Strip Tease (18 page)

The Rojos led Moldowsky upstairs to a small sitting room on the captain’s deck. Willie asked about Erb Crandall.

“I didn’t invite him,” Moldy said, “for his own protection.”

“Tell us the problem, Malcolm.”

He kept it simple: The congressman had gotten himself into an unsavory situation. A compromising photograph had been taken. Now a lawyer had come forward, demanding three million dollars.

The Rojos were deeply concerned, and conferred quietly in Spanish. Moldowsky noticed that the brothers wore matching robes with the name of the boat stitched over the left breast. One of Joaquin’s earlobes was white with dried soap bubbles.

Moldy said, “The options are limited.”

“Three million dollars,” said Willie, “is not possible.”

“I’m sure he’ll settle for two.”

Joaquin Rojo whispered a curse. The timing of the lawsuit threat couldn’t be worse—Dilbeck should hustle the sugar legislation out of committee immediately, so that the full House of Representatives could vote on it before the November election.

Impossible, Moldowsky said. “Those jerks couldn’t pass a kidney stone right now. Everybody’s home campaigning.” Besides, he added, the Speaker didn’t want the bill on the floor so soon—too controversial. Ralph Nader had gone on “Nightline,” making a stink about subsidies for Big Agriculture. The tobacco and rice lobbies panicked, which caused their stooges in Congress to do the same. A House vote now would be dicey; the smart thing to do was to wait. Which meant the Rqjos were forced to rely on David Dilbeck for several more months—and they needed him squeaky clean.

Willie asked, “How bad is the photograph?”

“Fatal,” said Moldy.

“Mierda. Let’s pay the goddamn money.”

“No!” Joaquin said. “I will not be blackmailed.”

“Do we have a choice?” Willie turned to Moldowsky. “Well, Malcolm?”

Without mentioning Jerry Killian by name, Moldy confided that a similar problem had arisen a few weeks earlier. “I handled it myself. But this one is more complicated.”

“Because of the photograph?”

“And the fact it’s a lawyer.”

Willie Rojo nodded. “That’s what worries me, too. Let’s just pay the bastard and forget it.”

His brother rose, shaking a pale fist. “No, Wilberto. You want to pay, do it with your own children’s inheritance. I’m out!”

Spanish erupted again, and this time the brothers’ voices escalated in argument. Moldowsky picked up a word here and there. Finally, Joaquin Rojo sat down. “Malcolm,” he said, “how much do you know about cane farming?”

Moldowsky shrugged and said he didn’t know much.

“We plant in muck,” Joaquin said. “Mostly sawgrass muck, sometimes custard apple. They call it black gold because it produces such rich sugar. A farmer might get ten good seasons out of a field, then the tonnage starts to drop. Why? Because with each crop, the layer of muck shrinks.” He dramatized with a thumb and forefinger. “Eventually the soil isn’t deep enough for cane, and the land becomes useless. Underneath is solid milestone.”

Willie said, “When the muck is gone, Malcolm, it’s gone forever. Our people are telling us five, maybe six more seasons.”

“Then what?”

Joaquin turned up his hands. “Rock mining. Condominiums. Golf resorts. That’s not important right now.”

“Later, yes,” said his brother. “But for now, our business is sugar cane. We need these last few years to be good ones.”

“A legacy,” Moldowsky agreed.

“Please make Mr. Dilbeck’s problem go away.”

“I assume you’re not paying off the lawyer.”

“My brother and I have decided against it.”

The emerald-collared ocelet trotted up the steps and crouched at Willie Rojo’s slippered feet. The old man dug into the folds of his monogrammed robe and produced a gooey chicken drumstick. The brothers watched fondly as the animal devoured the piece, bone and all. The crunching bothered Malcolm J. Moldowsky, who was not much of a cat person.

Joaquin yawned and announced it was time for bed. “Call us when it’s done,” he told Moldowsky.

“This’ll still be expensive.”

Willie Rojo giggled as he let the ocelet lick chicken grease off his fingers. “How expensive?” he asked. “Not three million dollars, I’m sure.”

“Not even close,” Moldy said, “but there’s a certain risk.”

“Not to us, I hope.”

“No, gentlemen. Not to you.”

Darrell Grant sold the wheelchairs for $3,200 cash and drove straight from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach. There he purchased an assortment of colorful pills, and picked up two prostitutes on the boardwalk. Later, when they thought he was asleep, the hookers let their pimp enter Darrell’s motel room and pick through his belongings. Darrell waited a suitable interval, then slipped his hand under the pillow where he kept the dagger. With a ghoulish screech, he sprung from the bed and stabbed the pimp in the fleshy part of a thigh. While the man wriggled on the floor, the hookers straddled him and frantically tried to stanch the bleeding. Darrell Grant calmly yanked the sheet from the bed and sliced it into long strips. Then he tied up the thrashing pimp and the two hookers, and stuffed dirty socks in their mouths. The women didn’t struggle, as they had gotten a close-up glimpse of Darrell Grant’s microdot pupils.

As he worked on the pimp, Darrell hummed a tune from The Jungle Book, which Angela had on video cassette. Gaily, he lathered the man’s curly black hair and shaved him bald. Then he took the dagger and cut a perfect capital G on the scalp. The pimp moaned and grunted into the filthy gag. Blood trickled in twin rivulets down both sides of his head. The women watched silently, fearing they were next.

Darrell Grant said: “Now I’m going to teach you people a lesson.” He got his keys and ran to the van. Two minutes later he returned, carrying an electric staple gun that he’d stolen from a construction site in Boca Raton. At the sight of the stapler, one of the hookers began to sob. Darrell Grant walked over to the pimp and untied one of his arms.

Still panting, he said, “Were you going to rob me?”

The pimp shook his head violently.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Darrell sang.

He plugged the staple gun into a wall outlet, and said, “Next time you want money, ask polite.” He grabbed the pimp’s hand and stapled a one-dollar bill to the palm. He held the trigger down a long time—ping ping ping—until the staple gun was empty. The pimp’s eyelids fluttered and he lolled unconscious. The women shivered with fright.

Suddenly Darrell Grant felt spent. He stretched on the bed and dialed Rita’s house. She growled at him for phoning so late, three-goddamn-thirty in the morning!

Her brother apologized and said, “Listen, I might take a few extra days up here. That OK?”

“Suit yourself. Erin’s coming tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Visitation day,” Rita said.

“No!”

“That’s what she told us.”

“Jesus, Rita, did you tell her Angie was there? How the hell did she know?”

“I can’t help it your daughter knows how to use the phone. And she climbs, too, like a little monkey.”

“Angie called her?” Darrell Grant pounded a fist on the bare mattress. “Goddamn, I can’t believe you let this happen.” He was too overmedicated to concentrate on two crisis situations simultaneously. He didn’t notice that one of the tied-up hookers had managed to twist an arm free, and was working covertly on the other knots.

Darrell choked the telephone receiver and cried: “Don’t let that cunt in the house, you understand?”

“It’s visitation day,” Rita repeated.

“It ain’t fucking visitation day!”

“Then you come back and deal with it. I got wolves to train.”

“Lord Christ.”

“Another thing, it was on the news—what’s the judge that got your divorce?”

Darrell Grant told her the name.

“Yep, Alberto said it was him. He’s dead, Darrell.”

“Now hold up—”

“It was on the TV,” Rita said. “He died last night at a nudie joint.”

Darrell Grant rested his cheek on the foul-smelling mattress. It was definitely time for more pills.

On the other end of the line, Rita was telling the story. “His family said he went there to preach gospel at the naked girls. You believe that shit? They found a Bible on his lap—it was all on the television.”

“I’ll be home by morning,” Darrell Grant said thickly.

“What about Erin?” Rita asked. There was no answer from Daytona Beach. “Darrell? Whoa hey, little brother, wake up!”

But he was out cold, sapped on the skull by a hooker swinging a staple gun. They made off with the cash, the drugs, the dagger, and of course the van. They did not take Darrell Grant’s dirty socks, which were the first things he tasted when he regained consciousness four hours later.

“How you know that?”

“It came to me in a dream,” Garcia said. Miklos opened the door and pointed gleefully at the carpet, which was a cocoa-brown shag.

The detective said, “Sometimes I scare myself.” The Mineral County coroner had found three brown carpet fibers under Jerry Killian’s left thumbnail.

“What else you dream?” Miklos asked.

“A man named Killian was murdered in this room.”

“Oh no,” Miklos said. “Don’t tell me.” He said the maid found Killian’s checkbook beneath the bed.

“He probably threw it there on purpose,” Garcia said, “so the bad guys wouldn’t get it.” People did weird things on the verge of dying. Miklos said, “I send it back right away, next day.”

“You did the right thing.”

“Who called the police?”

“Nobody,” Al Garcia said. “I opened Mr. Killian’s mail. There was the checkbook, and your note.” Miklos frowned. “Is that OK? To open his letters?”

“Oh sure. I’m an officer of the law.” Garcia got on his knees and crawled under the bed. His fingers probed the ratty shag in search of other clues. All he found was a petrified pizza crust and a nickel. Garcia got up and brushed the fuzz off his trousers.

Miklos said, “Since I work here, seven people die. It is very sad. Seven in seven months.”

“Guests?”

“Yes, sir. Drugs, guns, stabs, problems with the heart. The police come many times. Always we are replacing carpets and sheets.”

“Maybe it’s the location,” Garcia said, his voice rising over the roar of an incoming jet. The place was ideal for customers wishing not to be overheard. He took out a photograph of Jerry Killian.

“I never see him before,” Miklos said. “You say this man was a murder?”

“Yeah. In the tub is my guess.”

“The bathrooms we clean three times a week.”

“Wow,” Garcia said. “Your Lysol bill must be outta sight. Can I have a look?”

Miklos sat on the bed and waited. He heard the detective fiddling with the faucets in the bathtub. “Mr. Miklos, what happened to the hot-water knob?”

“Somebody broke.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Maybe two weeks ago.”

The detective came out, drying his hands on a towel. Another jet howled overhead. Garcia said, “Looks like somebody kicked that fixture right off the wall.” The drowning Jerry Killian had put up a pretty good fight.

Miklos said, “You say murder but the maid didn’t find no dead body.”

“That’s because the killer drove the dead body to Montana and dumped it in a river.”

“Why?”

“To mess up my vacation,” Al Garcia said. “Can I see the guest register?”

Miklos took him back to the office, which wasn’t much larger than the bathroom. Killian’s name did not appear on the check-in sheets; Garcia would’ve been shocked if it had. He made notes on everyone who’d rented Room 233 during the previous two weeks. One name showed up five times.

“He’s a local,” Miklos said.

“Local what?”

“Businessman. He entertains.”

“Oh,” said Garcia. “You mean he’s a pimp.”

Miklos squirmed. “Boy, I dunno.”

The detective asked if any of the other guests in 233 had made an impression. Miklos said yes, one man checked in with a bag of live gerbils and a video camera.

“And you find that unusual?” Garcia smiled. “Go on.”

“Another night was three Jamaicans. I tell them there’s only one bed but they say it’s OK, man. Three big guys in that room—you saw how small it is.”

Garcia tapped the guest register. Miklos found the name: “John Riley.” Conveniently generic. The address was a post-office box in Belle Glade, of all places. Lake Okeechobee.

“Big strong guys,” Miklos reported. “They check out before midnight.”

“Paid cash, I’m sure.”

“We don’t see many credit cards,” Miklos said.

“Remember what they were driving? Was there anybody else in the car?”

“Boy, I dunno.”

“What else?” Garcia asked. “You said they stood out.”

“They all have scars. Very bad scars.”

“On the face?”

“Legs.”

“Do tell,” Garcia said.

They were in short pants. Red, green, I dunno, but was very bright colors.”

“Gym shorts,” the detective said.

That’s how I saw the scars.” He reached down and patted his shins. “All down here.”

“You’ve been a big help, Mr. Miklos.”

The friendly motel manager offered to show Al Garcia the other rooms where guests occasionally died. The detective said no thanks, maybe another time.

“So maybe it was Jamaicans who killed the man who lost his checkbook.”

“It’s a thought,” Garcia said.

Miklos winked. “Maybe your dreams will tell you who did it.”

The detective laughed. “I deserve that.”

The motel manager accompanied him to the car. Miklos said he’d applied to be night clerk at a Ramada near the beach. He said the waiting list was two pages long.

“But I got more experience than most.”

“You’re not kidding,” Garcia said. “Good luck with that job.”

“Thank you,” said Miklos. “Good luck with your murder.”

Erin got to the trailer park at seven. Rita was already out in the backyard, yelling at the wolf dogs. It was Alberto Alonso who opened the front door. He’d just returned from the nuclear plant, and still wore his gabardine security-guard uniform. Erin was shocked that he was allowed to carry a gun.

“Coffee?” Alberto said. He unbuckled his holster and casually hung it over the back of a chair. Erin felt sick to her stomach; she had a flashing image of her daughter picking up Alberto’s pistol, thinking it was a toy.

“Where’s Angela?” she said tensely.

“Asleep, I think.”

Erin checked both bedrooms, which were empty. She returned to the kitchen, where Alberto was tending the coffee maker.

“Where is my daughter?” Erin said.

“Better touch base with Rita.”

“No, I want an answer from you.” She felt her arms shaking with anger. “Alberto, it’s visitation day.”

He poured a cup of coffee at the dinette. “I remember last time you stopped over. Took off without even saying so long.”

Erin said, “I didn’t feel so well.”

“Rita sure was pissed about the mail.”

“I sent it all back.”

Alberto Alonso eyed her over the rim of the coffee cup. “You look good in blue jeans,” he said. “How’s the job? I hear they changed the name of the place.”

Erin felt short of breath. What had these two cretins done with her daughter? She said, “OK, I’ll go ask Sheena of the Jungle.”

“Hold on there.” Alberto snickered nervously. “Maybe we can work something out, just the two of us.”

They heard Rita shouting curses outside. It sounded as if she was being dragged through the shrubbery. “Lupa don’t take to the leash,” Alberto explained.

Erin steadied herself; outmaneuvering Alberto shouldn’t be hard. He moved to a window and peeked through the blinds. “Rita’s got her hands full,” he reported in a furtive voice. He hustled back to the kitchen, and swept the dishes and silver off the table.

“How about a little show?” he whispered to Erin. “Just like you do at the club, only private.”

She thought of that final night, dancing on the table at Jerry Killian’s apartment—he’d been so sweet and shy about it. Alberto Alonso was a different story.

He said, “One little number, OK? Then I’ll show you where Angle’s at.” He sat on a stool, and excitedly motioned for Erin to climb on the dinette.

“Music would be helpful,” she said.

“Just pretend,” said Alberto. “Rita hears the stereo, she’ll want to know what’s up.”

Erin wasn’t sure she could dance just then, with or without her songs; all she could think about was finding Angela. Darrell Grant must’ve called and warned Rita to hide the child. If he knew that the judge was dead, then surely he knew Erin’s plan. That he would disregard an emergency injunction, or any court order, was a foregone conclusion. The man would skip the country before surrendering custody of his daughter. To Darrell, it wasn’t an issue of rightful parenthood, it was competition—a game of keep-away, with Angela as the prize. Erin knew she had to strike fast, before her ex-husband got back to town.

Stepping up on the table, she almost bumped her head on the drop-ceiling of the trailer. She began humming “Brown-eyed Girl,” slowly moving her hips, waiting for Alberto’s inevitable grope.

“Faster,” he said.

Erin put on her stage smile. As she danced, her sneakers skated on the Formica. After a minute or so, she started to hear the music, clear and tender, in her head. Alberto’s coffee-stained leer seemed far away and harmless. She didn’t flinch when he clamped his hands around her ankles.

“Go faster,” he said again.

Erin thought: Everything will be all right. Softly she sang the first verse.

“Not too loud,” said Alberto, glancing toward the screen door.

“It’s such a great song,” Erin said, to no one.

Alberto dropped his voice. “How about some titties?”

Erin raised her eyebrows.

“Just a peek,” he said. “Maybe take off your top.”

Still smiling, Erin undid the top two buttons. Then she said, “You do the rest, OK?”

A blissful glow came to Alberto Alonso’s face. He rose off the stool and reached for her, his fingers wriggling like night crawlers. Erin knew that Alberto would never locate, much less master, the tiny buttons of her blouse; in such extreme states of desire, men tended to lose their fine-motor skills. Alberto’s paws ultimately settled upon Erin’s chest, and began to massage in rhythmic circles. His coarse touch gave her an ugly chill, but Erin kept dancing like a pro. Alberto’s groans intensified with the pace of his fondling; the tip of his tongue emerged between his teeth, a sluglike sentinel of arousal.

Erin’s next move was to tousle Alberto’s hair, which was more than he could stand. He got a clumsy grip on her breasts and tried to pull her down, toward his waiting mouth. It presented Erin with an irresistible target. She brought her right knee up, majorette-style, high and hard against the point of Alberto’s unshaven chin. The crack was like a rifle shot.

Suddenly Alberto lay flat on his back, gargling blood. Erin stood over him. The stage smile was gone. Her blouse was fully buttoned. In one hand she held the coffeepot; Alberto could see steam curling off the sides.

“I intend to pour this on your balls,” Erin said.

Alberto attempted to speak, but the words came out in bubbles.

“I’m not sure this’ll kill you,” Erin said, taking arm, “but you’ll wish it had.”

A squeal rose from Alberto: “Neth doe! She neth doe!”

“Next door?”

He nodded hysterically. Erin put down the coffeepot and dashed out of the trailer. Alberto began gagging on the severed chunk of his tongue. Rita burst in the screen door; at her heels stood Lupa, ears pricked.

“Aiyeeee!” cried Alberto, shielding himself with both arms. But the wolf dog had already picked up the primal scent of the freshly wounded.

Erin held Angela’s hand the whole way back to Fort Lauder- dale.

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked.

“I’m just glad to see you, baby.” It had been fourteen months since she and her daughter had been alone, without Darrell Grant hovering nearby—the worst year of Erin’s life. She wondered what had been lost.

Angela said, “Mrs. Bickel has an aquarium. She let me feed her eels.”

Mrs. Bickel was the elderly next-door neighbor of Rita and Alberto Alonso. She had been microwaving glazed donuts for Angela’s breakfast when Erin arrived to collect her daughter. “I didn’t notice an aquarium,” Erin said.

“It’s in the bedroom near the TV. The eels are green and they ate all her pretty fish.”

“I see,” said Erin. It sounded like Mrs. Bickel fit perfectly in the demographic strata of the trailer park. Angela said, “Are we going to your house now?” “We sure are. Our house.” “For all day?”

“Better than that,” Erin said.

Angela looked worried. Erin’s heart sank at the thought that her daughter might rather be with Darrell, or Rita, or the old lady with the eels. It was Erin’s most dreadful nightmare, a year’s worth of nightmares. Now she felt paralyzed, afraid to say something that might prompt a lacerating burst of candor from Angie. I want Daddy! Erin couldn’t have endured it. The little girl broke the silence with one word:

“Pajamas.” She was wearing her favorites, starring Big Bird and the Cookie Monster. “But they’re dirty,” Angela said. She pinched a sleeve to show her mother. “All my clothes are at Daddy’s. And what about clean underpants!”