Strip Tease (35 page)

Erin was smiling in a private way as she stepped off the table, still smiling as she got dressed.

The congressman said, “I suppose we’re done for the night.”

Darrell pounded the nine-iron sharply on the table. “Erin, I want my daughter. No more goddamn games.”

“It’s over,” she said, adjusting the pearls.

“Fuck the courts,” Darrell declared. “Angie and me are headed to Arizona. Retirement Capital of North America!”

Erin opened her handbag and dropped the nickel inside. Then she took out the.32.

“Let’s go for a drive,” she said.

Darrell Grant cursed under his breath. The congressman felt a subtle contraction in his chest.

Some Saturday night, Erin thought. Me and the two men in my life. Aren’t I a lucky girl.

The first thing they noticed was the blood on the deck. In the salon, Garcia inspected the empty champagne bottles, the congressman’s photo album, and a pile of compact discs, still in their wrappings. Shad thumbed through a stack of cassettes left on the stereo cabinet.

“These are hers,” he said.

They searched the staterooms and found no bodies, no other signs of violence. Erin and the congressman were gone.

“Mierda,” said Al Garcia. He went out to the deck and examined the brownish splatters. Apparently the victim had been dragged, then lifted off the deck. Garcia felt a shudder of nausea; it wasn’t the sight of the blood, but the thought of whose it might be. Shad was on the dangerous edge of cold rage. He gripped the rail and stared hauntedly into the tea-colored water. His pinkish skull glistened with perspiration, and he hissed ominously when he inhaled.

Garcia said, “Don’t assume too much.”

A rumble came from Shad. “Yeah. What’s a little blood.”

The detective stepped across to the dock. On his knees: “There’s more here. Know what that means?”

“He didn’t dump her over the side. So what?”

A fifty-three-foot Hatteras convertible was moored next to the Rojos’ yacht. Garcia wanted to check it out. Shad located a flashlight on the bridge of the Sweetheart Deal. They boarded the fishing boat together and found more freckles of blood in the cockpit, near the fighting chairs. There was also the smudge of a partial footprint: the rounded heel of a man’s boot.

Morosely, Shad said, “That’s our boy.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Al Garcia pointed at the fishbox. “You want me to do the honors?”

“If you don’t mind.” Shad looked away.

The detective unfastened the latches and threw open the lid.

Buoyant with relief, he said: “Surprise, surprise!”

Shad turned to see. “Who the hell is that?”

“One of the most powerful men in Florida.”

“Not anymore.”

“No,” Al Garcia said. “He be deceased.”

Malcolm J. Moldowsky had fit easily into the fishbox, which he shared with three glassy-eyed bonitos. The aroma of the dead fish failed to overpower Moldy’s imported cologne.

“I don’t get it,” Shad said.

“The bonitos probably are shark bait for tomorrow,” Garcia speculated. “Mr. Moldowsky is a late addition to the buffet.”

Shad leaned in for a closer look. “This is the famous Melvin Moldowsky?”

“Malcolm,” Garcia said, “in the past tense.”

“Nice threads.”

“Feel better now?”

“About a million percent,” said Shad. “Who did it?”

Garcia shook his head. “Maybe Dilbeck went batshit.”

“Don’t say that.”

They were worried about Erin. Whoever had bludgeoned Moldowsky owned a monstrous temper. Shad frowned at the mutilated corpse. “I guess you gotta call somebody.”

“Not right this minute.” Al Garcia closed the fishbox. “He’ll keep.”

They returned to the Sweetheart Deal and searched the salon more carefully. Based on the volume of champagne consumed, Garcia calculated that the congressman was too drunk to drive. “He’s got the limo,” Shad said. “The girls saw it at the club.”

“So the question,” said the detective, “is where are they now.”

The clue was in the head, where Erin had written in lipstick on the narrow mirror: BELLE GLADE. Shad growled profanely while Garcia fished a gold bracelet from the toilet. Watching the jewelry drip, he said, “She’s got a temper, doesn’t she? A simple ‘no thanks’ would’ve done the trick.”

As they hustled to the cars, Shad asked Garcia to radio ahead for help. Garcia told him he’d been watching too much TV. “First off, that’s Palm Beach County, which is way out of my territory. Second, what do I tell ‘em, chico?” Facetiously he rehearsed the phone call: “See, guys, there’s this stripper who’s been abducted by this congressman who’s taking her to fucking Belle Glade, of all places, in a goddamn stretch Cadillac. Yes, I said ‘congressman.’ Yes, Belle Glade. Why? Well, we ain’t too sure. But we’d appreciate six or seven marked units, if you can spare ‘em…”

“Fuck it,” Shad muttered.

“As much as cops love strippers, they hate politicians,” Garcia said. “They hear it’s Dilbeck, they’ll all be oh-six. Off duty and unavailable.”

“So we’re the whole damn cavalry.”

“Mind if I drive?”

“Sure,” Shad said, “you’re the one with the siren.”

Darrell Grant had never ridden in a limousine. He was enjoying it so thoroughly that the circumstances seemed irrelevant. He accepted the fact that his former wife was holding him at gunpoint.

Darrell said to Dilbeck: “This your car?”

The congressman nodded. “It’s made available for my use.”

“What do you do? What’s your gig?”

“I’m a member of the House of Representatives.”

“Which means… ?”

“I represent the people of South Florida in Congress. And yourself?”

“I steal wheelchairs,” Darrell Grant replied.

Dilbeck glanced plaintively toward Erin, who sat on the bench seat across from the two men. The congressman’s roses lay next to her. She held the gun steady in her right hand.

“Darrell and I were married for a time. What else can I say?” Erin felt an inexplicable calm, heightened by the cool soft ride.

Dilbeck asked Darrell Grant what happened to his arm. He said Erin’s motherfucking boyfriend broke it with a motherfucking crowbar. Then: “Hey, driver, does the TV work?”

In a wounded tone, Dilbeck whispered to Erin: “What boyfriend?”

Erin iced him with a glare. Pathetic, she thought, both of them. She nonchalantly reached under her mini dress to unfasten the G-string and the scalloped dance top. She stuffed them in the shoulder bag. Still holding the gun, she gymnastically attempted to put on a plain cotton bra and white panties. It was a crucial detail; Erin didn’t want to be found dressed as a stripper. As she changed underclothes, the congressman watched inquisitively.

With an oily trace of a smile: “Why the white?”

“For you, baby,” she said.

Darrell Grant braced his sloshing head against the window.

They were on the interstate, racing away from the downtown skyline. The snaky scroll of lines on the pavement, the stream of headlights made him woozy. “I’m seriously loaded,” he remarked.

Erin said to the congressman: “My ex-husband has a drug problem, in case you were curious.”

“I wish you’d put the gun away,” Dilbeck told her.

“You’re not listening, are you?”

Darrell Grant, sleepily: “I never saw you dance before. That was damn good.”

“Aw, shucks,” Erin said.

“Sorry about that business with the nickel.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” she said, “your scathing wit.”

Darrell Grant basked in the limousine’s spaciousness. “I could get used to this,” he said, stretching his legs. “Climate-controlled comfort. Yessir!”

David Dilbeck, speaking as if Darrell couldn’t hear him: “That fracture looks bad, Erin. He should see a doctor.”

“Rita’s the one who done up my arm,” Darrell said, hoisting it in pride. “My big sister.”

“She cares about you,” Erin told him. “She’s the only one left.”

“No, Angie cares for me. Angie loves her daddy.”

“She finds you entertaining,” said Erin. “There’s a difference.”

“She loves me!”

Erin dropped the subject. Maybe Darrell was right. She didn’t want to think about it now.

The congressman said, “How much longer till we get there? I have to relieve myself.”

Erin ignored him. Her ex-husband said, “I killed a guy tonight.”

“Really?”

“On the boat back there.”

“Any particular reason?”

“I’m trying to remember.”

Erin assumed that he had hallucinated the incident. Darrell Grant said, “It didn’t feel the way I thought it would. Killing a guy.”

“You fell for the hype,” Erin said, “as usual.” She wondered what to do with him. He was screwing up her plans for the congressman.

“I’m serious about Angie,” he said.

“You kidding? You’re headed for prison, Darrell.”

“Nope, Arizona. Wheelchair Capital of North America!”

“Crazy bastard.”

“And I’m taking our daughter.”

“I’ll shoot you first,” Erin warned.

David Dilbeck abruptly began sobbing and groping for the door handle. He settled down when Erin jammed the.32 into the hollow of his cheek.

Darrell Grant said, “Since when do you carry a piece? Jesus, I hate guns.”

“My prostate is acting up,” the congressman announced.

“Quit whining,” Erin snapped. “Both of you.”

Darrell scratched his shin with the head of the nine-iron. “At least tell us where the hell we’re headed. Hey, driver, you speakee American?”

Pierre gave no reaction.

“I’ll tell you where we’re going,” Erin said. “We’re going to see our congressman in action.”

By early October, the sugar cane near Lake Okeechobee is green, bushy and ten feet tall. The bottomland is the flattest part of Florida; from a passing car, the fields seem to reach and define all horizons. Within a month, nearly two thousand Caribbean migrants arrive to start the cutting, and the mills run twenty-four hours a day. In early October, though, machines do much of the harvesting. An improbable crablike contraption called a cutter-windrower downs the cane and piles it in rows. More machines then retrieve the harvest for transportation to the company mills, where the sugar is made.

Congressman David Lane Dilbeck didn’t give much thought to the science or mechanics of cane farming. It was enough that the Rojos were nice people, well-bred and so generous. The mountainous campaign donations were important, of course, but Dilbeck would have traded his congressional vote for just the occasional use of that gorgeous yacht. He also valued the social company of young Christopher, who shared his tastes in bawdy entertainment and never failed to pick up the tab. For David Dilbeck, the attention of wealthy, powerful people was a flattering fringe benefit of the job.

The congressman saw no injustice in the price supports that had made multimillionaires of the Rojos. The grain, dairy and tobacco interests had soaked taxpayers for years by melodramatically invoking the plight of the “family farmer.” Why not sugar, too? Similarly, Dilbeck lost no sleep over the damage done to the agricultural economies of impoverished Caribbean nations, virtually shut out of the rigged U.S. sugar market. Nor did the congressman agonize over the far-reaching impact of cane growers flushing billions of gallons of waste into the Everglades. Dilbeck didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. In truth, he didn’t much care for the Everglades; it was torpid, swampy, crawling with bugs. Once, campaigning at a Miccosukee village, the congressman consented to an airboat ride because Erb Crandall saw it as a sensational photo opportunity. The airboat ran out of fuel on the Shark River, and Dilbeck spent two wretched hours picking blood-swollen mosquitoes out of his ears.

“And I’ve seen prettier water,” he told Erin, “in a pig trough.”

She was giving him a hard time about whoring for the Rojos. “Where do you think our drinking water comes from?” She pointed through the window of the limousine. “Out there, Davey. And your pals are pissing fertilizer into it.”

Darrell Grant was bored silly. He repeatedly sought to engage Pierre in conversation, with no success. The highway narrowed to two unlit lanes that Darrell recognized as U.S. 27. Blackness engulfed the limousine; the only trace of the city was a fuzzy sulfurous glow, far to the east. Darrell couldn’t figure out where Erin was taking them, or why. The geezer in the cowboy getup remained a riddle. Was this a rich new boyfriend? The idea of Erin as a gold digger engaged him—like mother, like daughter? Anything was possible.

Darrell struggled to hatch a plan, but the drugs interfered with his concentration. What he really wanted to do was sleep for about six months.

It was half-past ten when they arrived in Belle Glade (“Her Soil Is Her Future,” proclaimed a welcome sign). Pierre turned off the main highway and drove slowly through an empty migrant camp. David Dilbeck was alarmed by what he saw. He told Pierre to step on the gas before desperadoes swarmed from the slum and trashed the limo.

“It’s a leaser,” he explained to Erin.

“Don’t tell me you’ve never been out here.”

“What’s your point,” the congressman groused. The warm embrace of the Korbel had dissipated into a staggering migraine.