Valley of Bones (15 page)

“Okay, sir, but would you like to tell me why we’re putting a full-court press on something that looks a lot like a grounder.”

Oliphant made an impatient gesture. “Oh, hell, you know damn well it’s not a grounder anymore. You ever have a rat die in a wall? It doesn’t matter how much deodorizer you spray, there’s still that stink that sticks in the back of your throat. This thing has a stink like that. People are fucking with us, major players are playing us, and I’m goddamned if I’m going to be played. We need to go into the walls and find the rat.”

Paz took a breath and asked, “Sir, this wouldn’t have anything to do with why you left the Bureau?”

Oliphant stared at him so long that Paz was forced to drop his eyes. “That’s really none of your business. But if anything from my FBI experience ever becomes relevant to this case, I’ll bring it to your attention. Are we done?”

Paz stood. “Yes, sir.”

Oliphant was still staring at him. “You getting enough sleep, Jimmy?”

“Sure.”

“You don’t look like it. You got red rims on your eyes and you yawned three times in the last half hour. Maybe you need to lay off some of that Cuban coffee.”

“Yes, sir,” said Paz, “maybe I do.” He was in the hallway before he realized that Oliphant had steered the conversation away from revealing why the name David Packer had caused the security gates to slam down at the State Department.

L
ORNA WISE LIES
in bed and considers her symptoms. It is Saturday, so she can lie in bed doing this for longer than she usually does. A scratchiness in the back of the throat. A twitching in her calf muscle. A sort of deadened area just above her left elbow. She blinks one eye, then the other. Perhaps a slight blurring of vision in the left, or maybe that’s a bit of sleepy dust. Although, it’s worrisome that it’s the left one. The left calf muscle too, bad, speaks to central nervous system malfunction: an ischemia, a smallish brain tumor, the subtle onset of MS. As she lies, she palps her breasts, although she knows she should be upright, and although she will do it again when she showers. Probing for the tumor she knows is lurking, surely her fingers, so competent after all these years, can catch the nodule at the earliest possible stage and she can have the surgeon pluck it out. Although she knows that’s not true, although she is by now a fairly decent amateur oncologist, although she knows there are cancers so treacherous that by the time they show a palpable tumor they have spread througout the body. Not the kind her mother had, however, her mother was carrying a tumor the size of a tangerine around before she went to the doctor. Why, Mom, why didn’t you go to the doctor? Because I thought it was nothing. Because I hate doctors.

Lorna drops her breasts and sits up on the edge of the bed, experiencing a wave of dizziness and perhaps a slight nausea, the infallible sign of a brain wracked with metastases or else mere sickness and
disgust at herself. Unlike Mom, Lorna happens to love doctors, occasionally in a sexual way, as with Rat Howie, and for this reason has decided that her personal physician should always be a woman, and so it is. She suppresses an urge to call Dr. Greenspan. But she saw her only thirty-four days ago and does not wish to acquire a rep as a crock. For some reason, she thinks as she starts her Saturday routine, the first minutes of the day are always the worst, the times when she feels most fragile and afraid.

She breakfasts on grapefruit and health pills and coffee on the little patio in the back, surrounded by flowers and twittering birds. She receives both the
Miami Herald
and the
New York Times
every morning and reads both all the way through, except for the sports sections. The
Herald
is an excellent paper, but she does not feel civilized without the
Times;
the
Times
and the
New Yorker
, banners her dad flew, declaring that although he now lived in the New Jersey burbs, he had not surrendered to barbarism. And she likes the crossword puzzle, which she now does in twenty minutes, not as good as her dad but not disgraceful either.

After that, she sits in a sling chair, sipping the cooling coffee and recounting all the various tasks she has put off until the weekend and now must do or feel like a slacker. The phone rings, and she reaches for the cordless she has brought out with her and it is Sheryl Waits. Who asks if she is ready. Ready for what? It now turns out that Lorna’s mind has erased the appointment she made with her friend to go shopping for a dress to wear to Sheryl’s party, an actual party dress, which I don’t believe you own one of, sugar, because you are not entering my domicile looking like bark. Uh-uh!

THAT EVENING LORNA
shows up at Sheryl’s party more than fashionably late in a scarlet spaghetti strap dress with a Saran Wrap cling and a built-in bra that offers her breasts up like twin servings of flan. The place is jumping, cars lining both sides of the street, people standing on the sidewalk and on the front lawn, holding
drinks, lights strung among the branches of the pines and around the trunks of the palms on the property, light pouring from every window of the good-size split-level house, and thumping music.

She finds Sheryl in the kitchen taking a tray of fried chicken wings out of the oven. Sheryl screams how good she looks and requires everyone in range of her voice to see how good. Lorna says, “I hate you. This is the least fabric I’ve worn on my body outside a pool since I was four.”

“You’re such a fool, child! You look fantastic. Don’t she look fantastic, Elvita?”

Elvita agrees she looks fantastic. Lorna mugs for them, a pulp temptress. Hilarity.

In general, Lorna is bored by parties, by the way people act when they are drinking, nor does she like dancing with or being pawed by strangers. At loud parties, she usually finds a quiet corner, sits down with a glass of white wine, and observes the various species at their social rituals, an ornithologist in a rain forest. But because it is Sheryl’s party she feels obliged to be social. She circulates, sipping a wine and soda. Most of the people here are connected to the police, somewhat over half of them black, the rest a mix of Anglos and Cubans. As she expected, the men are standing about in clumps, clutching drinks in big plastic cups and talking sports or shop. The women are in clumps too, talking shop, shopping, vacations, clothes, kids, of which there are large numbers running underfoot and shouting in the yard. Some people are dancing under colored lights on the patio, to the Weather Girls, “It’s Raining Men.”

A man comes up to her, introduces himself as Rod, identifies himself as a friend of Leon’s. He is muscular, hairy, a cop, has only small talk to offer; he stares at her tray of breasts. Another man, taller, Ben, with the kind of big Adam’s apple she rather dislikes comes and joins them. He also stares at her breasts. She feels like she should be on a rotating platform, like a new model at an auto show. And another, Martin, younger and better looking, and what does he stare at? Not her flawless skin. They are all Miami PD and they engage in a
joking rivalry, saying amusing bad things about one another to her, all of them eyeing her body. She can almost hear the saliva gurgle, the blood surging through their genitalia. This is it, then, sexual triumph: she finds she can’t take it seriously, it’s like thinking that a construction worker’s whistle signals the start of a meaningful relationship. Yet she feels obliged to play, to bat back the slightly salacious repartee, to
simper,
for God’s sake! And to sweat. A good thing about this outfit is that it doesn’t come close to her armpits. A drink in a large plastic cup is placed in her hand and she drinks: sweet and very cold. Leon must be making his famous frozen daiquiris.

Somewhat of a blur after this. She dances with several men, feels several sets of genitals against her unprotected belly, several sets of hands on her ass. The dancing is to funk and disco, music she does not care much for. Then, suddenly, the music changes, a Latin beat, but unlike any Latin music she has heard before. It is layered, multivoiced, with rhythms that are incredibly complex yet still engaging of the groin area. Now she is dancing with a man who is leading her in steps she doesn’t know but seems to be able to do fairly well, or perhaps that is a result of the rum. He has steady hazel eyes set in a face that’s the caramel color of a Coach bag she owns. He is just her height in heels.

“What’s this music?” she asks.

“It’s a machine for the suppression of time,” he says.

“Pardon?”

“Lévi-Strauss.”

“Lévi-Strauss?”

“Yeah. Plays third base for the White Sox. How about those Marlins?”

“You’re Jimmy Paz,” she says.

“And how do you deduce that, Dr. Wise?” A grin now, small white teeth shining, like a cat.

“Sheryl said you were brainy. I don’t think many men at this party would respond to a question with a quotation from Lévi-Strauss.”

“Only those on the structural anthropology softball team.”

“Of which you are a member.”

“I am. Left
bricoleur
. We play ball, we down a case of cold ones, and sit around the locker room discussing
Tristes Tropiques
.”

“Seriously, what is this music?”

“It’s
timba
. A Cuban record, a band called Klimax.”

“What are they singing about?”

“
Yo no quiero que mi novia sea religiosa
. I don’t want my girlfriend to be religious. Speaking of which, how’s our girl?”

“Oh, no, not shop! And here I thought you were dancing with me because you liked my dress,” Lorna says, not really believing that she has let this slip from between her lips.

He flings her out and leads her through an elaborate break and then snaps her back close. He smells of tobacco, not a smell she is used to on the health-conscious men she tends to hang with. Not unpleasant, though. Spicy. He throws her out again to the beat and now he gives her a long appreciative look that she feels running over her skin like heat. He says, “No, it was mainly the dress. Mainly the nondress zones, to be honest. Creamy. It makes me wish I had a long spoon.”

“I think we could use another drink,” she says.

SOMEWHAT LATER THEY
are sitting side by side on a somewhat ratty Bahama couch in the Waitses’ Florida room with that drink, Lorna’s a second foolhardy daiq and Paz with some dark brown liquid on ice. Lorna sees Sheryl zoom by with a tray of nibbles. Sheryl spots the two of them and rolls her eyes while licking her lips dramatically. Lorna sticks out her tongue.

Paz catches this action but declines to comment on it. Instead he says, “So. What do we have?”

It takes a second for Lorna to recall what he is talking about. Then she hears herself talking, the words slow and only a little slurred. She listens to the person speak, as from a great distance. “Two interviews and one notebook full of writing. From the interviews, nothing much. She’s a hard case, very smart, doesn’t want to give anything away.
There’s a…I don’t know how to put it, a split in her, somewhere deep. Her usual persona is mild, saintly, lots of religious references. But occasionally, if she feels pressed…”

“Out comes the spider woman,” says Paz.

“You’ve seen it too?
Her,
I should say.” Lorna feels a rush of grateful relief. She has not discussed this aspect of her client with Mickey Lopez.

“Oh, yeah. I saw something when I interviewed her after the arrest. A look in her eyes. That’s when I knew we weren’t dealing with the Little Flower.”

“Excuse me, the little…”

“A saint, Teresa of Lisieux. I guess you’re not Catholic.”

“No. But I’m sure it’s not simple malingering. I’ve seen a lot of that and it’s fairly easy to tease out. We have tests that…anyway, not to get technical, but she’s for real, there really is something bent in there. That confession you got her to write tends to confirm that. She had a horrendous childhood.”

Paz listens as she summarizes the contents of the first notebook, professionally sympathetic, not particularly shocked; he has heard and seen worse. Studying the woman as she speaks, he sees something unsaid flickering behind her bland professional delivery, and he knows that she has seen the same kind of inexplicable transformation he’d seen himself. It wasn’t just a look in Emmylou Dideroff’s eyes, but what it actually was he cannot say, doesn’t want to think about, and for damned sure is not about to bring up just now.

He says, “A double murder–suicide should be easy to check. So she sets up her mom to whack her stepfather and the little brother goes down too. Quite the sweetheart. But even though she has no problem spilling that, she totally denies tossing our guy off that balcony. How do you figure that?”

“She’s not legally responsible for what her mother did. It’s no crime leaving out a key and depriving someone of tranks. But clonking someone on the head and throwing them to their death is a different story. I think.”

“So, you think we’re being gamed?”

“No, she’s not a psychopath. In fact she feels responsible for everything.”

She sees the confusion on Paz’s face, feels it in her own mind too. This is actually stupid, trying to discuss a case with a cop with her being half in the tank.

Lorna is finishing her second daiquiri now, and as she does, a young boy is standing in front of her with a tray of tall cups full of the same brew. He is dressed in a too-large maroon monkey jacket and has a clip-on bow tie loosely clutching the collar of his white shirt.

“Take another one,” he says.

“Does your mother know you’re dispensing liquor, young man?” says Lorna.

“She said I
had
to, that’s how low she is. You want a daiquiri, Detective Paz?”

“I don’t think so, John. I believe I would be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“Wimp,” says the boy. “
We
the
po-
lice here,” and turns to Lorna.

“C’mon take one, Lola, it’s a party!” he says, taking the empty and placing a full cup on the wooden arm of the couch. He gives Lorna a frank once-over. “Lookin’ fine, Lola. Dress is da bomb!” He slides away into the crowded room.

“Lola?” says Paz.

“My family name around here. One of the kids called me that when she was a baby and it stuck.”

“It suits you. In that outfit.”

“You think it’s da bomb, too, hm?” She takes a sip of the new drink. She knows that if she finishes it, she will be really drunk, fraternity house drunk, as she has been careful not to be for some time. She decides to go ahead. Better to be completely incapable of speech than try to make sense of Emmylou Dideroff on half a brain. Also, she is sitting with a man who knows who Lévi-Strauss is. She drinks her drink so quickly that its chill makes her jaw ache, aware of Paz watching her, that little grin playing around his broad lips. She leans toward him, a
little closer actually than she had planned, her breast squashing up against his arm. “How about another little dance, Detective?” she says.

SHE GROANS AND
pulls the sheet up against the morning sunlight. There is a dull pain behind her eyes, and her entire pharynx feels dry enough to crackle. It is painted thick with the particularly foul rotten-molasses taste you get when you drink a lot of rum. Her mind is perfectly empty, even for a moment or two void of her own identity. Memory returns in a slow trickle: who she is, where she is (her own bedroom), her current condition. She is hungover and naked. No, not quite, she is wearing the red lace thong from last night. There memory stalls. She recalls the third daiquiri and Paz and whirling with him around the patio and his insolent, examining grin, and then a blank. It is inconceivable that she could have driven home, so someone must have driven her. She can’t recall. Did she have sex? She might have taken on the Dolphins’ defensive line for all she knows. Sheryl calls, but Lorna has no dirt to give her, and they arrange for the return of Lorna’s car amid a degree of girlish giggling that only increases the pounding in Lorna’s skull.