West Palm: The Complete Novel (4 page)

S
moker entered her hospital room to find her sitting in a wheelchair, dressed for the street in cargo pants and a tank top. The cuts on her arms were superficial but her throat would never look the same again. “Am I late?” he asked.

She'd been ready for an hour, eagerly awaiting his arrival. It was her first day off painkillers and her skin felt as drawn as a patchwork quilt whose stitches were too tight, but it was exhilarating not to be drugged. “Just on time,” she said in her scratchy whisper.

Zaratzian's right, thought Smoker, she is an amazon. It's a shame this gorgeous woman is going to be scarred. He handed her a gift-wrapped parcel.

“From Mr. Zaratzian?”

“From me.”

She opened it, and took out a flowered scarf. “What a thoughtful gesture! Now I won't look like Frankenstein's monster.”

“Does that mean you like it?” He flashed the crooked grin she remembered, and she found herself smiling back. Gingerly she wound the scarf around her burning neck.

An orderly wheeled her through the corridors; Smoker followed with her duffel bag.

On the main floor, her chair was pushed to the wall to allow a gurney to go by. The woman on it was as gray as a living human being could be, her limp gray fingers ending in long red nails.

“Your nails look lovely,” said Tara.

The woman's eyelids fluttered open. “Thank you, baby.”

The gurney rolled on down the hall, and Tara was wheeled to the main door. Outside, the muggy heat seared her lungs. The air-conditioned safety of the hospital was behind her. Her chair was taken from her, and she felt cast adrift.

“Good luck,” said the orderly as Tara folded herself into Smoker's Jetta.

Smoker had planned to take her directly from the JFK Medical Center up to Banyan, but feeling how tense her mood had become, he decided it would be too abrupt to whip her out of the house of suffering straight into the house of crime. So instead of driving north on Congress, he slowed down and pulled into John Prince Park.

Looking for an empty picnic table, he drove past fields of soccer players and parties of hospital workers in scrubs on their breaks. Most of the hospital workers were Latino, and just about all the soccer players were. Considering the number of gangs in the neighborhood, it was nice to see unemployed young men kicking balls instead of kicking heads.

He spotted a vacant table on a slope going down toward Lake Osborne. There was no roof over it, but it was off by itself, peaceful and private. “Do you mind sitting in the sun?”

“I like it,” she said, taking her seat on one of the concrete benches. “But can I ask what we're doing?”

“I thought we could look at the ducks.”

Instead she looked at him settling in on the opposite bench. Behind him was a dense forest of foliage. If this park were Africa, she thought, he'd be a gentle rhinoceros coming out of the bushes.

“Zaratzian's told me everything about you,” he said. “Anyway, everything he knows. So this should be the point when I ask for the rest of your biography. But I think you've had enough of being cross-examined.” He sensed he wasn't calming her as successfully as he'd hoped to. She was wired as an electric fence.

“So,” he persisted, “here we are in our pastoral setting that was once underwater. In Chiefland, Santa Claus rises up from the water each year in diving gear. The kids are astounded, but he actually swims there through a network of underground springs. You should really like it in Florida. It's just your kind of thing, all water.”

“I've had enough water for a while.”

“Too bad. I was hoping we'd put on a couple of oxygen tanks and flippers and go down right here. You never know where we might come up.”

“Where's Chiefland?”

“Levy County. Thousands of acres of preserve up there. People think of Florida as beaches and high-rises, but there's a lot of wild country in this state.”

The fact didn't seem to get her too excited. “What are your feelings on wild country?” he inquired.

“I have no objection.” She lowered her eyes to the picnic table, which, like the benches, was solid concrete so it wouldn't be stolen. On the surface of the table someone had scratched
Chango Rides
.

Smoker traced the letters with his fingers. “This cement picnic set-up is like the Himalayas. Built to stay. But over time, the wind and Chango will wear it away.”

“Meaning?”

“I'm as persistent as Chango. I'm going to get the guy who did this to you.”

And then he was staring past her.

She turned her head to see what he was staring at and saw five young men swaggering through the heat in oversized T-shirts with their pants dragging on the grass. She felt her body growing more tense than it already was. They weren't homicidal maniacs like her attacker, but they were definitely bullies in a pack, looking to see whatever they could shake down from the money tree; if an easy target appeared they'd jump on the possibility, and here were a couple of gringos sitting at an isolated picnic table. Smoker sure picked a perfect place for bird-watching, she thought.

She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. He was moving his arm slightly on the table so his jacket fell open and his shoulder holster appeared. The rhino was showing his horn.

The trajectory of the five young men corrected itself. To compensate for their momentary loss of face, they increased the degree of their swagger as they sauntered off.

“What if they had guns too,” she asked. “What would you have done?”

“They did have guns.”

Don't rile the rhino, she thought.

“That duck over there,” he said as if there'd been no interruption, “has chosen to live in the city when he could be living in the Everglades, or anywhere out in the country. Don't you wonder why?”

“I think it has something to do with where they're born. They have no choice.”

“There's always a catch.”

She gazed at the birds that had no choice, and hoped she'd made the right one, staying on in Florida.

“One thing about John Prince Park,” continued Smoker. “It's rare for an alligator to wander in. Which means our duck doesn't have many natural enemies.”

“Unless those guys with guns decide they want roast duck for supper.”

“Well, yeah, but aside from that, they're peaceful ducks. They don't need to be on edge all the time. And that's how I want you to feel, like a peaceful duck.”

“I feel like a sitting duck.”

“Maybe the ducks were a poor example.”

“It was a good try.”

He looked at his watch. “I'm taking you to a lineup at the West Palm Beach police station on Banyan Boulevard.”

She opened her mouth to protest it was too soon, then reminded herself this was what she was sticking around for. “Fine,” she said.

He drew a muffin from his pocket. “As we bid good-bye to the ducks and show them our appreciation . . .”

Before he'd even broken the muffin apart, dozens of ducks were waddling over.

She watched him evenly distributing the pieces to be sure they all got their share.

“Ever been bitten by a duck?” he asked. “It doesn't hurt much, but it's a shock.”

The ducks finished eating the last crumbs and waddled back to the water.

“Tell me what I should know about the lineup,” she said.

“The suspect's description matches that of your attacker. And the MO fits.”

“The MO?”

He ran a finger across his throat. “Ear to ear.”

They drove out of the park and north on Congress past a string of health-care facilities, then turned right at a rehab center. Now the park was on both sides.

“Aggravated battery's a second-degree felony in Florida,” he explained as he joined the multilane traffic on I-95. “The maximum sentence is fifteen years and a fine of ten grand. Unless an attacker has priors, he doesn't end up serving much time. But the suspect they've arrested is looking at a murder charge. So I hope it's our guy.”

“She's dead then? The woman he cut.”

“The autopsy's scheduled for this afternoon.”

“How did you find out about it?”

“From a pal of mine. It's his case. Homicide Detective Ingersoll.”

They drove for a while without speaking while Smoker's internal navigation system ticked off the saddest calls he'd made when he was a cop on this beat . . . the child scapegoated by the rest of the family, so starved she was eating her own arm . . . the concentration camp survivor stomped to death for trying to break up a lovers' quarrel . . . the mother who said, “Why don't you just cut my heart; out?” one too many times; when Smoker responded to the son's 911, he was presented at the door with the mother's heart.

The cases of a private investigator were less bloody, but even these reverberated as he passed within their gravitational field . . . the adoption agency that milked childless couples and never came up with the promised child . . . the short-term luxury rentals paid for in advance by tourists who arrived with their luggage to find their home away from home was a multistory parking garage . . .

He took the exit at Okeechobee, and turned left on Tamarind, where there'd recently been a candlelight vigil for a slain young gangbanger. “People shouldn't be judged for the bad things they do,” declared the boy's tenderhearted classmates, “but for who they are deep down.” In the course of the vigil, five of them were shot.

Remembering that he had a passenger who needed cheering up, he pointed to a sign on a park bench by the courthouse:
ARRESTED? CALL ATTORNEY A. STINE
. “Think I should advertise on a park bench?”

“The only problem is when somebody sits, your ad disappears.”

They circled the police station, an angular stucco building with rose-colored pillars and a pocket park shaded by tall trees through which songbirds darted.

“Clematis Street,” he announced, doing his best to fill up the silence. “This is where the nightspots are. Every Thursday from six to nine there's live music outside. It's called Clematis by Night. I entertain on the balalaika.” He glanced at her. “Just kidding.”

They parked and walked past a secured area whose iron gate was being opened to allow a police cruiser to drive through. In the car's backseat sat a teenager whose life was about to change track. His expression was both cocky and fatalistic, as if he'd always known it would come to this. “They come off an assembly line,” remarked Smoker. “All day long, the same model.”

In front of the building's main entrance was a bronze statue of a policeman bending down and comforting a child. Inside, the desk marked
RECORDS
was protected by bulletproof glass.

“Tara Stevens here to see Detective Ingersoll,” said Smoker.

The woman behind the glass made a call and said, “Take the elevator to the second floor.”

Tara turned to see if Smoker was coming with her. He shook his head and gave her an encouraging smile.

The second floor had the same kind of office to report to, with bulletproof glass to protect the woman behind it.

A man came out and introduced himself as Detective Ingersoll. He wasn't as big as Smoker, but he was very black and solid as cast iron. I've got a pair of rhinoceroses on my side, she thought.

He unlocked the door with his ID and led her in. “I hear you had a rough time,” he said gently.

“I guess you see worse.”

“I see only worse.”

He felt her effort to stay calm and sensed she would be a good witness. Win or lose, she'd bring clarity to the job. His days were made of disappointments and chaos, but maybe today he'd be lucky, and get two for the price of one. “You'll be looking at photos,” he explained. “We don't do live lineups anymore.”

Thank God, she thought. I won't have to look into those living eyes with their mad mixed messages.

He took her past a grid of cubicles into an interview room along the wall.

“Ground rules first.” He gave her a form to sign that said she was aware that the person who committed the crime might not be in the lineup, that she shouldn't ask for guidance, that the suspects in the photos would all have similar features and hair but hairstyles could change . . .

Now he handed her the lineup, a sheet of paper with six faces on it.

Blood rushed to her head.

She dropped the paper as if it were on fire.

All of them were him.

“Take your time,” said Ingersoll. “They're not going anywhere.”

She forced herself to look closely at each shaven head, each surly face, and at last said, “He's not here.”

“Are you sure?”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “I'm sure.”

“You reacted as if—”

“That's because I keep seeing him everywhere. But I was mistaken. He isn't any of these men.”

She signed a statement saying she was unable to identify the subject, then studied the six faces again, wondering which one had cut the woman's throat.

“Second thoughts?” asked Ingersoll hopefully.

“The murderer you've caught is one of these guys, right?”

“Right.”

“I'd love to help you convict him.”

“It doesn't work that way. You either recognize him or you don't.”

“I don't.”

“We've got another witness. Don't concern yourself. I'm just sorry we couldn't resolve your situation.” Ingersoll pushed back his chair. “So it's over to Smoker.”

“He said you were buddies.”

“I've known Smoker since he was on the force.”

“Why did he leave the force?”

“Lotta cops take early retirement.”

“You didn't,” she said. They were walking together toward the elevator.

“Smoker left because the coffee machine went up in price.”