West Palm: The Complete Novel (5 page)

She looked at him.

“You get cream, sugar, and an extra helping of red tape.”

“It's the same thing in the military.”

“Smoker told me you did eight years in the Coast Guard.”

“Chasing after some of the worst people on the planet, and all I got was wet. A month into civilian life and I manage to get my throat cut.”

“Like they say, fate loves a jest.”

Downstairs, Smoker was waiting. He read the bad news on her face, but asked anyway, “How'd it go with the six-pack?”

“He wasn't on it.”

“So I still have a job.”

He led her out of the building past the statue of the cop comforting the child. She wondered if that's all Smoker would be able to do, comfort her.

She stopped at the gated area where the arrested boy had been driven in. Among the black-and-white patrol cars was a truck with a large globe on back for quarantining and exploding bombs. “Maybe,” she said, “I should move into
that
until you catch the guy.”

They walked on toward the parking garage. He liked the way she moved beside him, like an athlete. He liked the way she looked, liked it better all the time. He knew he should be sharing her disappointment, but all he felt was a quiet glow because his time with her wasn't over. Not good, Smoker.

“There's something I want to say.” She turned to him. “And it's hard. Can we go sit on that bench with your name on it?”

“A. Stine. Just the man we need.” They sat down.

“All the guys in the lineup looked like my attacker.”

“That's the point of a lineup.”

“I don't mean the shaven heads and age and that kind of thing.”

“What
do
you mean?”

“I always saw him as a mirage. A ghost. Looking at the lineup was like looking through a telescope. Suddenly he came into focus.”

“And how does that change the situation?”

“He was the one focusing, on me.”

T
he angel's frustratingly hazy image fills the screen of Zach's laptop.

If only he could get her picture sharp and large at the same time. But of course he can't. It was taken from far away at night in poor light.

Their time together was too short. He can't recall what her flesh was like. He needs to feel her, smell her, see her, hear her, taste her.

The medical tape he's wrapped around his rib feels like an embrace. He has no experience of embraces, but he decides this is the embrace of an angel.

His sense of longing is so strong the pain is physical. In comparison, the rib itself hardly hurts unless he coughs or makes a sudden movement. So he sits perfectly erect, and tries to dull the pain of his longing by clicking to pictures of his previous loves. Sharp, clear photos taken at leisure: the pale radiance of death, the beautiful bloodless lips, the sublime stillness.

He sings to himself as he studies his work.

In solemn delight I survey

A corpse when the spirit is fled

In love with the beautiful clay . . .

But his previous loves can't blunt his present pain. The perfect moment has blessed him in the past, and he needs it to sweep over him again.

He needs it so badly.

“W
hat type of vehicle do you want?” asked Mickey Zaratzian as he escorted her into the Honda dealership on West Blue Heron Drive.

“A bulletproof Popemobile.”

“What's your second choice?”

“Low mileage and good on gas.”

They found a Honda Civic with 2,300 miles on the speedometer.

“Repossessed,” explained the salesman, leading them into his office. “The lady lost her job. Totally unexpected. Not something we were prepared for. I take a very personal interest in my customers, especially during hard times like these.” His countenance brightened. “But there it is. Her loss is your gain. This is a remarkable bargain. Leather upholstery, sunroof, navigation—”

“It's the car of the year,” said Zaratzian. “Let's cut to the chase. Cash. No financing. Go get the paperwork.”

The salesman hurried from his office, sensitive to the fact that further performance art would not be necessary.

“I don't want it registered in my name,” she told Zaratzian. “I don't want him to be able to trace me by my car.”

“It's in my company's name. You're just a nameless employee. Which is true because I'm paying you a retainer. Use the car till you're sick of it, then we'll buy you another one.”

He took off his captain's cap and gazed thoughtfully out the window. “I knew a guy was knifed in an elevator. Now he always has to live on the ground floor. But everything has its compensations. Ground-floor rent is cheaper.”

She followed his gaze toward the street beyond the lot. The scar on her neck began to throb. Her lungs began to burn. Acrid sweat rolled down her sides. Her attacker was standing there. “It's him.”

Zaratzian slammed on his cap, leapt to his feet, and charged out through the doors as if he were six foot five instead of five foot three—a very forceful five foot three, with legs like little tree stumps and arms inherited from peasant ancestors who must've pushed a lot of plows.

She ran after him but didn't get there in time to stop him from reaching up and grabbing the guy by the neck of his T-shirt.

“It's
not
him.” Her shout came out as a croak, and then her injured throat shut down completely.

The young man, zoned out on oxycodone or some other horse pill, was slow to react, slow enough for Tara to pry Zaratzian off.

“Mickey, I made a mistake.”

“You're sure it's not him?”

She looked at the young man's shaved head, his high cheekbones, his tanned and wiry arms, and understood how she'd been misled. It was a type that was going to set her off every time she saw it. Unless she got hold of herself, all of Florida was going to be a police lineup. “I'm sure.”

Zaratzian pulled some bills from his money clip and made it right with the mellow young man, who held up two fingers and wished them, “Peace and love.”

The salesman was hurrying toward them, clutching the paperwork that he was ready to insert into the middle of a street brawl, mugging, or consensual sex in order to complete the sale.

“A case of mistaken identity,” Zaratzian explained.

Tara slipped her arm through his and guided him back onto the lot. “My hero.”

“You're wound up too tight, Tara. When you're always in fight and flight mood, it stresses a gland. I forget which one.”

“I've got to change my shirt.”

“What?”

“I stressed my sweat glands.”

“It's another gland I'm talking about. A more important one.”

They stopped at his vintage Cadillac and he opened the big trunk. She rummaged in her luggage to find another tank top. “I'll put it on in the ladies' room . . .”

The salesman was hovering at the door, wearing a look of anxiety. “Relax,” said Zaratzian. “It's just a wardrobe change to go with the new car.”

In the ladies' room, Tara washed her armpits, pulled on the clean shirt, and stuck the damp one in the pocket of her cargo pants.

Zaratzian was waiting in the office. “You sure you don't want to go to Syros so you don't have to go around changing shirts all day?”

“My friend's expecting me.”

“So bring your friend to Syros. No? No.” He peeled off a few hundred from his money clip. “This is for shirts.”

“Mickey, none of this is necessary.”

“If you sued me I would've known where I stood. That's familiar territory. An employee gets a hangnail and she sues for a hundred thousand. But you, you've got class.”

“Nobody's accused me of that before.”

“What d'ya mean? You get your throat cut on my boat and you pick a secondhand Honda Civic? That's class.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “Speed dial number two is Smoker. Number three is me. Call Hawaii, call Singapore, call wherever your Coast Guard buddies are stationed around the world.” With his little rat's paw he made a gesture that encircled the globe. “The bill comes to my company.”

She was examining the phone when the salesman brought them a pair of keys to the car of the year.

Mickey Zaratzian reached into another pocket and fished out a silver key ring with a silver rat hanging from it by its tail.

“Mickey's a rat,” he said, fitting the key onto the ring and pressing it into her hand.

T
he cobbled entranceway into Seafarers Landing was supposed to make you think you were entering a village with its row of quaint little shops behind flowering trees. But instead of the envisioned bistros, cafés, and bakeries, the storefronts were dusty stretches of glass plastered with
F
OR
R
ENT
signs. The only working stores belonged to the harbormaster and the realty manager, but the harbormaster's door was locked, which left only the realty office, where Courtney sat, surrounded by empty desks.

Courtney's isolation in this sea of emptiness was a far cry from when she began as on-site realtor in the first of the complexes built by Seafarers' developer. In those heady days when condo owners flipped their apartments over after two or three months, Courtney had commanded an office full of assistants. Then the merry-go-round lurched to a halt, the economy plummeted, and Courtney was left alone with the desks and the coffee machine.

She looked from her computer screen to her fingernails, handpainted by Min and spangled with Swarovski rhinestones. Min had rented the store next door in hopes of decorating the nails of all the Seafarers Landing ladies, with visions of women coming and going from bistro to nail salon to café to bakery. But since there was no bistro, café, or bakery, just a 90 percent condo vacancy rate, Min sold her equipment on craigslist and moved on, after doing Courtney's nails for the last time. Now there was no money in Courtney's budget for high-end manicures. This one would have to hold her for the foreseeable future, unless she sold a condo.

While she was reflecting on this unlikely eventuality, the door pushed open, and in walked a good-looking guy.

As he got closer, he began to look less respectable, but in South Florida, where the biggest banks are built by drug money, not-respectable has its own respectability. The most expensive condo Courtney had sold was to a pair of shady Russians whose voices sounded like they were grinding Swarovski rhinestones with their teeth. They paid cash and never complained about the escalating maintenance costs falling on the shoulders of the few remaining owners.

Thinking of the admirable Russians she said, “I can see you on the fifth floor facing the water, am I right? A little soft music on the stereo, your boat docked below, and you on the balcony looking at the moonlight on the water.”

“How'd you know?” asked Zach, removing his sunglasses.

“It's written all over you.” All she actually saw was a live body, of which there had been too few lately. But if he was what she hoped, a drug dealer with cash to dump, then flash was what he was after, a three-bedroom with a straight-on view.

“I'm Courtney, by the way.”

She noticed his eyes running over her body, which she kept in shape at the Seafarers gym. What she didn't know was that his perusal was more creative than the usual once-over to which she was accustomed. Like most men he mentally stripped off her clothes and put her in a submissive position, but this one was in a freezer drawer.

One of Great Aunt Emmy's blues tunes started sounding softly in his head:

 . . . stretched out on a long white table,

So cold, so white, so fair . . .

He tried to block out the words, because he knew where Aunt Emmy's singing would lead. It always began with a faint tingle in his brain, as if boiling water were being slowly poured over coffee grounds, increasing drop by drop until saturation was reached and the exultation overcame him. He reminded himself he was at the Landing for a purpose and he couldn't let the bad thing interfere. He never wanted it to interfere.

But the catchy tune pursued him. He wrenched himself around and headed for the door.

“How d'you like your coffee?” blurted Courtney to forestall his exit. “Sugar? Cream?” She indicated the coffee machine. “You're probably wondering if this is the time to buy. Is the market going to go lower? Should I wait and get a better deal?”

The two voices blended, Aunt Emmy's and Courtney's, drop by drop, building to the moment when he would be forced to behave badly.

In his erratic library readings he sometimes perused scientific articles, and once he'd come across the fact that epileptic seizures could be triggered by flickering lights. After reading that, he looked on what happened to him as a sort of epileptic attack, triggered by the tender voice of a ghost.

So cold, so white, so fair . . .

Not that the real estate agent was either white or fair. She was as tan as a beach bunny could be, with a shiny mass of dyed black hair, a skimpy dress revealing short, stocky legs, and rhinestone-studded toe and fingernails. He liked the idea of rhinestones on a corpse.

Becoming aware that the guy was staring at her body in an unusual way, Courtney wondered if he might be too much on the rough side. But then she reminded herself that in South Florida, rough meant money as often as not. The main thing she was picking up from him was intensity, which, if properly applied to the drug trade or some other fishy operation of which there were plenty in the state, would've earned him enough dough for a down payment.

Since he didn't seem to want coffee, she said, “Let's skip the foreplay and go right up. What have you got to lose?”

What Zach heard was Aunt Emmy talking, but he couldn't understand the words. Hearing the two voices merge, he felt a twitching in his brain, and another drop of water swelled the coffee grounds.

Courtney chirped on about the pleasures of Seafarers Landing as she mounted the golf cart she used to convey her captives from one building to the next. “Hop on,” she invited.

Driving him down the phony boulevard, she said, “The deeper in you get, the greater your privacy. It's our own little world here, safe from intrusion.”

She noticed that his eyes were on her skirt, which had risen to midthigh when she settled into the cart. It was the expected response from the male animal and part of the promotional package, right down to her high-heeled sandals and pedicure by Min. If I don't sell one of these units soon, she thought, I'll be selling myself, because what else can I do with 75,000 real estate agents all competing for one client? There was always her old hope of meeting a rich widower on the beach, but even if she did, it would end up like the rest of her romances and go no place. Complicating her financial predicament was the fact that she'd gotten used to living at Seafarers, with the gym, the pool, the sauna.

Zach could smell her desperation, and he liked the smell. He liked being carried along in the burning sun in this imperial manner. He should be living in a fine place like Seafarers Landing, not a trailer park with a dozen Guatemolies crammed into a single trailer.

So Courtney fantasized about rich widowers, selling her body, or breaking her run of bad luck by selling this guy a three-bedroom condo with a straight-on view, while Zach attempted to ignore Aunt Emmy singing “The St. James Infirmary Blues
.
”

“We're not there yet,” Courtney protested, because he was rising from his seat like he was going to jump off the moving cart. “Just give the place a chance,” she added in sympathetic tones, for she knew that when a prospective buyer was emotionally torn, as this guy obviously was, it meant he was serious. She knew all these symptoms from the good old days. When people were casual, they were sightseeing. When they were tortured, it meant business.

Beneath her cheerful chirping, Courtney was thinking of ways she could cut her expenses. She'd been debating getting rid of her landline when, turning on the local news this morning, she heard a report about an escaped convict, presumed to be armed and dangerous. The anchor lady said that people would be notified by telephone if he was spotted in their neighborhood, and then they'd know to lock their doors and windows and be extra careful. This made Courtney hesitate. But what was the chance of her ever having a close encounter with an escaped convict? I'll do it, she decided, I'll get rid of my landline.

She pulled up at the main entrance to Building Three. “The unit I'm going to show you comes with one parking space, but you can purchase a second if you have two vehicles.” The way things were going with the occupancy rate, he could park anywhere on any of the six floors and no one would tell him he was in their space. She recalled the good old days in other buildings when condos were hot and parking spots were gold. If you parked in someone else's place in those days, the first time you'd be warned, and the second time you'd be towed. Now in this wasteland, there were nothing but vacant parking spaces.

He grunted, which she interpreted as meaning he needed just one spot. Or maybe not. She reminded herself not to prejudge. A quiet type. “I think you'll find it quiet here,” she said. Quieter every day.

Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
Aunt Emmy crooned, and again the words grew garbled, gurgling drops of boiling water, bringing him to the saturation point. The golf cart stopped. It was his last chance to run before the rapture took him over, but Courtney was too fast for him. From her arsenal of tricks to make a potential buyer feel he already lived in Seafarers Landing, she handed him a key card. “Just run this over the code box.”

He dutifully obeyed, running the key card over the code box set into the peach-stuccoed wall.

She flashed him a professionally bleached smile as they entered the high-ceilinged lobby with its dark woodwork, marble floors, and the security desk which no longer had a security person behind it. A sideboard bearing a big bowl of artificial flowers and surmounted by a gilt-framed mirror stood opposite the elevators. The entranceway with its flowers, dark woodwork, and luxury in general reminded Zach of the entrance to Fiorello's Funeral Home. The elegance made him feel better, the way the elegance in Fiorello's viewing rooms always made him feel better.

Beyond the elevators, a wall of brass mailboxes glinted beneath a crystal chandelier. Zach felt confident such mailboxes weren't filled with eviction notices. Courtney knew a few contained disturbing letters from the bank.

Beyond the mailboxes, glass doors led to an enormous pool surrounded by tables, lounge chairs, and palm trees. “Picture yourself poolside,” said Courtney, “sipping a drink with an umbrella in it.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“Blue Hawaiian, piña colada, any drink served in an aloha setting.” She gestured toward corridors off to the left and right. “State-of-the-art gym, billiard room, and our magnificent party room, which extends out onto a stone veranda overlooking the Intracoastal.”

As the elevator doors closed behind them, shutting her in with him, she asked, “Do you have a boat?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he said in a strangled voice, assaulted by the perfumes radiating off her tanned skin, the spray that made her hair as shiny as licorice, the dryer sheets she used in her laundry. He gazed down at her painted piglet toes sticking out from her sandals. He disliked artificial scents, with the exception of embalming fluid. The perfumes he liked best were natural—fear and blood and the sweetness of decay.

Again he tried to banish these forbidden thoughts. That's not what he was here for. He was having a hard time remembering what he was here for.

“Everybody off,” she announced gaily.

Now began a walk down a labyrinth of carpeted corridors. Courtney could remember the time not long ago when cleaning ladies were always in the halls, polishing brass, arranging flowers, chattering in Spanish; now most of the doorknobs were decorated with real estate lockboxes, which didn't require polishing.

“That's where I live,” she said, pointing to a door with a red-and-green elf festively dangling from it. “I don't have your view, but all of our units have their own distinctive charm.”

They turned a final corner to a cul-de-sac with only two doors side by side. She held her jingling keys up to the light and attempted to unlock the right-hand door, but the lock gave her trouble and one of her fabulous fingernails broke off. She stooped to pick it up from the floor, calculating what it would cost to replace it, then realized she couldn't replace it because it was Min's unique design. So now she was stuck with one scalped fingernail. Her other option was to get a whole new nail job, but this she definitely couldn't afford. Unless she sold this reluctant guy a condo.

Energized by the idea, she came up smiling, with the glittering nail in her palm. “At least it's not a tooth.”

She flung open the door, and Zach caught his breath. The walls were long and white, the ceilings were soaringly high, the floor tiles were surgically white. At the far end was a pair of sliding doors, on fire with the sun.

She opened the balcony door and invited him out.

Shimmering before him was the Intracoastal, then the Mediterranean mansions of Hypoluxo Island, and then the gleaming white condo towers of South Palm Beach with blue gaps of ocean in between. “Did I tell you?” she asked with satisfaction.

He pointed to the end of the longest pier. “It's gone. The big yacht that was there.”

“They come and go.”

“Do you know where it went?”

“I don't keep track,” she said with a shrug, then, not wanting to seem dismissive, “The harbormaster might know. He's holding an open house today. Free wine and music.”

Zach became aware of the music down below, some jerk playing an amplified guitar and singing about Margaritaville. Underneath the jerk's voice, another voice was singing sadly. It was the voice of Aunt Emmy, singing to comfort him for his disappointment over his angel having sailed away.

Let her go, let her go, God bless her,

Wherever she may be,

She will search this wide world over,

But she'll never find another man like me.

He turned away from the singing down below and looked at the real estate lady, imagining this white room as her tomb.

Ignoring his strange smile, Courtney showed him the two guest bedrooms, the laundry room, the granite countertops in the kitchen, the pink marble surrounds in the bathrooms, which the contractor hadn't bothered to seal, so when you put a glass down on the sink it made an indelible stain. She also knew from her own apartment that the walls weren't actually painted, just primed, so they couldn't be washed. The handles on the sliding doors, as often as not, were installed upside-down and broke off like her fingernail. She hated to imagine what the invisible construction was like. The projected life span of the buildings couldn't be more than twenty years. She wasn't thinking of her own life span, which if Aunt Emmy's song continued sending its electricity through Zach's brain was going to be reckoned in minutes.