Miami Noir (23 page)
“Good,” she said. “Now hit me, goddamnit, Bobby. Leave bruises.”
“No, Reb.”
“Don’t be such a fucking wimp. There’s big fucking money at stake here.”
I cut a length of duct tape off the roll with the knife and slapped it across her mouth, perhaps the most satisfactory moment of the night so far. I stepped back and looked at her spread wide on the bed, helpless, her beauty almost perfect, her pussy glistening with the Astroglide. To see her was to want her.
Wanting is good. Even better than having.
I looked at the Casio. My bout of erectile dysfunction had put us behind schedule, even with the extra time Dmitri had built in for margin of error. He’d be coming up the elevator to discover his raped girlfriend any minute. I shoved the duct tape in the backpack, threw the knife on the bed. Fibers from generic Wal-Mart clothes, no prints or hairs, size-eleven footprints impressed on the lush carpet. I looked around the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything incriminating behind. I’d done what I could to minimize risk.
I slipped into the hall and ran down the stairwell to the first floor, moseyed out into the lobby. The Delano’s nightclub in full swing, even more people milled about the lobby than earlier. I saw Dmitri at the elevator. Then he saw me. He checked his watch, scowled. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead on the floor. The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and he stepped on. We’d cut it mighty close.
I walked briskly back to the 11th, changed back into my own clothes and sneaks, shoved the platforms and Wal-Mart clothes into the backpack, then again waited a few minutes before stepping out of the stall, through the diner, and onto the street. Less than ten minutes after leaving Rebel, I was driving west on 17th Street, feeling empty but relieved, glad that it was over. I drove across the MacArthur past the parade of cruise ships waiting at dock to sail off for temporary island fantasies, and got on I-95 north. I exited at State Road 84 twenty minutes later, turned down a small street, then into an alley between two warehouses.
I poured some gas into the Wal-Mart wastebin and dumped in everything I’d used and worn—only the knife, a piece of duct tape across Rebel’s mouth, and the four leashes that tied her to the bed remained. In life, as in poker, you can’t control all the variables, but you do what you can. I poured in some more gas, struck a safety match against the box, and flicked it in, then dropped in the rest of the box. Flame wooshed upward. I watched it burn and visualized Rebel spread-eagle on the canopied bed. My dick hardened at the vision. I had to laugh at myself; oh well, what can you do?
The blaze left a goo of plastic slag. After the fire died, I shoved the mess into the green garbage bag, tied it off tight, and drove to a complex I’d once lived in on Marina Mile, where they had Saturday-morning trash pickup. I threw the bag into a dumpster; in a few hours it would be lost in the daily refuse of a million people, with only the vultures circling overhead and the never-ending parade of garbage trucks for company. I set the cones and barricade at a construction site, then took I-95 to the Kennedy Causeway, home across the bay into the pink dawn.
I slept later than usual Saturday. I went to Miami Jai-Alai, yakked with the $2 poker players, ate a breakfast of hot dogs and beer, then headed to Gulfstream, where I relaxed in the cheap seats basking in the afternoon sun with the racing form. The hard work was now on Rebel—Monday she’d retain a lawyer. He’d file the suit for inadequate security resulting in Rebel’s rape, and the settlement dance would begin. Most cases like this never went to trial, but rarely settled before the eve of trial. All I had to do now was live my life and wait for my payday.
I cashed a $220 ticket in the last race, then went to the Porterhouse up in Sunny Isles to have a nice steak and flirt with the waitresses. As I ate, my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number, and didn’t answer. A few seconds later it rang again, from the same number. The third time, curious about who would be so persistent, I picked up.
“Bobby, thank God you answered. It’s Rebel.” She sounded as if she were crying. “I need your help.” She started to babble—Dima had gone crazy, beaten her. She was afraid. Could I meet her someplace private? No, not my place in Surfside, he’d check there. Freighter terminal #9 on the river, a few blocks from McKool’s. Just get there and we could decide together what to do. An hour, please hurry. She abruptly disconnected.
I didn’t like it a bit, but I didn’t see how I couldn’t go. I took 163rd Street to the Spaghetti Bowl, then I-95 to downtown and across the river. As I drove under the halogentinted sky, I slammed my fist on the wheel, telling myself this was wrong, that I was an idiot. Whatever Rebel wanted from me, I wasn’t going to want to do it. Why couldn’t my mother have raised a less chivalrous son?
Just past the Miami River Inn, I turned onto the street that dead-ended at terminal #9. The gate to the pier was open, the streetlight next to it burned out. I edged the T-bird past pallets loaded with construction materials waiting for the next freighter out, turned the corner along the ware-house, and saw Rebel’s car parked by the gantry crane. Lights from across the river cast oblong shadows. Rebel leaned on her car, smoking a cigarette. I climbed out of the T-bird and saw in the glow of the burning ash that her face was all mangled, bruised yellow and purple, one eye bandaged. “Holy shit, Rebel.”
“It pissed Dima off that you didn’t beat me,” she said. “The rape didn’t look real enough. So he added that touch himself.” She sobbed. “He likes hurting me too much. I’m scared, Bobby. I can’t go to the police. I don’t know what to do.” She stared into my eyes.
I stepped forward to take her in my arms. Something about that look.
“I’m sorry, Bobby,” Rebel whispered softly. “If it makes you feel any better…”
It was the same way she stared when she was trying to run a bluff!
“…Dima’s next.”
From behind me I heard the double-click of a revolver’s hammer pulling back.
Oh shit, I thought. I grabbed Rebel by the shoulders, ducked, and twirled around, holding her in front of me. Then came the explosion of a shot, the acrid smell of cordite, the blinding muzzle flash. The bullet that had been intended for me took her square in the chest, knocked her into me, came out her back, and hit me in the belly, but its momentum spent, didn’t penetrate. The slug clattered to the ground. Blood seeped out Rebel’s back all over my clothes. Dmitri stood in front of me, not ten feet away, a shocked look on his face that quickly turned to rage. It happened in seconds, but took forever.
He lunged toward me, screaming in Russian, pointing the pistol at my head. I pushed Rebel’s limp body at him, dropped, and threw my weight at his knees; the three of us rolled to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. The gun went off again, near my ear, the explosion deafening me. I grabbed Dmitri’s hair, wrapping my fingers in tight, and smashed his head into the parking lot pavement with all my strength, and again and again and again and again, until he stopped moving.
I lay there covered in blood, entangled in two bodies, with no clue what to do next, where to turn. My head throbbed. How would I explain this to the cops? How did I know these people who had just reported a brutal rape? Any investigator worth a damn would toast me. Focus, I told myself. Think, don’t react. Breathe deep. What are your options? What’s the best play here?
I called McKool on his private cell. “McKool. Two-ways,” I said. “What’s that Explorer you drive worth?”
McKool started to say something, then started over. “Maybe 25, 30k. Why?”
“The Explorer and 25 for the T-bird,” I said.
McKool hesitated a second. “Twenty.”
“Deal. But I need your help with something right now…”
Less than ten minutes later he was there, with Cartouche. They quickly surveyed the scene. “Fine mess, Bobby,” McKool said, as he tossed me his keys.
I pulled the keys to the T-bird from my pocket, pulled off my apartment key, then handed them to McKool. “She set us both up.”
“Chicks can be that way,” McKool said.
Cartouche bent over, felt Rebel’s neck for a pulse.
“Mort,”
he said. Then he checked Dmitri and shook his head.
“Il n’est pas tout a fait mort.”
“She’s dead. He’s not quite dead,” McKool translated for me. “This costs me. Rebel filled some seats.” He thought a moment, then made a small flick of his finger across his throat.
Cartouche took a handkerchief from his pocket and picked up the pistol, stuck the barrel in Dmitri’s ear, and pulled the trigger, then handed McKool the gun.
“He was near-dead anyway, and now he can’t mention your name before he goes,” McKool said. He stuffed the gun in his pocket. “We’ll dispose of the bodies. Go home and get rid of those clothes.”
“Thanks.”
“Come before gin tomorrow,” McKool said. “We’ll do the car titles and talk.”
I got the gas from the T-bird’s trunk, then drove the Explorer home. I disconnected my apartment’s smoke detector, threw my clothes in the bathtub, poured in the last of the gas, and burned my bloody clothes to ash. After making sure not a speck of fabric remained, I washed the ash down the drain, then stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, and fell into bed without even bothering to dry. I missed my T-bird.
Sunday afternoon, after a fitful sleep, I knocked on McKool’s door. The peephole darkened, and Cartouche let me in. Lilith stood at the stove making dinner for the crowd to come, and one of the dealers, Lefty Louie, sat at a poker table making up decks.
“Step into my office,” McKool said, and we went into one of the back rooms. He handed me the local section of Sunday’s
Herald
, opened to page five. A story halfway down the page read:
POLICE SUSPECT RUSSIAN MOB HIT
Two dead bodies were found early Sunday on a bus bench off Brickell Avenue, near S.W. 10th Street. Dmitri Ribikoff, a Russian national in the U.S. on an expired visa, had been brutally beaten and shot in the head, execution-style. The victim was a distant cousin of Russian oil oligarch Sergei Petrov, and a spokeswoman for Miami PD said Russian organized crime might be responsible. Police are withholding the name of the other victim, a woman in her twenties, shot through the heart and also badly beaten, pending notification of her family.
“They won’t find any family,” McKool said. “She had nobody.” There was a gentle tapping on the door. “Come.”
Lilith stuck her head in. “Luckbucket and Bumper are here.”
“We’ll be right out,” McKool said. He handed me a manila envelope full of hundreds rolled in rubber bands. I didn’t need to count it, knew the twenty grand was there. “You understand you owe me,” he said. “And last night never happened.” He signed the title to the Explorer and handed it to me with the pen.
“Never happened.”
“Make it out to Jean-Luc Cartouche.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Cartouche? Why?”
“He wants it. I’d rather he have it and me want it. Ready for gin?”
I signed the title over to Cartouche. “Yeah.” Who knew wanting and having were so complicated?
We stepped into the main room, where Bumper and Luckbucket sat leafing through back issues of
Card Player.
Luckbucket’s was opened to an article by Roy Cooke headlined:
Some Hands You Just Don’t Play!
Life is like the game, I thought. It’s supposed to be the fish who play the trap hands.
“Let’s gamble,” Bumper said.
McKool turned to Lefty and said, “Shuffle up and deal.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
Miami-Dade Correctional Center
H
ow’d the phone call go?
She ain’t much of a wife no more. Tha’s for sure.
You’re inna joint. Whaddaya expect?
I’m inna joint one day. Less than one day.
One day, one hundred days, it’s all the same ta them out there.
It ain’t like I’m in prison.
It’s all the same ta them out there. Out there is Miami. Here is here.
It ain’t like I’m even guilty.
What you ain’t is, you ain’t out there. Tha’s all that matters ta them.
We been married eighteen years. I was her firs.
Her firs what?
Firs, ya know, firs lover.
Oh. A virgin. Tha’s nice. I didn know they made them anymore.
I doubt she even hadda boyfriend before me.
Well, aleast tha’s what she told ya.
Whaddaya talking about? She was pure.
I’m not gonna argue with ya. You say she wuzz pure, then she’s pure in my book. All I’m sayin is ya never really know with women.
Well I know, I can tellya that. My Merly was pure.
Merly. Tha’s a nice name. Kinda like my wife’s name. Kerly.
Your wife’s name is Kerly?
My wife’s name
wuzz
Kerly. She’s dead now.
I’m sorry.
Yeah, me too. She wuzz a beaut. She woulda been a old lady now, but she wuzz the greatest gal in the world.
Wuzz she pure when ya married her?
Ya want me ta smack ya?
Want me ta smack ya back?
The trustee said, Ya got in a cheap shot this mornin, don’t forget that. Had I been looking, I woulda nailed ya.
You wuzz sayin about Kerly.
Greatest gal in the world. It’s becausa her that I’m inna joint these las fifteen, what, sixteen yearsa my life. They gave me life for it, but I got good behavior and extenuating circumstances, believe it or not, and they knocked a bunch of em off. So I got only six more ta do if I keep my nose clean and help out the guards, and I’m doin em here in the county instead of up at state where I was for ten, what, eleven of em. Up at state wuzz tough, I’m not kiddin ya. You don’t wanna go there.
Nah. I don’t wanna go there. Kerly. Some coincident. Ya killt her, huh?
Nah. I killt the guy what killt her.
Hoo. Hoo. Tough.
You don’t know tough. He wuzz my best friend.
Hoo. Tough. What happened?
See, there wuzz these two beautiful girls we met at the fair.
Hoo! The fair. How corny can ya get? Hoo!
It wuzz the fair. Tha’s where we met em. Kerly and her sista Pearly.
Hoo! Hoo! Go on, finish it. Hoo!
I’m tryin hard not ta smack you.
Hoo! Hoo! Go on, finish it before my lawyer gets here. I wanna hear this. Hoo! Kerly. Pearly. Hoo!
Then shut up and listen. We met em at the fair, me and my best friend Jasper. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh.
Jasper. Hoo! Hoo!
For me and Pearly it wuzz love at first sight. She wuzz the most beautiful girl I had ever met. We started a talk, and we hit it off, we had so much in common.
Pearly? But didn’t ya say—?
Yeah. Pearly. And Jasper, well he kinda got stuck with Kerly, who was cute in her own way, but nothing like her sister. Pearly had the long legs, blond hair, bluest eyes, perky breasts. The whole package. The other one, Kerly, she wuzz short, first of all, and her eyes wuzz dark, her eyebrows kinda thick, and she had more of a, how do you say, boyish body. Okay, she wuzz flat-chested. But still, she was pretty, and it seemed to me she wuzz a nice match for Jasper, who was not the tallest guy in the world and what with this nose that was kinda like a chopped-off carrot and these permanently red cheeks like they paint on a doll. Me, I wuzz the jock. Played baseball. I wuzz in good shape back then. Girls said I wuzz a hunk, though I didn pay it no mind, you know how it is. So there we wuzz at the fair, don’t laugh, and I’m thinkin I’ve jus met the woman I’m gonna spend the rest of my life with, and Jasper comes over to me and he whispers to me, It ain’t working, man. This girl I got is a dud. She’s not my type. Let’s swap. I want the tall one. And I sezz to him, I sezz, I kinda like the tall one. I’m not swappin. But I wuzz the jock, and his old man owned the bank, and my old man worked for his old man, so you know how it is.
Nah. I don’t know how it is.
Well, I’m kinda shamed ta say it. He paid me twenny bucks ta swap out with him.
Twenny bucks?
That wuzz a lot. It usually cost him five to swap out with me. See, the best girl always went for me, and then he’d have to pay ta get her. It’s terrible, I know, but tha’s how it wuzz. I dunno whether he wuzz usin me or I wuzz usin him, but tha’s how it wuzz. So anyway, it took some working on em, but finally we made the girls agree to the swap, and I got stuck with Kerly, the short dark one, who I had wanted all along.
You sly dog!
What can I say, I like girls who are dark and boyish-looking. The blond, voluptuous thing is way overrated. Plus, now I had twenny bucks and I could show her a good time. What a night we had. I fell in love with her on the spot and aksed her to marry me that night. God I loved that girl. God I loved her. And it worked out for Jasper and Pearly too. Pearly kinda fell in love with his money, and with him too I guess. A few weeks after Kerly and me got hitched, Pearly and Jasper did the same thing. It was great. I wuzz his best man. He wuzz mine. I nevah made it big as a baseball player, but the scholarship money got me and Kerly through school, and then we came back to town and worked at the bank, which Jasper was in charge of because his dad had retired to play golf and chase young girls, you know how it is. We wuzz married like ten years before the trouble started, but it had been brewing so long I feel stupid I didn notice. Me and Kerly, well, she got pregnant seems like ever’year. We ended up with four kids. Three girls anna boy. They’s all grown up and got they own kids now. I love ever’one of em. Jasper and Pearly? Well, she was like the Holy Bible says, barren. She couldn have babies. Now that I’ve been inna joint so long and so many cons have told me they stories, I realize that most crimes is committed because of either ya hate someone too much or ya love someone too much.
So, because this fella Jasper couldn have babies, he killt your wife? Sounds ta me like he’s crazy.
Well, crazy is the other reason people commit crimes. People commit crimes because they hate too much, they love too much, or because they crazy. But Jasper was not crazy. See, at one point he called me into his office and aksed if he could sleep with Kerly—
Hoo! Welcome to the crazy nut house.
Well, tha’s what I thought too, but there wuzz a method to his madness. See, this wuzz like ten years into our marriages, and the trouble had been brewing but I wuzz jus beginnin to notice. He was my boss, so I was careful how I answered him, but he wuzz also my best friend and my brother-in-law, so I figured I could have a little bit of slack with him. I aksed him if he wuzz outta his mind wantin a sleep with my wife. What the fuck, right? He explained that lots of people did it. Especially when they wuzz friends, and practically family, like we wuzz. Plus, he said, that I would get to sleep with Pearly. A swap out like inna old days. But jus for sex—no lovey dovey allowed. This is how he explained it.
Is that when you killt him?
Nah. That came later. I said to him, I sezz, Come on, Jasper, wha’s the real deal here? Level with me. Jasper said, It’s like this, you must know by now that Pearly can’t have babies. I’m sure Kerly told you. Women talk and they’re sisters, so I know that you know. There’s no point in lying about it. What I want is for you to lay offa Kerly’s sweet, fertile puss for a while and let me take a stab at it. She’ll get pregnant, and you guys’ll arrange for me and Pearly to adopt the baby. I wuzz stunned. Stunned. I wanted a smack him, but I wuzz jus stunned. I said, No! He said, Think about it. I said, Hell no. We ain’t kids no more. This ain’t no swap out. He said, Think about it. Think about all that I do for you. Think about Pearly’s puss, which I know you do. You gotta wonder what it woulda been like ta be with the pretty one. I’m a fair guy, I’m giving you a crack at the pretty one. This way it’ll be good for both of us. I said, No! He said, The girls have already talked about it and Kerly agrees. I said, No! And when I get home I’m gonna talk with Kerly and straighten her out on this here thing, talkin about this kinda crap behind my back. There’s a goddamned sanctity in marriage, and this goes way beyond it. She oughtta know betta. He said, I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you lots of money. I said, Hell no! And then I smacked him. Twice.
Hoo. Hoo. Did he fire you? I bet he fired you.
I quit. And me and Kerly sold our house and moved upstate to another bank, where we got jobs. After a while, things calmed down between us. I mean, we had been best friends. I mean, he hadda know that what he had aksed me was too offensive for even friends. To sleep with my wife? To get my wife pregnant? And the way he had said it,
Lay offa that sweet, fertile puss.
Who wuzz he to be getting so familiar with the goings on between a husband anna wife? There’s a sanctity to marriage. He hadda know that I had good reason to be upset. To be outraged. But eventually we started a talk again, sorta like the old days. Of course, it would never really be like the old days again. Then three years later he and Pearly adopted a set of twins, a boy anna girl, and aksed us to be godparents. Fool that I am, I thought all wuzz forgive and forgot. So when Kerly got sick…and she needed that kidney, and her sister offered, offered she did, to give hers, I didn think nothin of it. Kerly and Pearly had a unique blood condition. The doctor said there wuzz only one in a hundred million could donate a kidney to Kerly. With odds like that, how lucky she was that her sister was making the offer. And then the offer wuzz withdrawn. We got word that Pearly’s doctor had detected a condition she had, a form a arthritis that attacked kidneys. In other words, the odds were pretty good that in a few years one of her kidneys would become sick and she would be dependent on the remaining one. In other words, it wuzz against the law for someone who is at risk for a future kidney disease to give up one of her kidneys that she may come to need later. So Pearly did not give up her kidney. Kerly got onna waiting lis for the one-in-a-hundred-million donor. Kerly died waiting on that kidney to come.
Hoo. Hoo. Sad.
Yeah. We had the funeral. Jasper came up to me and hugged me like a best friend should. And Pearly came up afterward and said, I shoulda give her that kidney. I shoulda give it. She wuzz my sister. I shouldna listened to Jasper. Jasper? I said. What does he got to do with this? She said, Don’t tell him I told ya, but he loved me so much, he forbid me to give the kidney. He wuzz afraid somethin would happen to me on the operating table. He wuzz too afraid to lose me. Jasper? But nah. I had that letter from the doctor. I ran home and got out the letter Pearly’s doctor had sent us. I read it and I reread it. When you know someone, you know someone. There wuzz one line in it that went somethin like the kidney being a
fertile ground for disease
. I kept lookin at that word
fertile
and I knew what Jasper had done and why…
Hoo. Hoo. You awright?
Nah. I’m not awright.
What he done to you wuzz wrong.
Maybe I wuzz wrong. Maybe I shoulda let him sleep with her. He wuzz my friend and he wanted kids and couldn have em. Maybe because I loved her so much my mind was closed on this point.
Hoo. Hoo.
So I aksed him to go fishing a month later. Jus me and him, like inna old days. I took him down to the Keys. It wuzz night. I pulled into a dark spot along the road where I’d left a marker pointin out the place where I had dug his grave. I took out the gun and stuck it in his ribs and I took outta flashlight and showed him his grave. He started a cry. Said he wuzz sorry. Real sorry. Said he’d pay me a lot a money if I didn kill him. I told him ta get outta the van. He said, No. I shot him in the shoulda and told him ta get outta the van or I’d shoot him like that a little piece ata time. He wuzz howlin and howlin, he didn like pain, tha’s why he had nevah played sports, but he didn get outta the van neither. I shot him again in the other shoulda this time. He howled and finally got outta the van. He wuzz beggin me and pleadin as I pointed him to the hole with the flashlight and the gun. He said, You know you’re not gonna get away with this. Too much blood in the van. They’ll check the van. You can never get all the blood out. You gotta know that. I said, I don’t expect ta get away with it. I figure Pearly will send the cops afta me when I get back and you ain’t with me. But they ain’t nevah gonna find your body. I want you gone forever like Kerly’s gone forever. He pleaded one more time. Got down on his knees. Said he’d give me a blowjob if I promise to let him live. I shot him in the face, and he tumbled into the hole. I shot him again to make sure he wuzz dead. He wuzz my best friend. I didn want him to suffer. It took me like a hour to cover up the hole. Then I got back inna van and drove to the hotel room we had rented in the Keys and lived there for a week.
And then?
Then I went home. The police came. There wuzz court, and I told em what I had done and why. Then I got life in prison, but now I’m here cause of my good behavior.
Hoo. Hoo. Tough.
Shit yeah. Tough.
Wuzz it worth it?
Shit yeah. I’d kill him again if he rose from the dead.
Hoo. Hoo.