Miami Noir (3 page)
I sat and kept my hands to myself. There was too much stuff in that trailer. I was afraid I’d break something.
“How have you been, dear?”
“All right, I guess.”
“You don’t go to school?”
“Not since I turned sixteen. My daddy says I had enough school.”
“I see. Your daddy says, huh.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“My daddy likes you,” I said.
“Oh,” she replied, and she wiggled her butt on the plastic and it made crackling noises.
“He hasn’t been with a woman since Mama left. He was all broke up about that.”
“What happened to your mother, Kate?”
“She went out to California to work in the movies. She sent for me and I was gonna go out there too, but then we heard she was dead.”
“Oh dear, what happened?”
“She was murdered. Stabbed sixteen times in her own bed.”
Mrs. Murphy sucked in her breath so hard she started coughing. I got up and got her a glass of water.
“Thank you,” she said, and she drank the whole glass. When she put it down, her hands started fussing with the buttons on her blouse and the whites of her eyes looked extra bright.
“Remember what I told you last time, you know, about what’s been happening around here?”
She nodded.
“I heard he attacked another woman over in the Shady Palms Trailer Court. This one almost died. Daddy said he hoped you could protect yourself ’cuz he sure wouldn’t want to see anything like that happen to you.”
That night after dinner when he was about a six-pack and a half down, he brought it up. Daddy come to the door of my room and said he seen me go into Mrs. Murphy’s trailer.
“I want you to stay away from that woman,” he said. “You got no business going over there.”
I was lying on my bed reading one of Pattie’s books. It was about a private detective named Elvis out in Hollywood, California. “She was only being nice to me, Daddy. We just talked. She don’t have no friends.”
“She sure as hell don’t need a dumbass kid like you hanging around bothering her, probably telling her all kind of lies.”
“I’m not stupid, Daddy. Wish you’d quit calling me that. Leastwise I don’t sit around all the time drinking beer and slobbering over stuff I can’t even buy on the Home Shopping Network.”
It only took him two steps to cross my room and back-hand me across the mouth. “Shut up. You think you’re so smart reading your books now. But that don’t change nothing. Your mama was a crackhead whore and you ain’t gonna be no different.”
He left to go to Flossie’s after that and I turned off the TV and sat in the quiet night reading my book under the lamp, pretending it was me in the book, out in Hollywood, California, hoping he wouldn’t never come back, but knowing he would. I was in bed when he come in and, one more time, I watched the red blinking lights at the end of the run-way and held my breath as I floated up out of my body and counted. One hundred thirty-six flashes.
After that, I done my best to listen to Daddy and stay away from her. Shit, it weren’t no fun getting hit. Avoiding her wasn’t no big deal because she started going out and staying out for hours in the afternoons. Daddy said he wondered if she found herself another job because when she went in and out, she was carrying a black zipped case hugged to her chest.
One afternoon a couple of old boys come into the office and said they wanted to store their broke-down airboat in the dead storage yard till they could order a new engine for it. They both had shaved heads and yellow teeth but one of ’em had a gut on him that stuck out and hung low over the front of his belt. The other one wore cutoff jeans and a T-shirt about two sizes too small stretched tight cross his chest muscles with the sleeves cut out to show off his guns. They both smelled like beer and the one in the cutoffs leaned over the counter and told me that he knew of something he’d like to stick in that gap in my teeth. I went out the back door of the office and hollered for Daddy. When he come into the office, he hit it off with these two and invited them to go back to our trailer for a cold one before he opened the gate to the yard.
They’d been at it most of the afternoon, all three of them drinking beers and leaning on the old boy’s boat trailer, when Mrs. Murphy come driving up in her little Taurus. The sky had turned light blue and the last rays of sun was slanting across the boat basin. I’d stayed in the office way past quittin’ time when Pattie and Fred had all left. I told them that I had some stuff to finish and I wanted to pick out another book, but in fact I knew better than to show my face anywhere near what was going on out there in the yard. Mrs. Murphy didn’t have no choice, though, since she couldn’t get her car past their truck and trailer that was parked in front of the gate to the dead storage yard.
She stopped her car in front of Bud’s trailer and got out, holding that black case so tight she was squishing her own boobs. Them boys was on her before she took two steps.
“Yeeuuii,” the muscled one said. “Looky here, Franky. We seem to be blocking this lady’s way.”
“Shit, Jimmy, would you look at the tits on her?” the fat one said. He moved up close like he was gonna touch one.
Daddy just leaned there against the trailer watching ’em, his eyes half closed and a smile on his face.
The muscled one was trying to stand in her way like a football player ready to tackle, and she was pulling at the zipper on that bag of hers. Even in that low light I could see those eyelashes outlined against her white skin—not moving. Then she got her hand into the bag and she faked right, then ran left. The old boy got his legs tangled and fell and Mrs. Murphy run into her trailer and slammed the door before his fat buddy could help him up off the ground.
They was still laughin’ and jokin’ when the three of them backed the airboat trailer into the dead storage yard and then took off for Flossie’s.
I never did turn on any lights. I just sat by the window and watched her trailer. Every few minutes the sunflower curtains moved aside and even though I couldn’t make it out in the dark, I imagined those lashes blinking at the night, her hand inside that black bag, and I knew where she’d been all these afternoons she’d been away.
I went to bed when her last light went out and I lay there waiting for Daddy. He come in just past 2:00, and as usual I heard him whispering curses and bumping into things in the front room of the trailer. He couldn’t come home quiet when he was drunk. Didn’t matter if it was the first time or the last time, though, I always felt the same when I heard him coming. Every muscle in my body tightened up and it seemed like somebody’d sucked all the air out of the room and the saliva in my mouth started to taste real sour. I heard the noise of his zipper, then he yanked off my covers, rolled me onto my belly, pulled off my panties, spread my legs, and kneeled back there lifting my butt up and jamming himself inside me, over and over.
It hurt. It always hurt, but this time I couldn’t see my red lights, I couldn’t leave my body, I couldn’t do nothin’ but scream into my pillow.
I waited till I heard the snoring start in the other room, then I got up and washed myself and put on a clean nightie and pair of panties. I didn’t have to turn on the light in the kitchen to find the key. I stopped for a minute in the doorway to his room and watched him sleep. He had passed out on his bed, one shoe on, the other’d fallen on the floor. His jeans was still unzipped, and since he never wore no underwear, I could see the dark shadow at his crotch.
I thought about Mama and the movie stars out in Hollywood, California. I couldn’t find any picture of her in my head no more. I tried to remember what it felt like when she touched me, and I couldn’t find that neither.
He caught his breath and coughed on a snore when I grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
“Daddy! Daddy, wake up. I heard something, Daddy.”
He groaned and tried to push me away.
“Daddy, wake up. There’s a man out there. He broke into Mrs. Murphy’s trailer.”
I helped him to his feet and buttoned his pants for him.
“Kate, what you saying? You seen what?”
“Daddy,” I said as I helped him to the door to our trailer. “I seen a man nosing around Mrs. Murphy’s place. You better go see if she’s okay.” I pressed the key into his hand and he started across the dirt toward her trailer.
It was only a few steps from my bed to the front door. The trailer wasn’t big, not like the movie star mansions out in California, but it was home. I wondered, as I crawled under the covers, if Pattie’d give me his job. Then I tipped my head so’s I could see the lights on the tower, and I started counting. Fifty-nine flashes. Six shots.
T
he moment he saw Eustace Green, Dr. Vernon Lemaistre knew his job interview wasn’t going to work out as planned. Green, dressed in his trademark sleeveless flannel shirt and battered jeans, stood next to a man with a leonine halo of hair and academic loafers. Was it too late to walk away?
The crowd pushed past Vernon, heading for craft booths lined up like boxcars in the thin shade of the Australian pines. A breath of air fluttered the white vinyl banner:
WELCOME TO THE BISCAYNE BAY UNIVERSITY PALEOLITHIC POWWOW
Vernon wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Why Green, why here, in Out of the Way University, Miami? Last he’d heard, Green had a cushy endowed chair somewhere in Massachusetts.
You simply didn’t see him, Vernon told himself. Like many academics, Vernon was familiar with the application of tactical ignorance. He turned away to search for Dr. Wallace Mackenzie. The interview wasn’t officially till tomorrow, but he wanted to make a good impression today. I have the best years of my career before me, Vernon told himself. I have a lot to offer this university. He had a page with several other affirmations folded in the breast pocket of his jacket—and with Eustace Green around, he felt pretty sure he’d need them.
“Vernon!” That familiar gravelly boom.
Too late. Vernon groaned, turned, tried to rearrange his face into something like a greeting.
“The woods are just full of old friends and acquaintances today,” Green said. He offered his hand, which, after a moment’s hesitation, Vernon took. Eustace’s knuckles felt like steel ball bearings wrapped in leather.
“Quite a surprise,” Vernon said. He smiled at the loafered man and then asked Eustace, “How are you?”
“Full of piss and vinegar as ever,” Eustace said. “Wall, meet Vernon Lemaistre.”
“Dr. Lemaistre?”
To Vernon’s dismay, Eustace and Dr. Wallace Mackenzie, he learned, went way back. Grad school at Cornell. Shovel-bummed around the continent together. Vernon waved at a swarm of gnats that seemed to be attracted to either his sweaty face or his rigid smile.
“So, you here for the festivities? Going up against the world atlatl champ this afternoon?” Green said.
“Yes—uh, I always try to…” Vernon said.
“Dr. Lemaistre’s applying for our opening,” Wallace said. “The interview’s scheduled for tomorrow. Right after yours, Eustace.”
Vernon froze. Eustace grinned at him. “Reckon I’ll see you in the lobby, then.”
Vernon excused himself and wandered away through the crowd. What the hell was Eustace doing here? Applying for the opening—was that a joke? Eustace Green was the reason Vernon needed this job. They’d both been struggling post-docs interested in lithic tech, Stone Age weaponry. Vernon had discovered the true nature of the atlatl, an ancient spear-throwing device that was little more than a stick with a notch on the end. Eustace helped him refine his theories and offered encouragement, an occasional insight. And then Eustace published everything under his own name and never returned another of Vernon’s phone calls.
Now Eustace had an endowed chair at Blueblood U somewhere in Massachusetts, while Vernon held a sufferance post at Lake Okechobee Community College where he taught five introductory classes each semester. He lectured to students who thought evolution was a leftist conspiracy. He worked far too hard to do the kind of research that’d lead to a better job—banished for eternity to the fringes of academia and archaeology.
He watched Eustace saunter through the crowd carrying his atlatl. The forearm-long piece of wood had been used by ancient mankind for millennia to launch slender arrow-like darts at their prey. Archaeologists had discovered hundreds of atlatls with odd stones—“banner stones”—attached to them, presumably as good-luck charms. Vernon had proven that the banner stone kept the atlatl from vibrating from the force of a throw, acting as a Stone Age silencer. Archaeologists theorized that only a heavy, rigid spear would have sufficient momentum to bring down an animal. Vernon and Eustace put the lie to that theory by proving that a slender, flexible dart was much more efficient.
Go on, Vernon told himself, talk to him, ask him to put in a good word for you—why would he want this job anyway?
Not far from the booths and the milling crowd, a long strip of lawn had been set up with hay bales and tacked-on paper targets fluttering in the faint breeze. Along the side, propped-up white signs ticked off the distance from the target:
50, 100, 150.
Eustace nodded to him. “Need to warm up for this afternoon,” he said.
Vernon’s own atlatl—a fine Nanticoke he’d made himself—and two four-foot-long darts lay in the trunk of his dusty gray car. He’d thought of participating in the atlatl throw himself—thought it’d be worth a few brownie points with Mackenzie, show off his skills with the tools of his trade—but if Eustace planned to join the contest, there wasn’t much chance of winning.
Vernon watched Eustace settle his dart along the atlatl. “You really here for this job?”
Eustace glanced at him. “I miss the Everglades,” he said. “Nothing like ’em up north.”
“But it’s only an assistant professorship.” Vernon tried to keep from whining. “Wouldn’t that be a big step down?”
A shrug. Eustace turned to the distant target and flung the dart downrange with barely a hiss. Despite everything else, Vernon still felt vaguely amazed when he remembered he’d been right about the banner stone’s function.
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you take all our work and publish it as your own?” Vernon asked. A question he’d wanted to put to Eustace for so long—but the words just fell out of his mouth. Not at all the delivery he’d imagined.
Eustace looked at him. “The fact that you’re asking that question should be answer enough.”
In that moment, all Vernon’s disappointment and out-rage blazed like a lightbulb filament in his brain—he hated Eustace Green more than he’d ever hated anyone, would’ve gouged those narrow black eyes out with his thumbs and… Eustace raised a bushy eyebrow at him. Then deliberately turned his back on Vernon and strolled toward the target.
Vernon followed him, his mind white-hot and completely empty. He watched Eustace put a filthy sneaker against the hay bale and tug the dart. The wooden shaft slid free but the stone point remained stuck.
“Goddamnit,” Eustace said.
“Can you at least give me a good recommendation?” Vernon said, and hated himself for asking.
Eustace walked away laughing. Vernon stood beside the target, fists clenched, took long deep breaths until his heart-beat eased. He turned to the hay bale and used the blade of his Swiss Army knife to work Eustace’s arrowhead free. The onyx point gleamed black in the bright sun. Vernon remembered how particular Eustace was about his tools—perhaps it would make a good peace offering.
Vernon stepped up to the white chalk line drawn across the clipped grass. Even with his glasses on, the paper targets 150 yards downrange seemed pitifully small. An Ice Age tree sloth, he thought, or a cave bear—those would be proper targets. This was a bad joke.
The crowd, clustered off to his left, rustled and coughed its impatience. Hurry up. All his back-and-forth mental debate about whether or not to deliberately lose the competition to Eustace seemed ludicrous. He hoped he didn’t look like a silly stoop-shouldered academic to the crowd.
He balanced his dart on the atlatl, stepped, and threw. At the top of his arm’s arc he felt a muscle, something small and vital, let go in his shoulder and he shouted—the sound halfway between a karate battle cry and a yelp.
Vernon tucked the atlatl under his arm and rubbed his shoulder to scattered applause. He squinted downrange and saw his dart sticking out of the extreme upper-right corner of the stacked hay bales. No less than six feet from the edge of the paper bull’s-eye. He felt his face burn and turned away, headed for the crowd. He used to be good, back when he practiced weekly in an empty field along Harp Creek, back when he and Eustace e-mailed one another every day with new thoughts, ideas, theories.
He saw Mackenzie at the edge of the crowd and turned toward him. A self-deprecating comment,
academics and sports just don’t mix
, or something along those lines, might answer perfectly. Then he noticed Green beside Mackenzie. He kept walking anyway.
“Good shot, Dr. Lemaistre,” Mackenzie said.
“Not really,” Vernon replied. He tried to smile.
“Those things are tough to aim. The first time I ever shot a dart I accidentally killed a steel garbage can,” Mackenzie said. “I haven’t touched one since.”
Eustace snorted. “That’s because you didn’t know what you were doing. This guy,” Eustace jerked a thumb at Vernon, “he used to be pretty good. Not as good as me, but pretty good. What happened?”
Vernon felt his body heat rise and his heart swell as if it was about to explode. While he spoke, a separate part of his mind attended to the strange feeling and took notes. What a strange sensation. Am I having a stroke?
“Did you know Eustace and I used to work together?” he said to Mackenzie. But somehow his voice wasn’t quite in control. “We worked on atlatls together, everyone used to think they were made to throw a rigid spear and the banner stone was just a decoration, but I thought they were wrong and Eustace and I worked on it together and I trusted him—” Words tumbled out, fast and shrill. “And then he stole my research!” he added, his spare dart pointing at Eustace like a sword.
Vernon’s search for further accusations faltered when he noticed the amused expression on Eustace’s face, Mackenzie’s wide eyes and open mouth.
“Come on, Mac,” Eustace said. “Let this guy simmer down for a little while.” He turned to walk away.
“Admit it! You stole my research.” Vernon noticed the crowd staring. Even the next contestant in the atlatl throw had turned to watch.
Eustace paused and shook his head. “You are uniformly the worst researcher I have ever known. I would be embarrassed to put my name on anything, and I mean
anything
, you worked on.” He turned to Mackenzie. “Goddamn shame,” he said.
“Yeah? Well, you weren’t embarrassed when you slept with my wife!” Vernon shouted at Eustace’s back.
The two men left Vernon standing there sweating in the middle of the crowd. His clenched fists trembled. Then, out on the fringes, someone clapped their hands. The applause gathered slowly until everyone, even the people closest to Vernon, took it up. A clatter like rain on tropical leaves.
Vernon slurped at his fifth beer. In the dim cool bar, his prospects seemed much better. No reason to get in his car and drive back to Orlando tonight. He’d go to the interview tomorrow, tell Mackenzie about the bad blood between him and Eustace. Maybe he’d even imply that he’d deliberately missed the target because he didn’t want to compete against his former research partner.
This trip could still be salvaged. Vernon crunched a stale pretzel. Unless, of course, Eustace was serious about applying for the job. But who knows? Maybe Mackenzie’s department didn’t have enough of a salary budget to attract Eustace. Vernon grinned when he thought about how much he made—heck, it’d be the first time his mediocre tax bracket had ever been an advantage.
Vernon pulled the powwow schedule out of his back pocket and smoothed it on the bar. A little spilled beer left a dark spot on the paper. If he left now, he could get back in time for the bonfire. He waved a hand at the bartender for the bill. He’d show them. He was a good sport—he wasn’t beaten. Not by a long shot. Vernon drained the last of his beer.
The next morning, Vernon sat in an uncomfortable chair and watched across the desk as Mackenzie blinked at a piece of paper. Purple hollows sagged under Mackenzie’s eyes and Vernon wondered if he too was hung over.
After a long moment, Mackenzie lowered the page. “Eustace Green died last night.”
“What?” Vernon stared.
Mackenzie shook his big head. Tropical light filtering through the high narrow windows gilded his hair. “The police seem to think it’s suicide.”
“I…I don’t understand.” Vernon glanced out the office window, saw the tops of palms and blue sky. “I just…Did he seem depressed to you?”
“No. Did you see him last night, surrounded by those groupies?” Mackenzie shuffled through some papers on his handsome walnut desk, but when he stopped his hands were still empty. “I don’t understand it either, but they say he impaled himself with an atlatl dart.”
“Christ almighty. That just…that just doesn’t make any sense.”
“God—what happened to him? Eustace was a good friend. Not as close as I could’ve wished, not for a long time, but… I just didn’t see that coming.”
Vernon watched Mackenzie put a wide hand over his eyes for a moment and then saw glistening trails of tears work their way down the creased pink cheeks. Vernon tugged at the decorative handkerchief in his breast pocket. He’d always assumed it was just a decoy, stitched into place, but to his relief the fabric pulled free. He offered it to Mackenzie, who took it with a nod. Vernon looked away while Mackenzie wiped his eyes and resettled his glasses on his nose.
“My apologies,” Mackenzie said. “Now.” He shuffled the papers on his desk again. “Let’s try to get back on track.”
“I mean this respectfully, Dr. Mackenzie, but I don’t think now’s the right time for this conversation. You’re very upset.” Vernon tried to keep his voice upbeat and confident.
Mackenzie shook his head. “He’s gone. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do.”
“I could—let me ask some questions.” Vernon nodded. “I’d really like to help.”
Vernon was so distracted by thoughts of exactly what questions he was going to ask that he almost bumped into a student at the department’s exit.
“Excuse me,” Vernon said.
“Are you Dr. Mackenzie?” the boy asked. When Vernon straightened out his identity, the guy introduced himself: “I’m Detective Sheldon. Assigned to the Green case.” A brassy flash of badge from a brown leather wallet. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”