Strip Tease (11 page)

Al Garcia spoke loudly to be heard over the dance music. “You don’t look so hot. Want me to come back some other time?”

“Could you get to the punch line,” Erin said, impatiently. “In ten minutes it’s my set.”

“Sure,” said Garcia. “Here’s the deal. The Clark Fork was full of bugs and leaves—dip a bucket in the river and you’d see what I mean. But the water in Killian’s body was amazingly clean.”

“Tap water,” Erin said.

“You’re a smart girl.”

“So somebody killed him?”

“Probably in a bathtub,” Garcia said, “if I had to guess.”

“Can we go outside?” Erin asked.

“Only if you let me smoke.”

Shad followed them to the parking lot. Erin motioned him to go away. Al Garcia acted as if he didn’t care one way or the other. He lit his cigar and leaned up against his car, an unmarked blue Caprice.

Erin said, “You’re serious about Jerry being murdered?”

“His ex says he went fishing out West every year. This time was different in one respect: when he got there, he never took out a fishing license. That’s damn strange.” Garcia turned away and blew smoke into the darkness. “Two local boys saw him going downriver on a raft, alone in a rainstorm.”

“Alive?”

“I doubt it. You got any ideas, Mrs. Grant?”

Erin said, “Let me think on it. Things are complicated.” Maternal instinct told her to avoid the subject of Angela, and Jerry Killian’s promise. It was possible that Garcia already knew.

“For the record,” he said, “you didn’t kill him, did you?”

Erin laughed in bitter astonishment. “No, sir. I didn’t love him, I didn’t sleep with him, and I most definitely didn’t kill him.”

“I believe you,” Garcia said. “But I’m a sucker for high heels.”

He gave her his card. She studied it curiously. “This says Dade County.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem. We’re in Broward, aren’t we?” Garcia rolled the stogie back and forth in his mouth. “Montana’s a long way off, Mrs. Grant. It may take me a while to drum up local interest.”

“But technically it’s not your jurisdiction.”

“That’s right,” he said, agreeably. “I’m meddling, pure and simple.”

“Why?” Erin asked.

“Because my boy is the one who found him.” Garcia took out his car keys. “You got children, you’ll understand.”

“Is he all right—your son?”

“Sure. He just wants to know what happened, and I’d prefer to tell him the truth. Anyway, floaters happen to be right up my alley, I’m proud to say.”

Al Garcia’s voice trailed off. He looked tired and preoccupied and ten years older than he probably was. Erin fought back an urge to tell him everything.

“I’d like to help,” she said, “but I doubt if I can. Mr. Killian was a customer, that’s all. I hardly knew the man.”

Garcia flicked the cigar. It landed with a hiss in a puddle.

After he got in the car, Erin motioned him to roll down the window. She stepped up to the door and said, “If it’s not an official investigation, how’d you get inside his apartment?”

“All I did was ask the super.” Garcia winked. “A badge is a badge.” He started the car. “Get back inside,” he told Erin, “before you catch cold.”

“Will there be a service?” she asked.

“For Killian? Not for a while. The coroner promised he won’t sign the papers for a week or so, until I check around.”

“So where’s Jerry’s body?”

“In a freezer in downtown Missoula,” Garcia said. “Him and two tons of dead elk.”

Cousin Joyce wasn’t the very last person in the world that Mordecai wanted to see, but she was high on the list.

“Disaster,” she said, dropping a stack of color slides on his desk. “I found these in Paul’s underwear drawer.”

“And how is Paul?” asked Mordecai.

“Feeling better,” Joyce said. “Temporarily.”

“Any luck locating the phantom synagogue?”

“There was no synagogue,” she said. “Look at the slides, Mordecai.”

They were the photographs taken by Paul Guber’s friend at the ill-fated bachelor party. The lawyer went through the slides methodically, holding each one up to a goosenecked lamp.

Joyce sat down and began to sniffle. “That’s the man I wanted to marry.”

As Mordecai peered at the pictures, he longed for a projector and a screen. The women were happy-looking, gorgeous and nude. The lawyer pitied Paul Guber, for there was no mistaking his youthful face, buried serenely in the bare loins of a brunette. The effect was to give him a curly goatee.

“Obviously alcohol was involved,” Mordecai said. “Too much alcohol.”

“Don’t make excuses. I want you to sue the bastard.”

“For what? You’re not married yet.”

“Some lawyer,” she said, blowing her nose.

“What’s this?” Mordecai was examining the last slide, which differed in content from the others. In it, a paunchy silver-haired man loomed over the still-kneeling Paul Guber. With both hands the stranger was raising a green bottle over his head, as if swinging an ax. His face was twisted with rage. Behind the stranger was the figure of a larger man lunging with outstretched arms, trying to stop the attack.

“Dynamite,” Mordecai said. He took a magnifying glass from the top drawer and hunched over the slide.

“I’m so glad you’re amused,” said Joyce. “My future is in shambles, but thank God you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Joyce?”

“What?”

“Shut up, please.”

The sniffling stopped. His cousin’s expression turned cold and spiteful.

Mordecai glowed as he looked up from the pictures. “I know these guys!”

“Who? What are you smiling about?”

“Joyce, go home immediately. Take care of your fiancé.”

“I can’t. He’s playing golf.”

“No!” Mordecai exclaimed. “He can’t possibly be playing golf. He’s a very sick man. He’s got cluster migraines. Blackouts. Double vision. Go find him, Joyce. Tend to him.”

The lawyer hustled her toward the door. “I’ll be out to see you tomorrow. We’ve much to talk about.”

Joyce balked. “And what about me? I’m expected to forget what I saw on those pictures? My fiancé, the man I planned to marry, licking at the belly of some sleazy whore. I’m supposed to put that awful image out of my mind!”

“If you’re smart, yes,” the lawyer said, “because we’ve still got one hell of a case.”

“Suing a nudie bar?”

“Don’t be silly.” Mordecai held his cousin by the shoulders. “First rule of torts: always go after the deepest pockets—in this case, the fellow who assaulted Paul.”

“So who is he?” Joyce demanded.

“We’ll discuss it later.”

“A celebrity?” She was hoping for a movie star. “Let’s see that picture again.”

“Later,” said Mordecai, aiming her toward the door.

“He’s got money? You’re absolutely sure?”

“Oh, I’m certain he can get it,” the lawyer said. “I’m as certain as I can be.”

Mordecai thought: Finally it pays to be a Democrat!

Dawn found the foursome eighty miles away, on a levee on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Wearing only knee socks and Jockey shorts, Chris Rojo was orating the history of sugar cultivation and Congressman Dilbeck’s role in it. The dancers complained of being chewed by fire ants, and retreated on four-inch heels to the air-conditioned comfort of the limousine, where Pierre prepared Bloody Marys.

Rojo paced the dike and chattered nonstop, a typically brilliant cocaine monologue. “Two hundred thousand acres of muck, glorious muck,” he said. “Sweet sugar cane, far as the eye can see…”

Dilbeck’s gin-clouded retinas barely saw past the laces of his shoes. The first rays of sunlight warmed his bare shoulders and ignited an itchy prickle of insect tracks. Dilbeck rocked from one leg to the other, as if he’d spent the night on a very small boat. “I may puke,” he announced to Rojo.

It was the young millionaire’s first visit to the fields where his family fortune was sown. He raised lean brown arms to the sky and cried: “Twenty-three cents a pound!” The bleating caused Dilbeck to wince. “Twenty-three cents!” Rojo yowled again. “Thank you, Tio Sam! Thank you, Davey.”

Twenty-three cents per pound was the average wholesale price of the sugar grown by Christopher Rojo’s family corporation. The inflated figure was set by the United States Congress and monitored by the Commodity Credit Corporation, an arm of the Department of Agriculture. Rojo had good reason to be thankful: Cane sugar from the Caribbean sold for only twelve cents per pound on the world market. Strict import quotas kept most foreign sugar out of America, thus allowing the Rojos to maintain their fixed price and, thus, their grossly excessive life-style. Whenever the import quotas came under attack from international trade groups, Congress charged to the rescue. Dilbeck was one of Big Sugar’s best friends, and Chris Rojo never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his gratitude. Now, standing on the levee, he locked the congressman in a ferociously sloppy embrace.

Dilbeck felt himself teetering, and pulled free. “I don’t feel so good. Where are the girls?”

“Who knows,” said Rojo. “Relax, my friend. There will always be girls.”

The congressman squinted into the sun. “Did we get laid last night?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Me neither,” Dilbeck said. “I’m assuming we did.”

“For a thousand dollars, I certainly hope so.”

Dilbeck grimaced at the sum. “That’s what you paid?”

“Five hundred each. So what?” Chris Rojo’s voice was dry and high-pitched. “It’s nothing to me,” he said. “Just money.”

Dilbeck felt his body heat rise with the sun. He touched the back of his neck and found it damp. He wondered what had happened to his shirt. He hoped that one of Mr. Ling’s dancers had chewed it off in a sexual frenzy.

Rojo said, “It’s a crazy world, Davey. I give some girl five hundred bucks just to go for a ride, OK? The poor fucks who cut this cane”—he waved toward the fields-—”that’s three weeks’ pay.”

“Are you serious?” Dilbeck said.

“This is some country, my friend. Now I must find my pants.”

By the time they returned to the limousine, Christopher Rojo had come down hard from the coke, and David Dilbeck wobbled on the brink of heatstroke. Pierre held the door as the two men tumbled into the backseat. The dancers were asleep, a bright tangle of blonde, lace and Spandex. Dilbeck’s shirt and Rojo’s trousers lay crumpled on the floor of the car. The congressman dug a handful of ice from the portable refrigerator and packed it to his forehead.

“It’s so fucking hot,” he said.

Chris Rojo grunted. “Florida, man.”

In the driver’s seat, mute Pierre turned to receive directions.

“Civilization,” Rojo commanded. “And step on it.”

Dilbeck watched the flat brown acres fly by at ninety miles an hour, tall stalks of cane stretching to the horizon. He couldn’t believe that human beings worked in such suffocating heat from dawn to dusk. He’d heard it was bad but, Christ Almighty, he’d never imagined it like this.

“How much do you pay them?” he asked Rojo.

“The girls? I told you, Davey—five each.”

“No, I mean the migrants.”

“Oh, that.” Rojo was struggling to fit his legs into the wrinkled trousers. “My father says it’s up to thirty dollars a day. All depends if the foreman’s in a good mood. But when you subtract room and board, booze and smokes—who knows? And medical care isn’t cheap, either.”

“Jesus,” said the congressman.

“Hey, they keep coming back. Compared to Santo Domingo, this is fucking Club Med.”

“How long do they work?”

“Until it’s done,” Rojo said. “My father says a good hand cuts a ton of cane every hour. You believe that? A whole goddamn ton—amazing what a man can do when he’s properly motivated.”

David Dilbeck turned from the window and closed his eyes. It made him dizzy and sick, just thinking about it.

The judge was startled when Erin sat down at the table. She said, “You remember me? The unfit mother.”

The judge stiffly drained his Jack Daniels. “I was hoping this was a social visit,” he said.

Erin fought to steady herself. She’d had two martinis during her break—a rare indulgence while performing. The problem was Jerry Killian being dead. Even peripheral involvement with a murder could ruin her chance of getting Angie back. In his lovestruck quest to help, Killian might’ve provoked the wrong people. How far had he taken his screwball scheme? Had he actually tried extortion on a U.S. congressman? Erin needed to know more, before she told Al Garcia about her own supporting role. The judge was her strongest lead, and also the riskiest.

Erin feinted in the obvious direction. “I’d like you to hear my side of the case.”

“I already have,” the judge said, “in court.”

A waitress brought a fresh drink, which the judge eyed longingly but did not sip. Erin wondered if Shad had defiled it in the usual way.

“Thanks to you,” she said, “my daughter is in the custody of an incorrigible felon.”

“The record reflected no such thing.”

“The record was sanitized, Your Honor. Darrell Grant is a paid informant for the Sheriffs Office, and you know it. They purged his rap sheet.”

Fidgeting in a dark booth, the judge wasn’t nearly as imposing as he was in the courtroom. Here at the Eager Beaver, he was just another horny old fart with impossible fantasies.

Erin said, “My ex-husband deals in stolen wheelchairs. He’s made an accomplice of our daughter.”

The judge told her that he based his opinion on the known facts of the case; that’s the law. “But it’s also true that a decision can be reversed.” He twirled the ice cubes counterclockwise in the bourbon. “Are you going to dance on my table?”

“I don’t do that.”

“The others do.”

“Not I,” said Erin.

“Then perhaps something else?” The judge clutched his glass with both hands, as if it were a sacred chalice. His voice took on a sly tone: “I mentioned one particular idea to your friend.”

“Which friend was that?”

“Your ‘special’ friend.”

Naturally, Erin thought. “I’ve got lots of special friends,” she said, “with lots of special ideas.”

The judge pursed his wormy lips and said: “You’re playing games.” He fumbled under the table as if scratching himself, but brought forth a Bible. “I come here often, to pray for sinners like you.”

“Oh, that’s a good one.”

“I keep the Good Book on my lap at all times.”

“I’ll bet,” Erin said. “Levitating?”

“Fighting the devil on his own turf.”

“Whatever,” she said.

“Good versus evil, evil versus good. It’s an eternal struggle.” The judge found a dry corner of the cocktail table and placed the Bible there. Then he treated himself to a noisy gulp of bourbon. On stage, the two Moniques danced as gunslingers: fringed boots, Stetsons, holsters and a silver star on each bare breast. The judge was briefly transported.

“Time to get ready,” Erin said, slipping out of the booth.

The judge snapped to attention. “Does this mean the answer is no?”

“What did my special friend say my answer would be?”

“Mr. Dilbeck wasn’t sure.”

Finally, Erin thought: Jerry’s congressman.

“We talked about your custody case,” the judge said. “I suggested an oral settlement. Didn’t he tell you?”

Oral settlement. How incredibly clever! A regular Noel Coward, this one. “Your Honor,” Erin said, “I don’t know anyone named Dilbeck. And whatever you suggested to him, I promise that my answer would be no.”

The judge seemed more perplexed than humiliated. “All right,” he said, stirring the ice, “but perhaps we could pray together some fine Sunday morning.”

The lawyer, grinning like an imbecile, was waiting at the door. “Come in, come in, come in!”

Shad distrusted joviality. “I heard you the first time. What’s the news from Delicato Dairy?”

Mordecai led him to the conference room. “Coffee, Mr. Shad?”

“Answers, Mr. Mordecai.”

From his waistband Shad pulled a Black & Decker cordless drill with a 1/4-inch steel bit. Without a word he began to put numerous holes in Mordecai’s favorite Matisse print. “The new pointillism,” Shad explained to the stupefied lawyer.

Soon the painting fell off the wall, exposing an identical pattern of fresh holes in the plaster. Mordecai’s secretary pounded urgently on the door and Shad instructed her to go away. Mordecai dropped to his knees and began begging for mercy. He’d been rehearsing ever since Dr. Vibbs had phoned, weepy on Nembutals. His session with Shad had gone quite badly.

“Don’t kill me,” Mordecai pleaded. “I’ll do anything.”

Shad tucked the drill under his arm. “Start at the beginning, fuckhead.”

The lawyer’s story came out in whimpers: The yogurt had been stored securely in the office refrigerator. One day Beverly was out sick. The temp helped herself, never asked… ate the whole damn thing, roach and all. You believe that dumb twat?

Shad’s amphibian eyes closed slowly, and remained that way for a long time. He was thinking that he should have left the warning note on the yogurt carton.

The lawyer’s knees ached, but he was too frightened to move. Beverly rapped on the door again, and this time Mordecai was startled to hear his own voice telling her to relax, everything’s OK.

Just another narcoleptic sociopath in need of legal advice.

“You all right?” the lawyer asked Shad.

The hairless giant opened his eyes. His face showed nothing. From a breast pocket he scooped a handful of crispy dead insects—cockroaches, grasshoppers, June bugs, Japanese beetles, even a scorpion—which he organized on the table for Mordecai’s inspection.

“This time,” Shad said, “no fuckups.”

The lawyer rose to his feet. He circled the table slowly, pretending to admire Shad’s collection.

“We should discuss this,” Mordecai said.

“Nothing to discuss, partner. Send your girl off to the supermarket. Fruit flavors only.”

“You don’t understand—”

“And tell her to check the date on the cartons. I ain’t stickin’ my pinkies in expired yogurt. No way.” Shad sat back and waited for Mordecai to get rolling.

The lawyer said, “But this is fraud. I could be disbarred.”

“You could be dismembered,” said Shad, “if you don’t move your fat ass.”

Mordecai felt the blood rush from his legs. Soon he lost all feeling below the waist. His throat tightened. “I… have… another plan.”

“Sure you do.”

“I… d-d-do!”

With a single punch to the shoulder, Shad knocked the lawyer down. Mordecai wailed. Shad told him to shut up, don’t be such a pussy. Mordecai wailed louder.

Shad stood over him, taking aim. All he said was: “Pitiful.” Then he dropped the dead scorpion into Mordecai’s open mouth. Instantly the lawyer stopped crying, in order to gag.

“There’s more where that came from,” Shad said.

Suddenly Mordecai’s secretary came through the door. It was a half-hearted charge. For a weapon Beverly had chosen a cheap gold-plated letter opener, which crumpled like foil against Shad’s massive rib cage. He calmly disarmed the woman, and directed her to fetch a glass of water for the boss.

Later, after Mordecai had regurgitated the scorpion and everyone had settled down, Beverly confirmed the lawyer’s version of what had happened to Shad’s evidentiary cockroach: the temp had scarfed it down.

“Mmmmm,” Shad said, “I smell malpractice.” He arranged the other dead insects in military formation on the table.