by Jeff Lindsay
“Am I allowed to ask what ‘Goth squared’ means?” I said humbly.
Deborah glared at me. “Guy’s a vampire,” she said.
“Really,” I said, and I admit I was surprised. “In this day and age? In Miami?”
“Yeah,” she said, and the elevator doors slid open. “Even had his teeth filed,” she said, heading out the door.
I hurried after her again. “So we’re going to see this guy?” I asked. “What’s his name?”
“Vlad,” she said. “Catchy name, huh?”
“Vlad what?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you know where he lives?” I said hopefully.
“We’ll find him,” she said, stalking toward the exit, and I finally decided that enough was enough. I grabbed her arm, and she turned to glare at me.
“Deborah,” I said, “what the hell are we doing?”
“One more minute with that brain-dead bag of muscles and I’m going to lose it,” she said. “I gotta get out of here.” She tried to pull away, but I held on.
“I am as willing as anyone to flee in terror from your partner,” I said. “But we are going to find somebody and we don’t know his full name or where he might be. So where are we going?”
She tried again to jerk her arm away from my grip, and this time she succeeded. “Cybercafé,” she said. “I’m not stupid.” Apparently I was, because once again I was playing follow the leader as she stormed out the door and into the parking lot.
“You’re paying for coffee,” I said rather feebly as I hurried after.
There was an Internet café only about ten blocks away, and so in no time at all I was sitting at a keyboard with a very good cup of coffee and an impatient Deborah fidgeting at my elbow. My sister is an excellent shot with a pistol, and no doubt has many other sterling character traits, but putting her in front of a computer is like asking a donkey to do the polka, and she very wisely left all her Googling to me. “All right,” I said. “I can search for the name ‘Vlad,’ but—”
“Cosmetic dentistry,” she snapped. “Don’t be an asshole.”
I nodded; it was the smart move, but after all, she was the trained investigator. Within minutes I had a list of dozens of dentists in the Miami area, all of whom practiced cosmetic dentistry. “Shall I print it out?” I said to Debs. She looked at the long list and chewed on her lip so hard I thought she might well need a dentist herself soon.
“No,” she said, grabbing for her cell phone. “I got an idea.”
It must have been a very secret idea, because she didn’t tell it to me, but she called a number she had on speed dial and in just a few seconds I heard her say, “This is Morgan. Gimme the number for that forensic dentist.” She scribbled a hand in the air, indicating that she wanted a pen, and I found one beside the keyboard and passed it to her, along with a scrap of paper from the nearby trash can. “Yeah,” she said. “Dr. Gutmann, that’s the guy. Uh-huh.” She wrote the number down and disconnected.
She immediately punched in the number she’d written down and after a minute of talking to a receptionist and then, judging by the way she began to tap her toe, listening to elevator music, Gutmann came on the line. “Dr. Gutmann,” Deborah said. “This is Sergeant Morgan. I need the name of a local dentist who might sharpen a guy’s teeth so he looks like a vampire.” Gutmann said something and Deborah looked surprised. She scrabbled for the pen and wrote as she said, “Uh-huh. Got it, thanks,” and then flipped the phone closed. “He said there’s only one dentist in town stupid enough to do that. Dr. Lonoff on South Beach.”
I found it quickly on the page of dentists I had called up on the computer. “Just off Lincoln Road,” I said.
Deborah was already out of her chair and moving toward the door. “Come on,” she said, and once again Dutiful Dexter lurched up and followed along.
TWELVE
DR. LONOFF’S OFFICE WAS ON THE FIRST FLOOR OF A RELATIVELY old two-story building on a side street two blocks from Lincoln Road Mall. The building was one of those semi-Deco buildings South Beach had once been infested with, and it had been nicely restored and painted a very light lime green. Deborah and I went in past a sculpture that looked like a geometry lesson having sex in a hardware bin and we walked straight to the back, where a door announced, DR. J. LONOFF, DDS: COSMETIC DENTISTRY.
“I think this is it,” I said, trying to sound like David Caruso.
Deborah just gave me a quick and mean look and opened the door.
The receptionist was a very thin African-American man with a shaved head and dozens of piercings in his ears, eyebrows, and nose. He was wearing raspberry-colored scrubs and a gold necklace. A sign on his desk said, LLOYD. He looked up as we entered, smiled brightly, and said, “Hi! Can I help you?” in a way that sounded like, Let’s start the party!
Deborah held up her badge and said, “I’m Sergeant Morgan, Miami-Dade Police. I need to see Dr. Lonoff.”
Lloyd’s smile got even bigger. “He’s with a patient right now. Can you wait just a couple of minutes?”
“No,” Deborah said. “I need to see him now.”
Lloyd looked a bit uncertain, but he didn’t stop smiling. His teeth were large, very white, and perfectly shaped. If Dr. Lonoff had done Lloyd’s teeth, he did really good work. “Can you tell me what this is about?” he said.
“It’s about me coming back with a warrant to look at his drug register if he isn’t out here in thirty seconds,” Deborah said.
Lloyd licked his lips, hesitated for two seconds, and then got to his feet. “I’ll tell him you’re here,” he said, and he vanished around a curved wall and into the back of the office.
Dr. Lonoff beat the thirty-second deadline by a full two seconds. He came huffing around the curved wall, wiping his hands on a paper towel and looking frazzled. “What the hell are you—What’s this about my drug register?”
Deborah just watched him as he skidded to a stop in front of her. He seemed young for a dentist, maybe thirty, and in all honesty he looked a little too buff, too, as though he had been pumping iron when he should have been filling cavities.
Deborah must have thought so, too. She looked him over from head to toe and said, “Are you Dr. Lonoff?”
“Yes, I am,” he said, still a little huffish. “Who the hell are you?”
Once again Deborah held up her badge. “Sergeant Morgan, Miami-Dade Police. I need to ask you about one of your patients.”
“What you need to do,” he said with a great deal of medical authority, “is to stop playing storm trooper and tell me what this is about. I have a patient in the chair.”
I saw Deborah’s jaw stiffen, and knowing her as well as I did I braced myself for a round or two of tough talk; she would refuse to tell him anything, since it was police business, and he would refuse to let her at his records, because doctor-patient records were confidential, and they would go back and forth until all the high cards were played, and meanwhile I would have to watch and wonder why we couldn’t just cut to the chase and break for lunch.
I was just about to find a chair and curl up with a copy of Golf Digest to wait it out—but Deborah surprised me. She took a deep breath and said, “Doctor, I got two young girls missing, and the only lead I have is a guy with his teeth fixed so he looks like a vampire.” She breathed again and held his eye. “I need some help.”
If the ceiling had melted away to reveal a choir of angels singing “Achy Breaky Heart,” I could not have been more surprised. For Deborah to open up and look vulnerable like this was completely unheard-of, and I wondered if I should help her find professional counseling. Dr. Lonoff seemed to think so, too. He blinked at her for several long seconds, and then glanced at Lloyd.
“I’m not supposed to,” he said, looking even younger than his thirty or so years. “The records are confidential.”
“I know that,” Deborah said.
“Vampire?” Lonoff said, and he peeled his own lips back and pointed. “Like here? Th
e canines?”
“That’s right,” Deborah said. “Like fangs.”
“It’s a special crown,” Lonoff said happily. “I have them made by a guy in Mexico, a real artist. Then it’s just a standard crown procedure, and the result is pretty impressive, I gotta say.”
“You’ve done that to a lot of guys?” Deborah said, sounding a bit surprised.
He shook his head. “I’ve done about two dozen,” he said.
“A young guy,” Deborah said. “Probably not more than twenty years old.”
Dr. Lonoff pursed his lips and thought. “Maybe three or four of those,” he said.
“He calls himself Vlad,” Deborah said.
Lonoff smiled and shook his head. “Nobody by that name,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if they all call themselves that. I mean, it’s a kind of popular name with that crowd.”
“Is it really a crowd?” I blurted out. The idea of a large number of vampires in Miami, whether actual or fake, was a little bit alarming—even if only for aesthetic reasons. I mean, really: all those black clothes? So very New York–last year.
“Yeah,” Lonoff said. “There’s quite a few of them. They don’t all want their fangs done,” he said with regret, and then he shrugged. “Still. They have their clubs, and raves, and so on. It’s quite a scene.”
“I only need to find one of them,” Deborah said with a little bit of her old impatience.
Lonoff looked at her, nodded, and unconsciously flexed his neck muscles. His shirt collar didn’t quite pop. He pushed his lips out and then in, and, suddenly reaching a decision, he said, “Lloyd, help them find that in the billing records.”
“You got it, Doctor,” Lloyd said.
Lonoff held out his hand toward Deborah. “Good luck, ah—Sergeant?”
“That’s right,” Deborah said, shaking his hand.
Dr. Lonoff held on a little too long, and just when I thought Debs would yank away her hand, he smiled and added, “You know, I could fix that overbite for you.”
“Thanks,” Debs said, pulling her hand away. “I kind of like it.”
“Uh-huh,” Lonoff said. “Well, then …” He put a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder and said, “Help them out. I’ve got a patient waiting.” And with a last longing look at Deborah’s overbite, he turned around and disappeared into the back room again.
“It’s over here,” Lloyd said. “On the computer.” He pointed to the desk he’d been sitting at when we came in, and we followed him over.
“I’m going to need some parameters,” he said. Deborah blinked and looked at me, as if the word were in a foreign language—which I suppose it was, to her, since she did not speak computer. So once again, I stepped into the awkward void and saved her.
“Under twenty-four,” I said. “Male. Pointy canine teeth.”
“Cool,” Lloyd said, and he hammered at the keyboard for a few moments. Deborah watched impatiently. I turned away and looked at the far side of the waiting room. A large saltwater fish tank sat on a stand in the corner next to a magazine rack. It looked a little crowded to me, but maybe the fish liked it that way.
“Gotcha,” Lloyd said, and I turned around in time to see a sheet of paper come whirring out of the printer. Lloyd grabbed it and held it out to Debs, who snatched it and glared at it. “There’s just four names,” Lloyd said with a touch of the same regret Dr. Lonoff had shown, and I wondered if he got a commission on the fangs.
“Crap,” said Deborah, still looking at the list.
“Why crap?” I said. “Did you want more names?”
She flicked the paper with a finger. “First name on here,” she said. “Does the name Acosta mean anything to you?”
I nodded. “It means trouble,” I said. Joe Acosta was a major figure in the city government, a sort of old-school commissioner who still carried the kind of clout you might have found fifty years ago in Chicago. If our Vlad was his son, we might be in for a fecal shower. “Different Acosta?” I asked hopefully.
Deborah shook her head. “Same address,” she said. “Shit.”
“Maybe it’s not him,” Lloyd said helpfully, and Debs looked up at him, just for a second, but his bright smile vanished as if she’d hit him in the crotch.
“Come on,” she said to me, and she whirled away toward the door.
“Thanks for your help,” I told Lloyd, but he just nodded, one time, as if Debs had sucked all the joy out of his life.
Deborah was already in the car with the motor running by the time I caught up with her. “Come on,” she called out the window. “Get in.”
I climbed in beside her and she had the car in gear before I got the door closed. “You know,” I said, fastening my seat belt, “we could leave Acosta for last. It could just as easily be one of the others.”
“Tyler Spanos goes to Ransom Everglades,” she said. “So she hangs with the upper crust. The fucking Acostas are the upper crust. It’s him.”
It was hard to fault her logic, so I said nothing; I just settled in and let her drive too fast through the midmorning traffic.
We drove over the MacArthur Causeway and let it take us onto the 836 all the way to LeJeune, where we went left into Coral Gables. Acosta’s house was in a section of the Gables that would have been a walled community if it was built today. The houses were large, and many of them, like Acosta’s, were built in the Spanish style out of large blocks of coral rock. The lawn looked like a putting green and there was a two-story garage on the side, attached to the house by a breezeway.
Deborah parked in front of the house and paused for a moment after turning off the engine. I watched her take a deep breath, and I wondered if she was still going through the same strange molecular meltdown that had lately made her seem so soft and emotional. “Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked her. She glanced at me, and she did not really look like the fierce and focused Deborah I knew so well. “I mean, you know,” I said. “Acosta could make your life pretty miserable. He’s a commissioner.”
She snapped back into focus like she’d been slapped and I saw the familiar sight of her jaw muscles working. “I don’t care if he’s Jesus,” she snarled, and it was very good to see the old venom return. She got out of the car and began to stride up the sidewalk to the front door. I got out and followed, catching up to her just as she pushed the doorbell. There was no response, and she shifted her weight impatiently from foot to foot. Just as she reached a hand up to ring a second time, the door swung open, and a short, square woman in a maid’s uniform peered out at us.
“Yes?” the maid said in a thick Central American accent.
“Is Robert Acosta here, please,” Deborah said.
The maid licked her lips, and her eyes darted from side to side for a moment. Then she shivered and shook her head. “Why you wan’ Bobby?” she said.
Deborah held up her badge and the maid sucked in her breath loudly. “I need to ask him some questions,” Debs said. “Is he here?”
The maid swallowed hard, but said nothing.
“I just need to talk to him,” Debs said. “It’s very important.”
The maid swallowed again, and glanced past us out the door. Deborah turned and looked, too. “The garage?” she said, turning back to the maid. “He’s in the garage?”
At last, the maid nodded. “El garaje,” she said, softly and very fast, as if she was afraid she would be heard. “Bobby vive en el piso segundo.”
Deborah looked at me. “In the garage. He lives on the second floor,” I translated. For some reason, in spite of being born and bred in Miami, Debs had chosen to study French in school.
“Is he here right now?” Deborah asked the maid.
She nodded her head jerkily. “Creo que sí,” she said. She licked her lips again and then, with a sort of spasmodic lurch, she pushed the door closed, not quite slamming it.
Deborah looked at the shut door for a moment, then shook her head. “What was she so scared of?” she said.
“Deportation?” I said.
She snorted. “Joe Acosta wouldn’t hire an illegal. Not when he can get a green card for anybody he wants to.”
“Maybe she’s afraid to lose her job,” I said.
Deborah turned and looked at the garage. “Uh-huh,” she said. “And maybe she’s afraid of Bobby Acosta.”
“Well,” I said, but Deborah jerked into motion and headed around the corner of the house before I could say any more. I caught up with her as she got to the driveway. “She’s going to tell Bobby we’re here,” I said.
Deborah shrugged. “It’s her job,” she said. She came to a halt in front of the double-size garage door. “There’s got to be another door, maybe some stairs,” she said.
“Around the side?” I offered, and I took two steps farther toward the left side when I heard a rumbling sound and then the garage door began to roll up. I turned back around and watched. I could hear a muted purring coming from inside and it got louder as the door opened wider, and when it was up far enough to see into the garage, I saw that the sound came from a motorcycle. A thin guy of twenty or so sat on the bike, letting it idle and looking out at us.
“Robert Acosta?” Deborah called to him. She took a step forward and reached to grab her badge to show him.
“Fucking cops,” he said. He revved the engine once, and then kicked it into gear, very deliberately aiming the bike right at Deborah. The motorcycle leaped forward, straight at Deborah, and she barely managed to dive to one side. Then the bike was into the street and accelerating away into the distance, and by the time Deborah got back onto her feet, it was gone.
THIRTEEN
IN THE COURSE OF MY WORK WITH THE MIAMI-DADE POLICE Department, I had heard the phrase “shit-storm” used on more than one occasion. But in all honesty, I would have to say that I had never truly seen the actual meteorological event until after Debs called in a BOLO for the only son of a powerful county commissioner. Within five minutes we had three squad cars and a TV news van pulled up in front of the house next to Debs’s car, and at the six-minute mark Debs was on the phone with Captain Matthews. I heard her say, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir. No, sir,” and not much else in the course of a two-minute conversation, and by the time she put the phone away her jaw was locked shut so tight I didn’t think she could ever again eat solid food.
