Strip Tease

by Carl Hiaasen

  If only Dilbeck could be trusted to stick to the script! The subject of the deceased Jerry Killian was to be avoided. Subtle inquiries were to be made about the stripper’s daughter. If Mrs. Grant complained about the custody litigation, Dilbeck was to offer his assistance. I know the new judge quite well—something mild like that, not pushy or boastful. If Mrs. Grant brought up Dilbeck’s bloody outburst at the Eager Beaver, the congressman was to appear remorseful but offer nothing. Moldowsky drilled him on these points. He tried to keep things simple because he knew Dilbeck’s brain would be fogged with lust. Precautions had been taken to protect the stripper from lewd assault, but risk was unavoidable. The congressman was coming apart. It was a race against time.

  Malcolm Moldowsky studied his reflection in the bay window. He liked what he saw—a portrait of elegant confidence under stress. Even at home, Moldy was rarely comfortable wearing anything but a coat and tie. He’d read that Nixon was the same way, but so what? Casual attire impeded Moldy’s genius; he simply didn’t feel powerful in a tank top and a pair of wrinkled Dockers. On this morning he wore a three-piece charcoal suit, tailored in Paris. The necktie was burgundy with a gray diagonal stripe.

  Moldowsky sat at the cherry desk in his den. The phone rang often, but he let the machine answer. He made notes on a legal pad. He wrote: “What does she want?” Then he jotted a list of possible scenarios, from worst to best.

  Worst: The stripper could sink the congressman. She could do it on her own, or at an enemy’s behest. She wouldn’t necessarily need the photograph, either; an afternoon press conference would do nicely. The revelation would be an instant catastrophe. If it didn’t cost Dilbeck the election, it certainly would imperil the sugar subsidies. The Rojos stood to lose millions. Malcolm Moldowsky would do anything to prevent such a calamity. He had painstakingly mended Dilbeck’s political fences, and the committee vote was all but nailed down. The single remaining hurdle was a Republican named Tooley from northern Alabama who claimed to be a born-again Christian and railed tirelessly against R-rated movies, all forms of rock music and the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. Moldowsky happened to know that Congressman Tooley was a syphilitic old fraud, but it didn’t matter. The sonofabitch would repudiate David Dilbeck immediately if a seedy sex scandal came to light. Tooley wouldn’t vote in the same column as a philandering pagan—not for farm subsidies or any other damn fool thing. If Dilbeck was exposed, the sugar vote would be in grave jeopardy.

  At the bottom of Moldy’s list was his dream scenario: What if the stripper let the whole thing slide? Maybe she had no hard feelings about the champagne-bottle attack, no interest in blackmailing the hot-blooded congressman, no secret doubts about Jerry Killian’s death. Perhaps she just wanted to be left alone to dance her heart out.

  Not likely, Moldowsky thought. The woman surely needed money, and surely understood how deeply she could wound David Dilbeck by opening her mouth. Moldowsky guessed that Erin Grant’s silence was available for purchase. He figured she’d be content to accept a large sum and leave town quietly with her little girl. That would be fine. A payoff carried its own risks, but arranging a permanent disappearance was no longer viable. Not with a homicide cop hovering in the shadows.

  Moldy was vexed by Al García. How did his card turn up in the lawyer’s safe-deposit box? Was the detective looking into Mordecai’s disappearance? Moldy made a note to check with the Florida Bar. It was he, after all, who had tipped investigators to the missing lawyer’s trust-fund “scheme.”

  There were more riddles: Why would a Dade County homicide cop be snooping around Fort Lauderdale? Was García investigating Jerry Killian’s death, too? More important, was it he who removed the Kodak slide from Mordecai’s safe box?

  Experience had taught Malcolm Moldowsky to brace for the worst. Assume García was hot on the trail. Assume he’d gotten wind of the blackmail plots. Assume he suspected foul play in the death of Killian and the disappearance of Mordecai …

  Let him assume his fool head off, Moldowsky thought. There’s no proof, no evidence, no thread linking these unfortunate coincidences to the congressman. Homicides? A lonely bachelor has a fishing accident in Montana, a slimy lawyer skips town with embezzled accounts. What homicides? What the hell was García doing? Moldy wondered if the detective was playing a little game of his own—maybe the business card was left as bait. If so, the only smart move was to ignore the bastard. Play it cool.

  Moldowsky’s problem was a pathological lack of restraint. He owned a huge ego, a short temper and no patience. He was unaccustomed to doing nothing. He had so many connections and so much sway that his reflex was to grab the phone and ream some ass. That’s what fixers did, they spotted trouble coming and headed it off. But an influence peddler was only as good as his information, and Moldy didn’t know jack about this pushy Cuban cop. It gnawed at him all morning. Two, three phone calls would do the trick … but why panic? He’d been so thorough, so careful—a mistake was flatly impossible, ridiculous even. Señor Detective García didn’t have squat. Nobody could’ve put it together so fast.

  Yet Moldy found himself eyeing the telephone. Buffed nails tapped restlessly on the cherrywood. He needed to know more. His hand shot across the desk toward the Rolodex. His fingers tripped lightly through familiar index cards. It was an astounding trove of sources. Names and numbers, numbers and names. And they each owed Malcolm J. Moldowsky a favor.

  It was like a drug, this power he had.

  25

  The two goons guarding the Rojo yacht were dazzled by Erin’s arrival. She wore blood-red lipstick, gold hoop earrings, a white miniskirt, fuck-me pumps and a sleeveless salmon blouse. She looked great, she smelled great. A walking fantasy. The hired goons envied David Lane Dilbeck.

  “You’re Mrs. Grant?”

  “No,” Erin said. “I’m Tipper Gore.”

  “Who’s your friend? He’s not invited.”

  Shad emerged from the shadow. The goons shifted uneasily in their shiny black suits. They clenched their fists and swelled their chests, but the stripper’s bodyguard seemed unimpressed. He was as broad as a meat locker, and wore a red beret that barely covered the crown of his lumpy bald dome. His mouth was a cruel-looking beak. He blinked with bulging eel eyes. He had a .38 tucked in his belt, and a South American kinkajou on his left shoulder. The kinkajou was eating a candy bar.

  “Relax,” Shad told the goons. “He’s on a leash.”

  “Who the hell are you?”

  Erin said, “He’s a Guardian Angel. Can’t you tell?”

  “Get lost,” said one of the goons.

  Erin took Shad’s hand. “He goes, I go,” she said.

  The goons stepped away and conferred briefly. One of them disappeared into the yacht. He returned with a decision: “OK, Mr. Guardian Angel, you can stay out here with us. But your monkey goes back to the zoo.”

  Shad said, “It ain’t a monkey.” The kinkajou chittered through a mouthful of nougats. When Shad stroked its neck, the animal turned and bit him on the wrist. The goons jumped but Shad showed no reaction. He wiped the blood on his camouflage trousers and said, “I got him off a guy at jai-alai. He loves chocolate.”

  “Crazy fuck,” muttered one of the goons.

  Two couples came strolling down the dock in the moonlight. The men wore white dinner jackets and the women, both blondes, wore shiny evening gowns. They drank Rum Runners and laughed. The women were impressed by the tall fishing boats and gleaming yachts, and the men seemed to be expert mariners. They were much older than their dates. When they reached the slip where the Sweetheart Deal was moored, conversation stopped. The men eyed Erin, who smiled tolerantly. On deck the pinheaded Rojo goons stood shoulder to shoulder, steroid bookends. Shad adjusted the angle of his red beret.

  One of the blondes: “Say, can I pet your monkey?”

  “It ain’t a monkey. It’s a kinkajou.”

  “Oh, I love kinkajous.”

  “Then what the hell. Pet away.”


  One of the dinner jackets: “He doesn’t bite, does he?”

  Shad looked insulted. “No, sir, he doesn’t.”

  “See you later,” Erin said. She slipped between the two goons and opened the cabin door.

  Al García’s boss in Homicide was Lt. William Bowman, who once played linebacker for the University of Florida. Billy Bowman hated cigars and was eleven years younger than García, but García didn’t mind because Bowman was a decent cop, for an Anglo. Most of the time, he left García alone.

  On the night that Erin was to dance for the congressman, Billy Bowman called García into the office. There was the traditional discussion of the wretchedness of the Miami Dolphins offense, followed by a cursory inquiry about the late Francisco Goyo.

  “We found everything,” García told Bowman, “except four toes and a buttock.”

  “Nice work.”

  “Billy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why am I here?”

  Bowman cracked his knuckles. “Is that a cosmic question? Such as: What’s the point of it all? What is God’s grand plan?”

  García, grumbling: “No, chico, I mean why the fuck am I here? In your office. Shooting the shit for no apparent reason.”

  “How about closing that door.”

  García extended a leg and kicked the door shut.

  Bowman said, “I got an interesting phone call from the chief, who had an interesting call from one of the county commissioners.”

  “Do tell,” said García.

  “Are you working a case with Broward?”

  “Several, Billy.”

  “A missing lawyer?”

  “This is fascinating,” García said. “Let’s have some coffee.”

  Over the next half hour, he told Lt. Billy Bowman the whole story, beginning with the floater in Montana. Bowman was a good listener and he asked sharp questions. When García finished, the lieutenant said he was very impressed. “You got ’em to drill a lock box without a court order.”

  García said, “I knew a girl at the bank, she’s a vice-president now. We set a little trap.”

  Billy Bowman winced. “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Whoever opened the lawyer’s safe box found my card. And whoever found my card got on the phone.”

  “Which is exactly what you wanted.”

  Al García was generous about handing out his business cards during murder investigations. Frequently he’d give one to a prime suspect, just to gauge the reaction.

  “So,” said the lieutenant, “under whose ass did you light this particular fire?”

  “If I had to guess,” García said, “it’s Malcolm Moldowsky.”

  Bowman said he’d never heard of the guy. García told him he wasn’t supposed to. Political fixers were like vampires, the way they avoided daylight.

  “This is how it went: Moldowsky calls the commissioner, who probably owes him a big favor. Maybe several big favors, who knows. So the commissioner calls the chief and says who’s this guy García, why’s he mucking around up in Broward? The last thing Metro needs is some jurisdictional beef with BSO.”

  “Believe it or not,” Bowman said, “the commissioner was almost clever about it. He claims to be a dear friend of the missing lawyer. Says they met at a Dukakis fund-raiser and he can’t believe—what’s the dickhead’s name?”

  “Mordecai.”

  “Yeah. The commissioner can’t believe Mordecai would take off to the islands with embezzled money.”

  García laughed. “That’s very slick, making it personal. Like he was upset about his pal and that’s all.”

  “Right. And anything we could tell him would be greatly appreciated—and very confidential, of course.”

  Bowman took a call on the speaker phone while García poured the last of the coffee. A uniformed road officer had shot a burglar after a chase down the Palmetto Expressway. Bowman took notes and said he was on the way. He hung up swearing because the dead burglar was a drag queen, which meant that the local TV stations would go wild. The lieutenant said, “My whole career, I never shot a guy in a strapless cocktail dress. How about you?”

  “The world’s changing, William.” García lifted a salute with the coffee cup.

  Billy Bowman swung his size-thirteen Reeboks up on the desk. “About this lawyer—you figure he’s dead, too?”

  “Most likely,” García said. “And dumped, like the other guy.”

  “Yeah, but who knows where.”

  “The Everglades is perfect,” Billy Bowman said. “Why go all the way to Bumfuck, Montana, when you got the Everglades in your own backyard? Hell, a dead body decomposes faster here than anywhere else in the country. That’s a known fact, Al.”

  “Don’t tell me they’ve done a study.”

  “Seriously. Miami’s got the fastest rot-rate, because of the heat.”

  “Really?” García mused. “I thought it was the humidity.”

  “The point is, Montana makes no sense.”

  “It does if your victim’s supposed to be on vacation. Killian was a trout fisherman, remember? This shitbird lawyer, who knows where they put him. The nearest landfill, probably.”

  The lieutenant said nothing for several moments. Then: “Al, you can’t just go out and bust a fucking congressman.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “Unless you catch him in the act. Preferably on videotape, with the pope and Mary Tyler Moore as eyewitnesses.”

  “Bill, I’m aware of that.”

  “Where’s the Kodak slide? I’m curious is all.”

  García let the question hang. Bowman was a smart guy; it wouldn’t take him long to see the problem. About eleven seconds, in fact.

  “You’re right,” he told García. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Tell the chief there’s no missing-lawyer case with Broward.”

  “You were just checking out a tip.”

  “Right,” García said. “Dry hole.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t be more help.”

  “Yeah,” García said. “We’re very sorry.”

  “And this’ll go straight back to Moldowsky?”

  “You can bet on it.”

  “Then what happens, Al? Can we look forward to an actual arrest in our lifetime?”

  García rubbed his chin. “Frankly, I got shit for evidence. But I got some beautiful theories.”

  Bowman liked Al García because he was an excellent detective with no ambition to be anything more. Bowman himself wished to be chief some day, and cops such as García often made him look brilliant. Consequently, he wanted García to be happy and productive, not bored or burned out. Al enjoyed challenges, and the lieutenant usually tried to oblige. But this …

  “Where’s our jurisdiction?” Bowman asked.

  “It’s iffy,” García admitted. “Dilbeck lives in Dade County. So does Moldowsky.”

  “But the crimes took place elsewhere, right?” Bowman cracked his knuckles again. “Al, would you hate my guts if I said you’re on your own.”

  “You’d be crazy not to. Maybe I’ll take some sick days.”

  “But, as your friend, let me also say I’d love to see you pull this off.”

  “It’s a long shot, Billy.”

  “Yeah, but I got a personal stake here. I voted for the dumb bastard.”

  “No shit?” Al García couldn’t believe that Bowman was a registered Democrat.

  The lieutenant pulled his feet off the desk. “I remember what you told me a long time ago—”

  “The world is a sewer and we’re all dodging shit.”

  “Very uplifting, Al. I’m surprised Hallmark hasn’t bought up the copyright.”

  “Words to live by,” García said.

  “You know what’s sad? I’m beginning to think you’re right. I’m beginning to think there’s no hope.”

  “Of course there’s no hope,” García said, “but don’t let it get you down.”

  “I’m pissed, Al. I voted for the asshole.”


  “Here’s what you do: First thing tomorrow, sign up for some range time. Check out an Uzi, one of the fully automatics, and go nuts for about an hour. Shoot the living shit outta the place. You’ll feel a thousand percent better.”

  Billy Bowman said it sounded like a good idea. He tossed a notebook and a Pearlcorder in his briefcase. “Well, I better get a move on.”

  “Good luck with the drag-queen burglar.”

  “Thanks, Al. Good luck with the degenerate congressman.”

  David Lane Dilbeck greeted Erin timidly. He wore a blue blazer, a white shirt, pleated camel trousers and expensive cordovan loafers; no socks. His silver hair had a grooved look, as if it had been combed about twenty times in the past hour. Additionally, the congressman reeked of Aramis.

  Erin was accustomed to overdoses of cologne, but she wasn’t sure if she could hack the comical distraction of a turtleneck.

  She said, “This is a gorgeous boat.”

  “Belongs to a friend,” Dilbeck said. “I use it any time I please.”

  “For this?”

  Dilbeck stammered in the negative.

  “What’s that on the stereo?” Erin asked.

  “Dean Martin. Music for lovers.”

  He’s serious, Erin thought. That is Dean Martin. “Well, it’s pretty,” she said, “but I brought my own.”

  “Fine.” Dilbeck sounded disappointed. “It’s your show.”

  Erin had never spoken with an actual United States congressman. She expected a smoother presentation, an air of self-assurance if not downright conceit. But David Dilbeck struck her as just another jittery old lech.

  “Let’s try this.” Erin handed him a cassette. “I put it together myself.” She went to the head and changed to a dance outfit. It wasn’t easy; the bathroom was fiendishly small. Erin wriggled into a white teddy. Underneath she wore a lace brassiere and a matching G-string. She was betting that Dilbeck would go for the honeymoon look.

  When she came out, ZZ Top was playing on the Rojos’ sound system. She balanced the bass and cranked up the volume a couple of notches. The stage was a captain’s table that had been moved to the center of the room. The congressman sunk into a canvas director’s chair. He crossed his ankles and entwined his hands. A silver champagne bucket sat at his right elbow.