by J. A. Kerley
“Go, Contessa!” someone yelled. “Pile it on, baby.”
I turned to a man of four hundred or so pounds sitting in a lounge chair in a corner and thumping its arm with the butt of a bottle of beer. His remark generated applause and laughter from four other similarly large men playing cards at a nearby table. In all, I counted eleven men in attendance, nine of them morbidly obese, and two of normal size. Most were in their thirties, a couple guys nearing forty. Three were so large I wondered if they’d had to butter themselves to slip in the door, wide as it was.
Puzzled, I walked toward the bar where an obese, thirtyish man was stacking washed glasses in a rack, enough material in his Hawaiian shirt to cut placemats for a luau. Behind him were several framed eleven-by-seventeen photos of huge men holding loving cups or award ribbons. A banner behind a man so obese his features seemed to have sunken into his cheeks proclaimed Chubby Champion, 2012 Southeastern Convergence.
“Excuse me,” I said to the guy racking glasses. “Is this like a Weight Watchers meeting or something?”
He seemed to think my remark appropriate for the house. “Hey, everyone … the gentleman here wants to know if this is a Weight Watchers meeting.”
Laughter. Hoots and howls and slapped knees. One normal-sized guy pointed to a huge man and trilled, “Yes it is, hon. I’m watching his weight.” He blew the mammoth a kiss.
I sighed, pulled my badge and handed it to the barkeep. He stared between me and the badge, puzzled. “I just made you a detective for ten seconds,” I told him. “What do you detect in my expression?”
He looked into my face and frowned. “Uh, confusion?”
I plucked the badge from his fingers. “Very good, Sherlock. How about you help me out here?”
30
I left GMSC after discovering the place had only been open a half-hour, no one there when Eisen was dropped. The lab was my next destination, and I found Morningstar in the room holding the new DNA-analysis machine. It was a major advance in crime diagnostics, and I expected more.
“That’s it?” I said, looking at a stand-in for an office copier, just a big box with a read-out panel.
“What did you expect?” Vivian asked. “More chrome?”
“Here comes the report,” Gerri Haskins said. She was the tech trained on the device, sitting at a desk beside the machine, her hand on a sheet of paper as it rolled from a printer.
“And …?” I said, leaning behind Gerri like I was cribbing on a test.
“I don’t know if it’s what you want to hear, Carson,” she said. “But the match is loud and clear. It’s Ocampo DNA.”
I whispered some expletives to myself.
“What?” Viv asked.
“Patterns,” I said. “Patterns lead me inside minds. Donnie’s veered from two established patterns.”
“The new violence?”
“Violence was always inherent, just ramped up. But he’s stopped making the sign on the victim’s back, and he’s no longer dumping them in out-of-the-way locales.”
“Getting bolder … at least with the latter?”
“I have no idea. It’s all screwed up.”
I hightailed back to the hospital and found Eisen on a ventilator, Costa saying he was having difficulty breathing. Patrick White was there and Costa gave him instructions and went off to handle another case.
“I know you can’t tell me anything confidential, Detective,” White said when he’d finished checking tubes and wires, “but are you getting any closer to this crazy?”
“It’s a tough one, Patrick,” I admitted. “The guy seems invisible. We know what he looks like, we just can’t find him. You’re telling all your friends to watch out, right?”
“It’s my new mantra. Plus the pictures of the suspect are in most bars.”
“You never heard anything about how they got there, did you? The photos?”
We’d recently sent out the photos to the bars, but someone had gotten there before us in many cases, the photos already posted.
Patrick hung the stethoscope around his neck and shook his head. “They just appeared. The guy looks …”
“Yep. Like half of Miami. Plus it’s about a hundred per cent chance he saw the photos and gave himself a makeover.”
White finished his ministrations and left at a run. I took a final look at Jacob Eisen, wondering what his connection was to Donnie Ocampo. Or was it just a wrong place–wrong time scenario?
I heard racing footsteps and turned to see Lonnie Canseco run into the room. It surprised me, since he’d not had anything to do with the case.
“Tell me it’s not true,” Canseco said, staring in dismay at Eisen.
“He got his tongue removed, Lon.”
I saw Canseco’s hand ball into fists, his teeth clench in anger. “Fuck!” Canseco said through gritted teeth, his fist pounding the wall.
A nurse passing by stepped inside. “Is everything all right here?”
I assured her it was and nodded for Canseco to follow me out into the hall. He did, shooting backward glances at the victim.
“Why you here, Lonnie?”
Like Jeremy, Canseco liked looking sharp. He wore a summer-weight suit the color of ash, a shirt the blue of a Denver sky, a scarlet tie with a knot so perfectly triangular it could calibrate electron microscopes. With handsome, angular features and Latin coloration, he resembled the actor Jimmy Smits at age thirty-five.
“I know the kid,” Canseco said. “I do some counseling, a volunteer. I met Jake at a session.”
“Counseling?”
He looked down the hall and winced. “I hate hospitals, Carson. I know a laid-back bar a couple blocks away. I could use a drink.”
The bar was three blocks distant, the Brass Key, a quiet tavern with soft light and dark wood, a place where the barkeep wears a black vest over a starched white shirt and keeps his distance until you need something. We ordered, double Scotch neat backed with soda on ice for Canseco, a shot of bourbon with a beer back for me, then stood at the railed bar, the sole customers save for a quartet of suited sales-types at a back table. I waited until Canseco had a blast of the Scotch, then got into it.
“You said you met the vic at some counseling thing?”
“Young gay men, guys who’ve had a hard road, gotten in trouble. I try to divert them to a more productive lifestyle, like furthering their education and getting jobs or better jobs. It’s a big-brother kind of thing, and I do it a couple hours a week.” He gave me a look. “And yes … I’m gay.”
I wasn’t taken aback by Canseco’s sexual identity, only by my ignorance. He put his hand on my shoulder, gave it a shake. “You are slow on the uptake, amigo.”
“You know him well, then? Eisen?”
“I started with the program six years back. Jake was one of my first charges. We’ve kept in touch … I guess I see Jake every couple months. We’ll grab lunch or a beer, shoot the shit.”
“OK to talk … or is it confidential? The program?”
“Nothing secret. Oh, Jake used to hook some, shoplift, peddle smoke; the usual petty crap. All in the past.”
I lowered my voice. “The tongue cut out … that could mean he’s spoken when he shouldn’t have or, in some circles, told a lie. Jacob a big liar?”
“Like pathological? No. I mean, he’ll fib or tell white lies if a situation calls for it. Like if I said, ‘Jake, do these slacks make my ass look fat?’ He’d say something like ‘No, Lonnie, not at all.’ And yet I’m sure they do.”
I leaned back and checked. “I don’t think so.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
I downed beer and thought about the other victims, about Brian–Brianna in the Ivana Tramp persona, with supposedly acidic comedy. And Harold Brighton was reportedly caustic as well.
“Could Eisen be sharp with the tongue, Lon?”
“He was a pissed-off kid, Carson, trying to lessen his pain by belittling others. He came up in an Orthodox Jewish family, got tossed out of the house by Daddy when h
e was eighteen. He dropped out of school with three months to go, worked the streets, got beat up a few times. I think Jake sometimes insulted people just so they’d belt him in the chops.”
“What he thought he deserved?”
“Self-loathing. A lot of that going around.”
“What’d you do?”
“Convinced him he had value. He did the rest.”
Harry Nautilus used to counsel poor and angry urban youths riding a one-way flume to a life of drugs and incarceration. Convincing such kids they had merit took courage and insight, and though I already respected Lonnie Canseco’s skills as a detective, I was gaining new appreciation for his humanity.
“How’d you meet Eisen, Lon?”
“He got busted for slapping around some poor old queen. The judge gave him six months for A & B. I told the judge if he suspended sentence in favor of anger management and Jacob finishing high school, I’d make sure the kid followed up.”
“Eisen must have done pretty well.”
“It was rocky until he realized I’d been through many of the hassles he had, substitute Catholic for Jewish. Jacob’s a smart guy, and he started to let himself learn things about himself. He got his GED and went to a community college and earned a degree in business. Now he’s got a decent job and a future.”
“No more Mister Nasty?”
“The new Jake is secure in his skin. He likes himself, so there’s no need to piss on others.”
We finished our drinks and put money on the bar. A question occurred, now that I knew Canseco was gay.
“Hey, Lon … just by chance. Did you distribute any Ocampo pics to gay bars?”
He turned, a puzzled look on his face.
“No. I figured that was you.”
Roy would be anxious to get the latest so I ran back to HQ. He had an upcoming meeting in Tallahassee and was memorizing background information on a group of legislators added in the wake of a scandal that saw several others go to jail. Venal lawmakers are in every state, but Florida seemed a particularly fecund hothouse for their incubation.
When I entered, Roy pushed aside his “cheat sheets”, information compiled on legislators that allowed him to feign interest in their interests. His study paid off: We were one of the best-funded agencies in the state.
“Jesus, Carson,” Roy said, taking a final glance at one of his sheets. “This new assemblyman, Coronado … his hobby is collecting yo-yos. What do you say to a guy like that?”
“How they hanging?”
He closed his eyes – probably counting to ten – then got down to business.
“You looked weirded out when Doc Costa said Eisen didn’t have that goofy mark on his back. Reason?”
“Making the mark filled a need Donnie doesn’t seem to have any more. The same with his dumping methodology. He went from the Glades to dropping Eisen behind a superchubs hangout. Couldn’t be a coincidence.”
“I’ll bite. Superchubs?”
“The place is called GMSC, for Girth and Mirth Social Club, a hangout for obese gay men. It’s a kind of subculture, like men who have a thing for really big women.”
“How you know all this stuff?”
“A chatty bartender.”
“What’s it mean … Eisen dumped behind this place?”
“Maybe some message to Gary Ocampo. Or a slap in the face. Only Donnie knows.”
“No mark, different dumping ground. You’re sure it’s Donnie at work?”
“DNA is a match. Plus I heard from the lab on the way over. Same nasty brew: datura, robinia, dieffenbachia. No way a copycat would know that.”
“Why’s he changed MO?”
“He’s seeing things in a different way, Roy. He’s changing.”
Roy thought a moment. “You were going to talk to an expert, your super specialist. How’d that go?”
“I can’t seem to reach him. He, uh, travels quite a bit.”
“Hell, Carson, this is the FCLE. Grab a couple guys from the pool and have them track him down.” He pulled a pad close and picked up a pen. “You’re busy, I’ll handle it. What’s the guy’s name?”
My alarms went off. I’d made a mistake mentioning the possibility to Roy. Normally he was hands-off in a case, but the oddities here had piqued his interest. “I’ve, uh, got him covered from every angle, Roy. He’ll turn up soon. But thanks.”
He tossed the pen back on the desk. “You got it, bud. But if you can’t get him, I will.”
I shot a thumbs-up. “Cool. I’ll let you know.”
I headed back to my office, closed the door, and pulled my phone. “Call me, you stupid, self-aggrandizing son of a bitch,” I hissed into my brother’s voicemail. “Or else you’re gonna have a head honcho of the FCLE trying to track you down. How’s that sound, Brother?”
31
Gershwin arrived in late afternoon. I was at my desk when he tossed his briefcase on my sofa, yanked off his tie and collapsed in the chair across from my desk. The AC had died in his beatermobile, a third-hand F-150 pickup that kept running despite shedding another part every two or three miles. He hadn’t had time this morning to get to HQ and grab a cruiser from the motor pool.
“I checked Eisen’s place,” he said, unbuttoning the top three buttons of his shirt and flapping air across his sweating chest. “It’s an apartment near Hollywood. Lock intact, no signs of a struggle. Looks like Eisen’s picky about his fashion, had two pairs of pants and three shirts laid out on the bed like doing mix-and-match.”
“What’s the location like?”
“He lives in a complex at the end of a long hall, not a good place to deal with a hallucinating person, even if he can’t talk. The parking-squad zealots found Eisen’s 2009 Rav just two blocks from the club where he was last seen, so I figure Donnie plucked Eisen from the street.”
“OK, Zigs. Nice work.”
Gershwin ran down to the promenade outside to get an iced papaya juice from a cart vendor and I heard the intercom crackle on my desk phone.
“Carson, you there?”
Bobby Erickson, a retired Florida State Police Sergeant who worked the internal desk.
“Sure enough, Bobby. Whatcha need?”
“You got call on line three, a Dr Touring. Says you been looking for him?”
It was Jeremy using another of his identities. But why hadn’t he called my cell? What could he gain by … It hit me: he would know calls to the FCLE, as to most law-enforcement agencies, were recorded. I couldn’t rant at him for his antics, or ask questions that might sound suspicious. It was brilliant, irritating, and totally Jeremy.
I’m not sure why, but I went to the window and drew the blinds, plunging my bright office into soft shadow. I picked up the phone. We’d both be playing a word game.
“Hello, Doctor,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Good that you could find the time to call me.”
“Ryder! My good man! What do you need?”
“I, uh, was talking to my boss about a case of mine. A difficult case. I mentioned you might consult and when I couldn’t track you down, he thought he might put some of our people on it.”
A pause. “You’re renting me out now? Do you get a commission?”
“It was an off-the-cuff remark. My boss became interested enough to ask more about you. Before that happens, we should meet. Where are you at present, Doctor?”
“I didn’t mention that I’m now in Key West? I thought I told you last year.”
Serving up the same old slop. “Key West? I thought you were in Kentucky.”
“I’m afraid my old Kentucky home is in the past, Detective Ryder. It is still detective … you’ve not advanced in your career?”
Bastard. “Still detective, Doctor. I need to see you soon. Like tomorrow.”
“I’m extremely busy with my foundation. I might work you in late next week.”
I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t jumping at the chance to see my files. Nothing intrigued my brother more than a case that gave me difficulty.
/> “Listen, Doctor, I really need to—”
“Plus I have work pending on my new abode. We’re deciding on color schemes.”
“Oh? Who is we?”
“My girlfriend is visiting for a few days.”
“Girlfriend?” I said, trying to keep disbelief from my voice. My brother detested women and, as far as I knew, had never had sexual relations. The only females that interested him were those I dated, Jeremy clamoring for intimate details – “Do you put your tongue in them, Brother? Does it taste like bile?” – and pouting when I refused to answer.
“Yes, Detective. My girlfriend and I are decorating my new abode. Peaches.”
“Your girlfriend’s name is Peaches?”
“That’s the hue she’s selected for the kitchen: Peaches. Oh, wait … she’s telling me it’s actually Sunrise Peach. I don’t know how that differs from Twilight Peach, but I’m new to this. Give me a call midweek or so, Detective, perhaps we can work something out.”
“I … don’t think that will work. My boss will continue to press.”
A sigh. “Let me check my calendar. Hmm. Here’s what we can do, Detective Ryder: hang tight for a day or so. Tell your grand imperial whatever I’ll soon be consulting and to muzzle the bloodhounds.”
“Here’s another idea, Doctor. I’ll be in Key West soon. How about I drop by your place and you can show me—”
He hung up. I stared at the phone. I’d worked with the Key West police last year and called a contact. If my brother had bought property, it would be in the residential database. I’d drive the ninety minutes to Key West and show up on his doorstep, files in hand. Maybe a ball bat in the other.
“Sorry, Detective,” Lieutenant King Barlow said after checking my request. “No Charpentier listed.”
“Auguste Charpentier?” I spelled it again.
“Not even listed on the sales-pending reports.”
Jeremy had left Kentucky. The Key West home was a lie. Where the hell was my brother? What was this “foundation” he was supposedly building? Plus my brother never did or said anything without a reason.
