The Meter Maid Murders

by Andrew Delaplaine

  The water was always cold when you first went in, he thought as he sucked in his stomach when the first wave hit him, even in summer. He dove into an oncoming breaker and swam out about three hundred feet and then turned north, swimming parallel to the beach.

  After a few minutes, he paused, treading water, looking back on the Art Deco hotels lining Ocean Drive. Where in the world, he asked himself, would you ever see something as whimsical as all these pastel colored dinky little hotels that looked like frail ice cream cakes: pinks, greens, yellows, blues, turquoise? And with all the little Art Deco details: the portholes, the curving eyebrows, the spires? His favorite was the Waldorf Towers. (Towers? It was a whopping two stories!) And—it was just sinking into dusk—a lavender sky above it all, slipping gently into heliotrope blue.

  Wow! How wonderful!

  Just then, Bricker came alive with a sharp pang as he felt a jellyfish sting him.

  “God damn it!” he yelped, and swam for shore.

  The next morning, Bricker met Billy at the Front Porch Café, one of the few places locals actually went on Ocean Drive anymore. The gays had The Palace on Twelfth Street two blocks south, but that was about it for locals. The rest of it was swamped with tourists and places like the Clevelander, Mango’s and Wet Willie’s (with those awful frozen drinks that seized up your throat muscles).

  The Clevelander had recently wrapped up a renovation that cost millions, but it would all soon be awash in the vomit spewing from the mouths of college kids who couldn’t handle their liquor. The only reason Bricker ever went to these places was to arrest somebody. Ah, the glamour of South Beach!

  But the Front Porch was great. They hadn’t let the food quality slip just because they were popular year after year (like most of the places on the Drive), and they kept the prices within reason.

  “Hi-ya, Billy-Boy!” Bricker called out as he bounded up the steps. The morning was crisp, and though summer had set in, the air was still cool this early. But it was humid. It would be warm by noon, no question.

  He slipped into a chair opposite Billy on the terrace fronting the Drive and ordered an iced coffee.

  “Let’s order quick so you can take me to the murderer.”

  “Just be patient, my good fella, just be patient.”

  Bricker ordered the French toast with bananas and walnuts. Billy had them make a Western omelet and had some fresh-squeezed OJ.

  They were out of the Front Porch in record time.

  “Ride with me,” Bricker said. Billy hopped in and Bricker drove straight down Ocean Drive till he got to Second Street.

  “I know he’s working in this neighborhood,” Bricker said. “Ah, there he is now.” Bricker sounded so pleased with himself.

  Bricker pulled his car over to the curb on Second Street, right across the street from a dive bar called Ted’s Hideaway. A few feet down the block, by a restaurant called Big Pink, a meter mister was writing a ticket. Bricker nodded toward the meter mister.

  “What? I don’t get it,” Billy shook his head, confused.

  “Him,” Bricker nodded again.

  “Okay, him what? What about him?”

  “He’s the killer.”

  Billy watched as the driver of the blue Camry being ticketed came out of a dry cleaner’s situated between Big Pink and Ted’s Hideaway.

  “Hey, buddyyyyyy,” whined the Offender, some starched shirts slung over his shoulder.

  “Sorry, guy, jus’ doin’ my job,” said the meter mister.

  Inside Bricker’s car, Billy seemed befuddled.

  “Who is this guy?” asked Billy.

  “Name’s Smarney Weiner. Well, Barney Weiner.”

  “What?” blurted Billy. “You mean a meter mister is killing all the meter maids?”

  Things were heating up across the street.

  “Can’t you give me a break?” said the Offender. “I was just getting my laundry.”

  Weiner was having none of it.

  “Mister, that is a fire hydrant. Your car is parked in front of that fire hydrant. You have violated the law, and I am here to enforce the law, which is section forty-six point six of the Florida Statutes. You add it all, up, mister, and it comes to a cool forty-five dollars.” Weiner placed the ticket on the windshield. “You can pay by check, Master Card or Visa online.”

  “It’s a shitty law.”

  Smarney was not impressed.

  “Run for governor and change it.”

  “You got a shitty job, you know that, guy, enforcing a shitty law?”

  “It has its rewards,” Weiner said as he got into his Cushman cart and cranked it up. Putt-putt-putt.

  The Offender took the ticket from under the windshield wiper.

  “I hope you’re next,” he muttered.

  “What was that?” Weiner demanded.

  “I hope you’re the next one that gets killed, that’s what I said.”

  Weiner got out of his still putt-putt-putting Cushman.

  “Oh, hey, you’re really sick, you know that? For forty-five lousy dollars, you’d wish that on someone?”

  “You—a meter maid, or meter mister, or whatever the fuck you are—you are calling me sick?” The Offender was getting all worked up. “That takes guts. The only guy with any brains and guts around here is the killer! He knows if he kills a real cop, they’ll hunt him down and crucify him. But it’s okay to kill pseudo-cops!”

  “I am a member of the Miami Beach Police department. I am not a pseudo-cop!”

  The Offender threw his laundry in the back seat, got in his Camry and started it up.

  “Pseudo-cop!” he yelled as he sped away. Weiner just looked at him, hands akimbo, frustrated, but then frustration came with the job. He climbed into his Cushman and putt-putt-putted away.

  As the putt-putts faded in the distance, Billy turned to a smug-looking Bricker.

  “Would you like to tell me the theory behind your selection of”—he pointed after the already-gone Weiner—“that person to be the biggest serial killer in Florida history? Bigger than Ted Bundy? I’m waiting, Brick.”

  “You have no confidence. But I’ll tell ya, Billy-Boy, I’ve been doin’ my research. Detective work involves research, you know? I’ve been doin’ mine, see? This guy, this Smarney Weiner, he’s our guy.”

  “He’s our guy?” Billy asked. “Simple as that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you like to go out on a limb and tell me why he’s our guy? How he’s our guy?”

  Bricker shook his head in disbelief, clearly concerned that Billy doubted his deductive reasoning.

  “Well, numb-nuts, I’ll tell you. Smarney Weiner, that very guy, was the thirteenth highest revenue producer, or ticket-writer, on the PMS Force last year.”

  Billy shook his head. He wasn’t getting it.

  “And so? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Don’t you see it?”

  “No. I see nothing.”

  “He didn’t make the cut. If he’d written a few more tickets, he’d’ve made the calendar, don’t you see?”

  Billy paused while he took it all in.

  “And that’s all you’ve got?”

  “Billy, I don’t need any more. He’s my prime suspect.”

  “Your prime suspect?” Billy was outraged.

  “He’s been on the force for fifteen years. A few months ago he got out of a messy relationship.”

  “He had a relationship?”

  “Every now and then, they do, these meter people. Not often, though.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “Let’s go into Ted’s and get a beer.”

  Bricker led the way into the darkened hole that was Ted’s Hideaway where they sat at the bar. They were greeted by a smell peculiar to most dive bars, the smell of improperly cleaned-up vomit. It wasn’t as bad as the long-gone Jesse’s Dollhouse Bar up on Sixth Street and Washington, but it was there just the same. It was much worse years ago when Ted was still alive and they served food. Pe
ople puked left and right, day and night, even though they served the best greasy burger in town. But since Ted died, they quit with the food but still couldn’t get that smell out of the place. A block (and also a million miles) away around on Ocean Drive was Danny DeVito’s restaurant where a single meatball would set you back ten bucks.

  “Two Coors draft,” Billy told the scruffy but sexy-looking bar maid, tits busting out all over. She leaned over for him to repeat it. “Two Coors draft,” he said again, this time pointing to the Coors draft handle in front of them.

  She nodded.

  “Where you do think she’s from?” he asked Bricker.

  “And how old? She’s from Russia or Bulgaria or Romania, one of those places. I don’t know how they get ‘em over here, or how many have papers. There’s some kind of underground railroad or something, like a prostitution ring, but for bar maids.”

  “Tell me about Smarney Weiner.”

  “Well, just picture it, Billy-Boy. The hurt he went through, Smarney Weiner, the professional jealousy building up in him, eating away at his innards—”

  “His innards?”

  “Yeah—his insides, creating a well-spring of bitterness and uncontrollable anger, an anger so deep-seated that it can only be released in the act of murder.”

  Bricker paused to take a long drink from the frosty schooner of Coors the girl had put in front of him.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that nobody’s picked up on why these particular meter maids are getting killed?”

  “No, I don’t think it’s strange. Why do you?”

  “Well, I mean he’s only killing meter maids. And he’s only killing the twelve meter maids on that telecast last year who are also on the calendar.”

  “Billy, who the fuck is going to put all that together except you? You were the reporter covering the story. It stuck in your mind, dickhead. After the third one, wasn’t it the third one? Yah, the third one, you subconsciously detected a pattern, you mulled it over, you slept on it, and bingo! You remembered all those ugly faces, you remembered the story. You went and got the tape. You brought it to me.”

  “Yeah, mistake numero uno.”

  “Let’s go get some chicken wings at Big Pink.” Bricker dropped a few bills on the bar, winked at the bar maid. “See ya, sweetie.”

  They walked down the block and went in to sit at the bar at Big Pink, ordered Amstel Light on draft and a couple of dozen chicken wings and some onion rings from a decidedly more American bartender, this one a guy of about twenty with tats crawling down both of his arms from under his T-shirt down to his wrists. He had an Adam Lambert haircut, looked very Goth. He drew the beers while Bricker and Billy looked at a re-run of last night’s Marlins game on one of the big screens scattered around the bar.

  Bricker resumed his line of reasoning:

  “Well, whoever this guy is, and I happen to think that guy is Smarney Weiner, had to watch that same telecast you were on when the mayor was giving these meter maids those certificates and got the idea right then and there. He probably figured nobody would put it together, and he was right. Who’s gonna catch on to this pattern, except you? Hey, here we go.”

  “Adam Lambert” brought out the steaming chicken wings in a tin bucket and they got their hands greasy chowing down.

  “What about all the other meter maids? You’d think they’d be scared to death.”

  “Well, you know, Billy-Boy, they are meter maids. We’re not dealing with a terribly high IQ level, if you know what I mean. Hell, the next one in line doesn’t even have a clue she’s next. She just thinks she’s one of the girls. Nope, there are only two people who had the same knowledge here—you and him. You, the guy who did the broadcast, and him, the killer who saw it and laid out his plan. Just the two of you, until you brought that tape to me. That’s when you became an accessory to murder. “

  “After the fact,” Billy added.

  10 – Solid Tin

  The next meter maid in line to be murdered (or be saved, depending on how you looked at it, thought Bricker) was Miss July, or one Pepita Rios, nicknamed Pretty by all the other girls. Bricker picked up her trail as she putt-putt-putted out of the Cushman lot at PMS HQ a couple of mornings later.

  South Beach was now in the depths of summer, but Bricker was cool as a cucumber inside his Crown Vicky, a/c cranking away.

  He followed Pretty Rios as she made her way to the section she worked today: both sides of West Avenue from Seventeenth Street down to Fifth Street where the road gave onto the MacArthur Causeway. This included residential as well as a little commercial property down around Tenth Street where they had a few shops and restaurants. The sky was not appealing. It was that sad slate-gray color, the color of the metal filing cabinets you always saw in industrial offices. It was full of storms about to break. But they didn’t break. They just threatened.

  Pretty worked the side streets which were mostly lined with two and three story apartment buildings, some of them Art Deco gems, others hideous catwalk style apartments that were crappy places to live. Bricker was always backing up uniformed cops going to arrest the low-lifes that lived in these catwalk style apartments. Bricker wondered how many times he’d seen a Cuban dude pull a folding chair out onto the catwalk and sit there smoking a cigar and drinking a beer in his dirty white underwear tank-top, yelling at his woman to bring him another cheap beer after he’d finished the one he was drinking and more likely than not tossed the empty over the rusty railing into the street below. Guys like this loved to beat up on their women. Something about being a psychopathic beer can litterbug and beating up helpless women sorta went hand in hand.

  Bricker wasn’t exactly tuned in as to why the other girls called Pretty “Pretty.” For his money, Pretty Rios was anything but pretty. Okay, she did have long auburn hair, so long it reached down to brush against the top of her sizeable ass. There was something about the color that seemed wrong to Bricker, like too much of a light brown sugar color that made him think Pretty was not a natural auburn-haired girl. She had a long horse face, a terrible complexion and bad teeth. What’s so “pretty” about that? he thought.

  He’d gotten the whole lowdown on Pretty while he was fucking Alice one afternoon, to the point that she wanted to know why he was so interested in Pretty Rios. But he got access to the PMS Force personnel files and from then on stopped asking Alice anything about the Calendar Girls, as he and Billy’d starting calling them. Pretty was twenty-seven, lived alone in a new apartment house in Doral, a tacky town west of the airport that nobody ever heard of: a typical suburban town that could be anywhere in America. Bricker hated the long drive out there, but he followed Pretty out every night. Since Pretty lived on the eighth floor of a secure building, Bricker had the feeling the meter maid murderer would attack her at work or when she was off duty, running errands or grocery shopping.

  But after several nights staking out Pretty’s apartment building, he discovered one errand she ran every week that did not please him. After she got home and presumably took a shower to wash off all the spit showered on her by disgruntled motorists, she came out—it was always a Friday, as he was to learn—and walked four blocks to a strip club called Solid Tin. He followed in his car till he saw her go inside. He parked across the street and killed the engine, lighting up a Joyita. When the bitch didn’t reappear in twenty minutes, he got angry, then got out of the car with a sigh and walked over to have a closer look.

  He pulled his Trilby down a little firmer over his face as the creaky door swung open, and he entered a dump among dumps that smelled even worse than Ted’s Hideaway. This firetrap had a ceiling so low he could reach up and touch it, if he dared. He knew it had to be sticky with all the nicotine it’d collected over the years, and he almost choked on the smoke swirling around the room, stinging his eyes.

  And I’m a fuckin’ smoker, went through his brain.

  He went to the bar and ordered an Ezra Brooks, but they didn’t carry it, so he ordered a Jim Beam White la
bel, then quickly thought better of it, thinking of the glass it would come in, and ordered a long neck Budweiser. It came, he paid, and when nobody was looking, he took a bar nap and cleaned the top of the bottle before he took a drink from it.

  All this time he scanned the room for Pretty, and was alarmed to see her nowhere. The clientele were a bunch of lowlifes and the odd lonely businessman in a tie. He moved slowly around the nearly pitch black room, looking into every nook and cranny, and boy, this place had a lot of nooks and crannies. Some of the “dancers” were writhing in phony ecstasy and moaning unconvincingly as they made out with tricks.

  Finally, exhausting every last nook and the smallest cranny, Bricker looked up onstage, and there she was.

  Jesus fuckin’ Christ, the bitch works here!

  There was Pretty, looking everything but, sliding up and down the pole, caressing it like it was the biggest dick in town. She worked her mouth more than that drag diva Bricker’d seen in the clubs on South Beach, Miss Elaine Lancaster, doing her Marilyn Monroe impersonation. In fact, Elaine was a damn sight sexier than Pretty Rios, and her tits were fake!

  “Hey, en el frente!” came a shout from somewhere in the dark behind him, telling him to get out of the way, he was blocking the action.

  What action? he thought.

  Bricker backed into one of the hundreds of shadows readily available at Solid Tin. When the asshole shouted, Pretty looked directly at him, but he was fairly certain she couldn’t make out anything more about him than a shadow. She went on slithering around the pole and tossing her head back to get the most out of her one redeeming feature: her ass-length auburn hair. Or whatever color it was. She tossed her head and turned her head. She pumped her head up and down, over and out. She whipped that hair around like it was a bullwhip, a weapon you didn’t want to tangle with.