Bricker made his way back to the bar, but chose the far side so he could keep his eye on Pretty and the customers at the same time.
The bartender came over. He was about fifty with thinning hair he’d let grow too long so now it looked scraggly. He sported a nasty scar (still reddened from the original wound) down the left side of his face. He was missing one of his front teeth. His dirty white shirt had stains all over it and he reeked of body odor.
“Mejor vista, verdad?”
Which meant, “Better view, right?”
He wanted to barf.
“Si, otra Budweiser, por favor,” Bricker said. (He’d picked up a few words over the years.)
He was halfway through his second long neck when he made the mistake of putting his palm down on the bar, coming into contact with something cold and gooey (like chilled syrup) that made him want to barf again, but he contained himself and poured some beer into some bar naps and began wiping his hands. He wasn’t about to go into the bathroom in this joint.
He was still cleaning up when he heard the door creak and slam and saw Slimy Salazar, the tow truck driver, swagger in, acting like he owned the place. (For all the money those drivers made at TWERP Towing, he could very well own the place, for all Bricker knew.)
Bricker slinked further into the darkened recesses of the bar. Pretty wouldn’t necessarily know him if she saw him, but Slimy very definitely did know him. Slimy’d picked up quite a few vehicles from crime scenes Bricker’d worked, so he most certainly didn’t want to be caught skulking around in Solid Tin by the likes of Slimy Salazar.
Slimy went to the bar and got a Johnny Walker Black on the rocks and went straight down to the apron of the stage where he sat down looking straight up Pretty’s humongous butt. As she slinked around the pole, she smiled when she saw him.
Pretty’d discarded her G-string some time after Bricker’s first beer and was now prancing around stark naked, although nobody seemed to pay any attention to her primordial gyrations except Slimy. She sashayed over toward Slimy and learned down to give him a mini-lap dance. Slimy whooped and hollered, ending this charade by inserting a bill (Bricker couldn’t tell how much, but he did strain to see) either into her twat or her butt-hole (similarly, Bricker couldn’t tell which, but he did strain to see).
Minutes later, Pretty ended her set. She made her exit to a smattering of applause and a few catcalls, except for Slimy, who was obviously nuts about her. Soon enough, she came from behind the filthy curtain at stage left in her G-string, nothing else.
She sat on Slimy’s lap and they shared a drink.
By the time Bricker finished his third Budweiser long neck, Slimy and Pretty left Solid Tin. Bricker waited twenty seconds and followed them. They walked toward Pretty’s apartment. Bricker went to his car and followed them back. Slimy went in and didn’t come out for four hours.
This made Pretty the only meter maid on the PMS Force, as far as Bricker knew, to have sex. (Alice didn’t count; she wasn’t officially a meter maid.)
Back on that first day Bricker followed her as she worked West Avenue, Pretty towed a couple of cars—probably people with expired tags or some other infraction. Those handheld computers the girls carried with them held all the records. If you hadn’t paid a ticket or owed money anywhere in the system, they’d have it in their hot little hands. Bricker recognized Slimy Salazar pulling up in one of TWERP’s tow trucks. He spent a few minutes flirting with Pretty after he backed his truck up and secured the vehicle. Then he sped away.
Later in the day, when Pretty was working the area around Tenth Street, she got into a fight with a guy she was ticketing for double parking while he ran into Starbucks to get a latte. This encounter seemed to freshen her, give her resolve, as she pulled her shoulders back, sucked in her stomach and moved her Cushman down a block where she wrote another ticket in front of Oliver’s Bistro, an airy little restaurant where Bricker sometimes slipped in for a nice brunch (they served brunch till 2:30) and it was only a couple of blocks from his cottage on Lenox Avenue. The victim there had his flashers on and was inside picking up a take out order.
Around the corner, on Ninth Street, Bricker pulled over into a space so he could smoke one of his Montecristos. He rolled the window down to let the smoke out, watching in his side mirror as Pretty worked her way down the street toward him. He was next to Dewey’s Tavern, a dive bar with greasy burgers and cheap drinks and Eurotrash waitresses, all of whom had big tits, and were cute in the way Alice was cute (young enough to be firm all over without going to the gym, tight pussies, nice butts). No matter how mysterious their countries of origin, or their broken English, you’d still fuck ‘em.
Right across the street from Dewey’s was a hair salon named Sally and Her Scissors. Bricker watched as all the queeny hairdressers got agitated, their hands twirling in circles as if they had no bones in their wrists, reacting to the putt-putt-putt sound Pretty’s Cushman made as it crept inexorably down the street.
The girl at the reception desk opened the door and poked her head out to confirm the bad news. She propped open the door and started screaming frantically.
“They’re here! They’re here! Meter maids outside! Meter maids!”
All the hairdressers, as well as their clients, jumped up and dashed out into the street, fumbling in their purses or pockets for quarters, shrieking and screaming. Dye was running down one lady’s face. Another woman was limping—she’d jumped up from a pedicure to run out barefoot. Sally herself came out carrying two rolls of quarters, which she dispersed as clients and staff poured out of the salon, flooding the street.
Bricker calmly exhaled and glanced at Pretty in his rearview mirror. Ninth Street still had the old fashioned meters, so everybody could run to a meter and plunk in a couple of quarters. With the new Pay ‘n Park system currently deploying around the city, people had to wait in line, pay the machine, get a slip of paper with a time stamp on it, and place this slip on the dashboard. This all took time, valuable time meter maids used to issue tickets to their hapless victims as they waited for the Park ‘n Pay machines to spit out their slips of paper.
(The Park ‘n Pay machines were programmed to reject every third credit card, causing victims to have to use another Park ‘n Pay machine or just give up and get an $18 ticket. Bricker thought that was pretty clever of the parking people, but not very nice.)
11 – Mayor Germane’s Secret Meeting
Meantime, while Bricker sweated his ass off following Pretty Rios around town, there was a meeting in Mayor Germane’s mansion up on exclusive La Gorce Island off Sixty-third Street.
Germane led Chief Ramirez, Freddie Flumenbaum and Louie Lewis into his mahogany-paneled billiards room, followed by his white-jacketed Bahamian house man, Ronald, who went to the bar to prepare drinks.
“I’m gonna get back that fifty dollars you won from me last week, Freddie,” the mayor exulted. “Chief, rack ‘em, will-ya?”
The chief went to the end of the table and started racking the balls.
“Shouldn’t we have Major Bunstable here for this little talk, Mr. Mayor?” the chief asked.
“Naw ... Louie Lewis had a good point earlier: he thinks we can have a franker conversation without Enid. And I didn’t want to have this conversation in the office. I know you think she’s a hard woman, Chief, and she has to be hard to be Matron of All the Meter Maids, but deep down, I think she has a sentimental attachment to the bitches.” The mayor looked at Ronald. “I’ll have the usual, Ronald.”
“Pinch on the rocks, yessir.”
“Well, it’s only natural—” offered the chief, cocking his head as he made sure the rack was centered in the right position “—she’d have some feelings for them.”
“Well, within reason, of course,” added Flumenbaum.
“Naturally,” Lewis concurred.
Ronald brought the mayor his drink on a brightly polished sterling salver.
“Freddie? Chief? Louie?” he asked.
“Margarita,” said Flumenbaum.<
br />
“Diet Coke,” said the chief.
The mayor and comptroller looked at the chief.
“Okay, a beer, any beer.”
Louie Lewis was perusing the selection of bottles on the back bar behind Ronald.
“You have an excellent selection of single malt Scotches, Mr. Mayor,” he mused.
“My wife drinks ‘em. A lot of ‘em. She thinks I don’t notice because she moves from one single malt to the next.”
“I’ve have the Dalwhinnie fifteen,” Lewis said to Ronald.
“Right you are, sir,” said Ronald, splashing a generous portion into a snifter.
“I’ll take one or two cubes,” Lewis said.
Ronald dropped a couple of ice cubes into the snifter to complete the drink.
Germane examined a cue he pulled from a stand.
“What precautions are we taking to protect the PMS Force, Chief?”
“Well, you got my suggestion that we curtail all PMS activity during the evening hours. It’s much harder for us to protect them at night.”
Flumenbaum made a clucking sound as he looked over his cue.
“Yes, the mayor sent me that request, Chief. I immediately had my staff prepare studies on the amount of revenue we’d lose if we don’t have them out there working at night.”
“That’s when people go out, at night,” said the mayor.
“TWERP does an awful lot of towing from dusk till dawn, and you know how much the city gets from their kickbacks.”
“Commissions,” the mayor corrected.
“Commissions, then,” Flumenbaum shrugged.
“I think they’re called ‘administrative fees,’ Mr. Mayor,” the chief clarified.
“Whatever the fuck,” said Flumenbaum.
Germane broke and sank two balls, calling for solids.
“Has anybody thought of arming the meter maids?” Germane asked.
“The chief and I have gone over that option. Every single one of them is within instant radio contact for armed back-up, should a nasty situation arise. We really don’t want to see them armed.”
“You have to realize that meter maids are involved in more violent activities involving the general public than all other police department personnel combined,” said the chief.
“Arming them might exacerbate those violent situations,” said Flumenbaum. “You know, one meter maid cracks and pulls a gun on some little old lady who’s cussing her out for an undeserved ticket, and you’re looking at all kinds of lawsuits. The meter maids are on the edge already with this serial killer out there. We don’t want to push them over.”
The mayor sank the cue ball and rolled his eyes.
“Shit,” he said, banging his stick on the side of the table. “Well, has anybody thought about pulling them off the street altogether?”
“Well, the revenue stream would trickle to a halt. Let’s face it: the economics of Miami Beach are very basic: we attract tourists, why? Because we like them? Because we want to show them a good time? Because we’re just a bunch of laid-back Jimmy Buffets sipping margaritas on the beach?” He held up his Margarita. “No. We attract tourists so we can make money. A lot of money. Some people dig a hole and mine for coal. Others raise cattle and slaughter them. Still others plant seeds and harvest wheat and corn. Our work is cleaner. We take money from tourists. We get the tourists here because they have become an industry that must be ruthlessly but creatively exploited. We get them for a bed tax when they rent a room. They buy dinner or a drink, we have the food and beverage tax. They rent a car. We have a tax on that. They put gas in the car to go to Key West, that’s ten cents a gallon, pal. Want to see the Marlins play, the Panthers, the Dolphins, the Heat? Fine. We get two bucks a ticket. You name it. Whatever a tourist does down here, except maybe get laid by a ‘ho, the City of Miami Beach makes money off it. We’d make money off the hookers if what they did was legal.”
“No, we got the hookers covered, Freddie,” the chief smiled, taking a swig from his Corona.
“I’m not surprised,” said Flumenbaum with a frown.
“Hey, there’s more ‘ho’s in Scilly Hall than hookers on the street, so don’t get in my hair, okay?”
Louie Lewis interjected.
“Washington does not want Miami Beach to set a precedent by pulling meter maids off their beat. If meter maids in other parts of the country start getting the idea they can just ... quit ... we’d be in serious trouble. The president has made it clear he wants to keep them working no matter how many of them get murdered.”
Flumenbaum went on.
“Louie is absolutely right. Because while we get all that other money from tourists and residents, by far the biggest bite of all—the big money comes from the parking department. We get their quarters when they pay the meter. We’re slowly phasing out the meters that take nickels and dimes, a move designed to increase the likelihood of the motorist not having a quarter, which increases the likelihood that they won’t feed the meter, which increases the likelihood that we’ll get them for an expired meter. We get eighteen bucks a pop when they don’t feed the meter. When they do feed the meter and don’t get back in time because the meter’s only good for 15 minutes and expires, we get them on overtime at eighteen dollars. We get it on handicapped parking spaces, two hundred fifty a pop the first time, five hundred the second. And we’ll make even more money when we convert to the no cash wireless system. Even though we’re losing millions in theft from the money room, we are making many millions more.”
“Didn’t we start this meeting talking about the safety of the PMS Force?” the chief reminded everybody.
“All I can say is if you pull ‘em off the street, you might as well pull the plug on the extremely dynamic economy of this city as it stands today. That’s all I’m saying,” Flumenbaum went on.
“And that goes for the country as a whole, Mr. Mayor,” Lewis said.
“So you’re saying you’re opposed to pulling them off the street in order to save their lives,” Germane asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Flumenbaum protested.
“Nor did I,” Lewis rushed to say.
“The real question we have to face,” said the chief, “is how long is this serial killer going to kill? Is he going to stop at seven or eight meter maids, ten meter maids, fifteen, twenty? Does he want to kill them all?”
“Who doesn’t?” Flumenbaum asked rhetorically.
“Well, the chief brings up a very important point. You know, we have plans for evacuation in the event of a hurricane. Have you considered what we’re going to do to replenish our stock of meter maids as this guy kills them off, one by one?”
“Yes, Mr. Mayor,” said Flumenbaum, “we have. We’ve speeded up the certification process in the Trainee Program at the Academy of Parking Meter Science. This will provide all the additional meter maids we think we’ll be needing.”
“We’re speeding up the process nationwide, working closely with Congress. We’ll have additional funding in a matter of days,” added Lewis.
“I went over all this with the Academy yesterday,” the chief said. “We’ll be able to replace the meter maids at a rate of two to one. For every meter maid this maniac murders, we’re hitting the street with two!”
“Is it difficult to find girls stupid enough to go into this line of work?” asked the mayor.
“Being beaten as a child is good training psychologically for this job. A poor sex life is almost a requirement,” said Lewis. “Everybody knows what it’s like to nurse a grudge every now and then. Meter maids nurse a grudge every day, all day, all their lives. They take it out on the public. It’s very therapeutic to be a meter maid.”
Added the chief:
“I mean, at the end of the day, they come home mentally exhausted, happy that they’ve totally fucked over maybe a hundred people that day. You have to remember, Mr. Mayor, the official motto of the PMS Force: ‘Misery doesn’t love company, it demands it.’”
There was a pause as the may
or looked at the chief. He exhaled heavily.
“Ronald, let me have another Scotch.”
“Another Margarita.”
“Another Corona.”
“Dalwhinnie!”
12 – The Letter & the End of Pretty Rios
A few days later, Bricker was driving across the Seventy-ninth Street Causeway back to South Beach when he got a call from Billy.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me, William,” said Billy in a hushed, urgent tone, his voice quivering.
“I got Caller ID, asshole, so I know who it is. The fuck’s wrong with you?”
“I think you oughta come over to my house.”
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“I just got a crazy letter in the mail you gotta see.”
“What kind of letter?”
“Just get your ass over here, okay?”
“You got any beers?”
“I got a couple.”
“I’ll stop and pick some up.”
“Just get your fuckin’ ass over here, Jake!”
Billy hung up.
Well, whatever it is, thought Bricker, it can wait five minutes.
So he stopped at the old Publix on Dade Boulevard and got a twelve-pack of Amstel Light (cheaper than 7/11), but Bricker got stuck behind a woman in the “Ten Items or Less” lane who had thirteen items (he looked over her shoulder and counted). And she had a coupon for each item. He got four calls and two texts from Billy, but he didn’t answer any of them. He wanted to pull out his gun and pistol whip the old bitch in front of him, but finally he was through the line and on his way over the Venetian Causeway to Farrey Lane.
He skipped up the steps and went into Billy’s little bungalow, already drinking a cold beer. He set the twelve-pack on the coffee table and handed Billy a beer. He took it and gulped it down greedily, finally coming up for air.
“This whole thing is making me nervous as shit, Jake. The killer knows I know.”
Billy thrust a crumpled letter into Bricker’s hand. Bricker put down his beer, sat down on the couch and looked at the letter, which was made with letters individually cut out of the newspaper, like a ransom note put together by an amateur.
The Meter Maid Murders Page 9
