“Pretty ritzy up there in Bal Harbour. They got air conditioned scooters, you know?” said Missy.
“Yeah, I know,” said Wimpy.
“But the pensions are better down here.”
“If you live to collect it.”
Missy threw Wimpy a challenging look.
“You think you’d be safer up there in Bal Harbour?”
“Sure. The killer’s focusing on South Beach, ain’t he?”
“Yeah.”
Missy lit a Marlboro Red and took a deep drag.
“And they ain’t got so many meters.”
“I know.”
“And the driver gets about four hours for a quarter.”
“Instead of twelve minutes down here.”
Just then, a big BMW convertible drove by, speeding. A bunch of college kids, girls and guys, illegally overloading the car. They spotted the meter maids, slowed down, and immediately began hurling insults at them.
“Hey, look! Meter maids!” screamed the shirtless driver.
“Hey, fuck you, meter maids!” said a bikini-clad girl.
“Die, meter maids, die!” yelled another guy.
Then they sped off, ran the red light at Lincoln Road, sideswiping a woman pushing a baby stroller.
“Assholes,” said Missy, giving them the finger.
“It doesn’t even bother me anymore, the things people say. It was never like this in London. There’s more respect for the law.”
“It’s like the whole world is out to shit on you.”
“Well, Missy, it’s not like we bring happiness and cheer into people’s lives, now is it?”
“Still—˝
“And I forgot about the lactic acid. It’s bad for you, too.”
“What?” asked Missy.
“Lactic acid. It’s in the milk.”
“Oh. I’ll watch out for it.”
They finished their coffee.
“Back to work, I guess,” Wimpy said hesitantly.
Missy held her by the shoulders and looked into her pin-prick little eyes that were too close together.
“You keep the faith, hear me, Wimpy?”
“Uh-huh,” Wimpy mumbled unconvincingly.
“Anything happens—anything at all—you radio me. I can be there in minutes.”
“Thanks, Missy. That means a lot. You know,” she paused before going on, “all the other girls look up to ya.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re kinda like a hero.”
“Me? A hero?”
Missy snorted a dismissive laugh, but Wimpy could tell she appreciated the compliment. Not every meter maid could lay claim an active sex life.
“Well, you wrote the most tickets last year. And you got a sex life.”
“What do you know about my sex life?”
“Everybody knows about Slimy.”
“I can do better’n Slimy.”
“Just thought you oughta know how much we admire you.”
“Thanks, Wimpy.”
Wimpy put her Styrofoam cup on the counter and said goodbye to Maria.
Missy watched as Wimpy climbed into her Cushman, revved it up and putt-putt-putted away, heading south.
Wimpy’d no sooner pulled out the illegal parking spot she’d occupied than Jake Bricker pulled into it. He hopped out of his car full of vim and vigor, stepped up onto the curb and saw Missy Cuthbert standing there to greet him with a sardonic smile on her poorly lipsticked mouth, her hands akimbo.
“Well, well, well...” she began, not too originally, thought Bricker.
“Well, well, well ... back to you, Missy.”
He touched the brim of his Trilby.
“Mr. Dapper himself. Buy ya cup o’ coffee, big guy?”
She was crazy for him; a guy could tell.
“Sure.”
“Yo, Maria! Café con leche!”
“It’s gotta be quick.”
“Maria, make it pronto! One for me, too.”
“Thanks. Got a big lead I’m tracking down on the meter maid murderer.”
“Aw, he’s nuthin’. I wish he’d try fuckin’ with me, just try. I’d hand ‘im to you guys with his balls in a noose.”
How romantic, thought Bricker. And she probably could, too.
Maria, a dark-haired Cuban beauty, brought the two coffees in Styrofoam cups and threw Bricker an exotic smile full of sexual promise. Bricker smiled back.
“Thanks,” he said.
“All right, aw-ready,” Missy snapped. “We got the coffee. You got customers. Take care o’ yer customers!”
Bricker raised his cup to Missy and they sipped the scalding liquid silently for a minute.
“Hot,” Bricker commented.
“Thanks,” Missy said with as close to a coy smile as she could manage, not having had much practice.
Bricker wasn’t going to dignify her suggestion with an answer.
“So how are the meter maids holding up under all the pressure?”
“Hey, Brick, if you’re a meter maid, you get up every day with the same attitude a soldier does in Afghanistan or Iraq: it can’t and won’t happen to me. So we’re doing okay, thanks fer askin’.”
“You girls are tough,” he smiled.
Missy wasn’t about to give up on him yet, in the event he was as dull-witted as she was.
“What I said ‘bout you ‘n me, Brick—you know?—still goes. Anytime, anywhere.” She worked her eyebrows, making Bricker think of a silent film actress.
The Marines came to his rescue—in the form of The Halls of Montezuma ringing out on his cell phone. He pulled his phone out of his inside coat pocket and answered. It was Billy-Boy.
“Yeah?” He listened. “Right, I’ll pick you up in five minutes.”
“Aww. You gotta go?” she whined.
“Gotta go. It’s my lead.”
He put his half-empty Styrofoam cup on the window counter, looked at Missy, thought twice, then kissed her quickly on the cheek.
“Ah!” she murmured, in near shock.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
And like the complete fool that he was, he gave her one of his killer smiles (he just couldn’t resist), and then he hauled ass, wondering as he put the key in the ignition:
What the fuck’d I do that for?
A bit later, at the other end of South Beach, down around the marina at Third Street where Bricker and Billy went for cheap oysters at Monte’s, they drove around checking out the remaining meter maids left on the calendar. It was something Billy’d suggested when they were at Bricker’s house eating those Porterhouses and drinking the Chilean cabernet.
Fatiwa “Fatso” Farhat was writing tickets on the street across from Monte’s behind the elementary school. Bricker pulled over as a girl and a guy in bathing suits got out of a car three meters down from where Fatso was writing a citation. Fatso eyed them suspiciously.
“Got any quarters?” said the guy.
“Hell, yeah,” said the girl. “Are you kidding? I keep two rolls in the car at all times.”
Fatso was in her Cushman and putt-putt-putted her way towards the couple, stopping to make sure they fed the meter.
“We’re putting money in now,” the girl called out.
“I’ll wait,” said the dark skinned Fatso in a heavy Iranian accent, lighting up a cigarette and leaning back to relax.
“The glass is all scratchy,” said the guy. “I can’t read the hours.”
“Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week,” Fatso intoned in a weary, monotonous voice. (She’d said this speech how many times?)
“They do that on purpose, the cloudy glass. Throws you off,” said the girl. “Just fill it up.”
They filled the meter and Fatso moved on.
“Bitch!” yelled the guy.
“Fucker!” yelled Fatso over her shoulder, not even bothering to turn around.
Bricker looked at Billy.
“We’ll, there’s Fatso Farhat, our Miss August.”
“
Jesus,” said Billy “You really gotta take a lot of shit to be a meter maid.”
“They’re used to it,” Bricker said casually. “Occupational hazard with these girls.”
Over on Ocean Drive, they tracked down Miss September, Cassandra “Cassie” Castro, who was writing a ticket for the car driven by an elderly man with a walking stick who was now on his knees begging for her mercy.
“But, lady, lady, lady! Have a heart. I only have dimes and nickels and this meter only takes quarters!”
“You shoulda thought about that before you got in your car this morning, Pops,” snarled Cassie, unmoved. She had extremely dark skin, with large even blacker moles on her face the size of dimes. About twenty of them.
“But me and my wife, she’s sick—we live on a fixed income. Eighteen dollars is a lot of money to us.”
“I’m earnin’ a pension here, mister.”
“Will you at lest help me to my feet?”
“I never touch civilians.”
“But, lady, lady. Pleeeeease!”
“Sorry, Pops—that’s eighteen bucks,” she said, slapping the ticket on the windshield and sliding it under the wipers to secure it before hopping into her Cushman cart. As she sped away, she leaned out and yelled back at the old guy, “And I ain’t no lady!”
A couple of bystanders helped the old man to his feet.
“The bitch!” Billy whispered to Bricker.
“Let’s have a look at the next one.”
Working Collins Avenue in Middle Beach between Thirtieth Street and Forty-fifth Street (the Fontainebleau), they found Miss October, Winifred “Wimpy” Wimpole, the sole British member of the PMS Force. She was finding lots of expired meters on the side streets between Collins and Harding. Motorists were lulled into a false sense of security this far north of South Beach, thinking meter maids didn’t work up here.
They were dead wrong.
Bricker pulled up across the street where a lady in her sixties waved down Wimpy. With the windows down, they could hear the whole conversation quite clearly.
“And what might you want, Madam?” said Wimpy.
“Well, I saw you coming, or rather, I heard you coming, and I don’t have any change.”
“Well, then you shall have a ticket, ma’am, pure and simple. That’s the law and my employment depends on my execution of that law.”
“But I don’t have any change. Can you change a dollar?”
At this, Wimpy lost it and start howling with laughter.
“Surely you jest,” was all she could finally say.
“But there’s a store right here. I’ll just dash in and get some change. It’ll only take a sec. Will you wait? Please?”
The lady could not have been any more pleasant.
“Certainly I will,” Wimpy smiled, revealing her thoroughly bad English teeth.
“Oh, thank you, thank you.”
As soon as the lady dashed into the store, Wimpy hopped out of her Cushman and started writing a ticket.
“Sucker,” she sneered.
Bricker and Billy both shook their heads.
It just wasn’t right.
“She’s not any nicer than the other ones.”
“Suppose she even has a mother?” Billy asked. “Would she give her own mother a ticket?”
“Oh, sure—it’s all about the pension.”
Billy’s cell phone rang and he took a call.
“I gotta go back to the studio for an hour.”
“Time I checked in, too,” said Bricker.
They agreed to meet at Joe Allen’s for lunch in an hour. Bricker dropped Billy at his car and headed off to the station house.
There was less going on than Bricker thought there would be, so after a few minutes, he got back into his car and drove over to Joe Allen’s. He parked in the lot across the street from the restaurant and walked into the little park that hugged the bay just south of the Sunset Harbour Marina and strolled along the waterfront. This was officially called Maurice Gibb Park, named after the Bee Gee that died at Mount Sinai Hospital. A lot of locals called it Mount Cyanide Hospital.
Bricker often came to this little park to think things over. He found it completely serene and restful. He walked down toward the end of the park where the Venetian Causeway began and onto the little boardwalk that butted up against the first bridge on the Causeway.
After a few minutes, when he couldn’t think of anything to think about, he wandered back down the boardwalk, past the playground where there were no kids playing, across the street and was just going into Joe Allen’s when Billy pulled up, parked and joined him.
They walked in, got a four-top in the bar area and were already deep in conversation when a guy in a black suit sitting alone at the bar turned around to face them.
Bricker looked up and immediately noticed a creepy Louie Lewis staring at them with a sinister smile. He was peeling a hardboiled egg he got from the little stand on the bar that held about a half dozen eggs.
He climbed down from his bar stool and walked the three steps to their table.
“It’s Detective Bricker, isn’t it?” he smiled, that one tooth slanting away from his other teeth, his black eyes piercing. Bricker couldn’t help thinking that today the guy looked more like a cross between the actor Steve Buscemi and whatever Steve Buscemi’s brother would look like if he had hair the color of black shoe polish.
“Yes, it is.” Bricker rose, as did Billy.
“I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation about the meter maid murderer. And I recognize you from TV. You’re William Willoughby with WHY-TV.”
“That’s right.”
“This is FBI Special Agent Louie Lewis, down from Quantico.”
“Yes,” said Billy, “of course.”
There was an awkward silence as the three of them stood there eyeing each other. The maitre d’ came over to Lewis.
“Your steak tartare is ready at the bar, sir.”
“Why don’t you serve it over here,” Lewis indicated the table with a grand gesture. Billy and Bricker glanced at each other. “You don’t mind, do you?” he added with a tilted head and a furrowed brow, almost daring them to decline. “It would be helpful to me to get your feedback on the case.”
“Yes, of course, it would be interesting for us, too,” Bricker stammered.
Lewis took a seat and the waiter brought over his steak tartare.
“Would you like another Coke?” asked the waiter.
“Yes,” Lewis suddenly snapped, and Bricker saw that mean streak he’d detected raise its ugly head. “I would also like the extra raw egg I ordered for the steak tartare, on the side.”
“Yes, sir,” said the waiter, who melted away with a cringe.
Lewis finished peeling the egg, then put it on a little plate and used the little pepper grinder on the table to cover the egg in a soft layer of pepper till the top half of the egg was almost black. Bricker and Billy-Boy stared—speechless—while this process unfolded. Then he popped it whole into his gaping mouth, gave the egg two or three quick chews and swallowed it.
He coughed for what had to be a solid minute while the pepper worked its magic and then he settled down.
“Normally,” Lewis explained, that angled tooth really getting on Bricker’s nerves, “they mix a raw egg in with the steak, but I like a second one placed whole in the center of the dish. I like to do it myself.”
The waiter brought the egg and the Coke, popped the bottle and filled Lewis’s glass halfway.
“I like Joe Allen because he always has steak tartare and he always has bottle service, no cheap mixes from a bar gun that taste like shit,” Lewis spat. “Every time I’m in New York I go to his place on West Forty-sixth Street for the steak tartare.”
“Don’t wait for us,” Billy said.
“No. I’ll wait. My dish is cold. It’s raw. It’s fine.”
He tilted the little dish with the extra raw egg onto the center of the steak tartare and poked it with a fork. The yoke ran ov
er the raw meat. Bricker thought he was going to puke.
“How are you enjoying South Beach?” Billy said in an effort to strike up a conversation.
“I do not like the place, to be honest,” Lewis said, eyeing the yolk running down the sides of the little mound of blood red raw meat. “Too hot.”
“Have you been to the beach?” Billy asked.
“Too wet.” He laughed at his little joke. “Actually, I do not swim.”
Bricker and Billy had ordered burgers. When they came, Lewis finally began to take small bites of his steak tartare, finally mixed the yolk into the meat so Bricker wouldn’t have to stare at it.
“So, do you have any strong feelings or hunches about our meter maid murderer, Detective?”
“I’ve given it a lot of thought.”
“We’ve all given it a lot of thought, Detective.”
“He’s obviously very smart,” Billy threw in, using his knife to swab his hamburger with mayonnaise.
“Well, you have given this matter as much thought as the police, Mr. Willoughby, being as you are the top reporter working the case for WHY-TV.”
“That’s right. It’s with me day and night. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
Lewis leaned back in his chair, reflectively.
“It gets like that, yes.” His thin black eyebrows went up, his mustache curled up on his lip like a skinny caterpillar in the midst of sexual ecstasy. His eyes narrowed as he collected his thoughts. “What starts as a mere curiosity develops into—transforms itself into—an unhealthy obsession that—slowly, methodically—comes to dominate your life.”
“Yes,” Billy said, loading up on the mayo as he took another big juicy bite of the burger that made Joe Allen famous (not to mention rich) long before burgers made anybody famous or anybody rich.
“Soon the things that used to constitute your normal day lose their importance, are no longer meaningful in even the slightest way as your whole mind, your bottomless soul, come to be dominated by this once exterior force that has moved in a silent, sinister manner within you...”
And so forth and so on, thought Bricker. He glanced at Billy-Boy, who was staring at Louie Lewis, transfixed. After several forced meetings with Lewis, Bricker knew already what they were in for, and that within thirty minutes, Billy’d be nodding off. They’d both be nodding off.
The Meter Maid Murders Page 12
