Night Vision

by Paul Levine

  "Exactly. Priscilla put up a good front. Even fixed Nick up with Marsha, hoped it would be a quick fling. She had Marsha over for tea and slumber parties. One night Marsha finds the log. Probably she already looked up the clippings about Fox's war record, so she notices the discrepancy. She starts asking Fox about the war, but very casually. She's a little smarter than she seems. He doesn't figure it out at first, gives her the standard bit about the firefight in the village and the chase along the dike. Now she knows there's a story there. Maybe a very big story, bring down the state attorney, win a prize. Maybe she contacts survivors from the platoon, and one of them tips off Nick. And she may have told Priscilla, or Nick thought she did. He had a divorce in the works, plus a bright political future on the line. He couldn't afford to have somebody saying the medals are made of tin."

  Charlie was quiet a moment. Then he spotted something, raised the rod, and cast. The excitement must have pumped up his backswing and I felt the rod buzz by my ear. The shrimp plopped thirty feet from where he wanted it, and the fish swam lazily the other way.

  "Too big for a bonefish, anyway," Charlie said without regret. "Might be a cobia."

  "Theory number two," I said. "Nick's got nothing to do with it. Alex Rodriguez is some kind of freak. Seduces 'em and strangles 'em."

  "But you have no proof to support either theory."

  "Give me a chance. Now, how about some fishing?"

  Charlie was eyeing a sandy spot near a wad of seagrass. The first problem with bonefishing is spotting the little devils. I stood on the platform, watching for their tails. On the flats you sometimes see them waving like flags above the waterline, the fish digging in the sand for shrimp or crabs. Other times you see the mud churned up as they root around. More often you see nothing.

  "You might try some chum," Charlie said.

  Real purists may disagree, but I see nothing wrong with salting the water. We didn't have all day.

  I unlimbered myself, untied the skiff, and poled toward the sandy spot. I opened a bag of live shrimp and started chopping them into shrimpettes. When I had a mess of bite-sized morsels, I tossed them over the side, leaving a trail of hors d'oeuvres for Mister Bonefish. Squinting into the late-morning sun, I poled back a comfortable distance, stuck us into the bottom, and sat back down on the hard platform.

  Are we having fun yet? Charlie was watching the water, and I was thinking about the kinks in my back, when he said, "Hullo."

  I opened my eyes and saw one of those spooky little devils, maybe eight pounds and all muscle and fight. It was skittish, scoping the territory, wondering why somebody dumped dinner in its living room. The second problem with bonefish is getting them to bite. They're high-strung as thoroughbreds. Drop the bait too far away, they won't notice it. Too close, they'll leave town.

  Charlie let fly and landed his shrimp six feet in front of its snout. The fish didn't care. It was feeding on the chum or some microscopic flecks of fish food. Then it waggled over, sniffed around, and bit. And zip! It ran—hell, it flew—the reel singing a metallic song. The fish broke the Olympic record for the hundred meter, then decided to do it again. Charlie let it run out. He didn't have a choice. If your drag isn't perfect, the bonefish will snap your line and be in Mexico before you get your engine started.

  When the fish stopped its run, Charlie decided to see what it was made of.

  Dynamite.

  Charlie started pumping, pulling the rod back, letting up, and reeling in. The fish took about ten seconds of this, said the hell with it, bent the rod double, and ran again. They fought for a while, the fish running, Charlie giving ground, reeling in, letting out. Then the line snagged on something—it could have been a chunk of coral or an old tire—and it broke cleanly, the fish bolting free.

  "A fine specimen," Charlie said. He considered something for a moment, then added, "You might try some chum."

  "I just did."

  "Not here, Jake. For Fox and Rodriguez. See if they bite." Oh.

  "If Rodriguez is a psychotic killer," Charlie said, "he'll kill again. If Fox thinks someone else knows enough to ruin him, he'll silence that person. So, Jake, start chumming."

  ***

  The rains came in the afternoon, but we were dry inside Charlie's old Ford pickup, fighting the endless traffic up the highway from the Keys. He wouldn't let me drive, something about third gear not being up and to the right. The skiff was lashed to a rickety trailer behind us, and we bounced and splashed over the Card Sound Bridge on the way to Miami.

  "You should have kept that ten-pounder," I said. "Could have mounted it."

  Charlie snorted. "I never mounted a corpse in the morgue. Why would I do it to a poor fish?"

  "That poor fish damn near broke your pole in two. Never saw so much fight in something so small."

  "Deceptio visus," Charlie said, and not for the first time.

  "I've been thinking about the bait," I said.

  Charlie kept his eyes on the road and his mouth shut. He liked me to figure out things for myself.

  "I need to know more about Biggus Dickus."

  "His modus operandi?"

  "Right. How he relates to the Compu-Mate women, what he looks for."

  Charlie hit the defroster. Our body heat had steamed up the windows. Outside, a storm from the east slashed torrents of rain across the pavement. Lightning had knocked out the traffic lights and darkened the neon sign at the Green Turtle Inn. "You're casting for Rodriguez first."

  "If he goes after another woman, it would clear Fox, wouldn't it? Rodriguez would be just another crazed killer, except he wears a badge. If he doesn't bite, then I let Fox know the Vietnam War isn't over yet."

  "And if neither leaps at the bait? If your theories prove to be a floccinaucinihilipilification."

  "A flossy...what?"

  "Sorry. Such an ostentatious, academic word. If your theories prove to be valueless, where are you then?"

  "You tell me, Charlie. Where am I if I falsely accuse the state attorney and the chief homicide detective of murder?"

  "Poling for bonefish, Jake. Now and forever."

  CHAPTER 28

  The Hacker

  Richie Bergman kept twitching his nose, and the sergeant kept staring. "And just who is he?" the sergeant asked.

  "My paralegal," I said.

  The sergeant turned the volume down on his black-and-white five-inch set. "And what's his problem?"

  "Sinuses," Richie Bergman said.

  The only thing wrong with Richie Bergman's sinuses was what he stuffed into them. He sniffled and looked away. Richie was in his late twenties, skinny as a one-iron, jug-eared, and hawk-beaked. He wore thick, rimless glasses and had a scraggly mustache that looked like a squashed caterpillar.

  If Richie hadn't acquired an unquenchable appetite for the White Lady and a missionary's desire to share his good fortune, he'd be a doctor by now, and a damn fine one. In his last year of med school, Richie had a Saturday-night ritual. He would squirt chicken's blood up his nose and rush into the ER yelling nosebleed. His buddy, a resident in the trauma program, would give him a ten-percent cocaine solution used to contract the capillaries, and Richie would retreat to the lab to evaporate the liquid, leaving pure crystallized coke.

  Richie was too generous for his own good. He told his roommate of the scam and the next weekend half the med school showed up with nosebleeds. Even that might not have tipped the dean, had the lab floor not been covered with chicken feathers.

  Would you believe a pillow fight? Richie asked the dean.

  The dean would not.

  Now Richie lived alone and worked as a computer consultant, which is a fancy name for hacker, though he preferred calling himself a cyberpunk. He could change your grades at any of four state universities or add your worst enemy's name to the county health department's list of venereal-disease carriers. For a monthly fee of twenty bucks, he could get you free, unlimited long-distance calls, and for an extra ten, you could charge them to the person of your choice. All of
Richie's personal calls were billed to the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, including a live porno hotline headquartered in Vegas.

  Richie owed me a favor because I got him probation after he broke into an airline computer system and arranged a million frequent-flier miles for himself and every member of the county commission. The commissioners hadn't asked him to, but everybody who knew them thought they had, and a couple decided it was a pretty good idea in any event.

  So Richie Bergman stood at my side while a potbellied, retirement-age sergeant sat on his stool at the property-room window and looked us over. "Got your name here, Lassiter, but not this young fellow. Say, son, you just do some time?"

  Richie shook his head and stifled a sneeze.

  "'Cause you're so pale, you look like you just did eighteen months at Dade Correctional."

  "I spend a lot of time in my room," Richie said honestly.

  "And what the hell you doing with that?" the sergeant demanded, gesturing toward Richie's right hand.

  "TV. Like to watch it while we work," Richie said, holding a computer monitor for the old sergeant to see.

  After letting us know what a favor he was doing, and how if the lieutenant would find out, his ass was grass, and don't forget him at Christmas, the sergeant let us in, and we laid the contents of the locker, M. Diamond Case No. 91-1376-A, on a scarred walnut table in the back of the room. The sergeant returned to the window, and I heard the volume crank up on his TV. Local news. Rick Gomez had the latest on the computer sex murders, as Channel 8 had dubbed them. The latest was that the state's case against a local English professor had collapsed due to the incompetence of one Jacob Lassiter, Esquire. "No new leads," Gomez told his audience, his voice filled with concern, "and no comment from the special prosecutor." Then I heard Nick Fox's voice, tinny and distant, following me like a vengeful ghost. But he wasn't talking about the murders. No, it was his monthly crime-prevention tip, filler for the station and free publicity for an ambitious politician.

  "Plant some fear in burglars," Nick Fox was saying. "Under your windows, plant thorny bushes that bite. Try cactus or crown of thorns. Use the Spanish bayonet, the limeberry, or the carissa, all burglar biters. In law enforcement we think of them as antipersonnel plants."

  Horticulture, Miami style.

  Richie moved quickly, plugging in the cables, finding an outlet for Marsha's computer, hooking up the monitor he had brought along. He punched some keys, scanned the directories, found what he wanted, and went to work. I opened my briefcase, pulled out a folder containing the photos taken at the scene by Dr. Whitson, the young assistant medical examiner. There was the body, head jammed into the monitor, eight-by-tens from every angle. There were close-ups of the neck, the bruises and fingernail marks clearly visible. If Whitson couldn't hack it as a canoe maker, he could always make a living shooting pictures at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

  There were several shots of the room, a couple catching Nick Fox in the background. I studied them. His forehead was wrinkled in thought. Grief? I wondered. Or concern for his own hide? Then there was a photo of Pam Maxson happily digging her nails into my arm and a close-up of the marks themselves, Charlie's lesson that nail marks often appear reversed on human skin.

  Finally Richie motioned me over and I looked at the screen.

  HELLO, TV GAL. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION—PASSION PRINCE.

  I scanned the page. "Already have that. She talked with other men the same night. Earlier."

  He punched some more buttons and tickled the machine's memory banks.

  I CAN HEAL YOU!! I CAN HEAL YOUR WOUNDS AND SAVE YOU, LITTLE LADY.

  OH BOB, LIGHTEN UP.

  NOT BOB! NEVER BOB! ORAL ROBERT. I CAN LICK YOU INTO HEAVEN. BUT YOU GOTTA BELIEVE. I CAN LIFT A BRICK WITH MY TONGUE.

  GO SHIT A BRICK, BOB.

  She had cut him off, checked who else was in the mating room, skillfully avoided a misspelled pornographic entreaty from Bush Whacker, then fielded another call.

  IS YOUR ELECTRICITY ON, TV GAL?

  HELLO, BIGGUS, BEEN A WHILE.

  ARE YOU CABLE READY, TV GAL?

  'CAUSE YOU WANNA PLUG ME IN, RIGHT? CMON, BIGGUS, NOT YOU TOO.

  OK. WHATS NEW?

  SAME OLD THING. BOSS DOESN'T TRUST ME TO DO BIG-TIME REPORTING. I COULD BLOW THIS TOWN OPEN IF THEY GAVE ME HALF A CHANCE.

  REALLY, TELL ME ABOUT IT.

  ANOTHER TIME. WHATS NEW WITH YOU?

  STILL CHASING BAD GUYS.

  OH, THATS WHAT YOU DO. YOU'RE A COP?

  YEP.

  HEY, I MEET A LOT OF COPS IN MY WORK. FUNNY, WE MIGHT EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER.

  WE COULD GET TO. A DRINK SOMETIME? YOU COULD COOK ME DINNER.

  I DON'T EVEN COOK ME DINNER, BIGGUS.

  SO HOW ABOUT I COME OVER NOW, BRING A BOTTLE OF SCOTCH?

  NOT NOW, B.D. IT'S INCONVENIENT.

  OH, GOT SOMEBODY OVER?

  SORRY.

  SO WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME?

  'NIGHT, BIGGUS.

  "That what you're after?" Richie asked. He was in a hurry to get home and perfect a system for trading citrus-futures contracts in somebody else's account.

  "That's it."

  But it wasn't what I expected. Sure, Rodriguez was putting the make on her. But he sounded halfway reasonable. Even cloaked with anonymity, he was just a guy looking for a date, a little miffed not to get one. Not a drooling psychopath. But there was something new here, a man in her apartment when Rodriguez called. Not Nick, his alibi was ironclad. He was attending a prosecutors' conference in Orlando, returned the next morning. Who was it, some computer chatterbug who beat Biggus to the punch? And Nick thought she was only seeing him. I smiled at that, a pinprick in his ego when I would tell him.

  "Hey, Richie, you know much about women?"

  "Less than most, I suspect."

  "Say it's around midnight, a woman's got one guy in the bedroom, why would she be calling around, trying to meet somebody else, somebody new?"

  "Dunno, maybe the guy in the bedroom couldn't cut the mustard."

  Maybe, but we still didn't have a suspect, and the question was nagging at me. Who was Marsha's lover that night, and why was she still on the make?

  Richie pulled all the cables, and we replaced everything in the right locker. I repacked my file and declined Richie's kind suggestion that he break into the county traffic computer and fix all the lights green for our drive down Dixie Highway. Then we walked past the old sergeant, nodding our thanks, Richie sniffling and blowing his nose.

  "Got a cold?" the sarge asked.

  "Virus," Richie told him.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Bait

  Pamela Maxson leaned on me and removed her shoes, sensible professional-lady blue pumps. I stood on one foot and hopped a step, taking off my battered Keds. High-tops. We rang the doorbell, said hello to my wacky secretary, and left our shoes on the front doorstep of her townhouse. Cindy's hair, once stained a rusty orange, was now dyed black and cut short with bangs. She wore a white silk kimono tied at the waist. She smiled placidly and waved us in. With mincing geisha steps, she led us past a collection of dried flowers in a green Oriental vase and into a small room set off with sliding paper walls. Silently, she motioned us toward pillows and a table barely eighteen inches off the floor. My right knee, the crosshatched one, groaned at the thought of it. My back, which hadn't gone into spasm in years, demanded an appointment at Hoshino Clinic in the Gables.

  Cindy said, "I humbly offer my hospitality, lawyer-san."

  "Still dating Morikawa," I observed.

  "Tea?" she offered.

  "No thanks, let's get to work."

  "Care for a drink? Sake?"

  "Cut it out, Cindy. Where's the computer?"

  "Barbarian."

  When Cindy had dated a bearded biker, her townhouse was furnished in Early Hell's Angels. When she took up with a weak-winged shortstop for the Miami Marlins, her place looked like Cooperstown. Now, her Tokyo-born beau had the Panasonic concession for the Caribbean
and Central America, and Cindy was doing Teahouse of the August Moon.

  "C'mon, Cindy. It's going to be a long night."

  "If you're hungry, I can call a sushi place."

  "Please! The computer."

  She opened the paper doors and backed out of the room, bowing and shuffling. Oriental music tinkled from her CD player. We walked into the living room, a place hung with colorful silk paintings. The coffee table was covered with red lacquer boxes and bright ceramic pottery. Pam was admiring black-and-white ink prints of little fishes and big flowers.

  "Ito Jakuchu," Cindy said.

  "Gesundheit," I responded politely.

  "The artist, silly. That one's called Fish in a Lotus Pond. Do you sense the mix of humility and grandeur?"

  "Cindy, we need to get—"

  "Don't you find the brushwork almost Zen-like?"

  "Cindy!"

  "All right, already. Over here."

  In the corner of the living room, under a painting of more fishes in more ponds, sat her computer. Japanese, of course.

  ***

  "I signed up as Lady Chattery," Pam Maxson said, after Cindy turned on the juice. "Your friend Mrs. Blinderman was quite helpful."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Despite her apparent hostility the other day, I get the distinct impression she is attracted to you."

  "Uh-huh."

  "Jake?"

  "Huh?"

  "Why do you become uncommunicative when I mention her name?"

  Cindy rescued me. "Say, Dr. M, you didn't have to sign up. You could have used my handle, Barely Legal."

  My mouth dropped open. "Cindy, you?"

  "Sure, boss. With Mori traveling so much, a girl gets lonely. I been online a couple months now."

  "Cindy, don't you know there's a freak out there?"

  "Don't I ever! I been single a long time."

  "Jake, perhaps Cindy is right," Pamela said. "A new name may alert the killer. Perhaps using a familiar handle will be reassuring."