Body Language

by James W. Hall

  “Well, it’ll be a short trip, then, won’t it? Practically around the corner from this place.”

  There were bars on the window of his mother’s living room, bars on every window in the tiny house. Those steel rods cost more than he’d paid for the whole place. Not exactly prime Miami real estate, with a tumbling-down crack house on one side, scabby men and women coming every hour of the day and night. It was over there that he’d learned the needle techniques. Standing around in that foul-smelling house with the IV drug users and the crack smokers, he’d studied their crude tourniquets, the way they thumped the vein to make it rise. The careful insertion of sharpened steel into the fragile vein.

  On the other side of his mother’s house was an abandoned gray warehouse. A rat factory. Hundreds of them scrambling in and out of the broken windows. Her wood cottage was in the middle of the city, yet as isolated as if it were on the moon. It had oak floors and thick plaster walls and had been a pioneer house, the last of its kind along the Miami River. He could probably apply to the Historical League, request a brass plaque for the front door. Give the house a fancy name of some kind. Alma Mater.

  “Have another swig, Mom. It’s so comforting, so warm in your gut.”

  She trembled in the doorway, a passing shiver on this warm Miami evening. She was wearing her ragged housedress. It was blue, with yellow cornflowers, and in the last few months it had turned to shreds around her knees.

  He allowed her to keep that one piece of clothing only because he didn’t want to see her naked bones whenever he came for a visit. Her hair was a yellowed white, and in the last few months it had clumped into greasy dreadlocks around her face. She hadn’t bathed in months. Each week, he brought her a case of Alpo lamb and rice in the can, and he opened the dog food himself and took the lids away. Couldn’t have her slashing her wrist with the ragged edge.

  As far as he could manage, the house was suicide-proof. One mattress, no sheets. No electrical cords. Of course, she could always drown herself in the toilet. Or break out a pane of glass and slit her own throat. But she was in such an alcoholic fog these days, he doubted she could hold a single thought long enough to execute any kind of plan.

  “Why do you do these things?”

  “Do what things, Mom?”

  Her tongue slid between her lips and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

  “Kill these girls. Keep me prisoner. Why do you do it?”

  “Oh, you’re not a prisoner, sweetie. You’re free to go at any time. Just say the word and I’ll unlock the front door and you can waltz off to whatever glorious destination you choose. Wander the neighborhood, be a bag lady under the interstate, take a jet to Tahiti, anything my mother wants. Nothing’s too good for you, kind lady.”

  With a quiet moan, she closed her eyes, hefted the bottle up to her lips, and bubbled down a hit. She gasped, then turned and wandered back into the dark house. Probably headed to the west window to stare out at the drug house. Her scenic vista.

  When the blood bag was filled, he inched the needle free, then swabbed his arm with the alcohol-soaked cotton ball and dropped it on the dirty floor. He pinched the end of the tubing and clamped it with a metal grommet. Then he carried the plastic pouch to the padlocked storeroom at the rear of the house. He unlocked the door, picked his way across the dark room and swung open the small Frigidaire, and slipped the pouch onto the top shelf beside the others.

  For a moment in the weak refrigerator light, he stared at the bladders of blood. His own vital fluid, loaded with the dark and secret messages of his ancestors, notes dashed off centuries ago, placed in bottles and set adrift in a sea of plasma, to ride the currents for generations, until finally they washed ashore at his feet. And one by one, he uncorked them, read their telegraphic sentences, the sum total of their ancient wisdom, their faint and futile calls for help, their mad directives, their gibberish. It was his inheritance, his only legacy, this rich and viscous fluid.

  He stared at the four glowing sacks of blood.

  Five down. Four to go.

  TEN

  She’s looking for a license number, Suzie. She’s my daughter and she wants to find the address of the person driving this vehicle.”

  Her dad passed a slip of paper across the counter to the stout woman. Lawton Collins, bless his heart, was having a good day. As if he were picking up Alexandra’s wobbling vibes and had determined that he must compensate, hold himself together, sensing at some animal level that if one of them didn’t stay somewhat sane, both of them might soon be swirling down the drain together. Some natural law of symbiotic dysfunction—a craziness of lesser intensity temporarily yielding to the greater one.

  Alexandra could have pulled the name and address of the plate owner from one of the computers upstairs in her own office, but she didn’t want to risk having one of her snoopy friends lean over her shoulder, start asking questions. And anyway, her dad had assured her that Suzie Cuevas owed him sufficient favors to make this a simple and quick operation.

  Suzie looked up from her computer and drew on her unfiltered cigarette. A large red sign on the wall behind her claimed CLEAN AIR BUILDING, but there was an ashtray spilling over with butts on the desk beside her.

  Suzie was a failed redhead. Maybe it had been her natural shade a half century earlier, but now, apparently, so many of her proteins had leached away that her hair had a hard metallic tint. She was peering up at them through heavy black horn-rimmed glasses that looked like they’d been plucked off a dime-store rack about twenty years ago, $1.99, with glass thick enough to deflect bullets.

  “You’re retired, I believe, Lieutenant Collins. No longer enjoy the privileges and rights to departmental services and facilities.”

  “Thirty years, Suzie. Thirty long years on the streets.”

  “I seem to recall I attended your retirement banquet. Cheez Doodles and onion dip. Worst party food I’ve ever seen—even for cops it was terrible. Rap music on the stereo. Disgusting.”

  “I’m a man of humble tastes, Suzie.”

  “I heard you’ve been sick.”

  “Had a few problems,” Lawton said. “Nothing a license-plate check won’t cure.”

  “I can’t do it. Not legal. Got to do a ton of paperwork on any Motor Vehicles request.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want you to participate in anything you’d feel guilty about later. You should certainly let your heart guide your decision.”

  Alexandra watched the woman stare at her father. She’d seen him work on people before, noodle the truth out of them, nudge them ever so slightly this way and that until he had them where it suited him. Her mother had called him “a master manipulator, a psychological strategist.” Lawton claimed not to know what the hell she was talking about. He just presented his case as well as he could, put it up against the reasoning of his adversary. May the best case win.

  Suzie tapped her eraser against her desktop.

  The hallway behind them bustled with police officers and secretaries and the sloppily dressed prosecuting attorneys. Alex kept her face turned away from the stream of people. More than half she knew by first name.

  “What do you want it for? Somebody cut you off in traffic, so you going to show up at their front door, slap them silly?”

  “No, not a traffic beef,” Lawton said. “We wouldn’t waste your time, Suzie, with anything so trivial.”

  “Marital dispute? Trying to track down the other woman?”

  “All right, goddamn it,” Alex said. “Yes, that’s it. The other woman. I need to talk to her, find out what’s going on. Now, are you going to do it, Suzie, or should we go?”

  As she peered up at Alexandra, she sucked in her cheeks, working on her cigarette like it was a straw stuck into the thickest chocolate shake ever concocted. She drew the smoke deep, then let it out with raspy delight. Blue gas filled the air between them.

  “Pretty woman like you. Why would your husband cheat?”

  Lawton settled his elbows on Suzie’s countertop and
leaned forward, smiling with beatific charm.

  “We’ve seen it happen, Suze, haven’t we?” Lawton said. “Around these very halls, you and me, seen this same sad drama played out countless times. Pretty wife, sweet and kind and hard-working, a hundred percent supportive, excellent cook. Husband gets a twitch in his loins, and next thing you know, he’s wallowing in the trough of adultery. There’s just no accounting for it. And no easing its pain for the wife. The only cure for a woman so rudely mistreated is to have all the information she can before tearing off the nuts of her offender.”

  As she eyed Lawton, Suzie’s lips twitched on the edge of a smile. A woman who’d been sweet-talked so much, she would accept nothing less than a colossal dose of indulgence before performing even the most perfunctory aspects of her job.

  “You’re an old rogue, Lawton Collins. One crafty, silver-tongued coot. But I really shouldn’t, your being retired and all.”

  Alex edged in front of her father. She lifted her right hand above the counter and smacked it down hard. Suzie’s eyes enlarged behind the thick lenses.

  “Goddamn it, Suzie. Type in the number and give us the name. No more bullshit.”

  Suzie Cuevas licked her red lips and measured Alexandra for a long moment. Then her puckered mouth relaxed into a sweet smile, as if Alex’s tantrum was exactly what she’d been trying to evoke all along.

  She used the eraser of her pencil to poke the six keys and hit the enter button. Alex glanced over at her father. His eyes were crawling up the far wall in what had become a familiar gesture of disengagement, losing his grip on the moment. He’d worn himself out on her behalf and now was slipping off again into the confusion of his endless daydream.

  Suzie Cuevas’s cough was a phlegmy rattle in her throat. When she’d recovered sufficient breath, she pointed at the screen, ran her finger along the lines of data, and spoke without looking up.

  “Name is Jennifer McDougal, lives at two seven oh nine Leafy Way in Coconut Grove. Glitzy part of town. Maybe that’s what’s going on—a classy dame, money’s the attraction.”

  “When I used to burn leaves,” Lawton said, “they smelled so good, I could barely stand it. Gold and red and orange, crackling. Sugar maple and oak and birch. It’s the sweetest odor there is.”

  Alex put her arm around her father’s shoulders.

  “Burning leaves?” Suzie said.

  “You shouldn’t ever hide in the piles. I tried it a few times, but Mother comes along with a sharp stick, pokes it hard. And I always get those little particles of leaves in my shirt, my underwear. Itches like crazy later on.”

  “Is he okay?” Suzie said.

  “He’s fine,” said Alex. “Just fine. Thank you, Suzie. Thanks very much for your help.”

  Alexandra took Bayshore Drive to the Grove, the back way, slower, a circuitous and shady route. She wanted time to think, to build a picture in her head, what she was going to do at 2709 Leafy Way. Middle of the day. Sunny and clear. Temperature in the eighties. She should be at Jackson Memorial, holding Stan’s hand. Comforting him, fulfilling her wifely duties. She hadn’t even been to see him yet, her injured husband.

  Maybe at Leafy Way she’d knock on the door, stand there with Lawton at her side, and the three of them could discuss the odor of burning leaves in Ohio earlier in the century. Or maybe she should simply sucker-punch the blond girl, then say something cruel: “I’m the wife, you slut.”

  Her face was hot. Brain waves dancing, a hard swelling in her throat, like a fist had tightened around her air passages. The windshield with a red tinge, as if it were filmed with blood. She and Stan had been drifting away from the shores of their marriage for so many years now, it surprised her to feel the blood roaring in her ears at the possibility of his unfaithfulness.

  “I told you,” her father said. “I told you about Stan, what he was up to. But you wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Alex slowed for a light across from Mercy Hospital.

  “I should’ve shot him when I had the chance,” Lawton said. “Aren’t we going to Harbor House today? I’m supposed to get a box of chocolate chip cookies. Elaine Dillashaw is baking them for me. My favorite. Chocolate chips with coconut and raisins. She throws the whole kit and caboodle in there, maybe even macadamia nuts if I’ve been good. I should go over there now to Harbor House and get my cookies. Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to see someone. A friend of Stan’s.”

  “His girlfriend?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “But he’s married. Stan’s married. I know. He tied the knot with my daughter at St. Jude’s. There was a seagull in the church that day. It meant something. We knew at the time, but we forgot. What does a seagull mean when it comes into a church, flies around the ceiling? It can’t be a sign of anything good, that’s for sure.”

  Doped up on his morning ration of Tylenol and codeine, Stan stared at the blank wall across from him and waited for sleep to pull the covers over his head. In his narcotic stupor, he was imagining the life of Edward W. Green, born in 1833, the first bank robber in America. Thirty years old, Eddie Green was the postmaster of his little town just down the pike from Boston. Crippled as a youth, Eddie grew into a dark and twisted man, who began to drink heavily, then got himself into serious debt.

  A couple of weeks before Christmas in 1863, Eddie walked into the local bank and saw that only the seventeen-year-old son of the bank president was on duty. A shitstorm broke out in Eddie’s head. He trotted home, got a handgun, and trotted back to the bank. He rushed in, shot the kid twice in the face, grabbed up five thousand dollars in cash, and bolted. A couple of days went by before the dumb shit ran afoul of Stan Rafferty’s first principle. He began spending cash extravagantly, somehow thinking no one would notice in that tiny village.

  But police came to his door, questioned him. Eddie promptly confessed, and he was executed a month later. Swift, swift, swift.

  Something about that case had always clung to Stan’s memory. The spontaneity of it. A quick, brutal act. Down and dirty, no plan, no blueprint. Bam, bam, run home and count the cash. Of course, nothing about the aftermath was appealing. The police nab him, ask him some questions; he breaks down. Bing, bing, bing. A simple world back then, one-dimensional. The early Newtonian universe of crime. Comfy, cozy. Nothing like the way it was now. Video cameras, DNA testing, space-age satellite imaging. Some CIA wonk with access to film showing every single goddamn thing happening out on the face of the earth. They could run back the film, see which lane that red Mustang was in, calculate how fast it was going, the exact careening path the Brinks truck took as it veered down the off-ramp. That is, if they cared to do all that, were willing to spend the money.

  Big Brother up there, eye in the sky, everyone armed with video cameras, looking to be the next one-night hero, catch the cops thrashing another poor dumb speeder, spark another go-round of riots. These days, the world was a thousand times more challenging for crooks than it had been for Eddie Green.

  Poor twisted, stupid, impulsive Eddie, first bank robber in America, the first rash fuckup. Now that Stan himself was a criminal, he could put himself there with Eddie—doing the crime, no plan, just flat-out panic and drunken urge, stumbling in, shooting, grabbing up the greenbacks, then home, waiting a day, sweating, drinking up every drop of liquor in the house, maybe another day, sobering up, finally going out to the store, picking out the most expensive sour mash, flashing some bills, some gold coins, on purpose maybe, flaunting a little. Feeling big and free for the first time in his life

  In the last century, Eddie Green’s criminal career had lasted a week, but it wouldn’t last a millisecond these days. Big Brother watching, seeing him trot home, trot back, seeing him walk inside, come hauling ass back out a few minutes later. All there on nice clear tape.

  Stan looked over at the blank wall, the dead TV screen. Thinking of Eddie, the first bank robber in American history, feeling the codeine grapple with his brain, his blood warm and sluggish, as
if rice pudding were clogging his veins. The pillow cool against his head. Thinking of Eddie Green. Poor dumb, unlucky bastard, at least he got half of it right—the chaos part. Rush in, kill, grab, go. It was the aftermath that got Eddie. The aftermath, which was the trickiest, most dangerous part of any crime.

  And then it struck him, a thought he hadn’t considered till that moment as he slid away into the gray broth of his nap: Now that Stan Rafferty had committed his crime, he was going to be stuck in that one place the rest of his goddamn life—the aftermath.

  ELEVEN

  Jennifer McDougal’s small white cottage at 2709 Leafy Way was wedged between two Coconut Grove mansions. To the west was a massive high-tech structure with severe angles, skylights, buttresses, heavy concrete archways, and dozens of columns holding up a grape trellis. A neon flamingo was lit up beside the massive front doors and neon numerals flickered beneath it. On the east side of the cottage was a monstrous Mediterranean standard issue with a porte cochere that was as big as the Raffertys’ entire house. The roof was a red barrel tile, the walls white stucco, and several third-floor balconies looked down on the oaks and banyans and the rusty roof of the humble pioneer house next door.

  “I used to live in that place,” Lawton said, staring at the white frame bungalow.

  “No, you didn’t, Dad.”

  “One just like it. We spent August there. You don’t remember?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I remember. But it was bigger and it was yellow and it was a long way from here.”

  “Yellow, yeah. ‘Mellow yellow,’ we called it. We had fun that summer, didn’t we? We had a grand time.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we did.”

  Slowing the car to a crawl, Alexandra stared across at the small white house. The broken asphalt pad that took up most of the front yard was empty, but she continued on, driving to the end of the cul-de-sac. The rest of the houses on the short street were hidden behind dense jungles of palms and bougainvillea and the viny native vegetation that was allowed to flourish in neighborhoods like this one because they had enough armed security floating around for the residents not to worry about their houses being out of sight. The neighborhood was profoundly quiet, as if frivolous activity of any kind had been banned on this tiny street. She saw no cars, no pedestrians, not a dog, not even a bird fluttering on a limb, only a single vehicle parked on the edge of the street half a block down from the white cottage, a blue pool-service truck.