by Paul Levine
"Ah-chem," I said.
No one seemed to notice my brilliant opening line. Pamela Maxson was still focused on the old coroner who, until twenty minutes before, was my mentor and best friend.
"I was fascinated by your article on the forensic aspects of strangulation," Dr. Maxson gushed.
"It had me all choked up," I said, then took a hit on the Grolsch.
Dr. Pamela Maxson's emerald eyes shot me a pitying look, then returned their full concentration to the bearded wizard. "Your method for determining the time of death by assessing the degree of postmortem lividity in a hanging victim was quite helpful to homicide detectives."
"Yep," I offered, "the cops were at the end of their rope."
Charlie Riggs furrowed his brow, and the air seeped further out of my ego. That peculiar macho known to all men ached to haul out the trophies and merit badges, maybe tell her about the days before I wore a blue suit and wingtip shoes. Hey, lady, I once came off the bench to sack Terry Bradshaw on an all-out blitz in a playoff game. Now playing at outside linebacker, from Penn State, number fifty-eight, Jake Lassiter! Maybe Charlie would ask me how the knees were doing, and I could ease right into-
"Mr. Lassiter…Mr. Lassiter."
The waiter was tapping me on the shoulder. Now what? In fancy places they sometimes toss me out. But tonight I was wearing socks and long pants, and neither was required at Tugboat Willie's.
"A policeman on the phone, Mr. Lassiter. Says it's urgent."
I followed the waiter to an open alcove near the kitchen. The air was pungent with fish and garlic. From behind the swinging metal door, I heard the singsong of Creole mixed with the clatter of dishes. A black cat with yellow eyes was pawing through a garbage can, debating between grouper and dolphin for an entree.
"Detective Alejandro Rodriguez here," said the unfamiliar voice on the phone. "Hold for State Attorney Fox."
Ah, the accouterments of power. Using a policeman-a detective no less-for a secretary. Probably calling to rub it in. Nick Fox had been so busy dispensing victory statements to the press, he hadn't even needled me after the verdict. I waited, listening to the faint traffic noises that told me Fox was calling from his state-owned Chrysler.
"Jake, you did a helluva job for that fish wrapper they call a newspaper," Nick Fox boomed.
"Maybe you can tell that to Symington Foote. He thought I should have attacked when I played defense."
"He's an asshole. Downtown power-clique country-club asshole. You low-keyed it, kept the damages down. A savvy lawyer knows when to do that."
I didn't tell him I get my savvy from Marvin the Maven.
Fox paused, and so did I. We were out of conversation, or so I thought.
"Jake," he said finally, "I'd like you to meet me at a homicide scene."
"Should I have my alibi ready?"
He didn't laugh. "Three seventy-five Ocean Drive, South Beach, second floor. I need independent counsel to head the investigation."
"Why me?"
From somewhere at his end a police siren wailed. "Because you're honest and not plugged into any of the political groups. I checked you out. Latin Builders, Save-Our-Guns, English Only…nobody's heard of you since you used to sit on the bench for the Dolphins. I don't even know if you're a Democrat or Republican."
"Audubon Society."
"Huh?"
"My only affiliation. Charlie Riggs and I like to stomp through the Glades and look at the birds. Blue herons, snowy egrets, roseate spoonbills. Makes you believe in a Creator or at least a damn fortuitous Big Bang."
"Charlie Riggs," Fox said, almost wistfully. "Tell that old grave robber to stop in and see me sometime."
"Tell him yourself. He's about ten yards yonder, putting away some key lime pie and amusing a British lady psychiatrist with murder and mayhem."
"Her name Maxson?"
I looked around for a hidden camera. "You're getting some pretty good intelligence these days."
"Lucky guess. I have a man waiting at her hotel. She was one of the last people to see the decedent alive."
"This decedent have a name?"
"This line's not secure. I'll see you in twenty minutes. Bring Riggs and the lady."
When I returned to the table, Charlie was halfway through the story of the widow whose first two husbands died after eating kidney pie laced with paraquat. The third husband was smart enough to refuse her cooking, but deaf enough not to move when she rode the El Toro mower over the spot where he was sunbathing.
Charlie looked up at me, a dab of whipped cream stuck to his beard.
"Saddle up," I said. "We been deputized."
CHAPTER 3
Catch Me If You Can
Retirees still sit on plastic rockers on the front porches of the art-deco hotels. Hookers, fences, dealers, transvestites, pimps, chicken hawks, and runaways still stroll Ocean Drive, hustling their wares. But the Yuppies have staked claims to South Beach, spiffing up the old buildings with turquoise and salmon paint, dressing themselves in bright, baggy cottons and silks, and hovering on the perimeter of perpetual trendiness. Over the whine of the window air conditioner is heard the agreeable hum of European engineering as the young lawyers, brokers, accountants, bankers, and journalists steer their Saabs, BMWs, and Volvos into oceanfront parking lots.
Cafes and comedy clubs now occupy once-abandoned storefronts. Stylish restaurants abound, strands of pasta hanging on wooden rods like moss on forest trees. Saloons with etched-glass mirrors and polished brass rails offer exotic tropical drinks at outrageous prices. Fresh tuna is seared ever so slightly on open grills. And for reasons inexplicable, a sushi bar stands on every corner. Raw fish is fine for shipwreck victims, but with all the crud floating in our waters, I prefer my seafood well done.
The apartment building was built in the 1930s, which in Miami Beach qualified as a historic site. The building had been empty for years, before the resurgence of South Beach brought fresh money and fresher hucksters to town. The newspapers coined the term "Tropical Deco" to describe the renovated hotels and apartment buildings. This one was called Flamingo Arms and consisted of a series of curved walls, glass blocks, and cantilevered sunshades that looked like stucco eyebrows. The paint was the color of a ripe avocado. Two metal flamingos formed a grillwork on the front door, and the same motif was picked up in the lobby with a mural of several of the pink birds high-stepping through a fountain.
The three of us-the coroner, the shrink, and the mouthpiece- were let in by a uniformed cop who recognized Charlie Riggs. We climbed a winding staircase with a looping metal railing to the second floor. It was a corner apartment facing Ocean Drive with just a sliver of a view of the Fifth Street Beach. Nick Fox stood in a corner of the living room, his face drawn into a tight mask. Whispering in his ear was a cop in plainclothes. Nick Fox shook his head and didn't move. The cop came over to us.
"Alex Rodriguez," he said, shaking my hand, and nodding to Charlie Riggs and Pamela Maxson. He looked just right for a detective, which is to say he looked like your average forty-two-year-old, middle-class man who sells power tools at Sears. His dark hair was beginning to thin at the crown. He was of average height, average weight, and average demeanor, except for his nose, which, he later told me, had been head-butted one direction by a drugged-out citizen and smashed the other way by his partner's errant nightstick while quelling a domestic dispute.
"I'm glad you're here, Dr. Maxson," Rodriguez said. "You too, Charlie. Lassiter. Give Nick a minute. Then he'll talk to you. Now…"
He left it hanging there, and we all turned toward a desk in a corner of the room where a young assistant medical examiner was still snapping his photos. The ME nodded toward Charlie but kept at his work. His pale hair was parted high on his head and clipped short on the sides, a style favored by the current crop of young professionals.
In rebellion, I keep mine unfashionably long and shaggy, and when in the company of callow youth, I incessantly hum Joan Baez tunes. He wore a white lab coat with a name tag
. He didn't look old enough to be a doctor, but I figured, no matter what, he couldn't kill the patient. His little kit was open, and he had lined up his sketch pads, gloves, sponges, plastic bags, thermometer, trowel, chalk, and tape recorder.
Charlie walked straight to the body. She wore a black silk camisole and nothing else.
She was sprawled-legs akimbo-in her chair at a desk.
Her head was jammed through a computer monitor. The keyboard was pulled open.
Maybe Charlie Riggs was used to homicide scenes. Maybe it was just another day at the office for him. But not for me. The aftermath of violence chilled me. I didn't know this woman, didn't even know her name. I had no sense of loss for a loved one. I would not miss a laugh I had never heard. But I knew someone-a mother, a lover, a friend-would cry out her name. And somewhere, I knew, was someone who didn't cry for anyone or anything. Someone so foreign to me as to be unfathomable.
My life has been circumscribed by rules. I tried not to hit after the whistle, and I never lied to a judge, though I've been tempted to take a poke at one or two. But there are games people play without rules. The hard-eyed cops know the players, stare them down every day. Could I do that? At the moment, filled with a mixture of anger and dread, I didn't know.
I looked at Pam Maxson, who seemed to be studying me. "Of course it's dreadful," she said, "but scientifically, Mr. Lassiter, it's quite fascinating, too."
Charlie Riggs took control. He gently pulled the body back into the chair. "Lividity of the face and lips, engorgement and petechial hemorrhages in the conjunctivae."
He examined her neck. "No sign of a ligature. Crescentic abrasions on the skin, most likely fingernail marks. Probable cause of death, hypoxia due to throttling."
Charlie Riggs turned to the assistant ME. "Manual strangulation. Any evidence of sexual battery?"
"Nothing…visible," he stammered. "No contusions or lacerations other than the head and neck injuries. I swabbed the genitalia. No visible semen. However, vaginal secretions are consistent with…uh…sexual activity in close proximity to death."
"You'll check the smear for spermatozoa, of course."
"Yes, sir. I thought I'd use methylene blue."
Charlie Riggs shook his head. "You'll never distinguish sperm cells from artifacts with that stain. Try hematoxylin and eosin for better differentiation."
"Yes, sir."
"What else, what other tests?"
"Well…I don't know."
"What if the fellow's had a vasectomy, or he's an alcoholic with cirrhosis? Won't find any wagging tails there, eh?"
"In that event," the young doctor recited, as if taking his oral exams, "acid phosphatase determination will reveal the presence of seminal fluid. If the man's a secreter, we can identify A, B, or H blood types."
"Verus," Charlie said, beaming, a professor whose student had finally caught on. "Be alert to every detail. Don't believe that old saw Mortui non mordent-"
"I never did," I chimed in.
"'Dead men carry no tales.' Hah! They can tell us stories horribile dictu, horrible to relate, but essential to our understanding of their deaths."
The young doctor was nodding his head vigorously.
"Now, what about odor?" Charlie Riggs asked.
"Beg your pardon?"
"Vaginal odor? It's okay to take your sweet time with the lab tests, but you've got one chance to work up the crime scene. Just don't forget to use the old schnoz."
"Tell him about the time you opened a stomach and ID'd the restaurant by smelling the beer in the barbecue sauce," I prompted Charlie.
"Only one ribs joint in town had sauce like that," Charlie said. "Wasn't hard to figure where he had his last supper, then a waiter identified his dining companion, a hired killer."
The assistant ME bit his lip, shot an embarrassed look toward Pam Maxson, and sank to his knees. His head disappeared between two pale, slightly chubby thighs.
"Three-to-one the kid says he smells barbecue sauce," Detective Rodriguez whispered to me. He had been in the department twenty years and had little time for rookies in any field.
A voice without a face came from the general vicinity of the corpse's pudendum. "What smells should I be…uh…looking for?"
"Anything, son!" Charlie boomed. "The latex of a condom or a surgical glove, maybe soap, talcum, or a douche scented with lily of the valley, even a man's distinctive cologne. Some men splash it on their privates, you know. Maybe we find a guy who's crazy for Aqua Velva."
"Or Listerine," Rodriguez suggested, "depending on his proclivities."
There was the sound of a bloodhound sniffing, then the assistant ME picked himself up, looked sheepishly toward Charlie, and said, "Sorry, sir, but…it's just plain pussy to me."
"Oh, never mind. You'll want to do a complete autopsy, of course. Take a good look at the neck. I'd advise elevating the shoulders, eviscerate the body, and remove the brain. If you want a dry field, don't dissect the neck until the blood has stopped draining. Don't let the homicide detectives rush you. Take your time."
The kiddie coroner nodded, then piped up, "I'd say the assailant was right-handed, Dr. Riggs."
From behind me I heard a snicker. " Fantastico," Detective Rodriguez said. "I'll put out a BOLO for all right-handed guys."
Doc Riggs was more diplomatic. "And how do you reach that conclusion, Doctor…?"
Charlie squinted at the name tag.
"Whitson," the alleged doctor proclaimed. "Well, there's a single abrasion on the right side of the neck and four on the left. So the assailant's right thumb would have made the single abrasion, the fingers of his right hand the rest."
"Assuming she was strangled from the front," Charlie added politely.
"I thought of that, sir. You can tell from the concavity of the crescents that the strangulation occurred from the front."
Charlie made a little tsk-tsking sound. He didn't want to lecture the lad in front of spectators, but he had no choice. He examined the neck. "All I can tell is that the nail on the ring finger is jagged. In a couple of days, it will grow back, so the information is of very little use. As for the crescent, the direction of the concavity can be misleading. The crescent will be reversed, as often as not. Here, I'll show you. Jake, roll up your sleeve."
"Why me?" I protested. "I haven't forgotten your electrocution experiment."
"It was only two hundredths of an amp, Jake, and I turned it off as soon as you went into muscular paralysis. Now be a good scout."
Everyone was watching, so the good scout rolled up his sleeve. Charlie looked around and spotted Pamela Maxson, who was intently studying titles of the shelved books in the small apartment.
"Pamela, perhaps you can inflict some pain on Jake for a moment," Charlie wondered cheerfully.
"Gladly," she chimed in. She placed a cool hand on my forearm and dug five fingernails deep into my skin.
"I'll always remember the first time we touched," I told her, showing my All-Conference smile.
She dug deeper, letting up just before severing the radial artery. I held up my arm, and sure enough, the crescents went the opposite direction of each nail's shape. Charlie was explaining something about the free edge of the arch of the nail having no purchase and therefore creating the reverse crescent and how fallacious it was to infer much from fingernail marks. I just looked at the little dents in my arm and said to Pamela Maxson, "I'll bet you leave a mark on every man you meet."
"With some," she replied, "it takes a sledgehammer."
Having exhausted my store of witty repartee, I stood silently, surveying the scene. The apartment was sparsely furnished in Yuppie Modern-white tile and green plants, a large-screen TV, and CD player, a few bookshelves. There was a galley kitchen with a few pots and pans and a cupboard containing bran cereal, microwave popcorn, bottled spaghetti sauce, and spinach pasta from a gourmet market. The oven was practically sterile, indicating either an immaculate cook or no cook at all. The refrigerator had four different flavors of yogurt, no
ne of which had expired, bottled water, an eye mask filled with what looked like antifreeze, and not much else. The bedroom and bathroom were down a hall, but I hadn't seen them yet.
Young Dr. Whitson picked up his camera and click-clicked through several rolls of film, shooting the body, the furniture, and even one or two of me. Charlie puttered around the body for a while, giving more tips to the young pathologist. Pamela Maxson walked through the little apartment, her green eyes bright, taking everything in, letting nothing out.
Nick Fox motioned me onto the small balcony where we were alone. I looked him in the eye. I was half a foot taller, but he had impressive width. A stocky fireplug of explosive energy. "Marsha Diamond," he said. "Ever see her on Live at Five?"
I shook my head. Usually, I'm still working then. If not, I'm playing volleyball on the beach or fishing with Charlie. Afternoon television is for those in traction. Physical or mental.
"I want you to be a special prosecutor and lead the investigation," Nick said. "Present a case to the grand jury when you've got a suspect."
"Why can't your office handle it?"
He didn't hesitate, just shrugged those big shoulders. "Conflict of interest. I was seeing her. Not heavy-duty. But I'd slip over here in the mornings or she'd come by my place at night. It's sure to come out in the investigation.
Before I could ask, he said, "I've been separated for six months. Irretrievably broken and all that."
"So the first statement I take is from you," I said.
He showed the hint of a smile. "Should I have my alibi ready?"
I looked at him hard. His girlfriend's body was drawing flies and he makes a little joke. A used little joke.
"I don't show much emotion," Fox said, reading my mind. "Not in public, anyway. Maybe tonight I'll get drunk by myself. Maybe I'll put my fist through a wall. But that's none of your business. Your job is to find the slime that did this, get an indictment, and try the case."
