Night vision jl-2

by Paul Levine

  "I've already done Biff."

  "No. An actor?"

  "In college. When I wasn't tearing up my knee on the practice field, I studied drama. I was Big Jule in Guys and Dolls."

  "Yes, yes. You've got the size for that. As well as a certain pleasant vagueness of demeanor. But Biff? Biff's a serious role, a difficult role. Willy Loman has to play off his reactions."

  I thought about giving Gerald Prince some of his own medicine, hauling out Biff's big scene rejecting Willy, but I couldn't remember the lines. I wondered what it would be like to discover that your father, your hero, is a fake. "Maybe I'll drop by your class again."

  "Yes, you simply must come back!"

  I nodded and took one last stab at him. "'Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.'"

  He seemed startled. "Mr. Lust?"

  "Mr. Lusk."

  "Oh, dear me. For a moment I thought you were making a pass at me. The theater's so full of-"

  "You've never heard of Mr. Lusk?"

  "A character from Dickens, perhaps?"

  If he was a liar, he was a good one. Still, he was the only known link between the two women. "We'll talk again," I said.

  "Of course we shall. We'll do a reading. I'll be Willy; you'll be Biff. We'll analyze it for them. The play as social commentary, Willy as the modern tragic character. You do remember the theme of the play?"

  "As I recall," I said, "something about illusion versus reality."

  CHAPTER 14

  A Meeting of Hyenas

  I heard the clackety-clack of stiletto heels on courthouse tile before I saw her face. Or legs.

  She wore a red leather mini with silver tights underneath. The legs were long and sleek and flashed like blades of giant scissors. The suntanned face was set in a screw-you mode. As she clacked closer along the corridor the waves of attorneys, clerks, and witnesses parted in front of her.

  "Mr. Lassiter!"

  It sounded like an indictment.

  I turned to face her. "Mrs. Blinderman."

  She stood close enough to give me a cold, but this time there was no friction of body parts. She cocked a hip and jabbed a finger at me. "How would you like to be sued for slander? Or would you prefer I just report you to the bar association?"

  "Is there a third choice?" I asked. "Maybe a week in Philadelphia?"

  She jammed the local section of the morning paper under my nose. "You read this bullshit?"

  I allowed as how the Journal was part of my morning ritual, right along with fresh mangoes and one-arm push-ups. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Doc Riggs emerge from a courtroom. I had been waiting for him. Charlie was wearing his expert-witness suit and stopped a discreet distance away, tamping cherry-flavored tobacco into his briarwood pipe. The old geezer could barely suppress a grin as he studied the tall couple standing toe to toe.

  Her voice was low and icy. "And I suppose you deny being the 'source close to the investigation'?"

  "That's right. Wasn't me."

  "Really. Well, isn't it a coincidence that when my lawyer called the paper to raise holy hell, they said to contact their lawyer. And who do you suppose that is?"

  "A fellow of great charm and wit."

  She didn't agree. "You think I'm just a dumb broad, don't you? Well, appearances are deceiving. I vamp because it's fun. I'm playing a game, but I'm not stupid. I've been to college, wise guy."

  "Okay, okay, you're the homecoming queen."

  "You wouldn't banter with me if I was a man, you macho pig."

  "If you were a man, you wouldn't grind your thigh into my crotch, which, as I recall, was your greeting last time, Mrs. Blinderman. Now, make up your mind. Do you want to be treated like a piece of meat or the sweetheart of Sigma Chi?"

  "You don't know me at all. I've walked up dark staircases in parts of town you wouldn't show your face. I know the streets, and I know a conspiracy when I see one. Compu-Mate has crippled the Journal's personal classifieds. We're doing a free bulletin board of dating personals, and your friends at the paper are pissed. You're their lawyer, and you get brownie points for leaking the story. This is a plot to put us out of business."

  It's always that way. People on the wrong side of hard-edged news stories think the editors sit around all day devising ways to bust their balls. Maybe some do, but in my experience editors are so burdened by budgets and deadlines and cantankerous reporters that they conspire only against their own publishers. The pressure of putting out a new product three hundred sixty-five days a year leads to lots of mistakes, but few with malice aforethought. Shoddy reporting and haphazard editing, not willful character assassination, do most of the damage. And then, of course, there are the occasions- the majority, in fact-when the journalistic mugging is well deserved.

  "That's crazy," I said. "The Journal couldn't care less about your business. No offense, but frankly, Compu-Mate is strictly penny-ante."

  "That's your opinion. My lawyer's talking business defamation, injury to reputation, punitive damages."

  "Yeah. Well, my lawyer can beat your lawyer. Wait a second, I'm my lawyer."

  "You're not funny, Lassiter. And another thing. We're not a 'sex club.' Why the hell did it say that in the headline?"

  People were starting to stare. "The same reason most headlines miss the point. Not enough time or room or ingenuity to get it right. Look, I'm as unhappy about the story as-"

  She stomped her feet, clip-clop, like a flamenco dancer and tossed the newspaper at me. "You'll be even unhappier when I nail your pecker to the courthouse door."

  It was hard to argue with that, so I didn't, and she stormed down the corridor, high heels echoing like rifle shots.

  "Such language." Charlie Riggs sighed, lighting up in violation of county ordinance 87-1643A and moving next to me. "What was that all about?"

  I picked up the crumpled paper and showed it to him:

  SLAYING VICTIMS LINKED TO SEX CLUB

  Two young women slain in their apartments within the last month both belonged to a computer dating club, a source close to the investigation revealed yesterday.

  Marsha Diamond, 29, a local television personality, and Mary Rosedahl, 27, a Pan Am flight attendant, were killed in separate incidents. Both belonged to Compu-Mate, a Hialeah sex-talk club where members are linked by computer modems. Police are investigating the possibility that the killer is a club member who wooed victims by computer chitchat, then obtained home addresses on the pretense of setting up dates.

  "Divulging personal information by computer to a stranger is just as dangerous as picking up a hitchhiker," a source close to the investigation told the Journal. "Any odd behavior by club members should be reported to Metro Homicide at once."

  Max Blinderman, president of Compu-Mate, declined comment. His wife, Roberta Blinderman, told the Journal that the club is a "respectable business."

  Charlie took off his patched eyeglasses and gave a little harrumph. "Frankly, I think all behavior of Compu-Mate members is 'odd.' Now, in my day, you might ask a young woman to take a ride in your flivver, and if there was a full moon-"

  "There's something about her, Charlie, I can't quite get a handle on."

  "Who?"

  "Bobbie Blinderman. The day I met her at Compu-Mate, she was pissed off even before I served her with a subpoena. Something about me rubbed her raw, nearly at first glance. Next time, she came on to me like a cat in heat. Today she wanted to nail my most precious and underused part-"

  "Don't read too much into it. Who's the source, anyway?"

  "Must be Rodriguez. Wanted a little publicity to smoke out any unreported threats, weird talk, that sort of thing."

  "And you don't approve?"

  "I think the benefit is outweighed by the risk that we scare the guy away. He doesn't stop killing, just finds another method of choosing victims. At least here, we had a group of identifiable suspects, a known method of communication, and a way of monitoring the calls."

  "You tell Rodriguez this?"

  "Sure. But the lines o
f authority are a little fuzzy. Technically, Metro Homicide reports to me. In reality, cops always run an investigation until there's an arrest and the prosecutor takes over. It's the classic struggle of allies, the prosecutor in his office versus the cops in the field. The general gives the orders and the troops do what the hell they want. Here it's even worse because the cops consider me a deep-carpet, downtown lawyer stepping on their toes."

  "Can you get Nick Fox to straighten them out?"

  "Rodriguez wouldn't have talked unless Fox approved the story."

  "So he's meddling?"

  It was lunchtime and lawyers scurried like rats from the central courtroom, where Judge Dixie Lee Boulton was holding her calendar call, trying to balance her trial schedule against the summer-vacation demands of fifty downtown mouthpieces. I nodded hello to half a dozen guys who pretended to be friends until I needed a continuance.

  "Rodriguez has to work with him long after I'm gone. I'm sure Fox knows every step I've taken. He can control the cops, plant stories in the paper, alienate potential witnesses like Bobbie Blinderman."

  Charlie thought that over for a moment. Court stenographers, law clerks, and jurors with official badges jammed the corridor. "So you think he wants to torpedo the investigation?"

  "Who knows?"

  "I can see why Roberta Blinderman is upset with the story. Women will be terrified to join the club. Men will be inhibited for fear of being reported to the police if they come on too strong. The whole fantasy game will be stifled."

  "So the killer will answer the personals column in the Journal, and we start from scratch."

  "In which case you lose the chance to see Mrs. Blinderman, at least on official business?"

  That one stopped me. "Say what?"

  Charlie exhaled and enveloped me in a cherry-flavored cloud. Years ago, I had asked him to stop smoking for his health, but he refused, insisting that Nicotiana tabacum was his only remaining vice. Now he was grinning like a bearded leprechaun. "You are intrigued by her, are you not?"

  "Charlie. It's business. I've been cultivating her because she can be useful to-"

  "Yes, of course. And she has helped despite her schizophrenic behavior?"

  "Schizophrenic is a little strong, don't you think? Sure, she helped by not appealing the subpoena order and by voluntarily turning over the record of Mary Rosedahl's calls. But after today, I think the tall lady has concluded she doesn't care for me."

  Charlie jabbed at me with the briarwood bowl of his pipe. "Oh, to the contrary, I'd say she doesn't like the fact that she likes you."

  "How's that?"

  "Did you realize the two of you were circling each other as you talked, creating your own little universe?"

  "No, but what of it? Knife fighters do the same thing."

  We jockeyed for position in front of the one elevator that was still working. A horde of hungry lawyers elbowed each other, their competitive juices stirred by the thought of saving ninety seconds on the way to the lobby. When we squeezed aboard, Charlie said, "It reminded me a bit-you'll forgive me, Jake-of a male and female hyena in the mating ceremony. They approach each other quite warily, then after a while lift a leg to the other, exposing their private parts. Then they sniff each other to see if they like the scent. Finally they lick each other and get on with it."

  "I don't see how you can compare-"

  "I think the two of you are sniffing around."

  "Charlie, she's a married-"

  "Now, she is attractive in a modern way, I suppose, though that androgynous look doesn't appeal to me. I like women a little rounder, a little softer. Not all angles and planes."

  "Are you quite finished, you chauvinistic old lech?"

  "Quite, unless you want to hear about the widow-lady toxicologist who seduced me during a spectrophotometry procedure late one night at the morgue."

  "Already heard it, Charlie."

  "Dear me. Senex bis puer. 'An old man is twice a boy.' I shall have to watch myself."

  In the lobby we walked under a mural of the early Spaniards making nice with the Caloosa Indians, trading food for clothing and other blatant historical lies. On the wall were portraits of distinguished judges, some of whom had never been indicted. I started telling Charlie about the professor. He started telling me about his testimony for the defense in a malpractice case where the doctor failed to save the life of a man who shot himself in the head, trying to commit suicide. Then he interrupted himself.

  "You know the female hyena is often larger than the male, and her private parts resemble those of the male. Early naturalists thought the hyena was a hermaphrodite because of the female's false scrotum and a pronounced clitoris that was mistaken for a penis."

  "Charlie, is there a point to this?"

  "Well, it makes you wonder about the evolutionary process. Eons ago, female hyenas with pronounced male-like features fared better than more feminine hyenas. So today every female hyena appears male at first glance."

  "Or first sniff."

  "Exactly. Perhaps it was easier for the male hyena if the structure appeared familiar. Perhaps androgyny is mankind's future as well. Women in pants and short hair, some looking like motorcycle hoodlums or-what is that style called-pest?"

  "Punk. I don't think it ever caught on."

  " Deo Gratias! Thank God.'"

  We headed out the front door and down the steps onto Flagler Street. An overloaded bus belched a cloud of black smoke at us as we crossed the street to Flanigan's Quarterdeck Lounge.

  "I'll buy you a Reuben on rye if you promise not to mention hyenas or bodily functions," I offered.

  "A deal." Then, after a moment's deliberation, Charlie said, "I think it was Pliny the Elder who wrote that hyenas were ab uno animali sepulchra erui inquisitione corporum. "

  "Come again."

  "'The only animals that dig up graves searching for corpses.'"

  "Old Pliny never met a coroner," I said.

  CHAPTER 15

  Flint and Steel

  "Howdy," said the man in the canvas hat.

  "Howdy," I said right back.

  The canvas hat had little brass eyelets and a drawstring tied around his neck. Long pale hair stuck out below the hat and over the ears. The face was tanned to a tree-bark finish from the middle of the nose down. The chin was strong and the mouth firm, and if he ever smiled, he didn't let it linger. The shirt was khaki with lots of buttons and flaps, and the pants matched, with loops here and there and enough pockets to boost all the T-bones from the A amp;P. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn't curl my mind around a name.

  I had parked next to a line of juniper bushes. I got out, contorted myself into a couple of spinal twists and dropped into half a dozen knee bends. My back had stiffened into little knots and coils on the drive up the turnpike. The ancient but amiable convertible can still hum along at ninety without tossing a piston, but there is little to relieve the tedium of a narcotizing drive through the middle of the state.

  I had headed the old convertible north from Miami, past Lauderdale, the Palm Beaches, and Fort Pierce, then northwest away from the coast, through Okeechobee County north of the lake. I shot past Orlando, where ten million tourists queue endlessly under a broiling sun for a two-minute ride twenty thousand fathoms under an irrigation ditch, where every motel is walking distance to a wax museum, a water slide, a dolphin show, or a jousting tournament, where "attractions" substitute for mountains, rivers, and open spaces, where our joy is computerized and packaged and spic-and-spanned, a place where every developer, syndicator, and huckster would sell time-share parking spaces if only there were a place to park.

  I made a pit stop at Fort Drum. The turnpike rest areas have been remodeled into a trendy architect's idea of Florida. It is a vision never shared by the Caloosas, Seminoles, or Miccosukees. Pink and pale blue stucco with gables and tile trim. Wooden trusses overhead like a SoHo loft or a Beverly Hills Tex-Mex eatery. On the walls, pink neon palm trees say it all.

  In the gift shop, no
t much has changed. The orange juice is still fresh, the coconut patties still stale. Next to the alligator postcards and cretinous bumper stickers is a rack of miniature orange trees guaranteed to last twenty-four hours anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon. There is a collection of key chains, ashtrays, and doodads shaped like the Florida peninsula. Does anybody buy this junk or are those the same knickknacks I saw when I drove the old buggy down here in '74?

  The restaurant has changed but the food would still make an astronaut nauseous. Premade hamburgers indistinguishable from the Styrofoam container, gritty metallic coffee from a giant urn.

  Welcome to the Sunshine State. Having wonderful time. Wish you were here. Come on down, the weather's fine. Six thousand folks a week follow the postcard's advice. They leave the acid rain and radon soil and descend on a land of drained swamps, where the phone number for mosquito control is second in popularity to 911. They did a survey a couple of years back on the best place to live. Not a popularity poll, but a statistical study of crime, alcoholism, divorce, and traffic congestion. Every Florida city flunked. By objective standards, the place is a humid hellhole, a place that attracts drifters and grifters, where the streets are crowded and the streams will soon run dry.

  Work crews were busy patching one of the turnpike bridges near Orlando. That's going on all over the state. Especially the newer spans. At the beginning of the century, they built concrete bridges to connect the Florida Keys with the mainland. The cement was thickened with tough granite rock and was allowed to harden for more than a week. The bridges have lasted eighty years.

  In the 1980s, the smart guys in Tallahassee built new bridges of watery cement, then added a dash of soft Florida limerock and a splash of chemicals to make it dry faster. The cement began cracking as soon as the saltwater hit it. No matter, though, if the new bridges don't last fourscore years. By then, global warming will likely melt the ice caps. Key West will be a suburb of Atlantis, and they'll sell beachfront lots in Orlando.