Night vision jl-2

by Paul Levine

  "Hyperbole, nothing more."

  "That he denigrated the foie gras as 'toxic scum.'"

  "A timely reference to environmental concerns."

  "That the rabbit cassoulet tasted like 'road-kill muskrat.'"

  "Intended humorously, no doubt."

  Patterson bounded from his chair, put a hand on his client's shoulder, and thrust his chin toward the heavens. "Lies! Prevarications! I have never witnessed such calumny-"

  "Save it for the jury, H.T. Look, we're wasting a lot of time. You've got a waiting room full of clients, and from the looks of them, most are lucky to be out on bond. Let's conclude discovery, ask for an early trial date, and finish this."

  "— A string of malicious canards impugning my client's cuisine, damaging his reputation, assaulting his honor. The jackals of the Journal shall pay the ultimate price; their ledgers will flow with red ink in this, the Mother of all Lawsuits. And may I enlighten you as to how Shakespeare described the importance of a man's reputation in Richard II? "

  I'd already heard it, something about the purest treasure mortal times afford. By now I figured Patterson was getting paid by the word or maybe the syllable. He would go on for a while, making the stenographer earn her keep. I checked my watch. Three-thirty. Barely time to beat rush hour on the drive to Hialeah.

  "A man loses everything in his war-ravaged country…"

  Odd, since Wong was a Viet Cong sympathizer.

  "Then in our land of opportunity, he employs dozens of unfortunate souls from the Caribbean, South America, and the Orient…"

  Not one green card in the bunch.

  "Our city leaders dine at his famous establishment…"

  Freebies for the commissioners, no kitchen inspections for Wong.

  "Until that savage reporter unleashed his venom…"

  Actually he was drunk and the copy editor asleep.

  Max Blinderman looked me up and down and didn't like anything high or low. "She ain't here," he announced, leaning on the counter in the Compu-Mate office.

  I gawked over his shoulder, which isn't hard to do when you're nearly a foot taller. True enough, Bobbie was nowhere to be seen. Max wore a black T-shirt with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. I hadn't seen anything like it in years.

  "Actually, I came to see you," I said, and waited for my nose to grow.

  He looked at me skeptically. On his forearm, the tattooed snake seemed to hiss. Looking down, I noticed a bald spot expertly camouflaged by some vigorous back-to-front combing and a healthy dose of hairspray.

  "I wanted to apologize for that story in the Journal," I continued, making it up as I went along. "Bobbie threatened a lawsuit because of what it would do to your business. I just wanted you to know that I had nothing-"

  "Fergit it. Hey, business never been better. Babes are calling in, wanting to join, talk to the murderer. Some kind of turn-on, can you believe it? And guys, too, one wants the handle 'Sexy Strangler,' I won't give it to him." He paused a moment to pat himself on the back. "This is a classy operation."

  I nodded in agreement, and my nose was still normal except for a curve where an elbow once came through my face mask. "It's a strange world out there, eh, Max?"

  "Yow."

  "One more thing. When Bobbie responded to the subpoena, she gave me a printout of the calls to both women on the nights they were killed."

  "Yow."

  "Could the list be wrong?"

  "Whaddaya mean?"

  "Is it possible for someone's name to be listed by mistake? Can the computer be wrong?"

  He loosened up a bit, probably figuring I'd have served him with a warrant by now if that was my mission. "Don't see how. The computer records the handle automatically when the customer gets online. No human error possible."

  "What about an impostor? My handle's Stick Shift, but what's to keep me from logging in as Passion Prince?"

  "Won't work. Customer's handle can only be used when matched with his password. And that's something known only to the customer."

  "Not quite," I said.

  "How's that?"

  "You know all the passwords, don't you, Max?"

  A smile flashed like a blade beneath his mustache. "Yow. What of it?"

  CHAPTER 19

  Tourist Season

  "But I can't go to England."

  Charlie Riggs continued packing his battered leather suitcase.

  "I've got a partners' meeting next week. If I miss another one…"

  Charlie neatly folded a heavy mackinaw and placed it in the case. Next came a woolen scarf and a pair of gloves.

  "I've got a libel trial with H. T. Patterson. If I can prove that Chong Gong Wong pisses in his soup…"

  With his hand Charlie dusted off an old fedora that Harry Truman would have loved. He placed it lovingly on top of the clothes and gently closed the case.

  "To say nothing of the Diamond murder investigation. I'm stuck with a suspicious state attorney and a horny professor, and I don't think either one is Jack the Ripper. Plus the reporters are driving me crazy. Rick Gomez was hiding in a mango tree this morning when I went outside to water the crabgrass."

  "Precisely why you should accompany me to London. While I'm lecturing, you can follow up on the Ripper connection. Tour the East End if you wish. Call New Scotland Yard. Anything."

  "I don't know, Charlie. I think the Mr. Lusk stuff is a curveball."

  Charlie was stuffing his favorite pipe with cherry-blend tobacco. He would have to go eight hours without a puff and was going to miss it. "I'm sure Nick Fox would approve your travel expenses as part of the investigation."

  "No doubt. He probably wants me out of town."

  "It could be useful, getting away, thinking about the case. Tempus omnia revelat. Time reveals all things."

  "It doesn't feel right, leaving just now."

  Charlie shrugged. "It's up to you. And maybe just as well. You didn't seem to get along that well with Pamela Maxson."

  "What's she-"

  "As the hostess for the lecture tour, she'll be around quite a bit. I can understand your reluctance to go if the two of you don't-"

  "What time's our flight?"

  The Miami airport in July. An air-conditioned icebox stocked with frozen tourists. Shorts and thongs and legs broiled lobster red. Europeans on charters to art-deco South Beach. South Americans booking off-season rooms and escaping winter back home. Miamians heading for Asheville, Bar Harbor, and Aspen.

  Intentional tourists. Tourists from the islands hauling boxed Sonys and Panasonics, tourists from the Midwest loaded with tax-free liquor from the islands. Tired children screaming, caged dogs yowling, monotone messages in three languages on the PA.

  And the businessmen. Another day, another city. Gray suits, blue shirts, rep ties, a thousand weary faces. Briefcases stuffed with forms, Dictaphones, and calculators. Guys from sales or marketing peddling software or mainframes or this season's widget, sitting at the gate, figuring last week's commissions, fudging the expense accounts, making lists, taking inventory.

  The modern drummer, poised for his daily dose of cardboard food and stale air. No more Willy Lomans in the Studebaker getting just past Yonkers. These days a guy from Richmond or Memphis can make the Atlanta hub for the morning flight to Pensacola or Biloxi, hop the bus to the rental lot, slip into the still-wet Taurus, and have lunch with the purchasing agent he's been sweet-talking all year. If he makes the sale, great, and it's bourbon on the rocks at the Holiday Inn before dinner alone and a pay movie in the room. No sale, there's always tomorrow and a hot new prospect in Mobile.

  Charlie spent the interminable flight reading the Select Coroners' Roles, A.D. 1265–1413 while I went over what I knew. As usual, it was less than I didn't know. I knew Marsha Diamond was curious about Nick Fox's war record, but I didn't know why. She wanted a story, of course, but what story and why wouldn't Nick open up? Maybe I should talk to Priscilla Fox again. Maybe there's something she left out, something she knew from years ago. What
happened in Dak Sut and on the dike outside the village and which happened first? Marsha thought the shooting on the dike happened before the troops entered the village. If it did, when was Evan Ferguson killed? And what about the translator? How did she die? What did Marsha know, anyway? And if Nick thought she had something on him, would he have killed to silence her?

  So many questions.

  What about Gerald Prince? He denied chatting with Marsha even though the computer recorded his password and handle attached to the crude dialogue. Then there were the frenzied lyrics from "Great Balls of Fire." It isn't too much love that drives a man insane, I thought. But what is it? Maybe Dr. Pamela Maxson knows.

  Thinking about the professor inspired me to grab two little bottles of Jack Daniel's when the flight attendant rolled by. I listened to the drone of the engines, my eyes growing heavy, my mind drifting over the clouds.

  Tom Carruthers. Now there's a character. Homophobic, chauvinistic tough guy in rawhide and boots. Who knew what evil lurked in his heart.

  Henry Travers. A sad, middle-aged faker, scrounging for two-dollar winners and lusting for the friction of body parts. A lifetime of resentment against women by a guy who never did anything but lease them.

  And how about Max Blinderman? He could have been an electronic imposter, plugging into Marsha's line by signing on as the Passion Prince. But a guy with a record of misdemeanors doesn't usually leap to a Murder One. Unless he's done it before and has never been caught.

  Back to Nick Fox. Maybe he liked beating me in court and wanted me to play the fool twice. If Nick Fox killed Marsha Diamond, unthinkable as that was, who killed Mary Rosedahl? Someone did, after apparently consensual sex, but why? And what did it have to do with Marsha?

  Keep thinking, Lassiter.

  No thank you, miss, not another of the little brown bottles, rich cool liquid twirling down the throat. On the other hand, it's my duty to lighten the load you have to push down the aisle.

  Who knew both women? Biggus Dickus and Passion Prince. The first one had alibis, Alex Rodriguez said. The second one had his own frustrations, but a killer? I would ask Pamela Maxson about that, too.

  Ah, Dr. Maxson. Sexy and sagacious. Tall, brainy, beautiful Dr. Maxson who stiff-armed me like Larry Csonka jolting a linebacker. I pushed the rewind button in my mind and played it back. I saw her in my old convertible, hair flying, as we crossed the drawbridge on the night we met, lights of the city shimmering in the bay. But the scene was out of kilter. She had been unsmiling and unresponsive, unimpressed by an ex-jock mouthpiece with a crooked grin and an ancient chariot. I hadn't made a dent in her armor.

  Okay, admit it, Lassiter, it's not the first time. There've been others, wise to your aw-shucks counterfeit charm, to the sports-pub patter, the barbed sarcasm that passes for humor. Maybe the English lady sees through the veneer to the guy inside, the guy who despises renting himself out by the hour to the client with the largest checkbook. Which is almost always the client with the blackest hat.

  No, Your Honor, Asbestos-R-Us shouldn't have to remove its exemplary product from the Sunnyvale Elementary School. No problem if microscopic spores pierce the lungs of little Jack and Jill. Toughen 'em up.

  So after a while the guy inside didn't care anymore, and maybe it started to show on the guy outside. But now, with two women dead, something to care about. I didn't ask for it, but someone pinned a badge on me. Maybe someone who wanted me to boot it, someone who saw me lose and liked what he saw. Damn it, Lassiter! So full of doubts under all that swagger. Just buckle on the chin strap and dive into the pile. Make something happen. Hit somebody!

  I chased away the gremlins, closed my eyes, and thought of Pam Maxson for a while, maybe a long while, as the 747's giant engines droned on, and the warmth of Tennessee sour mash spread through me. When I opened my eyes, the plane's tires were screeching against the tarmac and I was still thinking of the psychiatrist lady, and I was happy and sad at the same time and didn't even know why.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Huddle

  A gray rain fell against a gray sky, and a gray chill hung in the air.

  The only thing gray about Pam Maxson was her silk blouse. The skirt was a rich black wool, the pumps black leather and sensibly low-heeled, but the scarf was an exclamation point of fiery scarlet. I pictured her in front of the mirror that morning, brushing back the thick auburn hair, slathering an extra daub of gloss on the lips, maybe starting for the door, then doubling back to tie that flirtatious scarf around her neck.

  Great fantasy, Lassiter. Man is never so foolish as when he fools himself.

  I tossed our bags into the back of Pam Maxson's silver Range Rover and let Charlie join her in the front seat. Pam expertly ran through the gears and got us out of the maze of Heathrow and onto the highway to the city.

  "I like the Rover," I told her from the backseat. "Great to have four-wheel drive in case we run into quicksand in Piccadilly."

  As usual, she thought I was hilarious. She showed this by ignoring me, doubtless out of fear she'd bust a gut laughing.

  Charlie was packing his pipe after eight hours of quarantine on the flight. Pam Maxson said, "The staff is anxiously awaiting your lecture."

  "Me too," I admitted, "and so is the customs inspector, judging from the look on his face when he opened Charlie's bag of tissue samples and internal organs."

  "Some people have never seen a hand floating in a jar of formaldehyde," Charlie said, as if he couldn't understand why.

  "Or a skull with an ax blade embedded in it," I agreed.

  Pam Maxson turned toward the backseat. "Mr. Lassiter…"

  "Jake," I reminded her.

  "Jake. If you wish, I could arrange some meetings for you during Dr. Riggs's first talk. It could be useful to your investigation. Of course, you may not want to miss-"

  "No problem. I've heard Charlie lecture so many times, I've stopped throwing up during the slide show."

  "Very well," she said, "you might find my therapy group very stimulating."

  We drove without speaking for a while, listening to the clack of the windshield wipers and the hiss of the tires. As we neared the city, Charlie nodded sleepily, and I stifled a yawn with the back of my fist.

  "If the two of you are weary, perhaps a short nap would be in order," she suggested. "I could wait in the lobby, then knock you up in an hour."

  I was intrigued by the possibilities but figured she was only offering a wake-up call.

  "No need," Charlie said. "A cold shower, and I'll be good as new. It's best our bodies get adjusted to the time change."

  I stretched my legs across the backseat and caught a glimpse of Pam Maxson in the rearview mirror. Our eyes met and hers flicked back to the road. "Perhaps the two of you would be interested in a weekend in the country," she said. "It's particularly nice this time of year in the Cotswolds."

  "Not to be confused with the Catskills," I piped up, remembering our first conversation of promiscuous farm girls and uncaught murderers.

  "Sounds delightful," Charlie said.

  "My family's summer home is in the Cotswolds," she said to the windshield.

  Family. It finally occurred to my dense brain matter that maybe the English lady was married. I pictured a dry Cambridge professor or a balding vicar, a stooped guy in a tattered tweed coat puttering around a drafty house, stirring the fire with an ancient poker.

  "My mother's home, really. It's been in the family for two hundred years."

  Mother, blessed mother.

  "I keep a flat in London, of course. But every fortnight or so, it's ever so nice to go home. So peaceful. It's sheep country and some roads are rather primitive. The Range Rover is quite useful there."

  Aha. The crack about the Range Rover had drawn a response after all. So she wasn't ignoring me. And the enchantment of that crisp voice: rather primitive…quite useful. How do they learn that unhurried enunciation?

  In the city she negotiated the traffic circles they call roundabouts, smoothly
shifting and accelerating, rarely yielding the right of way. The rain-polished streets were jammed with spacious black taxis and double-decker buses. On the sidewalks, tidy, well-dressed businessmen and women poured from banks and shops, walking briskly, umbrellas poised against the chilly rain.

  "Not much of a day for sight-seeing," Pam Maxson said, "but that's Trafalgar Square off to the right."

  I looked over my shoulder and caught sight of the National Gallery on one side and Buckingham Palace on the other and figured I had filled my culture quota for the trip.

  Pam Maxson dropped us at our hotel for a quick shower before Charlie's first lecture at the Covent Hospital for the Criminally Insane. I was quicker than Charlie and in fifteen minutes found Pam sitting in a leather chair in the lobby, legs crossed, staring through large-rimmed eyeglasses at a bundle of papers in her lap.

  She looked up, tossed the papers onto a side table, and slid the glasses on top of her head, brushing her hair back. "Medical students write such rubbish," she announced.

  I nodded and sat down on a sofa facing her.

  "So easy to condemn something they don't understand. So very avant-garde to denounce radical psychiatry."

  "Haven't heard of that," I admitted.

  "An unfortunate name for an innovative way of viewing psychiatric conditions. A radical psychiatrist would say that mental illness is a myth, that those we call mentally ill are just as rational as anyone else, from their own perspective."

  "You mean they're not crazy because they don't know they're crazy."

  "They're not crazy, as you say, because their actions are just as goal-directed and motivated as yours or mine. They are perfectly reasonable from their point of view."

  "That's nuts! I'm sorry…I mean it's just semantics. They're crazy or ill or whatever you call it because they can't conform to society's standards of normal behavior."

  She gave me the tolerant look an extraordinarily patient trainer might show to a particularly inept chimpanzee. "You may be surprised to learn that some schizophrenics actually choose careers as mental patients. They appraise their alternatives in the outside world, then make a rational choice as to their actions."