Miami Noir

by Les Standiford

  Trying to be of help, I dusted, wiped out the refrigerator, vacuumed, and cleaned the toilets for her while she was gone. Bob didn’t go to the funeral, and I knew he wouldn’t take over the cleaning neither. I couldn’t do anything obvious, but I just thought she’d feel better if the place somehow didn’t seem to get dirty—and the refrigerator needed cleaning bad. Bob was your regular slob and never noticed nothin’.

  Melly brought home some mementos from her father, his fishing license and a pin from the Marines, so I knew they were close. I admired the old fella, seeing he probably enjoyed life and had guts. I found some heavy dark-blue folders too, sitting in plain view on the desk. I thought they were books at first, but when I opened ’em up, they smelled musty and were filled with U.S. silver dollars in little slots marked with the years, the real silver dollars that this country don’t make no more. I could tell by the edges. I didn’t know what they were worth, but there were close to four hundred of ’em, from the 1880s to the 1960s. I wondered if Melodie knew the value. I wished I could warn her to put ’em in a safety deposit box, in case of burglars, like Weasel.

  I buddied up with their cat. He liked his water freshened a couple times a day, and he would have starved while Melodie was gone if I didn’t refill his dry food. I really performed a service. He was smart, and I taught him to give paw and roll over for Whisker Lickin’s tuna-flavored treats. I hid the packet in the empty cabinet above the refrigerator, and I had to laugh every time I pictured the Lamberts finding it and being downright stumped. I expect Bones thought I was his owner, considering all the quality time we spent together. I wished I knew his real name. I listened sometimes, waiting under the house, but the words were usually too muffled to make out anything, unless Bob and Melodie were having a fight. Bob could get pretty loud. I went through their address book, hoping for something like Tiger’s vet, but no clues. He answered to Lazybones—or Bones—as much as any cat answers.

  I generally took a long nap each day with Bones on my chest. It was like working the night shift, except no work! I sold off a lawn mower and weed eater—garage items from down the block—and got myself a gym membership so I could shower, swim, hot tub, and work out with the hardcore sissy fellas every evening if I wanted, and especially on weekends when I was stuck outside all day.

  Things were going good. One night when I was still holding some cash, I thought I’d slug down a few shots at one of them outdoor South Beach bars, take in the fancy scenery, meaning women. It was just then, when I’d got my life all in order, I run into Boozanne. I come up to the bar and there she was, her back to me, lapping a little over the stool in the thigh area, a big girl with lots of curly orange hair and freckled white skin on her upper arms. She had on a thin nylon shirt that clung to every ripple of her—the handles of love and the lush flesh above the back of her brassiere. When she turned my way, there were those double-Ds staring at me, talcum still dry between ’em, and the smell of a baby wafting off her, even in eighty-five degrees and heavy humidity. Stars were winking in the black sky over her head, so I shoulda known the joke was on me.

  A flamenco guitar strummed away in my left ear, traffic and ocean crashed together in the right. “Hi there!” I yelled. I pointed at the only empty seat, the one next to her, where she had parked her pocketbook.

  “I’m Junior,” I said. I was more often called Mouse, but I didn’t like it.

  “Name’s Susanne,” I thought she said.

  I nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Susanne.”

  She scrunched up her little pig nose with the freckles on it, but I didn’t know what the problem was. She had a puckered set of red lips to go with that nose. “Boooz-anne,” she drawled.

  That there was the killer. Her voice flowed out like syrup and I damn near choked. I wondered if she could be a Kentucky girl, hot and smooth as the bourbon I’d left behind those two years ago. I musta stared at her—I wasn’t sure what was polite to say.

  She picked up her beer can. “Booooz-anne!” she hollered. “Buy me one.”

  The bartender looked at me, and I put up two fingers.

  Boozanne stared at my legs. “You need a hoist onto that stool, pal?”

  I ignored her and used the step under the bar to give me the extra lift. Boozanne lit a cigarette. Her cheeks sucked in and her lashes kinda flickered in pleasure as she drew the smoke. When her chin tipped back on the exhale, I remembered how Ma used to aim her smoke at the ceiling by protruding her bottom lip like a funnel. Boozanne’s white neck and the pattern of freckles spilling down resembled one of the girls’ chests in Bob’s porno video. The smoke hung in the air and the flamenco ripped to a finale as she focused on me.

  “You’re pretty cute for a shortie. Been working out?”

  “Some,” I said. It came to me that she might want to get naked, despite my body being two-thirds her size. I wasn’t against it.

  “You know how long a man’s legs are supposed to be, don’t you?”

  I shook my head, getting ready for a joke about my height, figuring it was worth the ridicule to get laid.

  “Long enough to reach the ground,” she said. “Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Abraham Lincoln said that?” I scratched my head. “He had real long legs, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but that’s not the point. Yours are long enough.”

  I smiled. “It all evens out horizontal, don’t it?”

  She laughed, and after that my memories are spotty. Sometime, Boozanne and me staggered across the street, holding hands and bumping together. We stumbled over the sand toward the water, to my favorite wooden lounge chair, chained behind a low dune of shore grass, far enough from the street to be dark. My mind wasn’t working too good, but I recall taking off my pants, falling over once into the sand.

  Next thing, there was Boozanne, buck-naked and white as whip cream, like an art model with all the rich layers of her unfolding, as she laid down on the lounge and opened her arms to me. I stopped trying to brush off and leaned over her and straddled one of her thighs. We did some tonguing, I think, but mostly I remember the feel of her, meaty and cool, as I pawed over her big tits and nuzzled her neck. When I scooted on down, that baby powder drowned out the fishy smell of the beach. I suckled her nipples and crawled onto her lap. She weren’t my first woman, but there hadn’t been many, and none of this size. I poked into her soft gut and jelly thighs a few times, and then I located that sweet spot you don’t never forget.

  Over the next week things heated up even more, and I needed extra money to show her a good time. Besides sorting most of the quarters out of the change jar, I made some easy pickings from a tree service trailer, and took a chain saw to the South Dixie Pawn Shop. Boozanne—surprise, surprise—could put away the liquor. I convinced her to go to my usual local bar, where it was homey. Quantity was more important to her than scenery, so she didn’t complain much.

  Besides liking the sex, she was a woman who could tell a joke. I enjoyed her stories about idiots at the office, and the quick way she saw through her boss with his snooty manners. She had some schemes for easy money, and she promised to let me in. I’d started talking to Bones about her, and when I pictured her pretty face I felt something way stronger than the tightness in my balls.

  One night when we were sitting on the lounge chair smoking some weed, I dropped the roach into my shirt pocket and the damn fabric flared right up. Boozanne was fast with her hand to pat it out. “Your heart’s on fire for me,” she said. She was laughing, but I couldn’t deny it. I took that as a sign.

  Course, the subject came up of going to my place instead of the sticky, sandy lounge chair, and I couldn’t fend her off for long. She had an efficiency and a roommate, so it was up to me to make arrangements if I wanted to “continue enjoying her womanhood.” Now, I was really working her pussy hard, and I had a suspicion that she liked the fucking as much as me, but I knew there were plenty more men where I come from—taller ones, with better income—whereas she was the only woman ever come on to me t
hat didn’t ask for money up front. The chair hurt her back, and she wouldn’t get on top cause she was embarrassed about how she outweighed me. She kept harping on it until I let loose of the truth.

  I thought it would be the end of us, but it turned out my living conditions were a real amusement. I’d lied that I was on disability, but now I gave out all my secrets, including my nickname Mouse—which she promised never to use—and my recent incarceration.

  Before I had time to think, she’d took the day off work, and I was sneaking her in between the air conditioner and Bob’s moldy garden hose. I had to bend some bushes to get her through, and they took some damage, but the Lamberts hardly went into the yard, far as I could tell.

  I had a long sheet of plastic stretching to the edge under the house, so I could crawl on my stomach without getting dirty, and Boozanne surprised me with the ease she wormed on through. She weren’t afraid of the spiders or nothing. I went first and moved the bed aside, and she stood and took my hand, and stepped up into the room like a lady. It was a big hole, but she pretty much filled it. I’d told her I could go inside and unlock the back door for her, but she said the porch was too visible, and that was true. She went wandering around the house, while I slid the wood to cover the hole, enough so Bones couldn’t get out, and scooted the bed back in place so the room looked nice.

  Boozanne came floating my way in the living room, with a cigarette, sipping from one of Melodie’s good glasses filled with a clear gold liquid. I hoped it wasn’t the scotch Bob was saving from his birthday. She’d stripped off her clothes and put on a see-through robe that left a gap in front, with pink nipples and red muff peeking out.

  I grabbed her cigarette and flung it into the sink, even though the Lamberts wouldn’t be home for hours.

  She clucked her tongue at me. “Such a worrier.” She held up her glass. “They’ve got all kinds of booze in the cabinet, Junior. I’m surprised you haven’t polished it off.”

  “Now I shoulda told you—you got to be careful not to start suspicions. I hope that’s the Cutty’s.”

  She tossed her curls. “Why drink Cutty’s when there’s Glenlivet?”

  “Okay, just take it easy. We’ll add a little water. Don’t open new bottles and don’t drink more than a couple shots of any one thing.”

  “No problem. There’s lots to try. I haven’t had this much fun since I was twelve and broke into the neighbors’.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d you do?”

  “Not much. Three of us girls—we just put a little hole in the screen door and got excited sneaking around, looking in the bedrooms. Adrenaline rush.”

  “There is something to that,” I said.

  “I don’t know why we didn’t check for money or take anything.”

  “Maybe you didn’t need anything.”

  “Oh, Junior, you always need money,” she said. She cuffed me on the chest.

  “I don’t. Not always.”

  “That’s why you’re special—besides this.”

  She bent down and undid my belt and zipper, dropping my pants, and pulled me against her big powdered tits for a long sloppy kiss. I was useless, barely able to waddle to the bed and kick my pants off my knees so I could climb on top of her. I got her breathing hard, grunting and cooing, and we were both sweating rivers. I thought for a second about messing the sheets, but I had plenty of time to run laundry.

  After that, Boozanne got the fancy platter out of the china cabinet, and the cloth napkins, and we ate a snack—olives and crackers and imported cheeses, a small chunk of goat cheese, Parmesan, some Stilton. I wouldn’t’ve touched the moldy stuff on my own, but the Lamberts had introduced me to lots of new food, and most of it was pretty damn tasty. Boozanne was still hungry so I made her a peanut butter and jelly, which was always safe, but she didn’t much like it.

  She left around 3, and I was exhausted, but there was plenty of cleaning to do. I panicked when I picked up a juice glass and saw a white ring on the coffee table. I found some furniture spray that didn’t work, but while I stood there pulling out my hair, the ring started to lighten up, and it finally disappeared. I did the dishes and threw the napkins into the washer with the sheets. I hoped there was no ironing required.

  Bones came out from somewhere to lay on me while I waited for the fabric softener cycle. He was purring and it felt good relaxing with him on my chest after the wild afternoon. “Bones,” I said, “here’s a woman who knows all about me and still likes me.” I massaged behind his ears and his jaw went slack because it felt so good. “I’m pretty damned fond of her too.” I couldn’t say the word love out loud, not even to Bones.

  He stared me in the face with his big green eyes, and I thought I saw sadness. Course, he always looked like that, and just because Boozanne came around, I wasn’t gonna ditch him.

  Soon Boozanne quit her job. It was understandable—all the typing they piled on her. She was consulting with a lawyer on some female issues too. I was glad to see more of her, but it was worrisome, her not having any money coming in. She had to turn in the car she had on lease, but luckily her apartment was on a bus route. We went on like that for a couple weeks, wild sex and a snack several afternoons. She passed some time looking through the Lamberts’s closets and drawers. I’d seen it all already, so I sipped whiskey and watched her flesh move around in that skimpy robe. Lucky I had the place memorized, cause caution was not her strong feature, and I had to make sure everything got put back. As it was, a wine glass got broke. They had plenty, so it was no problem, but she scared me sometimes—yet I couldn’t think of what I used to do without her.

  I picked up bottles and cans for extra money, so I could pay for beer at night. A couple times I did dishes for cash. I wasn’t really allowed out of Kentucky, so I couldn’t take a job that checked records. I got into a neighbor’s storage shed and found an old waffle iron and ice skates to pawn, and let my gym membership go. I could swim and shower at the beach, and let my clothes dry on me Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t have much time to work out anyways with all the hours it took to scrounge. Boozanne got some kind of weekend job, just enough to keep up her rent until she could find something good. She wouldn’t take no cash from me.

  In early July, the Lamberts went to California for a week. It was blocked out on their calendar ahead of time and Boozanne and me couldn’t wait. Boozanne moved right in and we took over the place. The first morning she cooked me biscuits and fluffy eggs like her grandma taught her, and we took our time eating, and left the dishes all day, and smoked a little of the weed that Boozanne found in Bob’s chest of drawers. The only problem was that Bones was shipped off somewhere so we didn’t have our pet. I wished I could have told Melly that I’d take care of him.

  One day we were lazying around in the bedroom and I showed Boozanne Melodie’s “secret” drawer. Big mistake. My plan was to slip one of the old rings on her finger to see what she’d say, but she spotted Melodie’s gold heart right in front. It was a real delicate necklace that was usually missing, so I knew Melodie normally wore it a lot and must have left it home for safe keeping. Boozanne became instantly attached, but I didn’t want to let her take it. It wasn’t so much that I thought we’d get caught, but it was probably a present from Bob, or maybe even an heirloom. None of her other stuff was gold.

  Boozanne put it around her neck and asked me to fasten it. “Please, baby?” She was stroking my bicep and I liked that.

  “Just wear it while you’re here, then put it back.”

  “My birthday’s coming up and I know you don’t have money to buy me a present.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “November, but you won’t have any money then either.”

  It was true, and I had never bought her a gift.

  “It’ll be a nice memento of our vacation,” she said. “Please, baby, please?”

  I suggested a small silver heart that was far back in the drawer, but she was allergic to any metals except gold. I felt terrible about Melodie, but s
eeing how pretty the gold looked in Boozanne’s freckled cleavage, and how much she wanted it, I let her take it. Maybe I didn’t have a choice.

  When the Lamberts got home, I checked for extra Kleenexes in Melodie’s bathroom trash, and there weren’t none, but over the weekend an extra lock was installed on each door, and that creeped me out. One more mistake and they’d start checking more carefully. I tried to get the heart back so I could plant it in a front pair of underwear in Melodie’s drawer, like it fell there, but Boozanne wouldn’t give it up. She didn’t understand my feelings about Melly and how I enjoyed having a home.

  Things went good for a few more weeks, and then Boozanne got tired of the job hunt and lack of cash. Safe pickings for the pawn shop were running slim in the neighborhood, and without a car, it was tough. Boozanne said she had a plan to make some real money, live high on the hog for a while, do some traveling, then get an apartment of our own, a used car. Sneaking around was exciting at first, but she was tired of it. I didn’t want to leave the Lamberts, but my odds for getting caught were climbing, and I wanted Boozanne.

  We were sitting on the couch, me petting Bones, when she told me the specifics.

  “I’ll handle it,” she said. “We’ve got credit cards, Social Security numbers, birth certificates, checkbooks, bank statements, passports, and salable goods. You’ve heard of identity theft?”

  “But they’re nice people. Melodie is. I don’t want to steal from them.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve been stealing from them for months.”

  “Not enough to matter.”