Miami Noir

by Les Standiford

  And for the next few days I do, with no particular idea what I’m getting at. I go back to help Sharon out, but she hasn’t made any further discoveries. At home, I work through all of Helena Dorsett’s books and papers. The only thing of real interest is a vintage book on how to dress, from 1939; she was still a girl, if she got it new. There are pencilled tick marks next to various tips. A strawberry blonde should not wear orange-reds, but blue-reds and true violets. There is a chapter about shopping that tells what kind of coat to have if you can only afford one, and then what to buy when you can purchase a second.

  I have many pictures of Hialeah Park, postcards, programs. I went to closing day, back in 2001, and bought up a few future collectibles. It was a sad occasion. Even the pink flamingoes on their little island looked faded. I take a drive over there on Friday and circle around behind to see the area of extensive decaying stables where people used to board horses for the season. I forget what I last read about plans to reopen the track.

  Then I drive on down to Coral Gables and tour Leucadendra Drive and spot the house. It’s certainly worth a million now. But whatever it was worth in 1962 was plenty.

  I think I hear someone scrabbling outside my sun porch, late Friday night, but I’ve had problems with possums there, getting in under the house, and anyway it might just have been palmettos chipping at the window as they do. You have to prune here constantly. I get up, turn on some lights, patrol, see nothing, and go back to bed. I take out the phone book and look her up: an H. Dorsett is listed at the right address.

  Now I’m fully awake, so I go into my linen closet which is full of reference books. I have a half dozen assorted Social Registers I’ve picked up. In the one for Greater Miami 1955, I find, DORSETT, MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM ELSFORD (Helena M.H.), listed at the address on Leucadendra Drive, Coral Gables. Then:

  Summer: Little Chestnut Farm, Ligonier, PA

  Miss Diana Hogarth

  Clubs: Riviera (CG); Princeton (Miami); Rod and Reel

  (MB); Jockey. Clubs, Mrs.: Opera Guild.

  Coll., Mr:. Princeton

  Yacht: Sea Lark

  I note that she chose the initial of her stage name, and then Hogarth’s—which was needed to indicate where Miss Diana came from. No Coll. for the Mrs. was not all that unusual in those days. I presume the Opera Guild interested her due to her musical background.

  I look up Dr. Pryor, but I don’t suppose veterinarians were society people. Nor is there any Roy Robineau. I don’t have a register from the early ’50s, but I know the Hogarths wouldn’t be in there—they were staying at a hotel, not a home or a club. I’ve put Mr. Billy Hogarth down as a young guy with a little family money, not in Mr. William Dorsett’s league.

  I think about money and Florida. When I first came down here, years ago, after I got divorced, looking to have some fun and cheer up, I was amazed to see how much money was here, filtering in from all over America as people cashed in their piles. I cannot completely explain the fascination of discovering where they all went. In my old town when I was growing up, there were some rich people. You knew who they were; you worked for them. Then they deserted, and a lot of the people in the middle left. After they made me chief, I put in a few years at my best salary and then deserted too. I bought myself a little house down here in a neighborhood that was turning around and added my bit to the comeback. Here, I got interested in life’s cast-off paper, and started to buy and sell and learn the worth of the worthless.

  Sunday morning early, I’m at the Lincoln Road Antiques & Collectibles Market. The humidity has lifted and it’s cool, in the fifties at 8 a.m., though it promises to warm up later. I’m in my usual spot on Drexel just off Lincoln near the community church—the side street gets morning shade. I have set up my tent with plastic side flaps. Rain—even a stiff breeze—can do a lot of damage to my stuff. But it doesn’t look a bit like bad weather today, so I leave them rolled up. I get to work, unpacking the rubberized tubs of pages organized by subject, and the display rack for the intact magazines. I never dismantle anything that’s perfect. Boxes of books go on the ground, and my best stuff under glass on the back table.

  Other dealers pass by, circulating—we check out each other’s stuff early. Sometimes an item has changed hands twice before the average buyer comes out looking. There’s interest in my 1934 Vanity Fair with the Albert Einstein paper doll page: mint. I have the whole thing encased in plastic, but dealers know better than to touch. No one buys. I don’t expect it; I’ve set the price high because I don’t really want to let it go. When I have things laid out, I stand and stretch and look around. The Kussrows, as usual, have the corner of Drexel and Lincoln, across from where the SPCA has its table and pen of dogs up for adoption. Jeff and Hank are angling their stuff to best advantage: a bunch of HeywoodWakefield chairs, a dresser, and there’s Helena’s dressing table with the circular mirror, catching and reflecting the morning sun like a fat full moon.

  Sharon arrives, as promised, bringing me coffee, the Starbucks version of Nublado decaf skim, lacking the Cuban depth. While I was putting in her deadbolt on Thursday she said she’d take me up on sharing my space and see how she did selling some things, as a start on the Noir Boudoir idea. She covers one side table with a vintage cloth and lays out an assortment of compacts, old lipstick cases, evening bags, and so on. I have the other side table and the back table—a U so the customer can walk in and browse. We’ll sit at the outer ends in lawnchairs I brought. She’s not only got on all her amber, which I now think of as her chest guard, she is wearing some heavy tortoiseshell vintage shades. “You look invincible,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.

  The old guy comes by with his doggie on a leash. The pooch is wearing an argyle vest this morning, though the old guy himself is his usual shambles. He nods at us and heads for the Kussrows.

  I ask Sharon to watch my stuff while I go chew the fat.

  The old guy is running his hand across the dresser top. “What is this, Jeff,” he asks, “mahogany?”

  “Veneer,” says Jeff. “In great shape. No label, but it’s got the look and the lines.”

  The dog jumps up on the vanity bench and peers inquiringly at himself in the mirror.

  “Gorgeous day,” I say to all and sundry.

  “Finally some fresh air,” Hank says, and takes a deep breath to show off his chest expansion. I think he’s looking in Sharon’s direction.

  I say, “You guys hear Sharon got burgled?”

  Jeff nods. “Alex mentioned it. They get anything valuable?”

  I shrug. “Just some assorted duds from that estate we did. She’s mostly upset that anyone came in. Probably someone who saw her unloading.”

  “That’s what you get when you run your business from your home,” Hank says.

  I say, “I’ve always counted on no one thinking I’ve got anything. House doesn’t look like much, you know. Probably the least improved property in Belle Meade at this point. You guys have a warehouse, right? Design district?”

  “Right above there, Buena Vista,” says Hank.

  “It’s a fortress,” Jeff adds. “We all move in when there’s a hurricane. Where I live on the beach, they evacuated twice this fall, for nothing, really.”

  Hank says, “But if a big one came, we’d be safe in there. Got a generator and everything.”

  “Well, looks like we’re through with that this year. Weather’s changed.” I stretch. “I’m going down to Islamorada and fish a bit, I think. I’ll head down this afternoon against the traffic coming back from the Keys, take a few days.”

  “You got a boat?” asks Hank.

  “Just a small one. Boston Whaler. Sixteen feet. How long have you lived down here?” I ask Hank, now that we’re talking.

  “I grew up here,” he answers. “But I lived in Southern California for a while—used to surf, loved the beaches. Then got married, had a family, brought them back here.” He nods at Jeff. “Got Jeff and two more you haven’t met, not in the business.”

 
; Customers are talking to Jeff, who has them around behind the dressing table to show how the mirror connects. The little pooch apparently has an overblown sense of himself from his time with the mirror, because he jumps off and yanks the leash from the old guy’s hand and runs across to the SPCA gang, an assortment of biggish dogs who look like they could eat him for brunch. He growls at them from his side of their not-very-secure-looking pen. I go over and pick him up. His little body is vibrating with indignation or machismo or whatever it is.

  “You’ve got guts,” I say. I hand him back to the old guy, who takes the leash with a shaky old hand.

  “Archie, say thank you,” he instructs, and the dog yaps at me in what doesn’t sound like gratitude.

  “You should get a dog, Ray,” he tells me, nodding at the orphans up for adoption.

  “I probably could use a watchdog, at that,” I say to the old guy, and he walks with me back to my booth. The dog sniffs around Sharon’s ankles and the old guy peruses our goods while Guillermo comes up with some kind of heavy bundle he sets down by my chair.

  Guillermo unwraps his find, a vintage interest-calculating machine with Bakelite keys. “In operating condition,” he boasts.

  “Seriously outmoded,” I say.

  “But,” he says, “the guys who have outmoded it love these. I had three manual typewriters in my shop and last month they all sold to high-tech guys who like to decorate their offices with them.”

  “You never know,” I say. “Business been good, then?”

  He says, cautiously, “It runs hot and cold. I’m going over there to open up now.”

  “I could never stand being stuck in a shop all day myself,” I say. And I tell him, too, that I’m going fishing, but he just shakes his head at my laziness. I let him leave a stack of cards for his shop on my table.

  The little dog is nosing through my bin of Ephemera Samplers. I pull him away. “You looking for anything special this morning?” I say to the old guy. “I’ve got more at home, things that came from that estate. Nice stuff.”

  “Just giving the dog some exercise,” he says, and shuffles off.

  “How old is he?” whispers Sharon.

  “Too old to ask even you out,” I say. She gives me a look through her shades.

  And so the morning passes pleasantly. Beautiful girls come by and Sharon and I sell them things. One buys a powderbox, another an old Vogue, several select the brooches and hankies and hats of Helena Dorsett, fragments of another woman’s beauty, now theirs. We see a couple buy the dressing table, the fellow writing a check while the young lady sits on the bench, laughing up at him.

  “I wonder if she kept it because it was a magic mirror,” Sharon muses. “Maybe it showed her always beautiful and young.”

  “I think to her it stood for class,” I say. “Some idea she’d formed of what she’d have, and when she got it she never let it go. Why did she keep that whole room like that?”

  Sharon shrugs.

  A collector comes back twice before finally buying my Albert Einstein. “That’s how it works,” I say to Sharon. “If you want something too much, you’ll pay any price.”

  She says we are all poisoned by desire and tells me some more about meditation. We discuss mindfulness and the radiance of things. It gets warm by noon, and Sharon breaks out a mini-battery-operated fan and fusses that the heat will ruin the perfumes. I agree with her by 1:00 that it’s time to pack it in.

  Late in the afternoon I get the Whaler out: Paper Boat, I named it. Hook the trailer to my car, drive it over to the marina on the Little River just north of Belle Meade Island, and leave the boat and trailer there, for a fee. Driving back through my neighborhood, I take a different route and park a few blocks down beyond my house. I stroll back, enjoying the air, and think how I really have to walk more.

  Home, I settle down for a night of meditation. It’s after 1 a.m. when I see the flashlight flicker by the dining room window. For God’s sake, break in by the back door, I think. That window frame is rotting from the rainy season and needs to be replaced. I left the bolt off.

  He works his way back there. A quick smash of glass, and he’s in: sun porch, kitchen. He must be thanking his stars there’s no alarm. He slows down. In the dining room, his flashlight circles the piles on the table, and then he sends a beam into the living room. And there I’m waiting. I turn on the standing lamp by my chair.

  I say, “Where’d you leave the dog?”

  “Home,” Cash says. He sighs.

  “What are you looking for?”

  He tries to shrug, the big robber: “Anything of value.”

  “No,” I say. “You’re looking for something about you—or you and her. Which one are you? Robineau or the vet?”

  “I’m…” He sits in the other armchair across from me. “Cash Pryor. As you say, the vet.”

  “Lucas turned into Cash?”

  “No one ever called me Lucas much,” he says. “Newspapers always use your formal name. I got the nickname as a boy because other kids were always hitting me up for small loans and I was generous. You wouldn’t think it now, I realize.”

  “You killed the second husband,” I say.

  Sadly, he says, “And I killed the horse.”

  “Well, then you served your time,” I say. “Can’t be tried twice. So it wasn’t that she had evidence. It was—”

  He pulls out a gun.

  “Oh jeez,” I say. “I’ve got one too.” And I show him my Glock. “Yours looks rusty.” It’s a Jennings J25, dregs of the gun world, and the finish is gone on it. “Ever shot it?”

  He shakes his head and lowers the gun, some. His hand is trembling so much I’m afraid he’s going to shoot me accidentally. Those pistols jam a lot, but every once in a while one manages to emit a bullet.

  I say, “Put it down and let’s talk.”

  He sets it on the broad arm of the chair. I lay mine on my thigh, where I can get to it if needed.

  He says, “You were expecting me.”

  I nod. Though to be honest, I’d also worked out a theory where Hank Kussrow was Robineau.

  I say, “I figure you killed her. Are you looking for something you touched when you were there before? Something that might have your fingerprints that you couldn’t explain? Maybe this?” I point to the picture in the Lucite frame, on the table beside me. “Did you expect Sharon to have it?”

  “You don’t understand,” he says.

  “I probably don’t. Let’s go back. What was it all for? You killed Dorsett for her?”

  “She needed him dead.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Did she ask you?”

  “She…implied it.”

  “Why’d she need him dead?”

  “Dorsett was a bully. And a killer. Let me explain how it was. She told me that he’d seen her when she and her first husband came to Miami Beach. And he wanted her, naturally. But she was married with a child. And then someone ran her husband down and she was a widow, so when Dorsett courted her, she married him. It was only later—years later—that she found out he’d hired the man who hit her husband. This is what she told me, you understand?”

  “Dorsett hired Robineau?”

  “She said that when she expressed a desire to leave Dorsett, he told her so and frightened her.”

  “And Robineau, what happened to him?”

  “She said Dorsett took him out on his yacht and drowned him, in the Bahamas somewhere. And let it be thought he’d moved away, west. This was right after Hogarth was killed, she said.”

  “More death by transportation,” I say.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “So she told you all this, and you decided you could take him on, this brute?”

  “I was thinking about it.”

  “She was worth killing for?”

  “You should have seen her. At the racetrack, in blue linen. She was a dream. Then Dorsett asked me whether I could make it seem that the horse was having problems, to jigger the odds. So I did that, God help me. H
e was, as she said, a bully—he bullied me, never knowing what I was thinking. I stopped doping Panama Sailor in time for him to run. That was the plan. But on the day I gave the horse a little something else, Dorsett handled him rough and the horse knocked him down and I…helped.”

  “And then you didn’t tell.”

  “I kept my mouth shut for her,” he says.

  “Did she ask you to?”

  “We only had a moment,” he says. “At the stables. She came in after he was dead. They didn’t let her see his body, but then she asked to see the horse, and I was in with Panama Sailor, trying to fix his leg, but it was no good. She said, ‘Thank you, Cash,’ and it might have been thank you for the horse, but…And after that, we couldn’t speak again because the cops had me.”

  “You hadn’t slept with her?”

  “Oh,” he says. “I had. Twice. She was a dream, I told you. Your loveliest, dirtiest dream.”

  I’m thinking that’s a quote from somewhere, but I’m not

  “Did you figure if you killed him, you’d keep her?”

  “I didn’t think that much. I felt she was a creature in trouble and I would get her out.

  “The police took me in right after I put the horse away, and all I could do was try to keep her out of the story.”

  “You’re an idealist,” I say. “You could have cut a deal and given her to the law.”

  “I was an idealist,” he says. “Certainly so.”

  “And when you got out of prison, you didn’t look her up?”

  “No,” he says, “I stayed away.”

  “Why?”

  He shakes his head. “Well, prison…broke me, I suppose you’d say. I didn’t do well there. I loathe violence.” He clears his throat, his sandy old voice wearing thin. “When I got out, I hated that I’d killed and I didn’t want to see her or for her to see me. I didn’t try to find her, I didn’t want to know where she was. I couldn’t earn a living as a vet, just did odd jobs and picked up money and lived close to the ground and tried to…recuperate. You could live cheaply here then. I’ve been over ten years in Palm Grove. I’m just down the street from Alex. It cost very little, till lately. I live in a building they’re about to redo now, but for years it was full of poor folks. Nobody bothered us, Archie and me, because we didn’t have anything worth taking, as you said this morning about your house. When you were implying you had something I’d want.”