West Palm: The Complete Novel

by Joss Cordero

  Courtney’s isolation in this sea of emptiness was a far cry from when she began as on-site realtor in the first of the complexes built by Seafarers’ developer. In those heady days when condo owners flipped their apartments over after two or three months, Courtney had commanded an office full of assistants. Then the merry-go-round lurched to a halt, the economy plummeted, and Courtney was left alone with the desks and the coffee machine.

  She looked from her computer screen to her fingernails, handpainted by Min and spangled with Swarovski rhinestones. Min had rented the store next door in hopes of decorating the nails of all the Seafarers Landing ladies, with visions of women coming and going from bistro to nail salon to café to bakery. But since there was no bistro, café, or bakery, just a 90 percent condo vacancy rate, Min sold her equipment on craigslist and moved on, after doing Courtney’s nails for the last time. Now there was no money in Courtney’s budget for high-end manicures. This one would have to hold her for the foreseeable future, unless she sold a condo.

  While she was reflecting on this unlikely eventuality, the door pushed open, and in walked a good-looking guy.

  As he got closer, he began to look less respectable, but in South Florida, where the biggest banks are built by drug money, not-respectable has its own respectability. The most expensive condo Courtney had sold was to a pair of shady Russians whose voices sounded like they were grinding Swarovski rhinestones with their teeth. They paid cash and never complained about the escalating maintenance costs falling on the shoulders of the few remaining owners.

  Thinking of the admirable Russians she said, “I can see you on the fifth floor facing the water, am I right? A little soft music on the stereo, your boat docked below, and you on the balcony looking at the moonlight on the water.”

  “How’d you know?” asked Zach, removing his sunglasses.

  “It’s written all over you.” All she actually saw was a live body, of which there had been too few lately. But if he was what she hoped, a drug dealer with cash to dump, then flash was what he was after, a three-bedroom with a straight-on view.

  “I’m Courtney, by the way.”

  She noticed his eyes running over her body, which she kept in shape at the Seafarers gym. What she didn’t know was that his perusal was more creative than the usual once-over to which she was accustomed. Like most men he mentally stripped off her clothes and put her in a submissive position, but this one was in a freezer drawer.

  One of Great Aunt Emmy’s blues tunes started sounding softly in his head:

  . . . stretched out on a long white table,

  So cold, so white, so fair . . .

  He tried to block out the words, because he knew where Aunt Emmy’s singing would lead. It always began with a faint tingle in his brain, as if boiling water were being slowly poured over coffee grounds, increasing drop by drop until saturation was reached and the exultation overcame him. He reminded himself he was at the Landing for a purpose and he couldn’t let the bad thing interfere. He never wanted it to interfere.

  But the catchy tune pursued him. He wrenched himself around and headed for the door.

  “How d’you like your coffee?” blurted Courtney to forestall his exit. “Sugar? Cream?” She indicated the coffee machine. “You’re probably wondering if this is the time to buy. Is the market going to go lower? Should I wait and get a better deal?”

  The two voices blended, Aunt Emmy’s and Courtney’s, drop by drop, building to the moment when he would be forced to behave badly.

  In his erratic library readings he sometimes perused scientific articles, and once he’d come across the fact that epileptic seizures could be triggered by flickering lights. After reading that, he looked on what happened to him as a sort of epileptic attack, triggered by the tender voice of a ghost.

  So cold, so white, so fair . . .

  Not that the real estate agent was either white or fair. She was as tan as a beach bunny could be, with a shiny mass of dyed black hair, a skimpy dress revealing short, stocky legs, and rhinestone-studded toe and fingernails. He liked the idea of rhinestones on a corpse.

  Becoming aware that the guy was staring at her body in an unusual way, Courtney wondered if he might be too much on the rough side. But then she reminded herself that in South Florida, rough meant money as often as not. The main thing she was picking up from him was intensity, which, if properly applied to the drug trade or some other fishy operation of which there were plenty in the state, would’ve earned him enough dough for a down payment.

  Since he didn’t seem to want coffee, she said, “Let’s skip the foreplay and go right up. What have you got to lose?”

  What Zach heard was Aunt Emmy talking, but he couldn’t understand the words. Hearing the two voices merge, he felt a twitching in his brain, and another drop of water swelled the coffee grounds.

  Courtney chirped on about the pleasures of Seafarers Landing as she mounted the golf cart she used to convey her captives from one building to the next. “Hop on,” she invited.

  Driving him down the phony boulevard, she said, “The deeper in you get, the greater your privacy. It’s our own little world here, safe from intrusion.”

  She noticed that his eyes were on her skirt, which had risen to midthigh when she settled into the cart. It was the expected response from the male animal and part of the promotional package, right down to her high-heeled sandals and pedicure by Min. If I don’t sell one of these units soon, she thought, I’ll be selling myself, because what else can I do with 75,000 real estate agents all competing for one client? There was always her old hope of meeting a rich widower on the beach, but even if she did, it would end up like the rest of her romances and go no place. Complicating her financial predicament was the fact that she’d gotten used to living at Seafarers, with the gym, the pool, the sauna.

  Zach could smell her desperation, and he liked the smell. He liked being carried along in the burning sun in this imperial manner. He should be living in a fine place like Seafarers Landing, not a trailer park with a dozen Guatemolies crammed into a single trailer.

  So Courtney fantasized about rich widowers, selling her body, or breaking her run of bad luck by selling this guy a three-bedroom condo with a straight-on view, while Zach attempted to ignore Aunt Emmy singing “The St. James Infirmary Blues.”

  “We’re not there yet,” Courtney protested, because he was rising from his seat like he was going to jump off the moving cart. “Just give the place a chance,” she added in sympathetic tones, for she knew that when a prospective buyer was emotionally torn, as this guy obviously was, it meant he was serious. She knew all these symptoms from the good old days. When people were casual, they were sightseeing. When they were tortured, it meant business.

  Beneath her cheerful chirping, Courtney was thinking of ways she could cut her expenses. She’d been debating getting rid of her landline when, turning on the local news this morning, she heard a report about an escaped convict, presumed to be armed and dangerous. The anchor lady said that people would be notified by telephone if he was spotted in their neighborhood, and then they’d know to lock their doors and windows and be extra careful. This made Courtney hesitate. But what was the chance of her ever having a close encounter with an escaped convict? I’ll do it, she decided, I’ll get rid of my landline.

  She pulled up at the main entrance to Building Three. “The unit I’m going to show you comes with one parking space, but you can purchase a second if you have two vehicles.” The way things were going with the occupancy rate, he could park anywhere on any of the six floors and no one would tell him he was in their space. She recalled the good old days in other buildings when condos were hot and parking spots were gold. If you parked in someone else’s place in those days, the first time you’d be warned, and the second time you’d be towed. Now in this wasteland, there were nothing but vacant parking spaces.

  He grunted, which she interpreted
as meaning he needed just one spot. Or maybe not. She reminded herself not to prejudge. A quiet type. “I think you’ll find it quiet here,” she said. Quieter every day.

  Let her go, let her go, God bless her, Aunt Emmy crooned, and again the words grew garbled, gurgling drops of boiling water, bringing him to the saturation point. The golf cart stopped. It was his last chance to run before the rapture took him over, but Courtney was too fast for him. From her arsenal of tricks to make a potential buyer feel he already lived in Seafarers Landing, she handed him a key card. “Just run this over the code box.”

  He dutifully obeyed, running the key card over the code box set into the peach-stuccoed wall.

  She flashed him a professionally bleached smile as they entered the high-ceilinged lobby with its dark woodwork, marble floors, and the security desk which no longer had a security person behind it. A sideboard bearing a big bowl of artificial flowers and surmounted by a gilt-framed mirror stood opposite the elevators. The entranceway with its flowers, dark woodwork, and luxury in general reminded Zach of the entrance to Fiorello’s Funeral Home. The elegance made him feel better, the way the elegance in Fiorello’s viewing rooms always made him feel better.

  Beyond the elevators, a wall of brass mailboxes glinted beneath a crystal chandelier. Zach felt confident such mailboxes weren’t filled with eviction notices. Courtney knew a few contained disturbing letters from the bank.

  Beyond the mailboxes, glass doors led to an enormous pool surrounded by tables, lounge chairs, and palm trees. “Picture yourself poolside,” said Courtney, “sipping a drink with an umbrella in it.”

  He gave her a puzzled look.

  “Blue Hawaiian, piña colada, any drink served in an aloha setting.” She gestured toward corridors off to the left and right. “State-of-the-art gym, billiard room, and our magnificent party room, which extends out onto a stone veranda overlooking the Intracoastal.”

  As the elevator doors closed behind them, shutting her in with him, she asked, “Do you have a boat?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said in a strangled voice, assaulted by the perfumes radiating off her tanned skin, the spray that made her hair as shiny as licorice, the dryer sheets she used in her laundry. He gazed down at her painted piglet toes sticking out from her sandals. He disliked artificial scents, with the exception of embalming fluid. The perfumes he liked best were natural—fear and blood and the sweetness of decay.

  Again he tried to banish these forbidden thoughts. That’s not what he was here for. He was having a hard time remembering what he was here for.

  “Everybody off,” she announced gaily.

  Now began a walk down a labyrinth of carpeted corridors. Courtney could remember the time not long ago when cleaning ladies were always in the halls, polishing brass, arranging flowers, chattering in Spanish; now most of the doorknobs were decorated with real estate lockboxes, which didn’t require polishing.

  “That’s where I live,” she said, pointing to a door with a red-and-green elf festively dangling from it. “I don’t have your view, but all of our units have their own distinctive charm.”

  They turned a final corner to a cul-de-sac with only two doors side by side. She held her jingling keys up to the light and attempted to unlock the right-hand door, but the lock gave her trouble and one of her fabulous fingernails broke off. She stooped to pick it up from the floor, calculating what it would cost to replace it, then realized she couldn’t replace it because it was Min’s unique design. So now she was stuck with one scalped fingernail. Her other option was to get a whole new nail job, but this she definitely couldn’t afford. Unless she sold this reluctant guy a condo.

  Energized by the idea, she came up smiling, with the glittering nail in her palm. “At least it’s not a tooth.”

  She flung open the door, and Zach caught his breath. The walls were long and white, the ceilings were soaringly high, the floor tiles were surgically white. At the far end was a pair of sliding doors, on fire with the sun.

  She opened the balcony door and invited him out.

  Shimmering before him was the Intracoastal, then the Mediterranean mansions of Hypoluxo Island, and then the gleaming white condo towers of South Palm Beach with blue gaps of ocean in between. “Did I tell you?” she asked with satisfaction.

  He pointed to the end of the longest pier. “It’s gone. The big yacht that was there.”

  “They come and go.”

  “Do you know where it went?”

  “I don’t keep track,” she said with a shrug, then, not wanting to seem dismissive, “The harbormaster might know. He’s holding an open house today. Free wine and music.”

  Zach became aware of the music down below, some jerk playing an amplified guitar and singing about Margaritaville. Underneath the jerk’s voice, another voice was singing sadly. It was the voice of Aunt Emmy, singing to comfort him for his disappointment over his angel having sailed away.

  Let her go, let her go, God bless her,

  Wherever she may be,

  She will search this wide world over,

  But she’ll never find another man like me.

  He turned away from the singing down below and looked at the real estate lady, imagining this white room as her tomb.

  Ignoring his strange smile, Courtney showed him the two guest bedrooms, the laundry room, the granite countertops in the kitchen, the pink marble surrounds in the bathrooms, which the contractor hadn’t bothered to seal, so when you put a glass down on the sink it made an indelible stain. She also knew from her own apartment that the walls weren’t actually painted, just primed, so they couldn’t be washed. The handles on the sliding doors, as often as not, were installed upside-down and broke off like her fingernail. She hated to imagine what the invisible construction was like. The projected life span of the buildings couldn’t be more than twenty years. She wasn’t thinking of her own life span, which if Aunt Emmy’s song continued sending its electricity through Zach’s brain was going to be reckoned in minutes.

  He followed her to the master bedroom, which had its own small balcony on the side of the building, but all he saw was the real estate lady already dead, with himself kneeling over her, washing her cold body. The ecstasy was building . . . the bad thing was going to happen.

  He spun away from her and roughly pushed the sliding balcony door, hurriedly stepped out . . .

  And there it was. Heading south.

  From this distance he couldn’t see the name on the hull, but he recognized the size and shape of the yacht idling in the water waiting for the drawbridge to open.

  Faintly, he heard the bell ringing out the half hour.

  The gates swung shut to block off traffic

  The two halves of the bridge slowly separated . . . rose . . . and King Rat sailed majestically through the channel.

  “Where’s that boat heading?”

  “If it were me? Next stop Fort Lauderdale. Blue Moon Fisheries. You can dock right there and eat.”

  The voice of Aunt Emmy faded, and he was flooded with a feeling of deliverance. He didn’t need to kill the real estate agent. He just needed to get to Fort Lauderdale.

  He turned around and extended his hand for her to shake. “We came close.”

  “But . . . don’t you even want to try out our state-of-the-art gym?”

  He was looking through her as if she were invisible. She recognized the moment, for she knew it well: it was the juncture when the prospective buyer gets away. The thread connecting them was broken, and there was nothing she could do about it. At least he hadn’t wasted more of her time or done some false song and dance about how seriously he was considering the place. We came close said it all.

  Just another one I’m never going to see again, she thought as they rode down in the elevator. Is my luck ever going to change? she wondered glumly, not knowing that if she sold every unit in Seafarers Landing, met a hund
red rich widowers, or won the lottery she wouldn’t be as lucky as she’d been in the last few moments when a homicidal maniac decided to give her a pass.

  Stepping out into the downstairs lobby, Zach was so relieved he hadn’t murdered this woman, so relieved of the pressure on his brain, he felt dangerously elated.

  No, it wasn’t dangerous. The danger was over. He’d given her life back to her, a gift the poor ignorant woman didn’t even know about. He could taste the secret on his tongue, a tiny taste of pride. Hadn’t he spared her? Hadn’t he fought down his seizure? Having accomplished so much, he felt superior to her, to Seafarers Landing, to people who owned boats, and to all the other phonies.

  He headed toward the phony playing the guitar at the fountains.

  Ridiculously dressed with a Panama hat tilted over one eye and a Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to show off his jewelry, the phony swayed beneath a striped canopy, singing about a brown-eyed girl. What did the phony know about brown-eyed girls, or any girls? To know a woman you had to liberate her soul, and the only way he’d found of doing that was with a knife.

  The harbormaster, in his phony captain’s cap, was talking to some Russkies by the sound of them. Well, Zach could wait.

  He approached a couple of young men washing the rental boats in the inlet. The perilous episode was forgotten. Men never brought Aunt Emmy to mind, and he’d remembered just in time exactly why he came. “How much to rent a boat for a day?”

  “We don’t rent by the day,” replied the taller of the two. “It’s by the month.”

  Zach looked at the little boats with T-tops on their central consoles. “You mean I can go off in one of these for a month?”

  The shorter guy answered with a laugh. “So long as you bring it back every night.”

  “Oh. Gotcha.”

  “You won’t necessarily be given the same boat, but most of the time you’ll get the one you want. You can take it out whenever you reserve, doesn’t matter how often. Your only extra cost is gas. No insurance, no upkeep.”