Boca Undercover

by Miriam Auerbach

  I pulled up to the guard house of the compound . . . I mean, complex. The rent-a-cop inside looked like a military reject. His blue uniform hung on his scrawny frame, and his face was in need of a good acne cream. Guys like that probably shouldn’t be allowed to bear arms. He’d be no match for me and my snub-nose Magnum. The one I had license to carry concealed—and did, in my boot.

  “Driver’s license, please, ma’am,” he said.

  Now do you see my point? The kid was a danger to himself. Anyone who addresses any woman as “ma’am” puts himself in peril. It should always be “Miss,” even to a centenarian. And don’t call me testy just because I’ll be hitting the big four-oh next week.

  I was about to produce my ID when some kind of warning bell went off in my head. On the outside chance that there was any truth to Gitta’s claims, maybe I should be circumspect. I handed over my alternate ID instead—the one identifying me as Hailey Holloway and listing a vacant lot as my address. The guy consulted his computer.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, you’re not on the visitors list,” he said.

  “Oh.” I thought for a second. “Well, that’s because I’m not visiting anyone. I want to speak with someone about . . . uh, getting my sister into treatment.”

  He looked me up and down. “Your sister. Right.”

  I guess he’d heard that one before.

  “Please go ahead to the front entrance, and someone from the intake department will meet you and hook you up,” he said.

  Hook me up? To what, exactly? An electroshock machine? Visions of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest floated through my head.

  The guard logged my information and handed my card back to me. The ornate wrought iron gate swung open, allowing me entry into the asylum.

  A lush green lawn spread out before me, lined with flower beds. Don’t ask me what kind. I know Hogs, not horticulture.

  A short, wiry man—a Haitian, I judged from his broad face and mahogany skin—stood holding a hose attached to a plastic tank atop the bed of a small truck. He was spraying the lawn with a green liquid. In Boca, lawns were always green, though not necessarily naturally.

  I parked the Hog in the lot filled with Benzes and Lexuses (Lexi?). I took off my helmet, propped it on the backrest, and stashed my leather chaps and jacket in the saddlebags.

  Then I looked at the fortress . . . er, facility. The building was a three-story structure designed in a Moorish style, with horseshoe arches, rounded domes, and mosaic-tiled walls. It was Arabian Nights for Addicts.

  No one was in sight. Bypassing the front double doors and resisting the urge to say, “Open Sesame,” I walked around the side of the building and called Gitta on my cell.

  “Harriet! Where are you?” she whispered.

  “Outside the building.”

  I heard a gush of expelled air as she breathed out. “Oh, what a relief. But wait. You can’t come inside. I don’t want them to know about you.”

  “Already got that covered. Can you come out?”

  “Yes. I’ll meet you out back. There’s a maze there.”

  A maze? What the hell did that mean? But she had already hung up.

  I walked along the side of the building, passing a large, three-tiered fountain, its water splashing melodically. Around it, a half-dozen middle-aged men led by a younger one, all clad in loose attire, moved their limbs in slow motion. T’ai Chi. They call that a martial art? Their snail’s pace made me want to spring some Krav Maga action on them. Show them what real combat is all about.

  Behind the building, another vast lawn stretched to the Intracoastal Waterway, where gentle waves shimmered in the sun. Near the edge was an Olympic-size pool. A few women who should have realized their bikini days were over splashed around, led by a perky instructor doing water aerobics. They call that exercise? It’s child’s play. I expected them to start calling out “Marco” and “Polo” any minute.

  To the side of the pool I saw a long hedge that was over six feet tall. In the middle of it was a trellised opening with a small iron gate. I walked over. A metal sign by the gate read:

  Meditation Maze

  Walking labyrinths have been used since ancient times to enhance serenity and spirituality. Modern science has shown that mazes evoke the relaxation response, leading to improved blood pressure, breathing rate, chronic pain, insomnia, and fertility.

  Enter and Peace Be With You.

  With all those promises, they should have called it the Miracle Maze.

  I opened the gate and entered. In front of me was another hedge, equally tall. The two shrub walls bordered a pathway leading in both directions. I stepped aside and breathed in the scent of freshly-cut foliage. I listened to the gentle water sounds coming from the pool and fountain. Damned if I wasn’t starting to relax.

  Then the gate opened. A tall, slender woman with long blonde hair entered, wearing white linen palazzo pants and a matching sleeveless top. Gitta.

  She looked furtively to her left and right. When she saw me she hustled over, grabbed my bare arm with one hand, and dug in her French-manicured silk-wrap nails. With her other hand, she pushed her oversize Armani sunglasses atop her head as she looked down at me.

  Her pupils were dilated. Due to adrenaline, I figured. She was in fight-or-flight mode. However, her eyes, as well as her nostrils, had lost their former redness. And her complexion seemed to have more natural color. Despite whatever she thought was going on at the Oasis, it looked to me like a few days of detox had done her good.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” she said, breathless. “Nobody can overhear us out here.” She linked one arm in mine and propelled me along the gravel path, stumbling in her cork-soled platform sandals. Her Boca Babe fashion sensibilities remained intact, impractical though they were. Quite a contrast to my own daily uniform of all-black body-hugging stretch jeans and tank top.

  We reached the end of the path, where the outside hedge formed a corner. We turned around the end of the inside hedge and headed in the opposite direction.

  “So what’s going on?” I asked.

  “Two patients have died in the last week.” She pulled me closer. “The staff is trying to keep it hush-hush, but everyone knows about it. Some people say the victims were suffocated, other people think they were poisoned. Whatever, something evil is going on here.”

  “Maybe they were natural deaths,” I said. “I mean, think about it. This place might have all the trappings of a spa, but basically it’s a hospital for sick people. Some deaths must be inevitable.”

  She looked at me, wide-eyed in horror.

  “Tragic,” I said. “But inevitable.”

  “Then why would the staff be so secretive about it?”

  “Gee, Gitta, I don’t know . . . uh, maybe, like, for PR purposes? How would it look if the Inquisitor ran a headline like ‘Midnight at The Oasis: Murder and Mayhem in Ritzy Rehab?’”

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “You know, like all the major league sports teams might cancel their contracts for treating their players here. That would be a significant loss of revenue.”

  “Oh, yes. I see.”

  Of course. When anything was spelled out in dollars and cents, Boca Babes understood perfectly.

  We reached a fork in the path. We could continue straight ahead or make a right turn.

  “Which way do you think leads to greater peace?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I pulled her to the right. “Okay, so who are these patients who died?”

  “I don’t know their names, but they were a boy and a girl in the adolescent unit.” Her nails dug into my arm again. “Anyone could be next. Like me!”

  I stopped walking and faced her. “Gitta, I hate to break the news to you, but you are not an adolesce
nt. Your children are adolescents, for God’s sake.” If I recalled correctly, her son, Lars, was about seventeen, and her middle one, Margitta, was a few years younger. Her youngest was a girl, but damned if I could remember her name and age. As far as I was concerned, all kids were basically indistinguishable and to be avoided until they reached the age of reason. Which would be about thirty.

  Anyway, Gitta seemed to think that she hadn’t aged since her beauty pageant days. Another sign that she was delusional.

  “Have you talked to Reilly about this?” I asked.

  “No. He’d think I was crazy.”

  Duh. “And I wouldn’t?”

  “Well, maybe you do, but that doesn’t matter.”

  “Say what?”

  She stopped and placed a hand on a hip. “I am trying to start a lasting relationship with Kevin,” she said, looking at me. “How far do you think it would go if he believed I was a nutcase?”

  A nutcase or a cokehead—I didn’t know which Reilly would prefer. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “As for you,” she continued, “we’ve known each other over ten years. I’m not trying to start anything with you. So I don’t care what you think of me.”

  Here’s the thing about Gitta: she’s often actually logical—in a very convoluted way.

  She resumed walking, and I strode alongside. We reached another crossroads and veered to the left.

  “If you’re so scared,” I said, “why don’t you just leave? It’s not like you’re a prisoner here.”

  “It’s Kevin, again. He’d be disappointed.”

  I was about to lecture her that she had to commit to sobriety for herself, not for any man. But she surprised me by beating me to the punch.

  “Actually, it’s more than Kevin,” she said. “It’s me. I want to get better. I can see that cocaine . . . well, it will kill me one day.”

  She had that right. It had killed Bruce. Well, I had killed Bruce, but only after he threatened me in a coke-induced craze. One way or another, the drugs always got you in the end.

  “But you could check into another facility,” I said.

  “Not around here. I want to stay close to my kids. They can visit me here every day, and we can participate in the family therapy program together.” She gingerly wiped a tear from an eyelash, careful not to smear her mascara. “My drug use has affected them, I can see that now. Like how they’ve covered for me or flushed my stash down the toilet. I should never have put them in that position.”

  I had to admit I admired her insight and resolve. But I didn’t see how I could help. Besides, the deaths were probably natural, as I’d said.

  We rounded another corner.

  Gitta let out an ear-splitting scream.

  On the path ahead of us a pair of white Nikes pointed to the sky. They were attached to a pair of baggy jeans. A hand rested on an empty, plastic Coke bottle.

  It was a teenage boy. With a pair of hedge clippers sticking up out of his chest.

  Chapter 2

  “STOP SCREAMING!” I snapped at Gitta. Like that would do any good. She kept right on.

  I looked away from her, back to the body. The boy was black with close-cropped hair, nearly shaved bald. His eyes were open, staring blankly at the sky. I had the urge to close his lids to give him some semblance of serenity and dignity, but of course I couldn’t.

  A dark stain of blood emanated from the stab wound in his chest, where the hedge clippers were embedded all the way to their handles. Whoever had plunged in that instrument had either had extreme strength or extreme adrenaline.

  My stomach turned, and I had an immediate urge to flee.

  But where would I go? I could be trapped in this freaking maze forever. Besides, once the cops arrived, they’d put the whole place on lockdown.

  Yet, another part of me was telling me to stay. I recognized it—my Inner Vigilante. Now that Gitta’s seemingly paranoid fears had turned out be grounded in reality, I had to get justice for this poor boy.

  Gitta was still screaming. I heard pounding footsteps.

  “Where are you?” a man’s voice yelled.

  “Over here!” Gitta screamed.

  More voices.

  “We’ve gone the wrong way!” a woman said.

  “Well, what’s the right way?” A different male voice asked.

  “I don’t know!” The woman again.

  Moments later, the entire troupes of T’ai Chi masters and water sprites burst around the corner of the hedge, headed by the two group leaders, who were presumably staff members. When they saw the body, everyone stopped, crowding the narrow pathway.

  “Oh my God, it’s Demarcus Pritchett,” the female staff member screamed. “From the adolescent unit.”

  Now he had a name—an identity. He wasn’t just a body anymore.

  More screams and pandemonium ensued. The men and women quickly assumed traditional gender roles, with the alpha hero guys wrapping their arms around the dripping damsels in distress.

  “Calm down, everyone,” the male T’ai Chi leader said. This failed to get anyone’s attention.

  The female staff member was the youngest of the women, yet the only one wearing a one-piece swimsuit instead of two. She looked like she belonged in Sea World performing tricks with dolphins and whales. Instead, she was trying to separate the clinging couples. “Tyler, please let go of Skyler,” she said, sounding like she was talking to preschoolers.

  Tyler pulled Skyler closer.

  I knew that romantic relationships among people in treatment were discouraged because they distracted people from their own recovery and fostered co-dependency. (Listen, I’d read my share of self-help books during and after my marital implosion. Or explosion, to be technically accurate). And, of course, shared traumatic crises like this were perfect breeding grounds for future doomed romances.

  It was clear that someone needed to take charge of the scene. And it was equally clear that it would have to be me.

  “Everyone stand back,” I said. “This is a crime scene. We must not contaminate the evidence.”

  To my own amazement, my pronouncement worked. Maybe it was my authoritative voice or my menacing biker bearing. Or maybe it was that everyone was so brainwashed by watching CSI and NCIS and god knows how many other forensic crime shows on TV, that like docile sheep, they accepted my command. Even Gitta wound down.

  But now I had a major dilemma. I’d entered the premises under false pretenses. How would I explain that to the cops? And if I called the cops on my cell, they’d know my real identity immediately. I assumed the patients’ phones were confiscated upon check-in, since Gitta had called me from a landline in the facility. That left the two staff people.

  The woman was trying to pry the prickly pairs apart. I turned to the man, who was now pacing back and forth, taking deep breaths. He was a sandy-haired surfer type, dressed in board shorts and a t-shirt.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Sandy,” he said.

  Sometimes life totally lacked irony. It was disconcerting, a bizarre twist in the universe that I had not yet come to wrap my mind around.

  “Sandy, will you please call 911,” I said.

  “Uh, sure, dude.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched the numbers. Then he reported the details in a perfectly professional manner, thus restoring order to my ironic world.

  “I’d better call the CEO and Medical Director, too,” he said, demonstrating a keen grasp of the organizational culture. Namely, his bosses would have his ass if he left them out of the loop. He stabbed at his screen some more as the sun beat down overhead.

  Figuring we had a couple minutes before the officers and the officials arrived, I took the time to more closely examine the body and the scene.

  The boy’s Nikes were scuffed, and the
bottoms of his jeans were frayed. He wore a checked, short-sleeved button-down shirt that was a far cry from American Eagle or whatever else was the height of current teen fashion. All in all, he was not the picture of affluence that befit Boca in general and The Oasis in particular.

  While the boy’s left hand was splayed on the empty Coke bottle, his right hand clutched some torn sheets of paper. They looked like newsprint. I bent and peered closer. They weren’t a newspaper—they were pages from a phone book. The Yellow Pages. The R’s, though I couldn’t make out more detail than that.

  Where was the rest of the book? Had he torn these pages out and left the book elsewhere—or had he and the killer fought over it?

  The grass around the body was trampled, and the hedges were crushed as though someone had fallen into them. Apparently, there had been a struggle. The kid hadn’t just been laying there sunbathing when someone came along and stabbed him.

  I heard rustling in the hedges.

  “Dammit, with all these crises, I may have to cancel my annual vacation to Italy,” a woman’s husky voice said.

  “That’s the least of our problems right now, Maria,” a man replied, panting for breath.

  The two came around the corner of the tall, dense foliage. The man appeared to be in his forties. So did his body mass index. Rivulets of sweat poured down his face, and his white shirt was drenched. He was hardly the image of health that you’d think The Oasis would want to project. Irony was intact. But I feared we’d have another dead body any minute.

  The woman appeared to be younger, although you never could tell in Boca. She wore a butter-yellow suit that matched her shoulder-length hair, topped by a white doctor’s coat with “Maria Stillwater, MD” stitched on the pocket. Maybe she could save her companion in the event of a heart attack.