by Tom Turner
“They frown on me taking swings at taxpayers,” Crawford said. “Know a guy named Nick Greenleaf, Mr. Jaynes?”
“No.”
Crawford eyed him for a tell.
“Why were you at Lil Fonseca’s gallery the other day?”
“ ’Cause I like art . . . I like Lil, too.”
Crawford ignored that. “Talk to me about Cynthia Dexter.”
Nothing moved on Jaynes’s face.
“Can’t help you there,” he said.
“I think you can,” Crawford said. “We can talk in a room down at my station, if you prefer. You know, drink shitty coffee together?”
Jaynes turned and, on cue, the Asian woman thrust another bottle of water into his hand, like a nurse handing a surgeon a scalpel.
“How ’bout a little mano a mano target shooting?” Jaynes asked.
“What?” Crawford said, cocking his head.
“I got a shooting range, room on the other side of the pool.”
Crawford shook his head and smiled.
“You’re not too competitive are you, Mr. Jaynes?”
“Nah, just like to see who I’m up against. I’m gonna take a quick shower and get a massage. We can talk in my massage room . . . I’m not a big fan of shitty coffee down at your station.”
Jaynes walked away.
The Asian woman handed Crawford a bottle of water.
“Thanks, so tell me,” he said to her, “what do you all do here?”
“Well, John’s Mr. Jaynes’s trainer,” she said pointing to a husky guy with a shaved head. “Over there’s Mira, Tai Chi, and Terry . . . Pilates, Gual’s the masseur.”
She pointed to a huge man who looked like a Samoan Mr. T.
“And how ’bout you?”
“Water and towels.”
Crawford wondered if that was all. He walked around the gym, checking everything out.
Five minutes later Jaynes padded out in a thick white terry cloth bathrobe and sandals.
Gual, a square man with spiky hair and a barrel chest, came up to Jaynes’s side. His beefy hands dwarfed the tiny, gold Tank watch on his wrist. Jaynes didn’t introduce them.
Jaynes gestured toward a door.
“Follow me,” he said, “into Gual’s house of pain.”
Gual smiled. He had little Chiclets teeth.
Crawford followed Jaynes. Gual motioned for Crawford to go in before him. The room had thick, dark-tinted glass on two sides.
“Soundproof,” Jaynes said.
So Gual could jump him and start working him over with his gigantic hands, Crawford thought.
The room was surprisingly spartan, lit only by a circular overhead, hi-tech-looking fluorescent light. Crawford had never seen a bigger massage table. Figured it probably cost more than a midsized Kia.
Jaynes took off his bathrobe and flung it over a chair. He had a towel around his waist and turned toward Crawford, his posture military and square shouldered. Crawford noticed again how chiseled he was. He had slabs for biceps, more rectangular than round, but they were show muscles, not the kind you got from working in a field.
Jaynes climbed onto the table and lay facedown.
“The detective here,” Jaynes said to Gual, “thinks I did some horrible, unspeakable acts.”
Gual chuckled with something other than mirth.
“So go ahead . . . Detective, fire away,” Jaynes said.
Crawford suspected Jaynes saw this as an opportunity to show off his dazzling mind to one of his employees.
“Same question I asked before . . . what was your relationship with Cynthia Dexter?”
“Relationship? She was the goddamn bookkeeper at my club.”
“Assistant manager and social secretary.”
“Whatever . . . woman was a nosy bitch who played queen bee with the girls who worked there. Closet dyke is my theory.”
“That’s a little harsh, seeing how she just got murdered.”
Gual’s big fingers were digging in to Jaynes’s shoulders.
“Did I say I was happy she was dead, Detective?”
“I heard you had a thing with one of the girls at the Poinciana.”
Jaynes groaned.
“I got a thing for females, in general . . . so shoot me.”
Gual looked up at Crawford and smiled.
“What about that assault charge?”
Jaynes’s head turned slowly to Crawford, his eyes dark with menace.
“One hundred percent bullshit.”
“You know, that seems to be your mantra about things you don’t want to talk about. I heard you broke her collarbone.”
Gual shot Crawford a nasty look.
“One thousand percent bullshit,” Jaynes sighed theatrically, his eyes looking pitch-black in the dim light.
“What about Misty? The sixteen-year-old?”
“We already had this conversation.”
Then Jaynes pushed himself up, swung around and sat on the edge of the table facing Crawford. His muscles were taut, his forehead red and pulsing.
Then he smiled, retrieved his calm, serene look and turned slowly to Gual. “I want to be alone with the detective.”
Gual left quickly.
“Let’s talk the facts of life,” Jaynes said, after the door closed.
“Okay.”
“You’re the new guy in town. That’s obvious ’cause anybody who’s been around knows it’s a bad idea to fuck with me. Picture the following scenario . . . you take a nice all-expenses-paid trip down to the Cayman Islands for the weekend. You take along your little friend, Lil Fonseca, or maybe your buddy, Mort the fat cop. Then on Monday, all rested and relaxed, you go and meet with Mr. Alonzo at the Bank of the Caymans. He gives you a key . . . to a safety-deposit box.”
Crawford put his hand on his chin and nodded.
“Then what? I forget you even exist?”
“Or maybe, we become fast friends,” Jaynes said. “You know, fellow bachelors. You come over, use my gym, we box a little, go chase women afterward.”
“One big problem . . . I like ’em over sixteen.”
Jaynes sighed and shook his head.
“And two, I’m not really a big fan of Bangkok,” Crawford said.
Jaynes smiled and put his hand on Crawford’s shoulder.
“Charlie, Charlie, Charlie . . . what am I gonna do with you? You really like living in that dump of yours on Evernia Street, driving that Toyota beater to Dunkin’ Donuts every morning?”
Crawford took a sip from his water bottle and screwed the cap back on.
“You know, you remind me of some jock who just signed a $100 million contract. All bulletproof and invincible—”
“Come on, spare me, will you.” Jayne’s eyes hardened, his patience run out. “You’re so far out of your league, you just have no clue. To go with a sports analogy, it’s like a Triple-A farm team from Sheboygan up against the Yankees. So what I’m going to do for you is even it up, level the playing field a little—”
Jaynes took a step closer.
“And what I’m going to do is give you what every cop dreams of. I’m going to give you a full confession, Charlie, so listen carefully,” Jaynes said, and a demonic look spread across his face.
“I killed that kid. I strangled the little redneck at Mellor Park. He thought he was meeting me to get a nice, big, fat check. He had absolutely no idea who he was dealing with. It was so easy. And you know what I really liked about it? Watching the expression change in his eyes. And the sounds he made. You know what, Charlie . . . I liked it so much, I could even see doing it again.”
THIRTY-TWO
“No, Mort,” Crawford said into his cell, a few minutes after leaving Jaynes’s gym, “I think I can say with certainty, that in all my years in law enforcement, that’s the first time that’s ever happened.”
“So what happened after he strangled the kid?” Ott asked, tapping his foot on the floor and a pencil on his desk at the same time.
“He had everything all set up. After he
strangled him, he called a guy, who called another guy, who called two guys, who went and hung him up on the banyan.”
“Ho-ly shit.”
Crawford pulled over on the side of South Ocean Road. He was having trouble driving and concentrating on what he was saying.
Ott just kept tapping his pencil.
“He said he liked it, he wouldn’t mind doing it again,” Crawford said, getting out of his car and looking out at the green, murky ocean.
Ott tapped harder. The lead on his pencil snapped and, without a pause, he picked up another one.
“So what do we do, Charlie?”
“Well, I been thinking about that,” Crawford said, looking at an older woman pick up a seashell a hundred feet away. “I could go to Rutledge and say, ‘Guess what Norm, Jaynes confessed. Told me he did the kid, strangled him.’ And he’d say something like, ‘That’s great, Charlie, congratulations, you got him locked up?’ Then I’d go, ‘No, Norm, problem was he wouldn’t put it in writing.’ And he’d go, ‘Well, then, Charlie, it’s kind of worthless, isn’t it . . . you sure he told you?’ And I’d say, ‘I’m sure.’ And then he’d say, ‘So Charlie, why don’t you just trot him down to the station and put him in a room with Jeanie the stenographer. Think you could get him to do that, Charlie’? And then I’d go, ‘Ummm, probably not, Norm.’ And he’d go, ‘Well, then, maybe you better just forget this ever happened—if it did, that is—you know, keep this little story to yourself.’ ”
Nothing from Ott.
“You know, Mort, there’s only one way to play this,” Crawford said, looking out at a tanker a few miles from shore. “We don’t say anything about it to anybody. Especially Rutledge.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“You understand why, right?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Ott said, “ ’Cause Rutledge’ll use it against us. Chumps couldn’t catch Jaynes even after he confessed. Or maybe spin it like you just made the whole thing up.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
Ott drummed his desk a few more times.
“This is really fucked up you know, Charlie,” Ott said. “Hey, let me ask you, did Jaynes say anything about—”
“Cynthia Dexter? Yes. That he had nothing to do with it.”
“You believe him?”
“I think so . . . but I’m not sure. I’m not sure about anything he says.”
Crawford watched the woman toss a shell back down on the beach.
“You know, Charlie . . . this guy’s a major-league freak.”
Crawford watched the woman put a towel down, sit down on it and stare out at the green, murky ocean.
“Fine line maybe . . . between a freak and a genius, huh Mort?”
“That’s profound, Charlie, very profound.”
THIRTY-THREE
Fulbright and Donnie were in a redneck dive on Dixie Highway, just south of Lake Worth. Or Lake Worthless, as Fulbright called Donnie’s hometown, just to piss him off.
Fulbright raised a shot of tequila and downed it.
It was three in the afternoon and Donnie was glued to a soap opera on the wall behind the bar.
“Look around this dump,” Fulbright said, his contemptuous slit eyes cruising the dark, dirty bar. “Guarantee you, half the scumbags in this place are laid off, the other half on food stamps. Guy over there’s been working the same beer for an hour.”
“Country’s in a world of hurt,” Donnie said, “when people are sipping instead of chugging.”
“You know, Donnie,” Fulbright said, hefting his empty shot glass, “you have a simple man’s way of capturing the basic essence of things.”
He tried to slap Donnie five, but Donnie kept his slapping hand to himself. Donnie watched the guy Fulbright pointed to take a quarter-ounce sip of beer.
“You’re going to rot your brain watching that shit,” Fulbright said.
“Got a problem with The Young and the Restless?”
Fulbright didn’t acknowledge it being a legitimate question.
“I should be doin’ your Za-dukey puzzles instead, is that it?” Donnie asked.
“Sudoku, numbnuts.”
Donnie kept his eyes on the tube. He had a major jones for the actress who was playing the tarty receptionist.
“Think I’ll stick to the New York Times crossword puzzle,” Donnie said.
Fulbright laughed. “Like you gotta fuckin’ clue what it is.”
Despite having forty IQ points on Donnie, it was usually a draw between the two when it came to banter.
“I’m thinking about getting a really nice car instead of a house,” Fulbright mumbled, after a while.
Donnie turned to him. “What? Like a Mini? Or one of them . . . Smart cars?”
Donnie sprung a lot of short jokes on Fulbright.
“Funny, I’m thinking Escalade or a Navigator, maybe a Hummer. Big old gas hog . . . fuck the environment.”
“Your feet gonna reach the pedals?”
That was how it went. Fulbright gave Donnie shit about his brain. Donnie gave it right back about Fulbright being five two, one twenty.
A moment later Fulbright’s cell phone rang.
“Rozzetti,” Fulbright answered, going by his real name.
For a full thirty seconds he just listened.
Donnie took his eyes off the tarty receptionist for just an instant to get a read from Fulbright’s face.
It was definitely another job, Donnie could tell. Fulbright was taking it all in . . . name, address, method of payment, not writing anything down.
Fulbright hung up. A lot of his business calls were one-word conversations just like this one. He’d say his name, memorize the information, then . . . click.
THIRTY-FOUR
Crawford slept an hour. Maybe less. He could never sleep on his back, but he could think on it just fine. So after six hours of staring up at his moonlit popcorn ceiling, he had a plan. Well, actually more like a concept, but one that could easily make the leap to plan with the proper tweaking, refining and adjusting.
He had never had so little at this stage of two simultaneous murder investigations. On the other hand, he never had so much either. A confession. Now that was a first. But, of course, it was totally meaningless. All Jaynes’s confession really was was a taunt. Jaynes saying, “Okay, I’m going to tie one hand behind my back, and still beat the shit out of you.”
The reality of it hit him like a stiff fist to the jaw.
There was no way they were going to catch Jaynes with what they had. Because basically, they had nothing. No DNA. No prints. Nada. Nothing at all from the Bill crime scene. And one lousy button with a Z on it from Dexter.
Even if somehow they caught the guys Jaynes hired to hang Darryl Bill, where would that end up? What was the charge going to be? Murder? Hardly. The kid was already dead. Can’t kill someone twice.
So what was left?
Creative detective work was all he had. That was Crawford’s name for it. Some other guys up in New York might have had a different name for it. Anything from “going rogue” to “operating recklessly outside of the law,” though the latter was a little strong.
The way he had finally caught Artiste Willow was hardly by the book, after all.
The chief of detectives up at the Deuce had called it “outside-the-box crime solving” right before he pinned the Medal of Valor on Crawford’s chest for Willow’s takedown. But the same guy might have called it grounds for dismissal if it had all blown up.
Like most everything, it was all about results.
Like most everything, the end justified the means.
Another case of his, which the press dubbed the Skinny Texas Girl Murders—even though victims number two, three and four were from Iowa, New Jersey and Florida respectively—was way outside-the-box crime solving. And, in fact, a defense attorney for the killer tried to make an evidence-tampering charge stick.
But he couldn’t, because it wasn’t.
So—once again—as Crawford saw it, his onl
y alternative was to get creative. Or else, there was a good chance Jaynes was going to get away with it.
The main thing Crawford’s just-hatched work-in-progress was going to rely on was convincing a certain person—female in this case—that she was the only one who could play the starring role he had created for her. He planned to ask her to dinner, casually broach it, then try to reel her in.
His alarm clock pounded unmercifully on his head at six o’clock.
At the station by seven, he got back-to-back telephone calls from Norm Rutledge and the mayor an hour later. They both used the same phrase; they needed to have a “little talk” with him. Crawford had met the mayor just once, right after he started work. His name was Malcolm Chace and he seemed like an okay guy. They set up a time to meet the next day. Crawford was about to hang up when the mayor said pointedly, “Season’s right around the corner you know, Charlie.”
It was straight out of Jaws. Crawford in the Roy Scheider role, the beleaguered police chief who was reminded every five minutes that the big shark was not just attacking people in the waters off Amity, but killing tourist business as well.
Chace had stopped short of the obvious, that dead people weren’t good for Palm Beach’s already depressed economy. That it was time to wrap up this messy murder business before it put an even bigger crimp in the all-important season. In fact, the mayor’s breezy tone made it sound as if he was saying this ought to be no big deal for Crawford, compared to all the other famous cases he had solved.
Maybe Crawford was reading too much into it.
He was pretty sure that he was going to hear it from the mayor about harassing Ward Jaynes in the confines of his $1 million gym. He decided to head Rutledge off at the pass before he went into full-scale rant.
He was keeping an eye out for him to come off the elevator as he sat in Ott’s cubicle.
At 8:05. Crawford saw him come in. He got up and walked toward him.
“Hey, Norm,” Crawford said, “how ’bout I buy you a cup of coffee? Make peace. Get back to being buddies again.”
Ott chuckled loudly.
“Sure, Charlie,” Rutledge said, “what’d you have in mind?”
“My private table, Dunkin’ Donuts on South Dixie.”
It was about four blocks from his condo, always his first stop of the day.
