Dead in Boca

by Miriam Auerbach

  I sit there and sit there. Later, I don’t know when, a truck carrying a family, two parents and four kids, comes along. They ask if I’m okay. I say yes. They offer me a ride to town. I get in.

  Bruce isn’t at the hotel where we were staying. I spend the night. The next morning I take a Greyhound bus to Phoenix. From there I fly back to Florida.

  When Mom asks me how I got the bruise on my jaw, I tell her I stepped on a fallen tree branch when we were hiking and a piece broke off, flew up, and hit me in the jaw.

  I HADN’T HAD the nightmares in a while, despite what I’d told the counseling group yesterday. Now they were back. It wasn’t too hard to figure out why. I’d let myself get hurt again by another man. Even if I knew Lior would never lay a hand on me in anger.

  Well, screw that. I wasn’t going to dwell on it. I had work to do.

  I made my coffee and listened to the weather report. South Florida was now officially under a hurricane watch, meaning hurricane force winds were possible within the next thirty-six hours. The public was being told to prepare supplies to last for two weeks. Okay, fine. I was prepared. As long as the rest of South Florida’s five million inhabitants stayed out of my way, I’d be fine.

  I called information to get Trey Harrison’s home number. It was unlisted. I’d have to catch him at his office when court opened. Might as well get to my office in the meantime.

  Lana was nowhere in sight as I took off in my airboat. She was probably off making her own hurricane preparations. Whatever it was that gators did.

  As I piloted the boat to land, I noted the absence of the usual wildlife. There were no waterfowl, no river inhabitants in sight. Everyone was hunkered down. Soon I’d have to do the same in my cabin. But not before I nailed Junior’s killer.

  I reached land and docked the boat then untied and offloaded the Hog. After I straddled it and started the ignition, I could feel my mojo start to return. The night’s revelation about Lior and my subsequent nightmare had shaken me. But taking control of that quarter-ton machine brought me back into control of myself.

  Once at the office, I looked up the civil court that Trey was assigned to. I called, and his clerk told me Trey would return my call when court recessed that morning. He did.

  “Harriet,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I explained that I was seeking information about the injunction against the Castellano development.

  “Of course I’ll help you anyway I can,” Trey said. “I told you that. Never thought you’d take me up on it. But I’m so glad you did. I feel like I can at least have the opportunity to repay you for what you did for me.”

  “That’s not why I’m asking . . .”

  “Yeah, I know you don’t want any repayment. But it makes me feel good. Okay, I haven’t really looked into this case, because the hearing was postponed after Junior’s death. Let me read the briefs this morning. How about we meet for lunch to discuss it?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  I spent the next couple hours back on the sex toy case. Checking public records in all fifty states on the company’s owner, Slim Cox, I found that he had concurrent wives in three of them. Upon calling him at his headquarters, I confirmed my hypothesis that this was a fact he did not care to share with the said spouses. This was sufficient to incentivize him to do right by my client. Once that happened, of course, I would turn his sorry ass in anyway.

  A little before noon I met Trey at his office in the county courthouse annex on Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach, Boca’s neighboring town to the north. Trey greeted me with a big hug and kiss. He looked and acted as ebullient as the last time I’d seen him, the night the Holy Rollers had performed at the Hilton. His dark brown complexion practically glowed, and his eyes sparkled. Come to think of it, he looked almost feverish. I guess getting saved from the possibility of death row would make you feverishly happy.

  “Great to see you, Harriet,” he said. “I’m starving. Let’s get out of here.”

  We stepped out of the office. He took a key out of his pants pocket, locked the door, and pocketed the key again.

  “Out to lunch,” he said to his clerk, who sat at a desk in the outer office. “Back in an hour.”

  Outside, the sky was still clear with no signs of the tempest brewing offshore. We walked to a nearby restaurant. By the time we got there, we were both perspiring from the muggy heat. We went inside and froze in the air conditioning until our body temperatures recalibrated.

  After perusing the menu, Trey ordered a mesclun arugula salad with shitake mushrooms and raspberry vinaigrette dressing and a bottle of Pellegrino sparkling water. If that’s what he ate when he was starving, I wondered what he ate otherwise. A kernel of corn? A bean sprout? To hell with that. I ordered a cheeseburger and a Corona. After all, it wasn’t like I was planning to stuff myself back into that stripper’s outfit.

  Naturally, when the server came with the food, she tried to give me the salad and Trey the burger. I wish people would stop making sexist assumptions about food choices. Tell me, what’s wrong with a woman eating like a man—and vice versa?

  “So what’s the deal with the Castellano deal?” I asked as I bit into the juicy meat.

  “Harriet, you will not believe this one,” Trey said.

  “What is it?”

  “Castellano was out to build the Great Wall of Boca.”

  Chapter 14

  “THE GREAT WALL of Boca,” I repeated. “Is the city expecting an invasion of warriors?”

  “No. The city is expecting an invasion of waters. As in the Atlantic Ocean. As in global warming.”

  I stared at him. In the dim light of the restaurant I couldn’t make out his expression.

  “Here,” he said, reaching into his inside coat pocket and withdrawing a sheet of paper. “I copied this for you. It was an exhibit attached to the court filing. It’s Castellano’s prospectus for the project.”

  He handed me the paper, and I read:

  Boca Raton in 2100

  The World’s Premier Island Resort

  You’ve known it: The hotter days. The longer summers. The hurricanes. Now the world’s leading climatologists have confirmed it: global warming is a reality. And it’s here to stay. Scientists predict that global temperatures will rise between 3 and 8 degrees by the year 2100. And with that rise in temperature, sea levels will rise between 7 and 23 inches.

  What does this mean for Florida? The answer is clear: the state will be completely submerged under water.

  But now imagine . . . a fertile, vibrant, tropical isle in the middle of the Atlantic . . . a luxurious getaway for the sophisticated international traveler . . . a shining light in a sea of rapidly disappearing land.

  Where is this vacation paradise? Right under your feet. It’s Boca Raton!

  Yes, the very same resort town that today boasts breathtaking natural beauty, an abundance of golfing, and world-class shopping, will continue to do so—into the next century! Long after Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Orlando, and the Caribbean islands have passed from the face of the earth, one sparkling jewel of the Atlantic will remain, a beacon for the world—Boca Raton!

  How is this possible? With Castellano & Son Development and Construction. We envision a massive seawall—15 feet high, 20 feet thick—surrounding the city, keeping the floodwaters out. Creating a self-contained island. Generating thousands of jobs—now and into the new century. Creating an economic powerhouse that will be unrivaled anywhere! And ensuring a place in the sun for our children. And our children’s children.

  An accompanying artist’s sketch showed the proposed wall forming a nearly perfect circle around Boca, from the beach on the east right through the Valley View trailer park on the west. On the north and south, the wall was situated along what were currently canals separating Boca from its neighboring cities. Judging from a
n apparent radius of about five miles, I figured the wall would be about 150 miles in circumference and enclose an area of about 75 square miles. I guess that high school geometry turned out to be good for something after all.

  I put the paper down and stared at Trey again. As a ScamBuster, I thought I’d seen it all. But this had to be the mother of all scams.

  “Was anybody actually taking this crap seriously?” I asked Trey.

  “Are you kidding? Who else but the Chamber of Commerce? They were lapping it up. You talk jobs and revenue, you’ve got them, hook, line, and sinker.” He took a bite of his rabbit food.

  “But this wall couldn’t possibly work, could it?”

  Trey shrugged. “Don’t know. You’d have to ask an engineer about that.”

  “I just cannot believe this.” I took a gulp of my beer.

  “Neither could I. Like I said, I really hadn’t looked into it before today. When I read the briefs, I, well, I just about shit my . . . briefs.”

  “Then again,” I said, “this is Boca—World Capital of Wackiness. Anything is possible.”

  “You got that right. Remember that time the city council was considering saving money by burying the bodies of indigents offshore to create artificial reefs to prevent beach erosion?”

  “Um, actually, no.” Somehow I’d missed that particular screwy scheme.

  “Yeah, my own sister helped nix that one. She’s a schoolteacher, and she raised the question of how this might be explained to kids studying local geography and science.”

  “Yeah, I see how that could be a problem. ‘Mommy, guess what I learned in school today? There’s dead bodies where you took us swimming last weekend,’” I mimicked.

  “Mm-hmm.” Trey nodded.

  “Anyway, who filed for the wall injunction?” I asked.

  “A group calling itself BACK OFF—Bocans Against Castellano’s Kooky Ocean Front Fortification. They’re a bunch of beachfront homeowners who don’t want their view and their access blocked by the wall.”

  Okay. Just as I thought—the rich weren’t concerned about the possible loss of Valley View. It was the possible loss of their own view that had them in a snit. As for the Chamber of Commerce, most of its members probably lived on the inland golf courses, so the development wouldn’t affect their lifestyle at all. But in this bizarre collision of interests, the rich and the poor were on the same side. If the beachfront homeowners prevailed, Valley View residents would benefit, too. How weird was that? And in Boca—Exploitation City? Un-friggin’-believable.

  I shook my head to clear it.

  “So how was Castellano going to benefit from this?” I asked Trey. “This wall must cost billions. Who was going to pay for it? Or who would buy it once it was built?”

  “Good questions. He was angling to make this a public works project. He was mobilizing the support base to take this before the city council and ask them to issue bonds to fund the construction. Just like a road or a bridge project. The homeowners were aiming to head him off before it got to that stage.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Don’t know. The hearing has been postponed for a couple months. Nobody knows whether Castellano & Son will move forward with this project since Junior’s death. If they do, the homeowners will, too. If so, I’ll hear the case and rule according to state law and precedent, as always.” He sighed and ran a hand over his short-cropped black hair. “But you know what? This is the kind of case judges hate. No matter how I rule, it’s going to be appealed. You’ve got a bunch of powerful factions here—the wealthy homeowners, the Castellano company, the Chamber of Commerce. None of them are going to give up and walk away anytime soon. This is going to be tied up in the courts for years. And then there’s the ultimate trump card: eminent domain.”

  “Imminent domain? You mean like imminent domination? Like some kind of quick S&M technique?”

  “No, Harriet. It means the government could ultimately get in the act and claim that this wall is necessary for the public good and then just appropriate the land—both the beachfront and the trailer park and anything else in the way. You know the U.S. Supreme Court recently expanded government’s powers to do just that.”

  I nodded. Yeah. Uh-huh. Sure, I really knew that. Just the kind of thing I kept up on. But give me a break. My recovery from Babeness was still in progress. My clueless persona still slipped out occasionally.

  I popped the last of my cheeseburger into my mouth and chewed it over—both the food for hunger and the food for thought.

  “So as far as people who might have had motives to off Junior,” I said, “it could be one of the beachfront homeowners.”

  Trey nodded.

  “Or one of the Valley View residents,” I added. “Is there anybody else who’s a party to this case?”

  “There’s an environmental group that filed a brief siding with the homeowners. Their argument is that public funds should be used to fight global warming, not to support a construction project that’s based on the premise that global warming is irreversible. In other words, they think the flooding of Florida can be prevented if individuals and corporations become environmentally responsible. They think government should provide incentives to make that happen. I’m not saying they have a motive for murder. Just saying they’re in the game.”

  “Right. What are they called?”

  “FUGGER. Floridians United for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  “Oh, and then there are the engineers,” Trey added.

  “And who would they would be?”

  “The consultants that each side hired to argue that the wall is or is not feasible.”

  “Great.” I kept shedding more and more light on Junior’s life, but the light rays weren’t converging together into a single focal point; instead they were dispersing, as though through a prism. The leads in the case were just multiplying.

  Now I had the haves, the have-nots, the ecological freaks, and the engineering geeks. Where the hell to begin?

  “Trey, you got a penny?”

  “Yeah, sure. Why?”

  “Flip it. Heads, I go talk to the haves or have-nots. Tails, it’s the freaks or the geeks.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just flip it,” I said.

  He did.

  “Tails,” he pronounced.

  “Okay, flip one more time. Heads, freaks. Tails, geeks.”

  “Whatever you say.” He flipped. “Tails.”

  “Geeks it is.”

  Chapter 15

  I ACCOMPANIED TREY to his chambers, where he had his clerk provide me the names of the consulting engineers, which, as part of the court documents, were a matter of public record. The respective geeks were one Mr. Ernest Graves of Graves Geological Assessments, Inc., retained by Castellano & Son, and one Dr. Mason Hart of the civil engineering department at Florida University, retained by BACK OFF. I figured Castellano’s hired shill would have had minimal motive to kill him, since that would also kill what was no doubt a sweet source of payola. So I decided to go talk to the plaintiffs’ henchman instead. As someone standing in direct opposition to Junior, Hart might well have run up against some of Junior’s unsavory business tactics. Which could certainly drive some people over the edge.

  I was feeling antsy. I should have had this case in the bag by now. But all I’d done was go down one dead end after another. And now there were only more paths to follow. And with the hurricane bearing down, my time was running out. After the storm, Boca would be busted. There would be no electricity or phone service. Roads would be blocked by fallen trees and power lines. There would be accidents at every intersection as every road warrior was out for him or herself. Why, a few vigilantes might even come crawling out of the woodwork, although I liked to think that I was Boca’s one and only.


  The storm would seriously impede my investigation. So I had to hunt down the killer before then. That gave me about thirty hours. Craving action, I decided to ride over to the university campus in Boca and see if Dr. Mason Hart was in his office.

  Florida University, known far and wide to the amusement of all but its administrators as FU, was located in the grounds of a former airport. The campus formed a city within a city. But unlike all the other developments in Boca, this one appeared to be totally unplanned. Roadways, formerly runways, angled off in odd directions. Unpainted, unstuccoed concrete block buildings were plopped around, seemingly at random.

  Since it was summer, there were few students around. However, feral cats were in abundance, dawdling in doorways and prowling for prey. I felt like I had entered some dystopian future, where most of humanity had been decimated, urban infrastructure was crumbling, and wild animals ruled.

  Given the chaotic layout of the place, I had to look at posted campus maps twice and ask for directions three times (from the people, not the pussies) before I finally found the civil engineering building, imaginatively named CE. Naturally, by then I was so steamed it was amazing my helmet didn’t blow off my head.

  Just as I removed it, my phone rang. I looked at the display. Lior. I didn’t answer. I knew from experience that there was only one way to terminate a relationship. That was to, well, terminate it. Short of shooting him, that meant cutting off communication. Communicating would mean I was still relating instead of terminating. I turned the phone off and went into the building, the guardians of the entrance hissing at me.

  A directory in the lobby informed me that Dr. Hart’s office was on the third floor. Not having the patience to wait for the elevator, I took the stairs two at a time. Arriving at the third floor, I pulled on the door of the stairwell. It was locked. Fantastic. I went back down to ground level, where I pushed the button for the elevator. It took three minutes to reach the lobby. Once inside with the doors closed and the up arrow illuminated, the thing didn’t seem to move. I felt a wave of panic at being trapped in there, particularly after looking at the inspection certificate and seeing that it had expired six months before. And this was the civil engineering building? I hated to contemplate what kind of hazards lurked in the chemistry department or the medical school.