by Paul Levine
“Never kill an animal for sport,” he went on. His voice was flat and unemotional, his eyes hooded under the brim of the canvas hat. “Only for food. The Indians used every last part of the deer. Ate the venison, tanned the hides, boiled the hooves into glue, strung fishing line from tendons, and carved bones into utensils.”
“Complete recycling,” I said.
He nodded gravely. “I don’t expect you to kill a deer…”
“Lucky for Bambi.”
“You don’t need that much food.”
“A bacon cheeseburger would do fine right now.”
“Too late for that.”
“Even a turkey on rye, if we’re watching the cholesterol.”
He motioned me toward a path behind the cabin. Behind it lay the blackness of the Ocala National Forest. “There’s lots to eat in the woods. Nearly all your furry mammals are edible. Weasels, foxes, bobcats…”
I must have been shaking my head because he kept running down the late-night snack menu. “Rodents too. Voles, mice, lemmings, rats. In a pinch, I’ve made a stew out of maggots and earthworms. Loaded with protein.”
“Come to think of it, I should cut down on the meats.”
“No problem. Grasses, cattails, pine needles. You ever drink acorn tea?”
“Does it come in instant?”
He grimaced. “I’ll bet you don’t even know how to make a fire out of a spindle and bow.”
***
We were wending down a rocky trail in the moonlight when I got around to asking him about it. “They got any women up here?”
He snorted. “Scarcer than hen’s teeth.”
“Not like in Miami. Boy, we got all kinds.”
He didn’t bite.
“So what do you do for excitement?” I asked.
He hopped over a fallen log, graceful as a jaguar. “You either make friends with the palm of your hand, or you get the hell out of here. Gainesville’s got the coeds, a horny bunch if ever there was.
Orlando’s filled with divorcees from the north, all coming down for a fresh start.”
“A guy like you must wow them with this buckskin bullshit.”
He stopped in his tracks and I nearly bowled him over from behind. I thought I had offended him, and maybe he’d pop me one, but he just put a finger to his lips and cocked an ear toward the darkness.
“Black bear,” he whispered. “Season doesn’t open till November.”
I didn’t hear anything and didn’t have a license, anyway. A moment later we were moving again, Carruthers doing a brisk version of the Tom Cat Stalk and Lassiter bringing up the rear with a city-slicker shuffle, tripping and cursing over every branch and rock in the darkness.
I got my mind back on track, thinking of the role I had to play. A college drama professor once told me to visualize the character to become him. My mind’s eye saw a sweaty-palmed guy in a bar, shirt unbuttoned to the waist, gold chains dangling on his chest. I laid on the sleaze. “Yeah, in Miami, we got your basic panorama of flesh. Every color and shape. We got your waitress types, your business and professional types. We’re loaded with stewardesses.”
My line drifted with the current. Not a nibble.
After a pause I asked, “You get down to wicked Miami at all?”
“Once in a while.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“What?”
“I mean, when you get to the city, call me. We’ll go stalk the wild stewardesses.”
“Too many hang-ups.”
“How’s that?”
“City women. Too many hang-ups. Too much talk.”
“I know what you mean.”
He clammed up again and we walked some more. It was growing darker under the canopy of slash pine and red maple trees. We emerged from one thicket into a clearing only to enter the woods again a few hundred yards away. Branches kept swatting me across the kisser, and my feet were still stumbling on the rocky ground. The air was moist with the sour perfume of fermenting flora, and little animals could be heard scurrying in the undergrowth. The brush grew thicker until we reached a stream. He led me across a trail of rocks to the other side. I only got one foot wet with a slip on the moss. Lousy sneakers.
“So how long since you been there?” I asked.
“Where?”
“Miami. My home sweet home.”
“Couple of weeks. I give an outdoors class at the YMCA every month.”
The timing could have been right for Mary Rosedahl. I thought of her sprawled on the floor of her tiny house. Serving coffee, tea, and smiles at thirty thousand feet, hungering over the keyboard in the eternal search for Fantasy Man, a kind, sensitive, knowing gent who can fix a leaky faucet and share his innermost thoughts. Searching for love and intimacy and commitment and all the other words that have been Cosmo’ed into them. And maybe she found the deerslayer, a fantasy with a nightmare ending.
We stopped in a clearing and sat down, cross-legged, like Indians in a Western. It was a cloudless night, and I could see his tanned face clearly in the moonlight.
“Okay,” he said, “what’s your best choice for shelter?”
“The Holiday Inn on Route 200—”
“This land’s sloped. Figure the angles, so if it rains, you don’t have a stream through your bed.”
“—preferably with room service.”
“Start by finding some good, strong branches for your ridgepoles. There’s plenty of brush, tree boughs, and bark for the roof. Get some leaves to make a bed.”
I hadn’t seen him remove the knife from a sheath on his leg, but now there it was, gleaming in the moonlight. A row of sawteeth on one edge, a smooth bevel on the other, it looked big as a machete.
“You don’t seem to be into this, Mr. Lassiter.”
“It just takes me a while.”
He scraped the blade of the knife against a rock. Some people are afraid of snakes. With some, it’s guns. With me, it’s a foot-long blade of stainless steel. I hate a knife.
“That’s some blade,” I said, forcing a smile.
“Combination Bowie and Rambo. Can chop down a tree or field-dress a deer. You wouldn’t believe how it can open a rib cage.”
I believed it. I took a breath and said, “Bet you could slice out a kidney with that.”
“What?”
“A guy who guts animals probably has a pretty good idea about anatomy.”
“I know the intestines from the liver, if that’s what you mean.”
“Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.”
“Huh?”
His face was blank, showing neither malice nor curiosity.
“Tom, would you agree that ‘woman is the lesser man’?”
“The fuck you talking…?”
“Never mind,” I said.
He brought the blade of the knife across a rock, harder this time, and the metallic grating sent a shiver up my spine. “Flint and steel,” he said. “All you need for a fire. Bring me some dried leaves, little twigs for tinder.”
I unwound my stiff legs and, like a good scout, gathered a pile of forest flotsam, which I dropped at his feet. He didn’t look up. “We get all types up here,” he said. “Doctors, company presidents, retired folks. Even had a couple fairies from Lauderdale a few weeks back.”
“Imagine that.”
“Not too many lawyers.”
“Be thankful for small blessings.”
Little sparks shot from the blade into the kindling. He leaned close to the ground and gently blew into the pile. I could see his face, half-shadowed, half-lighted in the orange glow of the small fire.
“Most guys,” he said, “when they come up here, they want to know about the trees and the animals and the dewpoint. You want to talk about women in Miami.”
“Just a red-blooded all-American guy, what can I tell you?”
“There was somebody up here a few days ago, a Miami cop. I told him to fuck off.”
“Well put.”
“I hate cops.”
“And lawyers,” I agreed.
“Cop wanted to know the last time I was in Miami. And if I saw women down there. Then a guy in shiny shoes drives two hundred fifty miles to take a walk in the woods, asks the same questions. What would you think?”
“Life is full of coincidences. Sixty-five million years ago, when the dinosaurs bought the farm, all the plankton in the ocean died, too. What do you think of that?”
He stood up without using his hands or breaking a twig. “I think you’re a cop-lawyer or a lawyer-cop, and I think you’d better find your way home by yourself, mate.”
In his silent half crouch, it took only a few seconds for Tom Cat to creep into the darkness of the forest.
Then it hit me. Mate. Crocodile Dundee, but without the charm.
CHAPTER 16
Duck Soup
The Prosecutors. Earnest young men and women clip-clopping along the corridors of the Justice Building, barging from courtroom to courtroom, slinging a cargo of files. Always hustling. Always grim. An atmosphere of perpetual motion, of jobs undone, of calendars clogged. Nolle prosequi, refile, plead ‘em out, nolo contendere. Bring in new batch. Waive the jury, face the judge, try ‘em, minimum mandatory. Carrying concealed firearm, probation violation, back again sucker, revoke probation, bus ‘em to Raiford. Jury trial, six honest baffled souls, reasonable doubt, let ‘em go, catch you later. Stack ‘em up and move ‘em through.
The Accused. In the corridors, accompanied by uniformed county-jail guards, filing in from the holding cells. The funnel of law enforcement pours out its refuse here. Some bewildered first-timers, shackled at the feet, shuffling into court, eyes darting toward the gallery for a friendly face. Then the hard guys, still swaggering despite the chains, putting on that street-wise cool as a shell against the world.
The Civil Servants. Drab halls jammed with the faceless players in the game of crime and punishment. An army of workers from a dozen state agencies scooting through the building, feeding the monster. Social workers, probation officers, drug counselors, victim advocates, all committed to the impossible task of imposing order on the bedlam of the American city. In cramped offices overhead, an invisible legion of administrators, secretaries, and file clerks push the paper, stuff the files, and record every twist and turn of the swirling universe called the criminal justice system. Your Tax Dollars at Work.
I squished along the corridor, my wet high-tops leaving a perfect trail of tread on tile. Nick Fox’s receptionist gave me a look reserved for unshaven men in soggy clothes who interrupt the boss’s breakfast before the nine a.m. staff meeting. I didn’t wait for an invitation to join the great man in his inner office.
He had company.
“You know Commissioner Caycedo’s new Lincoln?” Fox asked. He sat at his desk, a linen napkin jammed into his already tight collar, protecting his white-on-white shirt and burgundy power tie. In front of him was a serving tray with a plate of eggs Benedict, a glass of orange juice, and a pitcher of steaming coffee.
Alex Rodriguez sprawled in an upholstered client’s chair, reading the sports section of the Journal. “Yeah. That blue-black number about a block long with tinted windows like he’s el presi-dente.”
Fox poured coffee for himself and did his best to ignore me. He was good at it. “See, he’s got the car, maybe two weeks, doesn’t even have pecker tracks on the velour. Every antitheft device known to Detroit, the kill switch, the remote alarm, the fuel-line switch, the cane hook, the portable motion sensor, the telephone-activated alarm, the window beeper.”
“I think I see this coming,” Rodriguez said, still reading the box scores.
Fox sliced into a poached egg and a dollop of yolk squirted out.
“But all that electronic shit doesn’t do any good if you just double-park in front of Manny Diaz’s restaurant—”
“El Pollo Loco.”
“—and leave the car running, door open.”
“Uh-oh. I picture it now,” Rodriguez said, cracking a grin.
“So the commissioner waddles into the kitchen to collect the week’s bolita receipts. He still would have been okay, but then he stops for a media noche on the way out with a side of frijoles negros and a little flan for dessert.”
“Bad for his heart, if he had any.”
“So he’s wiping the grease off his chin just in time to see some jackrabbit hop into the Lincoln and tear down Calle Ocho.” Fox paused, sipped the coffee, and continued, “Now the fat fuck’s busting my chops.”
Rodriguez nodded solicitously. “What’s he expect you to do, call out the National Guard?”
“A major crusade against grand theft auto. It’ll be his theme for the next election. He’s got the figures. Thirty-six thousand stolen cars a year in Dade alone, a hundred a day. In the course of a year, one out of every fifty cars in the county is snatched. He figures every voter either is a victim or knows someone who is.”
Rodriguez smiled with appreciation. “Caycedo might be fat, ugly, and crooked, pero el no es estupido.”
“Plus he wants his car back.”
“Lots of luck.” Rodriguez laughed. “It’s probably on a boat to the Dominican Republic.”
Fox took a swallow of his orange juice. “Nah, we found it last night. Fished a local doper out of a canal and the divers came across the Lincoln by accident. Radio and tape player ripped off, nothing else missing, car in twelve feet of muck.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “Your crack addicts got no respect for value.”
Fox looked up, well fed and delighted with himself. “Yo, Jakie. You look like shit. What’s that, mistletoe in your hair?”
Rodriguez put down the newspaper and laughed. “Jake’s a happy camper, aincha, Jake? Been earning his merit badge from some a-hole in the woods. I’ll bet Jake spent the night with him. Separate sleeping bags, I hope.”
I squeaked over to the window and caught a fine view of morning rush hour above the trestles of the interstate. “Is this what you guys do all day? Wait for me to make a fool of myself?”
“Doesn’t take all day,” Nick Fox answered.
Rodriguez giggled. “Hey, Jake, what’s the difference between a porcupine and two lawyers in a Porsche?”
I didn’t say a word.
“On a porcupine the pricks are on the outside.”
“Ole Jakie doesn’t have a Porsche,” Fox said. “Drives a rusted relic of his youth that—”
“Has six hundred miles more on the odometer today than yesterday,” I said. “Alex, your pal Tom Carruthers doesn’t believe in sleeping bags. Likes to sleep in trees and hump white-tailed deer.”
“Told you he was a hard case,” Rodriguez said.
“He’s a bit off center, but I don’t think he’s a serial killer. The professor is a boozer with a vivid imagination, but I don’t see him strangling young women, either.”
Nick Fox’s laugh was laced with derision. “Christ, is that how you investigate? Talk to the suspects, decide if they seem like murderers.”
“Thanks for the critique, but you were supposed to stay out of the Marsha Diamond case,” I said.
“And the Rosedahl case is out of your jurisdiction.”
“But if they’re related, we gotta work together, Nick.”
Fox shook his head. “Jakie, you’re jumping to conclusions. You’ve lost your feel for this side of the tracks, been downtown too long with the fancy divorces—”
“Hey,” Rodriguez interrupted, “I was downtown getting a warrant from Judge Simons the other day—this is the truth—and I’m waiting for this divorce case to finish. The judge turns to the husband and says, ‘I’m giving your wife eight hundred dollars a month in alimony.’ So the guy looks up at the judge and says, ‘Great, Your Honor, I’ll chip in a hundred bucks myself.’”
“Shut up, Rod,” Fox commanded. “Listen, Lassiter, the grand jury doesn’t give a shit how you feel about these assholes. How about collecting some evidence?”
“What do
you suggest, Nick, planting one of your men in the woods disguised as a tree? We don’t have enough to get a search warrant or a wiretap. So far as I can tell, it’s no crime to talk sexy to a willing woman. That’s all we’ve got on Daniel Boone and the professor.”
Rodriguez was fondling his .38, lovingly loading and unloading it. “What about Harry Hardwick?” he asked.
“Aka Henry Travers. I’m going to see him tonight, after I find out if I still have a job downtown.”
Fox drained his coffee cup, tore his napkin loose, and tossed it on the desk. “I don’t like your approach. You oughta let Rodriguez’s boys do the spadework. A couple of experienced cops to Mutt-and-Jeff these guys. If one’s a loony, maybe he’ll crack. Some of the nut cases love to confess. You don’t believe me, hire one of those psychiatric experts to consult with. Shit, the state’s got lots of money for shrink time. I can recommend someone who’ll—”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got someone in mind.”
***
I used Fox’s executive bathroom to shave and wash my face. When I came out, Rodriguez was gone, headed to the firing range, and Fox was dictating the agenda for his staff meeting. I decided the hell with it, just blurt it out. “Marsha ever ask you about Vietnam?”
“What?”
“Vietnam. Your experiences. The Silver Star, all of that.”
He dropped the Dictaphone and studied me. “What’s that got to do…?” He stopped, not liking where he was going. “I already told you about ‘Nam. That’s all I’m going to—”
“But she asked, didn’t she? About you and Evan Ferguson.”
He turned in his chair and looked toward the plaques on the wall. But he didn’t see them, his eyes blank with the thousand-yard stare of a thousand wars.
“Sure, she asked me some things.”
“Why do you suppose…?”
“You know reporters. A million questions.”
“But why Ferguson?”
“Prissy probably mentioned him. They always talked about me, comparing notes, I suppose. There’s a picture of us—Ferguson and me—in the house. Marsha must have asked about it. What’s the big deal?”
