Jake Lassiter - 02 - Night Vision

by Paul Levine

  “If he goes after another woman, it would clear Fox, wouldn’t it? Rodriguez would be just another crazed killer, except he wears a badge. If he doesn’t bite, then I let Fox know the Vietnam War isn’t over yet.”

  “And if neither leaps at the bait? If your theories prove to be a floccinaucinihilipilification.”

  “A flossy…what?”

  “Sorry. Such an ostentatious, academic word. If your theories prove to be valueless, where are you then?”

  “You tell me, Charlie. Where am I if I falsely accuse the state attorney and the chief homicide detective of murder?”

  “Poling for bonefish, Jake. Now and forever.”

  CHAPTER 28

  The Hacker

  Richie Bergman kept twitching his nose, and the sergeant kept staring. “And just who is he?” the sergeant asked.

  “My paralegal,” I said.

  The sergeant turned the volume down on his black-and-white five-inch set. “And what’s his problem?”

  “Sinuses,” Richie Bergman said.

  The only thing wrong with Richie Bergman’s sinuses was what he stuffed into them. He sniffled and looked away. Richie was in his late twenties, skinny as a one-iron, jug-eared, and hawk-beaked. He wore thick, rimless glasses and had a scraggly mustache that looked like a squashed caterpillar.

  If Richie hadn’t acquired an unquenchable appetite for the White Lady and a missionary’s desire to share his good fortune, he’d be a doctor by now, and a damn fine one. In his last year of med school, Richie had a Saturday-night ritual. He would squirt chicken’s blood up his nose and rush into the ER yelling nosebleed. His buddy, a resident in the trauma program, would give him a ten-percent cocaine solution used to contract the capillaries, and Richie would retreat to the lab to evaporate the liquid, leaving pure crystallized coke.

  Richie was too generous for his own good. He told his roommate of the scam and the next weekend half the med school showed up with nosebleeds. Even that might not have tipped the dean, had the lab floor not been covered with chicken feathers.

  Would you believe a pillow fight? Richie asked the dean.

  The dean would not.

  Now Richie lived alone and worked as a computer consultant, which is a fancy name for hacker, though he preferred calling himself a cyberpunk. He could change your grades at any of four state universities or add your worst enemy’s name to the county health department’s list of venereal-disease carriers. For a monthly fee of twenty bucks, he could get you free, unlimited long-distance calls, and for an extra ten, you could charge them to the person of your choice. All of Richie’s personal calls were billed to the Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, including a live porno hotline headquartered in Vegas.

  Richie owed me a favor because I got him probation after he broke into an airline computer system and arranged a million frequent-flier miles for himself and every member of the county commission. The commissioners hadn’t asked him to, but everybody who knew them thought they had, and a couple decided it was a pretty good idea in any event.

  So Richie Bergman stood at my side while a potbellied, retirement-age sergeant sat on his stool at the property-room window and looked us over. “Got your name here, Lassiter, but not this young fellow. Say, son, you just do some time?”

  Richie shook his head and stifled a sneeze.

  “‘Cause you’re so pale, you look like you just did eighteen months at Dade Correctional.”

  “I spend a lot of time in my room,” Richie said honestly.

  “And what the hell you doing with that?” the sergeant demanded, gesturing toward Richie’s right hand.

  “TV. Like to watch it while we work,” Richie said, holding a computer monitor for the old sergeant to see.

  After letting us know what a favor he was doing, and how if the lieutenant would find out, his ass was grass, and don’t forget him at Christmas, the sergeant let us in, and we laid the contents of the locker, M. Diamond Case No. 91-1376-A, on a scarred walnut table in the back of the room. The sergeant returned to the window, and I heard the volume crank up on his TV. Local news. Rick Gomez had the latest on the computer sex murders, as Channel 8 had dubbed them. The latest was that the state’s case against a local English professor had collapsed due to the incompetence of one Jacob Lassiter, Esquire. “No new leads,” Gomez told his audience, his voice filled with concern, “and no comment from the special prosecutor.” Then I heard Nick Fox’s voice, tinny and distant, following me like a vengeful ghost. But he wasn’t talking about the murders. No, it was his monthly crime-prevention tip, filler for the station and free publicity for an ambitious politician.

  “Plant some fear in burglars,” Nick Fox was saying. “Under your windows, plant thorny bushes that bite. Try cactus or crown of thorns. Use the Spanish bayonet, the limeberry, or the carissa, all burglar biters. In law enforcement we think of them as antipersonnel plants.”

  Horticulture, Miami style.

  Richie moved quickly, plugging in the cables, finding an outlet for Marsha’s computer, hooking up the monitor he had brought along. He punched some keys, scanned the directories, found what he wanted, and went to work. I opened my briefcase, pulled out a folder containing the photos taken at the scene by Dr. Whitson, the young assistant medical examiner. There was the body, head jammed into the monitor, eight-by-tens from every angle. There were close-ups of the neck, the bruises and fingernail marks clearly visible. If Whitson couldn’t hack it as a canoe maker, he could always make a living shooting pictures at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

  There were several shots of the room, a couple catching Nick Fox in the background. I studied them. His forehead was wrinkled in thought. Grief? I wondered. Or concern for his own hide? Then there was a photo of Pam Maxson happily digging her nails into my arm and a close-up of the marks themselves, Charlie’s lesson that nail marks often appear reversed on human skin.

  Finally Richie motioned me over and I looked at the screen.

  HELLO, TV GAL. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION—PASSION PRINCE.

  I scanned the page. “Already have that. She talked with other men the same night. Earlier.”

  He punched some more buttons and tickled the machine’s memory banks.

  I CAN HEAL YOU!! I CAN HEAL YOUR WOUNDS AND SAVE YOU, LITTLE LADY.

  OH BOB, LIGHTEN UP.

  NOT BOB! NEVER BOB! ORAL ROBERT. I CAN LICK YOU INTO HEAVEN. BUT YOU GOTTA BELIEVE. I CAN LIFT A BRICK WITH MY TONGUE.

  GO SHIT A BRICK, BOB.

  She had cut him off, checked who else was in the mating room, skillfully avoided a misspelled pornographic entreaty from Bush Whacker, then fielded another call.

  IS YOUR ELECTRICITY ON, TV GAL?

  HELLO, BIGGUS, BEEN A WHILE.

  ARE YOU CABLE READY, TV GAL?

  ‘CAUSE YOU WANNA PLUG ME IN, RIGHT? CMON, BIGGUS, NOT YOU TOO.

  OK. WHATS NEW?

  SAME OLD THING. BOSS DOESN’T TRUST ME TO DO BIG-TIME REPORTING. I COULD BLOW THIS TOWN OPEN IF THEY GAVE ME HALF A CHANCE.

  REALLY, TELL ME ABOUT IT.

  ANOTHER TIME. WHATS NEW WITH YOU?

  STILL CHASING BAD GUYS.

  OH, THATS WHAT YOU DO. YOU’RE A COP?

  YEP.

  HEY, I MEET A LOT OF COPS IN MY WORK. FUNNY, WE MIGHT EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER.

  WE COULD GET TO. A DRINK SOMETIME? YOU COULD COOK ME DINNER.

  I DON’T EVEN COOK ME DINNER, BIGGUS.

  SO HOW ABOUT I COME OVER NOW, BRING A BOTTLE OF SCOTCH?

  NOT NOW, B.D. IT’S INCONVENIENT.

  OH, GOT SOMEBODY OVER?

  SORRY.

  SO WHY ARE YOU WASTING MY TIME?

  ‘NIGHT, BIGGUS.

  “That what you’re after?” Richie asked. He was in a hurry to get home and perfect a system for trading citrus-futures contracts in somebody else’s account.

  “That’s it.”

  But it wasn’t what I expected. Sure, Rodriguez was putting the make on her. But he sounded halfway reasonable. Even cloaked with anonymity, he was just a guy looki
ng for a date, a little miffed not to get one. Not a drooling psychopath. But there was something new here, a man in her apartment when Rodriguez called. Not Nick, his alibi was ironclad. He was attending a prosecutors’ conference in Orlando, returned the next morning. Who was it, some computer chatterbug who beat Biggus to the punch? And Nick thought she was only seeing him. I smiled at that, a pinprick in his ego when I would tell him.

  “Hey, Richie, you know much about women?”

  “Less than most, I suspect.”

  “Say it’s around midnight, a woman’s got one guy in the bedroom, why would she be calling around, trying to meet somebody else, somebody new?”

  “Dunno, maybe the guy in the bedroom couldn’t cut the mustard.”

  Maybe, but we still didn’t have a suspect, and the question was nagging at me. Who was Marsha’s lover that night, and why was she still on the make?

  Richie pulled all the cables, and we replaced everything in the right locker. I repacked my file and declined Richie’s kind suggestion that he break into the county traffic computer and fix all the lights green for our drive down Dixie Highway. Then we walked past the old sergeant, nodding our thanks, Richie sniffling and blowing his nose.

  “Got a cold?” the sarge asked.

  “Virus,” Richie told him.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Bait

  Pamela Maxson leaned on me and removed her shoes, sensible professional-lady blue pumps. I stood on one foot and hopped a step, taking off my battered Keds. High-tops. We rang the doorbell, said hello to my wacky secretary, and left our shoes on the front doorstep of her townhouse. Cindy’s hair, once stained a rusty orange, was now dyed black and cut short with bangs. She wore a white silk kimono tied at the waist. She smiled placidly and waved us in. With mincing geisha steps, she led us past a collection of dried flowers in a green Oriental vase and into a small room set off with sliding paper walls. Silently, she motioned us toward pillows and a table barely eighteen inches off the floor. My right knee, the crosshatched one, groaned at the thought of it. My back, which hadn’t gone into spasm in years, demanded an appointment at Hoshino Clinic in the Gables.

  Cindy said, “I humbly offer my hospitality, lawyer-san.”

  “Still dating Morikawa,” I observed.

  “Tea?” she offered.

  “No thanks, let’s get to work.”

  “Care for a drink? Sake?”

  “Cut it out, Cindy. Where’s the computer?”

  “Barbarian.”

  When Cindy had dated a bearded biker, her townhouse was furnished in Early Hell’s Angels. When she took up with a weak-winged shortstop for the Miami Marlins, her place looked like Cooperstown. Now, her Tokyo-born beau had the Panasonic concession for the Caribbean and Central America, and Cindy was doing Teahouse of the August Moon.

  “C’mon, Cindy. It’s going to be a long night.”

  “If you’re hungry, I can call a sushi place.”

  “Please! The computer.”

  She opened the paper doors and backed out of the room, bowing and shuffling. Oriental music tinkled from her CD player. We walked into the living room, a place hung with colorful silk paintings. The coffee table was covered with red lacquer boxes and bright ceramic pottery. Pam was admiring black-and-white ink prints of little fishes and big flowers.

  “Ito Jakuchu,” Cindy said.

  “Gesundheit,” I responded politely.

  “The artist, silly. That one’s called Fish in a Lotus Pond. Do you sense the mix of humility and grandeur?”

  “Cindy, we need to get—”

  “Don’t you find the brushwork almost Zen-like?”

  “Cindy!”

  “All right, already. Over here.”

  In the corner of the living room, under a painting of more fishes in more ponds, sat her computer. Japanese, of course.

  ***

  “I signed up as Lady Chattery,” Pam Maxson said, after Cindy turned on the juice. “Your friend Mrs. Blinderman was quite helpful.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Despite her apparent hostility the other day, I get the distinct impression she is attracted to you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jake?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why do you become uncommunicative when I mention her name?”

  Cindy rescued me. “Say, Dr. M, you didn’t have to sign up. You could have used my handle, Barely Legal.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Cindy, you?”

  “Sure, boss. With Mori traveling so much, a girl gets lonely. I been online a couple months now.”

  “Cindy, don’t you know there’s a freak out there?”

  “Don’t I ever! I been single a long time.”

  “Jake, perhaps Cindy is right,” Pamela said. “A new name may alert the killer. Perhaps using a familiar handle will be reassuring.”

  I thought about it. “Okay. We start with Barely Legal, maybe switch to Lady Chattery if we come up empty.”

  “Have fun, kids,” Cindy said. “Gotta meet Dottie the Disco Queen and catch the last shuttle to Paradise Island. Twenty-four hours in the casino, hitting the slots, fending off Romeos. Sayonara.”

  ***

  Pam sat, posture perfect, at the keyboard. I stretched out on the sofa, hefting my .38-caliber revolver, courtesy of Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. It’s the air-weight bodyguard model with the checkered walnut stock and the blue steel cylinder, an ugly little five-shot gun with a two-inch barrel. At fourteen ounces, just about anybody can fire it, whether they ought to or not. Every assistant state attorney gets one, along with a laminated badge and an autographed, smiling photo of Nick Fox. The gun shouldn’t scare me. It has the requisite safety devices and fits snugly in the hand, a solid feel. It should be reassuring. But it scares me.

  I hate a knife.

  I hate a needle.

  And I hate a gun.

  A gun doesn’t do you any good unless you’re willing to shoot. You can’t aim at somebody and not mean it. You can’t pull the trigger and take it back. I put the gun down and picked up a four-foot gaff I keep on the skiff. A mean hook at the end, but the whole thing is lightweight aluminum. You could bend it over somebody’s head, he’d need a couple of aspirin, but could still shoot you if he had a gun of his own. Our visitor, if any there be, wouldn’t have a gun. He’d have a sport coat and cordovan loafers and a trendy car. And a closet full of goblins that screamed in the dark.

  I was sleepy from too much sun, and the muscles of my shoulders were bunching into angry little knots, telling the wise guy who used them that he hadn’t read the owner’s manual. There it was in boldface: after forty thousand miles, use an engine to push the boat.

  Pam watched me handling the .38 and said, “We could ask the police to stop by.”

  “There aren’t any secrets in the department. Rodriguez would find out. Besides, I can take care of you.”

  She regarded me skeptically.

  I waggled my gaff and showed her my tough-guy face. Pam Maxson shrugged and logged in. Barely Legal was on the air.

  ***

  It must have been a slow night for the electronic buzz-and-whisper set. Clark Kent said he’d like to come over and change clothes; Katz Meow asked if being Barely Legal was kosher; Camera Man allowed as how he only wanted to watch. A couple of women made connections. Phyllis Ph.D. complained about the intelligence of the men you find on your monitors these days. Bi Di asked if maybe it wasn’t time for a change in direction.

  But no Biggus Dickus.

  I had called the station; Alex Rodriguez wasn’t on duty. He should be home, opening a six-pack, watching TV, growing bored. He should be warming up the beige box, rolling those microchip dice. Come on, Biggus, we’re waiting.

  I was tired and hungry. I checked the refrigerator. Typical bachelor-girl fare. Six cartons of yogurt, some old enough to earn interest at the CD rate. Two cans of diet Pepsi, one opened, two sips missing. A forlorn tomato with no other veggies for company. A can of tuna, a couple eggs. A take-o
ut carton from Joe’s Stone Crab that emitted an astonishing odor. No wonder, Joe’s closed for the season in April. It was nearly Labor Day. The freezer was packed. Six pints of Ben & Jerry’s, all different flavors. I tried Chunky Monkey.

  Back in the living room, Barely Legal was logging out and Lady Chattery was logging in. Muff Diver popped up and asked if the new lady omitted a letter from her name.

  No, it’s a pun, she responded.

  A what? he asked.

  Pam pushed a few more buttons and joined Compu-Mate’s party line. Rita Cane was verbally abusing Señor Slave, who seemed to like it. Another code and she was in the mating room, singles meeting new talent. Charlie Horse said hello and complained about his rheumatism. In the Dungeon, Bum Swatter was looking for passive women. I hoped he didn’t run into Rita Cane; there’d be hell to pay.

  I left Pam there, then lay down on the sofa, picked up the Journal, and got my daily dose of Miami madness. The usual collection of crime stories. Another policeman shot another drug suspect, another three women had their car windows smashed with bricks and their purses grabbed at downtown traffic lights, and another cache of automatic weapons was seized at the airport. Standard local fare.

  Something else, too. A story about how dry we are, and are going to be. The Biscayne Aquifer keeps shrinking and we keep chugging the water in great wasteful portions. We are overpopulated and over pampered. We water our lawns while thunderstorms rage. In one plush suburb overflowing with hibiscus and impatiens, each household uses an astonishing six hundred gallons of water every day. So there is a push on to replace thirsty palms and St. Augustine grass with ferns and satin leaf trees, bougainvillea, and other shrubs that thrive without irrigation.

  As the water table drops, the garbage piles up. Mount Trashmore overflows. Our old landfills leak poisonous crud into the porous sand-and-limestone aquifer. Instead of recycling, we use and discard. Disposable diapers take five hundred years to decompose, many times the rate of our greatest books. Our shorelines are clogged with plastics and Styrofoam. Our fish and turtles and birds become snared in six-pack rings or strangled in illegal nets. We dump thousands of old cars and used tires in places where sludge leaks into the groundwater. One gallon of oil contaminates a million gallons of water.