by Paul Levine
“Issuing worthless checks, mail fraud, buying, receiving, and concealing…”
“Big deal. Restitution on one, probation another, dismissed on the BRC. I’ve never done time, you can look it up.”
I already had. A thief and a con man with no history of violence. But every killer has to start sometime.
From the other side of the bleachers a man in a red tunic and black boots was blowing a bugle. In the walking ring the jockeys mounted their horses and prepared to enter the track.
“C’mere,” Max commanded, and we turned toward the ring. “Whaddaya think of number two, Radar Vector?”
“I think he’s a big, brown horse,” I said. “And he uses more tape on his ankles than I used to.”
Nobody knows something about everything.
“Good blood,” Charlie Riggs interjected. “By Diplomat Way out of Hawaiian Love Star. Florida-bred. But out of the money the last four races. He did finish strong the last two, however, and at a mile and a half, he should like this longer distance. He may be overlooked and go off at ten or twelve-to-one. So…”
Almost nobody knows something about everything.
“Yow,” Max said, “but you left out something.”
“Bellasario’s up,” Charlie continued, “in the money sixty-two percent of his mounts. Wouldn’t mind laying two dollars across the board.”
“The jockey,” Max agreed. “Never overlook the jockey. The horse gotta have the blood and gotta have the heart, and the horse carries the jockey on its back, not vice versa, but a lousy jock can still ruin a great horse, and a great jockey can get the best out of a fair-to-middling horse.”
Made sense to me. I nodded. So did Charlie. So did Radar Vector, who was prancing his way on the parade to the track.
Charlie started packing his pipe with tobacco and said, “Mr. Blinderman, I saw you ride Pax Americana in the Flamingo a number of years ago. To this day I believe your protest should have been upheld.”
Max’s dark eyes brightened. “Damn right! I moved left, Salazar moved left. I moved right, he moved right. When I took the inside, son of a bitch whipped my horse and nearly drove me over the rail.”
“A shameful, dreadful decision, or should I say non-decision, by the stewards.” Charlie clucked, pushing all the right buttons.
“Yow, you said it. C’mon. I’ll introduce you to the fifty-dollar window. Forget that two-dollar stuff.”
They took off for the stone staircases with the carved balustrades. Purple bougainvillea spun down the mezzanine, clinging to the green-and-white latticework. Hialeah Park was a place of old terrazzo floors and unpretentious lawn chairs, a graceful faded garden of pink flamingos, green shrubs, tropical flowers, and sweet-smelling earth.
I sat on the edge of the fountain next to Citation. He stayed on his pedestal. He was by Bull Lea out of Hydroplane II, bred at Calumet Farm. He won the Triple Crown. I was by a nomad shrimper out of Katy Lassiter, raised by my granny. I was a triple threat, just good enough in baseball, basketball, and football not to get good enough at anything else. By the time I learned that games were not forever, I had a lot of catching up to do.
Maybe I was just a step too slow to ever be good at this. I was starting to feel sorry for myself, which is not the most endearing of my qualities. But let’s look at the facts. Nick Fox was right. I’d been spinning webs for Rodriguez and Fox, and they were clean. They said they’d humor me, take the blood tests. They did, and young Dr. Sanford Katzen, mathematician and geneticist, brought his autoradiograms and his scientific mumbo jumbo to my office. I told him to spare me the lecture about chopping up the DNA and he did. He held the X-rays up to the window and showed me, by golly, there wasn’t one chance in a quintillion that either man’s DNA matched that of the semen from Mary Rosedahl or Priscilla Fox. If that wasn’t enough, Fox said, they’d each take polygraph tests. It was enough.
So I asked Charlie Riggs to spend a buck and hop on Metrorail for the ride to Hialeah. He had agreed, and we sat there, gliding above the treetops, past the marble-and-glass skyscrapers of Brickell Avenue, past the downtown government buildings, through the cheerless streets of Overtown, looking down at the tar-patched roofs and asphalt courts where skinny kids dropped a ball through netless rims. From a distance I peered into the Orange Bowl, my own house of pain. We shot by the civic center, Allapattah, Brownsville, and Northside, and came to rest in the parking lot beside the old racetrack.
The winter and spring dates go to Gulfstream and Calder, leaving Hialeah with the stifling summer season, smaller crowds, slower horses. Like many aging institutions of charm and character, the Hialeah track was also going broke. The summer meet would be cut short, closed without ceremony, and already there were plans for plug-ugly condos around the flamingo pond. Inside the clubhouse, amid ragged, curling photos of Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons and the litter of discarded tickets, an elderly barber sat in the reclining chair of his empty shop beneath a stained-glass window of a pink flamingo. He studied the Daily Racing Form. Just memories now, hundred-dollar tips from grateful bettors in need of a shave.
And here I was, trying to bully a tough monkey who used to steer thousand-pound beasts with his knees, and he tells me to shove it where the sun don’t shine. But old Charlie Riggs, master of the microscope and the anecdote, found common ground with the little weasel. When they came back from the window, I was sure, Max would be rolling up his sleeve and asking if we wanted a drop or a pint.
And how about my personal relationships, as long as we’re engaging in self-flagellation? Ms. Pamela Maxson, where is she now, oh man of many charms? In a hotel room, ocean view. Do not disturb.
I’m sorry, Dr. Maxson is not taking any calls. Would you care to leave a message?
Yeah, tell her she wasn’t that great, either. No, never mind.
Okay, Lassiter, you’ve struck out before. You’ve had good relationships go bad and bad relationships get worse. There’ve been lady executives who cared more for their work than you, new-age types who declared you obsolete, touchy-feely artistic types who found you impenetrable, and a couple of cocktail waitresses who thought you had a cute tush.
So don’t start romanticizing this one. This was weird from day one. First she stiff-arms and belittles you. Then drops you in the soup with a bunch of sicko killers and gets angry when you fight your way out. Next she shows up under the sheets, then boom, she’s furious. She cuddles again, sharing bed and board until she finds someone else. Who was it? A psychiatrist at one of her speeches. Or a beachboy type, Mel Gibson with a deep tan.
Okay, grow up already. She left. Accept it for what it was. “‘Sweet love were slain,’” old Tennyson wrote. A meaningless joining of bodies, a sharing of mutual heat, a momentary exchange of breaths. Nothing more.
***
The ex-coroner and the ex-jockey hadn’t come back, so I limped up the stairs to the mezzanine, the left foot still swollen and angry at me. There were cries of joy and anguish from the grandstand, and by the time I got to the bar, the TV monitor was showing the replay, number two, thundering down the stretch, five lengths ahead, Bellasario leaning forward, talking horse talk, I imagined, in Radar Vector’s ears. He paid $25.80, $9.80, and $5.20.
I ordered a draft beer and was joined by two elderly men in polo shirts, golf slacks, and sneakers. A second TV was tuned to the Yankees-Red Sox game and it was clear these guys didn’t come to drink. One had a hundred bucks on the Yankees at six-to-five.
Five minutes later, Charlie Riggs and Max Blinderman pulled up, laughing, slapping each other on the back, counting their money. Literally counting it, unfolding greenbacks as they walked.
“Jake, buy you a beer?” Charlie thundered.
I didn’t say no.
“Never played a perfecta before,” Charlie announced. He dropped two fifties on the bar and stuffed one in the pocket of the old geezer who was polishing glasses. “But couldn’t resist pairing Radar Vector with Internal Medicine. How could I lose?”
How, indeed?
“Great, you can buy dinner,” I said.
“He can buy more than that,” Max said. “He bet a hundred bucks. Say, doc, you’re not doing anything tomorrow, we’ll have breakfast, study the charts.”
“Tomorrow?” Charlie raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be at the lab by eleven, they can stick me, and we’ll make the one o’clock post.”
“Done,” Charlie said.
The bartender drew a pitcher of beer for the coroner and the lawyer, then delivered a Preakness—rye and vermouth with a dash of Benedictine—for the jockey.
Max sipped his drink and looked at me, his smile gone. “Hey, shyster, that English-bred filly of yours came by the other day to sign up. What’s the matter, she want to graze in other pastures?”
“Thanks for the news bulletin, Max,” I said. “Give Bobbie my best.”
He showed me a shit-eating grin. “Yow, I’ll do better than that. I’ll give her my best.”
I laughed. Not at him. At us. A couple of immature punks in the school yard insulting each other’s prowess with the opposite sex.
“Whaddaya laughing at, shyster?”
“Just wondering. When Bobbie comes sniffing around, should I tell her to skedaddle, go home to Max? Or should I give her a run around the track?”
I don’t know why I said that. Stupid and vicious. That wasn’t the man Granny Lassiter raised. There was no need to respond in kind to his ridicule. Charlie would tell me later how disappointed he was in me. Max told me something else. He came next to my bar stool and stood, maybe on tiptoes, pressing his face close to mine. His breath smelled of tobacco and whiskey.
“Look, shyster, you try anything with Bobbie, I make you a gelding quicker’n you can say Eddie Arcaro.”
“Eddie Arcaro,” I said.
Oh boy, aren’t you big and tough, taunting someone who makes Michael J. Fox look like Rambo. Little guys always want to fight you, to prove something to themselves. If you take them up on it, throw them from here to second base, you’re a bully. Get whupped, you’re a wimp. Jockeys prove something to themselves squiring six-foot-tall models and driving block-long Lincolns. Don’t ask me what or why. Maybe Pam Maxson knows. I’ll ask her. Maybe get the promised therapy at the same time.
“Nobody fucks with Bobbie,” Max Blinderman snarled, turning on his heel and disappearing into the grandstand.
CHAPTER 35
Sublimations
I had the top down and the pedal to the metal climbing our Miami mountain, the great looping causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The causeway soars skyward to let the sailboats pass underneath, and it gives you a copter’s view of the city, sun-sparkled and gleaming. Cruise ships and condos, beaches and sports cars. It is the cinematographer’s vision of the tropical paradise. Phony as a bar girl’s smile.
The Olds roared over the crest, eastward toward the morning sun, and I eased off the gas, cruising past the marina and the Marine Stadium, past the entrance to Virginia Key, and on through Crandon Park into the small downtown of Key Biscayne. The Key is turned inside out. Surrounded by water, the condos and hotels on the east open onto the sea. The houses on the west open onto the bay. In northern climes, houses have front porches. You can walk the block and salute your neighbors. Here, we’re all out back at the beach or pool. The fronts are deserted, out of the action.
I tried the house phone at the hotel. No answer in her room. At least the operator didn’t give me the non disturbate message. I tried the lobby. No luck. The pool deck had its usual collection of buttocks in bikinis, the South American Tonga, alongside heavyset men weighted with gold. But no English lady from the Cotswolds. I stepped onto the beach, my black wingtips sinking into the sand. I don’t know what’s worse, being underdressed for your surroundings or overdressed. It is impossible to wear a shirt and tie on the beach and not feel both foolish about yourself and resentful of those properly unattired.
I checked the grill at the chickee hut, not thirty yards from the surf. Bare backs, the smell of coconut oil, icy red strawberry daiquiris, and the sizzle of burning burgers. But no Pam Maxson.
I tried the front desk, where a slim young man with a slim young mustache smiled at me and chirped g’morning. For a moment I thought I was two hundred twenty miles up yonder in the land of the mouse. The plastic tag on his brown blazer said “Carlos.” I allowed as how it was a fine morning indeed and asked him for Dr. Maxson’s room number. Still smiling under his whiskery lip, Carlos told me he couldn’t do that but the operator would be oh-so-happy to dial the room she might fall off her ergonomic, three-hundred-sixty-degree swivel chair. So I flashed him my laminated, semiofficial badge, which was starting to show wear around the edges, and Carlos punched some buttons on his computer and gave me a suite number, twelfth floor, ocean side. I headed for the elevator and he looked after me. Smiling.
There was silence after the first knock on the double doors. And the second.
After the third she asked who it was.
When I told her, she cracked the door, chain still affixed, and asked what I wanted.
Beaches without footprints, I told her. Eternal happiness, too. But I’d settle for fresh-squeezed juice, eggs over lightly, and a basket of toast with three or four of those little jelly jars.
She unchained and let me in. We faced each other awkwardly in a sitting room tastefully done in muted tropical colors. A sliding glass door led to a balcony with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Atlantic. She wore an ankle-length floral satin robe and no makeup. The sculpted cheekbones still showed their granite planes. Her green eyes were still spiked with flint. Her auburn hair was pulled straight back and tied in a ponytail.
I was too late for breakfast. The room-service cart was there, covered with a white tablecloth and decorated by a vase with fresh-cut lavender flowers. An empty cereal bowl sat on one side of the table and the remains of a western omelet on the other. Two chairs, two place settings, one big pot with two coffee cups. My inductive reasoning told me that Pamela Maxson had not dined alone. I was getting so good at this I decided to ask Nick Fox for a raise.
“Kiss me quick before I die,” I said.
“What in heaven’s—”
“The flowers on your table. I don’t know the real name, but as kids, that’s what we called them, kiss me quick—”
“Before I die.” She picked up one of the flowers, a white eye in the center circled by a lush lavender. “How quaint.”
“The color doesn’t last. Even on the shrub, it’ll fade to pale lilac and then a ghostly white in just a few days.”
“Gather ye rosebuds,” she said, twirling the stem in her hand.
“Something like that. Flowers, people, we’re all a-dying, aren’t we?”
She didn’t answer. I thought I heard the water running in the bathroom, but it might have been the next suite down the hall.
“Coffee?” she asked.
I nodded and she poured into a used cup. The coffee was still hot.
“Business or social call?” she asked.
“I was wondering how you were doing.”
“Fine.”
“Think you’ll stay here long?”
“No.”
“You need anything?”
“No.”
Reluctant witnesses either blather incessantly about irrelevancies or one-word you to death. I drank somebody else’s coffee and stared through the glass door at a tanker three miles offshore, heading south. I wanted to put all the little fishes on the reefs on red alert.
“Pam…”
“Yes?”
“I thought we could talk about—”
A sound from inside the bedroom stopped me. Maybe a dresser drawer closing. I watched the door.
“Oh, Jake. Just come out and ask. There’s no reason to be so sensitive about it. I’m surely not.”
“All right. I’ll ask. Why? Who? What’s going on?”
The bedroo
m door opened and out walked Bobbie Blinderman.
She was dressed in a hot-orange, body-molding leather mini held up by two straps. The shoes were matching orange with stiletto heels. She puckered her orange glossy lips and blew me a kiss. “‘Morning, Lassiter.”
I wished it had been Mel Gibson.
“Jake, don’t look so surprised. My goodness, you’re actually turning pale, isn’t he, Bobbie?”
“As a ghost,” she said.
“Jake, I’m helping Bobbie with some of her problems. She’s—”
“Great, who’s helping with yours?”
“Oh Jake, don’t.”
“Is the little boy angry?” Bobbie jeered. “Somebody steal his candy bar?”
“Jake, bisexuality is quite normal, really. Some of the greatest figures in history were bisexual. Socrates, for example.”
“Elton John,” Bobbie added.
“Oscar Wilde,” Pam said.
“David Bowie,” Bobbie countered.
This went on for a while, like a vaudeville routine.
Pam said, “Henry III.”
And Bobbie said, “Janis Joplin.”
Pam said, “Colette.”
And Bobbie said, “Bessie Smith.”
“Okay,” I said. “I get the point.”
Pam said, “All of us are born bisexual and have those tendencies until puberty. The heterosexual merely sublimates his homosexual cravings in friendship and other social engagements with the same sex. Some don’t sublimate it.”
“I understand,” I muttered.
“So why are you so…threatened?”
Bobbie sat down on the sofa and crossed her legs, hiking the leather dress toward her hips. What was it she told me that day in the courthouse? That I really didn’t know her at all, and the less I knew the better.
“Hey, I don’t care if people are homosexual, bisexual, or if they like inflatable dolls or rubber duckies,” I said. “It just gets personal when somebody I’m involved with, somebody I thought I was involved with, turns out differently than I had supposed.”
