by Don Donovan
Once the sweet, sweet music permeated the room, she maneuvered herself up to her front window, to a spot between two chairs. She drew the drapes open a couple of feet. The window afforded her a view of her quiet residential street, Northwest Tenth Avenue, and in the distance, a few of the skyscrapers of downtown Miami.
Binoculars rested on an occasional table next to one of the chairs. She took them and began scanning first the street, then downtown. This often proved to be a soothing practice whenever she found herself in the grip of fierce pain. It allowed her to stare up and down the peaceful street and at the sparkling lights of downtown a mile or two away. Her imagination took over and as the Giselle introduction segued into the entrée joyeuse, she briefly allowed herself one thought, one which she customarily no longer allowed: if only that Ukrainian cocksucker hadn't deliberately dropped me.
Her pain subsided somewhat and this would normally be her cue to head back to bed, but the music had overtaken her and she sat glassy-eyed, staring out the window, binoculars on her lap.
A car slowed down as it passed her house and pulled up to the curb in front of the house next door, to her right. This was most unusual, even for that house. The Cuban guy who lived in it was trash, coming and going with all kinds of unsavory people. She had him pegged as some kind of drug dealer, no doubt, and this was probably some douchebag coming to make a pickup.
First thing she noticed was no one got out of the car right away. Up came the binoculars. The car was a Chrysler Sebring, a positively dreadful vehicle if ever there was one. Mostly manufactured for the rental market, according to an article she had read online, whiling away one of her days. The binoculars dipped down a little. The overhead street light cast a little glow on the plate. Tennessee. She noted the number. It ended with three sevens. Lucky sevens.
It has to be a rental, she thought. Why the hell would anyone from Tennessee drive all the way down here to Little Havana at four o'clock in the morning? A drug deal? Quite possibly, but then she remembered that same article about rental cars in which was mentioned a certain county in Tennessee as sort of home base for issuing license plates to many rental car companies. This was despite the fact the companies aren't located there and the cars seldom if ever drive on those county roads. Sort of the same way Delaware is home to a lot of corporations who do no business whatever in that state.
A man got out and walked toward the house next door. She turned the binoculars on him. Hmm. Anglo. Looks like a real hardass. Kind of ugly, mean in a way. The drug dealer theory is looking good right about now.
On his way to the door, she saw him flip the back of his shirt upward so that it hung on something sticking up from his rear waistband.
A gun! she thought. Maybe it's a gun! Maybe he's going there to rob them of drugs or something! Maybe he's going to —
Someone answered his knock and let him in, although she didn't really have a good view of her neighbor's front door. There was still no other activity on the street.
The meds were sliding into effect. She wondered what was happening inside the house next door as she let her binoculars drift back toward downtown and its enchanting lights. She tried to imagine who was behind each of those tiny illuminated windows, what horrible things they were doing at this hour, whether they were trying to —
The explosion jolted her back to the world. It came from the house next door. A loud boom! She damn near dropped the binoculars. Then — another one! Several more reports at a lower volume. Shots! They have to be shots! Gunshots! My God! What the hell —
Just as this hit home to her, all fell silent.
A minute later, the same man came running out of the house toward his car, carrying a bag of some kind — a backpack, something like that. He leapt into his Sebring and drove away with the lights out.
She wheeled herself frantically toward the telephone, where she began dialing 911. She dialed 9-1 and paused. Her gaze was stuck on the phone in her hand. The Bolshoi Orchestra played on in her darkness — oh, so beautifully. She found herself unable to move. The Roxy was now fully operational, fully in control. Her muscles relaxed — strange, she thought, since there were obviously maniacs right next door blowing each other to kingdom come.
Gradually, a thought came to her. She considered it, then slowly replaced the phone in its cradle.
A thought. That's all it was now, but somewhere deep inside her, beyond the Roxy haze, she knew the idea would come later.
6
Logan
Islamorada, Florida
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
4:55 PM
BY THE TIME I GOT TO ISLAMORADA, the rain had stopped. It came down pretty good almost all the way up, making for slow going. Water puddled all over US 1 and cars slowed to a maddening thirty miles an hour in many spots along the two-lane artery that ran the length of the Florida Keys.
Islamorada itself is usually a traffic nightmare, rain or shine. Fourteen stressful fucking miles of no passing and God forbid you should get stuck behind someone crawling along towing a boat. By the time I hit Lorelei's, all I wanted to do was relax.
It's an indoor-outdoor waterfront bar, good-sized, and on this particular day, jam-packed now that the rain had let up. Tourists and locals were indistinguishable from one another since it seemed like everyone adhered to the same dress code: cargo shorts and either T-shirts or Hawaiian shirts on the men and short shorts and tank tops or T-shirts for the women. Nobody was yelling, but when you have that many people talking at the same time, they're going to raise their voices to be heard, even if it's just across the table or on the next barstool. When you have that, things are going to be loud. Really loud. Despite the volume, the place vibed good times.
I found the last remaining seat at the bar and ordered a bottle of beer. Just as it arrived, so did she.
A broad-shouldered man stood slightly behind her with his hands on the rear grips of her wheelchair. I put him in his mid-forties and her in her late twenties. She looked to be Cuban — or Hispanic anyway, the man Anglo. Despite my guess at her age, her curly hair showed tiny flecks of premature graying, and there were a lot of years in her face, as well as in certain key areas of her lean body, but it didn't detract from her natural good looks. Not too long ago — maybe just a couple of years — she was probably very pretty, even beautiful. Her hands, with long, slender fingers and lacquered nails, were gorgeous.
"Logan?" she said, and I nodded. "Let's see if we can find a table. I don't feel like shouting up at you from this chair." Her English was perfect, without accent. Probably American-born.
She followed me and my beer to a vacant table on the outer perimeter, expertly wheeling the chair herself, not being pushed by the man with her. The waitress showed up surprisingly fast. The woman ordered a glass of wine. Her male companion stood about fifteen feet away, near the edge of the patio, out of earshot.
"So what's the deal?" I said, raising my voice a little to be heard over the racket that covered the whole place like a tent. "Why are we here?"
"We're here," she said, "because a noisy joint like this makes it hard to hear the person right in front of you, much less the person at the next table. Everybody's too busy trying to hear each other to pay attention to us and our conversation."
"Who are you and why are you accusing me of murder or whatever?"
A knowing look came over her face. "Ah, it's not 'whatever', Logan," she said. "It's murder. Plain and simple. You know, as in, you fire a gun at somebody, the bullet hits them, and they die. You did it and I know you did it."
"Who are you?"
"I told you on the phone. My name is Laura Lee."
"Okay … Laura Lee … mind telling me what this murder is I'm supposed to have committed?"
"Well, of course you committed it or you wouldn't be here now, would you." It wasn't a question.
I gave her an answer anyway. "I didn't commit any murder. I'm here because it's not every day I get a phone call from someone accusing me of that kind of a crime."
>
She shifted to a more comfortable position in her wheelchair, if there is such a thing. "You see this wheelchair?" she said. "It gives me a lot of problems. I'm in pain a lot and I'm supposed to take medication to relieve it, but I know that shit is just addictive narcotics. Those fucking doctors are trying to turn me into a junke. That's yet another problem, one I don't need." She tossed a wave of her hand into the air as though she were tossing away the problem of addictive narcotics. Her hand reached for her wineglass and she took a healthy hit. "I'm not supposed to drink this either, especially while I'm doing the meds. But you know what? I don't give a shit." Another drink, this time more of a sip to chase her earlier swig.
"So how does that involve me?" I asked.
"Simple. One night early last summer, the early morning of June twenty-fifth to be exact — around four AM — I was having trouble sleeping. I rolled around my house in this fucking chair with pain in my lower back like you wouldn't believe. I was forced to take one of those goddamned pills, and afterward, I moved over to my front window and looked out at the quiet street. Sometimes, you know, just looking at a peaceful setting can do wonders for my pain. Also, if I look out over the tops of the houses across the street, I can see part of the city skyline. I can see it pretty good if I use my binoculars."
"Okay, so you looked out at a peaceful street."
"Yes, but it wasn't peaceful for long. You know why?"
I knew why, and I knew she had me. I started sorting through my options.
She said, "Of course you know why. Because a couple of minutes after I heard a lot of gunfire from the house next door, I saw you running out carrying a bag of some kind, like a backpack or … or a gym bag. You jumped into your white Chrysler Sebring with a Tennessee plate — I keep binoculars by my window — and you took off. With your lights out, I might add."
"Wait a minute," I said. "Tennessee plate, Chrysler — what's any of that got to do with it?"
"Not too bright, are you?" she said with her wineglass at her lips, as though she liked saying it. "No individual in his right mind would actually buy a Chrysler Sebring. And you don't strike me as being completely nuts. In fact, I'll bet money you drove up here today in a different vehicle altogether. You probably never saw that Sebring again after that night."
"So what," I said.
"So this. They make those Sebrings for the rental market. And for some reason, car rental companies love to register a good percentage of their fleets in Tennessee, regardless of where the cars are actually located. Besides," she added, "who's going to drive all the way from Tennessee to Little Havana, especially at that hour of the night. No Cubans up there. So now I know it's a South Florida rental. You with me so far?" I nodded. She went on. "Okay. Then — surprise! — I don't dial 911 like everybody else in the fucking neighborhood did that night."
"And I'm supposed to ask why not, right?"
She ignored my wiseass remark. "What I did was, I waited till the next day." She threw a head gesture toward her male companion patiently standing over to the side. "I told everything to Fuzzy here, who's an ex-cop, and he made a few discreet calls on my behalf. Those car rental companies, they don't like to give up information on their customers. He kept at it, though, and eventually he found the agency you got it from down there in Key West. Took me quite a while after that, but I finally tracked you down."
"Pretty persistent," I said, not showing my nerves. "So what do you want?"
"You killed those people in there. Including that young girl! I don't know what happened to make you want to do it, but I do know the cops would love to talk to you. And I seriously doubt you could convince them it was anything but murder, probably over drugs."
"And you're going to call those cops, right?" My options were quickly narrowing. One, kill this bitch out in the parking lot — and probably have to take out Fuzzy at the same time. My .45 semi-auto taunted me from its cradle in my rear waistband. Option two: grab Dorothy and split town tonight.
"No," she said. "I'm not going to call them. That'll be my favor to you. Your favor to me, in return, should be no problem for you. Do it for me and I'll forget I ever laid eyes on you. Forever."
I put the longneck to my lips and took a hearty drink. The beer was cool and sudsy going down. "What favor might that be?" I asked, suppressing a burp.
She drank heartily from her wine in sync with my swigging my beer. She carefully placed the wineglass in the exact center of the beverage napkin in front of her, then focused her eyes into mine and said, "I want you to kill the man who put me in this wheelchair."
7
Logan
Islamorada, Florida
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
5:10 PM
I KEPT A STRAIGHT, HARD FACE. Now was not the time to give anything away. The Lorelei's crowd still drowned us out to any eavesdroppers at nearby tables. Not taking my eyes off her, I moved my beer bottle from one hand to the other, waiting for her to explain herself. I still wasn't buying into any of this.
Eventually, she spoke.
"You ever go to the ballet?"
I shook my head.
"I didn't think so," she said. "Well, if you did, the first thing you would notice, apart from the beauty of the performances, is how incredibly difficult it is to do that kind of dancing. The precision … the wrenching demands on your body. And what you wouldn't notice, what you could never notice, are the incredible sacrifices each of those dancers had to make in order to be able to perform on a ballet stage in front of paying customers. You would never notice the bloody feet, the broken bones, the endless hours of workouts and practice and the unbearable weariness that penetrates your entire body afterward. Weariness you live with every single day of your life. You would never notice the countless rejections each of those dancers has endured to get to where they are. The years of being told they're not good enough, the years of abuse by tyrannical artistic directors and choreographers. You would never notice any of that."
That little speech blindsided me with its passion. All I could say in response was, "I don't know anything about ballet. I've never really seen it done."
"Take it from me," she said. "Everything I just told you is true." Another serious pull at her wine. It drained the glass. She signaled the waitress for another. "I used to be a ballerina. I was a star … with the Miami City Ballet. I came on board when I was sixteen, became a star not too long after that. Oh, I may have been a teenager then, but the dance was in me, down to my bone marrow, you know what I mean? I was born to do it. From the time I was six years old, when my mother first took me to ballet lessons. I knew I had what it took and so did my mother and my teachers."
I knew what she meant. She had ballet in her like I had crime in me. And our mothers encouraged us to play to our strengths. And now, both of us were out of our chosen careers. "You said you were a star?" I asked.
The waitress brought her wine. She hit it immediately and nodded while swallowing. "I, along with a couple of other dancers in the company, gained fame and helped put Miami City Ballet on the map. The company performed around South Florida at first … Miami, Broward, Palm Beach. But eventually, it was on to the rest of the country and later, all over the world." Her eyes grew misty and started to wander, to leave the table for someplace far away, clearly remembering her time at the top. I eyed her closely. It was contagious. I could feel her excitement as fabulous memories of glittering world tours washed over her. I wondered what it must have been like.
"So how did you … what …" I gestured toward the chair.
"You mean, what happened to put me in this? This wheelchair?"
"Well, yes. I didn't —"
"I know. You're not too sure how to ask me about it. You're maybe afraid you'll upset me. Don't worry. I get that all the time. That's why those doctors want me to take all those fucking narcotics. So I'll forget about everything."
"All right. What happened, then?"
"I was twenty-four years old. At the very peak of my career. Ballerinas
find it pretty rough going as they get close to thirty, you know. Younger, more flexible girls always coming up, nipping at your heels, able to do all you can do and more. And then one night you find you can't execute a particular move quite as easily as you previously could. But at twenty-four, I was still on top. I was one of the very best."
"I bet you were," I blurted, not really meaning to say it, only to think it. She took it the right way and smiled at me.
She pulled a big swig from her wine. She glanced at my emptying beer bottle and held up her index finger, spinning it around to indicate she was buying a round for both of us. Her eyes once again looked as if they wanted to drift off but she brought them back and locked them on mine.
"It was 2009," she said. "About two and a half years ago. Getting close to Christmas. We had just come back from a triumphant tour of Australia. We hit all the big venues. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane … all the rest. You wouldn't think they would be too into ballet over there. I always thought they were a kind of untamed, Wild West type of place, you know? But they're really quite sophisticated when it comes to the arts. At least a lot of them are. We drew record crowds everywhere we went."
"Had they heard of you over there?"
"Honey, they heard of me everywhere. I had top billing and was making top dollar."
The waitress brought our drinks. She grabbed her wine right away. I could tell it was finally loosening her up. She was getting comfortable. The temperature had dropped by a couple of degrees, making things a little more agreeable.
"Anyway," she said, "we were scheduled to play our final date of the year in Miami a week after coming back from Australia. The Nutcracker. You ever heard of it?"
I shook my head.
"Well, trust me when I tell you that to dance the lead in The Nutcracker is a big goddamned deal." She began gesturing with her hands, broad gestures involving her arms as well. They moved freely through the space in front of her. She continued, "They perform it every year at Christmastime and it's a big goddamned deal. For all the years I was with Miami City Ballet, another dancer had starred in the lead. Had been doing it forever. Cherie was her name. She was a few years older than I and had a lot more experience. She was grandmothered in, you could say. Even though I was a star, too, she still got to dance the lead in The Nutcracker. Until 2009, that is."
