by Danny Lopez
I had some fried calamari, a pressed panini, a few cold Birra Moretti. Pretty soon I found myself in a decent little groove. My brain was churning like a steamroller. I made a few searches for Maya. Then I tried variations on Mike Boseman.
Google gave me the skinny on Boseman pretty damn quick. He was all over the web. His fifteen minutes of fame came a few years ago when he promised to bring Hollywood to Sarasota. He suckered the city and county governments to dish big bucks for his movie venture. You’d think he was Steven Spielberg.
Boseman had made a small fortune when he invented a gizmo that helped advance rearview cameras in cars. He sold the patent and came to Sarasota to open a big movie studio. He made all kinds of promises: everyone in California would follow him to our pretty little town if Sarasota was willing to lend a hand. Our starstruck city council was giddy with the prospect of Hollywood celebrities hanging in our outdoor cafés. They threw money at him, two million to be exact. He was going to open a soundstage and bring people in the biz to town and start filming right away. But no one bothered to check his record. The man knew nobody in Hollywood. The closest he’d ever been to a movie was Netflix. He was just another greedy businessman with the gift of gab. He had no company and no title. The Sarasota Herald did a number of stories on him—all of them shiny profiles saying how he was going to put our little slice of paradise on the map. He managed to produce a pilot that never sold. Then the company closed shop. At the center of the fiasco was Mr. Michael Boseman.
The city sued him. He counter-sued. And guess what? He won. Motherfucker got a million-dollar claim and got into real estate. Pumped all his money into condos. When the mortgage crisis hit, it all came tumbling down.
I didn’t even know he was still in town. I’d imagine he’d run for the border, left the country, disappeared just like Maya Zavala. But here he was living the life on Siesta Key. I couldn’t wait to find out what his game was.
I was pretty drunk and was just getting ready to stumble home, when I noticed Holly Lovett sitting at a table near the front of the bar with a couple of friends.
Holly Holly Holly. Of all the gin joints … Holly was pretty without being beautiful, smart without being pompous, liberal without being overbearing. And she was a lawyer without being an asshole.
I hadn’t seen her in three years.
I’d met Holly when she worked with an advocacy group for migrant workers in downtown Bradenton, north of Sarasota. I was working on that story about the Mexican migrant who’d been shot by Sarasota PD. We hit it off right away. We were perfect together. We were almost identical: ambitious, driven, idealistic. We laughed and argued politics and had great sex without too much attachment. The energy between us was tremendous. Then I went to Mexico to find the family of the victim. I was gone for three weeks. Three fucking weeks. When I came back, she had hooked up with this douchebag accident lawyer. Joaquin del Pino. His commercials were all over TV. “Joaquin del Pino, Justice for All. Se habla Español.” Total ass.
Now she was sitting half a dozen stools from me and looking as beautiful as ever. She wore a tight business suit; her blond hair was combed back in a perfect bun. And like always, her pretty lips were painted bright red. She looked great. She always did.
I can be tough in an interview. I can help out some old guy who’s getting the crap beat out of him. I can travel to strange lands where I don’t speak the language. I can look a cop in the face and accuse him of lying to a grand jury. But I couldn’t face Holly. Not now. I was a laid-off, has-been reporter. My self-esteem was in the gutter. And I was drunk.
I felt like I was back in middle school. I wanted out of the bar. I wanted to go home and sleep it off. I didn’t want Holly to see me like this—drunk and down and miserable.
But to leave the bar I had to squeeze right past her. It was the only way out. I closed my laptop, paid my bill, and stood. On the one hand, I was hoping she wouldn’t notice me, but on the other, I was hoping she would, that she’d say she’d dropped her Justice for All attorney, that she missed me, that we should get together sometime. Maybe that she wanted to come home with me.
I shoved my laptop in my bag and focused on the exit—walked the walk.
“Dexter?” Her voice hadn’t changed. It still had that magic timbre like the song of a siren. She turned her body and leaned back on her chair as I passed. “Is that you?”
“Holly,” I said full of fake surprise. “Long time no see.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward her and gave me a hug. She still smelled like heaven. Then she kissed me on the cheek and squeezed my arm like she was more than a friend.
“What have you been up to?” Before I could answer, she introduced me to her friends—two women lawyers. They were out celebrating because one of them had just opened her own practice. I registered none of that, but I latched on to Holly’s pretty green eyes and the red smile that reminded me of sitting with her on the porch of my house, holding hands, and talking of how the two us were going to turn this shitty tourist trap of a town into a place where everyone could live a decent life.
“Grab a chair,” she said and wiped the lipstick mark from my cheek with her thumb. “Please join us.”
I pulled a stool and sat as close to her as I could—my leg touching hers, my arm around the back of her stool. I wanted to breathe her in, take in the smell I’d been missing for three years. I set my bag down by my feet and ordered a tequila. The best shit they had was Don Julio. Good enough. At this point even Cuervo would have worked for me.
“I’ve missed you,” she said and held my hand like we were lovers. “After I read about the layoffs, I was afraid you’d moved out of town.”
I shook my head. “They can’t run me out of paradise.”
“Did you find another job?”
“Kind of.” I didn’t want to tell her what I was up to. Not because I was embarrassed, but because I didn’t know. Or maybe I was embarrassed. She was Holly Lovett for fuck’s sake. I wanted to present a perfect picture. I wanted another chance with her. “I’m working on a couple of freelance pieces. I have a few irons in the fire.”
She rubbed my back. “I’m so glad to hear that, babe.”
Babe? Really?
“What’s new with you?” I said trying to sound as casual and as sober as I could. “Last I heard you were engaged or something.”
She laughed, but it was obviously forced.
“Joaquin and I broke up,” she said. “I guess we were just not meant to be.”
“That’s too bad.” I could hardly contain my glee.
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “But it’s all in the past now.”
“We should get together.” It came out of me like a pro, full of confidence. Bravado. “Let me take you out to dinner.”
“That would be nice, Dex.”
I smiled. I had her. My day—my night—couldn’t have gotten any better. But I was drunk and I had all that Maya Zavala shit reeling in my mind.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have some work I have to finish up.”
“Sure, babe.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll go to Michael’s on East. Remember?”
She smiled big—teeth, squinty eyes, the works. “My God, you remember. We always talked about going there.” She stood and took my face in her soft hands and kissed me full on the lips with just the slightest hint of tongue.
I walked out while I still could. I left my car where it was parked and walked, my legs wobbling all the way home.
It was hard to believe. In three years I had never bumped into her in this little town. And now there she was. And she had broken up with the Justice for All lawyer. I couldn’t wait to hear how it had gone down.
But I had to focus. I had to think of Maya and Boseman. I had to look him up. Find Boseman, find Maya. By all accounts Boseman was a sleaze. What if he did something to her?
No. I was getting ahead of myself. I had to erase the prejudice, clear the slate. I knew nothing
. What Boseman had done before had no relation to Maya. No matter how I felt about him, this wasn’t about busting Boseman. This was about finding Maya.
CHAPTER FIVE
IT WAS ALMOST ten when I awoke the following morning. My AC had conked out. It was eighty-eight degrees in the house and I was soaked in sweat. I had a headache and was dizzy from the booze. Mimi, that mischievous and lucky cat, was lying on the pillow next to my bed. Good morning to you.
I shuffled to the bathroom, drank water, washed my face. Last night was a fog. I retraced my steps. I had been in Caragiulos, gotten drunk, and left my car parked on Palm Avenue. I had seen Holly. Or was that an illusion, a dream? She kept calling me babe. And she kissed me.
Maya Zavala. Right. I was right on her trail. Today I had to find Boseman. I searched around my messy house. My laptop was gone.
The restaurant. I’d also left an envelope with ten grand under the seat of my car.
Fuck. Me.
I didn’t shower. I just fed Mimi a handful of dry food and ran back to Caragiulos. My car was still there, intact—a twenty-five-dollar parking ticket on the windshield. Caragiulos was just opening for lunch. I asked the manager about my bag, a small leather case with a laptop. He seemed skeptical. He went back to ask the kitchen staff. I had everything in there. All the information, the stupid stories I was working on for the magazine, my leads for finding Maya, the info on Boseman.
After about twenty minutes the manager came back. He had the bag. Yes. He had the bag. He handed it over with a smile that seemed to say: you lucky bastard. It was all in there, computer, notebooks, pens, gum.
Before driving out to Boseman’s place on Siesta Key, I drove by the bank and deposited half of the ten grand into my checking account. Then I went home and stashed the other five in the pages of Diana Kennedy’s Recipes from the Regional Cooks of Mexico. The house was so hot, it stank of old wood and that unique sour smell of termite shit. I called the AC repairman. They said the earliest they could send someone was at the end of the day.
* * *
Siesta Key is the little island that made me fall in love with Sarasota back in ’95 when I came down with a couple of buddies from the University of Houston for spring break. I knew I would come back. But in my overactive imagination I always thought I’d own a place on the beach. It didn’t seem so far-fetched back then. Real estate seemed affordable, and I had the crazy illusion that I’d become a well-paid, hotshot journalist. So much for that pipe dream.
I had gotten Boseman’s address from the County Assessors website. It was a large house by Point of Rocks at the very south end of the public beach, the one I never went to anymore because trekking out there, finding parking, and dealing with the crowds took all the fun out of it. I liked nature, quiet. Siesta Beach lost that long ago.
I drove past the village and the beach and turned into Point of Rocks Road and found the house. It was pretty much like all the other houses on the Gulf, but it wasn’t as obnoxious as I had imagined it would be. It was an older two-story place with a lot of wood and character. It was the kind of place I could live in if I were rich. I knocked on the door but got no answer. I stepped back and looked at the small windows. Nothing. No movement, no lights. A late-model silver Jaguar XJ was parked in front of the garage. I walked back to the front door and knocked again.
I went back to my car. It was early afternoon. Maybe he had a job or had gone out to lunch, which wasn’t such a bad idea. I drove to Anna’s Deli a few blocks away and devoured a Pastrami Ruben with extra sauerkraut and Tabasco. It cured my hangover like a magic potion.
About an hour later I went back to Boseman’s place. The Jaguar was still there. I knocked, got nothing. I walked to the side and down to the beach access path. Then I made my way toward his house from the beach side. The erosion had washed out most of the sand so anyone walking the beach had to walk across the backyards of the houses.
I climbed past the private property sign. The rear of the house was all windows. I imagined every room had a view of the ocean. The patio was all stone around a small kidney-shaped pool. A hammock hung between two palm trees. On a table by the pool there was a pair of women’s sunglasses, red and big like butterfly wings. I picked them up. Vintage Dior from the ’50s. There were two empty glasses, one with lipstick marks, a tube of Hawaiian Tropic, and a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
I made my way around the pool to the sliding glass door and knocked. I started to think maybe Mike Boseman had absconded with Maya Zavala. Maybe they’d eloped. Maybe Nick really had nothing to worry about. I understood that he wanted to know his daughter was all right, but really, if she chose to take a six-month trip to Luxembourg with Boseman or some other hack, that was her choice. She didn’t have to notify him or anyone else if she didn’t want to.
When I turned to go, someone yelled, “Hey, get the fuck off my property!”
I put my hand over my brow to shield my eyes from the sun and get a better look. It was him. Mike Boseman in the flesh. I recognized him right away from the photos I’d seen on the computer and from the newspaper article where he was posing with his production manager—a tall sexy blond—and a fancy Bell helicopter parked in front of the new sound studio warehouse of his now defunct Sarasota film production company.
He was leaning out a window on the second floor, shirtless, his shoulder-length hair a mess. He looked like a surfer—a wealthy beach bum.
“I got a sign posted, asshole. You blind?”
“Yeah, I saw it.” I took a couple of steps back so I didn’t have to crane my neck so steep. “But no one was answering the front door. I’d like to have a word with you, Mr. Boseman.”
It took him a moment, like he was surprised that I called him by his last name. He stared at me, probably sizing me up. “What’s this about?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not be yelling it out for all your neighbors to hear.”
Again he just stared. He didn’t look pleased. He glanced back into the room and then back at me.
“I’m not selling anything and I’m not with the government,” I said.
“You with the paper?”
“Not anymore.”
“Do I know you?”
“My name’s Dexter Vega. I want to talk to you about a mutual friend.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I spread my arms. It was hot. The sun was burning overhead. I needed a drink. “Five minutes.”
Again, he took a moment. He looked back inside. Maybe there was someone there with him. Then he closed the window. A minute later he opened the sliding glass door and walked out on the patio to meet me. He was wearing khaki cargo shorts and nothing else. His skin was red and brown and slightly peeling on his nose and shoulders from the sun. He must have been spending a lot of time out on the beach.
He crossed his arms over his bare chest. “Five minutes.”
“I’m trying to find Maya Zavala.”
There was a subtle twinge in his blue eyes. “What makes you think I know where she is?” he asked.
“You’re her boyfriend. She lived with you. I figured you might know something.”
He leaned back and raised his head. He was tall, strong. He looked to be my age, but fit. I could tell he was sharp. I suppose you had to be to bamboozle the county out of three million bucks and stay out of jail all in a single bound.
“Where did you hear that?” he said.
He was asking a lot of questions, a clear sign of guilt. I was on to something with him, but I needed to coax it out of him. Gently. “We’ve got mutual friends. They’re worried about her.”
“What mutual friends? Give me some names.”
I took a shot in the dark: “John and Mary.”
“You mean Joey and May.”
“No,” I said. “John and Mary, from New College.”
He squinted. “What’s your game, man?”
“I told you. I’m looking for Maya. It’s like she suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Her friends are worried.�
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“Maya doesn’t have any friends.”
So he did know her. “Where is she?”
For the first time he smiled. “What makes you think I know?”
“I’m not a cop, and I’m not planning on going to the cops. But I could. I could also go to the paper. Can you see it? Pretty co-ed disappears, former Sarasota-Hollywood exec is prime suspect.”
“Why do you want her?” he asked.
I was getting warm. He sounded worried, or maybe not. I changed my tone, gentle but firm. “Her biology professor at New College came to me. We’re old friends. He told me he was worried about her, asked me to look into it. That’s it.”
“Dr. Tabor?”
I nodded. “We just want to know she’s okay.”
“She’s fine.”
“Where is she?”
“I thought Dr. Tabor knew she was going.”
“He did,” I said. “But he lost touch. He hasn’t heard from her in a while.”
“Maybe he’s getting old. The whole fieldwork idea was his suggestion.”
“Fieldwork?”
“To count those damn Mexican salamanders. The axo-whatever the fuck they’re called.”
I nodded. “So she’s in Mexico.”
“Yeah, it’s all over her Facebook page.”
I stepped back. “I don’t do Facebook.”
“Dr. Tabor does. He knows everything about the trip. He set the whole thing up.”
“Shit. Maybe he is getting old.”
He shook his head. “I’m telling you. He knows more about what she’s up to than I do.”
“Damn that Dr. Tabor. He made me come down here for nothing.”
Boseman laughed. “Hey, I’m sorry about earlier. I get all kinds of assholes walking across my property to get to the other side of the beach.”
“No sweat. I’d get pissed if I had someone hanging out in my backyard.”
* * *
I left Siesta Key and headed north toward New College. Dr. Tabor. That was the lead. I’d thought about going to him earlier, but I didn’t imagine a college professor would know much about the personal life of one of his students.
