The restaurant was a few blocks down on Ponce De Leon, off the Miracle Mile. There was a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a Bentley, and a Porsche Carrera valet-parked curbside in front. Each was polished in a primary color. The Italians call the drivers of these things “tomatoes.” Apt. I wanted to key all four right in front of their overcompensating owners. Tasha saw me looking without approval.
“You get used to it,” she said. “Miami’s so damn flashy. It used to drive me crazy, now I just laugh.”
The place was called Bulla, and despite the douche mobiles out front, it was a fine-looking space of blond wood and high leather seats. We found two chairs at the mostly full bar. The bartender was a Ronaldo look-alike with comparable vanity. He was long accustomed to charming every lady and less-than-straight man that he served. He greeted Tasha like he knew her, with a hug over the bar, and turned to me with a frown.
“Carlos, this is my friend,” she said. “He calls himself Duck.”
“Quack, quack,” he said. Then to her, “Pitcher of white sangria?”
“Sounds delicious, thanks, hon.” She turned to me. “You’ll love the sangria here. It’s dangerous, sneaks up on you.”
“Thought you had to work tomorrow?”
“It’s early yet. Don’t be getting any ideas, Mr. Duck.”
“I’m full of bad ideas, darling.”
And I almost forgot all the troubles that brought me down here after that. The sun sank in the sky, the day’s swelter becoming bearable. A breeze passed through the restaurant’s open doors. The light had that special golden hue seen only in towns surrounded by water. Much is made of the magic-hour twilight and the palate of soft colors it brings, but it’s the glow that precedes it that is the true seducer. It’s the last, best promise of day, before the darkness announces itself. It’s a time to exhale and to raise a glass and look into the faces of beautiful strangers.
I was feeling downright poetic and my hand found its way onto Tasha’s thigh. My fingertips rested there, not daring to advance farther. She allowed it. She offered a playful smile while we sampled the croquetas and pintxo.
“So, what do you have planned for tomorrow?” she asked.
“We’ll see,” I said. “Probably sit outside the kid’s house, wait till he gets out of school. Follow him and his dad. See where they go.”
“How glamorous.”
“Hurry up and wait, that’s the job.”
“For a boy who hates cops, you sure sound a lot like one.”
“Known some cops, have you?”
“Maybe a few.” She pushed my hand away. “I think somebody’s getting some bad ideas.”
“I told you I was full of them.”
“That you did. Now if you’ll excuse me for a minute.”
Tasha dabbed at her lips with a napkin, placed it on the bar, and pushed her chair out. She turned her back to me and I watched her weave through the crowd toward the ladies’ room. It was up the stairs. With each step men stole glances at her ascending figure in that green sundress. I liked her, in more than that giddy I-might-get-laid sort of way. She had a clear-eyed bluntness mixed with manners that could be so charming in many Southern women. I sipped at my sangria. Wondered what Tasha would think of the ChateauBleau Hotel, and if I had any chance to lure her back there. But when she returned, it was with a serious expression. The mood had changed.
“Listen,” she said, climbing back next to me. “I was thinking about what you’re up to, for the mother of that kid. I don’t want to get the boy in trouble. It’s not my place. It could mess with my job.”
“Not to worry, I didn’t hear anything from you.”
“Yeah, sure you didn’t. You been pumping a source all night, haven’t you?”
“That comes later,” I said.
She slapped my arm. “Keep dreaming, big boy,” she said.
“Can you tell me more about Dr. Lipke?” I asked.
“What you wanna know?”
“What’s he like, where’s he from? I’m curious how a doctor crosses to the dark side. Seems to me he doesn’t think much of the Hippocratic oath.”
“You make it seem so sinister. It’s not. I told you, he’s good to me. His patients all like him. He just seems like a friendly old German grandpa. Harmless, you know? He’s a whole lot better than his partner, I’ll tell you that.”
“Who’s that?”
“Dr. James Crowley, a real cracker, from up in Jacksonville.”
“So, Lipke partnered with an American.”
“I don’t know if they’re fifty-fifty or what, but it’s both of them who run BioVida. I’m from down south, I can smell a racist a mile away, even if he smiles and says all the right things and pretends to respect you. Dude’s bad news. I try to keep my distance. It’s been nice lately, he’s been gone for a while.”
“What does he look like?” I asked.
She raised her eyebrows. “What’s that got to do with this job of yours?”
“I’m just trying to imagine this lovely fucker.”
“Oh, he thinks he’s lovely, all right,” she said. “Probably treating himself to his own medicine. Always running, crazy fit, tall, too damn skinny if you ask me, but he likes the mirror, that’s for sure. Oh, and we started to notice—Crowley only likes treating the white boys. Dr. Lipke, he doesn’t care, he treats anyone, but his partner? His client list looks like a Trump rally. You believe that?”
The thin man by Oliver’s side . . . his henchman’s racist numerology tattooed on his knuckles.... Yeah, I could believe it.
“What you thinking about?” she asked. “You got a funny look.”
I tried to slow my thoughts as they flooded forth. Vic Wingate gets on the story of Carl Kruger, the abuse he and so many others endured back in East Germany, at the hands of men like Dr. Lipke. He follows the story down to Miami, to the BioVida clinic. He thinks Lipke is the story; he’s not expecting to find a neo-Nazi American business partner. Both doctors shun attention. They’re concerned about Wingate’s intrusion, the threat he brings. Their client list, if they hear about it, will be even more concerned. Crowley, the more aggressive and younger of the two, demands they do something about it. Lipke, an old Communist, knows a few things about staying under the radar. Then the writer turns up dead at the bottom of a waterfall. His subject impaled with his own javelin on the floor of his bar. I’m warned, a boy is threatened, and Cass is framed. And then I walked right into their office and chatted up the nurse. I’d probably put her in danger too.
“Damn, boy’s gone quiet on me,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “A long time ago I did some time, for dealing weed. Inside, I had some problems with some white supremacists. Hearing about a racist fuck like Crowley, it brings back bad memories.”
My presence beside her might have been based upon a lie, but that part was too true. My face grew hot. I gulped at the sangria and sucked on a piece of ice. I felt her hand touch my thigh, felt her watching me. I turned, cupped her warm cheek in my hand, and kissed her lightly. Waited, brushed against her lips, to see if she’d return it. She did. Tasha wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer. She opened her mouth and breathed me in. I felt her tongue on mine. A shudder went down my spine. When we broke the kiss, we turned together to the bar with fingers raised for the check. It was already placed before us.
Chapter 24
The glow of streetlight slipped through the crack in the curtains. The quiet in the dark felt alive, suspended. I watched her walk naked to the bathroom. Her ass was athlete firm and high, and she moved with a spine-straight pride. Her smell lingered on my skin, in the sheets, on my lips. It was a rich, musky scent that could not be mistaken for anything else. Like a primitive mating call, it announced hunger. I breathed it in, exhaled, and stared, smiling, at the ceiling. I tried to remember the last time I felt so sated.
When Tasha emerged from the bathroom, she began to gather her clothes at the foot of the bed.
“No,” I said. “Come back
.”
“Told you, I gotta work tomorrow.” She moved to the side of the mattress and leaned over me. Her tangle of hair fell around my face. Her lips met mine, tasting herself. I felt a small wiry hair in the back of my mouth. She straightened up, touched my cheek. “I’m gonna be cross-eyed at work tomorrow,” she said. “Thanks to you.”
“Not yet.”
I sat up and reached for her, tried to pull her back. She resisted, but not entirely. I began to kiss her stomach. My eyes peered up and connected with hers. She smiled me down to my knees.
“What are you doin’, mister?” she asked.
I kissed lower. My hands cupped her ass. I pulled her to me. She gasped and relented and down I went.
Round two exceeded the first. The raw thrill of the first time was heightened by a proven quantity. We knew what we could bring out of each other. With Juliette everything had felt like theater. She took great pride in her bedroom abilities, but it was always once removed, as if she were watching herself from across the room, taking measure of the action. Mental notes on volume, creativity, duration . . . With Tasha everything was present tense. I savored her and lost all memory of past, all worry of future.
Finally she was dressing at the foot of the bed and we were both laughing in disbelief. The room reeked of sex. The comforter and sheets had all been pushed off the side; the pillows were flattened. There was a wide wet stain in the center of the mattress. She fastened her bra. Picked up her sundress and slipped it over her head. It fell across her body and stuck to her sticky skin.
“How long did you say you’d be in town?” she asked.
“I didn’t.”
“Stick around,” she said. “I think I’m gonna need that again.”
“You and me both.”
“Well, you know where to find me.”
“Here,” I said, reaching for my phone on the nightstand. “Enter your number for me.”
She took it and looked at the screen. I saw her face drop.
“What?” I asked.
She handed it back. “You better take a look,” she said.
There was a text from Detective Miller. It read: Your partner is now being charged with double murder. There’s evidence. Call me.
“The fuck you doing down here?” she asked.
“I told you, a mother hired me—”
“Oh, bullshit. I shoulda known you were full of shit. When I go in tomorrow and ask about the Nestor family, what’s the doctor gonna tell me? I bet he says the boy’s mother and father are still married, that’s what I bet. How about it, Duck?”
I stared up at the ceiling, without the sated smile of before. “I have no idea what you’ll find,” I said. “Until you called that kid’s name in the waiting room, I’d never heard of him before. Maybe his parents are still married. Maybe that wasn’t even his father with him. I have no clue.”
“Mother. Fucker,” she said.
I sat up. She stood before me with crossed arms, her feet set wide, like a pissed-off bouncer. The doors had been shut, the latches pulled tight. I wouldn’t be entering again anytime soon.
“Can I explain?” I asked.
“You damn well better.”
And I tried. I started with Cass, my now-incarcerated partner, facing a double-murder charge. I told her about the death of Victor Wingate, and my presence at the scene of Carl Kruger’s execution. I told her about Oliver and the thin man, the guy I thought I could now identify as Dr. James Crowley. The only thing I neglected to mention was the threat to Stevie Cohen. There were enough layers for her to digest. I didn’t need to add that last one, and try to explain my relationship with the kid and his mother. When I finished, she was seated on a chair by the window. Her arms were crossed as she looked out the crack in the curtains.
“You think Dr. Crowley is behind all this?” she asked.
“It seems likely,” I said. “What about the other guy, this neo-Nazi errand boy, Oliver? He sound familiar?”
She shook her head. “I’d remember a man like that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure he’s never been to the clinic. At least while I’ve been there.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry for lying. . . .”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Tasha stood and peered out the curtains to the pool below. “You have any cigarettes?”
“I don’t,” I said.
She looked toward the door. Bit her lower lip, refused to face me. We’d had such a time. It was no mere hookup and we both knew it. Moments earlier I’d been contemplating how long I could stay down here, or if she had any vacation time coming to her, wondering if I could convince her to visit me in the city. Now I was just scrambling to say something that would make her not hate me.
“Tasha, I’m sorry,” I said. “I never expected—”
“You ‘never expected’ what?” she asked. “To fuck me after you pumped me for information?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s exactly like that.”
I watched her gather her purse on the dresser. Her body was stiff with her back to me. She was a proud woman who didn’t allow her heart to be opened often. I sensed I’d inflicted a deep hurt, one that she would try hard to banish from her mind. Just a one-night stand with a lying white boy, she’d tell herself. Connection or not, she’d be right.
“Bye, Duck,” she said.
I listened to the door open and shut.
Once again a text concerning Cass had wrecked the postcoital moment and enraged a woman I’d just pleased. And once again I didn’t hesitate in reaching for the phone.
* * *
Miller picked up on the third ring.
“You got my text,” she said. It was after midnight, but there was no yawn to her voice.
“I think I know who’s setting her up,” I said.
She sighed like I was a cuckolded spouse, always the last to know.
“Duck, her prints were all over Kruger’s javelin,” she said.
“So what? She’d been there before, she probably asked him to see it.”
“The widow, Uli Kruger, insists that her husband never let anyone handle it.”
“And Victor Wingate?” I asked. “I suppose her prints were all over her boyfriend’s clothes too? And that must mean she’s the killer.”
I listened to Lea breathing on the line. “The autopsy on Wingate’s body revealed marks consistent with torture,” she said. “It was badly damaged by the fall, but his sister, Susie Wingate, insisted on further examination.”
“‘Torture,’” I said. “Lea, you do know what Cass did for a living, when she wasn’t working with me?”
“I’m aware that she was involved in S and M, yes. You told me as much.”
“So, doesn’t it stand to reason that any man she was with would also share those certain tastes?”
“That is for her attorney to parse out,” she said. “I’m only telling you what we’ve found.”
“You want to tell me what Cass’s motive was? You’re telling me she went on a murderous rampage and then called me for help in finding out who did it?”
“Duck, how well do you know your partner?” she asked.
“As well as anyone,” I said. “We worked together for years. We’ve taken bullets for each other. You know this.”
“I also remember you telling me how private she was, how little she let you know of her personal life.”
“So much for trusting a cop in bed,” I said.
That jab hit the mark and left her quiet for a moment. I was beating up the messenger. Detective Miller had never been anything but decent to me. I’d seldom returned that decency.
“We’d like you to come in for questioning,” she said.
“I’m still in Miami,” I told her.
“I realize that, and I’m going to suggest—as your friend—that you wrap up whatever it is you’re doing down there and come back to the city.”
“What if I’m investigating something that could c
lear Cass?”
“Then we’ll look forward to hearing about it, and picking up where you left off.”
“Stay tuned,” I said.
“Duck . . .”
“What, Lea?”
“Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Not my style,” I said.
She ended the call with a sigh and no good-bye. I looked at the screen, hated it for being the source of such trouble. I missed a world of no text messaging, of pay phones and privacy, a time when we weren’t perpetually reachable, always on hand to receive the bad news day and night. Without that goddamn device this night would have ended with blissful sleep after rounds of stunning sex. Instead I was up. Sleep wouldn’t be possible. Tasha hated me. So did Lea. Juliette was probably being serviced by one of her Warrior Security studs. And Cass was imprisoned, suspected of multiple homicides.
In the dark hours that followed, I played pillow karate for a while. At three a.m., I got out of bed and pulled on jeans and went out in search of booze. The streets were warm and damp in the night, with a film of condensation over every surface. I walked back to The Bar to find it closed. I remembered that few cities outside New York kept bars open until four. I went in search of a bodega or an all-night supermarket for beer, but struck out there too. I’d have to go without, as much as the prospect of a sober head sounded like torture.
When I returned to the hotel, I stopped by the pool. I hopped the locked gate and went to the edge of the water. The underwater lights gave off an unsettling glow, like a Hockney painting come to life. I contemplated a clothed plunge, but resisted. Instead I rolled up my jeans to the knees and sat on the lip and dangled my legs in. I watched the surface ripple and spread as I moved my feet in slow circles. Contemplated the way the slightest disturbance can awaken still waters and send aftershocks in all directions. Then I thought about all the half-bright metaphors and quotable wisdoms subscribed to the ways of water. Bruce Lee said, “Be water, my friend.” Leonardo da Vinci described putting a hand in a flowing stream, how you touched the last that’s gone before and the first of what’s still to come. Fitzgerald claimed that all good writing was swimming underwater and holding your breath. So said the man who drank himself to an early grave. Step into liquid, said a surf movie I’d seen years ago. Yet again I felt the pull. Those dark whispers that pushed for the final solution. It would be so easy. Just step in and exhale. Let yourself sink. And stay there. Sleep would come then, the big one.
Against Nature Page 19
