by Karl Tutt
“I won’t. And by the way, Dee, I didn’t kill her.” He got up and left.
When I got back to office, Ricky was on the phone.
“Captain Sullivan,” he said, “nothing new. Unless the press starts howling for results, this one could end up on the back burner.”
It sounded too familiar. Nobody cared much about the whores. But I did. I told him about my conversation with Rod. Ricky rubbed his chin and whispered something to himself. Then he turned to me.
“So he says he didn’t kill her. Maybe not, but with his contacts, he could have easily found someone who would. He’s desperate. Wants to be one of the honorables. Well, good for him. This is the kind of publicity that could destroy him. So he thinks ‘why not roll the dice and get the witnesses out of the way?”
I remembered Rod’s hands around my waist, the way he had pulled me into him. Could a man I thought I might have been in love with be a killer? I hoped not, but Ricky was right. We couldn’t remove him from the Ten Most Wanted list. As much as I wanted to believe Rod, it just didn’t make any sense to eliminate him as a suspect at this time. The afternoon drifted into mindless speculation. We simply didn’t have enough information. The conversation moved to my encounter with Teeny and Elvis. Ricky got quiet. When he spoke, my favorite pragmatist was definitely present.
“Okay, Dee. Why don’t you use the kid? If he’s this genius geek, maybe he can turn up something that will get us a little closer. Set him loose. What have we got to lose?”
The answer was ‘nothing’. It made sense. A member of the original Skeleton Crew. Teeny said he had helped the FBI solve three cold cases. For us, this one was definitely as cold as ice. Ricky was right, nothing to lose. I went by Publix on the way home to pick up a six-pack of Kalik. I went to the checkout where Elvis was bagging like a man on fire. His Publix shirt was green and crisp, but he was still in the plaid shorts and the Gillette had yet to meet his face. He grinned and called me ‘ma’am’. Cute.
“You and Teeny come over for a beer later.” I lifted the carton of Kalik and shook the bottles. Then I moved past the counter. He nodded shyly.
I went back to GREAT GESTURE. I was getting behind on my maintenance. I wanted Uncle Teddy to stay proud. I threw some Tide on the deck and ran the brush over the topsides, then waited for the rinse to dry. I got my orbital sander out of the lazarette and went to work on the teak. It was hot as hell, big surprise for Fort Lauderdale in the summer. I decided to put the heatstroke off for another day. I went below and poured a huge mug of ice water and left it within reaching distance. Around four, I was sweating like Niagara Falls and definitely out of juice. I wiped myself down with a towel and collapsed on the settee for a well-deserved nap.
I woke up and opened the companionway. The deck was sparkling like a bowl of fresh milk. The teak would be ready for a coat of Sikkens tomorrow. I reached for the mug. It was tepid and the taste wasn’t quite right. Still, I downed it in a gulp or two. Anything wet would work.
Suddenly I felt a little loopy. The heat, I guessed. No cooking tonight. I’d order in. I fell down on the settee again and was out of it almost instantly. I began to dream.
There was a clicking sound. The man in the trench coat was standing over me. He held his right hand close to his side. I could see the sweat oozing out of his forehead and smell the stink of his fetid breath. He smiled, but it was more of a grimace. Out of the haze I heard his voice.
“God commands me. I do his bidding, but first I must render the attention that you have earned.”
I felt his hands. They were smooth, but damp. The crawled over my breasts like the locusts. He reached for his zipper. I heard it ease down to his crotch.
That’s all I remember until I heard a voice. “Dee . . . Dee. Teeny’s on her way. The beer?”
I woke with a start. My shirt was up around my neck and my nipples were red and sore. My shorts were pulled down to my ankles. I put my hand between my legs. It ran with something thick and silky. I felt something crawling up my thighs. I swatted at the brown locusts. They tumbled to the floor and I crushed them with my bare feet. The crunching sound bore into my brain and their guts clung to the naked soles of my feet.
“Hey, Elvis,” I spit from below, “I was asleep. Come back on an hour.”
“Sure,” I heard him say.
I looked at my fingers. They were glossy with a milky substance. I smelled them. It was fresh and earthy. Then I felt a vague aching below my pelvis. I had been raped. Fuck the dream. It was real. I sniffed the mug. Nothing. Probably Rohypnol, the date rape drug preferred by red necks who couldn’t persuade the ladies in any other way. Tasteless, colorless, quick and powerful. The sonovabitch screwed me while I was drugged. I heaved and wept. I threw my clothes into the garbage and jumped into the shower. I twisted the red one all the way to the left, but no water was hot enough.
No one ever confused me with a virgin, but the thought of that psycho inside me while he grunted and grinned made me want to puke. I did, but it didn’t help. I looked in the mirror. I wanted to see Dee Rabow, the tough detective who could handle anything. But the image staring back at me was ghostly and haunted by fear. She spit and accused. I didn’t think she was going away any time soon.
My parched lips mouthed little prayer that the bastard’s poison seed didn’t leave anything else as a reminder of the horror. My first stop in the morning would be the clinic. I had a morning after pill I’d been saving for a special occasion. I guess this was as special as it got. I choked it down with a shot of Jameson.
I put on a fresh top and some denim cut-offs. That made me feels a little better. I thought about another belt of the Irish, but I didn’t want to mix it with anything that might be left in my system. I opted for ice water, but it didn’t cool me down. Pure fury plunged into me. It was an electric charge that tingled in my entire body and buried itself in my mind. ‘I’ll get the asshole and I’ll kill him.’ That was the promise I made myself.
I heard bare feet padding on the finger pier. I went the companionway and slid the hatch open. On the deck I could see the gray prints of a man’s working boots. An hour had passed, but I hadn’t noticed. I waved to Elvis and Teeny. They came aboard, Elvis still in his Publix shirt and Teeny looking like a life-size Barbie, bouncing, smiling and ready to be adored by some imaginative little girl, or in this case a willing, but harmless, nerd.
I popped the tops on a couple of cold Kaliks and handed them into the cockpit.
“Hope we didn’t disturb you. I saw the guy rushing off of your boat. Boyfriend?”
I gritted my teeth.
“Not exactly. Uninvited guest, you might say. So you saw him?”
“Yeah, I did. Long black hair, sort of slicked back. I couldn’t figure out the trench coat. It’s so damned hot. He was favoring his right leg.”
“What about his car? You see that, too?”
“Yeah, royal blue Dodge Caliber, probably 2010. Need the license? Yeah.” He recited the numbers and letters with perfect precision.
“See, “said Teeny, “I told you. Photographic memory. Never misses a darned thing.”
“Elvis, Teeny, I need someone I can trust. I think you guys are it. He’s a suspect. Had no business on my boat. There’s a lot I don’t know, but this guy is dangerous, possibly even a murderer.” They looked at each other in disbelief.
“Do you think you can use your computer to find out something more about him?”
A shy smile crept across Elvis’s face. “Right up my alley,” he said.
I didn’t tell them any more -- I couldn’t -- but I gave him enough info to start the chase. He had the license plate. If Elvis was the hacker that Teeny believed, he could trace it to a name and address. That, in itself, would be huge. I was sure Rod could get Captain Sullivan to run the police files. See if he had any priors, maybe even check for similar cases on the national register.
One beer later, they joined hands and headed back to the Catalina. He was eager to start. “I’ll
get you something quickly,” he said, “and we’ll be watching. Won’t we, Baby?” She beamed and gave a full nod.
I called Ricky. I didn’t tell him I’d been raped. I did tell him that Abaddon had been on GREAT GESTURE and that I had taken his suggestion to use Elvis and Teeny as a potential source of info. He didn’t say much. Ricky knows me. He knows I sometimes withhold information. He also knows if he’s patient, he’ll get it at the right time. But when is the right time to tell someone you’ve been raped?
I decided to sleep.
Chapter 11
I was in a car that wasn’t mine. I don’t know where I was going, but I was late. I tried to read the street signs, but they were blank. I looked for familiar landmarks, turning at random. But I was drifting in and out like smoke. Something hellish was in the inky void of the back seat. I could hear them scratching, crawling, creeping up my neck. I swatted, but there was nothing. I slammed on the breaks, desperate to get out of the car. I wanted to run from the nameless terror, but the door was locked. I jerked and writhed in the seat, but the handle only clicked. And the things kept coming.
I woke to the stench of my own sweat. I jumped out of the v berth. The silence pounded into me. I unlocked the companionway and pulled back the hatch. The boats swayed in the moonlight. It was full and almost orange on the horizon. There were stars, but they seemed to dull as I stared at them. I caught a glimpse of the Orion Nebula. It should have been beautiful and breath taking. It wasn’t. There was no sign of movement on the docks. It was the silence of the grave.
So this is what it’s come to. A girl like me. Maybe they were right. Maybe I was the she-devil . . . finally getting what I had been earning all along. I was Angie, Eleisha, Lana . . . all of them. Dead and defiled. Women whose souls had been lost long before they ceased to breathe. So where to, now? Another place, another job, some sort of salvation? . . . Or just a pathetic attempt at escape? And could I hope to escape that woman who accused me in the mirror?
I locked up and went back below. I grabbed the .38 and stuffed it under my pillow. It really didn’t help.
I dressed as soon as the sun came up. No make-up, no coffee, no breakfast. I knew I looked like shit, but I had work to do. There was note clothes pinned to the lifelines when I left. I stuffed it in my pocketbook.
I was at the clinic at 8 A.M. Two tests, one for general STD’s and a second one for AIDS. No results for three days. I tried to smile and pretend it was all routine, but the nurse looked at me like I’d been gang banging the New York Knicks. A good rape will do that to you. Fortunately, at the clinic, they don’t ask too many questions. That’s a good thing. They wouldn’t like the answers. I didn’t, either, but the last thing I needed was cops. I could see them shaking their heads. “So Diabla, the damned whore, finally had to pay her dues. Aw . . . that’s a crying shame.”
When I got to the office, I started a pot of coffee. I listened to water draining into the carafe and opened the note.
Orlando Rodriguez. 305 Valencia Court. A small grainy copy of a driver’s licence photo. Looked like a thousand other Hispanic guys in Fort Lauderdale. Could have been Antonio Banderas for all I knew. Still there was something feral and lifeless in the eyes. I studied them for a moment, then went back to the info. No moving violations. No credit report. No record of employment. A quickly hand written note at the bottom. “Gotta go bag some groceries. Maybe more later -- Elvis.”
At least it was something. I MapQuested the address. It was an apartment complex a couple of miles from the beach. A little visit might be in order.
Ricky came in looking like the hammers of hell had been working on his skull.
“Rough night?” I asked.
“I’m getting too old for this crap,” he said, “the lady was needy, damned near wore me out.”
“Yeah, well you have my sincerest sympathies.”
“Looks like you need some sympathy, yourself. New boyfriend?”
I dodged it and handed him the note.
“So this is our perp? Did you see him?”
“You might say so.” I said grimly.
“Come on Dee. You’re holding out on me. How can I help if I don’t know what is going on?”
“Just shut up, Ricky. I can’t talk about it now. You got to trust me. You’ll get it when you need it.”
“Okay, Diabla. You’re the boss. Now, let’s go for a ride.”
I piled into the Caddy XLR. He left the top up, but I wasn’t convinced it would make us less conspicuous. The car was a pure knockout. We followed the map I’d printed and pulled up into a space across from the building. No blue Caliber in the parking lot. The complex was pure Sunshine State schlock. Pale yellow, common catwalks, nothing to distinguish it from a thousand others in South Florida. From the look of the vehicles in the spaces it was populated with servers and secretaries. None of the BMW’s and Mercedes that signaled high class tenants. The pool was small. A few young bikini clad bodies lay in lounges chattering and soaking up the rays.
A guy like Orlando might be a local celebrity, especially if he wore the damned trench coat all of the time. Nevertheless, we didn’t stop. No questions. It wasn’t time to raise any red flags. When we got him, I wanted him alone. He belonged to me and the .38.
We were close to Lu Lu’s Bait Shack across from the beach. I hadn’t had one of their Philly Cheese Steaks in some time. Ricky found a place on the street and parked. A couple of gorgeous twenty somethings whizzed by us on roller blades as we got out of the Caddy. The girls weren’t wearing enough fabric to qualify as underwear. Ricky noticed, but he tried to be casual about it. Unfortunately, he just doesn’t do casual very well when it comes to lovely young ladies. I snagged his arm and ushered him roughly across the street.
We sat at the bar and ordered a couple of drafts. The Fat Tire went down easy. I scanned the dining area. The usual collection of locals and tourists enjoying the view of the beach and what breeze there was. I jolted to a stop. He was there in a navy work shirt, sitting at a table near at the rail. I was riveted. He didn’t look up for a moment. When he did, I zeroed in on those eyes. The night before leaped into my mind, the aching, the feeling of pure filth I had tried to scrub off of my body and banish from my brain. I placed my hand on Ricky’s forearm and squeezed. He followed my eyes. Then he froze.
I shook myself off of the stool and pretended to head for the ladies’ room. Then I made a sudden turn and stepped up to his table. A steel rod ran up my back. He faked bewildered. A heavy gold cross gleamed on his chest.
“Orlando,” I said, “enjoy yourself last night? Or should I call you Abaddon?” He shook his head.
“Do I know you?”
“Do you mean in the Biblical sense?”
“I am sorry. I don’t get your meaning. You are quite attractive, but I do not think I have had the pleasure? I am, indeed, Orlando, and you are?”
“I think you know exactly who I am.”
He stared at his sweaty glass for a moment, then looked into my eyes. The smile of a cobra leered at me.
“Ah,” he said, “perhaps it is coming back to me. Yes, you are Diabla, the she-devil, the one whose sins will fill the annals of perdition.”
My hands locked into fists. I felt the weight of the Smith and Wesson on my ankle. I wanted to shoot the sonovabitch here and now, but it wasn’t the time. Patience, I told myself. If I had my way, that time would come soon enough.
“Good trick with the Roofie. Worked exactly like you wanted. Next time I’ll be waiting.”
“Yes,” he hissed, “the pleasure was all mine. I offer you my sincerest assurance, I will be waiting, also.”
I went on to the ladies’ room. I quickly splashed some water on my face and dried it with a paper towel. I didn’t like the look of terror infused with violence in my eyes. I fondled the handle of .38, then slipped the leg of my jeans back over it. When I got back he was gone and so was Ricky.
A few minutes later, Ricky slid onto the stool next to me. “Followe
d him,” he said, “got into a blue Caliber. The license plate matched.”
He waited for a response. I sank my teeth into my upper lip. A trickle of warm blood swam down the back of my throat.
“He hurt you, didn’t he?”
I nodded, but said nothing. We got up and left Lu Lu’s. My sandwich was still on my plate.
We got back to the office. It was a time for quiet, but after a few minutes, Ricky spoke.
“If you’re gonna be okay, I’m going to see Sullivan. I’m gonna ask him for help. I’m not so sure we’re outgunned. Maybe the Captain can put this case on the priority list. If he can get us more info, we definitely need it. All he can say is ‘no’. I can stay if you want.”
“I’m okay, Ricky. You’re right, we need any leads we can get, but I don’t really expect any help from the boys in blue. You know how they feel about Diabla. I’m their favorite bitch.”
“Yeah, well they’re wrong. I know the good stuff, Dee. Know what’s in your mind and what’s in your heart. We gotta be cool. We’ll get him one way or another.”
He was doing his best to make me feel better. That’s what partners are supposed to do. Too bad it didn’t work. He left. I closed my eyes and a miasma of hellish images danced in my head. Orlando, Eleisha, Lana, the insects and, my God . . . the blood.
I picked up the phone and dialed Rod’s private number. No answer. I left a message and got out my notebook.
Chapter 12
I guess I wrote a lot of shit, but I was in a daze. We had a name, an address, and now a positive ID. Teeny and Elvis had signed on. They were watching. He might slip by them, but it was one more card that might protect my back. Sullivan might cooperate. Strength in numbers and all that shit. I wanted to feel relieved, at least to an extent. I should have, but the feral look in Orlando’s eyes had paralyzed me. I was sure he’d kill me at his earliest opportunity. I hoped that was all he’d do. The thought of his dick inside me again made my hands shake and my entire body cringe.
Ricky called. Homicide was stacked up. Three gang related murders over the weekend. The SUN-SENTINEL was screaming for police action. Calls from the Mayor. Every homicide detective was working overtime and the cops on the beat had been ordered not to ride the streets without backup. They were pulling every known gang member in for questioning. We would have to take a back seat. He did agree to run the files on our buddy Orlando as soon as he had time. Who the hell knew when that would be?
