Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  “I’m sorry. It won’t work.”

  “It’s okay, babe, I drink worse stuff on the job all the time. I’m just spoiled rotten. What’s the matter with the machine?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I can’t get it open to put the beans in.”

  Dusty bounced energetically out of her chair and into the kitchen, uninvited. “Let me look at it, I’m pretty good with these things.” She swiftly examined the machine. “Here,” she said, simply sliding open the little panel. “There’s nothing wrong with it. The beans go in here, the filter there, the water there, and the coffee comes out here. Voilà.”

  “Of course.” Laurel looked flustered. “I just forgot how the darn thing works.”

  “When all else fails, read the instructions,” Rick said. Laurel seemed so disconcerted that Beth threw both arms around her in a warm hug. “It’s been a rough weekend. It’s a wonder any of us are still sane,” she said, sitting down again across from Rick. “I know I won’t be if Boo Boo Kitty does not bring her furry little ass home.”

  “Someone must have picked her up last night,” Laurel said.

  Beth shook her head. “She was here this morning. She and Benjie were playing in the backyard. I was hoping she had wandered in here.”

  “Bet she doesn’t miss a meal,” Rick said heartily. “Cats know how to take care of themselves. She’ll come back. Chuckles is almost fifteen years old, and he has never missed a meal.”

  “Yeah, Chuckles was your mom’s cat,” Beth said smiling.

  “He came with the house,” Rick said. “Mom thought he’d have trouble adjusting to condo living. I built his pet door in the garage when he was the size of Boo Boo.”

  “Tell your folks I asked for them next time you talk to ’em. I’m gonna go check across the street,” Beth said. “If Boo Boo Kitty shows her face, puh-leeze call me.”

  “What does she look like? I’ll keep an eye out too, as long as I’m in the neighborhood anyway.” Dusty pushed her chair back from the table and stood up, altered instantly from friendly feminine coffee-klatsch demeanor to the no-nonsense body language of somebody accustomed to taking control: alert, back straight, feet slightly apart and planted firmly. Rick watched. He could not help recalling that he liked her reverse transformation better, from tough cop, a cool professional, to woman, warm and seductive, wet and willing. Wonder Woman to sex kitten. He had always found it a turn-on.

  “Appreciate it. Small, pale gray, fluffy. Thanks for the coffee.” Beth winked at Laurel, who looked ill.

  Eleven

  None of the messages waiting at headquarters related to the murder of Rob Thorne; it was as though the killer had appeared out of nowhere, then melted back into the muggy night. The reward might generate some tips. The parents had offered five thousand dollars for information leading to the killer’s arrest and conviction. They were willing to make it more, but Rick advised against starting high. If the facts were out there, the people most likely to have them would turn in their mothers for a lot less than five thousand dollars.

  The fund-raising effort by the student groups touched Rick. It made the dead boy’s parents cry.

  Dominguez and Thomas were still working the convenience-store shooting. The next case would go to Rick’s team. There was no hiatus. He and Jim went to records to pull a printout of recently paroled burglars to check out in the Thorne case. They were only gone for fifteen minutes. By the time they got back, it was their turn. A stranger was dead.

  Dusty looked up brightly from her desk. She wore deep blue, the same shade as her eyes. “We’ve got one holding,” she said briskly. “Went down about ten minutes ago. Some kind of a fight down in the Hole, one dead, the perp is being held at the scene by uniform.”

  “Shooting?” Rick said coolly, picking up his walkie.

  “Nope,” she said. “No weapons involved, apparently. Just a beating.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Dusty punched the elevator button. “And who is Terrance McGee? He says he has found new evidence. Are you really investigating attempts to poison him? Why didn’t you fill me in?”

  “A wacko,” Jim said. “Paranoid.”

  “Really? I just spent a half an hour on the telephone with the man.”

  “Now he’s got somebody new to talk to,” Jim said gleefully.

  “And he sounded so sincere,” Dusty said, as the doors slid open and they stepped inside.

  “They always do,” Jim said.

  “Ain’t that the truth?” The doors whooshed closed.

  The Hole is inner city, a tough Overtown neighborhood of dilapidated apartments, thriving crack houses and all-night bars. The disgruntled suspect was locked in the back of a cage car. “Sly!” Dusty called out in surprise. Gone were the graceful and fluid movements. He waved awkwardly. His hands were cuffed at the wrists.

  When he saw that no one in the slightly unruly crowd was watching, that all eyes were glued to the covered corpse sprawled on the pavement, he furtively shook his head. “I didn’t do it,” he mouthed frantically from behind the glass.

  “It’s J.L. Sly,” she said aloud, in her precise, deadpan delivery. “And he says he didn’t do it.”

  Jim grunted. “That’s what they all say.”

  “We warned him about that king fu crap,” Rick muttered. “Let’s see what we have.” He stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape, lifted the paper sheet, did a double take and whistled. The dead man was a well-built Latin, nearly twice J.L.’s size. His only apparent injury was a small, slightly bloody cut on the forehead.

  “What have you got?” Rick asked a young cop. He was a rookie who snapped to attention, all spit and polish.

  “Sir, the two individuals in question apparently participated in some type of altercation. The alleged perpetrator, a local resident who is well known for his expertise in the science of martial arts, struck the victim a single blow, causing his demise, sir.”

  “Is that the head injury?”

  “No, sir. The laceration to the front of the victim’s head appears to have been sustained when it made contact with the pavement, sir. He was apparently already deceased at that point in time.”

  “I wish you would speak English,” Rick sighed.

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Never mind. Good job, Officer.”

  “What are they teaching them in the academy these days?” Dusty asked softly. She stood on the opposite side of the dead man. “Big fellow, isn’t he? J.L. must be good to waste him.”

  “Everybody knows his reputation, I wonder why this guy didn’t back off.”

  “Maybe he’s new in town.”

  The crowd had become increasingly raucous. “Okay,” Dusty shouted. “Back on the sidewalk, everybody! You, too. You know you can’t block the street. You heard me!” The crowd scattered before her like a flock of pigeons.

  Jim watched. Her ability to control ghetto crowds always impressed him. Young blacks will often obediently follow orders from a woman, while the same orders from a man would create a confrontation. There is nothing macho about decking a woman, he thought, or maybe it’s the matriarchal society they live in. So many young blacks are raised by mothers and grandmothers, women accustomed to being listened to, women who have to be tough to survive and bring up their children alone in bad neighborhoods.

  “Okay, now, listen up,” Dusty shouted. “If you saw what happened, step right over here so I can write down your name. Those of you who didn’t see anything, stay behind that yellow rope, or better yet, go on about your business.”

  The witnesses were eager. The victim had burst into the corner bar, belligerent and disoriented, screaming in Spanish. He appeared to be under the influence and scuffled violently with several patrons. He eluded their grasp and ran out the door, smack into J.L. Sly. The crowd watched J.L. posture and pose as he warned the stranger to back off and behave himself. But J.L.’s sudden crouches and shrill kung fu cries were no deterrent. Instead,
the big man kept coming. Wild and roaring, he forced J.L. into a corner, his back to the wall. Excited, the crowd pressed in for a closer look. The moment of truth came—and went. J.L. hesitated. Disappointed doubters catcalled. The big man lunged forward for the kill. At last J.L. hit him. The blow missed his opponent’s head by a mile and glanced off a burly bicep. No matter. The big man dropped like a rock and never moved again. The stunned crowd fell back, whispering “Kung fu” and respectfully murmuring J.L.’s name.

  J.L. appeared dazed himself. He simply stood there, staring down at his crumpled victim until police arrived.

  The detectives sent the dead man to the morgue and took J.L. to headquarters. Stoic as they drove through the awed crowd of spectators, he managed a clenched-fist salute for a few acquaintances who pressed their faces against the car windows and shouted his name.

  He was an entirely different man in the interrogation room, slumped woefully, crumpled in a wooden chair, hands still cuffed.

  “Killed the guy with one blow,” Jim said, nodding approval. “You don’t have just a reputation anymore, J.L. You rate legend in your own time. But most likely you will never get to enjoy the status because, speaking of time, you will probably never see daylight again.”

  “You’re not going to charge me, are you?” Panic cracked his voice. He searched each face, his eyes wild. “I barely touched him.”

  “J.L.,” Dusty said gently, “the man is dead. He didn’t commit suicide.”

  “Come on, guys, I helped you out beaucoup times.”

  “I know, we’re friends,” Rick conceded. “We warned you. But did you listen? You think this makes us happy? We’re going to have to charge you with second-degree murder.”

  “It was an accident!” J.L. screamed.

  “Martial arts training makes your hands lethal weapons. You’ve said so yourself a thousand times. You didn’t have to duke it out with the man, you could have run, or walked away. The fact that you iced the guy with one blow makes it obvious you knew what you were doing. I’m sorry,” Rick said, nodding at Dusty.

  “Now, J.L.,” she said, “I believe the officers at the scene advised you of your rights, but we want to do it again, and we want you to initial every paragraph.”

  “It’s not true!” J.L. wailed. “Take these off,” he whimpered, rattling the handcuffs and holding up his wrists.

  “I don’t know about that,” Dusty said. She looked at Rick, then back at J.L., who was now sobbing as tears skidded down his face. “As ludicrous as it seems, since he did just kill a man with his bare hands, I am inclined to take them off.”

  Rick sighed and nodded, then dug in his pocket for the key. “Behave yourself, will you, J.L.?”

  The man nodded, rubbing his wrists and sulking. “Thanks, Miss Dustin. I have a confession to make. A good example for wise men to follow…”

  “Okay, but the form first.”

  J.L. listened and scrawled his initials after every paragraph. “Now?” he whispered, still sniffling.

  Dusty nodded and handed him a tissue. He blew his nose loudly, wiped his eyes and began.

  His confession was not precisely what they expected.

  “Look at me,” he demanded. “I’m five feet, four inches tall, with lifts in my shoes. I weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. I never grew.”

  The detectives looked puzzled.

  “Neither did Michael J. Fox, J.L. We want to know about what happened tonight—” Dusty said, clearing her throat.

  “I’m coming to that. I’m coming to that. Look at the neighborhood where I grew up. You know it’s survival, survival of the fittest. And I was never fit. I could do no sports. I didn’t have no brothers and sisters to stand up for me. I was sickly when I was a child. In school nobody wanted me on no team. Other kids picked on me, knocked me down and took my stuff.”

  “The fight tonight, J.L.”

  “I’m getting to it. I’m getting to it! Give me a chance!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “I never did much but stay to home, sitting in front of the TV—and then one day it changed my whole life. I saw a show about kung fu. It came on every week, stories about a man who was taught the ancient art, a man who brought harmony and got respect. He could protect people and right wrongs. Like Sir Galahad.”

  Dusty’s right eyebrow raised slightly at the image.

  “So you learned kung fu,” Jim said impatiently.

  “No.” J.L. looked genuinely surprised at the suggestion. “Where would I learn that? I saw the movements of the great circle and learned how to scream from watching the TV show. I practiced a lot. I practiced all the time,” he said softly, “in front of mirrors by myself.

  “When my mama died I took her home, back up to Georgia. I promised her I would. Then I stayed up there for a while visiting my cousins and relatives. Day after I come back, I had on my new suit, the one I bought for the funeral, and a bunch of jitterbugs in Overtown decided to take it away from me. It wouldn’t even have fit any of them. It was just sport to them.

  “I don’t know why I did it. But I had been practicing my moves and my yells so much, it just happened. They got scared and backed off. I told them I learned it from an oriental man, a master I met while I was away. I got respect. I could walk down any street, anytime. Everybody believed it, because I was good. I was really good. I never had to put a hurt on anybody. Although,” he stared at the floor, his voice dropping, “I might have told them I did. I said that’s why I came back, cuz I hurt a man real bad and the law was after me.”

  “But it wasn’t true?” Rick said.

  “That’s right, it was show. It was all show. But everybody believed it. People looked up to me. I could stop barroom fights. I could make bullies back down and stop beating on their women. I could be a hero. All I had to do was walk in the move like this.” He got to his feet and slipped into a crouch, his dark hands moving in menacing circles.

  “Sit down,” Rick said, absently rubbing his temple as though his head ached. “You’re saying you never really learned it?”

  “That’s right,” J.L. said, sliding gracefully into his chair.

  “Then what happened tonight?” Dusty asked.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he said earnestly. “Nothing. That’s exactly what happened. Nothing. That crazy man was about to kill me. I knew I was about to die. But everybody was watching, and he wouldn’t back off, so I finally took a chop at his head, but I missed. I barely touched his arm. Let me show you.”

  He reached over and lightly tapped the side of his hand on Rick’s upper arm.

  “Watch it.” Jim’s big hand instinctively went to the .38 in his leather shoulder holster.

  “It’s okay,” Rick said, holding his arm up, as if to demonstrate that it was still intact. He shook his head in disbelief.

  “So if that was all that happened, how did you drop the guy?” Jim said.

  “He just fell down.”

  “Just fell down and died. Well, that’s novel,” Jim said.

  “If, and I emphasize that word,” Rick said, “if you’re telling the truth, it had to be just a lucky punch. You got pumped up and hit him harder than you thought. With your reputation, it’s going to be an uphill battle for you to convince a prosecutor that it’s manslaughter, not homicide.”

  “Manslaughter? I barely touched him. I know I didn’t hurt the man!”

  “Nobody shot him,” Jim said. “Nobody knifed him. I didn’t see an arrow in his back. You hit him and he’s dead.”

  “We have to book you,” Rick said.

  “You’re really going to put me in jail? I don’t believe it. I—I’ve never been to jail. It’s not right. Sergeant, Miss Dustin?” His eyes moved from face to face in search of a friend.

  Dusty looked away, staring uncomfortably at the arrest form on the table in front of her.

  Rick ignored his pleading gaze and summoned a uniform who stepped in and motioned for J.L. to get
to his feet and accompany him to the booking desk. “I didn’t do it!” he insisted.

  “Watch him,” Jim told the officer. “His hands are lethal weapons.”

  “That’s not true!” J.L. said. “I may have been wrong to fake it, but everybody has to be a hero sometime.” The officer snapped a new set of cuffs around his wrists and steered him out the door, still protesting.

  “Everybody has to be a hero sometime! Everybody has…” J.L.’s mournful wails echoed off the cold walls of the empty hallway until cut off by the elevator doors as they closed.

  Rick, Dusty and Jim sat in the sudden silence without speaking for a moment. Dusty finally said, it softly, as if to herself. “Everybody has to be a hero sometime.”

  Twelve

  The weekend death toll mounted. So did the paperwork. Miriam Kelton, night investigator at the Dade County Medical Examiner’s office, grabbed a quick sandwich and nibbled it at her desk.

  She buzzed the morgue for Lester, one of the attendants. “They’re bringing in another one,” she said, swallowing a small bite of ham and cheese on rye bread, “a traffic dispute.”

  Dr. Lansing popped out of his office. It had been a long hard night, and he had already vowed to never ever be stuck again with weekend duty during the full moon.

  “What’s cooking?”

  Miriam had the sweet face and curly perm of a grandmother who would look more at home baking cookies. She clucked and shook her head at each day’s new collection of corpses as though they were errant children. She compiled the case histories and efficiently completed the voluminous paperwork the rascals generated. In stern, maternal fashion, she also handled the grief-stricken, angry and/or crazed next of kin who arrived to claim their dead. Paid a pittance by the county, she was worth her weight in gold.

  More exasperated than weary, she peered up from behind the stack of multicolor folders: red for murder victims, green for suicides, blue for traffic fatalities and orange for the still-unclassified casualties of life in Miami, the riddles yet to be unraveled.