The Savannah Madam

by Tom Turner

  It turned out Crawford really missed the murder and mayhem up in New York. Which was weird, since the whole reason he’d gone south was to get away from it all.

  At age thirty-six, with a bad case of acid reflux, chronic cynicism, and acute burnout, Charlie Crawford had packed up his Upper West Side apartment and headed down to the Sunshine State. He decided on the Keys, the plan being to take up surfing, give the Jimmy Buffett thing a shot. But after three long months of listening to stoned-out beach bums in lame Hawaiian shirts oohing and aahing pretty average sunsets and duding each other to death, Crawford was ready to move on.

  So he’d reached out to a handful of Florida law enforcement agencies, and when the Palm Beach Police Department made him an offer, he grabbed it. But almost a year into the job, no one had come close to getting knifed, shot, garroted, or even banged up a little. Christ, what he’d give for a nice facedown stiff, a little rigor setting in. Crawford was drawing a bunch of nowhere cases, which could best be summed up by the one he was writing up now.

  It was late afternoon on Halloween, and a call had come in about a possible trespass up on the north end. The north end of Palm Beach was really two places, depending on the exact location. Obscenely rich or doing just fine, thanks. Spectacular houses on the ocean and Intracoastal that started at ten million dollars and went up from there. Or fixer-uppers, on postage-stamp lots at around a million. Recently a Russian fertilizer billionaire had plunked down a shade under a hundred mill for Trump’s monumentally ugly, but colossally huge, ocean spec house.

  But despite that, the real estate market had been hit hard when Wall Street collapsed and was still wobbly. Somewhere between anemic and soft, desperately trying to claw its way back to pre-crash levels. One of the top brokers in town was whining about having a lousy year—four-point-eight million in commissions as opposed to over seven million in ’07. And real estate lawyers quietly grumbled about fewer closings, but even more about a troubling new phenomenon: clients hondling them on their fees. And pity the poor builders, who had traded down from tricked-up ninety-five-thousand-dollar Escalades to basic Ford F-150s.

  Crawford was pinch-hitting on a routine call since several uniforms were out with the flu. He pulled into the driveway of the address the dispatcher had given him and parked next to a big-haired blonde in a black Jag convertible. She smiled at him as he got out of his Crown Vic.

  “Hi, I’m Detective Crawford.”

  “Rose Clarke,” the woman said, pointing at the two-story yellow stucco. “This is one of my listings.”

  “Did you put in the call?” Crawford asked, looking through a big picture window for signs of life.

  “Uh-huh.” Beautiful smile, teeth like Colorado snow behind pouty lips.

  “You think someone’s in there who’s…not supposed to be?”

  “Think?” she said. “I know. Just saw a naked woman through the slider in back.”

  “Who’s the owner of the house?”

  Crawford started toward the house. She followed.

  “Willard Gregg was,” she said, “but he died six months ago.”

  “Couldn’t be a relative you saw, could it?”

  “No way, I’d know about it.”

  Crawford started walking. “I’m going to try around back.”

  Rose nodded, and Crawford went toward the side of the house; she was a step behind him.

  He pressed the back door buzzer, shaded his eyes, and looked through the slider. Nothing.

  He felt Rose’s eyes on him.

  “You look like that polo player in the Ralph Lauren ads,” she said. “Taco or something like that.”

  He pretended to be absorbed in his work. He’d heard it before and wasn’t flattered. Crawford, at six foot three and one-hundred-eighty pounds, had thick, dirty-blonde hair, which he wore a little longer than his boss liked. He had piercing blue eyes, and a thin scar zigzagged above his right eyebrow.

  “You have a key, Rose?”

  She handed him one.

  He keyed the lock and thought he heard footsteps inside.

  It crossed his mind to call for backup, but he nixed it. He was pretty sure the Manson family wasn’t lying in ambush.

  “Stay here, please,” he said to Rose.

  “Okay.” She sighed.

  He walked in. There was a torn rubber carpet mat on the living room floor and holes on the walls where paintings had hung.

  “Palm Beach police,” he said, pulling out his Sig Sauer semi. “Whoever’s in here, come on out.”

  Nothing.

  He inched toward a closed door and turned the knob. An air mattress lay on the floor with sheets and a puffy comforter on top. Men’s and women’s clothes hung on doorknobs.

  “I’m not gonna say it again, come on out—now.”

  He pushed open a door to a bathroom and saw toothbrushes, cosmetics, a man’s razor with shaving cream on it. He backed out and spotted a yellow Lacoste shirt hanging on a closet door. He opened the walk-in closet and saw shadowy shapes behind the clothing.

  “Okay,” came a man’s voice, “we’re coming out.”

  “Slowly, hands up.”

  First came a man in blue boxers, then a woman in red lacy panties and a black push-up bra.

  “Who are you?” Crawford asked, handing the woman a terry-cloth bathrobe that hung from inside the closet door.

  “We’re the Kazmeyers. I’m Dick and this is my wife, Jan,” the man said, like he was making introductions at a cocktail party.

  “Hel-lo,” Jan said, knotting the sash on her bathrobe.

  Crawford heard steps behind him.

  Rose walked in, and her eyes popped.

  Crawford holstered his gun. “What are you doing here?” he asked the couple.

  Jan glanced at her husband. “Just kind of…crashing.”

  “Wait a minute,” Rose said, “you were at my open house here a couple of weeks ago.”

  Jan nodded sheepishly. “We hid in the garage afterwards—”

  “Actually that little room with the hot water heater,” Dick corrected her.

  Rose’s mouth dropped.

  “When the open house was over and you left, we came out,” Jan said.

  “Got our mattress and stuff from the car,” Dick said, like describing a camping trip to Yellowstone.

  They still had their hands up.

  “Winters up in Buffalo get really long,” Jan said. “This is our fourth season down here.”

  “Rent free,” Rose muttered.

  “Okay,” Crawford said, “you can put your hands down.”

  “Thanks,” Dick said. Then, to Rose, “We kept our stuff in that little crawl space, in case you showed the house.”

  “How very thoughtful of you,” Rose said.

  “You hardly ever showed it, though,” Jan said.

  “’Cause it’s way overpriced,” Rose said. “Besides, nothing’s moving in this market.”

  “Get dressed, please,” Crawford said. “We’re going down to the station.”

  Dick started to panic. “Can’t you just give us a ticket?”

  “No,” Crawford said. “We don’t have tickets for things like this.”

  “Isn’t it breaking and entering?” Rose asked.

  “We didn’t break anything,” Dick said, suddenly indignant.

  “And entered perfectly legally,” Jan huffed, eyeing Rose like she wanted to stick her tongue out at her.

  Rose just shook her head.

  “Let’s go,” Crawford said.

  Rose, by his side, nudged him and whispered, “Only…in Palm Beach.”

  It was six-thirty now, and Crawford was at the station writing up the incident, wishing the crashing Kazmeyers had come on someone else’s shift. Half listening to his radio, he thought he heard the dispatcher say the code for homicide.

  No way. Yesterday’s big investigation had been a socialite’s poodle getting pancaked by a Lamborghini. Day before had been a blue-haired lady who sideswiped a mailbox after happy hour at
Ta-Boo.

  “What did you say?” Crawford said into his radio.

  “Call from a jogger,” dispatch said, “reporting a young white male, down at Mellor Park”—then a long pause, as if he couldn’t quite process it himself—“hanging from a banyan tree.”

  2

  Crawford flipped on his strobes as he turned left onto Brazilian and floored the Crown Vic. He figured it was a ten-minute drive to the park in South Palm Beach, which he could do in five. He eased up to South Ocean, looked both ways, flicked his siren, punched the accelerator, and made a skidding right turn heading south. He stepped on it again and heard the delayed roar of the Vic’s 405. A cluster of trick-or-treaters on the sidewalk was a purple-and-black blur as he blew past them.

  He fished his cell phone out of his breast pocket and, doing seventy in a thirty-five, dialed his partner, Mort Ott. Ott was in West Palm, interviewing a witness on a mail fraud case.

  “Yeah, Charlie?”

  “Got a seven down at Mellor Park.”

  A long pause.

  “You’re shittin’ me?”

  “Nope,” said Crawford and clicked off.

  That would be the end of Ott’s interview, since the two of them were the only homicide detectives on the Palm Beach force. There were six other detectives and seventeen uniformed cops, nicknamed “bags.”

  Crawford was first on the scene. He heard sirens off in the distance. As he pulled up to the park, he clicked on his high beams, grabbed the Maglite on the front seat, and jumped out of his car. The first thing he saw was a small neon circle floating at eye level fifty yards ahead. Then, after a few more steps, he realized the reflective circle was on the back of a sneaker and the sneaker was on the foot of a body dangling from the thick, shiny branch of a banyan tree.

  He heard short breaths and flicked his Maglite to his left. A woman in her fifties, in black spandex tights and a white baseball hat, was staring up at the body, her mouth slack, her expression frozen.

  “Hi, I’m Detective Crawford. You the lady who called?”

  She nodded.

  “Stay right here, please,” he said, sweeping past her and aiming his Maglite up at the body. The victim—wearing black jeans, a faded red T-shirt, and a hoodie hiked up over his stomach—looked to be around twenty. Crawford reached up and checked his pulse, even though he knew there was no point.

  The vic’s head was tilted forward, purple and swollen, a lime green rope cutting into his neck. Crawford recognized it by the material: paracord, a type of rope used by the military.

  He estimated the vic was around six feet tall, weighed close to two hundred. Had to be at least two perps, Crawford figured. One to pull up the rope, the other to lift up the body. Too much for one guy to do alone. Might have been a third guy on lookout.

  He flicked the flashlight up and noticed the kid’s bulged-out eyes, a trace of ruptured blood vessels on his lids.

  He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out a pair of vinyl gloves, put them on, then shined his Maglite on the kid’s jeans. He reached into the kid’s back pocket and pulled out a lumpy wallet. He opened it and saw a Florida driver’s license. His name was Darryl Bill, and he looked way better in the picture than real life.

  Darryl Bill had turned nineteen three days before.

  Crawford looked around and saw the jogger hadn’t moved. He wondered if she was in shock.

  “Ma’am, you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “How ’bout I take you over to that bench?” he asked, pointing. “I need you to stick around a while, answer a few questions.”

  He led her to a park bench.

  “I got a bottle of water in my car. Can I get it for you?”

  “That’s okay, thanks.”

  He walked back to the crime scene, got out his cell, and dialed as he saw a squad car pull up and a tall uniform hop out.

  “This is Two Eleven at Mellor Park, South Palm,” Crawford said into his phone. “Confirming dead white male, nineteen years old. Notify brass, the ME, and crime scene techs.”

  He clicked off and scanned the area, looking for a public restroom or other buildings where security cameras could have picked up something.

  Nothing.

  He retraced his steps toward the park’s entrance gate, still looking for cameras, but saw none. Then he remembered that all four bridges over to Palm Beach had cameras specially installed to read license plates. Tag readers, they called them. He’d get a copy of the day’s recording from the Southern bridge and ID every plate that had come and gone since morning.

  The tall uniform, Ramsey Steer, walked up to him. Crawford told him to watch where he stepped, tighten up the perimeter, and tape off the scene. A few more cars rolled up.

  He went back and studied the kid again. Short blonde hair, a two-inch mullet in back, wearing a cheap beaded necklace.

  Crawford shined his flashlight on the sand and saw several sets of footprints. One set caught his eye. The toe of the shoe print looked like it had really dug in. He couldn’t see any heel mark that went with it. Like someone had his weight forward and was swinging hard, trying to knock one out of the park. He pictured one of the perps holding the kid’s arms behind his back while the other one whaled away.

  Kid probably was out cold when he got lifted up. No way he was conscious, or he would have been fighting for his life—kicking, biting, whatever it took. Crawford was surprised there wasn’t more blood on the sand below.

  He saw the white EMT truck with the yellow stripe pull up. Two guys came running toward him: one with a trauma kit, the other a Zoll resuscitator.

  Crawford caught the eye of one and shook his head.

  They were ALS—Advanced Life Support—a hospital on wheels. The truck carried everything a sick or injured person would ever need—ventilators, triage cardiac systems, defibrillators, and more meds than a Rite Aid. But there was nothing they could do for Darryl Bill.

  “ME on his way?” one of the ALS guys asked.

  Crawford nodded and went to his car to get a camera.

  Just as he got there, his partner wheeled up.

  “Trick or treat,” Ott said as he got out of his car.

  The knock on Ott was that he was not the most sensitive guy around. Maybe it was the twenty years in Cleveland homicide.

  “A kid…nineteen, hanging from a tree.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” was all Ott said, taking long, deliberate strides toward the crime scene.

  Ott had come down about two years ago. So far he and Crawford had a mostly good relationship. Ott had a go-with-the-flow attitude, didn’t get too ripe after eight hours in a car, and didn’t suck up to Chief Norm Rutledge the way other guys did. The Palm Beach cops looked at Ott as a throwback. A guy who said “fuck” every third word, drank at the low-life cop bar in West Palm, and still used Ten-Code even though the Palm Beach department had switched over to “plain talk” five years before.

  Some of them called him “Sip,” after Andy Sipowicz, the bald, cranky cop in the old TV show, NYPD Blue, but most of them just called him “F-bomb.”

  Ott walked up to the body, too close for the EMT supervisor’s liking.

  “You mind?” the EMT said.

  “Not if you got a way to bring him back.” Ott pulled on his gloves and looked up at the kid.

  “Two perps, I’m guessing,” Crawford said. “Maybe three.”

  Ott nodded as two uniforms came up behind them. “Really put the wood to the poor fucker,” Ott said.

  “Yeah, wearing gloves.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “Noticed a couple fibers—looked like suede maybe—on his lips. Left cheek, too.”

  Ott moved closer to the body and nodded.

  “Guy I took in once, just offed a couple hookers,” Ott said. “Used these high-tech ski-racer gloves. Real light padding. Told me he got a nice bone-on-bone crunch.”

  The young EMS guy glanced over, caught Crawford’s eye, and shook his head.

  Ott w
as looking up at something over the kid’s head. “Check out that knot,” he said, pointing. “A sheep shank. Military. Maybe one of our perps is some psycho just back from Iraq.”

  Ott theorized a lot, but was more often right than wrong.

  A uniform, his flashlight shining down, was about to step on a shoe print.

  “Hey, dipshit, not till we cap it, huh,” Ott said. Then, to Crawford, “Can’t let ’em fuck up our crime scene, right, bro? You ID him yet?”

  “Yeah, name’s Darryl Bill, from somewhere in West Palm,” Crawford said. “I’m gonna diagram the scene and make sure Steer doesn’t let anyone unauthorized get through.”

  Ott nodded. “I’ll put placards down. Cutter on the way?”

  Crawford nodded and smiled at Ott’s dated reference to the ME. “It’s all comin’ back, huh, Mort?”

  “Shit yeah, just like ridin’ a Schwinn.”

  Crawford turned away and started snapping pictures of the footprints in the sand. Then he walked a little farther and spotted the kid’s other Nike over by a swing set. He noticed the shoelace was broken, as if the kid’s foot had been twisted violently to one side. Ott came over for a look.

  Crawford flicked his flashlight in the direction of a woman approaching in a blue jacket that said “Crime Scene” on the back.

  “We got the cute one,” Ott said.

  Crawford had heard about her. A crime scene tech named Dominica McCarthy, whose bulky nylon jacket and polyester pants did little to flaunt a figure everyone agreed was way above average. The Crime Scene Evidence Unit techs were the fingerprint and DNA analysts. Their TV counterparts got a lot of face time on the tube, but in real life, they mostly crawled around on their hands and knees with tweezers and baggies.

  McCarthy looked over at them, holding her gaze on Crawford for a second, then looked up at the body.

  The ME came next. George Bullen was an egotistical show-boater with thirty years on the job. He’d walk around a crime scene grabbing his chin and striking poses, then respond to all questions the same way: “You’ll get all your answers in my write-up.”

  Crawford decided to steer clear of the great man.

  He and Ott spent the next forty-five minutes combing the scene and questioning the jogger, who had little to tell beyond a replay of her grisly discovery.