Midnight Rambler

by James Swain

  Bash's throne.

  Across from the chair, a wide-screen plasma TV was mounted on the wall. I stared at the TV, slack-jawed. On its screen, a bikini-clad Melinda Peters hung by her wrists inside someone's closet, her manicured toes scraping the floor. A cell phone lay by her feet, and I thought back to last night's call.

  Bash staggered around the trailer, clutching his face. Cheever grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into the leather chair.

  “Please don't hit me again,” the DJ begged.

  “You gonna behave?” Cheever asked.

  “I didn't do anything.”

  “Answer me, asshole.”

  “Yeah, I'll behave.”

  Cheever pointed at the screen. “Is that live?”

  “Yeah, it's live.”

  “They're playing voyeur cam with her, aren't they?”

  Bash hid the smirk forming on his face. “Something like that.”

  “When are your buddies going to kill her?”

  “Tonight, after Skell gets back to Fort Lauderdale. He wants to see it.”

  “Were they going to broadcast it to him?”

  “No. He was going to Jonny's place to watch.”

  I could not take my eyes off Melinda. The voyeur cam turned, and the Cuban who had shot out my windshield on 595 appeared on the big screen. It was Jonny Perez, wearing a bright red bandanna around his head and clutching a can of beer. He smiled and waved at the camera while doing a crazy little dance.

  “Why is he dancing?” I asked.

  “He's playing ‘Midnight Rambler,’” Bash said. “It's what we play when the girls are being tortured.”

  “We?” I asked.

  Bash nodded. Sensing that I wanted a more complete answer, he used the remote to start a CD player sitting on the floor beneath the TV. Out of its speakers came the opening harmonica riff from the live version of “Midnight Rambler.” The music was like a demonic chuckle.

  I took a deep breath. If I saw any more, I was going to explode.

  “Where's your address book?”

  “In my bedroom. I'll get it for you.”

  He started to get out of his chair, and Cheever shoved him back down.

  “I told you not to move,” Cheever said.

  “I was just going to get the address book for him,” Bash said.

  “Don't you want Jack to go in there?”

  Bash shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not?” Cheever asked.

  “He won't like it,” Bash said.

  Bash's bedroom was in the rear of the trailer and reeked of cigarettes and a decayed conscience. There were no real furnishings, just a water bed and an upturned orange crate that served as a night table.

  The address book lay on the crate. I found Jonny Perez under the J's. He lived in West Sunrise, which was as close as you could get to the Everglades without falling in.

  As I slipped the address book into my pocket I realized I wasn't alone. The bedroom's ceiling was papered with photographs of naked women. It looked like pervert heaven, only with a twisted difference. The photographs were not torn from an X-rated magazine or copied off a pornographic website. They were real. They were the victims.

  I choked up. The poses were sexual, the women smiling through clenched teeth. All eight were there. I silently recited their names as I pulled them down.

  The last photograph was of Lola, a pretty Jamaican prostitute whose story I'd never known. I'd talked her into making her johns wear rubbers and getting doctor's checkups, and she'd lasted twelve years without getting sick. As strange as it sounded, I took a lot of pride in that.

  I let Lola's photograph float to the bed. It flipped over as it landed, revealing writing on the back.

  #7.

  I checked the backs of the other photographs. They were also numbered. I realized this was how Bash and the rest of the gang saw their victims, as nameless objects. In their eyes, they were not worthy of proper names or identities, just numbers.

  I gathered up the photographs. They were evidence, but a part of me didn't want anyone to see them. The victims had suffered enough, and having these images passed around a police station or at a trial seemed one more senseless indignity. As I weighed what to do with them, a man's screams shattered my thoughts.

  I ran into the next room, and found Cheever punching Bash. Cheever outweighed me by forty pounds, and it took all of my strength to pull him off the struggling DJ.

  “What are you trying to do?” I asked.

  “Kill the son of a bitch,” Cheever said.

  “Why? What did he do?”

  “Look at the goddamn TV.”

  I looked across the room at the giant screen. Jonny Perez and a second Hispanic were dancing naked around Melinda while using pieces of paper to cut her arms and legs. Each time she screamed, they cut her again. They seemed to be feasting on her fear.

  “I caught Bash laughing under his breath, getting his rocks off,” Cheever said.

  “I need to talk to him, Claude.”

  “Wasn't the address book in the bedroom?”

  “I've got the address book,” I said. “I need to ask him something.”

  Cheever walked across the trailer to where my dog was sitting in the corner. He crossed his arms and stared murderously at Bash.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  I knelt down beside Bash's oversized chair. The DJ was red in the face and was having a hard time breathing. I grasped his arm and pinched it.

  “You said something on your show that I want explained,” I said. “You said Melinda had more dirt on me. What was she going to say?”

  Bash started to reply, then thought better of it. I answered my own question.

  “Was she going to say I was the Midnight Rambler?”

  The DJ shut his eyes.

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “That's why you've been attacking me on the radio, isn't it?”

  The DJ nodded.

  “Was that Skell's idea?”

  “Yes. Skell thought it would take the heat off him.”

  Since Carmella Lopez's body had been discovered in her sister's backyard I'd been painted to look like the kind of monster that I'd spent my life chasing. Now I knew why.

  “He's all yours,” I told Cheever.

  Bash opened his eyes and looked pleadingly at me. “What about our deal? You guys said you'd help me if I cooperated.”

  “Fat chance,” Cheever told him.

  “But you guys said—”

  “The only deal you're getting is a one-way ticket to Starke,” Cheever said. “Either you'll get the needle shoved in your arm, or someone will shove a broomstick up your ass. Those are your options.”

  “But we had a deal.

  ” “We lied, buttercup.”

  Bash's eyes floated to the giant screen. Jonny Perez had ripped away Melinda's bikini top and was cutting perfect circles around her perfect breasts. Bash tore his eyes away long enough to look at me.

  “No deal?” he asked.

  “No deal,” I said.

  Bash started to protest, then went rigid in his chair. He slapped his hand over his heart like a dramatic actor in a play. I knew what was happening, and pulled him out of his chair and laid him on the floor. Then I began to pound his chest. But it was too late. He had already stopped breathing.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Heart attacks are strange. Some could last for hours, the way my sister's did. Others were over in the blink of an eye.

  Bash's was quick, and he was dead in less than thirty seconds. I could do nothing but watch.

  Years earlier, I had plowed into a deer on a moonless night, and stood on the side of the road to comfort the poor thing. As the deer died, a smokelike substance escaped from its chest. I told a doctor I knew, and he'd said that he'd seen the same thing with many terminal patients. The substance, he believed, was their soul.

  I looked for Bash's soul to escape, but saw nothing. Cheever edged up beside me.

  “Is he
dead?”

  “Yes,” I said under my breath.

  “Shit, Jack, what am I going to do?” Cheever asked.

  I looked at him, not understanding.

  “I might get pinned with this,” he said.

  “Because you punched him in the mouth,” I said.

  “Yeah, and I provoked him. The review board will have a field day. I don't want to go through what you went through.”

  I didn't blame Cheever for feeling this way. If I'd learned anything from my experience with Simon Skell, the only people society expected to follow the laws were those who enforced them.

  The trailer had a small kitchen. I got a rag out of the sink and washed away the blood from Bash's lips. Then I scrubbed down anything Cheever or I had touched.

  “How well did you know him?” I asked.

  “I came by the station when he had porno stars visiting,” Cheever said. “I knew he was a sick puppy, but not this sick.”

  “Did you ever use your real name at the station?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  I shifted my attention to the wide-screen TV. Jonny Perez and the other Hispanic had stopped torturing Melinda and were no longer in the picture. Melinda was looking directly into the camera, fighting back tears.

  “We're coming,” I said to the screen.

  We went to the door and I whistled for my dog. Then I looked at Bash lying dead on the floor. His face looked as if he'd been dead a long time. As we walked out, “Midnight Rambler” was still playing on the CD player.

  We left the station and drove our cars to a deserted strip center. We got out of our vehicles, and I took Bash's address book from my pocket and showed Cheever the listing for Jonny Perez.

  Perez lived in a marginal neighborhood in Sunrise. Cheever suggested that we take his car and leave mine behind. He believed his filthy vehicle was less likely to arouse suspicion as we searched for Perez's hideout.

  I agreed, and soon we were heading west on 595 in his car. Cheever drove with his body hunched over the wheel and his eyes glued to the highway. I sensed he was trying to shake off Bash's death, and tried to comfort him.

  “Don't blame yourself for what happened back there,” I said.

  He shook his head without taking his eyes off the road.

  “Bash got what was coming to him,” I said.

  Several miles passed before Cheever replied.

  “I need to ask you something,” he said.

  “What's that?”

  “Do you love Melinda? I have to know, Jack.”

  The question stunned me, and I jerked sideways in my seat.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, Claude? I didn't sleep with her. Not yesterday, not last week, not last year. We never got it on.”

  “But do you love her?”

  “No!”

  The pain showed in Cheever's face.

  “I'm sorry, Jack, but you're the reason she and I broke up.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “She said your name one night in bed. She had this thing about me wearing my badge on my T-shirt. She looked at it and said your name.”

  I hadn't forgotten the cartoon drawings I'd seen on Melinda's kitchen table, and the stick figure with a badge pinned to his chest. That figure had been holding hands with a female stick figure and standing before a house with smoke billowing from its chimney. Now I understood its significance.

  “I'm sorry that happened to you,” I said.

  Cheever nodded regretfully.

  “So am I,” he said.

  Cheever took the Sawgrass Expressway to the Sunrise exit and soon got lost. Sunrise had been built by developers and was a mishmash of identical-sounding street names. Fifteen excruciating minutes later we found Perez's street and did a quick sweep.

  The houses were small, their windows covered with security bars. An alley ran behind the properties. It made spying easy, and we crawled down it and braked behind Perez's place. His house was a single-story concrete-block structure with a tar-paper roof and rotted hurricane shutters. A bike with two flats sat on the back porch.

  “What a dump,” Cheever said.

  I looked around the backyard. It was a disaster area, with newspapers floating in the dirty swimming pool and no grass. The place felt unattended to.

  “I don't think Perez lives here,” I said.

  “Then where is he?” Cheever asked.

  Perez's trick of cutting the cable in his victims' backyards was fresh in my mind, and I gazed at the telephone poles lining the alley. It didn't take me long to find a thick black wire running from Perez's supposed house to the house next door. This house had some serious landscaping, plus a padlocked prefabricated storage shed in the backyard. Sitting in the carport was Perez's white van.

  “They're in the house next door,” I said.

  Cheever parked on the street, and we walked down the alley to look at the second house. It appeared to be a normal middle-class dwelling, except for the shed. It was way too big for the property.

  “Wonder what's inside that thing?” Cheever said.

  “Let's have a look,” I said.

  A five-foot-high chain-link fence ringed the property. I picked up Buster and dropped him over the fence. Then Cheever and I climbed the fence and crossed the backyard. We took down the shed's door with our shoulders.

  The shed's interior was easily a hundred degrees. I hit the light switch, and we cautiously entered. Hanging from the walls were tools and trenching equipment. Something was making me uneasy, and I drew my gun. So did Cheever.

  We stood with our backs to each other and looked around. My eyes fell on a metal worktable that ran the length of one wall. Beneath the table sat eight coolers, each large enough to hold a human body. Buster was sniffing them, his tail wagging furiously.

  I examined the cooler closest to me. It had a label with writing on it. I had to squint to read what it said.

  #1.

  The cooler beside it said #2, and the cooler beside that one said #3.

  I walked the row and read the label on each cooler. They were numbered just like the photographs that had papered Bash's bedroom. No names, no identities.

  Just numbers.

  I decided to open cooler #1 first. I put my hand on the lid, and the image of Carmella Lopez lying in her sister's backyard came back to me.

  “Want me to do that?” Cheever asked.

  I shook my head.

  “You sure, Jack? You look pale.”

  “Positive,” I said.

  I popped the lid. The cooler was empty. The smell of ammonia nearly knocked me sideways. I caught my breath, then opened the rest. They were all empty.

  A glittering object inside the last cooler caught my eye. I held it up to the light. It was a gold earring.

  “Perez must have already dumped the bodies,” Cheever said.

  I put my hands on the worktable and took a moment to compose myself. I had desperately wanted the bodies to be here. Finding the victims was the only way I was going to be able to get on with my life. Cheever put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “Sorry, buddy,” he said.

  I nodded without looking at him.

  “Let's go rescue Melinda,” he said.

  I reached for the light switch, then noticed a map taped to the wall. It was of Broward County and had colored thumbtacks stuck in it, just like the map in my office. The thumbtacks were stuck in the same spots as on my map. Perez had chronicled where he'd nabbed his victims, just as I had. Only there was a thumbtack on his map that wasn't on mine. It was on the north end of Dania Beach, where I lived. I wondered what its significance was, and decided I'd have to ask him. I turned out the light.

  We entered the backyard. Cheever stood by the end of the shed and cautiously peeked around the corner. I edged up beside him.

  “I hear them talking inside the house,” he whispered.

  “How many are there?”

  “I'm not sure. You speak Spanish, don't you?”<
br />
  “A little,” I said.

  “Maybe you can understand what they're saying.”

  We switched places, and I stuck my head around the shed. Jonny Perez's face was visible through a screened window on the back of the house. He was washing his hands in the kitchen sink while carrying on a conversation. He moved away from the window. “He's talking to his brother Paco, and some guy named Alberto,” I whispered. “They're discussing a restaurant they want to visit after they kill Melinda.”

  “So we're outnumbered,” Cheever said.

  “Looks that way.”

  Cheever pulled out his cell phone and powered it up.

  “Time for reinforcements,” he said.

  “You calling the cops?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I thought about the ramifications of bringing in the Broward cops, and how Bobby Russo was going to react after hearing what we'd been up to.

  “Give me the phone,” I said.

  “Why?” Cheever asked.

  “I've got a better idea.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I called Ken Linderman. Even though I'd abandoned him a few hours ago, I knew he'd help us. He wanted Skell as bad as I did.

  “I need your help,” I said.

  I explained our situation without going into specifics. Cell phone conversations could be picked up by a variety of monitoring devices, and I didn't want to tip our hand to Perez or anyone else who might be electronically eavesdropping. Twenty minutes later, Linderman was standing on the sidewalk with us. Theis was with him.

  “That was a shitty thing you did this morning, Jack,” Linderman said.

  “What happened after I left?” I asked.

  “Goddamn police grilled me for an hour like I was a perp,” he said. “If Coffen hadn't shot at me through his desk, I'd probably still be talking to them.”

  “Did everything get resolved?”

  “Yes, no thanks to you.”

  I was past the point of apologizing for my behavior, and led the FBI agents down the alley. I pointed over the fence at the back of Perez's house. “Melinda Peters is being held inside that house by Jonny Perez, his brother Paco, and a guy named Alberto,” I said. “They're going to kill her once Skell gets here. Skell has told them he wants to watch.”