“Let’s just say, William, that the city does quite well with parking.”
“Yes, $30 million is a lot of money. And Missy Cuthbert here wrote how many tickets?”
“PMS First Class Melissa Cuthbert clocked in with 20,801 tickets, William.”
“You must be very... proud?” Billy offered hesitantly.
“Oh, I am very proud,” Missy gushed.
Missy Cuthbert was not the prettiest woman in the world. And the eleven other meter maids lined up behind her, representing with Missy the top dozen ticket-writers on the PMS Force, were not your average eye-catching specimens, Bricker thought while the camera panned the women.
Bricker knew Missy Cuthbert. The bitch was all over South Beach—worse than the Angel of Death over Tel Aviv. (Or was it Egypt? Jerusalem? Whatever.)
She’d actually come on to him once a few years back. Him! Of all people! The biggest heartthrob on the police force. He’d been astounded at the time, shocked that she’d had the audacity of hope to approach someone like him.
His response had been sure and swift:
“Sorry, Missy. I’m weak like anybody else. And I’ve let my standards slip after a few too many Ezra Brooks, sure, but I do not fuck meter maids.”
Billy asked on the tape:
“You open yourself up to quite a bit of abuse when you become a parking meter specialist, don’t you?”
Missy’s shoulders straightened noticeably, she lifted her chin resolutely, her fists clenched.
“It’s part of the job, William. You have to have nerves of steel to do what we do,” her head jerked slightly over her shoulder as the eleven meter maids behind her nodded in support of these tough words.
“Why don’t we get on with the presentation, Major Bunstable?” Billy asked.
“Of course, William,” the major smiled, pulling an award from one of those canvas “No Parking” bags they cover the meters with.
A barely audible “Oh” escaped from Missy’s mouth, as she was unable to contain her excitement.
“For PMS First Class Melissa Cuthbert, on behalf of the city administration, who are not to be confused with the citizens of, or visitors to, Miami Beach who actually pay for the tickets, we present you with the Parking Meter Award, given annually to the parking meter specialist who writes the most tickets in a fiscal year.”
To Bricker’s untrained eye, the Parking Meter Award looked an awful lot like a jumbo-sized dildo. This impression was more enhanced as he watched Missy Cuthbert stroke it sexually. To look at her, Bricker was certain she had a weird collection of dildos at home, in various colors and sizes. She had stringy dark strawberry blonde hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month, sensuous lips with a cruel downward turn on both sides of her mouth.
“I might add, William, that this is the second year in a row that Missy has won the award,” Major Bunstable nodded with pride as she gently tapped the riding crop she always carried against the knee-high black patent leather boots she wore as part of a uniform that looked like it was designed for a Nazi death camp colonel. Beneath her black flight cap with its red piping, strands of her close-cropped reddish-orange hair crept out.
“Do you ever feel guilty when you write a ticket, Missy?” Billy asked.
“Never,” Missy snapped at him. “I know what I’m here for. My job is to enforce parking regulations, and the City of Miami Beach, I can tell you, has a lot of them.”
Mayor Germane butted in.
“You know, William, at the last City Commission meeting, we added four new parking violations,” he nodded sagely.
“I’m sure people will be thrilled to hear that,” Billy said with an edge of sarcasm lost on the mayor and the others.
“Yes, that brings us up to, uh...”
Major Bunstable leaned over to him and whispered.
“Uh, that’s right,” the mayor continued. “There are now 848 ways to get a ticket when you park your car on Miami Beach. That is, if you can find a place to park it.”
Bunstable held up a thick book of regulations.
“From the alleys behind the nightclubs to the sunbathers at the oceanfront, the PMS Force is there!” she crowed.
The mayor broke in.
“And Missy will take her place on the Annual PMS Calendar in the most honored position of Miss December,” he intoned. “The other eleven PMSers will fill in the other months, from January to November, based on their rankings.”
At the point, Billy abruptly paused the DVD player.
“So what is this all about?” Bricker said, still in the dark.
“Don’t you get it?”
“Get what?” Bricker shrugged.
Billy jumped out of his chair and dashed to the other side of the room.
“While you’re up, get me another Amstel, willya?” Bricker hollered after him.
Billy grabbed what he was after and then detoured into the kitchen and came back with a long neck Bud.
“Outta Amstel. Drink a long neck.”
He tossed the bottle to Bricker.
“Hey, careful there, Billy.”
Billy sat down and held in front of Bricker last year’s Annual PMS Calendar.
“Now do you get it?”
Bricker looked at Billy stupidly.
“No.”
He used a bottle opener on the coffee table and popped the top on the Bud, taking a deep swallow.
Billy opened the calendar to Miss January on whose picture was an X in thick black Magic Marker.
“Miss January was the first meter maid killed.” He flipped the page. “Miss February was the second meter maid to go.” He flipped a page revealing Miss March. Then Miss April. Each meter maid had an X over her picture.
Bricker’s jaw opened as he looked dumbly at the calendar.
“You mean...?”
“Yes. He’s killing all the meter maids in this calendar, one each month. This is April and he just killed Miss April.”
The sun was breaking (slowly) through the heavy mists shrouding the summit of Jake Bricker’s intelligence.
“How long have you known all this?”
“I just figured it out this morning—a couple of those dead meter maids looked familiar and I vaguely remembered this story from a year ago. I rummaged through the old crap at the station and found this story and had them make me a DVD of it. Then I got the calendar and compared the names. Presto!”
“Presto!” Bricker murmured.
Bricker looked into the baby blue eyes of his best friend, Billy Willoughby, a guy who’d always looked up to him ever since they were in high school together. True, Bricker got picked for all the sports teams before Billy, even took most of Billy’s girlfriends from him, not out of spite, but just because he could.
Billy was trembling with excitement. “Glee” was the word that filtered into Bricker’s mind.
“I tell you, I can’t wait to show this to my news director tomorrow. I just wanted to show my best friend first. I’ll have the biggest story in crime history in decades! I’ll get a raise! Win an Emmy! And just wait’ll you tell Raffy Ramirez. When he sees this, he’s gonna go nuts! You’ll be a captain! You’ll catch the killer on his very next attempt!”
Bricker looked at him dumbly.
“Aren’t you excited?” Billy asked. “Excited? For both of us?”
There was a pause; finally, Bricker spoke.
“Billy, I want you to sit on this story.”
“Huh?”
“Sit on it.”
“Are you fuckin’ nuts?”
“Look at it this way ... if you break the story, you’ll warn the killer. We have a chance to catch him if we don’t tell the world about it. Listen, I’m being selfish here ... I, me, Jake Bricker, have a chance to catch the killer. Single-handed!”—now Bricker was getting excited—“Think what it would do for me!”
“You’ll make captain in a week!”
“Well, yeahhh, fuck. I already know who the asshole’s gonna kill, Miss May,” he said, p
ensively picking up the calendar and flipping to the picture of Miss May, an ugly, tangerine-haired girl in her twenties named Samantha Succubus.
Bricker shook his head. A smile crept over his lips.
“I’m gonna save this ugly bitch’s life.”
“All right, Jake. I’ll hold off. This’ll give you a chance to nail the motherfucker.”
“I’ll follow the bitch day and night.”
“You don’t even have to do that. We already know the guy always strikes during the New Moon of the month, when it’s darkest outside.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Jake, remembering.
“But when the time comes, you’ve gotta be on this girl’s ass. We’ll work a schedule. I’ll help you. It’s my career, too, ya know? I’m gonna get an Emmy outta this story.”
“You got it, Billy-Boy.”
Billy winced.
“Don’t call me Billy.”
4 - Sizing Up the Victims
The next day, Jake Bricker went out in search of Miss May, one twenty-eight year old Samantha Succubus, known as Sammy by the other meter maids.
He couldn’t just drop by the PMS Force HQ in a fortified compound nestled behind the holding lot of the TWERP Towing Co. in the Sunset Harbour District and ask Major Bunstable for Sammy Succubus’s route today.
No, he was smarter than that—such a move would immediately arouse suspicion.
He pulled to the curb across the street from the gate of the Tremendously-Wonderfully-Egregiously-Ridiculously-Profitable Towing Co. (or TWERP Towing for short), and waited for Sammy Succubus to emerge in her Cushman three-wheeled meter maid mobile to begin her rounds terrorizing the people.
He clipped the cap off the head of one of his short Montecristos, lit up, and was halfway through it when he heard the familiar putt-putt-putting of dozens of the Cushman scooters revving up to begin their daily assault on the Billion Dollar Sandbar, sounding as much like that music in Jaws just before the shark struck a hapless victim as anything Bricker’d ever heard. A gate next to TWERP Towing slid open and the Cushmans poured forth to do their dirty work, like so many ants streaming out of the ant hill to forage for their queen bee, the Matron of All the Meter Maids, Major Enid Bunstable.
Bricker raised a pair of binoculars and peered through them, checking each scooter as it emerged.
Finally, he saw her, looking every bit as ugly in her day-to-day look as she did all dolled up for her retouched Miss May photo. She was plump, and wore a fluttering scarf around her neck, something she’d added to the PMS uniform of tight black tube pants with a yellow button-down shirt with a red circle on the back of the shirt that was cut in half by a bolt of lightning. Above the red circle were the initials PMS in black. Her boots were knee high heavy boots that laced all the way up creating a very military effect, not at all suitable for Florida weather. On her ugly head she wore the standard-issue cunt cap, also known as a garrison cap, piss-cutter, side cap or flight cap—in black with red piping and a series of three small lightning bolts on the left front side. A uniform designed to strike fear in all motorists short of quarters, dimes and nickels, providing you fit into it properly, which Sammy Succubus decidedly did not.
Bricker followed Sammy out of Sunset Harbour and down to her station, an area covering Ocean Drive from Fifth Street up to Tenth and over to Washington Avenue. This time of year, the area was still awash with tourists, but added to that crowd were young mainlanders over from towns like Kendall and Hialeah to go to the beach. Kids were notorious for parking illegally and not feeding the meters. The city made a fortune off these jerks. Now that the Cushman scooters all had computers in them, hundreds of cars were towed daily by TWERP Towing. Every outstanding ticket was stored in the handheld computer carried by the PMS Force. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Bricker followed Sammy until she came upon the Cushman cart driven by Missy Cuthbert. They stopped to chat. Missy gave Sammy a roll of the waterproof “paper” that the tickets were printed on now (no more rain-streaked tickets in Miami Beach, thank you very much), and went on her way.
Bricker decided to follow Missy for a while. There was no rush about Sammy. The killer never struck until the New Moon. He was just doing his homework, familiarizing himself with the daily habits of all meters maids between Miss May and Miss December, and the straggly-haired Missy was Miss December, destined to be the killer’s biggest catch of all—unless Bricker could stop him.
Missy was working the residential areas just west of Washington Avenue. She putt-putt-putted her way into Drexel Avenue, a one-way street behind the post office, with old half crumbling Art Deco apartment rentals along the street.
She pulled over and got out of her cart. Bricker pulled to a stop across the street and pulled out a Joyita. All the spaces here were diagonally striped, and one car was parked more in a parallel position, slightly illegal, but not really. Problem was, it was half way into a handicapped space and the car did not display a handicapped permit.
Missy went to work, checking the plate. She obviously discovered an infraction, because in less than a minute she was on her radio calling for a tow truck.
It arrived in less than three minutes, driven by a guy Bricker knew, Salvino Salazar (everybody called him Slimy), a real asshole, just as a very pregnant woman came running out of the building carrying a little overnight bag.
Bricker shook his head in disbelief.
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” cried the woman hysterically. “That’s my car!”
“I don’t care whose car it is, sister,” said an unmoved Missy. “You’re parked in a handicapped zone. No handicapped permit. That’s two hundred fifty bucks. Then I look up your tag and see you have five outstanding tickets. We’re towing!”
“But I’ve broken water! I’m gonna have a baby any minute!”
“I don’t care what else you broke, honey. You broke the law.”
“But I’m gonna have a baby!” the poor thing screamed in anguish.
It was true. Bricker could see the damp spot on her maternity dress.
“Get your husband to take you,” Missy advised. “If you have a husband.”
Bricker didn’t think Missy needed to add that last bit. But Missy was one tough cookie. (He’d heard through the grapevine she was a tigress in the sack, though meter maids were generally considered unfuckable.)
“My husband’s disabled in a wheelchair. I gotta get to the hospital!”
Slimy Salazar was lifting the car by now, totally unimpressed by the pregnant woman’s plight, much less her performance. He was chewing tobacco. Traffic was backed up, but Slimy and Missy could not have cared less.
“Move the God damn truck, asshole!” yelled one impatient motorist.
“Vete a la mierda! Fuck you,” Slimy said with a dark chuckle just loud enough for Bricker to hear across the street. Slimy spit a wad black tobacco juice out of his mouth and Bricker took a long look at his Montecristo and tossed the little bit left out into the street. Slimy was wearing a torn V-neck T-shirt. Of course, it had to be white, or once had been white. Now it was torn and stained with huge underarm pockets of sweat. He had more hair on him than that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Every time Bricker saw Slimy Salazar, that picture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sprang into his mind. Just like Khalid, Slimy had copious tufts of hair sprouting from just about everywhere on his body: from his chest (amply visible thanks to the V-neck), his head (unruly and disheveled), his nose, his ears, his back.
The pregnant woman had gone to sit on the building’s stoop.
“Can I at least get a ride in the tow truck? Just to Mount Sinai?”
“Out of the question,” Missy sniffed.
“Will you call an ambulance?”
“No. Use your cell phone.”
“I don’t have one.”
“Likely story.”
“Will you call a cab?”
“No. You call ‘em. Central Cab, 305-532-5555.”
“What am
I supposed to do?” the poor woman wailed.
“Walk,” Missy suggested.
Just then there was a clap of thunder and a rush of cool air raced down Drexel Avenue, whooshing through the trees overhead. A violent storm was on its way.
Missy looked up at the sky and then over to the woman.
“Quicker if you hitchhike.”
Slimy and Missy exchanged a few pleasantries before he hauled away the car. Missy hopped into her Cushman and putt-putt-putted away in a flash.
Suddenly, there was a downpour, one of those freak Florida weather situations where a perfectly wonderful balmy tropical day switches in an instant into a monsoon that might last five minutes or thirty minutes, you never knew.
Bricker pulled his car over to the other side of the street and helped the pregnant woman into his car. She was afraid of him at first. He was in his unmarked Crown Vicky. He flashed his badge.
“I’m a cop. I’ll take you to Mount Sinai.”
He got her into the passenger side of his car and flicked on his lights and siren and off they went.
Later, when he met Billy for the weekly pick-up game they played on the beat-up basketball court behind Feinberg-Fisher School, he told Billy the whole story about the pregnant woman.
Billy shook his head in disbelief.
“That Missy Cuthbert is a bitch.”
“Yep,” said Bricker, sinking a shot from twenty-five feet out.
“So the woman’s okay at Mount Sinai?”
“Yep, had twin boys.”
“No fuckin’ way.”
“Yeah. Likes the name Jake for one of ‘em,” he smiled, thinking to himself: It’s the dimples—they do it every time.
5 – Bricker Meets Alice
The next morning Bricker edged his car through the throng of international media now camped out 24/7 in front of the station house as well as Scilly Hall. Reporters were crowding around him, pounding on his hood, yelling out questions. Bricker ran up his windows, shook his head, which he meant to mean, “No comment, assholes.”
The meter maid murders were getting to be bigger and bigger news all around the world. With the fucking media camped outside the police station day and night, the business at the Eleventh Street Diner directly across from the station had soared because it was open twenty-four hours. The gay bar next door, Twist, also had a surge in business. Bricker’d been in there a few times. Once or twice a month he’d slipped into Twist to listen to the reporters talk about the case. Still, he hadn’t realized how many of the media were queer. But because he was so handsome, Bricker had to leave because he was always getting hit on by the fags, especially after 3 A.M. when the drugs kicked in, closing time was approaching and they wouldn’t take “No” for an answer, even from a straight guy.
The Meter Maid Murders Page 3