I looked up towards her floor. Her room was in the back.
I climbed the outside staircase to the second floor.
Light came through the bottom of Jessica’s door. She was home.
The liquor helped me work up the nerve I needed. I knocked, three times.
Nothing.
I knocked again.
Still nothing.
I tried the door.
It was locked.
I heard a stirring inside, then the sound of something falling and hitting the floor.
“Jessica, let me in,” I said a little too loudly.
Nothing.
For the second time, I slid down in front of her door and sat on the dirty boards.
+++
It was two-thirty when John Miller finally finished with Ginger. He was in rare form tonight, she thought, stronger and more hungry than most nights. He made her do everything, even the stuff she hated, the stuff that hurt. But it was his nickel and she needed it. When he was finished he tipped her a C-note and left with a smile on his face.
She packed her small bag, slipped on some jeans and a pink pullover top and headed out down the back stairs. At the bottom she cashed out, giving the house their thirty percent and taking her cut in small bills. She managed to keep over three hundred for herself tonight, a damned good haul, all things considered.
Then she found Chuck.
“Call me a cab, sugar?” she said, and he knew what that meant. From a little box in his jacket pocket he produced a wax paper package about six inches long and an inch in diameter. “Thanks sugar. Here’s a ten for your trouble. Now really, I need that cab,” Jessica/Ginger said, and like a good soldier Chuck picked up the phone and called for a Checker to meet her out back.
Ginger sat on the back fence and waited, stuffing the little package down deep into her purse. When the cab showed up she directed him to her apartment, and in a few minutes was home.
She showered off first, then took a half a ham sandwich from the Fridgidaire and ate it with a bottle of Coke. A decent breeze came through her window tonight, and she knew she’d sleep well. When the sandwich was finished, she took out the little wax paper package and slowly opened it on her table. Then she took the black zippered case from under the clothes in the second drawer of her bureau, and opened that next to it.
A few minutes later any memories she had of ghosts or Johns or Bills or anything were lost in a cloudy dream.
+++
I woke up about three-thirty a.m. in front of Jessica’s door. My head was a lot clearer now and I knew she was in there. I needed to see her.
I pounded on the door. “Jessica, let me in. It’s Riggins.”
I heard a stirring, then a faint, “Go away.”
“I ain’t going away. I’ll pound this door until the neighbors call the cops,” I yelled, and a light came on in the next apartment. Then I remembered how flimsy her lock was. I didn’t want to break the door down, but it was a cinch I could pick the lock with nothing but a hairpin.
If only I had a hairpin.
Then I remembered her lock used a skeleton key. I looked under her mat, then on top of the doorjamb. Sure enough, she left an extra latchkey over the door.
I opened the lock and opened the door.
Damn.
Sometimes I should just quit while I’m ahead, but I don’t. If I did, I’d be telling you the story of how I met this smokin’ hot chick on vacation, who I found out later turned out to be a call girl. End of story. Kind of crazy, a little funny, but not so bad.
But I had to push it.
A pushed the door open slow. A small bulb glowed on the nightstand, giving the room a quiet, dead feel with strange shadows clawing at the walls. Jessica was laid out on her bed naked, one leg off the side and one arm over her face, shielding her eyes against the dull light. She didn’t move when I came in. On the table sat a piece of wax paper with white powder on it, a spoon, a candle, and a syringe.
I didn’t have to look twice to know what I was looking at.
H.
Horse.
The White Ghost.
Heroin.
“Jesus H. Christ, Jessica!” I yelled as I ran to her. I looked at her arms. No tracks. Of course not, she needed to look good to keep her clients. I spread her toes. Sure enough, there were enough pinpricks to make a connect-the-dots picture.
I shook her. “Jessica, wake up. Jessica!”
She muttered very low, “I’m…Ginger.”
“Gaddammit, I don’t care if you’re Vera Lynn, wake the hell up!” Then it hit me. I checked her pulse. It was racing but weak. Her breathing was shallow. Her pupils were dilated like hell.
The dumb broad over-dosed herself!
I picked up the phone and asked the operator for the nearest doctor to her address. She rang me through to a Dr. Watson (yeah, really, how about that?) who sounded groggy but concerned. I told him I was a Detective and he said he’d be over in five minutes. Four minutes later he knocked on the door.
He checked her vitals and gave her a shot of something. Then he turned to me.
“She’ll be fine. She didn’t take a lethal dose. Is she a friend of yours?”
“Just met her this week. Just found out tonight she on the junk.”
“Do everything you can to get her off of it, Mr. Riggins. She keeps this up she won’t last past her thirty-fifth birthday.”
“Just like Bird,” I muttered.
“Yes, just like him. Such a waste.” He closed up his bag and gave me some pills. “Give her two of these when she wakes up. It will help with the pain that she’s going to have in her head. Two every four hours after that. Good luck, Mr. Riggins,” he said and left.
I wasn’t going to wait until she woke up. I shook her hard and she woke up on my schedule.
“Jessica, get up.”
“Wha, what do you want?”
“It’s me, Riggins. I want to know what the hell this is all about.”
She shook off the sleepiness enough to answer me. “It’s all about me, Bill, it’s about me. This is how I live with myself. This is how I can do what I do, and forget. This is how I get the voices to stop. This is how I get the ghosts to leave me alone.”
I was yelling. “Jessica, this stuff will kill you, don’t you understand that?”
The groggy answer came, “I don’t care.”
“How could you not care! I’ve seen what this stuff does to people!”
“I need it.”
“You’re a Gaddamned junkie!” I screamed, not realizing how loud I’d been. A dog barked downstairs. Someone pounded on the ceiling above. “Jesus, Jessica,” was all I could say. I was losing it, losing my cool. I could put up with her being a stripper. I could put up with her being a sex dancer, and even a Gaddamned prostitute, although that was really pushing my sense of morality. I could even forgive her for lying about everything. But the one thing I couldn’t forgive was a junkie.
Then the final gear clicked into place, and the motor ran smooth and quiet.
Click.
“That’s why you can’t leave Key West,” I finally said. “Because you’ve got your whole system set up here. You make big money fast turning tricks, then you spill it all week on H. That’s why you live in a six-by-twelve apartment, that’s why you wanted me to stay away today. No wonder you see freakin’ ghosts, you probably hallucinate half your life away!”
“The ghosts are real!” she yelled, jumping from the bed. Suddenly she was full of life, full of energy. “They’re real, you saw them yourself, Riggins. Don’t you dare tell me you didn’t. I need this stuff just to get through the nights. Thank God I found something that can help me through, or I’d be dead already!”
“Bullshit!” I retorted. “What you need is a good shot in the head to set you straight. Heroin doesn’t help anything. It makes it worse. So you’ve been seeing strange things for a few days. Cope with it.”
“A few days?” she said quietly. “You dumb sunofabitch, haven’t you bee
n listening to anything I’ve been saying? Haven’t you paid attention to what I’ve shown you? It hasn’t been a few days. It’s been my whole fuckin’ life!”
She broke down in tears again and it seemed the only time I saw her now was when she was crying.
That had to change.
I had to try to help her. I knew it was crazy, but I had to try. Maybe it was just the cop in me, or maybe I felt something for her that I never should have started feeling in the first place, but it was out there, and there was no suppressing it, no denying it.
“Jessica, look at me.” She looked up and I realized at some point she had come into my arms, and she was still naked. I held her close and talked softly. “No matter what you think, I can help you. I know doctors who can help you get off the Horse without going cold turkey. Come with me to New York, and leave all this behind. Leave your past, leave your ghosts. Start over again. Let me help you.”
She gave a short laugh. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to help me?” she asked through drug-soaked sobs.
“I…I just do. I want to.”
“Is it because you love me, Billy?”
“I…” I didn’t’ know how to answer.
“Do you love me Bill? Can you love me?” She put her arms around me and kissed me. Something didn’t seem right. She looked into my eyes. Hers were glistening with tears. “Can you still kiss me knowing where my mouth was earlier tonight?”
Something grabbed the back of my mind and threw it against a rock wall. Disgust, hatred, loathing all balled up in my gut and I pushed Jessica off of me onto the bed. She just laughed. I spit, wiped my mouth with my arm.
“You don’t love me, Billy. You just want a project. You just want someone you can take care of, because you miss taking care of the pushers and hookers and lowlifes you work with. Admit it, Riggins, once you go back home you’ll forget all about me and you won’t care whether I live or die.”
She laughed again. She was a monster, not her real self, not Jessica but Ginger, the strung-out, naked whore with needle tracks under her toes and a heart as cold as ice. The Bourbon spun my brain and I had to get out of there. I left her there laughing on the bed as I ripped the door open and shot down the stairs.
I found my car and fired it up. An hour on the boat was too long to get back to the Island, so I floored it and raced through town, then raced up US 1 as fast as the road would let me to Sugarloaf Key. The road was a dark, winding snake that stunk of marsh and rose with treacherous bridges barely wide enough to let the car through. My high beams cut through the night; shadows leapt from the sides of the road and threatened to turn me over but I held her steady at almost ninety for most of the way. I was in Sugarloaf in what seemed like minutes, and I parked at the edge of the dock that said, “Hawthorn Industries.” No one was around, but a motorboat with Tiki Island painted on the side sat ready. I jumped in, cranked it up and took off for the Island. It wasn’t far off but the boat barely pushed twenty, and it seemed like it took forever to run the half mile stretch. When I finally got to the Island I just beached the boat near the front, and tied it to a Tiki pole.
A minute later I was in my room, in the shower, washing off the grime of the night. I brushed my teeth twice and looked at myself in the mirror. I swear I aged ten years.
Shaking, I poured myself a Wild Turkey neat from the Tiki bar and sat in one of the big chairs. It all rushed in.
Jessica was a hooker.
And she was an addict. Not just a reefer smoker or a cocaine party girl, but a certified heroin junkie complete with her own do-it-yourself juice kit.
And she was wrong.
I was falling in love with her.
How could I be so stupid? How could I let this happen, me, Detective William Riggins, the smartest cop on the force, the youngest to be made Detective in thirty years? I swallowed the belt and threw the glass against the wall. It shattered into a thousand tiny pieces and spread across the room. That just made me madder.
I was going crazy. I didn’t know what to do. I left the suite, and at four-thirty in the morning I found myself in the one place I should never have gone.
I knocked.
It took a minute, but Melinda opened the door to her room and stood there sleepily, yet beautiful. It was like in a movie when a doll goes to bed looking like a million bucks and wakes up the next day with perfect hair and makeup. She was gorgeous through and through, wearing nothing but a flimsy silk housecoat.
“Bill?” she asked. She seemed surprised. I didn’t say a word. I pushed the door open and pushed my way in. I took her by surprise so fast that the she let the silk robe slip a little and I could see she wasn’t wearing a damned thing underneath. I kicked the door shut. We were alone.
“Bill, I…”
I didn’t let her finish. I took her by the arms and pulled her up to me, pressing my lips against hers. The fire broke out and sparks flew all over the room, chasing away any thoughts I had of Jessica or Ginger or whoever the hell she was. Melinda kissed back. She wrapped her arms around my neck and gave in completely. We’d both dreamed about this minute for days and now it was here and there was no stopping it.
The kiss ended and she stepped back, her breasts heaving with passion, her mouth open with desire. She untied the robe and in one soft move it floated to the floor, exposing that tan, lithe body I’d dreamed so much about. “Take me,” she said softly, and I moved in slowly and kissed her again, the passion roaring up inside us like an atom bomb loosed on the world. I picked her up and laid her on the bed. I ripped my shirt off and buttons flew everywhere. I didn’t care. “Take me,” she said again.
She didn’t have to ask twice.
+++
I woke up late Saturday morning. It was around eleven and the taste of Bourbon and Melinda still lingered. A crazy thought occurred to me then, that they should make a cocktail and name it the Bourbon Melinda. Then I realized any drink named after her would have to be made with rum, so the name didn’t make sense. Then I realized I must still be a little drunk if I was thinking thoughts like that.
Melinda was nowhere to be found, but she left me a note on the bathroom mirror:
“Dear Bill, I hope you had as wonderful a night as I did. I figured you’d want to sleep so I didn’t wake you. I had to coordinate a breakfast for a group this morning and won’t be available until after eleven. I’ve left word with the front desk to send up a package of clothing for you; it should be waiting outside my door. I’ll see you soon, love, Melinda.”
Oh boy. ‘love, Melinda’.
I splashed some water on my face to wake up and grabbed the clothes from outside the door. A nice pair of pleated tan pants, tan socks, and white shirt with red and orange flowers and a pair of boxers, all the right size. This hotel was first class, all the way. I dressed fast and went back to my room where I showered and shaved before showing my mug in public again.
I sat on the balcony and looked out over the Gulf to Key West. What a night. What a day and night. A haunted house, a brothel, a sex show, finding out Jessica was a call girl and a junkie, all that booze and ending up with most beautiful, most sensual girl I’d ever known. I might have thought Jessica knew a few tricks, but honestly she could have taken lessons from Melinda. Where that girl learned her techniques I didn’t know…and come to think of it, I really didn’t want to know.
As I stretched out on the lounge chair I thought of my life, how it was going, where it was going. I was a cop, no doubt about it. But could I really be happy here, on this Island, with Melinda? Could I fall for her, and make it stick? I’d still have to be a cop…not a doubt that Sheriff Jackson could find something for me to do, maybe even get a gig with the state cops. I don’t know if I could wear the southern-style uniforms though, I’d feel pretty silly wearing a cowboy hat while talkin’ wit my Joisey accint. Of course if I moved here, I’d have more use for a pretty blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible. That’s a thought.
The autu
mn sun rose high in the Florida sky, and a cool breeze came off the Gulf into my room. It occurred to me that it was probably cloudy and in the low forties in New York today. It didn’t seem fair that the greatest city on Earth had to be cold and dreary nine months out of the year. Then again, if it didn’t get cold there, New York chicks wouldn’t wear tight pullover sweaters and black boots.
I had enough of the view and decided to look for Melinda. I didn’t know what last night had meant to her, and I wanted to get things straight before I put my foot in my mouth. I was at a point where dropping everything and moving to Tiki Island didn’t sound too bad, but still sounded crazy and unrealistic.
I went down to the lobby and asked the concierge if they knew where she was. They didn’t so I tried the lobby bar and the restaurant. Nothing. I decided to try back at her room, just for the hell of it.
She left me a key so I let myself in. She wasn’t there either, but I decided to stay a while. Detective mode had kicked in, and as such I couldn’t help but do a little snooping. Now don’t get sore, I wasn’t going to invade her privacy, wasn’t going to sniff her panty drawer or anything like that. I just wanted to give her apartment the once over, see what books she liked to read, what TV shows she had circled in the guide, what photos she had sitting out.
Her place was converted hotel rooms so it was set up in such a way that you walked into the bedroom first, then went down a short hall to a living room space. A bookshelf in her bedroom held a couple dozen hardbacks, every one of them out of place with each other. There was a book of Hawaiian history and culture next to a Mike Hammer novel (she’s got good taste, I noted). Next to that was a book on shipwrecks of the Florida Keys, then Frankenstein, then a couple of romance novels, then another Mike Hammer and a book of poetry. Her tastes were all over the map when it came to books. I liked that. I left the books and wandered down the hall, a short but interesting passage lined with thatch mats and hung with black velvet paintings of tropical beaches and topless native women.
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 25