by Paul Levine
"Sexual identity?"
"In the beginning, the gender of the prince and princess are confused, each taking on characteristics of the opposite sex, perhaps even hermaphroditical, at least figuratively. The prince has blue eyes and hair 'of yellow ringlet, like a girl.' The princess is a dark and masculine woman. She wants to live apart from men. Her identity needs to be adjusted. At the end—"
"'Her falser self slipt from her like a robe.'"
"Right. She became womanly, he manly, but only in an androgynous way idealized by the Victorians."
I read aloud from the printout:
"'Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man.'"
"That's it," Prince said, "man into woman, woman into man."
"Would Professor Higgins agree?"
"Perhaps to the extent he believed in a relationship with a woman at all. When Eliza threatened to leave, he told her to come back for his good fellowship."
"Not very romantic," I said.
"No, not like his progenitor."
"Shaw?"
"Pygmalion."
It took me a second. "But Pygmalion wasn't real," I protested. "He was a figure from myth."
"And what was Higgins or the princess or the old man speaking to the Earth, or even Biff? Mythical characters who represent universal thoughts, common experiences. Do you remember the Metamorphoses?"
"Something from high-school biology?"
Prince grimaced. "Ovid's Latin poems, written at the time of Christ. Surely you read of Echo's ill-fated love of the selfish Narcissus, Apollo's pursuit of Daphne, and of the sculptor Pygmalion."
"I missed it in Latin," I said, thinking of Charlie Riggs, "but caught it in Classic Comics. Pygmalion carved a woman from ivory and fell in love with her."
"Galatea by name. He prayed to Aphrodite to bring her to life, and she complied. He created his beauty and willed her to live."
Now there's a sexual-identity issue for you, Tennyson. Statue into woman. Hang some rhymin' on that, Al, baby.
CHAPTER 34
Pink Flamingos
Max Blinderman was right where he was supposed to be, next to the fountain with the statue of Citation.
"Hello, shyster," Max said, taking the last drag on a cigarette.
"Hello, shorty," I said.
Citation didn't say a word.
Max's shifty eyes flashed from me to Charlie Riggs and back to me again. The ex-jockey wore a baseball cap and a nylon jacket in the ninety-degree heat. "Whacha want? I gotta lay down fifty on the turf feature, so hurry the hell up."
"Blood, Max. Yours."
"Whaddaya mean?" He flipped his cigarette butt into Citation's fountain.
I cranked up the volume a notch. "I'm looking for an impostor, somebody logging in as Passion Prince. The women he talks to are ending up very dead. I'm giving you a chance to prove you're not the guy who bangs 'em and strangles 'em."
His sneer wrinkled his mustache. "I don't have to prove nuthin.' I know my rights."
"Sure, you do. They've been read to you a few times."
"Go piss in the wind."
I heard Charlie's disapproving tsk-tsk.
"I've seen your rap sheet," I said.
"Bad luck, a couple businesses went bad. Like a horse going lame, nothing you can do about it. An airline goes bankrupt, nobody gives a shit. A small businessman can't make it, he gets thrown in jail."
"Issuing worthless checks, mail fraud, buying, receiving, and concealing..."
"Big deal. Restitution on one, probation another, dismissed on the BRC. I've never done time, you can look it up."
I already had. A thief and a con man with no history of violence. But every killer has to start sometime.
From the other side of the bleachers a man in a red tunic and black boots was blowing a bugle. In the walking ring the jockeys mounted their horses and prepared to enter the track.
"C'mere," Max commanded, and we turned toward the ring. "Whaddaya think of number two, Radar Vector?"
"I think he's a big, brown horse," I said. "And he uses more tape on his ankles than I used to."
Nobody knows something about everything.
"Good blood," Charlie Riggs interjected. "By Diplomat Way out of Hawaiian Love Star. Florida-bred. But out of the money the last four races. He did finish strong the last two, however, and at a mile and a half, he should like this longer distance. He may be overlooked and go off at ten or twelve-to-one. So..."
Almost nobody knows something about everything.
"Yow," Max said, "but you left out something."
"Bellasario's up," Charlie continued, "in the money sixty-two percent of his mounts. Wouldn't mind laying two dollars across the board."
"The jockey," Max agreed. "Never overlook the jockey. The horse gotta have the blood and gotta have the heart, and the horse carries the jockey on its back, not vice versa, but a lousy jock can still ruin a great horse, and a great jockey can get the best out of a fair-to-middling horse."
Made sense to me. I nodded. So did Charlie. So did Radar Vector, who was prancing his way on the parade to the track.
Charlie started packing his pipe with tobacco and said, "Mr. Blinderman, I saw you ride Pax Americana in the Flamingo a number of years ago. To this day I believe your protest should have been upheld."
Max's dark eyes brightened. "Damn right! I moved left, Salazar moved left. I moved right, he moved right. When I took the inside, son of a bitch whipped my horse and nearly drove me over the rail."
"A shameful, dreadful decision, or should I say non-decision, by the stewards." Charlie clucked, pushing all the right buttons.
"Yow, you said it. C'mon. I'll introduce you to the fifty-dollar window. Forget that two-dollar stuff."
They took off for the stone staircases with the carved balustrades. Purple bougainvillea spun down the mezzanine, clinging to the green-and-white latticework. Hialeah Park was a place of old terrazzo floors and unpretentious lawn chairs, a graceful faded garden of pink flamingos, green shrubs, tropical flowers, and sweet-smelling earth.
I sat on the edge of the fountain next to Citation. He stayed on his pedestal. He was by Bull Lea out of Hydroplane II, bred at Calumet Farm. He won the Triple Crown. I was by a nomad shrimper out of Katy Lassiter, raised by my granny. I was a triple threat, just good enough in baseball, basketball, and football not to get good enough at anything else. By the time I learned that games were not forever, I had a lot of catching up to do.
Maybe I was just a step too slow to ever be good at this. I was starting to feel sorry for myself, which is not the most endearing of my qualities. But let's look at the facts. Nick Fox was right. I'd been spinning webs for Rodriguez and Fox, and they were clean. They said they'd humor me, take the blood tests. They did, and young Dr. Sanford Katzen, mathematician and geneticist, brought his autoradiograms and his scientific mumbo jumbo to my office. I told him to spare me the lecture about chopping up the DNA and he did. He held the X-rays up to the window and showed me, by golly, there wasn't one chance in a quintillion that either man's DNA matched that of the semen from Mary Rosedahl or Priscilla Fox. If that wasn't enough, Fox said, they'd each take polygraph tests. It was enough.
So I asked Charlie Riggs to spend a buck and hop on Metrorail for the ride to Hialeah. He had agreed, and we sat there, gliding above the treetops, past the marble-and-glass skyscrapers of Brickell Avenue, past the downtown government buildings, through the cheerless streets of Overtown, looking down at the tar-patched roofs and asphalt courts where skinny kids dropped a ball through netless rims. From a distance I peered into the Orange Bowl, my own house of pain. We shot by the civic center, Allapattah, Brownsville, and Northside, and came to rest in the parking lot beside the old racetrack.
The winter and spring dates go to Gulfstream and Calder, leaving Hialeah with the stifling summer season, smaller crowds, slower horses. Like many aging institutions of charm and character, the Hialeah track was also going broke. The summ
er meet would be cut short, closed without ceremony, and already there were plans for plug-ugly condos around the flamingo pond. Inside the clubhouse, amid ragged, curling photos of Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons and the litter of discarded tickets, an elderly barber sat in the reclining chair of his empty shop beneath a stained-glass window of a pink flamingo. He studied the Daily Racing Form. Just memories now, hundred-dollar tips from grateful bettors in need of a shave.
And here I was, trying to bully a tough monkey who used to steer thousand-pound beasts with his knees, and he tells me to shove it where the sun don't shine. But old Charlie Riggs, master of the microscope and the anecdote, found common ground with the little weasel. When they came back from the window, I was sure, Max would be rolling up his sleeve and asking if we wanted a drop or a pint.
And how about my personal relationships, as long as we're engaging in self-flagellation? Ms. Pamela Maxson, where is she now, oh man of many charms? In a hotel room, ocean view. Do not disturb.
I'm sorry, Dr. Maxson is not taking any calls. Would you care to leave a message?
Yeah, tell her she wasn't that great, either. No, never mind.
Okay, Lassiter, you've struck out before. You've had good relationships go bad and bad relationships get worse. There've been lady executives who cared more for their work than you, new-age types who declared you obsolete, touchy-feely artistic types who found you impenetrable, and a couple of cocktail waitresses who thought you had a cute tush.
So don't start romanticizing this one. This was weird from day one. First she stiff-arms and belittles you. Then drops you in the soup with a bunch of sicko killers and gets angry when you fight your way out. Next she shows up under the sheets, then boom, she's furious. She cuddles again, sharing bed and board until she finds someone else. Who was it? A psychiatrist at one of her speeches. Or a beachboy type, Mel Gibson with a deep tan.
Okay, grow up already. She left. Accept it for what it was. "'Sweet love were slain,'" old Tennyson wrote. A meaningless joining of bodies, a sharing of mutual heat, a momentary exchange of breaths. Nothing more.
***
The ex-coroner and the ex-jockey hadn't come back, so I limped up the stairs to the mezzanine, the left foot still swollen and angry at me. There were cries of joy and anguish from the grandstand, and by the time I got to the bar, the TV monitor was showing the replay, number two, thundering down the stretch, five lengths ahead, Bellasario leaning forward, talking horse talk, I imagined, in Radar Vector's ears. He paid $25.80, $9.80, and $5.20.
I ordered a draft beer and was joined by two elderly men in polo shirts, golf slacks, and sneakers. A second TV was tuned to the Yankees-Red Sox game and it was clear these guys didn't come to drink. One had a hundred bucks on the Yankees at six-to-five.
Five minutes later, Charlie Riggs and Max Blinderman pulled up, laughing, slapping each other on the back, counting their money. Literally counting it, unfolding greenbacks as they walked.
"Jake, buy you a beer?" Charlie thundered.
I didn't say no.
"Never played a perfecta before," Charlie announced. He dropped two fifties on the bar and stuffed one in the pocket of the old geezer who was polishing glasses. "But couldn't resist pairing Radar Vector with Internal Medicine. How could I lose?"
How, indeed?
"Paid ninety-eight dollars on a two-dollar bet."
"Great, you can buy dinner," I said.
"He can buy more than that," Max said. "He bet a hundred bucks. Say, doc, you're not doing anything tomorrow, we'll have breakfast, study the charts."
"Tomorrow?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.
"Don't worry. I'll be at the lab by eleven, they can stick me, and we'll make the one o'clock post."
"Done," Charlie said.
The bartender drew a pitcher of beer for the coroner and the lawyer, then delivered a Preakness—rye and vermouth with a dash of Benedictine—for the jockey.
Max sipped his drink and looked at me, his smile gone. "Hey, shyster, that English-bred filly of yours came by the other day to sign up. What's the matter, she want to graze in other pastures?"
"Thanks for the news bulletin, Max," I said. "Give Bobbie my best."
He showed me a shit-eating grin. "Yow, I'll do better than that. I'll give her my best."
I laughed. Not at him. At us. A couple of immature punks in the school yard insulting each other's prowess with the opposite sex.
"Whaddaya laughing at, shyster?"
"Just wondering. When Bobbie comes sniffing around, should I tell her to skedaddle, go home to Max? Or should I give her a run around the track?"
I don't know why I said that. Stupid and vicious. That wasn't the man Granny Lassiter raised. There was no need to respond in kind to his ridicule. Charlie would tell me later how disappointed he was in me. Max told me something else. He came next to my bar stool and stood, maybe on tiptoes, pressing his face close to mine. His breath smelled of tobacco and whiskey.
"Look, shyster, you try anything with Bobbie, I make you a gelding quicker'n you can say Eddie Arcaro."
"Eddie Arcaro," I said.
Oh boy, aren't you big and tough, taunting someone who makes Michael J. Fox look like Rambo. Little guys always want to fight you, to prove something to themselves. If you take them up on it, throw them from here to second base, you're a bully. Get whupped, you're a wimp. Jockeys prove something to themselves squiring six-foot-tall models and driving block-long Lincolns. Don't ask me what or why. Maybe Pam Maxson knows. I'll ask her. Maybe get the promised therapy at the same time.
"Nobody fucks with Bobbie," Max Blinderman snarled, turning on his heel and disappearing into the grandstand.
CHAPTER 35
Sublimations
I had the top down and the pedal to the metal climbing our Miami mountain, the great looping causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The causeway soars skyward to let the sailboats pass underneath, and it gives you a copter's view of the city, sun-sparkled and gleaming. Cruise ships and condos, beaches and sports cars. It is the cinematographer's vision of the tropical paradise. Phony as a bar girl's smile.
The Olds roared over the crest, eastward toward the morning sun, and I eased off the gas, cruising past the marina and the Marine Stadium, past the entrance to Virginia Key, and on through Crandon Park into the small downtown of Key Biscayne. The Key is turned inside out. Surrounded by water, the condos and hotels on the east open onto the sea. The houses on the west open onto the bay. In northern climes, houses have front porches. You can walk the block and salute your neighbors. Here, we're all out back at the beach or pool. The fronts are deserted, out of the action.
I tried the house phone at the hotel. No answer in her room. At least the operator didn't give me the non disturbate message. I tried the lobby. No luck. The pool deck had its usual collection of buttocks in bikinis, the South American Tonga, alongside heavyset men weighted with gold. But no English lady from the Cotswolds. I stepped onto the beach, my black wingtips sinking into the sand. I don't know what's worse, being underdressed for your surroundings or overdressed. It is impossible to wear a shirt and tie on the beach and not feel both foolish about yourself and resentful of those properly unattired.
I checked the grill at the chickee hut, not thirty yards from the surf. Bare backs, the smell of coconut oil, icy red strawberry daiquiris, and the sizzle of burning burgers. But no Pam Maxson.
I tried the front desk, where a slim young man with a slim young mustache smiled at me and chirped g'morning. For a moment I thought I was two hundred twenty miles up yonder in the land of the mouse. The plastic tag on his brown blazer said "Carlos." I allowed as how it was a fine morning indeed and asked him for Dr. Maxson's room number. Still smiling under his whiskery lip, Carlos told me he couldn't do that but the operator would be oh-so-happy to dial the room she might fall off her ergonomic, three-hundred-sixty-degree swivel chair. So I flashed him my laminated, semiofficial badge, which was starting to show wear around the edges, and Carlos punched some buttons on h
is computer and gave me a suite number, twelfth floor, ocean side. I headed for the elevator and he looked after me. Smiling.
There was silence after the first knock on the double doors. And the second.
After the third she asked who it was.
When I told her, she cracked the door, chain still affixed, and asked what I wanted.
Beaches without footprints, I told her. Eternal happiness, too. But I'd settle for fresh-squeezed juice, eggs over lightly, and a basket of toast with three or four of those little jelly jars.
She unchained and let me in. We faced each other awkwardly in a sitting room tastefully done in muted tropical colors. A sliding glass door led to a balcony with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Atlantic. She wore an ankle-length floral satin robe and no makeup. The sculpted cheekbones still showed their granite planes. Her green eyes were still spiked with flint. Her auburn hair was pulled straight back and tied in a ponytail.
I was too late for breakfast. The room-service cart was there, covered with a white tablecloth and decorated by a vase with fresh-cut lavender flowers. An empty cereal bowl sat on one side of the table and the remains of a western omelet on the other. Two chairs, two place settings, one big pot with two coffee cups. My inductive reasoning told me that Pamela Maxson had not dined alone. I was getting so good at this I decided to ask Nick Fox for a raise.
"Kiss me quick before I die," I said.
"What in heaven's—"
"The flowers on your table. I don't know the real name, but as kids, that's what we called them, kiss me quick—"
"Before I die." She picked up one of the flowers, a white eye in the center circled by a lush lavender. "How quaint."