Ringer

by Wiprud, Brian M

  On the column of smoke, smoldering twenty-dollar bills flickered and danced through the air.

  Gina had a hand to her mouth, sinking to her knees.

  Skip skidded to a stop next to her.

  He pointed. “What happened?”

  “Premiere. It’s gone.”

  “A boat exploded, is that it? Was anybody on it?”

  With downcast eyes, she said, “Robert Tyson Grant.”

  “Holy shit!” Skip pulled a point-and-shoot from his jacket and began taking pictures furiously. “Anybody else with him?”

  “Dixie.”

  “Where’s Purity?”

  “She was meeting Morty. At the beach.”

  “At the beach? What about the Ramparts? She said she was going to meet him at the Ramparts.”

  “That is the beach.”

  The Mexican caretaker appeared next to them in just shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Mi Dios!” He started down the stairs.

  “Come on.” Skip reached a hand out to Gina. “We need to call the Federales, and to make sure Purity and Morty are OK.”

  Gina cast a tearful eye back at the flaming yacht and followed Skip up the dark path.

  * * *

  At the villa’s shadowy veranda, the camera zooms in on Skip and Gina coming from the path to the yacht.

  The camera slowly zooms out to include a silhouette of me on the end of a lounge chair, crooked like a question mark, panting. Skip and Gina jogged up onto the veranda, headed for the living room—but Gina stopped short. She leaned in my direction.

  “Morty?”

  Switch to their perspective as they draw near.

  They see me as I turn toward them, half cast in shadow.

  Eyes: bloodshot from the ether but also with tears.

  Hair: matted with blood and sand.

  Shirt: torn open to reveal four crimson scratches across my chest.

  Pants: splattered with blood like a butcher’s apron.

  “She’s dead,” I gurgle.

  Cut to my blurred wobbly perspective.

  Gina shrieks, “Morty!”

  She rushes toward me, and the camera fades to black.

  I pass out.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-ONE

  I ADMIT THAT AS MUCH as I would like to think of myself as an accomplished screenwriter, I am at a loss when it comes to describing the macabre. To be brutally honest, I don’t remember much of anything of how I got back to the villa, or what I saw at the beach. The prison psychiatrists tell me that I have repressed memories, but I will not allow them to hypnotize me. I know whatever images I have of the headless body of Dixie on that beach are not ones I want to take with me for the rest of my short life and to the grave. There is a reason the memory is repressed. So be it.

  The audience is wondering what exactly happened on that yacht.

  Again, I could guess, but I am not sure I want that image with me, either. I am not capable of writing that gruesome scene. The thought that Paco may have displayed for Grant the head of his lover Dixie is far too chilling for me to contemplate. Grant was kind of a dick, true, but such grisly episodes should only plague our most ruthless killers and remorseless financial speculators.

  My fate is pretty clear given where I am composing this cheery tale. Everybody’s little scheme backfired on them and onto me.

  The body at the beach was identified as Purity’s—the manner of dress, her body type, the phone, and the fact that Purity was missing were sufficient for the Mexican navy.

  Yes, the Mexican navy. I will return to that matter in a moment.

  Dixie had set me up nicely by putting long fingernail scratches on my chest, which she did to make it look like Purity had struggled when I tried to kill her. What Dixie did in the process was to plant damning evidence under her own fingernails—which is where the forensics people found my flesh. Paco put my prints on the sickle and covered me in the victim’s blood. Purity was kind enough to record me on her phone saying I would kill her father for her and to make sure I was on the security camera going down to the boat alone to sabotage it. She also left on her bed the note supposedly from me asking her to come to the Ramparts.

  Making matters worse was that Gina did not see Paco go down to the yacht. Her face tucked into the rock crevice, Gina only heard the footsteps go past in the dark and assumed that it was Dixie. She also knew I was going to meet Purity down at the beach. So did Skip.

  Yes, Skip came out of this in great shape. He was back on top at the paper, scooping every other tabloid on the triple murder of Robert Tyson Grant, beauty queen Dixie, and Purity Grant.

  This was big, big news in the States, as everybody knows, and which is why you are interested in making this into a movie.

  The news was even bigger in Mexico. As anybody knows, the federales are practically in the midst of a civil war with the drug cartels, and the violence and rash of senseless beheadings were creating a hue and cry in the congress to bring back the death penalty—which they had only abolished several years before.

  The sensational nature of the Grant murder case caused a populist push by the politicians in the Mexican Congress to bring back the death penalty for those found guilty of beheadings.

  See if you can guess who is the first to die under this new law.

  Anyway, because the murders took place within tidal areas, the Mexican navy had jurisdiction, and my lawyers used this to get me out from under the civil death penalty and court system. I was to be tried by a tribunal. This created another giant controversy, and under political pressure the navy convened a commission that recommended they adopt civil statutes covering beheadings. Guess what? They did, and the tribunal found me guilty in a single day. In a country known for its sluggishness, they have handled my case with uncommon swiftness. So I guess I should feel special.

  To be brutally honest, I am grateful the navy was swift, and I am grateful they will execute me by firing squad tomorrow instead of dangling me from a noose. I am spared the hopelessness of a lengthy trial I cannot win and the indignity of the gallows. There is something noble about a firing squad, even if I am a convicted murderer. I didn’t want my last conscious memory to be pooping my pants.

  Is there any bright side to this tale? Has God seen fit to trim with silver the dark and foreboding thunderheads that have gathered around the ill fate of Morty Martinez?

  Gina, a girl who barely knew me three days before all this happened, has been fantastic and visits me all the time. Her beauty foils any attempt by the prison to forbid me contraband, like the occasional bottle of wine or Gruyère cheese. I would be an idiot if I did not admit that she and I have grown very close and that were there not an appointment to riddle my body with bullets I would ask her hand in marriage. I believe she would have said yes. What perfect irony that I should find the love of my life while on death row, yes? Tomorrow she will be set free to love another.

  Oh, yes, I almost forgot. What of the gold Caravaca ring of Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra? Thanks to Gina, the ring was of course recovered and the relic returned to Father Gomez. He came to visit me, too, although reluctantly. I think he thinks I’m guilty, too, but mumbled something about saying a prayer for me. Gina said she was going to ask Father Gomez if she could wear the ring for execution day in hopes God would somehow save me. I suppose it is worth a try.

  You must be saying, “Morty, hold the phone! If Purity is still missing, how do you know the body on the beach was Dixie’s? How—in fact—do you know all this about this soulless killer Paco? Are you guilty and just making up all this shit or what?”

  Until recently, I have been in the dark as much as everybody else. Well, except about the palmist part; Gina filled me in on that. In my defense, I’ve been guessing that the murder was committed by the cocktail steward I saw in the gardener’s shed worshipping death. Of course, it was not for me to find out who did these crimes, just to prove I did not do them. Yet it was hard for my defense attorneys, much less the prosecutors or the tribu
nal, to see how anybody else could have done these heinous murders. My premise about the clumsy devil-worshipping cocktail steward sounded idiotic, and the crumpled Waffle House place mat they found in the gardener’s shed did little to substantiate my theory.

  Skip Baker has been following this case closely, and I give him the exclusive from my side of things. I figure, why not, he’s a nice enough guy; helping his career with my plight is just another way to put a positive spin on all this.

  Two weeks ago he came to me in an agitated state. I met with him in my death row cell, a small ray of sunlight beaming through the bars of my window. I was dressed as I have been for months, in my dark gray prison jumpsuit with the stripe down the side. I lay on my bunk, hands behind my head. Skip was in a windbreaker, a tropical shirt, and chinos, documents in his hand. He waited for the guard to leave earshot before sitting at my little writing desk where I have been churning out this story. He leaned in, elbows on knees.

  “Huge news, dude. You didn’t kill Purity Grant.”

  My smile was a weary, lopsided one. “Really?”

  “I think you killed Dixie.”

  “Really?”

  “Look at this.” He pointed to the coroner’s report in his hand. “Implants. I can’t believe I missed this. It was on the back side of the report, and before I only had one side.”

  “And?”

  “Purity Grant did not have implants.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Morty, I told you she and I hooked up. I know implants and these were not implants and I have it from her physician in New York that she in fact did not have implants! I’ve alerted the authorities, and they are exhuming the body to get the numbers off those implants.”

  “There are numbers on implants? I never noticed any.”

  “Inside the tit, on the silicone implant itself.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Then what was Dixie doing dressed as Purity down at the beach, with her phone?”

  Skip slapped his knee and pointed a finger at me. “That’s what I’d like to know.” He jumped to his feet and began pacing, talking more to himself than me. “So I’m cleaning out some files from my laptop the other day, archiving them, when I came upon a little story I was working on just before we all ran off to Cabo. A little story about this guy.”

  He showed me sketches of Paco from the Memphis and Richmond police departments, and they looked quite similar.

  “That’s the clumsy cocktail steward!” I sat up. “The one worshipping death in the gardener’s shed. Ask Gina, she’ll tell you, this is the man who was on the plane.”

  “He left a trail of murders and robberies across the South—that’s where these pictures came from. Now get this. You remember you said you first met Grant at the Red Flame Diner off of Sixth? We had a heeler follow up on that, as we do on a lot of small details. Turns out Grant went there every day for lunch for weeks and had a table reserved. Then they mentioned the last time they saw him. They said he and Dixie were yelling at a busboy, only it wasn’t a busboy, and that they left with him. It seemed odd that they would yell at a stranger and then leave with him, so we recovered their security camera images.” He handed me a grainy photograph.

  I looked from the photo to Skip. “They met this Satan worshipper at the diner. I don’t understand.”

  “A prostitute named Firecracker spent the night with this guy in Richmond and told the cops he’s Guatemalan, named Paco, works for the Juárez cartels, and was on his way to New York for a job.” Skip put his hands on my shoulders. “I think Grant and Dixie hired this Mexican hit man to kill Purity. When you happened to show up before this dude, they thought—”

  “That I was the hit man!” Now I was standing, too. “This all makes sense now, why they acted so strangely.”

  “Then when the real hit man did show up, they decided to take him and you along to Mexico to frame you for Purity’s murder.”

  “My brain is exploding, Skip.” I gripped my hair in astonishment.

  “Don’t you see? Purity also set you up for killing Grant! Dixie and Grant sent a note from you to Purity and from Purity to you, and used Dixie to lure you into the shadows, where they put you out and waited for Purity to show up. When she did show up, Paco would kill her and make it look like you did it. Only Purity didn’t show up. Dixie probably went up to the house, found Purity’s Vespa missing, and found where she’d dropped her phone. I think some of those reports that sighted Purity at a disco that night were actually true. Dixie picked up the phone and headed back to the beach to tell Paco Purity wasn’t coming. Paco mistook Dixie—who was still disguised as Purity—for his victim. Realizing his mistake, he chopped off her head and went to a rendezvous at the yacht to get the money. Grant was on the yacht, and who knows what happened, except one of them turned the key and set off the diesel explosion in the aft of the ship. Both were obliterated with nary a trace.”

  “But, Skip, where is Purity? Are you saying that the woman I have been accused of beheading may still be alive? If so, I am free to leave, yes?”

  “Where is Purity? That’s the ten-million-dollar question. Get this: Right before she left New York, she signed a media deal, selling her image for things like jeans and perfume—fashion stuff. These companies have been making a ton of money off her while the murder investigation has gone on. So I got to wondering—where is all this money going now that she’s dead?”

  “Yes, where?”

  “We contacted her lawyers about this, and our guys are in court now trying to force them to tell us. We think it is to an offshore account. If we can track any withdrawals, we’ll know where she is.”

  I embraced Skip. “You have saved my life! Skip, how can I repay you?”

  “Um, yeah, well, there’s just one problem.”

  I held him at arm’s length, a misspent tear rolling down my cheek. “Problem?”

  “The Mexican authorities were quick to get you in front of a firing squad. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be quick to make themselves look incompetent.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “We’ve got the U.S. ambassador involved, and apparently the State Department is in discussions, but…”

  “But what? I didn’t kill who they say I killed.”

  “From their perspective, you at least may have killed Grant.”

  “But the video of me going to the boat showed I was there only a few moments, and the gardener saw Purity run past him with a fish in her hands headed for the yacht earlier that evening. That would account for the gulls flocking around the camera at that time. And remember Purity’s phone? She had done a Web search about boat explosions.”

  “That’s all a possibility, and circumstantial—it doesn’t translate to fact. If Purity is found alive it will go a long way to diverting blame from you to her. Putting Grant’s murder aside, the navy’s position is that even if you didn’t kill Purity, you killed Dixie thinking it was Purity.”

  “But the Mexican hit man—what of him?”

  “It would be one thing if we knew something more about him, or at least had a body, but he and Grant were obliterated in that explosion. There’s no actual evidence that Paco was here other than your eyewitness of him in the gardener’s shed.”

  I groaned. “What about the Waffle House place mat in the gardener’s shed?”

  “That’s probably your only hope. We’re having less-than-perfect prints from that matched with those in the Richmond motel room and Grant’s Gulfstream. It’ll take time, and it’s dicey.”

  “Still, there is a lot of doubt here. They cannot shoot bullets into me now can they?”

  “Morty, the Daily Post is doing everything it can to save you. You have made so much money for the paper these last months, the editors don’t want this story to die if it can be avoided.”

  “I see.” I sank onto the edge of the cot and heaved a heavy sigh. “So I am to be executed after all, yes?”

  “We’re doing everything we can, Morty, but I’ll
give it to you straight: I think the Mexicans won’t listen, and we don’t have enough time—much less Purity Grant—to make them listen.”

  We shared a long pause.

  “Well, Skip, I can only hope I am exonerated after my bullet-ridden corpse is buried. I want you and the Daily Post to know how much I appreciate that, and the efforts to free me.”

  “Um, could you write something up like that for us, Morty? You know, a farewell note, an exclusive that we could print? Once you are exonerated it will sell a ton more papers if you profess your innocence to the end and credit our paper with being the noble guardian of justice.”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  A guard appeared at the bars to my cell.

  “Looks like I have to go, Morty. Chin up, OK? If all else fails, when they say ‘fire’ … duck.” He winked and smiled.

  I returned his joke with a firm handshake and a wry grin.

  Skip’s footsteps faded down the long prison hallway, and so did my hopes.

  Since that fateful day I have been working both day and night to revise this film treatment to reflect the truth of what happened, to fill in all the unknowns, to fit all the crazy pieces of this jigsaw into a hideous landscape that features an innocent man standing bravely before a firing squad.

  FINAL CHAPTER

  I THINK IT WAS LINCOLN who once said of an unfortunate predicament that he was too old to cry yet too sad to laugh.

  It is now three in the morning, the day of my execution. I have had my last meal: a grilled cheese, of course, and it wasn’t very good because Mexicans can only make quesadillas. They were nice enough to provide me with some tequila. In the USA they don’t let condemned men drink, which if you ask me is perfectly insane. If ever there was any poor slob who really needed a drink it is a condemned man, wouldn’t you say? Write your congressmen.

  Gina came today, after Skip. I refused to see her; the prospect of witnessing her tears was too painful. Instead I have left her a note:

  Dear Gina: I have left you my villa in La Paz, sell it, do whatever. My destiny is no longer in La Paz, but with God, who will hopefully look favorably upon His poor servant, the one who restored the relic of Hernando Martinez de Salvaterra at the expense of his life. My gratitude to you, dear Gina, for staying in Mexico and comforting me, is boundless. I have but one regret in my life, and that regret is that I cannot spend eternity cherishing my sweet Gina. Perhaps I will see you on the other side, but do not pine. Find a man as good as me if you can, but do not settle, and avoid men with elaborate facial hair. Just trust me on this one. Love always and forever—Morty.