Miami Noir

by Les Standiford

  I was on my third reading of the A form when Mr. Campos walked in. I don’t know what I had expected, but it sure as hell was not the slight, sallow-looking, white-haired individual with the twinkling blue eyes that came into the interview room.

  I stood up and extended my right hand. “Mr. Campos? I’m Lily Ramos, the investigator from your attorney Mr. Langer’s office.”

  Mr. Campos shook my hand, even as he checked me over with a skeptical look on his face. I was not surprised at his reaction, as I knew I did not fit most individuals’ preconceived idea of what a private investigator should look like. I was small—five feet tall if the wind was blowing right—and, although curvy, I only tipped the scales at one hundred pounds. I was olive-skinned, with straight, shoulder-length, light-brown hair and caramel-colored eyes. Although I carried a big, heavy gun—a Colt .45 (I had bad vision, so I wanted to make sure that if I had to shoot someone, I would not miss my mark)—I was not exactly intimidating.

  “You have some kind of ID?” Mr. Campos was not the first client who doubted me, so I had come prepared. I took out one of my business cards from inside my notepad and handed it over to him. I waited while Mr. Campos carefully examined it, turning the small white card over as if there might be a secret message somewhere on it. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine,” I answered. Then, thinking I was sounding just a bit too curt, I added, “I just had a birthday.”

  “You look very young—maybe twenty,” Mr. Campos commented. It was not meant as a compliment and I did not take it as such. “Okay, we can start. What do you want to know?”

  “Well, could you please tell me a bit about yourself, and then we’ll talk about what happened—ending up with how and why you’re here,” I said. “Whatever you tell me will be kept in the strictest of confidence.”

  Mr. Campos, who had come over with his wife from Cuba thirty years before, had lived in the same house in Hialeah since then. He had worked as an automobile mechanic—he specialized in repairing air conditioners—at the same store since his arrival in Miami. His wife worked in a factory, as a seamstress. Although they had been very happy together, the couple had no children—“a great sadness,” as he said.

  Mr. Campos told me that he had retired from his job five years before, not by choice, but on his doctor’s orders, due to a heart condition which was being aggravated by his work as an air conditioner repairman. His wife, who was ten years younger than him, continued to work. According to Mr. Campos, he did not like just hanging out with other old guys—all they did was drink cheap beer, play dominos, and tell lies about life back in Cuba—so he dedicated himself to improving their home, thinking that if he were to fix up the place nicely, he and his wife could sell it, and with the profits they were sure to make, move into an assisted-living community. He spent hours landscaping the garden, and took great pride in the results.

  Mr. Campos also began to take an interest in cooking, and said he very much enjoyed surprising his wife with the meals he had prepared for her when she came home from work. He would try out new recipes, tweaking the ingredients here and there until he was satisfied. He even invented several recipes for marinating especially tough cuts of meat before barbequing them, some of which were so successful that his wife asked for a list of the ingredients. Life was good, and it seemed that it would only get better.

  It had been two years ago, when the new neighbors moved in, that the “trouble” began. The owner of the house next door had died, and his children sold the home to a gay couple. At first, although he disapproved of gay people and the “gay lifestyle,” Mr. Campos had tried to be a good neighbor, greeting them whenever he saw them, even talking to them on occasion. Yet neither the Campos nor the couple ever went into each others’ homes, and it continued that way for the first year.

  It was during the second year that the situation started to deteriorate. The gay couple began having trouble—first arguments, then shouting matches that escalated into physical attacks on each other, which became so violent that the police had to come on several occasions. Finally, much to everyone’s relief, one of the men moved out, and peace was restored in the neighborhood.

  All was going well until the day when the remaining neighbor decided to buy a dog to help himself get over his loneliness. Everything would have been fine except for the fact that he was not just a dog, but a mastiff, a huge animal which barked all day. When he wasn’t barking, the dog was howling.

  The neighbor, who worked as a personal trainer in one of the giant gyms located in a mall a few miles away from home, was away for hours at a time, which meant the dog was alone—and lonely—a condition that he let everyone know about.

  Mr. Campos told me he liked dogs all right, but the neighbor’s mastiff drove him crazy. Not only did he bark and howl, he also left enormous smelly poops all over the neighborhood. The dog was especially fond of defecating on Mr. Campos’s front lawn, marring the landscaping he had so meticulously worked on. Mr. Campos told the neighbor on numerous occasions to pick up after his dog, but the neighbor did not pay any attention, and continued to let his dog run wild. Mr. Campos even put up a fence to keep the dog out, but the animal just jumped over it.

  Mr. Campos went on to tell me that he began plotting how best to remedy the situation. He had become so consumed by his relationship with his neighbor and dog that he began thinking about it almost continuously. Things got so bad that his wife told him to get over it and deal with it, or, if he couldn’t do it by himself, get professional help. The fact that his wife told him he needed to see a psychiatrist had been the last straw. He had to do something about the dog, and he had to act fast, while he still had his sanity.

  As I listened to Mr. Campos run through the events which led to him killing his neighbor, it was not difficult to see how it had been almost inevitable. As the time passed, it became clear to Mr. Campos that it was either the dog or him.

  The longer the interview went on, the more I tried not to think about the situation with Rob, Royal, and me, and I slowly began listening to Mr. Campos’s story with more of a personal interest than a professional one.

  Mr. Campos told me that he came to the conclusion that the only way to save his sanity—not to mention his property—was to kill the dog. It was after much contemplation that he decided that the best, most efficient, and least painful way to get rid of the animal was to poison him. That night, for the first time in months, instead of sitting by the window, lying in wait for the neighbor’s dog to shit on his front lawn, he slept through until morning.

  First, he went to the library, where he conducted research on poisons, and he didn’t leave until he found one which would not only kill without leaving any trace, but which was so quick and effective that the victim would not suffer. Mr. Campos took a bus across town, to a neighborhood where he was not known, and purchased a bag of that same poison.

  Then, Mr. Campos told me in a perfectly calm and detached manner, all he had to do was wait for the perfect opportunity. Not wanting to get caught, he knew he had to be patient and wait for the perfect time to carry out his plan. It was as if God was helping him, he said, when his wife announced that she was going away for a few days, to visit her sister in New Jersey. As soon as her taxi pulled out of their driveway, he set out to purchase a juicy steak at Publix.

  Mr. Campos told me he returned home with a five-pound sirloin steak, red, plump, and marbled with just the right amount of fat. As he wanted to make sure that the dog would come over to eat the meat, Mr. Campos decided to light the barbeque in his backyard and let the smell of the meat on the grill waft over to his neighbor’s house. He lit the barbeque and, while the charcoals were getting nice and hot, stuffed a handful of the poison inside the steak. Then he placed the steak on the sizzling grill and waited for the dog to jump the fence.

  Less than one minute later, he saw the dog stick his head over the fence. Mr. Campos, pleased that his plan was working so well, decided that it was time for nature to take its course and
went inside the house. He sat in his favorite chair in the living room and turned on the television.

  From the research he had conducted on the Internet, he knew that the poison would act almost instantaneously, but even so, he decided he would wait thirty minutes before going outside to check on the dog. It was a working-class neighborhood, and Mr. Campos knew there would not be anyone about at that time of the morning, so he was not worried that any of the other neighbors would see him dragging the dog around to the back of his yard to properly dispose of the body.

  Imagine his surprise, Mr. Campos told me, upon discovering not a dead dog next to the barbeque, but its owner. The neighbor, dressed in his usual workout clothes, was lying next to the gym bag he always carried. The dog kept circling around his master’s body, whimpering softly.

  The only explanation that Mr. Campos—in his near panicked state—could come up with was that the neighbor had arrived home unexpectedly, and had smelled the steak cooking on the Campos’s grill. The entire neighborhood knew of Mr. Campos’s predilection for barbequing—it was possible to smell from miles away the secret recipe he used to marinate the meat—so the fact that there had been something cooking on the grill was not unusual.

  Seeing that there wasn’t anyone around, the neighbor must have decided to steal the meat, which looked and smelled so very appetizing. He must not have been able to wait until he had gotten home to taste it, and bit into the meat right then and there.

  Seeing his neighbor lying in his yard had almost brought on a stroke. Mr. Campos told me that as repulsive as it was, he bent over the neighbor and touched him, to see if he could find a pulse. As he leaned over, he saw red juice coming out of the neighbor’s mouth, confirming his initial theory about how he had ended up there, lying dead next to the grill.

  In spite of his shock at having killed the neighbor, Mr. Campos could not help being angry at him—the bastard had been stealing his steak!

  Mr. Campos insisted that there was no way he was going to go to jail, especially as it had been a complete accident. Mr. Campos was no lawyer, but he knew that Florida had the death penalty, and he was determined to avoid that fate. After having successfully fled the giant prison that Castro had made of his beloved Cuba, he was not about to die in an American jail.

  Mr. Campos told me that on that day he had been lucky that he had time on his hands—his wife was out of town, and for the next few hours there wouldn’t be many people walking around the neighborhood—so he could think clearly about how to properly dispose of the body. After deliberating for awhile, he decided that he would follow the plan he had thought of initially, had it been the dog who had died: He would chop up the body and bury it in the backyard. He headed to the garage where he had set up his workshop, got out his electric saw, the powerful one he had bought after Hurricane Andrew hit Miami and he’d had to cut up the trees littering his property.

  First, he had to enlarge the hole he had dug earlier in the back part of the yard so it could accommodate a larger body. He had dug the hole as far away from the street—and prying eyes—as possible, to give himself time to bury the dog. Even though it meant more work for him—he now had to drag a heavier body—he was grateful he’d had the foresight to choose that spot. Even so, he was surprised to find out how much the man’s body weighed.

  After placing the neighbor in the center of the hole, Mr. Campos got ready to cut it up. The first step was to put on his safety glasses—he certainly didn’t want to hurt himself during the sawing process—and then he plugged the cord into the outside wall with an extension cord. His preparations complete, Mr. Campos began the task of slicing up his neighbor. He told me that throughout the process, the dog had just lay silently by the wall, watching the proceedings. I tried to block out a mental image of Royal, and how he would react if someone were to cut me up. Somehow—old, sick, and senile as he was—I don’t think he would just sit quietly by and watch.

  Mr. Campos told me that when he first began to cut up the body, he was a bit taken aback at how much effort it required. He figured that it had been so difficult because he’d had to slice through mostly bone and muscle. The neighbor had once told Mrs. Campos that he was not only a physical trainer, but a champion bodybuilder as well—and those types had no body fat at all.

  I have to confess that it was difficult holding onto my composure as I listened to my client describe his actions on that horrific afternoon, especially when he spoke about the neighbor’s dog. Private investigators are never supposed to show emotion, as that can result in the interviewee clamming up. Even though the client may have committed unspeakable acts, no one wants to be openly judged, especially by someone who is supposed to be helping him or her. If a client were to suspect that I thought he or she was disgusting, they would hold back information, and might even lie to show themselves in the best light possible.

  Mr. Campos, clearly, had no such hesitations: He was giving me all the gruesome details of what he had done, speaking in a plain and straightforward manner, without any attempt to make himself look good. In his eyes, he had done what he had done to protect his sanity and his property: He had come up with a viable plan to kill the dog that had caused so many problems. The fact that his carefully thought out plan had gone awry was simply too bad.

  “So then, Lily—I can call you that, or would you prefer that I address you as Miss Ramos?” Suddenly, and without notice, Mr. Campos broke off from his narration, frightening me. I would have much rather kept the interview on an impersonal note.

  “Lily is fine, Mr. Campos,” I replied. “So, after you cut up the neighbor’s body, then what did you do?”

  He took a deep breath before answering. “As I told you, when I was cutting him up, I saw how very, very hard his body was—all muscle, no fat—and I was afraid that if I buried it that way, the gases that get into bodies after a few days would cause the body to stink, and then blow up. You see, Lily, the dog was easier to get rid of—smaller and all that.” He shook his head slowly, almost regretfully. “Now I had to think of a way of getting rid of a human body without leaving evidence.”

  Because Rob had become such a gym rat, I too was aware of the fact that many bodybuilders have almost no body fat. After spending almost all of his waking hours in the gym lifting weights, Rob had sculpted his body to such an extent that on the very few occasions I touched him lately, it felt like I was running my hand over a rock. I knew exactly what Mr. Campos meant when he described the neighbor’s body.

  “So what did you do?” It frightened me, but I had lost all pretense of asking for professional reasons.

  “I marinated him,” Mr. Campos replied. “And then, when he was soft enough, I barbequed him.”

  “You what?” I had to restrain myself from reaching across the interview table and shaking the answer out of him.

  “Lily, remember that one of my specialties is creating marinades that break down the fibers of cheap, tough cuts of meat so they will be tender enough to barbeque.”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I figured if my marinades—there was one in particular which breaks down the sinews of chuck-grade meat—worked on a tough cut of low-grade steak, why wouldn’t it work on a human being?”

  As much as I disliked admitting it, I could follow Mr. Campos’s logic perfectly—worst of all, however, was that my mind had now gone into overdrive. “So you marinated him?”

  Mr. Campos just looked straight ahead. I took that to be a yes.

  “For how long?”

  He kept staring at the opposite wall. I hoped he was not shutting down on me—I still needed to extract certain information.

  “Mr. Campos, please answer my question: How long did you marinate the body before you felt he was ready to be barbequed?”

  “Overnight,” Mr. Campos finally answered. “I put him on the grill the next morning, after everyone in the neighborhood had left for work.” He shrugged his shoulders and continued with his explanation. “I would have liked to marinate him longer, but my wi
fe called to tell me she was cutting her trip short and would be coming home that night.”

  I sat back and thought about what he had just told me. “What happened to the dog?”

  “Ah! The dog!” I could see the faint outlines of a sweet smile on Mr. Campos’s face. “It was because of the dog that I got caught. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Can you explain that to me, please?” I couldn’t recall having read anything about the dog in the A form.

  “Well, of course, after the death of the neighbor, the dog didn’t have any place to live, so my wife, bless her, decided to take him in until the owner came back.” Mr. Campos leaned over the interview table and shook his index finger at me to emphasize his point. “Remember, at that point no one knew what had happened to the owner. Everyone still figured he was coming back.”

  I thought for a minute about what he had just said. “So why is it the dog’s fault you’re here? I mean, you did him a kindness—you offered him a home.”

  “Ay, Lily—it was because one day he dug up his owner’s bones, dug them up from where I buried them in the backyard. And not just that—he did it while the detectives were at our house, interviewing my wife and me, asking us questions about our neighbor’s disappearance.” Mr. Campos shook his head at the absurdity of it all.

  I thought about the dog, and how he had remained faithful to his owner until the very end. Then I thought about Rob, and what he intended to do to Royal tomorrow if I didn’t find him a home.

  Suddenly, I shoved my notepad over to Mr. Campos. “Please write down the recipe for the marinade you used to break down the tough fibers in the neighbor’s body.”