Miami Noir

by Les Standiford

  I ignore that. “Okay, so you steered clear of her. Then?”

  “About a month ago, we did a job at the Delphi, a small estate. You weren’t there. Just Jeff and Hank. I was lugging stuff out for Alex. And she saw me. She caught me outside when I was alone putting things in my van and…asked me to come see her.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

  “She hadn’t changed nearly as much as I had. And she recognized me.” He clears his throat. “Like I say, prison broke me. But I did learn to think more—what would be the word—more cunningly. And I had thought about her story.” He gives a dry smile. “Often. As you can imagine. It was too…”

  “What?”

  “I kept seeing patterns. I killed the second husband, somebody killed the first. The guy who killed the first got killed—at least that’s what she’d said. It couldn’t be simpler, I felt. I did it for her. So maybe the others did it for her.”

  “Wait. Robineau killed Hogarth for her?”

  “Could have been. Could have been just because Dorsett paid him, but I looked up what I could find and he hadn’t been a bad guy, just a silly rich drunk. So I think he may have done it for her, yes sir.”

  “And Dorsett killed Robineau?”

  “So she said. For her, I think. I mean, at her behest. Possibly.”

  “And you killed Dorsett.”

  “Indisputably. So, if you pay attention to the pattern, someone ought to kill me. I’m the loose end. She could have been looking for me, but I would have been hard to find. I’d entered the cash economy. I have no phone. And maybe she just didn’t have a man to sic on me.”

  “Well, maybe,” I say.

  “I don’t have a lot of evidence. But she said she was happy to see me. Now, should she have been happy?”

  “Well, you’d been a stand-up guy and gone to jail without ratting on her. You might have been her idea of a hero,” I say, though I know he’s right.

  He shakes his head. “But I could still have sent her to prison. Now.”

  “Let me get this straight: She knew you were going to kill the husband ahead of time?”

  “She asked me to do it…in the clearest way one could, without saying it right out.”

  “In bed, was it?”

  “In bed. Her bed. I have no evidence for that. But if I were to say she had done so, even now, would the police not at least speak to her?”

  “Cops aren’t that eager to open settled cases from 1962.”

  “But there was scandal and she’d become respectable again. And she might think the police would care. My impression was that she was scared that I’d appeared in her building.”

  “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. She should’ve avoided you. Instead, what did she do?”

  “She wanted to get together, she said. I agreed to see her, but said I had a lot of work.” He laughs his dry laugh. “So we made the date for a week from then. I was to come to her place, have a drink, then maybe we’d go out to dinner. I wanted a week to think. What would she do with the loose end? She’d be looking for a way to kill me, I felt. She had to. I considered running, but she would be able to find me now. People can’t disappear as easily they used to. So I put on my jacket and tie, and left my dog with plenty of food and water and the door ajar in case I didn’t come back, and went to see her.”

  “Did you take your gun?” I gesture at it.

  “No, I didn’t own it then. When I got there I was scared. She offered me a cigarette, but I don’t smoke. Offered me a drink, a martini, which I accepted, but didn’t drink, just lifted it to my lips and put it down. My dog, Archie, has quite a few ailments. I had a dog tranquilizer with me to put in her drink, but I didn’t get a chance. Her eyes were on me all the time. Intent.” He sighs. “I was raised to think of women as emotional creatures.”

  “Creatures?”

  “Weren’t you? Soft, dependent, lacking calculation. Of course, that’s a mistake we make about many other creatures too, underestimating them. In any case, believe me, she was rational, detached, watchful. She said she’d thought about me, a lot. That she’d been alone a long time. And she invited me into the bedroom. Perhaps I was supposed to be woozy. I know I was shaky, anyway, following her in.”

  “My God,” I say. “That bedroom.”

  “She lay back on the bed the same way she had when—” He pauses, clears his throat. “And I sat beside her and leaned forward and I put the pillow over her face.”

  “That’s why you stole the pillowcase.”

  He nods. “She died unexpectedly fast. I was thinking I would give her an empty injection, just put some air into her vein and cause an embolism.”

  “You had a hypodermic on you?”

  “I have a whole kit. You know, you can buy anything in Miami. But she just stopped breathing. She must have had a heart attack—perhaps the shock?”

  “She was old.”

  “And she smoked,” he says. “She may have had heart disease. I figured nobody pays attention to the death of an old lady in her own bed. I took off her shoes, and wiped them, and set them under the bed. I wanted it to look like she’d felt ill and had to lie down and then died. I cleaned up the glasses, dried them, put them away. I have them now—I got them from the kitchen. I believe I have washed them half a dozen times. Interestingly, among her liquor there was a bottle with a dropper, hand-labelled Bitters. I don’t know what was in it. Maybe it was bitters, maybe something else. I moved it to the kitchen cabinet, and later threw it out, then realized I should have kept it, had it tested if I needed to prove self-defense. I left her one cigarette butt in the ashtray. I wiped whatever I thought I’d touched. But I was fairly sure we’d be in there to do the estate clean-up and I’d handle a lot of things and so my fingerprints wouldn’t mean anything. I’m not going back to jail!” He shrieks this last.

  “I understand,” I say, soothingly. “How did you know Alex would get the estate job?”

  “Oh,” he says, “Alex left cards when we were there before—at the desk and by the mailboxes and so on. So I didn’t think anyone would find it odd that Helena had picked one up and had it in her desk, where she had other business cards. The daughter saw it and called. It was a gamble, but a good one. I left feeling fairly confident and calm. It was only afterwards that I started to doubt myself and worry about little things. I couldn’t have taken the pillowcase. That would have drawn attention. But later I kept thinking about it—forensics people can pick up tiny fibers, hairs. That day we were there, I never could get into the bedroom alone till after Jeff and Hank carted off the furniture, and by then Sharon had packed up the bedclothes. I am sorry I had to steal from her.”

  “What’d you do with the pillowcases?”

  “I burned them both. I didn’t know which one was which.”

  “And the rest of the stuff you took?”

  “In my van. I was going to put it in a dumpster, but I kept worrying it would be found.”

  “Sharon was going to give it to abused women.”

  He looks somewhat ashamed.

  “Did you touch the dressing table?” I ask.

  “I don’t think so. But afterwards I wasn’t sure.”

  “So on Lincoln Road you touched it and you let the dog hop up there?” He nods. “Did you touch the portrait?”

  “I don’t recall. There were a number of pictures in the living room that she showed me—her daughter and her grandchildren. I think it was there. I don’t think I touched it. Did I?”

  I say, “Lucite does hold prints. But I had already cleaned it myself when I got it home. Here—look at it. You’re safe.”

  He takes it, holding it between both palms, and I lift his pistol off the chair arm and put it on the floor beside me.

  “So there’s no evidence,” he says.

  “Just what’s in your head.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I shake my head. “Don’t know.”

  “I wouldn’t have hurt you, Ray,” he says. “Tonight, I didn’t e
ven think you’d be here.”

  “But you brought the gun. Where’d you get it?”

  “In my neighborhood. I bought it from a sad woman, a…prostitute. I said I wanted it to defend myself. I just thought if the police were to surprise me—if I had no warning—I could use it on myself. Or wave it at them and they’d shoot me. I’m not going back to jail.” He says it calmly this time.

  “Miami,” I say. “This place is full of killers. Guys who work on your car may have been in death squads in Peru, dictators own steak houses, drug kingpins become developers. I can’t fix every little thing. Go home. I know you did it, and you know I know, but there’s not a bit of evidence left, I promise you. She’s ash and her things are scattered, and scattering further every day.”

  He uses his shirttails to wipe off the picture frame and hands it back to me. I clasp it. Her eyes smile at me in the lamplight.

  “Is that how she looked when you knew her?”

  “She’s a little younger, but yes.”

  “It’s driving you nuts,” I say, “isn’t it?”

  “What is?” he says, but he knows.

  “The shred of a shadow of a glimpse of a chance that she might have been innocent. That the first story was true, the one she told, with Dorsett the killer and bully and you the rescuer. The one you went to jail on.”

  He says, “I’m sure as one can be.”

  “It’s just too bad you have a conscience.”

  He blinks at me. “She didn’t,” he says. And sighs. He picks up his flashlight and nods to me and leaves. I bolt the door after him. On close inspection, his gun’s in even worse shape than I thought. I put it into a bag. I’ll drop it out to sea. I listen to the sound the palmettos make chattering against my windows and treat myself to a cigarette.

  Three weeks later, on a Friday, I’m getting spruced up to go out. Two days after our long discussion, Cash was found dead in his apartment He had a needle beside him containing nothing but air. In a note he left his worldly goods to Alex and asked that I take care of his dog Archie. He left no explanation for his suicide other than to say, I’m very tired

  Our team cleared out his place. He had many old books, those of most interest with illustrated plates of birds and animals. He owned a complete medical bag and a collection of antique vet instruments that Guillermo says might be worth something. He’s researching it. These things might possibly realize enough to repay Alex for the cremation. None of us could start the van, but Alex located some of Cash’s buddies from the flea market in Fort Lauderdale and they came down and towed it away. The Kussrows declared his furniture of no resale value and we put it all out on the street for pickers to take. The building itself will soon be gutted.

  Alex is looking for another trustworthy clean-up man. I haven’t told him about Cash. The morning after my talk with him, Sharon found the stolen clothing tossed behind her hibiscus bushes. Alex and Sharon like the theory that the burglar was a boy seeking women’s clothes who found them too dowdy.

  Archie came to me with a list of what he eats and his ailments and a wardrobe of waistcoats and sweaters. I think Cash underestimated him. There’s a nip in the November air this evening, but I’m making Archie tough it out. We’ll walk down to Sharon’s to pick her up and have dinner at a new restaurant on Biscayne that Alex recommends. We’ll go on afterward to Café Nublado, and beyond that, who knows? She’s a warm woman, as I’m coming to appreciate.

  On my way out I stop in the dining room—as I often do—to look at the portrait of Helena Dorsett. What was it she had? Beauty enough to kill for, any way you look at it. I strain to recapture the woman I met. Quite a lady, I remember thinking. Her face is a pattern of shadow and light. Now, just paper.

  MACHETE

  BY BARBARA PARKER

  Biscayne Bay

  The Miami PD had beaten us to the scene. Yellow tape already circled the yard from one royal palm tree to the next. An officer in a rain poncho held up a hand and I waited, wipers flapping, while the fire-rescue truck pulled out of the driveway. No emergency lights, no siren. The bodies would be taken out later in the ME’s unmarked van.

  I drove past the police vehicles and parked at the end of the block. The house was in Coconut Grove in a wealthy enclave of narrow streets that deadended at Biscayne Bay. Confined by the downpour, neighbors watched from their porches or second-floor windows.

  The only thing I could find to keep myself dry was a plastic bag from Target in the backseat. I dumped out the jeans to be returned, grabbed my camera bag, and shoved the door open just as a silver BMW sedan lurched around me and skidded on wet leaves. Its brake lights went off, and through the misted rear window I could see Charlene on her cell phone. She disconnected and struggled out of the car with an umbrella as thunder rattled the sky.

  I called out, “Did you reach her?”

  “No. Doesn’t matter, we’re here. Come on, let’s go.” I could hear Brooklyn in her voice, though she’d practiced law in Miami longer than I’d been alive.

  Charlene held the umbrella for both of us, but I told her to go ahead, and she clattered along beside me in her high heels and tight skirt. An officer stopped us at the end of the driveway.

  “I’m Charlene Marks, Mrs. Zaden’s attorney. Would you kindly tell the lead investigator I want to see my client? Who’s in charge, by the way?”

  Ignoring the question, the officer lifted a radio to his lips. Water dripped off the hood of his poncho. I looked at the house from under my white plastic bag. Standard South Florida mansion: red barrel-tile roof, a portico over the circular driveway, double doors with beveled glass, a chandelier in the foyer. The builder had probably bulldozed the little threebedroom-with-carport that used to sit on this lot. What can I say? I don’t like bling.

  My name is Sara Morales. I do private investigations, and Charlene’s firm is one of my accounts. I used to work for the Miami Police Department until I slid down some stairs while chasing a supposedly docile suspect and broke two vertebrae. I’ve recovered from the injury; I run five miles a day, when the weather isn’t so hot it melts my shoes to the asphalt, but I won’t go back to police work. I’ve come to enjoy my freedom.

  I rent a two-room office in a commercial strip on South Dixie Highway, walking distance to my apartment if I had to. My parents still live in Little Havana in the first house they bought after coming to the U.S. on a raft. Literally a raft: inner tubes and a wooden platform that broke up halfway across the straits. Three of the people who started out, including my grandfather, didn’t make it. Till the day she died, my nena claimed she could talk to him in the other world. Of course she could. She was into Santería big time. I moved out after high school, a sacrilege for a Cuban girl.

  Twenty minutes ago I’d been at my desk writing invoices when the phone rang. I picked up and heard tires screaming down the ramp of a parking garage. Charlene had told me whatever the hell I was doing, drop it and meet her at Kathy Zaden’s house. She said a woman had come in and slashed Dr. Zaden with a machete. Kathy heard him yelling for help, and ran downstairs with a pistol. She killed the woman, but not soon enough.

  “The idiot called 911 before she called me. Damn it!” Charlene wanted to get there before her client said anything stupid to the cops. She told me to bring my camera.

  I was out the door in less than thirty seconds.

  The uniformed officer lifted the tape. “You want to speak to Sergeant Bill Nance.”

  “Thanks.” Charlene headed up the driveway. Water sheeted over the interlocking pavers.

  Bill Nance. He’d been my supervisor in the detective bureau. I’d been promoted to homicide after only five years on the force, so to him I was a minority cutting in line. When I left, he didn’t send me a goodbye card.

  We ran under the portico, where the mist was blowing in sideways. One of the front doors was wide open, and Nance stood there, feet spread, leaning back a little to balance his gut. Short white hair, gray slacks, gun on hip, silver shield clipped to the holster. He dis
missed me with a glance and nodded at Charlene. They go back to her days at the prosecutor’s office. They’d been close, but damned if I can see why.

  She propped her folded umbrella against a poured-concrete lion, one of a set flanking the entrance. The humidity had frizzed her curly gray hair. “Hello, Bill. Crummy day for this, isn’t it?”

  “It’ll blow over.”

  “What have you got so far?”

  “Two dead downstairs in the study. Dr. Howard Zaden and a black female, early fifties. Mrs. Zaden ID’d her as Carmen Sánchez. She’s from the Dominican Republic. It appears she attacked Dr. Zaden with a machete, and Mrs. Zaden shot her. I’d like a few more details, but your client won’t talk to me.”

  “It’s my fault. When she called, I told her to sit tight. Where is she?”

  “Sitting tight.” Nance looked at me, at my camera. “No photos, Morales.”

  “Nonsense,” Charlene said. “We have a right to record the scene, and if you make me call a judge, he’ll tell you so. You’ve got the gun, and Kathy Zaden admitted firing it. How could we possibly impede your investigation?”

  There was an argument, which Charlene won by dangling the possibility that she’d let Kathy Zaden talk to him. I don’t think Nance bought it, but he took us inside.

  My wet sneakers chirped on the marble floor and fell silent on the Oriental rug. A crowd at a door on the opposite side of the living room meant I’d find Dr. Zaden and his guest over there, but Charlene said to come with her.

  Nance led us through a dining room overlooking the canal where the Zadens’s boat was docked, then to a kitchen done in stainless steel, cherry wood, and black granite. Either nobody cooked in here, or they had a better staff than I did.

  Kathy Zaden was sitting at the counter with her head in her hands and a wad of tissue in her fist. She saw us and stood up, and her crop pants and sleeveless yellow top showed splashes of red. Her knees were bloody, and her forearms, like she’d crawled in it.