by Joss Cordero
That’s what it was, he told himself, leaning over the toilet bowl, just your average rapist. There were rapes every day in Palm Beach County. Not necessarily on yachts, but that wasn’t the point. The point was out-of-control testosterone.
There was no mention of rape in the article, but the woman couldn’t very well complain about it if she was in critical condition. Convincing himself that by the law of averages it was just your average local rape, Fiorello forced the waves of nausea to subside.
And maybe she’d recover. While before he’d wished her state to be upgraded to extremely critical, now he was hoping it would be downgraded to stable.
He splashed his face with cold water, looking at his guilty reflection. A nut like Zach, it probably didn’t take much to tip him. Fire him, smash his dreams, refuse to give him a reference, and he puts some girl in critical condition.
I’m damn lucky it wasn’t me he put in critical condition.
And on this happy thought, Fiorello dried his face.
Her attacker took possession of Tara’s dreams.
Each time she awoke, his face remained suspended in the air, superimposed on the faces she knew were real—nurses, doctors, trauma counselor, and the violent crimes detective. Then the face would pixelate and disappear.
At night, the humming and beeping sounds monitoring her vital signs were interrupted by cries from the room next door.
“Water! Oh God, you could die waiting around here. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die . . .”
“Sure I’d like to get married,” a nurse was saying, “but when I think of the sleazeballs I’ve been with, the leeches, the cheaters, I couldn’t have walked out on them so easy if we were married. I’ve got three cats. They don’t lie to me, they don’t cheat on me . . .”
As Tara improved, her attacker continued to invade her dreams just as he’d invaded her cabin on the boat, but he no longer bled into her waking hours or altered the faces of her visitors.
Her most faithful visitor was Mickey Zaratzian, who’d stayed in Florida on her account, and had the great white Caddy lowered onto land so he could drive to and from the hospital.
Seated by her bed in the private room for which he was paying, he offered words of wisdom.
“That first day when you dropped that handheld VHF in the drink, we should’ve both known then and there. This cruise wasn’t for you.”
She too recalled the incident. She’d been crossing the gangway, carrying a lightweight piece of equipment, which wasn’t even awkward to hold. She hadn’t slipped or tripped; it was as if the VHF willed itself out of her hands. She’d been so embarrassed she immediately offered to resign, but Zaratzian had protested: Are you crazy? It’s just a piece of junk fell in the water. Forget about it.
“Now I understand,” he continued. “It was an omen straight to you, telling you to walk away from the cruise. You yourself wanted to walk, and I didn’t let you. Me of all people, an Armenian who grew up in omens.” He shook his head. “The question is, why did I ignore such an omen? Because I wanted you on board. I still want you on board. My wife wants you on board. The whole crew wants you back on board.”
He removed his captain’s cap, revealing that his thick black hair was just a fringe. Now he looked like a tonsured monk instead of a furry little rat in a cap.
“So answer me, Tara. Are you willing to continue on the cruise? Nod for yes . . . wait, don’t nod, it’ll hurt your stitches. Thumbs up for yes. The middle finger for no.”
As politely as she could, she gave him the middle finger.
“I’m not going to argue. I understand. Having your throat slit has made you boat shy.”
He rubbed his bald crown, clamped his cap back on, and pulled his chair closer. “Far be it for me to criticize the cops. But they’ve come up with zilch. I’m gonna hire someone on my own to nail the son of a bitch.”
She knew he was sincere, though she didn’t have much faith he’d act on the idea. She’d grown accustomed to his style of hopping from one idea to the next. Along the way, enough of these inspirations had earned him a fortune, but he possessed a short attention span, and she was pretty sure his latest plan, to nail the son of a bitch, would be replaced by another, which would have nothing to do with her. This didn’t detract from his generosity.
Predictably, he hopped on. “I’ve had businesses that folded. I’ve had my share of flops. You gotta expect to get your ass kicked now and then. You had more than your ass kicked, but it’s a metaphor I’m using.”
He gazed at her bandaged form bristling with tubes and wires. “Your trauma’s fresh. You think Armenians don’t know about traumas? The Turks wiped out a million and a half of us.” He began reciting a poem in what she figured was Armenian, and then it turned into a sorrowful song, as if the little rat was grieving for a whole lost world. A nurse popped in to hush him.
After the nurse left, Zaratzian made the point he’d been driving at. “But we bounced back. And you’re gonna bounce back too, Tara. Our association hasn’t been a long one, you were only on board a few weeks. But with Armenians, family is a feeling, and I’ve got the feeling for you. Which my wife does too. Anytime you want to work for me, you’re in. And not just on King Rat. I’ve got other businesses.”
She gave him the thumbs-up sign.
When she woke, Zaratzian was gone, and her attacker’s face hovered on the ceiling, but only briefly.
Her stamina was returning.
On the day before her release, a new face appeared.
“Tim Smoker,” he said in a voice that matched his name. “I’m working for Zaratzian. Mind if I sit down, Tara?”
He was as big as his voice was deep. Worry lines, pouches beneath unshockable eyes, a face that had witnessed every horror show around.
“I’m a private investigator,” he said, pulling up a chair.
She stared, and he stared back.
Zaratzian had described her as an amazon, but she just looked white and fragile to him. Her blue eyes were the only spots of color in her face, and even they looked drained, the irises unusually pale, darkening to black at the edges. Her sandy hair was short and tousled like the petals of a dying flower. What happened to her could happen to anyone, but in his experience most young women who got their throats slit were looking for a good time, or living with a bad time. It was statistically unlikely that the first mate on a 50-meter yacht would end up this way unless she were kidnapped by Somali pirates, and last he looked there weren’t any Somali pirates on the Intracoastal Waterway.
“I don’t have the resources of the police department,” he explained. “On the other hand, Zaratzian’s given me an open-ended budget.”
He studied her for a reaction. He’d been warned that her vocal cords were injured, but not that she was deaf or mute, so he plowed on. “Zaratzian said you didn’t want to stay in any of his houses. As you know, he has many, in places far away from what happened here. You mind telling me why you wouldn’t want to take him up on the offer?”
Her answer was just above a whisper, scratchy, like a case of laryngitis. “I don’t run. It’s against my training.”
“I hear you, Tara. You were Coast Guard and I was a cop and I’d like nothing better than to catch the joker, but I want to lay out your options first. I’ve been to Zaratzian’s place on Syros. It’s a hell of a vacation.”
She was sure it was a hell of a vacation, as opulent as King Rat, and she wouldn’t even have to work, just be waited on. Well, she was being waited on in the hospital if that was any kind of goal worth having. She recalled how starry eyed she’d been, how entranced with luxury, and it seemed to her she’d exhausted an entire lifetime in her few weeks aboard. She’d considered herself dazzlingly lucky, then grown used to wealth as if she were born to it, and now the whole grandiose extravaganza meant nothing to her.
She swallowed but her voice stayed dry. “I don’t want
to be sunning my buns in Greece when another woman is attacked.” She paused to gather her strength. “I want to be on the spot to point my finger at him.”
“Glad to hear that. But if you stick around, you’ve got to lay low.”
She said hoarsely, “There’s a friend I think I can stay with. I’ll call him this evening.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Just a friend.”
“Because Zaratzian will pay for a hotel.”
“Can you think of anything more depressing than living alone in a hotel room?”
“My usual place in a hotel is the lobby, watching for irreconcilable differences.”
He seemed awfully big for unobtrusive snooping. As if reading her mind he gave a lopsided grin. “I hide behind a giant potted palm.” The grin transformed him. She was sorry to see it disappear.
“I’ll hide behind my friend,” she said
“That’s the housing situation then. Now a quick review. You told Zaratzian the guy’s still after you. But why do you think that?”
“I’m afraid he wants to finish the job.”
“And you never met him before.”
“No, but I saw it in his eyes.”
“His eyes were filled with what?”
“Determination.”
“Forgive the question, but is there any chance the knife was just to scare you and if you’d let him–”
“No. I told everyone. He didn’t want to rape me, he wanted to kill me.”
“Sorry, I had to ask. I need to know what I’m looking for. So, a nut job who hates women.”
“Except the expression in his eyes was the opposite of hate. It was . . . loving. Does that sound crazy?”
Smoker shook his head. “Stalkers develop a relationship in their mind. By the time they make their move, they’re under the impression you return their feelings.”
“You’ve had experience with stalkers?”
“I’ve had experience with stalkers.”
“But how could he have stalked me? I was on board King Rat.”
“You were moored there a few days, he could’ve seen you from the pier. The security at that marina’s crap.” He took out a notebook. “First, your cell phone. We can change the SIM card, but I’d rather close out your account altogether and get you a new phone under another name.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Now for your computer. We’re going to change your e-mail address, and delete you from any social networking accounts. That means no more tweeting or Facebooking.”
He wrote down her user names and passwords. “I’m also going to remove any linked accounts, browsers, cookies . . .”
“Why don’t you just wipe my hard drive?”
“Are you sure?”
“I haven’t looked at it since I’ve been here. How important can it be?”
“Your information will still remain on Twitter for a couple of days and Facebook for a couple of weeks. But we can’t worry about that. We have no reason to believe he knows your name, or, if he does, how computer savvy he is.”
Smoker set aside his notebook. “Can you tell me anything else about him?”
“He was about my age, late twenties. Shaved head. Muscular. It was hard to tell in that light, but I think he was suntanned. When I hit his arm with the flashlight, I heard metal meeting metal. He had a bracelet on each wrist. The kind that coils like a snake.” She was breathing with difficulty.
“Easy, Tara.”
“Something else I noticed. A chemical smell.”
“What kind of chemical?”
“Everything happened too fast for me to pin it down. It’s been bothering me, because it was familiar.”
“Trauma wipes out certain memories, but it’ll come back. And when it does, let me know right away. There wasn’t much for the forensic team to work with.”
“They blamed the firemen for ruining the scene.”
“The police department keeps holding courses for Fire Rescue on how to tread lightly, but destroying crime scenes is still a Fire Rescue specialty. To be fair, in this case, a boat’s cabin has one way in and one way out. It would’ve been hard for them to tiptoe around the evidence while keeping you from bleeding to death. They saved your life, which is more important than dusting the place for fingerprints and swabbing you for DNA.”
The door opened, and a nurse appeared. “Sorry to break this up. Visiting hours are over.”
Smoker rose to his feet, and Tara looked up at him apprehensively. She wished he didn’t have to leave.
“Don’t worry,” he said with his crooked grin. “I’ll be here tomorrow for your graduation.”
Smoker entered her hospital room to find her sitting in a wheelchair, dressed for the street in cargo pants and a tank top. The cuts on her arms were superficial but her throat would never look the same again. “Am I late?” he asked.
She’d been ready for an hour, eagerly awaiting his arrival. It was her first day off painkillers and her skin felt as drawn as a patchwork quilt whose stitches were too tight, but it was exhilarating not to be drugged. “Just on time,” she said in her scratchy whisper.
Zaratzian’s right, thought Smoker, she is an amazon. It’s a shame this gorgeous woman is going to be scarred. He handed her a gift-wrapped parcel.
“From Mr. Zaratzian?”
“From me.”
She opened it, and took out a flowered scarf. “What a thoughtful gesture! Now I won’t look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Does that mean you like it?” He flashed the crooked grin she remembered, and she found herself smiling back. Gingerly she wound the scarf around her burning neck.
An orderly wheeled her through the corridors; Smoker followed with her duffel bag.
On the main floor, her chair was pushed to the wall to allow a gurney to go by. The woman on it was as gray as a living human being could be, her limp gray fingers ending in long red nails.
“Your nails look lovely,” said Tara.
The woman’s eyelids fluttered open. “Thank you, baby.”
The gurney rolled on down the hall, and Tara was wheeled to the main door. Outside, the muggy heat seared her lungs. The air-conditioned safety of the hospital was behind her. Her chair was taken from her, and she felt cast adrift.
“Good luck,” said the orderly as Tara folded herself into Smoker’s Jetta.
Smoker had planned to take her directly from the JFK Medical Center up to Banyan, but feeling how tense her mood had become, he decided it would be too abrupt to whip her out of the house of suffering straight into the house of crime. So instead of driving north on Congress, he slowed down and pulled into John Prince Park.
Looking for an empty picnic table, he drove past fields of soccer players and parties of hospital workers in scrubs on their breaks. Most of the hospital workers were Latino, and just about all the soccer players were. Considering the number of gangs in the neighborhood, it was nice to see unemployed young men kicking balls instead of kicking heads.
He spotted a vacant table on a slope going down toward Lake Osborne. There was no roof over it, but it was off by itself, peaceful and private. “Do you mind sitting in the sun?”
“I like it,” she said, taking her seat on one of the concrete benches. “But can I ask what we’re doing?”
“I thought we could look at the ducks.”
Instead she looked at him settling in on the opposite bench. Behind him was a dense forest of foliage. If this park were Africa, she thought, he’d be a gentle rhinoceros coming out of the bushes.
“Zaratzian’s told me everything about you,” he said. “Anyway, everything he knows. So this should be the point when I ask for the rest of your biography. But I think you’ve had enough of being cross-examined.” He sensed he wasn’t calming her as successfully as he’d hoped to. She was wired as an e
lectric fence.
“So,” he persisted, “here we are in our pastoral setting that was once underwater. In Chiefland, Santa Claus rises up from the water each year in diving gear. The kids are astounded, but he actually swims there through a network of underground springs. You should really like it in Florida. It’s just your kind of thing, all water.”
“I’ve had enough water for a while.”
“Too bad. I was hoping we’d put on a couple of oxygen tanks and flippers and go down right here. You never know where we might come up.”
“Where’s Chiefland?”
“Levy County. Thousands of acres of preserve up there. People think of Florida as beaches and high-rises, but there’s a lot of wild country in this state.”
The fact didn’t seem to get her too excited. “What are your feelings on wild country?” he inquired.
“I have no objection.” She lowered her eyes to the picnic table, which, like the benches, was solid concrete so it wouldn’t be stolen. On the surface of the table someone had scratched Chango Rides.
Smoker traced the letters with his fingers. “This cement picnic set-up is like the Himalayas. Built to stay. But over time, the wind and Chango will wear it away.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m as persistent as Chango. I’m going to get the guy who did this to you.”
And then he was staring past her.
She turned her head to see what he was staring at and saw five young men swaggering through the heat in oversized T-shirts with their pants dragging on the grass. She felt her body growing more tense than it already was. They weren’t homicidal maniacs like her attacker, but they were definitely bullies in a pack, looking to see whatever they could shake down from the money tree; if an easy target appeared they’d jump on the possibility, and here were a couple of gringos sitting at an isolated picnic table. Smoker sure picked a perfect place for bird-watching, she thought.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes. He was moving his arm slightly on the table so his jacket fell open and his shoulder holster appeared. The rhino was showing his horn.