West Palm: The Complete Novel

by Joss Cordero

  “Tell me we’re not going to feed him to the lions.”

  Matthew drove on through the darkness until they reached a fork, then turned left down a side road and onto a small bridge. Their headlights shone on a sign—SHERIFF’S TRAINING RANGE.

  “You picked a great place to bury a body,” she said.

  “We’re not going to bury it.”

  Beyond the deserted training range, they turned at a pumping station, and their headlights caught a brown-and-white sign for the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge.

  “Entrance fee required,” she read.

  “Mother has a senior citizen pass.”

  A body of water gleamed on their left, and their headlights lit a sign that said it was unlawful to feed, entice, or disturb the alligators. Another sign showed the outline of an alligator with a slashed red circle inside its swollen stomach. In case this didn’t make the point, the warnings were in three languages: ATTENTION! ATENCIÓN! ACHTUNG!

  Matthew slowed the van.

  Up ahead she could make out a boat ramp, but he stopped well before the ramp, parking on a grassy slope.

  He and Faith climbed out.

  “Why,” declared Faith, looking around, “this is where we dumped Donny.”

  Her words filled the moist stillness.

  In the back of the van Tara told herself, I must not have heard her right.

  Matthew unlocked the back doors.

  She stared out at him. “What did Faith just say?”

  It was too dark to read his expression, but his silence was her answer.

  He was sliding out his collapsible dolly and opening it to its full length.

  She said, “You’ve done this before.”

  “Push him toward me,” he commanded.

  Don’t think, she told herself, just do what you have to. She helped him slide Zachariah Whitman’s naked body to the edge of the van, and watched him stand it upright on the dolly. Then she too climbed out. The night was cloudy, with just a sliver of moon.

  “Alligators are fussy eaters,” he said, fastening a cement block around the corpse’s ankles with the rope he used for wrapping furniture. “It has to be alive and kicking, or nice and rotten. A fresh corpse doesn’t interest them.” He tied a second block around the corpse’s neck. “Once it begins to decay, they’ll devour it with pleasure. But before that happens we don’t want it floating to the surface.” She understood now why he’d pierced the body’s abdomen, to keep the stomach and intestines from inflating with gas.

  Faith was staring at the man she’d killed.

  “Mother, what I want you to do is lie down in the van and have a nice nap. I’m going to lock the doors to make sure you’ll be safe from lions. You saw the sign, this is lion country.”

  They helped her into the back of the van, made sure she was lying flat on the padded blankets, and locked the doors.

  He handed Tara the crushed laptop and a flashlight. “Thataway,” he pointed.

  She guided him down the grassy slope to a small dock just wide enough for a couple of fishermen to stand there with poles.

  He wheeled his dolly onto the dock, and pushed. The weighted corpse fell and hit the water with a loud splash; the drop from the dock was obviously a long one.

  A second heavy splash came from across the inlet.

  “Alligators,” he said. “They cruise around here like destroyers.”

  He pointed over the rippling darkness toward a chain of buoys. She understood. Boats not permitted here.

  “This area was dredged,” he said. “The water’s deep, and the bottom’s invisible.”

  He took the laptop from her and heaved it into the drink.

  He was closing up the dolly when they heard the sound of dogs and tires crunching on the gravel road.

  “Good-bye, Dolly,” he muttered, and flung it off the platform.

  As the vehicle and its barking cargo grew louder, he grabbed her hand and hurried her from the dock down into the field. “Take off your clothes.”

  “What?”

  “I know you have a headache, darling, but this has to look authentic. Just remember, the death penalty is alive and well in Florida.”

  They were fumbling out of their clothes when a peculiar truck came noisily into view—rumbling on large tractor tires, with a frenzied dog in a cage on top of the hood, more caged dogs in back, and a bunch of drunken hog hunters whooping it up and pointing rifles through the open windows.

  He drew her to the ground and rolled on top of her. “Sorry there’s no time for romantic dialogue.”

  The headlights caught them, and drunken laughter erupted from the truck. One of the yahoos called out through the window, “Ride that flagpole, sugar.”

  Hours before, she’d had a murderer on top of her; now it was Matthew. The truck lights blinked in rhythm with his dry humping and the barking of the dogs grew more intense. As the drunken hunters shouted their encouragement, Matthew hummed their high school anthem in her ear.

  The catcalls and barking seemed to last forever. The longer he went at it, the more the hunters cheered. Were they going to stay until he stopped? And afterward what would they do?

  He let out a loud groan, celebrated by applause and whistles from the truck.

  The motor revved, the headlights veered away from them, and she relaxed. The drunken hunters weren’t criminals, just good ol’ boys. She and Matthew were the criminals.

  The last wisecrack she heard was directed to the dog on the hood. “You sniffed out the wrong hogs.”

  “Was it good for you?” Matthew asked.

  “I could’ve done without the gnats.” She swatted them away as she got to her feet. Hurrying into her clothes, she said, “When we were kids I used to dream of doing it with you.”

  “My own sitcom fantasy was we’d marry a pair of brothers and live next door to each other.” He held out his hand, and they climbed up the slope to the van.

  She slid into the front seat beside him. They heard Faith snoring in back.

  When the Loxahatchee Wildlife Refuge was behind them and they were across the bridge, he explained the demise of Donny. “He came home crazed on bath salts, claiming I was using mind control on him through a device I implanted in his nose when he was asleep. Then he broke twenty thousand dollars’ worth of antique glass, and came after me with a jagged hunk of Italian green opaline. Mother shot him. A gay lovers’ quarrel leading to a bullet in the heart isn’t the ambience my clients expect with their Lalique crystal. So his body had to disappear.”

  They picked up speed on the main road. The Lion Country Safari flashed by on their left. Tara wondered how many days it would take for the alligators to be tempted by the rotting corpse.

  “You may question my decision,” he said, “but I never have.”

  “I’m not questioning your decision.”

  “Donny’s dreadful family missed the checks he occasionally sent them. Drawn on my account, of course. They got in touch with the West Palm Beach police, who were all over me. That’s why we couldn’t report what went down today. If the cops found a dead body on my patio, they would’ve reopened Donny’s case.”

  Gazing out at the lights of Southern Boulevard, she wondered how many more crimes were being covered up tonight.

  They arrived home to find a Jetta parked in front of the house.

  “It’s Smoker,” she said.

  “I wonder what I’ll be selling him this evening.”

  “Try a cast-iron alibi.”

  “Now that’s a thought.”

  Smoker was out of his car before they’d parked, striding toward the van.

  He was so relieved to see his amazon alive in the passenger seat, it barely registered in his mind that for the first time she wasn’t equally glad to see him.

  Then she stepped from the van, and he saw th
e expression on her face. It was an expression he’d seen many times in his career, and he thought of it as the abyss. It was treacherous and deep, but you were given just a glimpse, and then like a broken window it was quickly covered with plywood so you couldn’t see in.

  Something monumental had happened. And he wasn’t going to offer her any information until he heard what she had to say.

  “Here for a little late night shopping?” asked Matthew.

  They’re covering up, thought Smoker, but exactly what?

  “Tara,” said Matthew, “why don’t you take our private investigator inside and give him a drink while I unload?”

  Smoker followed her into the house. She faced him across the mahogany bar. Her eyes were bloodshot; she’d been crying. “Have you been waiting outside very long?” she asked politely, like a hostess to a guest she barely knew.

  “A couple of hours.”

  “What would you like to drink?”

  “Anything.”

  Her gaze moved toward the door, and Smoker turned to see Matthew entering with his mother.

  All three of them looked wrong.

  Not that the old woman ever looked right. But tonight she didn’t ask if he liked rutabaga.

  Tara reached for the ice. Smoker saw her hands were shaking, and he knew it wasn’t Zach she was afraid of anymore. Zach was no longer a threat to her. Which could only mean one thing.

  Now I’m the threat.

  “Why don’t I mix the drinks?” suggested Matthew. He dropped ice cubes into four highball glasses, added gin and tonic to three, and plain quinine water to the fourth, which he gave to his mother.

  He’s on edge, thought Smoker. He forgot the citrus slices.

  They’re all in on it.

  As they clinked their glasses, he recalled how well the amazon had defended herself the last time Zach attacked her.

  This time, she’d been waiting with a semiautomatic. And she’d had help.

  He didn’t blame them. They’d wanted it to be over.

  He contemplated the antique dealer with new respect. Not only did he sell me a bar and a half, he blew away a serial killer.

  He noticed dried streaks of mud on the amazon’s clothes. They’ve just come home from burying the body. Let’s hope they buried it deep.

  Above her highball glass, her bloodshot eyes were fixed on Matthew, and Smoker sensed that she and the antique dealer were closer than ever.

  And I’m totally excluded.

  That was the hard part. He and the amazon were finished.

  Matthew broke the oppressive silence. “I know it’s terribly late,” he said to Smoker, “but since you’re here, I’d love to show you a Tiffany hip flask I just got in.”

  I’ve got to hand it to the guy, thought Smoker, he’s got balls of steel.

  But I don’t have to buy his Tiffany hip flask.

  “I see him surrounded by water,” said the psychic into the TV cameras. “I’ve told the police: look for him near water.”

  “Another genius,” muttered Ingersoll. “With the ocean on our doorstep, how could she go wrong?”

  Although the official search went forward, Smoker e-mailed his final bill to Zaratzian, with a note, “The amazon is out of danger.”

  “Can you elaborate on that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “So she’s free to travel?”

  “She might welcome it.”

  “I got a perfect job for her.”

  Smoker buried himself in a string of investigations he referred to as What happened to Grandma’s money?

  Sometimes what happened was she’d been conned into thinking the kids would love a $90,000 DVD of her talking about her life. Sometimes, a charming young man convinced Grandpa he’d save on taxes by putting his house into the charmer’s name. There were phony gold investments; bogus green investments; gypsy fortune-tellers who told Grandma bad things would happen to her loved ones if she didn’t pay for advice; and the usual sham contractors.

  Sometimes Smoker got Grandma’s money back. Other times it disappeared across the blue Caribbean Sea to finance a con man’s condo on the beach. No one involved in these jobs tried to sell him a Casablanca bar, vintage cocktail shaker, or anything else. Dottie was pleased to see his midlife crisis was over.

  But by Christmas it was clear he needed a break. “After the holidays,” she warned, “I’m taking you on a vacation.”

  “What about Honolulu?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That was easy.”

  In Honolulu, while Dottie was off shopping, Smoker took a cab to ZZ Navigation.

  The shipping company had an office tower on the harbor. Its windows glittered like vertical stripes of gold in the Polynesian sun. He took the elevator to the fifteenth floor and told the receptionist he had an appointment with the Director of Logistics.

  A pleasant young man came out, introduced himself, and led Smoker down a corridor. The fact that she’d sent an assistant instead of coming to meet him herself made him realize his visit was a mistake.

  When he entered, she was talking on the phone about a freighter in Thailand that had to get to Hong Kong by Tuesday to pick up thirty-two containers of Barbie dolls. He hardly listened to the words. It was her voice, unrecognizable, that hit him like a blow. The old laryngitis hoarseness was gone. No doubt she was glad to have her normal voice back, but he’d fallen in love with her rough, injured tones.

  She hung up the phone and rose to greet him with that smile of hers that made him feel there was no one on earth she’d rather see.

  “I was afraid you’d forgotten me.”

  “We’ve both been so busy,” he said tritely, unable to reconcile her old smile with the new voice.

  To avoid more meaningless conversation he pretended to admire the view of the bay. He tried to make out Zaratzian’s ships among the others, but his focus was drawn, as if by a magnet, to the city streets. Honolulu or West Palm, a con man was out there wracking his brains for a new scam, and a killer was stalking someone. That was where he belonged. Not in this office, not with this woman. She was just another case he’d had.

  “Will you please stop pacing.” She took him by the hand, led him to a couch, and sat beside him.

  She wore a knockout sleeveless dress with a high mandarin collar that hid her scar. “You’ve gotten very glamorous,” he said.

  “Makeup will do that for a girl.” She hadn’t let go of his hand, and he noticed that the tips of her fingernails were painted.

  “Why did you take so long to get in touch?” she demanded. He had to keep looking at her to be sure it was his amazon speaking in this ordinary voice.

  “You didn’t need me anymore,” he replied.

  “What made you decide I didn’t need you?”

  “It was evident that night.”

  “Everything?”

  “The essentials. The rest I found out later. It’s what I do. I dig. Even if nobody’s paying me, I dig until I’ve no more questions.”

  “Then I’m grateful for your silence.”

  “It’s guaranteed in the contract.”

  He realized what was nagging at him about her outfit. “I see you traded in your red bracelets.”

  “They were too delicate for me. I’m not the delicate type.”

  The new snake bracelets definitely weren’t delicate. She had to wear them above her elbows.

  “They’re his,” she said.

  He stared at her. He couldn’t tell if she was pressing his hand, or if the pressure was on his heart.

  “I thought he came to Matthew’s place to kill me,” she said, “but I was wrong. He’d just come courtin’.”

  “Courtin’?”

  “Like the song. Froggy went a-courtin’ and he did ride, uh-huh.”

  “And he gave you his bracelet
s?”

  “We stripped them from his corpse. I meant to ditch them when I had a chance, but . . .” She withdrew her hand from his, slid the bracelets off, set them in her lap, and gazed down at them. “I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I was still obsessed with him.”

  She carefully put the bracelets back on, pushing them to her upper arms. “The first time I wore them was real creepy. They felt like ice.”

  “And now?”

  “He’s stopped haunting me.”

  He met her gaze and missed the secret beauty her eyes had held when they were bare of makeup, with just that black ring around the pale blue iris.

  It was painfully clear this wasn’t the vulnerable woman he’d once been hired to protect. The whole executive setup told him he belonged in her past. “I should let you get back to your work,” he said.

  “Will you be here long?” She asked the casual question in such a way he knew he didn’t have to belong to her past. She’d gotten her groove back and was ready to explore that unspoken thing between them. For a dizzy moment he tried to figure out how he could sneak the time. Then he saw Dottie in his mind, and knew that if he let this thing start up again, he’d be back handcuffed to the desk with his arms stretched out in opposite directions.

  He could tell by the twinkle in her eyes that there was less at stake for her than there was for him. It was easy for her. For all he knew, she wasn’t even making a pass at him. He was up against the case no one ever solves, the mystery between man and woman.

  “A couple more days,” he replied, “but I’m kind of tied up.”

  She followed him across the carpet to the door.

  “Congratulations . . . on your job,” he said. “I bet you’re great at it.”

  “Oh, I’m a killer.”

  “No. You’re just a loyal friend.”

  She frowned. “You think it was Matthew who pulled the trigger?”

  “I don’t think it was you or Matthew. I told you, I did a lot of digging. All the way back to the death of Faith’s husband. It was treated as an accident, but there was one detective who didn’t agree. He said with all the barriers and signs to keep people away from the edge, no sober adult just topples off the Cliffs of Moher. Why are you surprised? Remember what she said to us, I never liked the son of a bitch.”