by Pavia, Peter
Steadying the wheel with his knee, Harry twisted out of his jacket and wiped down the Colt. He was about to cross a bridge on some back road that ran parallel to Collins Avenue. He pulled over. He could smell the ocean. No streetlights, not a single car or the dimmest headlamp in any direction, just a crescent moon waning against a star-splattered sky. He held the gun by its trigger guard and dropped it into the canal.
Harry ran through his story to Manfred. Basically, there was no story to Manfred. It all went smooth. Here’s your cash, I got lost on the way back. Take care and thanks. I am so gone from this miserable town, the man you see before you is but a hallucination.
He drove on, fighting South Beach traffic all the way back to Manfred’s hotel.
On the way up in the elevator, Harry thought about his trip to New York. Seven hundred dollars to the good, the bus was out. Harry would be flying. He was going to report to that parole officer, all ready to be good, and he was going to say, Hey, I’m right here.
Only something wasn’t right. It wasn’t adrenaline or nerves or cocaine jitters, though Harry was feeling all of those. But something wasn’t right and he didn’t know what. From behind Manfred’s door, he could hear a Pasty Cline song blaring, a recording of the real thing this time. Nobody answered when he knocked, so Harry tried the knob and let himself in.
Manfred was sprawled in the center of the room, one leg pulled in, the other stiffening straight out from his torso. He’d been shot with a small caliber pistol, once real close from what Harry could bring himself to see. Powder burns rimmed a wound at the base of his skull. The satin bathrobe was thick with blood. His mouth and eyes were set in mischief, like Manfred had been poised to float one of his idiotic suggestions before the bullet went in.
Harry’s forehead was wet at the hairline and his breath got short, fear choking off his air. He’d better figure out what to do quick, and get out. He tiptoed around the pool of blood and shut up Patsy Cline. The silence made it easier to think. He swallowed three thirsty pulls of Ballantine, and wiped down the bottle and both glasses with a towel. Bringing up one acidic belch, he switched off the lights. He walked out and shut the door.
A drunk couple nattering in French fumbled with their keys, oblivious as Harry went past.
Leaving the scene of a murder. Another felony. No question.
The upside was this: He had just made a considerable accidental score. The down: If they caught him they’d try him for murder, and he’d have a bitch of a time talking his way out of it. And they’d catch him. Nobody had seen him on the way in, but there was Leo, and Jennifer, and the Surfside fags, and the fact he was registered under his real name at the Fiorella. They’d find out about him, and then they’d come for him. He’d have let the whole roll ride on that. The question was when, and where.
He took the Mustang and immediately regretted it. He was on the Interstate headed north, putt-putting in the right hand lane, every car on the road whizzing past him. The Florida Highway Patrol car tailing him for the last ten minutes changed lanes, gaining speed. The trooper closed to an eighth of a mile. His lights flashed silently and Harry closed his eyes. You stupid motherfucker. What were you thinking?
He pulled onto the shoulder, scattering gravel under the tires.
He hurled a prayer into the indigo sky. Holy Mary, Mother of God. The trooper screamed past and hit the siren. A second unit was on his bumper. A third, in the southbound lane, hooked a U and joined them. And then a group of motorists cruised past, in exact replicas of Manfred’s rental, in Sunbirds and Escorts, in mini-vans and pick-ups made in Japan. The road was still for a moment, then the next cluster of vehicles zipped by.
Harry got off the highway in a town called Hollywood, and drove around the back of an all-night mini-mart. He wiped down the keys and the steering wheel and the seats and pitched the keys into some thick weeds next to the lot. Breaking a hundred, he bought three packs of Marlboros and a bag of peanut M&Ms. The cashier snapped suspicious gum and wore huge pink-framed glasses connected to a chain. Three o’clock in the morning, she was telling him to have a nice day.
This street was like Hollywood’s main drag, Florida route something or other, running north and south. Where he was going and what he was going to do when he got there, he didn’t know, but he walked north. North was as good a direction as any. They’d catch up to him eventually, he had to admit that, but not tonight. No way. Not tonight.
Chapter Two
Detective Arnie Martinson was standing in the lobby of the Bird of Paradise hotel, talking to the patrolman who had responded. His name was Kenneth Simms. Simms was in his mid-twenties, and he had a rusty-brown mustache, and though Martinson had seen him around for the last couple years, he couldn’t say he knew him. Simms let him know that the room where the homicide occurred had been taped off and that the Crime Scene Unit had been dispatched to the hotel. Martinson asked him to go back upstairs and wait.
The hotel manager was dressed in grey slacks and a grey cotton shirt. The hair he retained was cropped super-close to match the this-is-not-a-beard length whiskers fuzzying his cheeks and chin. A pair of reading glasses hung around his neck, and he put them on as Martinson approached the desk.
“I’m Detective Martinson,” Martinson said. He shook the man’s hand.
“I don’t suppose there’s any way not to turn my hotel into a three-ring circus.”
“Well,” Martinson said, “no. What’s your name?”
“Howard Rutger.”
“And you’re the manager?” Martinson flipped open a notebook.
“I’m the General Manager.”
“General Manager. You reported the crime?
“That’s right.”
“Found the victim?”
“No, that was Mrs. Lopez, one of our housekeepers.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s in my office. Would you like to speak with her?”
“Is she alone?”
“One of our other housekeepers is with her.”
“Where’s your office?”
“Right through that door behind the desk,” Rutger said.
“If you could ask the other maid to come out of there, I’d appreciate it. Explain that a detective is going to interview her, and the detective’ll be along shortly. Could you do that?”
The CSU rolled up, represented by Carl Burns and Shug Petrie. Another detective from the Beach Bureau, Lili Acevedo, walked a few steps behind them.
“Second floor,” Martinson said to Burns. He and Petrie proceeded straight through to the stairs, and Martinson said to Acevedo, “A maid found a body in a room up there. Go and see if she can remember what she saw.”
Pink was the pastel theme of this operation. The lobby’s walls were pink stucco. Pink neon alerted weary travelers of the hotel’s existence, and the housekeepers wore pink uniforms. A woman dressed in the regulation smock walked out of Rutger’s office with a balled-up tissue in her fist.
Rutger had taken a call. The top of his head reflected the lobby’s pink interior.
Martinson said, “Can you get somebody to cover for you?”
He pushed a button that sent the caller to some Muzak’d limbo. The phone chirped again, then a third line started ringing. Rutger caught the attention of a passing bellman. “Arturo,” he said, “get on these phones. We are not interested in speaking to any newspaper or television station at this time. Do you understand that?”
Arturo rushed behind the desk to put everybody on hold. He said hello to the first caller when a fourth line started chirping.
“I can do this,” Rutger said. He extended his arms, making his hands into stop signs, then touched two fingers to his forehead. “I can do this.”
He turned to Martinson. “Do you realize what’s happening here? I’m fielding calls from fishwrappers that don’t normally cover anything more serious than some bimbo jumping agencies. This is going to kill my season.”
“What do you know about the victim?” Martinson as
ked.
“His name was Manfred Pfiser.” Rutger blew out a sigh and squared his shoulders. “He was a businessman from the Netherlands.”
“Remember when he checked in, off hand?”
“One day last weekend.” Rutger’s features pinched, his eyebrows closing in. His nose wrinkled like he was getting a whiff of sour milk. “I’d have to look it up.”
“Was he traveling alone?”
“Yes,” Rutger exhaled. “He always traveled alone.”
“So you knew the guy.”
“He’s been a frequent guest,” Rutger said. He pursed his lips.
“Can you think of any reason why anybody would want to hurt him?”
“None.”
“What sort of company did he keep?”
Rutger said, “I think I’m drawing an inference here, and I think I’m resenting it.”
“I wasn’t implying anything, Mr. Rutger, I’m asking if you knew who his friends were. If you don’t think I know fifty percent of the visitors to Miami Beach are gay, then you’ve got a poor understanding of my knowledge of my jurisdiction, and I resent that. Was he a homosexual?”
“The sexual orientation of my guests is the least of my concerns.”
“That’s a very progressive attitude. You think you could answer my question?”
Martinson saw a reporter homing in on him, Jason something or other. He worked for a weekly that concentrated mostly on restaurant critiques, but he was their police blotter guy. They’d spoken once or twice before.
“Hey, Arnie,” Jason whatever his name was said. Arnie. As if they were cousins.
Jason was wearing faded dungarees and a white golf shirt, shoes that looked like moccasins without socks. Martinson remembered when these guys dressed like they wanted to be taken seriously.
“I’ve got nothing for you,” Martinson said. “Call the Bureau this afternoon.”
“C’mon Arnie,” Jason persisted. “Give me a little piece of something.”
“I said call in later today. I’m talking to this man.” Martinson turned his back.
Rutger said, “Mr. Pfiser was often in the company of young men.” He snapped off the glasses and let them hang from their chain. “Beautiful, young men. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.” The two fingers were back at his forehead, massaging. “You know what else is going to get killed? My business. At the peak of our peak season.”
The phone lines had not stopped bleeping. Arturo stonewalled them in the order they came in.
“Media frenzy,” Rutger said, tilting his chin toward the desk. “Psycho Killer Strikes on South Beach.”
“Would you know how involved the victim was in the scene?”
Rutger composed himself. He looked left and he looked right and he shot a tight-lipped smile at two guys walking through the door. Sand clung to their ankles.
“Manfred Pfiser was a raging queen so desperately out of control I’m surprised he lived as long as he did. How’s that?”
“Fairly substantial. Now, who was on duty last night?”
As an up-to-the-minute example of the evolutionary process, Arnie Martinson might’ve been considered tall, had he lived five hundred years ago. Though he hadn’t begun to think of himself as short until very recently, there was no denying it: He was shrinking. His last physical proved it, when the wizened Doctor Eusasky extended the measuring stick attached to his scale and gave him the news. Sixty-eight inches. Five feet, eight inches. When he joined the Miami Beach PD, he was five-nine. This was the ineluctable effect of gravity on the body. People got shorter as they got older. Arnie had watched this happen to his father.
And he was getting fat by anybody’s standards. He was always stocky, but that extra weight used to make him feel strong. For most of his life, he carried it well through the chest and shoulders, maybe not so well around the gut, but the distribution seemed to shift right around the time he started to think of himself as short. He was not short enough, however, to duck under the tape denoting this new, expanded crime scene without some unintentional grunts escaping his throat, so the new, expanded Martinson lifted the tape up over his shoulder.
Simms had himself posted opposite the elevators, and another patrolman was standing outside the room. Arnie cleared another yellow obstacle and walked onto the scene as Burns was completing a chalk outline around the body.
The victim was lying in the center of the floor, a middle-aged white male with white hair taking a goofy, surprised expression into the next world. His lifeless hands were stained black with fingerprint ink.
Manfred Pfiser had taken a single bullet to the back of the head at very close range. The powder marks provided an impression of the barrel on his whitening skin. Entering at the base of the skull, the bullet struck the jawbone and sent shattered bone fragments tearing through the flesh, creating massive exit trauma. Burns focused his Nikon and snapped a nice, tight close-up of the fatal wound.
Shug Petrie reminded Martinson of the guys the Department was top-heavy with when he was just starting out, old boys from Kendall and Homestead whose daddies knew judges or somebody in the mayor’s office who could get their son a job. Petrie was a throwback, a relic of a bygone day, holding out until he could swat mosquitoes and spit tobacco juice outside his trailer while drawing the pension on his twenty-five years of faithful service. He was a tremendous pain in the ass, a cop Martinson exchanged as few words with as he could, but he was a competent, patient technician.
A mediocre seascape, an original, depicted a deserted beach at sunset. Except if the artist was painting Miami Beach, it would have to be sunrise. The water was greenish-black, and the sun, making either its entrance or exit, was a band of orange on the horizon.
Acevedo cleared the tape like she was slipping a punch and popped inside the room. She was in her early thirties, and long-legged, an inch in height on Martinson. The name and the family were Cuban, but Lili’s wan complexion was more Prague than Havana. She had green eyes and black hair Martinson originally thought she dyed to combat encroaching grey, but the hair stayed that shade always, and not a single root ever gave it away, not in the florescence of the squad room, not in the hot, bright Florida sunlight.
Giving the body a nonchalant once-over, Lili said, “The maid found him around ten after eleven, ran out of here screaming and tracked down her boss, who made the call. She insists she didn’t touch a thing. I took her phone number and told her to go home. The woman’s a wreck.”
“Alright,” Martinson said. “Start knocking on doors. Take this floor first.”
Acevedo repeated that same tight move and popped up on the other side of the tape.
Petrie was brushing aluminum powder on the nightstand where two bottles of Ballantine scotch sat, one empty, the other about half-full. Two eight ounce tumblers crowded between them.
“Whoever it was did some housekeeping,” Petrie said. “See the wipe marks?” He indicated the swirling trails made on the bottles, like the streaks a rag might’ve made on a window. “Same thing with the glasses.”
On the opposite side of the bed, in a drawer of the nightstand, Martinson found Pfiser’s wallet and passport. Multiple Visa cards representing many banks sat snug in their individual slots, but the wallet was empty of cash. His Dutch papers said he was born in Rotterdam in 1947, three years before Arnie Martinson. So that was how long the guy had been alive. Martinson wanted to find out how long he’d been dead.
Burns said, “I thought somebody notified the Medical Examiner.”
Martinson said, “I did. Where is this guy?”
“On vacation,” Petrie said. “You’re getting Leviticus, mon.” He was mocking the doctor’s Caribbean accent. Arnie felt sorry for Burns, having to work so closely with this asshole.
A gold Rolex sat on the dresser, keeping imperfect time. The drawers were stocked with boxer shorts and those see-through kind of socks that went up to the knee. Pfiser was not bashful about spending money on clothes. The man liked his silk.
Ma
rtinson opened the closet door. Every one of the hotel’s theft-proof hangers was holding something, a suit, a shirt, a tailored jacket or a pair of trousers. Two suitcases sat on the floor, one housing a few days laundry, and an overpowering male scent puffed out of the bag as Arnie flipped it open, sweat mixed with a thick cologne long gone sour.
He pulled down a carry-on bag and undid the latches. It was empty except for some traces of white powder. Arnie touched the tip of his pinky to the powder for a taste. It was cocaine. A potent batch that numbed his tongue and deadened his teeth as he clicked them together. So let’s say the deceased was doing more than sniffing little-bitty spoonfuls out of a twenty-dollar envelope. Let’s say this dust leaked out of a big fat package.
Then let’s say the shooter knew the deceased was holding heavy.
The Assistant Medical Examiner had arrived and was squatting over the body. Dr. Leviticus Williams was a dark-skinned black man with conked, orangish hair he greased straight back. His eyeglasses were so thick they magnified his eyes and made him look like he was in some hypnotic trance. He did some poking and he did some touching and he said, “Gunshot wound to the head.”
It might have come off like a grim gag from somebody else, but Williams had almost no sense of humor. Your class clown rarely wound up in forensic medicine.
Two of Williams’s men came in bearing a collapsible gurney, dressed in hospital green. Somebody took the trouble to close Manfred’s Pfiser’s eyes for him before he got zipped into a black vinyl bag for his trip to the morgue.
Lili Acevedo was in Room 224. At first, with the almond eyes that were the exact same shade of cobalt, Lili made this French couple for a father-daughter team. The woman answered the knock, dressed in a pair of pink nylon shorts and a halter top, typical South Beach for a girl her age, with the body to show off. Through an accent like quicksand, she wished Lili a good morning. They were the last two words she attempted in English.
She was a generation younger than her boyfriend, who was in front of the bathroom mirror training a blowdryer on the salt and pepper hair he wove over the bald spot on his crown. A bathrobe was sashed tight across his pot gut, and a chain, featuring both a crucifix and a diamond-studded Star of David nestled in a thatch of black-grey chest hair. He introduced himself as Allain Marcoux, the girl as Annick Mersault, and Lili scribbled both names into a notebook, way too much alike to be clear in her head.