Dirty Harriet Rides Again

by Miriam Auerbach

  “Then yesterday afternoon I went to see Hollings. Our encounter was fairly antagonistic. He creeps me out with those snakes, and I guess I creep him out with my . . . well, my existence. So I’d have to say he’s the most likely candidate. He must have figured I was likely to attend the reverend’s funeral. So he could have been waiting there for me. Maybe he went to O’Malley’s funeral first and learned that O’Malley was going to be cremated and then got the idea of how to do me in. Or he could have had an accomplice do it.”

  “But how would he know you’d be in the back room of the funeral home?”

  “Shit, I don’t know. Maybe he planned to lure me back there somehow and just got lucky that I showed up on my own.”

  “Well, I’ll have to agree with you,” she said. “He’s still the prime suspect. Watch your back.”

  “I’ll watch mine if you’ll watch yours.”

  “Very funny. You know damn well I can only see sideways, and I don’t have a neck to turn my head around.”

  “Well, that doesn’t seem to have hurt you any. Aren’t you guys the oldest living reptiles on earth?”

  “Indeed we are.” She flashed her teeth. Was that a gator grin? “We’ve seen the dinosaurs come and go, seen all the predecessors of Homo sapiens come and go, and I hate to tell you . . .”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ll still be here when we’re gone. You and the cockroaches. That’s real nice, Lana.”

  “Well, there’s no need to get huffy,” she said.

  “Fine, whatever. Now look, I don’t know what more to do about Hollings at this point. I think my next move should be to follow up on this Lucas Morse scumbag that Trey talked about. But how the hell will I get to him? A direct confrontation probably won’t get me anywhere. After all, look where it got me with Hollings. I think this calls for undercover work. But how?”

  “I have an idea,” Lana said. “Remember when you stepped out of the church after the murder and there was half the population of Boca thinking this was a TV show and looking to have their brush with fame?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “And remember how you thought reality was stranger than fiction in Boca?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, think about that some more,” she commanded. Then she disappeared into the swamp.

  What the hell was she talking about? She wasn’t usually this cryptic. But she was always right, so I had to work with what she’d given me.

  “TV, fame, reality,” I repeated to myself over and over. Finally it clicked: reality TV. That was my answer to getting inside the Loyal Brotherhood of Assholes.

  Chapter 10

  THE NEXT MORNING I went to the office and called the D.A. After I dropped Judge Harrison’s name, he readily gave me Lucas Morse’s address and phone number. Then, knowing that every hate group in America has a website to promote their vileness and recruit vulnerable youngsters, I looked up the Loyal Brotherhood of Aryans. Sure enough, they had a site, and it was full of the usual revolting bullshit.

  Now, even though I don’t watch TV, I do read the newspaper occasionally, which inevitably has an article about one of those asinine reality shows. So I was familiar with the phenomenon. How could you not be? Those programs proliferated like weeds. Or parasites, sucking the lifeblood out of their viewers. Would someone please explain to me why anyone would sit on their ass watching somebody else’s mind-numbing life instead of living their own?

  Anyway, I picked up the phone and called Morse.

  “Yeah?” a voice demanded.

  “Lucas Morse?” I asked.

  “Yeah, what’s it to you?”

  “My name is Har . . . uh, Hailey Holloway. I’m a locally based television producer from Hollywood.”

  “Hollywood, Florida, that pit of old freeloaders who should die already instead of draining our tax dollars?”

  That Lucas, what a guy.

  “No, sir, Hollywood, California.”

  That gave him pause.

  “Sir, we are developing a new reality show called American Patriot. It’s about concerned citizens striving to preserve the American way of life. I’m scouting for possible stars for the show. I came across your group’s website and thought that you’re just the kind of upstanding Americans that we want to showcase.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Now I had perked his interest.

  “Absolutely. Sir, if you were on this show, you and your group would get national exposure. It would be an unprecedented opportunity to spread your important message to the American people.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “Well, I’d like to come and observe your group in action. If it looks like you’re as perfect for the show as I think you are, I’ll pull for you with my boss.”

  He was silent for a few moments. Then he bit.

  “Yeah, okay. We’re meeting at midnight tonight at the old sugar mill out on Hooker Highway. You know where that is?”

  I knew. Hooker Highway was another one of those “Only in South Florida” phenomena.

  “Yeah. And by the way, it’s okay if I bring a video camera, right? I’ll need it to take footage back to my executive producer to pitch your group for the show.”

  “Sure, I’m cool with that.”

  I knew it. He couldn’t resist the lure of fame. Now that’s the American way.

  “Great, I’ll see you tonight,” I said and hung up with a smug smile.

  Then, reminding myself that I still needed to keep an open mind about all possibilities in the case, I decided to delve further into the reverend’s life. Lupe had mentioned that the church had received a large monetary donation just before the reverend’s murder. I wondered if there could be any connection there.

  I could call the church board members I’d talked to before and see if they had any thoughts about that. But I figured I’d best lie low with them. If it was one of them who had pushed me into that coffin, maybe they’d think that they’d at least scared me off the case.

  So instead, I looked up the donor, Dennis Pearlman, and called him at his office. Since he was the owner of a major company, he had a myriad of minions blocking access to him. But knowing what a publicity hound he was, once I merely stated that I was calling about his charitable activities, I was immediately scheduled for an appointment that afternoon.

  I had a few hours to spare, so I worked on another case. This one was for a wealthy elderly widow who’d been scammed out of nearly a hundred grand by a con operation called Heaven, Inc., which promised a connection via a psychic medium to said location. After forking over the bucks in a series of enticements to communicate with her late spouse, she’d finally wised up. Since he wasn’t answering, she’d decided that she’d been calling the wrong place all along, and he must be in hell instead of heaven. She figured Heaven, Inc. should have given her that information right off the bat, so she’d come to me to take them down. As with almost all my clients, she didn’t go directly to the police since she didn’t want the public embarrassment that comes with being a con victim. So I acted as a medium of a different sort.

  For the past few weeks I’d been making calls to Heaven, posing variously as a bereaved daughter wanting to make amends with her departed mother, a terminally ill woman wanting to know her fate, a scorned woman wanting her guardian angel to tell her whether her lover would return, and so on. Each time I was told that for additional payments, all would be revealed.

  Today it was bound to be no different. I picked up the phone, turned on the built-in recorder, and dialed 1-800-1-HEAVEN. I sat back as I listened to the recording on the other end.

  “Thank you for calling Heaven, Inc. Please listen carefully to the following options, as our menu has changed. For our Master Medium, press one. For our Medium Assistant, press two. For our Medium Intern, press three . . .”

  I pondered whet
her to go for the large medium, the medium medium, or the small medium. I decided to go straight to the top. I pressed one.

  “We’re sorry,” the recording said, “The Master is unavailable to take your call. To return to the main menu, press one.”

  I went back and tried the intern. He was in.

  I stuck a piece of chewing gum in my mouth and adopted a Queens accent.

  “Yo, small fry? Listen, I think I met my future exhusband today. He is one fine-lookin’ specimen, but there’s those little warning signs of danger ahead, you know what I’m sayin’? So what I want to know is, how much will I get out of homeboy in the divorce?”

  “My child, you’ve called the right place,” Small Fry replied. “Heaven does have the answer. You need only seek and it shall be revealed. However, I’m going to have to consult with the Master on this one, and you know his time is valuable. But just for today, we have a special offer of only $99.99. But that’s only good today so you need to act now. With this special offer, I’ll bring up your case at our next leadership team meeting. I’m sure you don’t want to pass up this great value. I’ll take your credit-card number now.”

  That was the point where I did my standard sign-off, “I’ll have to think about that, thanks,” and hung up.

  I decided I now had accumulated sufficient evidence to slam the scam, so I wrote my final report to the client with a CC to the police. They could now get an arrest warrant based on my evidence, rather than my client’s, leaving her dignity intact.

  As I was heading out to grab some lunch, the phone rang.

  “Harriet? It’s Gitta.”

  Who? Oh. Oh, my God. The recently widowed Brigitta Larsen O’Malley. What was she doing calling me? None of my former Babe “friends” had acknowledged my existence since I’d bumped off Bruce.

  “Uh, hi, Gitta,” I said.

  “Sweetie, I heard what happened at Mort’s,” she said. Her voice was babyish, like Melanie Griffith’s. She’d always spoken that way, and it had always grated on me. “You were locked in the casket with my darling Lapidus?”

  “Well, yes, but I wouldn’t call him dar . . . Oh, never mind.”

  “I am so horrified, sweetie. Look, can we get together?”

  Get together? After four years of exile? True, my exile was self-imposed. And the shunning . . . Well, I guess it went both ways.

  “Yeah, I guess we can get together,” I said.

  “What are you doing now?”

  Now? “I was just heading out for some lunch.”

  “Would you mind if I joined you?”

  Jeez. She was sounding desperate. Why didn’t she just go hang out with her Babe buddies?

  Then it struck me. With her husband dead, she was no longer a Babe. Just like that. The rules are simple: if you aren’t owned by a man, with a huge stone on your finger to weigh you down, then you’re not a Babe.

  “Uh, okay,” I said. “Yeah, you can join me. I’m going to Saul’s Deli.”

  There was a pause, during which I imagined her turning up her nose. Saul’s was just down the street from my office, far removed from Babe territory, geographically and gastronomically.

  “Saul’s?” she asked. “Sweetie, how about Chez Celine? Or Antoine’s?”

  “I’m going to Saul’s,” I repeated.

  After another pause, she said, “Okay, I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  I walked to Saul’s and took my usual seat by the window. While I waited for Gitta, I munched on pretzels and sipped a Corona with lime.

  When Brigitta Larsen O’Malley came in, all eyes turned to her. And no wonder. Babes were rarely seen in this part of town. And Gitta had been Boca’s reigning Babe. She was Danish with a figure and features to match. Tall, lithe, blonde and blue-eyed. In her early twenties, she’d been a Miss Universe runner-up. Now, over two decades later, she hadn’t lost her beauty-queen looks. In the intervening time, she’d married Lapidus, borne his third set of children and, last I’d heard, had become an aerobics instructor at Boca’s poshest athletic club.

  I waved, and she came over to my table. She started to give me the cheek-to-cheek air kiss that is the standard Babe greeting, but I backed off.

  “Sorry, Gitta, I don’t do affectations anymore. Have a seat.”

  She sat. Up close, she didn’t look quite as good as she had from afar.

  “I’m so sorry about . . . about Lapidus,” I lied.

  And then I choked on a pretzel.

  I gasped for air. I coughed. I wheezed. I tried to swallow. The damn thing wasn’t moving.

  Son of a bitch! I was going to suffocate over Lapidus O’Malley after all.

  Chapter 11

  GITTA GOT UP, rushed to my side, and started hitting my back. I took a big gulp of Corona. Then, finally, I took a big gulp of air.

  I don’t know which saved me, Brigitta or beer. Whichever, I was free of Lapidus’s eerie hold on me from beyond.

  “Are you all right, sweetie?” Gitta asked.

  “Yeah. I’m fine now. Thanks.”

  She sat back down and looked at me with concern. Her face was beautifully made up, as all Babes’ are, but her eyes were bloodshot. I didn’t know if that was from crying over Lapidus or from the coke habit I knew she had.

  “Sweetie, thank you for seeing me,” she said. “I wanted to apologize about what happened at the funeral home.”

  “No apology necessary. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Howard said someone pushed you into the casket deliberately?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have any idea who it was?”

  “No.”

  That’s all I intended to say on that subject. If she was even remotely connected to this thing, I certainly wasn’t going to give her the slightest hint that I might be on the perp’s trail. That would only invite another attempt on my life.

  “So, why don’t we order?” I asked. “I’m having pastrami on rye.”

  “Oh. Yes. Okay.” She perused the menu. And perused.

  Finally I said, “This place doesn’t have your finger sandwiches, your Waldorf salads, or your carrot soup.”

  “Yes, okay.” She sighed and ordered a large house salad with no dressing and some bottled water. Boca Babes are in a constant state of starvation. Being on coke makes that easier.

  After the server left she said, “Sweetie, I also wanted to see you because, well, I’m just beside myself. I don’t know what to do. I thought maybe, you know, as a widow yourself you might have some words of wisdom.”

  Well, the circumstances of our widowhood were hardly the same. And it was damn weird to have her asking me for advice. But I went along, just to see where she was going.

  “I just don’t know how you do it, being all alone,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “It’s not easy” I said. “It takes time to adjust. But then the feeling of self-sufficiency is a real high.” Higher than your coke, I wanted to add.

  “I don’t think I can face it,” she said, choking back sobs.

  She pulled herself together when the server came with our food.

  “Give yourself some time,” I said. “Lapidus just passed, so you need to grieve. And take time to figure out who you are without him.”

  “But that’s impossible. I’m nobody without a man. You know that.”

  Gee, thanks for just calling me a nobody. If that’s how she felt, what the hell was she doing here?

  “I need to find someone new,” she went on. “But, you know, it’s a jungle out there. All the men in Boca are cheap, domineering liars.”

  “And you just now figured this out?” I asked.

  “Well, yes. You see, some of our friends have been out there on the dating scene.”
/>   Her friends, I thought. Not mine.

  “Do you remember Randi?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Like Gitta, Randi had married a much older man.

  “Well, you know, she figured she was safe with Rupert. I mean, even though he’d been married four times before, she always thought she’d be his last wife. He was thirty-five years older, so she thought the chances of him leaving her for another woman were pretty slim. But guess what, that’s exactly what happened. Right after she turned forty he left her for a twenty-three-year-old. And he’s seventy-five!”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. This news did not come as a shock to me. I’ve been in Boca a long time.

  “So she goes out to the clubs to meet somebody, right? She’s aiming younger this time. So she meets a guy that seems very nice. They make a date for dinner. She gets all dressed up, with the high heels and push-up bra and everything. So then he comes over—with a pizza box!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He puts the pizza in the kitchen, goes and sits on the couch, turns on the TV, and asks her to bring him a couple slices and a beer. So she does and brings a couple for herself. Then when she gets up to get a third slice, he tells her she doesn’t need to eat more than two. So then she puts the remaining slices in a container and puts them in the refrigerator and throws away the box. And do you know what he does then?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah. He tells her he wanted to take the rest home.”

  “How did you know that?”

  I shrugged.

  “So that was Mr. Cheap,” she said. “Now, do you remember Tiffani?”

  I stared at her. “Yes,” I snapped.

  “Oh, yes, of course you do. I’m sorry,” Gitta said, flustered.

  Tiffani was the woman at whose wedding reception I’d deep-sixed Bruce. That had brought the festivities to, well, an abrupt finale. Needless to say, Tiffani hadn’t spoken to me since.

  Gitta looked around the room and then whispered, “Scott was convicted of tax evasion and is in prison.”

  “Uh-huh.” Again, no big shock there.