“Hey, listen, how ’bout I watch?” proposed the manager. “I’ll pay a hundred bucks to watch.”
“I’m sorry, but watching is prohibited by the International Brotherhood of Pornographers.”
Tomato fields, dark and featureless as the night sea, sprawled west all the way to the border of the Everglades National Park. Yet south Florida herself, her land, offers nothing to growers but a site, no nourishment whatever in the marl. Farmers scrape off all native vegetation down to rock, then they truck in real soil from the north. South Florida agribusiness enjoys a one-month monopoly on tomatoes. Picked green by undernourished migrants and shot full of gas, these fruits are built to travel north, where during February no one eats a tomato not reared on utterly infertile Miami Limestone.
Doom was ready in the Baby Bear bungalow. He had typed up the scripts and placed them on music stands. The Annes were busy setting light and sound levels.
“If you agree to help,” Doom told the Annes in private, “you’ll probably end up with a film you can’t show to anyone without landing us all in jail.”
“What choice do we have?”
“You have a choice.”
“You’re going to do this thing with us or without us, right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s this film or no film.”
“Do you think I shouldn’t do it?” asked Doom.
“It’s not up to us to judge.”
“Yes, but what do you think?”
“Politically it’s justified.”
“Morally it stinks.”
Wasn’t that just the problem with crime? Doom was troubled by the calculated ruthlessness of his scheme, but what choice did he have? Careful calculation was essential. Anything half-assed would get them arrested. Or killed. And this time, if he was arrested, it wouldn’t be Longfellow. This time it would be hard time with sex-starved incorrigibles.
The Annes hung sheets on three sides around the sheriff’s chair, then adjusted their light levels accordingly.
Meanwhile, Duncan sped crazily through the night. Duncan was jealous. Wasn’t he the conceiver, Doom just the scribe? But hell, the money was good, even if the gig lacked leadership potential. And where was Doom getting the money he was throwing around? Maybe Duncan would find an opportunity to make his own side deal somewhere along the line. He extinguished his flasher and siren and drove sanely through downtown Homestead. It was nine o’clock; everything except the 7-Eleven was locked and dark. He pulled the black-and-white around behind Baby Bear bungalow with the headlights off.
“Where are we?” mouthed the sheriff, a trembling lump on the backseat.
“Never you mind,” said Longnecker, guarding the sheriff’s crown with his hand as Plotner squirmed out. “You just think about saving your ass. I don’t like to say jail’s tough on bad cops, but they usually go in farting normally and they come out farting like a slow leak in a tractor tire.” Longnecker was ad-libbing now.
Longnecker sat the sheriff sideways in the chair to accommodate his cuffed hands. Doom was glad Rosalind wasn’t there to see the fat, weeping figure bedazzled by about 10,000 watts of white light. His thighs were dark with sweat.
“What is that stink?” Anne asked Anne in a whisper.
Agents Peebles and Armbrister took their places at the music stands and prepared their interrogation.
The sheriff said something, but the sound didn’t make it through the glare.
“What?” asked Duncan.
“Lawyer…I want—a lawyer.”
“Okay, fine,” said Duncan, capping his pen theatrically. “Take him to the Miami lockup. He wants a lawyer. He doesn’t want to make a deal.”
“Huh? No, please. I do, I do want to make a deal.”
“Then just sit and relax. There, that’s good. Now, Sheriff, did you or did you not cover up the murder of Dennis Loomis?”
“…Yes.”
“Let the record show that the sheriff admitted to killing Dennis Loomis, then covering it up,” said Duncan, the picture of authority.
“No! No, please! I didn’t say I killed him! I covered it up, I didn’t—oh, Jesus!”
“Why did you cover it up if you didn’t kill him? Were you working for someone?”
“I—I leaped to conclusions!”
“How so?”
“I thought—I thought Big Al did it!”
“That would be Big Al Broadnax?”
“Yes! Yes, I thought he did it!”
“Are you saying he didn’t?”
“Yes. I mean no, he didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked him.”
“And he’s an honest man?”
“No, but I could tell he didn’t.”
“Would you say Big Al has you in his pocket?”
“…Yes. Look, I’m sorry, honest. I got—confused!”
“You’re doing fine, Sheriff. I’m sure we can work this out.”
“You are?”
“Depending on the candor of your answers. Who killed Dennis Loomis?”
“I don’t know! I swear on my wife’s grave!”
“Do you know one Donald Sikes?”
“The tycoon?”
“He’s a developer.”
“Well, I’ve heard of him. Everybody’s heard of him, but I never met him or nothing. Please don’t make me go to jail—I’ll do anything. Anything! What can I tell you?…Ah, Tamarind! The Tamarind Financial Group—Big Al blew it up!”
“But we heard that explosion was caused by a gas leak.”
“No, no, I covered that up too—for Big Al! Big Al did it!”
“Why did this Big Al blow it up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he thought they were trying to gyp him!”
“How so?”
“I don’t know. Big Al ain’t…ain’t entirely right upstairs.”
“That should do for now,” said Doom from behind the wall of light. Doom didn’t want to prolong the agony. He carried a chair into the light and sat beside the sheriff.
“You! What the fuck is this! You faggot! I’ll have your ass for—” He looked into the camera. “Duress! This confession took place under duress! I take it all back!”
“You’re right, Sheriff, duress. Your confession would never stand up in a court of law, but neither of us wants to go to court. However, seeing your confession on film, people might begin to ask embarrassing questions. The real FBI might even pose a few, and Big Al Broadnax wouldn’t be happy, especially about your eagerness to confess his crimes. Reelection would be in doubt.”
“So what do you want?”
“Answers, for now. Later I may want direct help. If you help willingly, I might be able to hand you the killer of Ozzie Mertz and Doris Florian. And I might be able to get you out of Big Al’s pocket. You see, when this is over, Big Al will be finished.”
“You’re going up against Big Al?”
“Yes, and so are you. What choice do you have? Tell me about my father’s body.”
“…He was strangled. You could see the marks on his throat. You had to look close, because, well, because the crabs had gotten to him pretty bad.”
“What was he strangled with?”
“Fish line. Somethin’ fine. Wait a minute! Mertz and the Florian broad—they was both strangled, too!”
“That’s a keen observation, Sheriff. Why did Big Al send Lucas Hogaboom to kill Rosalind’s alligators?”
“What? He did? I didn’t know—”
“Come on, Sheriff. I’m a little angry at you about my father. If you piss me off further, I’ll sell you right out.”
“No, honest, I don’t—wait! You and Snack Broadnax was out at the Up-the-Grove place plotting against Big Al…Maybe somebody saw you out there and told Big Al.”
“What do you know about the Perfection Park scam?”
“Scam? What do you mean, scam? You mean it was a scam? I didn’t know it was a scam.”
Doom decided to keep it simple for now. “Sheriff, I w
ant you to stop hassling the people in Omnium Settlement. I want you to allow them to live openly in Fred’s Hobby Shop and wherever else they want to live.”
“Okay. Big Al won’t like it none.”
“Sheriff, Big Al is going down.”
“I forgot.”
“I also want you to arrange a meeting between Big Al and me. And a meeting between Roger Vespucci and Big Al.”
“Who’s Roger Vespucci?”
“I also want to know what goes on at the Broadnax compound. I want you to spy on him.”
“…Okay.”
Doom removed the sheriff’s handcuffs and handed them back to him. “When this is over, we’ll still need law and order on Omnium Key. I for one would vote for Sheriff Plotner. I think Agents Peebles and Armbrister would too.”
The agents agreed it would be a vote well cast.
GRAVESIDE THEATER
Heavy-heeled, Doom marched down the long marble hallway, outdistancing Wing Li, trying to work up some genuine anger. In matters of theater and of bullshit, genuine emotion is always most efficacious. But Doom wasn’t prepared for the garden heat—it struck his temples like the clout from Roger Vespucci’s sap—nor was he prepared for the elaborate naturalism, density, and sheer size of the vegetation. Longnecker and Rosalind had of course described this place to him, but as a “garden”; instead, it was a riotous jungle. Like those in Dragoon’s Hammock, but phony, tropical trees strove skyward as if to compete for sustaining sunlight. Down on the blue-tiled ground, only gloom penetrated the top cover.
Doom was no more prepared for Big Al himself than for Big Al’s works. There he sat in his steel wheelchair beneath the spooky spread of a leafy something-or-other. Doom had pictured an old man, an ill one, perhaps even a dying one, but Big Al Broadnax looked like a two-week-old disinterment. The flesh of his face seemed to have melted into the skeleton below. Every long bone in his body was corkscrewed, each joint crepitant. Big Al weighed barely a hundred pounds. His entire person was shrunken and withered like a fallen fruit in the Florida sun. Frankly, Doom was taken aback, his work for real anger wasted. So he went with phony anger—it might pass in the limited light.
“You killed my father, and I demand redress!”
“Stop right there, you punk! Lucas!”
Lucas Hogaboom had been skulking behind a cabbage palm, its fiberglass trunk overgrown in moon vine. He stepped from cover. His leg was cast in plaster, immobilized from hip to ankle. His crutches creaked under their burden.
“Hey, snakeman,” Doom waved.
“Beat him! Beat him!” whined Big Al.
Wincing, Lucas advanced, but he was moving as if underwater. Doom had ample time to draw the photograph from the sweat-soggy envelope under his arm and hand it to Big Al, who held it two inches from his nose and squinted: “Wait!”
Lucas was only too glad to oblige.
“This is my son!”
“Good eye.”
“And that—that’s the pecker who lit my orchids!”
“He’s not a stable individual. No telling what a man like that might do.”
In the photograph Snack was tied to the sheriff’s chair. Longnecker stood behind the chair and pointed a gun into Snack’s ear. “If anything should happen to me, Snack won’t be around to rebury you.” From somewhere unseen a fountain plashed. “Likewise, if I leave here unsatisfied, Snack goes for a vertical swim.” Doom wasn’t sure about the patter, but it felt reasonably convincing.
“I didn’t kill your stinking father, damn his jism, why’s everybody think I killed him! I had no reason, no—what the stink do you call it?—no motive!”
“You had a motive.”
“What motive!”
Doom pulled papers from the envelope and carried them toward Big Al.
“Stop right there! Don’t come near me,” Big Al wheezed. “Lucas, take that from him and bring it to me.”
Lucas Hogaboom dragged himself painfully along to serve his master. Doom handed him the papers, and he struggled onward with them.
“What the fuck’s this!”
“That’s a contract. Clause 47-R says that in the event of my father’s death for any cause whatsoever, all lots in Omnium Settlement revert to Palmetto Properties, a company which, upon his death, I control.”
Big Al pretended to read, but these days even bold print was a blurry smear; fine print was hopeless. But Big Al didn’t let on. “I’ve never seen this in my whole stinking life!”
“That proves it.”
“Proves what!”
“That you killed him.”
“How!”
“If you’d known about it, you wouldn’t have killed him. It wouldn’t have been in your interests to kill him. But not knowing about it, you did. That’s precisely why my father inserted Clause 47-R.”
“Why!”
“Because he knew it was dangerous doing business with you.”
Big Al’s head was spinning. A smudge at the bottom of the page looked something like his signature, but he had never heard of Clause 47-R. “Lucas, why the fuck didn’t my Jews tell me about Clause 47-B!”
“Uhh…”
“Fire my Jews! Fire them all! Get me a whole new Jew crew!”
Lucas hobbled out, grunting in pain.
There were possibilities here, Big Al was thinking. “Say, Mr. Loomis, you wouldn’t be interested in selling your interests in this—what did you call it?”
“Palmetto Properties.”
“What if I bought Palmetto from you for a fair price, then you let Snack go. Fair? Fair enough, I’d say. What do you say?”
“Why should I help the man who killed my father?”
“Because I didn’t kill him!…Who told you I did? Did that putrid sheriff tell you?”
“No. Donald Throckmorton told me.”
Suddenly Big Al was having trouble breathing. Something the consistency of semen gurgled in his trachea. “…Did you say Throckmorton?”
“He goes by the name Donald Sikes, but his real name is Throckmorton.”
The very sound of the name Throckmorton caused him cold chills in the pelvic region. “Donald Sikes?”
“He and my father were swindling you in the Perfection Park deal. You didn’t know Perfection Park was a phony?”
“…Of course I knew. Where is he? Throckmorton.”
“Is that a porch out there?” It looked like a porch with a heavy marble balustrade, each support sculpted to represent the Venus di Milo. “You can see him from here.”
“What!”
Doom slid open the huge plate-glass door. The air—at ninety-two degrees—felt dry and autumnal compared to that in the garden. Big Al grunted and wheezed as he wheeled himself out onto the patio. The ocean was silvery, its expanse unbroken but for the ungainly bulk of the King Don lying to her anchor.
“You mean—?” Big Al’s voice cracked.
“That’s his boat.”
“…It’s cold out here.” Big Al wheeled himself as fast as he could back into his den. Doom followed. This man was an arsonist and a murderer of innocent alligators—at least. Then why did Doom feel sorry for him?
“Do you know Don Throckmorton?” Doom asked innocently.
“Who me? No, I never heard of the—!” Big Al tried to collect himself, to stave off impetuosity. There might be a means of turning things his way. “You have me at a disadvantage. This ain’t business we’re talking, this is extortion, but let’s talk about it like it was business. So would you be interested in a deal for Omnium Settlement, Mr. Loomis?”
“Well, I really hadn’t given it much thought.”
“You’ve got to think of everything. Especially if you go kidnapping my beloved son Sennacherib. I could have you eliminated for that.” Which Big Al fully intended to do anyway, the brass-balled punk, trying to extort Big Al Broadnax.
“I’ll need a hundred thousand dollars. Cheap at twice the price.”
“Lucas!”
Lucas, grunting, hobbled back in.
/> “Get me my checkbook.”
“No checks. And I don’t take American Express. Cash.”
“I ain’t got a hundred thousand in cash! Are you nuts! Forty thousand.”
“Seventy, cash money.”
“Make it fifty, you got a deal.”
“No deal. Sixty. My last offer.”
“Fifty-five.”
“Fifty-seven.”
“Done.”
“Lucas,” said Big Al two minutes after Doom left with the cash.
“Yes, sir.”
“Kill him. Then get my money back.”
“You got it, sir.”
PROFESSOR GOODE
Paper-stuffed valise in hand, Professor Goode nimbly strode Black Caesar’s dock toward Staggerlee, sidestepping holes, rent planks, and exposed nails. It had been years since he had stridden nimbly anywhere, and many years before that since he had done so lecture-bound with a case full of cogent research. He had his old student Dennis Loomis to thank for that.
Professor Goode had made friends and acquaintances at the trailer park. Bert and Marvis were teaching him to fish, and last night he had discussed with Professor Munday, a retired Romantic-poetry specialist from the University of Chicago, the Mt. Snowden episode in The Prelude. Their views were highly compatible, although Professor Munday was much more favorably inclined toward “Michael” and the gentle swain poems than was Professor Goode, who had difficulty keeping a straight face when talk turned to gentle swains.
Professor Goode had delicately queried Professor Munday as to why he had chosen life in a tacky trailer park when other more seemly avenues of existence seemed open to him. Professor Munday said that only in truly rootless, disassociated, and self-referencing places like the Briny Breezes Trailer Ranch could one achieve and maintain a firm connection to the dry hole at the spiritual center of American society.
Doom greeted Professor Goode in the cockpit and made to assist him down the companionway ladder, but the professor didn’t need help. He was rock solid on his feet, and Doom was glad. The professor seated himself at the table, laid out two pens and a yellow notepad before he assembled his notes. He hadn’t done a single hit of NyQuil in three days.
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