by Danny Lopez
On top of everything I was a few weeks away from having to cash into what little was left of my retirement. I’d have to budget, stop drinking. I had my vintage Scott stereo and a sizable vinyl collection: a lifetime of records, first press albums and special audiophile editions. I could sell it all and survive another month or two. Then what?
I knew one thing for sure: I was not going to look for another newspaper job. I’d been kicked out of the club. I had skills, a reputation, a closet full of awards. What did it get me?
I had to face it. At thirty-nine I was too old and had too much experience in a career that no longer existed. Blogs and gossip journalism had taken over the world. The prospect of working for another paper made me sick to my stomach. And really, my skills as an investigator, writer, reporter, as a person who actually gave a shit about making the world a better place, were useless. Nobody cared.
* * *
The following day I gave Nick a ring and met him at his place midafternoon. He came to the door wearing a Speedo and an unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt and dark Ray-Bans. His brown skin had that glow from sunscreen and sweat, which seems to be like a uniform for rich Floridians. Buried in his hairy chest was a gold medallion. It had the image of a man on a horse slaying a dragon, surrounded by little red gems. On the bottom corner a part of the medal was missing.
He noticed me staring at his chest and held up the medallion for me to see. “It’s St. George. From Italy.”
“Looks like someone took a bite out of it.”
He laughed. “My grandfather was in the first war. A bullet hit him in the chest and took a part of the medallion. It saved his life.”
When we walked inside, I noticed a young lady lying on a recliner by the pool. She was skinny, topless with small breasts.
“Tiffany,” Nick said when he saw me checking her out. She turned on her stomach to get the sun on her back. She looked young, like a teenager. But the way she moved her body told me she knew she had something and knew how to use it.
“She’s the daughter of one of the neighbors,” Nick said and led me away from the window. “They like to use the pool. I don’t mind.”
“I wouldn’t either,” I said. With the tall hibiscus hedge and the wall around the garden, the place offered excellent privacy for nude sunbathing.
“A drink?” He was already at the bar.
“I think I’ll wait till five.”
“You know what they say. It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
He poured himself a bourbon. I followed him into his study. It wasn’t a big room, a little dark and predictable except the shelves were stocked with sexual paraphernalia—sex toys, dildos, leather straps, chains, and all kinds of freaky sexual shit. On the side of his large oak desk was a huge erect penis.
“Louise Bourgeois,” he said when he saw me staring at it. “It’s an original sculpture. She made it especially for me.”
“Why?”
“It’s bronze,” he said. “Pick it up.”
“I’m fine.”
He laughed. “Are you afraid of art or afraid of a penis?”
It was as long as a baseball bat with a pair of rough-looking, grapefruit-size testicles at the base. I grabbed the thing and picked it up off the desk and felt its weight. “It feels lethal.”
He laughed and offered me one of the chairs. He sat across the desk. “It’s how I made my fortune,” he said, motioning to the sex toys. “I started out with a small sex shop in Boston’s combat zone back in the early seventies. It was okay. One day one of my customers made a joke, how he had to drive all the way to downtown Boston from the suburbs just to buy a cock ring.” He tapped the side of his head and grinned. “I paid attention to what he said. Six months later I took out a loan and opened a shop in Woburn. You wouldn’t believe the business. Twice what I was getting downtown.”
“I guess all the pervs are in the suburbs.”
“No, no.” He frowned. “Not perverts. That’s what everybody thinks. They’re just regular people. Everyone loves sex. That’s what I figured out. Five years after I opened the Woburn shop, I had three more stores in Newton, Quincy, and Reading.”
“Sex sells.”
He laughed. “You’re telling me, my friend. You’re telling me.”
He reached to a shelf behind him and offered me a framed photograph of an attractive young lady in a formal gown. She was elegant. Great posture. Strong dark eyes. “That’s Maya,” he said. “It was taken three years ago during her first year of college. I think she was going to a dance.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Like her mother.”
I put the photograph aside. “What do you think happened?”
He shrugged. “I really have no idea. She’s an A student. Brilliant. She’s majoring in biology and she’s already been accepted at UC Davis for graduate school.”
“Did she live here?”
“No. She lived in a house near the college with roommates. She wanted the full college experience.” He opened a drawer, pulled out a pad and an agenda, and wrote down an address. “Perhaps it’s a place to start,” he said.
I looked at the address, folded the paper, and put it in my breast pocket. “You guys didn’t have a fight or anything?”
“No.” Then he smiled in a way that made me think of people in jail. You ask them how they are or how it is for them and they give you this sad smile—desperate—like it’s fine but it’s not fine. It never will be.
“We didn’t see much of each other,” he said. “She had her life, I had mine. She usually came to dinner once a week. We got along but we didn’t have much in common.” He looked at the shelves where the sex toys were displayed. “I don’t think she approved of how I made my money.”
“And you say the cops found nothing suspicious?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you remember the officer in charge of the investigation?”
“No,” he said and looked down at his hands resting on the desk. “First it was a big man in uniform. Then it was a plainclothes detective. Then a woman in uniform.” He waved his hands. “Never the same person.”
I glanced at Maya’s picture and leaned forward, resting my forearms on the desk. “Let me ask you something. Why don’t you just hire a private investigator?”
“I tried.” He showed me three pink stubby fingers. “I spoke to three. But none of them would take a missing persons case.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“They said the same thing the cops said: ‘She’s an adult.’ I said, ‘so find her anyway,’ and they said, ‘no thank you.’”
I leaned back on my chair and sighed. “Maybe I shouldn’t do this.”
Nick’s little eyes almost popped out of his face, then narrowed to a squint. “Please,” he said, and reached into the drawer of his desk and pulled out a white envelope. He tossed it on the desk in front of me. “A thousand dollars a week. Plus expenses.”
“Nick—”
“There’s ten thousand in that envelope. It’s all yours. If it takes longer, I’ll give you another ten. If it takes less, you keep it all. A bonus.”
All the journalism in the world had never prepared me for this type of negotiation. But it wasn’t as if I wanted more. Me in my faded khakis and thrift store Hawaiian shirt, two-day stubble, and a tooth in dire need of a root canal.
I had no idea what private investigators charged for this kind of work. I just knew this was a nice chunk of change for an unemployed journalist.
“What if I can’t find her?”
“You will. I know you will.” His face changed again. Suddenly, he was that friendly little old man, the guy I met the previous night at Memories. He frowned, the confidence and power seeping out of him. “You have to. Please.”
I’m an honest guy. Perhaps too damn honest. I couldn’t see how finding someone would take more than a few days. But I wasn’t a fool, either. I was broke. I needed the money. But it was more than that. Give me a mystery, a clue, an idea.
That was all it took. Suddenly, I had this burning inside asking me to solve this thing, find out where this girl went. What was she doing? It was what drove me to journalism in the first place—that insatiable need to solve the puzzle.
I put the envelope in my pocket and leaned over the desk. “When was the last time you saw her?”
CHAPTER THREE
I LEFT NICK’S house and drove straight to that coffee shop on the North Trail next to New College. Before I started knocking on doors, asking about a beautiful young woman named Maya, I wanted to find out about my employer: Nick Zavala.
I ordered a double espresso, loaded it with sugar, and opened my laptop. Google had a few thousand answers for me. From what I read, Nick was being straight with me. He’d owned a string of sex shops all over New England, not just Boston. He sold out after 9/11 and moved to Florida, first Naples, then Sarasota. He also held a couple of patents on dildos he’d invented. The man had to be loaded. His house on the bay and the Lexus was nothing for someone like him. He had been married twice, divorced twice. One of his ex-wives had died of breast cancer ten years ago, about the time he’d bought the house in Sarasota, according to the County Property Assessors website.
I found nothing on the first wife and nothing on any children. Nothing about Maya Zavala or anyone else connected to him. That was a little strange, but it wasn’t unusual. I Googled Maya. Nothing. Not a singe entry except her Facebook page, which was closed to those outside her circle of friends. No images, no papers, no records. Nothing from New College, nothing in the local paper or any other paper, no web or blog mentioned her name. Nothing.
I drank my coffee and got back in my car. I checked the money in the envelope. It was scary. I had never seen so many clean hundreds in my life. I didn’t count them but it sure as hell looked like ten grand. I shoved the envelope under my seat and drove to the address Nick had given me.
The house was across the Trail on the corner of Old Bradenton Road and 47th, a couple of blocks from the greyhound racetrack. It was an old wooden house with a lot of windows, looked handmade. Everything in the neighborhood was old and neglected. Probably the only part of town the housing boom skipped over.
There were three cars in the driveway, an ’89 Toyota Corolla, a Nissan pickup, and a ’70s Mercedes diesel with flat tires and the windows open. There were three bicycles on the ground by the front door. All the plants in the yard were overgrown. Kudzu was overtaking the oak tree and the side fence. A black cat slept by the recycling bins that were full of empty beer cans.
I knocked on the door. There was music. Sounded like the Grateful Dead. I knocked again. Nothing. I pushed the door open real slow.
I called out, “Hello?”
Bits of conversation and laughter came over the music.
“Hello?” The place stank of cigarette smoke, pot, incense, and dirty socks. It was a mess. Three young men and two young women were sprawled on a set of couches in the living room. They looked as if they’d just been pulled out of Haight-Ashbury circa 1968.
“Hey, man, just come on in.” The guy with the long red hair and wiry glasses sat up. He looked just like a male version of Janis Joplin. The others stopped talking. One of the women, the small one with the paisley headband, turned the volume down on the stereo.
“Who’re you, man?” one of the other guys said. He was chunky with curly hair—Jerry Garcia.
“I’m a friend of Maya’s,” I said.
They fell silent. The girl with the paisley headband looked at Janis Joplin and back at me. “You’re a cop,” she said. “Don’t you have to identify yourself or something?”
“You got a warrant?” Janis Joplin said.
“I’m not a cop. I’m a friend of her family’s.”
They stared at each other, at me, their red glassy eyes focusing back and forth like they didn’t know where to park themselves.
“You look like a cop,” Jerry Garcia said.
“You smell like a cop,” Janis Joplin said. That threw them into a laughing fit.
I took a deep breath.
“We don’t know shit,” Paisley said.
“She lives here. You mind telling me about it?”
“Dude,” Janis Joplin said. “We don’t know shit. That’s what she just said. She lived here for like five months. She kept to herself. And then she split. Fucked us up on the rent.”
“A real drag,” Jerry Garcia said.
“Where did she split to?”
Jerry Garcia shook his head. “We don’t want any hassles, man.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m not a cop. I’m a reporter and a friend of the family. They asked me to help them find her. They’re worried. I mean, what if it was your daughter who vanished?”
“No way, man.” Paisley laughed. “Like, we don’t reproduce.”
“I’m just saying. If you did.”
“But we don’t.”
“Did she leave anything behind?”
They looked at each other. I thought of two things: they were hiding something or they were just stoned and didn’t give a shit. Most likely it was the latter. I moved closer and sat on the corner of the couch. The ashtray was full of roaches and cigarette butts. There was a plastic bong on the carpet. The place was filthy. I couldn’t imagine Maya, the elegant young woman from the picture, living in a place like this.
“You seen her at school lately?” I asked.
Janis Joplin flinched, looked at Jerry Garcia.
I pulled out my phone. “Look, I could call the cops, tell them about all the dope you have lying around this place.”
“Ah, come on,” Paisley said. “Uncool.”
“Tell me about Maya?”
“She had Hannah’s room,” Janice Joplin said and glanced at Jerry Garcia. “She was here for like what, four or five months?”
“Then what happened?”
Janice Joplin shook his head. “Dude, she just split. People come and go from this house all the time.”
“Can’t keep track, man,” Jerry Garcia added.
“And you don’t know where she went,” I said.
Janis Joplin grinned. “I’m not her father, man.”
“Where’s Hannah?”
They looked at each other. Jerry Garcia shrugged. “She’s at school.”
A hippy flophouse. Who knew who held the lease, maybe Janis. Maybe no one. People came and went, paid and stayed, no strings attached.
It was obvious I wasn’t going to get anywhere with these clowns. I walked out. A girl in a loose cotton skirt and a tie-dye t-shirt was just getting off her bike in front of the house.
“Are you Hannah?”
She smiled. “That’s me.”
“I was looking for Maya. The guys in the house said you might know where she is?”
“Who’re you?”
“I’m with the UC Davis graduate school. Microbiology.”
She looked me up and down. “For real?”
I nodded. “We haven’t heard from her since we accepted her into the program.”
Hannah chuckled, curled a strand of hair behind her ear. “You must really want her.”
“We certainly do.”
She tilted her head to the side and bit her fingernail.
“So how long did she live here, anyway?”
She raised her eyes. “She never really lived here.”
“Really?”
“She just used it as an address. She came and got her mail every week and gave Kirk a check every month.”
“Who’s Kirk?”
“The guy with the red hair.” The Janis Joplin character.
“So what happened?”
She shrugged. “She just stopped coming by, I guess. I mean, I don’t really know her.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. Like a month ago. Or two. I didn’t pay any attention.”
“Do you know where she lives now?”
She dropped her head and looked away. “She has a boyfriend.”
“Oh
.” I laughed. “They moved in together.”
She nodded.
“Do you know his name?”
“Mike.”
“Does he go to New College?”
She shook her head. “He’s older. He works, I guess.”
“What’s Mike’s last name?”
“Mike … Baseman or Bossman or Boseman or something like that. It started with a B and ended with man. Something like that.”
“So she paid rent here but lived with this guy.”
“I guess she didn’t want her parents to know she was living with him.”
“So you know where Mike lives?”
“I think Siesta.”
“Seriously?”
She nodded and glanced past me at the house.
“Do you know where on Siesta?” Siesta Key was Sarasota’s beach paradise—every year it was voted best beach in the universe by some magazine or another.
She shook her head. “No, but I heard Maya say it was a great place. She said it was like the real Florida. Whatever that means.”
CHAPTER FOUR
BY THE TIME I left the hippy house it was late afternoon. I went straight to happy hour at Caragiulos on Palm Avenue in downtown. I was starving. And I wanted to celebrate my progress and plan my next move. Caragiulos had been in Sarasota long before all the chichi places moved in. It wasn’t one hundred percent my thing, but the narrow bar with the brick wall and the nice spread they set out for happy hour always hit the spot.
I took a seat at the far end of the bar—way in the back. I had decided to approach finding Maya the way I approached working on a story: notes. I opened a new document in my laptop, titled it Maya, and put it all down—everything about Nick, everything about the hippies, my theories. Everything I saw and heard. I put it all down.