CHAPTER 36
A MATTE BLACK Crown Vic screeches into the parking lot of the Marriott Courtyard, and the tinted window spools down. Behind it, Wawrinka holds up her pinkie and forefinger, grins in a way that ought to be illegal at 5:15 a.m.
“Road trip.”
A pair of iced coffees sweat in the cup holders and there’s a stack of CDs between the seats, but Wawrinka, in wifebeater and jeans, is the real wakeup call. On the job, O’Hara buries her ample curves under Clintonian pantsuits and reinforces the effect with self-administered haircuts and rubber-soled shoes. Wawrinka’s butch aesthetic is kept under wraps even more thoroughly.
“Look at fucking you,” says O’Hara. “Nothing but baby girls and muscle cars.”
“What else is there?”
“For one thing—dogs.”
Neck to wrists, collar to cuffs, every bit of skin that would otherwise be concealed under Wawrinka’s buttoned-up oxford shirts is tattooed with a female or an automobile or something that pertains to either. Circling her neck like a choker is the inscription “need for speed,” and on her breastbone the heavy metal band “Rage Against the Machine.” On her right shoulder a sailor-style tart in a negligee rides a wrench like a broomstick, and bumper-to-bumper down her left arm are scaled-down illustrations of a ’68 Camaro, a ’72 Malibu convertible, a ’74 Chevy Monte Carlo, and finally a dull black 2001 Crown Vic. “That’s what we’re in now,” says O’Hara, pointing at a spot above the elbow.
“Very good. I bought it when it was decommissioned by the department three years ago. Did all the work myself.” When O’Hara makes the mistake of asking what that involved, she hears more than she needs to know about MagnaFlow mufflers, 2.5-inch piping, K&N cold air, and a custom tune. “She can do one-forty all day without breaking a sweat,” says Wawrinka, and as she rips out of the parking lot, the pleasure she takes in her inked-up persona is so palpable it makes being a freckled Irish hetero feel like a bore and a half.
A dull black Crown Vic with big side mirrors earns a certain amount of goodwill from local law enforcement and removes whatever stress a couple cops might feel about mocking the speed limit. Slouching in her seat like Richard Petty, Wawrinka rolls the speedometer up to 110 and sticks a pin in it, and when she spots a state trooper lurking behind some bushes in the dim predawn, taps her brights instead of her brakes. A deep sonorous growl percolating beneath them, they do 260 miles in their first three hours, and that includes a stop to use the bathroom and get more coffee.
The sun comes up north of Tampa, and by Jacksonville, O’Hara’s face has settled into the squint that has become her default expression. By now, she takes as a given that the old man and the kid were shot at about the same time in Levin’s condo, but what connects them, beyond being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Why was the kid there at all, and why did he make the trip from New York? From there she turns to the obdurate riddle of Levin’s wooden spoon and the upward flight of the bullet that struck the kid.
When Wawrinka’s energy lags, she shoves early Stones into the CD player, or one of her compilations of garage punk with bands who sound like perps—Little Willie and the Adolescents, the Intruders. When Wawrinka joins in on a chorus, O’Hara discovers another advantage of being a lesbian beside the most obvious. Nine out of ten rock songs are about girls. If you’re gay you don’t have to transpose the gender. When Mick croons about some Siamese cat of a girl, Wawrinka can sing along without losing a thing in translation.
The tricked out Crown Vic devours the miles, and they’re half an hour into Georgia, west of the Okefenokee Swamp, before O’Hara associates her queasy stomach with the growing realization that this entire trip is a fool’s errand. The closer they get to Walterboro, the more tenuous her belief/hope/hunch/prayer that the Volvo was stolen by the same people who raced out of Banyan Bay in a green van. Now O’Hara has an even more disquieting thought. One detail that helped her zero in on the Volvo is the age of the victim, which seemed to fit a pattern, but short of a handicapped parking sticker, how would the perps have known the owner was old?
Eighty minutes later, they cross into South Carolina. A couple miles after that they exit the highway and pull up to the barracks of the Colleton County Police Department. Deputy Sheriff Carter Barnwell is waiting and drives them in his vehicle to 1560 Western Highway, the address where the ’93 Volvo wagon was stolen from the driveway six months before. O’Hara has driven to Florida a couple times over the years but never strayed from the interstate. The country roads are her first taste of the rural South.
At 1560 Western Highway, they find a well-kept but faded ranch house, and O’Hara is relieved. As long as there was enough light, the perps would have had little trouble discerning that the home was occupied by an older person or couple. From the curtains in the windows to the porch furniture to the mailbox, everything is dated. At the top of the drive there is only a single garbage can, and in the garage window an ancient sticker commemorating the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Before 9/11, which this clearly predates, the only people who put up VFW stickers were people old enough to have fought in World War II.
For the next couple hours Barnwell patiently works his way out from the spot where the car was stolen, taking them to a dozen locations where there is a chance, however remote, that an abandoned van might have escaped attention, and as the sleepy tour enters its third hour, O’Hara’s pessimism blooms anew like a dark spring. For some reason, Walterboro has five high schools, and they check them all, as well as the hospital, the playgrounds, the cineplex, and the shopping centers.
“The problem,” says Barnwell as they’re idling in a parking lot, “is that, except for the hospital, these lots are empty by ten or eleven, midnight at the latest. Anything in them after that is going to get noticed.”
In the early afternoon they stop at a diner on Main Street, where Barnwell steers them to the meat loaf and key lime pie, and O’Hara picks up the tab, the least she can do for wasting half the man’s day. “Any gay bars in town?” asks Wawrinka.
Jesus Christ, thinks O’Hara. This is all we need.
“A couple. Why?”
“For one thing, they tend be out of the way, particularly in a little town like this. And if someone did leave a vehicle behind one of them, people might be hesitant to report it.”
Pretty far-fetched, thinks O’Hara, but no more than driving to Walterboro in the first place.
Without batting an eye, Barnwell shows them all gay Walterboro has to offer, which consists of a piano bar attached to a motel at the edge of town and a lesbian joint called Christy’s in the basement of a bed-and-breakfast in the boonies.
“Ever been here?” O’Hara asks Wawrinka.
“No, have you?”
In the midafternoon, both are closed, but at Christy’s two old cars are parked in the dirt lot, and to O’Hara’s annoyance, both are VW Jettas. I drive a dyke car, she thinks. Great. Depressed by the folly of their excursion, she summons the little self-discipline she has not to ask Barnwell to stop at a grocery so she can pick up a couple six-packs.
“Sheriff,” says Wawrinka, “you said that everything in Walterboro shuts down by midnight. Any big twenty-four-hour shopping centers in the vicinity?”
“There’s a Walmart superstore. That big enough for you?”
“How far?”
“Four miles north on 95. Couldn’t miss it if you wanted to.”
Barnwell drives them back to Wawrinka’s car, then has them follow him to the highway. “Sorry about this,” says O’Hara.
“What are you talking about, Darlene? The meat loaf alone was worth the trip.”
“By the way,” says O’Hara, “guess what kind of car I have?”
“A Jetta,” says Wawrinka.
“How’d you guess?” says O’Hara, laughing.
“Pretty obvious to me what you’d be driving.”
CHAPTER 37
THE WALMART PARKING lot is the size of Luxembourg. Toward the rear is a modest structure of cinder block and corrugated steel, and standing immodestly in front of it, his posture and accessories exaggerating his authority, is a man who looks like a mediocre high school football player gone to seed. He holds a two-way radio, a clipboard, and Styrofoam coffee cup, and wears pointy western boots that look to be ostrich, although his own view of his pricey footwear is challenged by his ample gut. As O’Hara and Wawrinka approach, he welcomes them by lifting the coffee cup and catching the thin brown sluice of saliva and tobacco he squirts through his lower teeth.
“Good afternoon. I’m Connie Wawrinka, with the Sarasota Police Department. This is Darlene O’Hara, a homicide detective from NYPD. Are you in charge of parking lot security?”
“Clint Eakins,” says the man, rearranging his items so that he can steady them with his left hand and extend the right. “And yes, I am. What the hell have I done now?”
“I have no idea, Clint,” says Wawrinka. “And I’m not sure I want to know.”
Because the language and customs of South Carolina are closer to Florida than New York, the two determined that Wawrinka would do the honors. “What I am concerned about is a vehicle involved in a homicide,” she says. “Specifically a dark green van, which may or may not have ‘Sarasota Water Authority’ written on the side. We have reason to believe it was left in this lot several months ago.”
“Doesn’t jump to mind. What makes you think it was left here?”
“We’d rather not get into it right now, Clint. Let’s just say that we do.”
“I can appreciate that, but like I said, nothing like that comes to mind, and I’ve run this lot for the better part of two years.”
“All that responsibility, Clint. How do you sleep at night? In that time, how many cars have you recovered?”
“About thirty-five.”
“I would have thought there would have been more. When someone leaves a car here, how long before it comes to your attention?”
“Two, three weeks. This lot holds twenty-five thousand cars. In the run-up to Christmas we’ll get forty thousand vehicles passing through in twenty-four hours. My men do a complete cruise-through twice a week. They notice a car been here long, we chalk it up, go back in a couple days for another look. Once we determine it’s been abandoned, we call the state police in Columbia. It can take them a week or two to get around to it, but eventually they come down and haul it away.”
“You got a list of every vehicle abandoned here in the last year?”
“Of course I do, or should I say, I did. Until two weeks ago, when my silly computer crashed. Everything on my hard drive was wiped out.”
“You got to back that shit up, son.”
“I learned that the hard way, didn’t I?”
Something over Wawrinka’s shoulder distracts Eakins.
O’Hara turns to see an enormous bearded man lumbering in their direction. From his bandana to his work boots, everything is smeared with grease.
“Who do you deal with in Columbia?”
“Where?”
“With the state police. Who’s your contact person?”
“It’s not any one person,” says Eakins.
“Give me a couple names, then?”
“It’s no big deal. Whoever I can get on the phone.”
“Well, they would have a list of every car they picked up, wouldn’t they? Or have they had computer issues too?”
“Not as far as I know.”
Eakins raises his palm to stop the progress of the approaching man, but it’s like trying to stop an ocean liner. It takes a couple steps for his boots to grab and bring him to a stop. “Buddy, as you can see, I’m kind of tied up here right now. I’ll call you in a few.”
“Suit yourself,” says the man and turns around.
“Who’s that?”
“That enormous son of a bitch is Terrence Porter, old fishing buddy.”
“Oh yeah. What kind of fishing you boys do?”
“Depends on the season, of course, but this time of the year we’re still doing some grabbing. What you do is take a hook and dangle it from an overhanging limb. When the fish, suckers mostly, come schooling by, you yank them right out of the water. I live for grabbing suckers. Of course, you need to know the right spot, and I’d tell you.”
“But then you’d have to kill me,” says Wawrinka.
“ ’Fraid so.”
“Clint,” says Wawrinka, “you got a card, in case we need to get in touch with you again?”
FIVE MINUTES LATER, back in the Crown Vic, Wawrinka is still holding Eakins’s card by one corner.
“Something not kosher about that boy,” she says.
“I don’t think there’s anything kosher about him. That thing still damp?”
“Yes.”
A diesel gurgle cuts through their air-conditioning, and an eight-wheel tow truck with custom paint job slowly passes in front of them, dragging a five-year-old Saab. According to the fancy gold script, the tow has a name, Mabel, like a yacht.
“I’ll be amazed if the state police have even heard of this motherfucker,” says O’Hara, pulling out her cell and making the call. O’Hara is connected to the State Police barracks, where she is promptly put on hold. While she hangs on the line, the big diesel comes back into earshot and stops three lanes in front of them. The promised thirty-second wait turns into minutes, and she is still on hold when Eakins steps out of the security hut and walks up to the side of the truck.
“You have binoculars in here?”
“Right in front of you. Glove compartment.” O’Hara pulls them out and focuses on the driver’s-side window.
“Whoever’s in the cab just slipped the Archduke of Parking a rather fat envelope,” says O’Hara.
“Nothing sadder in this world than a rent-a-cop turned bad.”
As the truck pulls away, O’Hara pans down the side of the cab to the name of the company: “TP Salvage, Ruffin, South Carolina.”
“Connie, what was the name of that biker dude who Eakins waved off—Terrence something?”
“Terrence Porter.”
“Well, a Saab just got pulled out of here by a tow named Mabel working out of a place called TP Salvage.”
“For once in his life, that slimy son of a bitch Eakins was telling the truth. He and Porter are fishing buddies.”
“Porter pays Eakins to fish in his pond.”
CHAPTER 38
THE RESOUNDING COLLISION cuts through the drone as cleanly as a howitzer. It’s the sound of a car hitting a wall head-on at sixty miles an hour, and although in this case it’s the wall that’s moving, not the car, the effect on the car locked inside the compactor is the same. The first blow compresses the hood like an accordion. The second flattens it flush against the engine wall. At the same time the rear and sides are also being battered, and after four mighty blows, what was once a Buick Skylark is a two-ton piece of carry-on. At first, O’Hara found the violence disturbing. It reminded her of the highway horror shows they made her sit through in drivers’ ed. But after a while the violent rhythm is soothing.
“It kind of takes the edge off,” she says, “like watching the breakers hit the beach in Montauk after a storm.”
When O’Hara and Wawrinka rolled into TP Salvage forty minutes earlier, it was already 6:00. Mabel, with the Saab still hanging off the back, was parked just inside the wire fence. Behind her was a long, low shed with a marquee-style sign listing in press-on letters the newest additions to the inventory of parts on sale inside. The back of the shed, which is open but unattended, looks out on a clearing filled with hundreds of cars, arrayed in tall rusty stacks. In the midst of the wreckage squats the hulking three-story compactor, whose violent mastications are the only movement in the seventy-acre vista. Despite the scale of the operation, there
’s only one visible employee, the eponymous Terrence Porter. He sits fifty feet off the ground in the throbbing cab, bunkered so deep inside his Spector-esque wall of sound, the horn of the Crown Vic can’t pierce it. All O’Hara and Wawrinka can do is repair to the shade of the back porch and wait for Porter to shut down for the day. Since then, they’ve sat witness to the final moments of a Camry, a Hyundai, and this light blue Skylark, which, having been stubbed out like a cigarette, is nudged down a rusty chute into a railroad car.
“It’s also pretty damn depressing,” says Wawrinka. Sitting at their feet, her mottled tongue hanging from her mouth, is the mongrel bitch who crawled out from under Mabel soon after they settled in the shade, and Wawrinka reaches down and rubs her neck. “Knowing that sooner or later, the same thing is going to happen to my Crown Vic.”
“And my lesbian Jetta.”
“Not to mention the three of us. You were right about dogs. They definitely make the short list.”
To take her mind off the grim eventualities, Wawrinka gets up and walks back to the car, and returns with the binoculars. Back on the bench, she aims them at the compactor. Although still rattling, the cab is empty, and she sees that Porter has moved to the even higher cab of an adjacent crane.
“How late is this guy going to work?” says Wawrinka, handing the binoculars to O’Hara. “Now he’s in the goddamned crane.”
Porter is using the second machine to reload the first. As she watches, he clamps the teeth of his shovel down on the roof of a Pontiac Fiero and pries it off the stack like a bouncer separating combatants in a brawl. He carries the Pontiac to the compactor, drops it into the chute, and rolls back to the stack for seconds.
“He’s like a kid playing with his Tonka toys,” says O’Hara.
Now the vehicle at the top of the stack is a Cimarron, without question the lamest model to wear the Cadillac badge, not really a Caddy at all, and below it a Cherokee and a nondescript box of a van. As Porter lines up to grab the Cimarron, O’Hara sees that the van is dark green, and when she screws up the magnification, sees that the side panel is flecked with black. Panning the full width of the side panel, she can make out the outline of a W in the center.
Buried on Avenue B Page 14