by Dorsey, Tim
There was silence on the line and then it went dead. Marlon turned to his side mirror. A minute passed. The squad cars cut their lights and backed off the street.
Marlon started up the RV again and pulled onto the highway.
“I don’t have a good feeling about that,” Escrow said with an armful of sodas.
“I’m with him,” said Elizabeth. “You did the right thing, but you should have gotten some allies together first instead of sticking your neck out alone. You spent a lot of political currency.”
“As Lyndon Johnson said, what good is political currency if you can’t spend it?”
Jenny was sleeping a lot from her medicine, and Marlon’s yelling on the phone had awakened her. She slowly made her way up front with the others and sat down next to Elizabeth and yawned and smiled at her. Elizabeth smiled back.
Escrow handed out sodas. “Mountain Dew. Pepsi…. Who had the Surge?”
Pimento raised his hand.
Elizabeth was still smiling at Jenny, but her expression changed as she studied her face. “You remind me of someone.” She suddenly got a startled look. “Jenny!…You’re Jenny Springs! THE Jenny Springs!”
Jenny looked away in embarrassment.
“What happened to you?” asked Elizabeth. “You vanished from the face of the earth!”
“Who’s Jenny Springs?” asked Escrow.
Sinclair looked at Pimento. “You’re the fact guy. Tell him.”
Pimento told him as they rolled south on US 1. He finished his Surge and was about to crunch the soda can.
“I’ll take care of that for you,” said Escrow. He held open a clear plastic litter bag.
“Why, thank you.”
Only it wasn’t a litter bag. It was a Florida Department of Law Enforcement evidence bag. Escrow sealed it and wrote in grease pencil: “Fingerprint analysis.”
The streets were so deserted at three A.M. you could hear the mechanisms in the traffic lights clicking as they cycled. The RV ran a yellow near Pompano Beach. One of the RV’s windows was down and the stereo on. “Age of Aquarius” wafted through the intersection as they headed for Miami.
The music faded out until only the clicking of the traffic light could be heard again in the intersection.
Ten minutes later, there was a whoosh of wind through the intersection. A red Ferrari blew through a red light at a hundred, and its illuminated vanity tag disappeared toward Miami.
THE rising sun was large and orange, still near the horizon, and out of its center came a snow-white seaplane with lavender trim, a Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard, the first flight of the day from Bimini. It flew low over the art deco hotels on Miami Beach and belly-landed in Biscayne Bay. A woman on a Jet Ski raced next to the left pontoon, then angled away as the plane taxied to the ramp at Watson Island. A limousine waited on the side of the MacArthur Causeway.
Dempsey Conrad was on his cell phone before his feet touched ground. “Where are you?”
“Pompano, I think,” Marlon said on the other end. The call had awoken him.
“We need to talk. Meet you in two hours on top of Pier 66.”
Marlon grabbed the alarm clock off the nightstand and looked at it. “Oh, man.” He fell back against the pillow. He reached to replace the clock but missed, and it fell on the floor.
Ninety minutes later, Marlon and the gang were at the front desk, booking a block of rooms on the sixteenth floor of the Pier 66 Hotel in Fort Lauderdale.
The concierge became flustered. “You’re Jenny Springs!”
He ran up with a pen. “Here, sign my arm. I’ll have it tattooed.”
Jenny blushed and wrote.
They got in the elevator. As the doors were closing, two arms came through the opening with a pen and piece of paper and got stuck. The doors bounced back open. “Jenny. Can I get your autograph? ‘To Ernie.’” The doors closed again on the arms, and bounced back open.
Jenny signed her name, the arms withdrew and the doors closed.
They rode up to the rooms, and Marlon opened his with a magnetic card. They were awestruck by the views. “You blew the wad,” said Escrow. “I’m impressed.”
Pimento fiddled with the plastic sign on the doorknob. “‘Do not disturb!’ ‘No molestar!’—ever get the idea some things aren’t translating right?”
They unpacked and regrouped at the elevators, and caught one to the revolving bar another floor up on top of the hotel. There were some empty cocktail tables facing Bahia Mar. Marlon sat next to Elizabeth.
“Have you thought about it some more? The campaign could really use you.”
She smiled. “Answer still has to be no…. Besides, you already have Escrow.”
They glanced at Escrow, tapping a swizzle stick to the Muzak, wearing a FREE ERLICHMAN! T-shirt.
Elizabeth looked back at Marlon. “Deepest sympathies.”
Pimento stood at the window, hands on the glass. “I remember these views. The strip, the marina, the Yankee Clipper, Port Everglades. My folks must have brought me up here when I was a kid…. I wonder if they can make this thing spin faster. I’ll go ask.”
A new voice: “There you are!”
Everyone at the table turned.
Dempsey Conrad and Periwinkle Belvedere marched deliberately from the elevators.
“Marlon, who are all these people?” asked Dempsey. “I recognize Escrow and Pimento, but who are these two—these women?”
Belvedere chimed in with a sideways grin. “That’s Elizabeth Sinclair, my former top aide. We had a disagreement on her style of client relations, so she left and started her own firm. Now she’s trying to put me out of business.”
Dempsey laughed. He took Elizabeth’s hand and gave it a genteel kiss. “Honeypie, you got moxie, I’ll give you that. But why would you want to go up against Perry?” He winked at Belvedere. “That just ain’t where your talents lie.”
“Where would they lie?” Elizabeth asked with a poker smile.
“Well, like at Perry’s parties. I’ve seen you—you’re a terrific hostess. You look great!”
“Thank you.”
“Seriously, it’s not that easy. You should be very proud you’ve made it this far, so don’t take it too hard when your company fails. I’m sure Perry will take you back—you put women half your age to shame.”
“Thank you.”
“And who’s this?” asked Dempsey.
“This is Jenny Springs,” said Elizabeth.
Dempsey went to kiss her hand as well. “Nice to meet you, Jenny Spr—Wait. Not the Jenny Springs?”
“That’s her,” said Elizabeth.
“I was one of your biggest fans!” said Dempsey. “What happened to you?”
Belvedere cleared his throat.
“Sorry,” said Dempsey. “Almost forgot why we’re here.”
He turned to Marlon. “Son, first I have to say I’m awfully proud of you. Awfully proud. But I think you’re handling von Zeppelin all wrong…Perry and me understand what you’re doing, but Helmut’s a different story. You need to go visit and make nice-nice with that asshole. And while you’re at it, maybe ease off a couple of other things.”
“Like what?”
“Like the issues, for example. All I’m saying is give ’em a little rest. Stick to personal attacks and photo ops. Just for a few days. You don’t want people’s heads to start hurting.”
“Can’t do it.”
Dempsey smiled at Belvedere. “A fighter, just like the old man.”
Belvedere broke in. “Marlon, your father and I agreed early on not to interfere, since you’ve obviously got the Conrad instincts. But now big money is coming into play….”
Dempsey tapped Perry’s arm. “The boy’s got a head on his shoulders. We’ve made our point. I’m sure he won’t let us down. Isn’t that right, Marlon?”
“I promise I won’t let you down.”
“See? There ya go!” said Dempsey. “Y’all have nice day.”
He smiled again at Elizabeth and gave her
hand another kiss. “You take care, sweetie, and don’t bankrupt Perry too fast. He’d look kinda funny wearing suspenders and a pickle barrel.”
They laughed all the way out of the bar at that one. Then Dempsey started coughing and fell in the elevator. Perry pressed the button and the doors closed.
31
THAT AFTERNOON, journalism professor Wally Butts carried a briefcase up the elevator at Pier 66 and got off at sixteen. He knocked on Marlon’s door.
Escrow answered. He studied his clipboard. “Sorry, you’re not on the list.”
“Get the fuck outta my way, you troglodytic twit.”
Escrow bounced off the doorjamb.
“Marlon, I think we have a problem with the Sirocco case. It looks like the victim raped Sirocco’s daughter.”
“So it wasn’t insurance?”
“No, this brings in passion. He still killed him, but it’s not first-degree murder, maybe not even murder at all depending on state of mind.”
Escrow was turning blue. “Sure sounds like murder to me.”
“Shhhhhh!” said Marlon.
“The problem is, we don’t have anything to hang a hat on,” said Butts. “I’m having trouble finding the daughter—time’s running out.”
“No rush,” said Marlon. “I haven’t signed the warrant yet.”
“Yes you have,” said Butts. “I’ve seen it.”
Marlon turned. “Escrow!”
Escrow began sniffing. “You smell something? I think I left the coffeepot on in my room.”
BUTTS thought he’d locate the daughter in a matter of days, but it was the damnedest thing. He had tracked her through elementary schools in Massachusetts. Then, when Sirocco was extradited to Florida, his new wife and daughter followed. They moved into a modest ranch house near the jail, to visit. And the trail ended cold. Butts drove to the address. Neighbors move in and out so often in Florida that nobody even remembered there being a girl. Or a mom. The house had burned down years ago. It was like they’d never been there.
Butts was clutching at straws. He drove out to the state prison at Starke.
Frank Lloyd Sirocco sat at a flaking metal table. He wore a bright orange shirt, handcuffs chained to his belt, and ankle cuffs.
“Do you know where your daughter is?”
“She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“George raped her, didn’t he?”
It was like Frank had been slapped. He stared coldly at Butts but didn’t speak.
“If he did,” said Butts, “you can probably get out of the electric chair.”
“Interview’s over,” said Frank, turning around. “Guard!”
The guard opened the door and began leading Frank out of the room.
“You’re going to let yourself be killed just to keep the rape a secret?”
Frank stopped and glared back at Butts. “She’s my only daughter.”
AT ten P.M., they were all in their rooms, Jenny in 1604, Elizabeth in 1605, Marlon in 1606, and Escrow and Pimento fighting over the remote control in their pajamas in 1607. Marlon banged on the wall. “Don’t make me come in there!”
Escrow and Pimento lowered their voices. “It’s my turn!” “Mine!”
Elizabeth skimmed a magazine in bed, unable to concentrate. She was mad at herself. She was way too together to let those creeps get under her skin. “Honeypie,” “sweetie,” “when your company fails.” She always demanded composure, but now she couldn’t stop their words from repeating inside her head. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“You’re working on Marlon’s campaign, aren’t you?”
“Who is this?”
“That’s not important. I was talking with some friends in the capital today, and I threw your name out for a PR project. Pays a hundred thousand—”
“I said, who is this?”
“—but it starts right away. You’d have to come back to Tallahassee. You wouldn’t be able to keep working on the governor’s campaign.”
“I’m not on the campaign.”
“Good, then there’s no conflict.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Think about it.”
She hung up.
Elizabeth sat on the side of her bed and clenched her fists. Her breathing became shallower and more rapid. She rummaged through her purse and found a .25-caliber pistol. She pushed it aside and grabbed an old pack of Salems and lit the occasional cigarette she allowed herself.
The phone rang again.
“Hello!” she snapped.
“It’s me, Marlon.”
“Oh, sorry.”
She opened the courtesy bar in her room and twisted the cap off a Dewar’s as she talked.
“Hope I’m not getting on your nerves, but I have to keep trying. About the campaign—”
“It would be my pleasure.”
“That was easy. Must have caught you in the right mood.”
“The wrong mood.”
“What?”
“Good night, Marlon.”
ELIZABETH deserved credit. She gave absolutely no hint that her business was indeed failing, and it had nothing to do with her yeoman effort. It had to do with the male blacklist Periwinkle had invoked against her getting any clients. That’s why Dempsey wasn’t just guessing when he said she was going under.
An hour later, she was sitting up in bed, back against the wall, remote-controlling over to the Discovery Channel. I’m not going back to Perry or anyone else, she told herself, no matter what. But she couldn’t stop fuming. Nothing was working and she had broken all her rules. The ashtray was filling up and there were two empty scotch miniatures on the nightstand. She started thinking about the campaign she had just agreed to join. Wonderful. Now I have to play den mother.
There was a man’s scream, behind her, on the other side of the hotel-room wall, and she jumped.
She ran out in the hall, praying it was what it sounded like—a nightmare. She tried the door, but it was locked. She knocked. “Marlon, you all right?” No answer.
She went back in her room and tried the pass-through door between the rooms. To her surprise, it was unlocked. She pushed it open and looked around. “Marlon?”
No Marlon.
She saw a light under the bathroom door. Her heart pounded as she slowly pushed it open.
She was relieved. It had been a nightmare. Marlon was sitting on the floor in his briefs next to the toilet, staring down, crying silently. Lying on the tiles was the eight-by-ten group photo of his Army unit.
He never looked up. Elizabeth watched him for a long time. Such a boy. He was ten years younger than she was and, factoring maturity, even younger. But he was so much different now.
She reached and grabbed him by the arm. “Come on.”
He was distant as she walked him over to the bed and laid him on his back. She covered him up and sat in a chair next to the bed, trying to find something on TV.
Marlon fell asleep for a short spell. When he awoke, he found Elizabeth nodded off in the chair. She never fully awoke as Marlon coaxed her out of the chair and into his bed. Then he sat in the chair and checked channels with the remote. He fell asleep sitting up.
MARLON was awakened at two A.M. by Elizabeth kissing him. The TV and all the lights were off—only night reflections from the water were coming through the window.
She pulled him into the bed, and he realized she didn’t have any clothes on. He started to talk, but she put her hand over his mouth.
They were perfectly still for five minutes. Then Marlon slowly began sliding toward the foot of the bed. Elizabeth reached her arms up behind her and grabbed the headboard and closed her eyes.
“WHERE is he?”
Babs Belvedere was drunk and hysterical, weaving down the sixteenth-floor hallway of Pier 66, waving a large automatic pistol.
Before leaving Tallahassee, she kept calling her father’s office. She left several messages and finally got through to his personal secretary, who said he was meetin
g Marlon at Pier 66.
It would be another six hours before Perry got back to the capital and checked his voice mail and heard Babs: “Daddy! Marlon’s cheating on me! I saw him on TV with that little hussy! Wahhhhhhhh!”
So Babs had packed one of her father’s pistols in the check-through luggage and caught a Delta flight to Fort Lauderdale. Now she was roaming the sixteenth floor of Pier 66 in the middle of the night, mascara all over herself.
“Where is he?”
Marlon was inside room 1606, halfway down Elizabeth Sinclair. He stopped and turned his head sideways. “I thought I heard something.”
“It’s nothing,” said Elizabeth.
Babs was out of her head, stumbling all over the hall, sobbing. “I just don’t fucking care anymore!” She bounced off a fire extinguisher and trampled through room service trays that had been left out. Then another long, crying wail. One hand held the pistol and the other dragged a marionette by the strings.
A bleary-eyed Pimento stuck his head out of his room to check on all the freakin’ noise. Babs staggered toward him, blinded by tears, and bumped into him.
“Sorry.”
“Hey, you’re Babs Belvedere!”
Babs stopped and opened her eyes; she dropped her gun hand to her side.
“Yes, I am.”
“I knew it!” said Pimento. “Miss Tallahassee. You should have been Miss Florida except for that bullshit lightning round at the end.”
“It was a trick question.”
“You should have won just on the puppets. That was so artful!”
“You really think so?”
“Absolutely.”
She broke into a pitiful smile and wiped away the tears as she lifted her puppet out of a room service tray. “Would you like a demonstration?”