Basket Case

  From the pancake house I drive directly to the county morgue. The contrast in ambience is not especially striking. Upon entering Pete's office I find myself briefly alone with Karen, who gamely engages me in superficial conversation. Our lack of chemistry is so enervating that it's hard to believe we once had a sexual relationship, much less an athletic one. It's remarkable what two uninterested people can do in bed with each other when they set their minds to it. Turns out both Karen and I are doing well, staying busy, looking forward to some cooler weather, etc. We're on the brink of boring each other comatose when I spot Pete at the end of the hall, and excuse myself none too smoothly. He leads me into a lab and closes the door.

  "You get my message?" he asks.

  "No, I didn't." Sometimes I go for days without checking my voice mail at the newspaper. In my defense, however, the phone doesn't ring all that much. Obituary writers aren't exactly swamped with hot tips.

  Pete says, "Well, you were right."

  "The samples matched?"

  "Yup."

  The blood on Janet's carpet was hers. Cursing, I kick my heel into the door half a dozen times. Pete patiently steps back and waits for me to settle down.

  "Jack, you know I've got to ask—" "Please don't."

  "I can get in all kinds of trouble," he says. "If this blood is evidence, there's a serious chain-of-custody problem... "

  "Throw it away," I tell him. "Now hold on—"

  "Throw it away, Pete. There's plenty more where that came from."

  25

  After a rough day of kickin' down doors and chasin' after scumbag criminals, all I wanna do is have a cool drink, peel outta this hot gear and get comfortable.

  If you wanna get comfy with me, then have your modem call my modem at 900-555-SWAT. Or, if you register now on this site, the first ten minutes of chat time are absolutely free. I accept Visa, MasterCard or Discover...

  It took an hour but I've found Janet's Web page, complete with a streaming-video promotion. In it she's wearing night-vision goggles, a lacy black bra, matching panties and military-style boots. In the background I recognize the furniture in her living room. The quality of the video is typically dim and herky-jerky, but the sound of Janet's tomboy voice fills me with unexpected sadness. I click over to her list of FAQs, frequently asked questions, and immediately get a laugh.

  Q. Are you really a cop?

  A. Yes, I'm a lieutenant with a major South Florida police department.

  Q. Have you ever shot anybody?

  A. Not fatally.

  Q. What's your favorite color?

  A. Pearl.

  I click back to the host page, activating a brief loop of Janet dancing. It's high-spirited though not especially erotic. Touchingly, the accompaniment is a recording of "Derelict Sea," sung by her late brother.

  "Is that porn?" Horny young Evan, peeking over my shoulder.

  "Does it look like porn?"

  "But she's stripping."

  "Not really. It's just a goof."

  "Wow, Jack. You know her, like, personally? Check out the freaky shades."

  "They're sniper goggles, and don't bother calling."

  "What?"

  Evan has been busy memorizing Janet's 900 number; I heard him repeat it under his breath. "You're wasting your time," I tell him. "She's not there."

  "Come on. What's her name?"

  "Forget about it," I said. "She's Jimmy Stoma's sister."

  "Oh wow."

  "Evan, don't you have some work to do?"

  Be sure to check out my live chat schedule for when I'm available, but don't pitch a hissy if some nights I don't answer. You never know when they're gonna call the SWAT team out on a hostage crisis or a drug raid or some other 'mergency. I do take online appointments—but not from hard-cores and pervs. Remember, being a police officer I got automatic worldwide call tracing. Anybody starts in with that gross sicko talk and I promise there'll be cops at your door before you can hang up the damn phone!

  So let's keep our private chats cool and sexy and nice, and I promise you a super good time, every time...

  Clicking over to Janet's chat schedule, I notice she's got a regular two-hour block on Thursday mornings. It couldn't hurt to try. Maybe she left a message for her regulars, or possibly she bought a new PC and is back in business somewhere else. On my keyboard I tap in the number of her Web-cam line. On the other end it rings and rings, and keeps on ringing.

  Who am I kidding. Janet's gone.

  "How do you know this?" Rick Tarkington asks.

  "The blood matches. Trust me."

  "I don't doubt it, Jack, but how would you know? See my point?"

  Tarkington is a major-crimes prosecutor for the State Attorney's Office. I'm obligated to admire him because he's a lifer. He could be making a million bucks a year as a private defense lawyer in Miami or Lauderdale, but he can't stomach the thought of representing killers, rapists and nineteen-year-old drug lords. Instead he has a fine old time sending them to prison and sometimes Death Row. Tarkington is an old-fashioned hardhead who believes that certain feloniously bent individuals cannot be rehabilitated, reborn or redeemed. He believes that some are purely evil and others are just hopeless fuckups, but that all of them should be dealt with unambiguously. He also believes that the American penal system functions essentially as a social septic tank, and that nothing more lofty should be expected of it.

  "I could probably sell tickets," he's saying, "for the day they put you on the witness stand. 'Mr. Tagger, would you mind telling the court why you broke into the victim's house and stole a tampon?'"

  Rick Tarkington is my age but he looks ten years younger. The irony is glaring and nettlesome. Here's a fellow immersed full-time in the ghastliest details of human malefaction, yet he shows no trace of being haunted by cosmic questions or mortal fears. He is cynical to the core, yet happy as a clam.

  In the last thirty minutes I've told Tarkington almost everything about the Jimmy Stoma story, spilling it as breathlessly as I did to Emma. I even brought a small boom box and played "Shipwrecked Heart," which Tarkington said reminded him of early Buffett. I had hoped it would work in my favor that the prosecutor is a rock 'n' roller. On the wall behind his desk is a photo of the Rolling Stones taken backstage at the Orange Bowl. The picture is signed: "To R.T., Thanks for not searching my dressing room. Keith."

  "I came here," I say to Tarkington, "because I need direction."

  "That you do." He's reclining at a precarious cant, the worn heels of his boots propped on his desk. Tarkington is from Lafayette County, where it's still possible to step in cowshit.

  "Jimmy Stoma. I'll be damned," he says, clicking his tongue. "After I saw the obit I went and dug out my old eight-track of A Painful Burning Sensation. It kicked butt." Tarkington swings his feet off the desk and hunches forward, looking serious. "But, Jack, I don't know what the hell you expect me to do."

  We've been over this twice already, and he's shot holes in every idea I've floated. "There's a woman missing," I say wearily, "and bloodstains in her house. Can we not assume she's hurt and possibly even dead?"

  "I need a warrant to search the place, and where's my probable cause? You tell me nobody phoned in a disturbance. Nobody's reported her gone," Tarkington says. "However, if you'd care to sign an affidavit stating you entered the premises and observed what appeared to be a crime scene—"

  "You know damn well I can't." That would make me a witness and put me at the center of the story—and then I couldn't be the one to write it. Another reporter would be given the assignment; the newspaper's lawyers would see to that.

  "What about Jay Burns?" I ask.

  "By all means. The genius who got smushed by the mullet truck." Tarkington raises his arms beseechingly. "He's drunk, stoned and now his head looks like a fucking Domino's deluxe. And you want me to prove it's homicide."

  "Look, I know there's problems—"

  "Problems? Old buddy, you've already given me enough to pinch you right now for trespas
s, b-and-e, tampering and obstruction," says Tarkington. "But that's assuming you and I are having this conversation, which we're not."

  The Springsteen tickets—I'd almost forgotten. Sometimes it pays to be a shameless suck-up.

  "Killer show," Tarkington says, warming at the memory. "Floor seats, fifth-row center. I owe you for life, Jack. But I can't do much with this one. I'm good, buddy, but I'm not a magician."

  "And if Jimmy's sister turns up murdered... ?"

  "I'll be there like a gator on a poodle," he says, "and I'll not hesitate to subpoena your scrawny, white, First Amendment-quoting ass. Now, before you go, play me that song again."

  Given the setting, it's a strangely mellow interlude—Tarkington listening with his eyes closed, his chin on his knuckles and his elbows braced on four fat brown file folders: two murders, a DUI manslaughter and the sexual battery of an eleven-year-old child. People think the media is full of bleeding-heart liberals, but most reporters I know root for the Rick Tarkingtons of the world.

  "That's nice," he says of Jimmy's singing. "You can tell he was into the island groove."

  I switch off the boom box. "So where we at, counselor?"

  "Well"—Tarkington, the prideful cracker, pronounces it like "whale"—"we've got an ambitious young widow who may or may not have bumped off her rock-star hubby. What we don't have are human remains to examine, as the decedent has been inconveniently incinerated. However, we do have the corpse—more or less—of a keyboard player with questionable lifestyle habits. We also have assorted sloppy burglaries of a fishing vessel, an obituary writer's apartment and the dwelling of the dead rock singer's sister, who may or may not have been abducted."

  "Don't forget Tito Negraponte," I mutter.

  "Not for a moment! Our bass player, plugged in the bupkis by a couple of beaners supposedly recruited by the aforementioned ambitious young widow. Unfortunately, we have no suspects, no supporting witnesses and damn little evidence, circumstantial or otherwise. Which brings us to our pretty little love song, the alleged motive behind all this mayhem—"

  "Hey, I just figured out what you can do for me."

  "Wait, Jack. I'm not finished—"

  "Just give me a quote. That's all I want."

  Tarkington snorts. "Are you deaf on top of everything else? Let me repeat this: You're not here. I'm not here. We're not having this chat."

  "One crummy quote," I nag him. "Not for publication now, but later."

  "The only thing I've got to say to you is be very careful, Slick. Don't be a nitwit and get yourself whacked. And that's strictly off the record."

  "One quote, Rick, come on. It doesn't have to be substantial, for Christ's sake."

  "Oh, there's a load off." Tarkington scowls.

  I try dusting off an old standby from my hard-news days. "What if you were to say the state attorney is 'investigating a possible link' between the deaths of Jimmy Stoma and Jay Burns, and the coldblooded shooting of a third member of the band. You don't have to mention Cleo or the song. Just say you want to find out if somebody's bumping off the Slut Puppies. It's a helluva headline, you've got to admit."

  "Except we're not investigating a damn thing."

  "Yes, but you would investigate—wouldn't you, Rick?—if more evidence turned up. Startling new evidence, as we say."

  "Be sure and call me when that happens. Then you'll get your precious quote."

  My predicament, which I'd rather not explain to Tarkington, is that I'll need more than a string of baroque incidents to sell the Jimmy Stoma story to our managing editor. Abkazion might be a Slut Puppies fan, but he's also a hardass when it comes to the front page. He'll want to see a quote from somebody in law enforcement saying they smell a rat. Tarkington would be ideal. Unfortunately, he's a hardass, too.

  "Are you telling me," I plod on, "it's all coincidence, everything that's happened since Jimmy died?"

  "Hell, I don't believe much in coincidence," he replies matter-of-factly. "I think you're probably onto something."

  "And the blood's not enough to make you pick up the phone? His own sister's blood?"

  Tarkington glares as if I've just spit up on his boots. "What blood, you fucking bonehead? The sample you stole when you broke into the lady's house? Jesus W. Christ."

  "Rick, I needed to know for sure. That's why I did it."

  "And I need a warrant, old buddy. You find me some PC and I'll find a judge and then we'll go cut us a piece of that rug, nice and legal." He stands up, stretches his arms. Throws in a yawn, in case I'm not taking the hint. "Jack, don't get bummed. You've got quite a story here... "

  "But what?"

  "A helluva story, as you say. But you're not done yet. It's still missing the pretty ribbon and the bow." Tarkington nods toward his stack of files. "Now you'll excuse me, I've got a couple widows of my own to interview. They aren't nearly as chipper as yours."

  "Okay, but first give me your impression—in a word, Rick—of everything you've heard so far."

  "Intriguing," he says.

  That's good, but it's not what I'm looking for. Abkazion will demand something stronger.

  "How about 'suspicious'?" I venture.

  "Yeah, all right. It's suspicious."

  "Highly suspicious, would you say?"

  "I would say goodbye now, Mr. Tagger. And if my name appears in the paper this week under your byline, it'd better be because I've croaked in some newsworthy way."

  That's what I mean about Rick. I couldn't even joke about something like that. As soon as the office door closes, I take out my notebook and jot the following:

  Asst. State Atty. R. Tarkington says he's preparing to investigate circumstances of J. Stoma death and disappearance of Stoma's sister. "Highly suspicious," says the veteran prosecutor.

  Forgive me, Woodward, for I have sinned.

  The pier at Silver Beach is not a big draw at high noon on a hot August day. I arrive half an hour early and, from the safety of my car, I scope the place thoroughly with binoculars. Team Cleo has had two days to run the phone number I wrote on the compact disc, an easy job for any private investigator.

  But I don't see any egregious lurkers, anyone who looks as if they don't belong. There are a couple of shirtless teenagers drinking beer and snagging pilchards; a row of retirees in folding chairs, dozing under hats the size of garbage-can lids; a smoochy young Hispanic couple sharing a single fishing rod, taking turns reeling in baby snappers; a trio of weekday regulars, leathery and windblown, laden with bait buckets and bristling with heavy tackle.

  After yanking off my necktie and loosening my shirt at the collar, I set off at a breezy amble for the phone booth at the end of the pier.

  Each step puts me that much farther from a clean escape, but it's not as if I haven't got a backup plan—should one-eyed Jerry burst out of a trash bin and start shooting, I'll simply dive over the rail and swim away like a dolphin.

  Pretty darn clever. Always be halfway prepared, that's my motto.

  And naturally some old guy is tying up the damn phone. I check my watch—twelve minutes until noon. I hope Cleo doesn't give up because the line rings busy once or twice.

  Assuming she tries to call.

  I sit down on a worn wooden bench and notice too late that it doubles as a bait table, leaving the seat of my pants covered with lady-fish scales and gummy snippets of rotting shrimp. I am one smooth operator.

  The man at the phone booth hangs up and waves to me. "It's all yours, son."

  A cheery little fellow topping out at maybe five-two, he's got small wet eyes and fluffy gray hair and a pink pointy face with sparse white whiskers. He looks like a 120-pound opossum.

  "Thanks, I'm waiting for a call," I tell him. "Shouldn't be long."

  He says his name is Ike and he was talking to his bookie in North Miami. "Don't ever bet on a horse named after a blonde," he advises ruefully.

  Ike is fishing three spinning rods. He reels in one and rebaits with a dead pilchard plucked from a five-gallon bucket. "I cau
ght a twenty-three-pound red drum standing at this very spot," he says, "on August 14, 1979. That's my personal best. What's your name, son?"

  "Jack."

  "Strange place to take a phone call, this pier."

  "It's going to be a strange phone call."

  "You look familiar. Then again, everybody looks familiar when you reach ninety-two." He laughs, flashing a mouthful of shiny dentures. "Either that, or nobody looks familiar."