Dale said, I get stopped and have to take a Breathalyzer I'm fucked.
What're you worried about, Elvin said, they might put you in jail? Tell them you're about to do five years, have to catch you later.
Shit, Dale said.
He had cooled down since yelling at the judge in court and they threatened to put cuffs and leg-irons on him, then let him go when the judge didn't make a case of it. He had seven days to think of what prison would be like. Elvin, eating pizza, said he'd give him some pointers on how to jail. Since they'd be together this week.
Dale had let his uncle move in while his two roommates were finishing up thirty days for criminal mischief. Got freaked on crack and kicked in a guy's windshield for no reason. Now Elvin was talking about staying on after Dale left. The house was in Delray Beach, a dump but only a few blocks from the ocean. Smell that salt air, Elvin said, it would clean the stink of prison off him. Dale said, well, his roommates were about to get their release, he believed either today or tomorrow. If Elvin wanted to stay he'd have to talk to them about it. Elvin said he'd had enough of roommates to last him. If he stayed, they'd have to leave. Like that, taking over. Dale had said, You don't know my roommates. Elvin said, eating pizza, And they don't know me, huh? You don't either.
That was a fact. Ten years old when his uncle was arrested for murder and stood trial, Dale knew him more from photographs than face-to-face. Elvin in his airboat. Elvin standing with Dale Senior, the oldest brother. Elvin with Roland, both big guys, twins to look at them, except Elvin was a few years younger. When Roland was shot dead and Elvin sent to prison for killing a man he thought was the one had got the woman to kill Roland, nobody in the family seemed surprised.
Elvin was saying now, This is a pretty street, you know it? Look at those palm trees. Those are the tallest palm trees I ever saw. He said, I wouldn't mind living over here. It sure beats the shit out of Delray Beach. He said, Summer I'd go back to the Glades, though, get me an airboat. He said, Not too much traffic now, huh? The snowbirds've all gone home. I don't know why anybody wants to live up north. I go even as far as the Georgia line I get a nosebleed. He said, Go on over to Ocean Boulevard and turn south.
Now they were riding along next to the Atlantic Ocean, black out there all the way to the sky.
Elvin said, Nice public beach but no place to park. So it becomes a private beach for all the rich people live along here behind their walls. It's interesting how rich people fuck you and you don't even know most of the time they're doing it, huh? I had a cellmate my last year at Starke name of Sonny? Cute boy, use to work for a rich doctor. He's still rich, only he isn't a doctor no more. They took his license away.
Dale said, Right there's where Donald Trump lives.
Elvin said, Is that right? Who's Donald Trump?
Before they ate and were driving around West Palm, Dale had pointed out the building Barnett Bank was in, its shiny black glass rising above old structures around it, and said, You know what they call that building? Darth Vader.
And Elvin had said, Who's Darth Vader?
Dale could see how he might not have heard of Donald Trump in prison, but everybody in the world knew who Darth Vader was. Either one, though, was hard to explain, so Dale let it go. Elvin wasn't interested anyway. He wanted to drive down to Ocean Ridge.
What for?
The doctor I mentioned? Elvin said. He lives there, and began telling about Dr. Tommy Vasco and Sonny, who was his cellmate up at FSP his last year.
Actually it wasn't quite a year. Couple of weeks before my release I sold him for two hundred dollars. Sonny had this blond hair you could see clear across the yard. I could've got more, but I let a buddy of mine have him.
Dale stared at his headlight beams on the two-lane blacktop, trees now closing in on both sides. He could feel his uncle, the size of him, sitting there in that cowboy hat. Dale set his tone of voice to be casual, uncritical, saying, Well, I ain't getting into any of that. I'll tell you right now.
Elvin said, I know cons that remain virgins, I'm not telling you it can't be done.
Dale shook his head at the road. I won't even talk to a queer.
Listen to me, Elvin said. I'm a person was never married on the outside. But you get in there, something happens to you. Soon as I was put in with the population I started looking for a wife. Generally speaking, you poke or get poked. They'll fight over your skinny butt or you'll fight to keep it your own. It's got nothing to do with being queer, it's how it is. Sonny come along toward the end there, I kicked out this puss I had and said that one's mine, the cute blond. Don't nobody even look at her. It was okay with Sonny. He's the type goes along with whatever Is this Ocean Ridge?
Manalapan, Dale said. Ocean Ridge is next.
Anyway, Elvin said, here's this boy has to do a mandatory twenty-five on a life sentence and he's I mean depressed, doesn't think he can hack it. He needed somebody like me to cheer him up. See, he'd keep house, tend to my wants, and I'd take good care of him.
Dale said, What'd he do? watching the road, seeing condos and big homes now.
He killed a woman. Beat her to death and got first-degree.
Dale said, Was this in the newspaper?
It musta been, was about a year and a half ago. At the time, Sonny was living with this Dr. Tommy Vasco, being his little helper. Sonny'd get girls for the doctor and the doc'd write drug prescriptions using fake names and Sonny'd go out and sell the stuff, mostly Quaaludes and Xanax, make himself some money.
He got girls? Dale said. Whyn't the doctor get his own girls?
He use to, when he was married and playing around. He was always drunk or stoned, Elvin said. Till his daddy swore he'd cut him off if he didn't behave hisself. See, this Tommy Vasco was a fuckup all his life. His daddy sent him to medical school down on one of the islands, set him up after, bought him this big house His daddy use to be a doctor, owns all kinds of property down in Miami, a rich tightass kind of guy, real strict and he has this fuckup for a son. You get the picture?
Wants the old man to think he's a good boy, Dale said, so he pulls the shades down and does all his partying at home.
There you go. And has Sonny get the women and the dope, all different kinds. But now the women, that's something else. The doctor was partial to big blond women, no Latins. They had to be big but not fat and have good-size titties on em.
Dale said, How many women would he have at a time?
Oh, he'd have two or three there for a party. See, what Dr. Vasco liked was for Sonny to take movies of him and a couple women in bed doing it. Then after, they'd sit around drinking, doing the cocaine and watch themselves on TV. Well, this one night I forgot to mention, the doctor's favorite was a woman name Pola from Lake Worth. Big woman almost six foot and built. Sonny said she was bigger'n he was and Sonny musta been, oh, five eight or nine and kinda chubby. I'd call him that sometime, Hey, Chubby, look at what I got for you.'
Dale thinking, Jesus. Not wanting to hear about it.
And I'd give him a candy bar for being a sweetie. Anyway, Elvin said, this woman I mentioned, Pola, come by one night alone, no other women there. They have their party, chop some rails, put a movie on. This Pola says to the doctor she bets his daddy would just love to see one of these movies, kidding with him. Sonny thinks she didn't mean anything by it, but he says the doc started to go crazy at the idea. He slaps her and she hits him back. They get in a fistfight and pretty soon she's beating up on him. So the doc yells at Sonny to help him. But Sonny, not being a fighter, picks up a poker from the fireplace and hits her with it. This woman he says come at him like a tiger and he had to keep hitting her till he give her a good one over the head and it killed her. So then the doctor tells him what to do. Put her in her car and drive up to Lake Worth. The idea, leave the car on the street with her in it and it'll look like she was mugged and the guy went too far, so take her purse. Sonny does all this, he's getting out of her car, when who drives up shining a light on him
Dale was nod
ding. Man, he could see it.
The police. Sonny was charged, he had her blood all over him, and convicted, Elvin said. He tried to tell them it was Dr. Tommy Vasco made him do it. They looked into it but couldn't put nothing on the doc except the fake prescriptions he wrote. He got like six months and can't practice medicine no more, which he barely did anyway. Sonny got life, the mandatory twenty-five, and is now keeping house for this buddy of mine. Okay. You want to know something else?
Dale said, What?
The judge that convicted Sonny and the doc is the same one gave me ten years straight up, minimum, and gave you five on that dinky violating probation charge. Judge Bob Gibbs, he must be one busy son of a bitch.
Coming to Ocean Ridge they had to stop at a light on A1A, dark and quiet out there, quiet in the pickup now, Dale seeing Judge Gibbs leaving the courtroom as he yelled at him. The judge walked out and now Dale tried to imagine a blond-haired guy hitting a big blond woman with a fireplace poker. As the light turned green and they started up again, he said, You want to take a look at this doctor's house, where it happened?
I want to see the doctor, Elvin said.
What for?
Sonny asked me to.
It didn't make sense to Dale.
Like you have a message for him?
In a way, Elvin said. Sonny wants me to hurt him.
Chapter 6
Kathy Baker sat in her secondhand VW, faded beige, 78,746 miles on the odometer and tires going bald, waiting for Dale Crowe Junior to show up. His house was dark. The Crisis Center, where she had worked when she was with South County, was only a few blocks down Swinton Avenue from here. It was weird telling the judge how she'd moved from public mental health to Corrections and he said she must like dealing with misfits, losers. Sounding exactly like Keith, her ex.
Pardon me. Dr. Baker.
The way Keith would say it, No one with an ounce of ambition would work in public mental health. With his condescending tone. While she was supporting him, paying the bills. Your willingness to deal with subhumans indicates a definite personality disorder. Your adjustment reaction to adulthood. Telling her she was unwilling to face the real world. A guy who locked his doors to drive through Little Havana, where she grew up.
Her mom said, He's perfect. Marry him quick before he gets away. Sure, it was what you did, got married and had children. Most of her school friends were already married to guys in trades, working construction. Keith was at the University of Miami studying to be a doctor.
Her brother Ray Diaz, with Drug Enforcement, said, That's why you married him?
She could talk to Ray because they were close and not just in age, two years apart. She had felt growing up that if she were a guy she would be Ray, just like him.
I try to explain why I married him, it sounds dumb.
Ray said, Accept it. You were.
Gimme a break, I was twenty-three. Keith looked like he was sent from heaven. Coral Gables, good family, modeled for a sportswear catalogue
You oughta be ashamed of yourself.
He was quiet, had a nice smile, perfect manners
No sense of humor, Ray said. The guy didn't know shit except what was in books and you helped him with that. You know what the big problem was? He found out you're smarter than he is. But once he got his MD he was a doctor and you weren't. Ask Dad or Tony, they saw it.
Tony, her older brother, a uniform Metro-Dade cop. She'd bring Keith home to visit or have dinner, her dad and Tony would watch sports on TV, any sport. When Keith got his MD and went to North Broward as a first-year resident in psychiatry, Tony said, That's all he is? I thought he was a fucking king at least. Ray said he acted superior so no one would know he was a moron.
She said to Ray, I thought he was just playing doctor and would get over it. I guess he never will. Keith said my problem was I thrived on abusive situations. Boy, tell me about it. When I did lay into him I said all the wrong things. You wouldn't have made it through school without me. You wouldn't have eaten, had clean clothes to wear, all that. He'd go, Oh, did I force you? Make you work at that place?' One time when I blew up he said, I have to deal with emotional Latins all day and I come home to one.' In that superior tone of his. I said, For Christ sake, why did you marry me?' You know what he said, now that he's a doctor and doesn't need me? He said, That's a good question.'
And the judge, in his chambers, said she didn't look especially Latin. Like he was paying her a compliment.
Oh, thank you, Your Honor. What she always wanted to hear from a redneck racist asshole old enough to be her father. So obvious, coming on with that business about his wife's mental condition, speaking in another voice. Oh, really? Going along with it instead of saying, Judge, married to you, no wonder she wants to be somebody else.
She was supposed to feel honored a judge wanted to sleep with her. Like she'd made it to the big time and could tell the lawyers who hit on her to kiss off. The lawyers in their nifty suits. You're a bright little girl, I might be able to do something for you. Like what? Oh, make your job easier. How? Oh, put in a word here and there. She was supposed to see it as her big chance. Wow, get to go to bed with a lawyer.
At hospitals it would be, get to go to bed with a doctor. A nurse at North Broward had liked the idea. The one Keith visited evenings, an hour or so at a time.
It was her brother Ray, a surveillance expert, who found out. He said, If he was clean I would never have told you. But he isn't, so there it is. You want, I'll have a talk with Keith, straighten him out. Kathy said, No, I'll handle it.
A car rolled past, a dull shape, its exhaust rumbling, and stopped in front of Dale Crowe's house. Two young guys got out with grocery sacks, one tall enough to be Dale but built heavier, broad through the shoulders. They walked up to the house talking in loud voices, flying high this evening, and went inside. A light came on in the front room, the door still open.
There were lights in some of the homes along the street, single-story frame houses back among old trees and overgrown shrubs, a low-rent neighborhood no one cared about.
The house where the nurse lived in Pompano Beach was like one of these. Three years ago she might still be there.
The two young guys seemed right at home. Maybe they'd know where Dale was, seven days before going to prison. She should have taken the time, had a talk with him after the hearing instead of going in to see the judge, sit there like a good little probation officer. Yes, Judge Oh, really?
Kathy got out of her car and locked it, thinking about the night she drove up to the nurse's house, in the same car but didn't lock it that time. She had walked past Keith's Mustang convertible his parents had given him for graduation, went up to the door and rang the bell. She rang it six times and remembered thinking as she waited, they bought him a car but let her pay the rent, buy the groceries and she never said one goddamn word about it. The nurse opened the door frowning. A small blond nurse in a pink wrap and with a tiny white dog in her arm.
Kathy said, There's something I'd like to tell my husband.
The blond nurse said, Your husband?
Maybe she didn't know.
The one in the bedroom, Kathy said, moving past her.
He was out of bed standing naked, about to put on a pair of pale-blue briefs she washed whenever they were in the hamper. He looked at her and said, Would you mind waiting in the other room, in that tone of his.
I guess I don't know how you're suppose to act, Kathy said, you catch your husband fucking a nurse.
Don't be crude.
That isn't what you were doing?
Why don't you go home and wait for me. We'll talk about it later. All right?
I brought all your clothes, your books
What do you mean?
I mean I brought all your clothes and books. What do you think I mean? All your stuff, it's in my car, loose, I didn't pack it. I'm going to take it out and put it in your car. If it's locked I'll lay the stuff on your car or throw it in the street, I don't know, wha
tever I feel like doing.
You brought all my things?
Everything you own, your books, your catalogues, anything else you paid for, which isn't much. You can come out and help me if you want, or you can stay here and fuck your nurse or fuck the dog, I don't care, you're out of my life. And my apartment.
He made faces, frowns, standing there naked with his cute undies in his hand. He said, I don't believe you're doing this.
Hey, Keith, come on. We Latins are very emotional, man. You know that. On her way out she said to the blond nurse still holding the dog, He's all yours.
Elvin and Dale had to wait before the door was opened by a stocky little guy Elvin judged to be light-skinned colored, except he had a big honker on him and maybe was trying to pass. He looked out at Dale's pickup in the drive sucking at his teeth, giving the truck a careful inspection before saying, What is it you want? With just enough accent that Elvin had to change his appraisal. This was some kind of Hispanic booger with a big nose, Cuban-looking now. There was all kinds of them.
Elvin said, Where's the doc at?
The guy only had the door open a foot or so, peeking out at them. He had his hair greased back in a knot, a teeny stud earring in one ear, and was wearing one of those Cuban shirts that hang outside your pants. He said, The doctor isn't in practice, he's retired.
Elvin shook his head. I ain't sick, you dink. This is a social call. Tell the doc a friend of Sonny's is here.
The name didn't seem to mean anything. The guy said, Wait here, and closed the door about a half inch from being shut.
Elvin said to Dale, That ain't nice, leave us standing here with our thumbs up our ass, pushed the door open and walked in.