Beauty and the Beast

2

I had never before now been inside a morgue.

In the movies, an attendant dressed entirely in white rolls out a drawer and a relative of the deceased looks down at the body while the attendant gently pulls back the sheet covering the face, and then the relative sobbingly makes identification, and the attendant rolls the drawer back in, and that’s that. In the movies, that is a morgue. In real life, a morgue is a handful of medical examiners in bloodstained green surgical gowns, sawing open skulls, or studying the contents of a stomach removed from a corpse; a morgue is dead meat on cold steel surgical tables with blood running down narrow troughs into a basin at the end; a morgue is total exposure, the human being reduced at last to a beast of the field, three pounds of brain and twelve ounces of heart; a morgue is the permeating stench of decomposing flesh, a faintly sweet putrescent aroma that seemed to invade not only my nostrils but every pore of my body.

Michelle Harper had struggled mightily against the wire hangers binding her hands and feet and the flames that had consumed her. It would seem contradictory to use the word frozen in describing the posture of a body burned to death, but frozen she was, her large frame contorted and stiffened into a position one would have thought the human body incapable of achieving. She had died in anguish; her body expressed that anguish more completely than any autopsy report would ever reveal.

“Found an empty five-gallon gasoline can maybe ten feet away from her,” Bloom said. “We’ve got it at the lab now, see maybe we can find some latents on it. Whoever did this must’ve doused her real good.”

Morrie Bloom was six feet three inches tall, and now that he’d abandoned his diet, he had to weigh at least 230, a heavyset man with the oversized knuckles of a street fighter, a fox face with a nose that had been broken more than once, shaggy black eyebrows, and dark brown eyes that almost always seemed on the imminent edge of tears, a bad failing for a cop.

“Are you sure it’s her?” I asked.

“Found her clothes and her handbag in the sand, wallet and driver’s license in it. That means she went out there under her own steam. Lady doesn’t take her bag with her if she’s being dragged someplace. We’re still looking for the husband, this George N. Harper. I understand you were in yesterday to file a complaint. We can’t find hide or hair of him. Do you know what the N stands for? Did she happen to mention it?”

“No. Why? Is it important?”

“I’m just curious,” Bloom said, and shrugged. “I can’t think of many men’s names beginning with an N. Norman? Nathan? Can you think of any? Beginning with an N?”

“Nelson,” I said.

“Yeah, Nelson, that’s right,” Bloom said.

I could not believe we were having this conversation here in this place with the charred and grotesquely contorted body of Michelle Harper on a steel table before us, and open cadavers everywhere around us, and the stench of death in my nostrils and in my throat.

“And Neil, I guess,” Bloom said.

“Yes, Neil.”

“Anyway,” Bloom said, “I sure as hell would like to find him. From what I read in the complaint...”

“Do we have to talk in here?” I asked.

“What? Oh, you mean the stink. I’m used to it, I guess. I spend a lot of time in morgues, occupational hazard, huh? When I was just starting as a detective, out on Long Island, I used to wash my hands a lot. I’d get back from the morgue, I’d wash my hands ten, twelve times, trying to get the stink off. You’ll see, Matthew, you’ll wash your hands a lot today. Come on, let’s go outside.”

We sat on a low white wall outside the hospital. The sunshine was bright, the air was balmy — but the stench lingered.

“I must be coming down with a cold,” Bloom said, reaching for a handkerchief in his back pocket. He blew his nose, blew it again, and then said, “I moved to Florida because you’re not supposed to get colds down here. I catch more colds down here than I ever did up north. Goes to show.” He put the handkerchief back in his pocket. “I called you because you were in the office with her yesterday...”

“That’s right.”

“To file the complaint.”

“Yes,” I said, nodding.

“So she was one of your clients, am I right?”

“After yesterday morning, yes.”

“But not before then?”

“No.”

“First time you ever saw her was yesterday morning?”

“Yes. Well, no. I’d seen her on the beach Saturday.”

“Oh? Did you talk about her problem then?”

“No, no. I didn’t even know who she was. She was just walking by on the beach.”

“But you remembered her when she came in yesterday, is that it?”

“Yes. She was a very beautiful woman, Morrie.”

“Yeah,” he said, and shook his head. “That’s the shit of it, ain’t it? From what I get from the complaint, she was beaten up real bad. So now she turns up on the beach, burned to death. Does that seem like a coincidence to you?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Which is why I’m anxious to find this wonderful husband of hers. Guy disappears from the face of the earth, there’s got to be a good reason, am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Murder’s a very good reason,” Bloom said. He was thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, “What I’m going to do, Matthew, when I release this to the papers and the radio and television stations, I’m not going to mention that Sunday-night beating, okay? I’d appreciate it if you kept it quiet, too. Whoever killed her — the husband or whoever — he won’t know anything about the beating unless he’s the one who did it. And we don’t want him working up an alibi because he knows we know, okay? For the murder, he’ll have an alibi. But for the beating, maybe not — unless we tip him off. So let’s keep it our little secret, okay? Not a breath about that beating Sunday night.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

He did not call me again until four that afternoon, while I was in conference with my partner Frank. There are people who say that Frank and I look alike. These are undoubtedly the same people who insist that married couples begin looking like twins after they’ve been together for any substantial period of time. I do not believe I look at all like my former wife, to whom I’d been married for fourteen years, nor do I believe there is the slightest bit of resemblance between Frank and me.

I’m an even six feet tall, and I weigh 190 pounds. Frank is two and a half inches shorter than I am, and 30 pounds lighter. True enough, we both have dark hair and brown eyes, but Frank’s face is rounder than mine. Frank maintains that there are only two types of faces in the entire world — pig faces and fox faces. He classifies himself as a pig face and me as a fox face. The designations have nothing to do with character or personality; they are only intended to be descriptive. But it seemed to me that Frank was behaving in a decidedly pigheaded way that afternoon as he paced the office, telling me that it was one thing to take a young lady to the police to file a complaint, but it was quite another matter to get involved in a homicide case, which Frank felt I was doing with alarming frequency these days.

“Why did Bloom find it necessary to call you this morning?” he asked, pacing. “Why did he want you to see the body? We handle a routine matter for somebody who walks in off the street, and the next thing I know you’re at Calusa General looking at a corpse!”

“Do you think I wanted to look at a corpse?”

“Then why’d you go look at it?”

“Because Michelle Harper was a client...”

“Some client,” Frank said, rolling his eyes. “Two more clients like Michelle Harper, and we can retire. Popular belief to the contrary, Matthew, this is a business we’re trying to run here, and your time is very valuable. If you choose to fritter it away by running around town looking at dead—”

That was when Cynthia buzzed from outside.

Cynthia Huellen is a native Floridian with long blonde hair and a glorious tan that she works at almost fanatically; never a weekend goes by that does not find Cynthia on a beach or a boat. She is easily the most beautiful person in the law offices of Summerville and Hope, twenty-five years old, and employed by us as a receptionist. Frank and I keep telling her to quit the job and go to law school instead. She already has a BA from the University of South Florida, and we would take her into the firm the minute she passed her bar exams. But each time we raise the possibility, Cynthia grins and says she doesn’t want the hassle of school again. She is one of the nicest young people I know, and she is blessed besides with a keen mind, an even-tempered disposition, and a fine sense of humor. She told me now that Detective Morris Bloom was on six. I pressed the button in the base of the phone and said, “Hello, Morrie.”

“Matthew, hi,” he said. “We got him.”

“Good,” I said, and glanced across the room. Frank had begun scowling the moment he heard me mention Bloom’s name. He stood now with his hands on his hips, staring at me. “Where’d you find him?”

“He walked right in off the street. Said he’d been in Miami for a few days, heard the news on the radio while driving back. I’m just about to ask him some questions here, but there’s a slight problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“He doesn’t have an attorney, and he wants one here during the Q and A. I told him we could have one appointed for him, but he thinks there might be something fishy about that. So I was wondering... if you have the time... maybe you could come down and talk to him, maybe he’d find you acceptable. Just for the Q and A, Matthew. What you do later, if we charge him with anything, is entirely your own business. What do you say?”

“When did you want me?”

“Soon as you can get here.”

I looked at Frank again.

“Give me ten minutes,” I said.

“Good, see you,” Bloom said, and hung up.

I put the receiver back on the cradle. Frank was still staring and scowling at me.

“What’d he want?” he asked.

“They’ve got George Harper. Morrie asked me to represent him during the Q and A.”

“Shit,” Frank said.

It had never occurred to me that George N. Harper might be a black man. Sally Owen, the woman for whom our firm had handled a divorce a year ago, the woman Michelle had called for advice before coming to see me, was black — but even in Calusa, there are white people who have black friends. Nor had Michelle’s address, 1124 Wingdale Way, triggered any immediate insights. Wingdale Way was in the heart of the city’s black section, still called the “colored” section by many of the older white residents here, and referred to as “New Town” by Calusa’s polite society. I simply never made a connection.

I have always felt uncomfortable with the descriptive label blacks have chosen for themselves. I suppose it is no less accurate than the “white” label, or the “yellow” label, or the “red” label, but I had never before that Tuesday afternoon met any so-called black man who was anything but one or another shade of brown. George N. Harper was the color of coal, the color of midnight, the color of mourning. George N. Harper was the blackest black man I had ever seen in my life. And the biggest. And the ugliest.

He was pacing the floor of the captain’s office at the Public Safety Building when I opened the door and entered. He turned to face me at once, a startled hulk of a man some six feet four inches tall and weighing 350 pounds if he weighed an ounce. He was wearing blue overalls with shoulder straps, a blue denim shirt, and high-topped brown leather workman’s shoes. He had huge shoulders and a barrel chest, a pockmarked face with flaring nostrils and thick purple lips, an Afro haircut and rheumy brown eyes that peered at me from beneath a wide brow, huge hands clenching as he turned, Neanderthal surprised.

“Mr. Harper?” I said.

“You the lawyer?” he said.

“I’m Matthew Hope,” I said, and extended my hand. He did not take it.

“Whut I need a lawyer for?” he said. His eyes kept searching my face.

“Mr. Bloom said you’d requested—”

“I dinn kill her.”

“Nobody says you did.”

“Then why I need a lawyer?”

“You’re entitled to one if you want one. Didn’t Mr. Bloom explain your rights to you?”

“Yeah.”

“You can have a lawyer if you want one. Or you can refuse to answer questions entirely, if that’s your choice. It’s up to you.”

“You a cop lawyer?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You one of them lawyers they said they could get for me?”

“No, I wasn’t appointed.”

“You think I need a lawyer here?”

“That’s entirely up to you. If you had anything to do with your wife’s murder—”

“I didn’t.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I’m positive.”

“Because if you did—”

“I’m telling you I didn’t.”

“You realize that anything you say to the police can be used later in evidence, don’t you? If you’re lying to me, Mr. Harper, I’d advise you to remain silent, I’d advise you not to answer any of their questions.”

“I ain’t lyin. I dinn kill her.”

“You’re a hundred percent sure of that?”

“A hunnerd percent.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“If I doan answer them, they goan think I killed her.”

“Not necessarily. I’ll make it clear on the record that you claim to be innocent of the crime and are answering questions of your own free will. If that’s what you want. They’re waiting, what do you say?”

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Harper said.

The interrogation (or the “interview” as it is euphemistically called in genteel Calusa) was held in Bloom’s office, adjacent to the captain’s. In addition to Bloom, Harper, and myself, there was a man sitting behind a Sony tape recorder. Harper looked at the instrument, and then looked at Bloom and asked, “You gonna tape this?”

“Yes, sir,” Bloom said.

“Ev’ythin I say?”

“Everything. Has your attorney informed you that this may possibly be used as evidence?”

“Yeah, he tole me. Is it okay to have them tape it?” he asked me.

“If you choose to answer their questions, there has to be a record of what you say.”

“Well, I guess it’s okay,” Harper said.

The man sitting behind the recorder pressed both the play and record buttons. He said a few words into the mike, testing, played them back, and then rewound the tape and pressed the buttons again. Bloom read Miranda-Escobedo, as required by law, and elicited from Harper the responses that made clear he had been informed of his rights, understood what they were, and was willing to answer the questions about to be put to him.

“Detective Bloom,” I said, “I want it made clear on the record that my client denies any knowledge of the murder of his wife, and is answering your questions here voluntarily and in a spirit of cooperation.”

“It’s on the record,” Bloom said, and the interrogation began. “Mr. Harper, when did you last see your wife alive?”

“Saturday night.”

“What time Saturday night?”

“Long about two.”

“A.M.?”

“Yessir.”

“Then that would’ve been Sunday morning.”

“Felt like Saturday night.”

“Where was this?”

“Home.”

“Can you give me the address, please?”

“1124 Wingdale.”

“And that’s the last time you saw her alive?”

“Yessir. Juss before I left for Miami.”

“At two in the morning?”

“Yessir.”

“Isn’t that an odd time to be traveling?”

“Nossir. Wanted to get an early start.”

“Why’d you go to Miami?”

“Wanted t’see my mama. Also to drop off a load.”

“A load of what?”

“Junk. I’m in the junk business. I buys an’ sells junk.”

“And you went to Miami...”

“To sell some junk. To a man I does business with down there.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lloyd Davis. Turns out it was a wasted trip, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lloyd wun’t there. His wife tole me he was out with the reserve that weekend. He got to put in so much time with them, y’know. The army reserve. I was in the army with Lloyd overseas. Thass how we got to know each other.”

“But he wasn’t there when you got there Sunday.”

“Nossir, he was not. My mama wun’t there neither. Neighbor tole me she’d gone up t’Georgia, t’see my sister.”

“What time was all this, Mr. Harper?”

“Oh, early in the mornin sometime. Took me six hours or so to get down there, musta been, oh, I’d say, eight, nine o’clock sometime. Somewheres in there.”

“So what did you do when you discovered neither Mr. Davis nor your mother were in Miami?”

“Went to have some breakfuss.”

“Where?”

“I don’t recollect the name of the place. Little place off the road there someplace.”

“Did you eat alone?”

“Yessir.”

“Then what?”

“Called another ole army buddy of mine. He’s a recruitin sergeant there in Miami.”

“What’s his name?”

“Ronnie Palmer.”

“You phoned him...”

“From the place where I had breakfuss.”

“What’d you talk about?”

“Oh, juss how are you, how’s things, like that.”

“Then what?”

“I went up to Pompano.”

“Why?”

“Figgered I was up that way, might as well do some sightseein. It’s ony juss outside of Lauderdale, y’know.”

“How long were you in Pompano?”

“Oh, juss long enough to look aroun a little.”

“Then what?”

“Kept on drivin north to Vero Beach.”

“Why’d you go there?”

“Still sightseein.”

“All the way up to Vero Beach?”

“Ain’t too far.”

“Something like a hundred miles north of Pompano, isn’t it?”

“That ain’t so far.”

“How long did you stay there?”

“Oh, coupla hours, no more’n that.”

“Then what?”

“Drove back down to Miami.”

“And what’d you do there?”

“Got me a bite to eat, then went to the beach. T’get some sleep. Woulda gone to my mama’s house, but she was away, and I dinn have a key.”

“So you slept on the beach.”

“Yessir.”

“In Miami.”

“Miami Beach, yessir.”

“Were you on the beach at 11:45 P.M.”

“Slept on the beach all night, yessir.”

“Were you there at 11:45 P.M.?”

“Morrie,” I said, “I think he’s answered the question.”

“I’d like to pinpoint the time, Matthew, if that’s all right with you,” Bloom said.

“Mr. Harper, would you have any objection...”

“None a’tall. I was on the beach at 11:45 P.M., yessir. All night. Juss like I said I was.”

“Miami Beach, is that right?” Bloom asked.

“Yessir, Miami Beach.”

“Then you weren’t here in Calusa, is that right?”

“Morrie,” I said, “he’s just told you, at least four times—”

“Okay, okay,” Bloom said, and turned again to Harper. “Mr. Harper,” he said, “are you aware that on Monday morning your wife filed a complaint with the Calusa Police Department charging that you had physically abused her at 11:45 P.M. on Sunday night, November the fifteenth?”

“Whut?” Harper said, and turned away from Bloom to look at me.

“Are you aware of that?” Bloom asked.

“Nossir, I am not aware of it,” Harper said. “How could I... whut did you say I’m spose to have done to her?”

“The complaint charged that you broke her nose and—”

“Nossir, that complaint is wrong.”

“Your wife made the complaint.”

“Nossir, she couldn’ta done that. Nossir.”

“Mr. Harper, when did you leave Miami?”

“This mornin.”

“What time this morning?”

“’Bout ten o’clock, musta been.”

“And you came directly here to the police station when you got back to Calusa, is that right?”

“Directly.”

“Why didn’t you come back home yesterday? Your business partner was away...”

“Lloyd ain’t my partner. He’s juss an ole army buddy I does business with, thass all.”

“But he was away.”

“Thass right.”

“And so was your mother.”

“Thass right.”

“So why’d you stay in Miami? Why didn’t you just turn around and come back yesterday morning?”

“I thought Lloyd might come back.”

“Did he come back?”

“Nossir.”

“So why’d you stay there?”

“Thought he might.”

“Uh-huh. How long have you been married, Mr. Harper?”

“Woulda been two years come nex’ June.”

“Your wife was a foreigner...”

“Yessir.”

“Where’d you meet her?”

“In Bonn, Germany. I was stationed with the military police in Bonn.”

“When was this?”

“When I met her, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Two years ago this month. Met her in November, married her the followin June.”

“Were you married in Germany?”

“Nossir, right here in Calusa.”

“What kind of a marriage would you say it was?” Bloom asked.

“I loved her t’death,” Harper said, and suddenly buried his face in his hands and began crying. In the stillness of the office, the only sound was the whirr of the tape as it relentlessly recorded Harper’s grief. He sat in a hard-backed chair, dwarfing it, his wide shoulders shaking, the sobs coming up out of his barrel chest, his huge hands covering his pockmarked face, sobbing uncontrollably. Bloom waited. It seemed that Harper would never stop crying. His sobs reverberated through that empty room like the moans of a wounded animal deep in a secret jungle glade where nothing else might hurt it and only the moon bore witness. And then, at last, the sobbing stopped, and he reached into his back pocket and took out a soiled handkerchief and dried his eyes, and then blew his nose and sat very still in the chair, sniffing, his shoulders slumped, all life and spirit seemingly drained from that enormous body.

“Mr. Harper,” Bloom said gently, “you say you were in Miami on Sunday morning, and then you went up to Pompano and Vero Beach, and then came back down to Miami later in the day, is that right?”

“Yessir.” His head was still lowered, he seemed intent on studying his high-topped workman’s shoes.

“Did anyone see you while you were in any of those places?”

“Lots of people seen me.”

“Anyone who might be able to say with certainty that you were actually where you were when you say you were?”

“Juss Lloyd’s wife, an’ the lady lives nex’ door to my mama.”

“But that was on Sunday morning.”

“Yessir.”

“How about Sunday night?”

“No, I dinn see nobody I know Sunday night.”

“Or Monday?”

“Nobody.”

“No one at all?”

“Nossir.”

“Mr. Harper, are you sure you weren’t here in Calusa on Sunday night? Are you sure you didn’t drive back here to—”

“I’ll have to object to that, Morrie. You’ve got his answer to that already. He was in Miami on Sunday night, he’s already told you that.”

“Then how do you account for the complaint his wife filed on Monday morning?”

“Are you questioning me, too, Morrie? If so, you’d better read me my rights.”

Bloom sighed.

“Mr. Harper,” he said, “did you kill your wife Michelle Benois Harper?”

“Nossir, I did not,” Harper said.

“Okay, thank you very much. Is there anything you’d like to add?”

“I dinn kill her,” Harper said directly into the microphone.

Dale and I have never exchanged the words I love you.

I know that Dale was once passionately in love with an artist she’d met in San Francisco when she was practicing law out there. I also know that she lived with him for two years, and that the parting was painful for her because it came as the result of a sudden recognition that seemed to negate everything they had previously shared. Last January, when we were first getting to know each other, she used to talk about him a lot. She never talks about him now. But neither has she ever told me she loves me.

For my part, I have used those words often and with varying degrees of sincerity. I’m thirty-eight years old, and when I was growing up in Chicago, I had none of the sexual advantages today’s young people enjoy. I was seventeen when the sixties were just starting; I missed out on the permissiveness that followed. A goodly amount of my adolescent energy was spent feverishly scheming on how to plunder the treasures inside a laden blouse, each button the equivalent of a Vietcong division guarding the road to Hanoi, how to slide a wily and preferably unsuspected hand along the inside of a thigh and onto those cherished nylon panties beneath a fortress skirt, how to hide from the eyes of a shocked citizenry the erections that bulged the front of my trousers whenever any girl of reasonably modest good looks (and, quite frankly, even some very ugly ones) sashayed into view. I loved legs, I loved breasts, I loved thighs, I loved asses, I loved girls with a passion that was all-pervasive and overwhelming. And on that perilous road to hopeful consummation, I discovered that the words I love you sometimes worked wonders: “I love you, Harriet, I love you, Jean, I love you, Helene, I love you, Melissa,” my fingers frantically working those maliciously obstinate buttons and those diabolical brassiere clasps invented by a madwoman scientist, “I love you, Joyce, I love you, Louise, I love you, Alice, I love you, Roxanne!” Those were the days of garter belts and nylon stockings, soon to give way to panty hose (invented by that same madwoman in her boiling laboratory), and God, the delirium of actually touching those secret mysterious undergarments, the windows of my father’s Olds fogged with the exhalations of singular male intent and determined female resistance, “I love you, Angela, I love you, Shirley, I love you, Ming Toy, I love you, Anybody!”

I used the words as cheap currency in a market without buyers.

I later learned, when I met and fell truly in love with Susan — the woman who would later become my wife — that the words I had until then considered the three cheapest words in the English language were indeed the three most expensive in any language. I’m not referring now to the alimony payments I still make to Susan each and every month, $24,000 a year with a built-in cost-of-living increase — but who’s counting? I’m referring only to the pain of total exposure, the loss of a private entity to a partnership. We were good partners for a good many years; many divorced men and women tend to discount the happiness they once shared, remembering only the bad times. But perhaps that was the trouble; we became partners and stopped being lovers. And yet, as partners, we made it work for fourteen years, and we did, after all, produce together the light of my life, my darling daughter Joanna, long legged and beautiful and mightily resembling her mother — Joanna whom I love to death but whom I only get to see every other weekend and for half the duration of her school vacations.

When a wife becomes a partner and nothing more than that, and when another woman suddenly materializes as an apparition from a bygone time of hand-in-hand moonlit walks along Lake Shore Drive, reviving memories of all that steamy adolescent sex in the front and back seats of automobiles, when “love” once again enters a man’s life with all the heart-lurching suddenness of a lightning flash at midnight, well then, the partnership goes down the drain, the tweed and corduroy you’ve been cutting for that Seventh Avenue manufacturer surrenders to the silken secret of whispered liaisons, and the marriage dissolves, the marriage ends — “I love you, Aggie,” for such was her name, Agatha Hemmings, now herself divorced and living in Tampa, so much for that ozone-stinking lightning bolt that left behind it nothing but a withered landscape.

So our wariness — Dale’s and my own — with the words I love you is perhaps understandable. Or perhaps we have no need for saying them out loud. If what we share together isn’t “love” (whatever the hell that may be), it is at least a reasonable facsimile. We are enormously glad to see each other. We chatter like magpies when we’re together, not only about the profession we happen to share, but about everything under the sun — and there is a lot of sun in Calusa, Florida. Moreover, I find it more and more difficult to keep my hands off her. I want to touch her all the time. I find it almost impossible to be anywhere with her — a public place and most certainly a private one — without longing for some sort of physical contact. I will sometimes reach across a restaurant table to brush a strand of auburn hair away from her cheek. I will touch her fingernails, I will touch her arm, I will cop a covert feel as I am helping her into her coat, I seem to absorb from her flesh the very essence of her, and the simple knowledge that she is still and simply there. My partner Frank says that the world is divided into Touchers and Tap dancers; Frank tends to make sweeping generalizations about everything. I know only that never in my life (discounting those delirious adolescent forays when I would have touched even an iguana if the contact served to still the longings of that raging tumescent creature in my pants) had I been a particularly demonstrative person. My need to touch Dale remains bewildering to me.

Dale insists it’s because of the sunrise-sunset coloration of her hair; the hair on her head is a lovely burnished shade of red, the hair between her legs is blonde. Since I am privy to her secret, she says, since I know that her “golden snatch,” as she sometimes calls it, had in her own tumultuous adolescence inflamed more than one energetic swain to heights of unprecedented passion by its very contradictory and surprising existence — why naturally, then, I burn with desire to touch not the passive flesh of cheek or elbow but rather the responsive slit buried behind those gilded portals, the touching here and there above serving as a sort of out-of-town tryout for a Broadway opening below, so to speak. Dale is thirty-two years old, a true child of the sixties, and is often more candid about matters sexual than the Tap dancers of the world are. (Frank defines a Tap dancer as anyone who glides and clicks away from true contact with another person.)

Lying in bed with Dale that night, I told her all about the encounter the day before with Michelle Harper and her subsequent murder (which she’d read about in the Calusa Journal, without connecting the story to the beautiful woman we’d seen on the beach Saturday) and the Q and A with her husband, and the fact that he had no real alibi for where he might have been when Michelle was first being beaten and next being killed. Dale listened — I love the way she listens, those magnificent green eyes intent on my face — and then rolled over naked to light a cigarette, nodding, absorbing what I was telling her, weighing it with the keen mind of a lawyer searching for a case that could possibly be made in Harper’s favor. She blew out a stream of smoke (I realized all at once that she was smoking pot) and then said, “If he really did it, you’d think he’d have a ready—” and the telephone rang.

I have always regretted the moment of insanity that prompted me to give Morrie Bloom the telephone number at Dale’s house on Whisper Key. She answered the phone now, listened for a moment, said, “For you, Matthew,” handed me the receiver, and then sat cross-legged on the bed, closing her eyes and puffing on the joint.

“Hello?” I said.

“Matthew, it’s Morrie. Sorry to disturb you so late at night.”

“No, that’s okay,” I said, and Dale pulled a face.

“Few things I think you ought to know,” he said. “You remember I was telling you about that empty five-gallon can we found on the beach?”

“Yes?”

“Well, we checked with the gas station where Harper brings in his truck, and also where the woman used to get her Volks serviced, it’s right around the corner from where they live. We figured it would be the most likely place, and we got lucky. Place called A&M Exxon on Wingdale and Pine. Anyway the attendant there — black guy named Harry Loomis — filled Harper’s gas tank on Saturday morning, around seven, seven-thirty, sometime in there. He also sold Harper an empty five-gallon gasoline can. Filled it for him. A red can like the one we found at the scene.” Bloom hesitated. “Matthew,” he said, “we had him up here looking at the can, he’s identified it as the one he sold to Harper on Saturday morning.”

“How can anybody tell one red can from anoth—”

“That’s not all of it. I got a call from the lab ten minutes ago — well, let me go back a few steps, okay? You remember that before Harper left the station house this afternoon, he agreed to let us print him, said he had nothing to hide, you remember that, don’t you? You were there when the guy downstairs was printing him.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“Well, we sent those prints over to the lab, where they were working on the latents they lifted from the can, and I got a call from them ten minutes ago. The prints on the can match Harper’s. And, Matthew, they were the only prints on the can. Harper’s and nobody else’s.”

“Are you calling for my advice, Morrie? Then here it is. Harper first bought that gasoline can—”

“And had it filled, Matthew.”

“Yes, at seven, seven-thirty Saturday morning. He then went back to the house and was home all day Saturday. There’s nothing to say he didn’t leave that can in the garage or wherever before he left for Miami at 2:00 A.M. Sunday. If he left the can home, anybody could have found it and used it to—”

“His fingerprints are on it, Matthew.”

“They’d naturally be on it. If he handled the can...”

“What happened to Loomis’s prints? The guy who sold him the can, the guy who filled it for him?”

“Are you suggesting that Harper wiped off the attendant’s prints, and then committed murder and neglected to wipe off his own? Come on, Morrie.”

“People panic, Matthew. I had cases before where the killer left incriminating evidence behind. I had one guy, he strangled this hooker to death while he was fucking her, he was naked when he did it, you know? And he left behind a monogrammed shirt, ran out of there barefoot with only his pants on, left behind a shirt with his initials on it, R.D., I can still remember the initials. So it’s not too unusual, Matthew. Even the pros panic. And murder isn’t a professional crime unless the mob has it done for them.”

“This is all circumstantial, Morrie. A man buys a gasoline can, he has it filled—”

“I got a witness who saw them on the beach Monday night, Matthew.”

“What witness?”

“A fisherman anchored just offshore. Saw a white woman and a black man struggling on the beach.”

“Has he identified Harper?”

“Close enough. Big black guy struggling with a naked white woman.”

“But has he specifically identified Harper?”

“We’re bringing Harper in. I expect identification will be made at that time.”

“So why are you calling me, Morrie?”

“Because if we get a positive make, we’re going to have to charge Harper. I mean, Matthew, I know it isn’t the strongest of cases...”

“What does the state’s attorney think?”

“He thinks if this guy can identify Harper, we’ve got a case.”

“And if he can’t?”

“We keep looking. Those prints on the can, the fact that he bought the can two days before the murder was committed, the fact that his wife filed a complaint the day she was killed — that may not be enough for a sure conviction, but it’s enough to keep us working. That’s if this guy who was out on the water—”

“A fisherman, did you say?”

“Yeah. Claims he saw them struggling, heard the guy yelling her name. He didn’t pick that out of the air, Matthew. Michelle isn’t that common a name.”

“No, it isn’t. I still don’t know why you called me.”

“If we get a positive make, the state’s attorney will have a whack at him this time, and this time we’ll be charging him, Matthew. So I thought you might want to represent him during the formal Q and A. This is serious this time, Matthew.”

“I’m not a criminal lawyer, Morrie...”

“I know you’re not.”

“But I know damn well what I’d advise him this time. If it’s serious this time.”

“If that guy identifies him, it’s very serious this time.”

“Then I’d advise him not to answer any further questions.”

“That’s what I figured you’d advise him. But shouldn’t somebody be here to tell him that?”

“Me, you mean?”

“Well, you, yes, if you want to come down. It’s just, this fucking Miranda-Escobedo, the law says we’ve got to appoint a lawyer if the man requests one, but we don’t have lawyers just hanging around here at the station house, you know, the law’s got a jawbone but no teeth, do you follow me? So since you already know the man, and did such a good job this afternoon, which by the way I’m sorry I hassled you so much...”

“That’s okay, Morrie.”

“So if you wanted to pick up here where you left off, it might not be a bad idea. For Harper, I mean.’Cause the way I look at it, he’s in bad trouble here, and he’s going to need all the help he can get.”

“When will you have him there?”

“Pete Kenyon’s already on the way to Wingdale. Unless Harper’s skipped, he should be back here within—”

“Do you think he may have skipped?”

“My guess? No, he’ll be there at the house when Pete pulls up. No, I don’t think he’s skipped.”

“So when will you have him downtown?”

“I suppose maybe five minutes, unless he gives Pete trouble.” Bloom paused. “Pete didn’t go alone, Matthew. I sent two cars with him. If Harper murdered his wife—”

“If,” I said.

“Well, I know, that’s what we’ve got to prove. But if we get that positive ID, we’ll have enough to charge him, and that’s what we’ll do. Would you like to be here, Matthew?”

“I’d like to be here,” I said. “I like it here, where I am. I like it very much right here.”

Dale blew me a kiss.

“Well, it’s entirely up to you,” Bloom said.

“Don’t ask him anything until I get there,” I said.

“Would I do that?” Bloom said.

“No, but some of those guys in the State’s Attorney’s Office can be very cute.”

“No questions, I promise.”

“And you understand, don’t you, that I’ll advise him to remain silent?”

“Sure. Exactly what I would do.” Bloom paused. “So are you coming down?”

“Yes,” I said, and sighed.

“Thank you, Matthew,” Bloom said, and hung up.

I looked at Dale.

“One of these days,” she said dreamily, “I’m going to buy myself a flesh-colored vibrator.”