Lassiter

17 The Road Goes on Forever

The air was soggy as a steam bath as I started my morning run. The violet morning glories in my neighbor’s yard were yawning open for the day, just like me. The grass wet with morning dew, the sweet tang of jasmine in the air. No breeze, the palm fronds hanging as limp as laundry on the line.

It’s not a fancy neighborhood of mini-manses and well-tended lawns. More like a tropical jungle, small houses on crowded lots overgrown with ragged ficus hedges and creeping bougainvillea.

I wore an old pair of Penn State shorts and a T-shirt with the slogan “A Friend Will Help You Move, but a Real Friend Will Help You Move a Body.” I’d only recently started carrying an iPod and wearing headphones. Off-season training would have been a lot easier if we’d had them in the old days. Still, there was a tradeoff. I missed the slap of shoes on asphalt and the call of the wild parrots in the neighborhood.

I slogged along, sweat streaming down my chest. Loquat to Solana to Poinciana, then south on LeJeune toward the Gables Waterway. A black-and-white wood stork strutted across the street, apparently lost. I wanted to point it toward Biscayne Bay. In my earphones, I heard Joe Nichols worrying that his lady was going out for the evening, and “tequila makes her clothes fall off.”

Traffic was already building, and car fumes had overwhelmed the jasmine. I hung a right on Barbarossa, planning to cut over to Riviera and then north toward Dixie Highway. A pair of land crabs the size of catchers’ mitts scuttled across the pavement, headed toward the waterway.

A black Lincoln followed me through the turn, then slowed to keep pace. I tried to see through the tinted windows but could not, the morning sun shooting daggers into my eyes. I picked up my speed, and so did the Lincoln. I slowed, and the car edged closer, until it was directly alongside me.

I stopped short, and the car braked. The passenger door opened, and a man in khaki pants and blue blazer hopped out. Nimble for a big galoot. Gray-blond crew cut, Marine neck, maybe fifty or so.

Ray Decker. Jesus!

“Where you going, turd face?” Decker said. He came onto the sidewalk and stood in my path, just out of arm’s reach.

Turd face? And they say our era lacks sophisticated wit.

“Nice to see you, Ray. When’d you get out of jail?”

“Never been in jail, shyster.”

“Another failure of our justice system. When will it ever end?”

He glared at me. The look of a man who wanted to step on a cockroach but didn’t want to soil his shoe.

Decker had been a detective in the Sheriff’s Department. In a marijuana case-possession with intent to distribute-I’d sweated him for five hours on cross-exam to show he lied on his affidavit. A judge dismissed another of his cases when I proved Decker repeatedly smacked my client in the testicles with a phone book while interrogating him. I didn’t personally get Decker tossed from the force, but I didn’t help him win any commendations, either.

The driver’s door opened and another man stepped out, staring at me over the roof of the car. African-American, early thirties, smaller but with the broad, sloping shoulders of a body builder. Identical blazer and pants. There is no good reason to wear a jacket in the Miami summer unless you’re hiding a shoulder holster.

“You got a license for that thing, Decker?”

“CWP signed by the State Attorney himself.” He patted his jacket over the bulge. “I’m head of security for Ziegler Enterprises, and my boss wants to see you.”

“Last night a woman delivered the same message. Offered a blow job. Same deal, Decker?”

The driver chuckled and Decker’s face heated up. “Get in the car, asshole.”

“Answer one question first. When Shorty isn’t chauffeuring your fat ass, do you drive a red Escalade with spinners and lake pipes?”

“You think I’m a Liberty City pimp?”

“Nah. They have to be good at math.”

“That’s enough, dickhead. Get in.”

“Changed my mind. If Ziegler wants to see me, he can make an appointment.”

I turned away as if to resume plodding down Barbarossa Avenue. Decker’s gun was holstered on his left shoulder. Meaning he was right-handed. I figured he would take one step and reach for me with that right hand.

He did.

I spun around and locked onto his right wrist. First with my left hand, then with both hands. I whipped his right arm behind his back, kicked him on the side of his left knee, and pushed him face-first to the ground. I reached around him, grabbed the lapels of his jacket and ripped downward, tearing the fabric at the shoulders, pinning his arms in the sleeves.

I knew the Lincoln’s engine was running. I knew the driver would race around the car. I wasn’t sure whether he’d pull his gun, but it didn’t matter. By the time his top-heavy body rounded the hood, I had dived into the car through the open passenger side. I scrambled into the driver’s seat without closing either door. Threw the gearshift into drive. Floored the accelerator. Heard the shriek of tires and the thwomp of the open door smacking the driver and cartwheeling him to the ground.

I hung a right on San Vicente and headed north toward Ponce de Leon and downtown Coral Gables.

Charlie Ziegler, you want to talk to me?

I got some things to say to you, pal.