Miami Noir

The timing of unfelt smiles by John Dufresne

Sunny Isles

At 9:15 on Thursday morning, June 4, while Jordan Delreese was bludgeoning his two young children to death, I was sitting in Dr. Hamburger’s consulting room at the Sunny Isles Geriatric Clinic with my father, who was just then at a loss for words. He had been trying to explain to the doctor why he no longer felt comfortable being in the same room with his shadow. He’d said, If light can pass through the universe, why can’t it pass through me? But now he could only manage to hum and to shake his head. I highlighted a speech in my script. Dad’s contention, as near as I could figure it, was that light had a mind of its own and had taken to behaving arbitrarily and recklessly in the last six months or so. After Dr. Hamburger clicked off his desk lamp, Dad took off his eyeshade, blinked, rubbed his rheumy eyes, and asked me who I was. Dr. Hamburger tapped the side of his prescription pad on his desk blotter, leaned back in his squeaky Posturetech office chair, cast me a glance, raised his articulate brow, and lifted his upper eyelids. Lid-lifters tend to be a tad melodramatic.

Dr. Hamburger had diagnosed Dad with Alzheimer’s. Dad said he was merely closing up shop. He hadn’t lost his ability to make metaphor, not yet. And he did have his lucid moments. He was in and out, however, and he was hard to read. His expressions were often without nuance or blend. He was extremely angry, extremely happy, or extremely vacant. He could remember what he had for breakfast on June 15, 1944, in Guam (gumdrop candy, two cookies), but not that he just turned on the gas without lighting the pilot; which is why I had to move him into an all-electric, assisted-living facility.

Jordan Delreese walked down to the kitchen after slashing his wife’s throat and changing out of his blood-soaked pajamas and into a maroon polo shirt and khaki chinos. He clapped his hands and told Davenport and Darchelle to finish up their Cap’n Crunch quick like bunnies. Darchelle said she thought she heard Mommy screaming before, but then it stopped.

Jordan said, You did, dumpling. Mommy and Daddy were playing Multiply and Replenish again.

In the morning? she said. That’s silly.

Jordan asked the kids if they wanted to play a game too. They sure would. Okay, then you have to clean up your mess, put the bowls in the sink and the spoons in the dishwasher, handles up. Davenport wanted to know what the game was called. Just Rewards, Jordan said.

The kids giggled when Jordan blindfolded them. He told Darchelle to wait in her room and to count to two hundred. One Mississippi, she said. He locked her door and led Davenport to the children’s bathroom. The tub was full. He asked Davenport to lie on his back on the floor. Yes, I know the tile is cold, but it won’t be for long. Jordan took the hammer from the ledge of the tub, raised it above his shoulder, and brought it down on his son’s right eye, and then the left eye, the mouth, the forehead, the forehead again. He wiped the slick face of the hammerhead on an aqua hand towel and walked to Darchelle’s room. One hundred and eleven Mississippi, she said. Darchelle lay on the floor like her daddy asked her to. Jordan said, I saved you for last, dumpling, because you are my special angel. She did not get to say, Goody! or, Thank you, Daddy.

And then, to be extra certain that his buddy and his dumpling did not wake up in pain, Jordan laid the children face down in the bathtub. He washed his hands with antibacterial soap, singing “Happy Birthday” twice while he did. Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN said that’s how long it takes to wash your hands properly. Jordan went downstairs and made himself breakfast. Scrambled eggs on a blueberry Pop-Tart, sausage links, a box of grape Juicy Juice. While he ate and read the Sun-Sentinel, he called his mother and asked her if she and Dad would be home this afternoon. He’d like to pay a visit. Do I have to have a reason? His mom told him she’d make gingerbread and whipped cream. Jordan said, I’ll be there one-ish.

Jordan lifted the children out of the tub and dried them off. He noticed a small mole on Darchelle’s left hip, examined it, touched it, figured it was probably nothing. He tucked them both into Davenport’s bed, pulled the sheets to their chins, covered their faces with the lace doilies from Darchelle’s vanity. He nestled cuddly toys next to their bodies and read them the Bible story about Abraham and Isaac. He sang their favorite lullaby. Sweetest little baby, everybody knows. Don’t know what to call her, but she’s mighty like a rose. He choked back tears. Jordan decided to drive to North Beach in Hollywood, stare at the ocean, clear his head. And then maybe surprise his parents by showing up early. He’d drive by Whole Foods and pick up lunch. Some of that tabouli he likes so much. And the grilled portobellos. He cleared the table, started the dishwasher, went up to the master bath, and hopped in the shower.

I told Dad I was still Wylie, the same old Wylie.

“Well, you look a little like my boy Winston.”

“Winston was your bulldog.”

“Like Cameron, I mean.”

“Cameron’s dead. I’m all you got.”

“Where’s Birute?”

“Mom’s dead.”

“I know she’s dead. That’s not what I asked you.”

Dr. Hamburger had Dad take off his shirt — easier said than done — and climb up on the examining table. I turned my script toward the window light and read Willis’s next speech. It’s like you’re in ninth grade, and you die and go into high school. That’s all death is. I was playing Willis Harris in the Gold Coast Theatre’s production of Trailerville. Willis is a true believer. I’m not. It was one week till dress rehearsal. Or maybe you’re humming along in a big rig, and you see a long straightaway up ahead and you shift gears and jam that pedal, and just like that the hum of the engine’s an octave higher. Dying’s like that, like shifting into a higher gear. My cell phone vibrated. I excused myself and stepped out into the hall. Dr. Hamburger was trying to unknot Dad’s T-shirt from around his neck.

The call was from my friend, Detective Carlos O’Brien of the Hollywood Police Department, requesting my immediate services. He had a situation in the Lakes. Three bodies, two weapons, one missing suspect, much blood. “I need you here, Coyote. Now.”

“I’ll have to take my dad.”

“How’s he doing?”

“He’s not himself.”

“Ten minutes.”

I couldn’t leave Dad in the car with the keys in the ignition, so I opened the windows and gave him a Fifteen Puzzle, told him to slide the numbers around until they were all in order.

“In order of importance?” he said.

“In numerical order.”

I’m not a police officer. That morning I was a forensic consultant. Sometimes I work for lawyers who are trying to empanel the appropriate jury for their clients. Sometimes I sit in my office and help my own clients shape their lives into stories, so the lives finally make some sense. A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety. And that’s when I call myself a therapist. And that’s what it says on my business card: Wylie Melville, MSW, Family and Individual Counseling. Carlos uses me, however, because I read minds, even if those minds aren’t present. I say I read minds, but that’s not it really. I read faces and furniture. I look at a person, at his expressions, his gestures, his clothing, his home, and his possessions, and I can tell you what he’s thinking. I’ve always been able to do it. Carlos calls me an intuitionist. Dr. Cabrera at UM’s Cognitive Thinking Lab tells me I have robust mirror neurons. I just look, I stare, I gaze, and I pay attention to what I see.

Carlos showed me the framed wedding photo they’d found on the slain wife’s body. No, I said, I’d prefer not to see the victims. The photographer had posed the couple with Jordan’s cheek on — “applied” might be a better word — with Jordan’s cheek applied to Caroldean’s temple, and he’d canted the shot at a thirty-degree angle. I wondered what he saw that suggested the pressure and the slant. Jordan’s smile was thin, yet wide, as wide as he knew was appropriate to the occasion and pleasing to the photographer. Adequate but unfelt. His eyes were eager, yet slightly squinted. I guessed that the obvious accompanying brow lines had been Photoshopped out. You can’t trust photos to tell you the truth anymore. Caroldean wore a diamond stud in her left ear and a thin silver necklace. She had a dimple on her right cheek, like she was used to smiling out one side of her face. This ingrained unevenness suggested a lifetime of feigned emotion.

Jordan River Delreese was a thirty-five-year-old graduate of FIU’s College of Business Administration and the CEO of, and the creative force behind, Succeedingly Wealthy, Inc., a company that produced and sold motivational artwork. Like there’s this photo of crashing waves on a rocky, forested coast, and beneath it, in case you think this is just an empty, if dramatic landscape, are Jordan’s words: Sometimes amidst the waves of change, we find our true direction. Or maybe there’s a lighthouse, its beacon shining above a roiling sea, and Jordan has printed: The savage sea can pull our customers in many directions. Our duty is to light their way to safety — before the competition does. Above his desk in his office at the back of the house hung his company’s best-selling framed photo, a shot of a golf green in the brilliant light of early morning, dew still on the grass. The photo is titled Success and beneath the photo, Jordan’s inspiring words: Some people only dream of success... other folks wake up early and work at it.

You can lie with your possessions, of course. I suppose we all do this a bit, stash the Enya CDs in a drawer and leave the Chet Baker and the Louis Prima conspicuously on the coffee table. Jordan had lined his office bookshelf with the hundred-volume set from the Franklin Library of The Collected Stories of the World’s Greatest Writers, from Aesop to Thomas Wolfe. Each book had gold decor on leather boards, gilt page edges, silky end pages, and a ribbon bookmark. None of the spines had been broken; none of the pages in those volumes I checked had been thumbed.

The neatness of the office, the precise arrangement of items on Jordan’s desk — laptop computer, family photo, cherry wood and punched-black metal desk organizer, matching Rolodex and pencil cup, stapler, tape dispenser, wire mesh paper clip holder — told me that he was a man with a firm handshake, a pumper, not a wrist-grabber, a man who numbered his arguments, asked and answered his own questions, and was given to proverbial expression. Tucked into the side rail of his mocha desk pad, a note on pink “while-you-were-out” message paper, presumably to himself: Stumbling isn’t falling. I took a business card from the leather card holder. The “S” in “Succeedingly” was a dollar sign.

In the family photo, our four Delreeses are posed casually, sitting on a white rug against a white backdrop. They wear white, long-sleeved oxford shirts, white casual slacks, and white socks. Jordan’s in the middle, one hand on his leg, looking up at Darchelle, who smiles back at him. Caroldean — there’s that dimple again — has her arm around Davenport. His is the smile of a child about to drift away to sleep. You can always tell a happy marriage. People in love begin to acquire each other’s traits, each other’s styles — they begin to look and act alike. They want to please. They admire each other and, naturally enough, want to become what they esteem and cherish. That had not happened with the Delreeses.

Carlos handed me a sheet of lime-green stationery. “He left a note.”

Jordan’s writing was half-print, half-cursive; his words began with a flourish and ended with a flat line.

I told Carlos that no person who has ever tried to be honest for even one second of his life could think like this.

Carlos said, “He’s a deacon in his church.”

“Of course he is. And he’s probably a scoutmaster.”

“Soccer coach.”

“There you go.”

“So you think the volunteer work is pretense? You don’t think he’s sincere?”

I shook my head. “I think sincerity is his honesty. And I think you’d better find Mr. Delreese soon. He’s not finished. The family was just the flourish. He’ll kill again. My guess is he’s killed before.”

Back at the car, I nudged Dad awake, strapped him in his seat belt, closed the windows, cranked up the AC, and drove toward Federal Highway. I told Dad about the victims, omitting the gruesome details. He shrugged. “Life is nothing,” he said.

“But it’s all we’ve got.”

“Nothing’s plenty for me.”

“Did you finish your puzzle?”

“The zero was missing.”

“So what did you do?”

“Killed some time.” He picked up my script, fanned the pages, found a highlighted speech, and fed me my cue. “You want to lose her too?”

“A man belongs with his family, Arlis. Where we come from, the elderly are not discarded like old rags.”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

“That’s not in the script, Dad.”

“What was her name?”

“Who?”

“Your ex-wife.”

“Georgia. What about her?”

“On my mind is all. You lost her.”

“She found someone else.”

“So she’s dead to you.”

I dropped Dad at Clover House in North Miami, told him I’d pick him up on Sunday for the Marlins game.

On the way to rehearsal I took a chance. I checked Delreese’s business card and called his cell. I told him who I was and said I was hoping he could design me a piece of art I could hang in my office. What I had in mind was one of those Hubble shots of distant space, maybe the one of the eagle nebula or some radiant spiral galaxy, and it’ll say, I love the light for it shows me the way. I endure the dark for it shows me the stars. Something like that.

Jordan Delreese told his parents that the kids were swell, fit as fiddles, never been better. He asked his mother to pass the tabouli. She told him to leave room for dessert. Caroldean’s busy with her scrapbook project, he said. He told them that when he was at the beach earlier he saw this cloud that looked like an angel. Did they see it too? Like Michael the archangel. They hadn’t seen it. What do you think it means? he said.

Rain, his father said.

Jordan said, He makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.

Amen, his mother said.

Jordan’s BlackBerry played “You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings.” He checked the number and punched Ignore.

Emotions don’t lie, but you can lie about them. Of course, lying about them’s not so easy. You’re angry, but you say, I’m not angry, but then just for a moment, you draw your eyebrows down and together, flash those vertical wrinkles on your forehead, and press your lips together. Or maybe it’s your body that leaks the truth. Your natural-born liar understands that everyone is watching his transpicuous face, and he knows that an easy smile is the cleverest mask. Gestures, however, may belie that smile. He brushes a nonexistent piece of lint from his slacks, drums his fingers, leans forward.

You can’t command emotions to appear, but you can coax them, summon them. I learned that in acting class. Stanislavsky said if you move your hands in a tender way, you’ll begin to experience tenderness. You move with the quality of tenderness, in other words, and the movement will evoke the sensation of tenderness, and that sensation will lead you to the true emotion, and now you’re feeling it. No pretense. Change your expression and you change your nervous system. And you can use your own life experiences and your remembered feelings to help you understand your character. Work from an aroused emotion back to the source of it. In other words, to lie on stage, you need to be honest with yourself.

I was working on feeling Willis’s exhilaration, his joy about life after death and the promise of eternal salvation. Easy enough to slap on the brilliant smile, brighten the bountiful eyes. I stood on my toes like I couldn’t hold the good news inside, like I was bursting with beatific energy. I started hopping, pounding my fists in the air. Hiroshi, our director, asked me to take it down a notch, or several. “It’s only life everlasting, Wylie; it’s not a weekend with Madonna.” I wondered if I had any exhilaration in my past to call on. When had I ever been so deliriously excited? Maybe on my wedding day, but the failure of that whole enterprise got me sad like it always does. When I was five or six I ran everywhere. I ran to school, ran to the kitchen. I couldn’t wait to get to wherever I was going. And I was happy wherever I was. I ran down the stairs, over to the park. I ran to the swings. I ran to church. So what happened when I was seven? Hiroshi put his wrist to his forehead and told me he couldn’t take another interruption. I said, “I’m ready,” and then I saw Carlos backstage waving me over.

Jordan Delreese asked his father Calbert to tie him to the cyclone fence in the backyard. Calbert smiled and turned on the TV. Let’s Make a Deal on the Game Show Network. Jordan said how that would be the best thing for all of us. Calbert told the contestant, a man in a hoop skirt and red baloney curls, to just take the cash and be happy with it. Cripes, he said, people don’t know when they have it good. Calbert sucked on a sour ball. The contestant went with whatever was behind Door #3. Greed, Calbert said. Jordan said, I have no way to control my stress. Jordan’s mother said she’d like to serve dessert out by the pool. Calbert said, Put on your sunscreen, Vernal. The contestant seemed delighted with his six-piece gray mica bedroom suite, complete with platform bed and Serta Perfect Sleeper mattress and box spring. Jordan said, That way I won’t fly way. Calbert said, What way? Tied to the fence with baling wire, Jordan said. And you’d better do it now.

While they ate, Jordan brought up the time his father had caught him masturbating into a tube sock while he was watching Bewitched. His mother said now what she had said then. About Onan spilling his seed. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore He slew him also. Calbert said he couldn’t remember what happened after he’d caught Jordan abusing himself, so Jordan reminded him. You took the TV cord off the old Motorola, plug and all, wet it, ran it through the sandbox, and put it in the freezer. Bringing back any memories, Dad? Then Mom filled a tub with ice-cold water and had me sit in it. Then you had me stand naked in the kitchen; you took out the cord and whipped me with it. I’ve still got the scars. Calbert said he wasn’t proud, but it had to be done. You were committing an abominable sin, son. You were no better than a viper. And look how you’ve turned out, Jordan. A success. A God-fearing, law-abiding man, a solid citizen, and a pillar of the community. You should thank me. Jordan poured his parents two glasses of sweet iced tea and proposed a toast to discipline. Calbert said, You might want to try a little tough love with your own kids, Jordan. That grandson of mine has a sassy mouth on him.

Jordan finished his gingerbread and then his mother’s gingerbread and his father’s. He talked while his parents nodded off. He’d dissolved six Ambien in their tea. Worked like a dream. He told them about how if you wanted to get away with killing someone, you should kill them in a pool. Not that he was trying to get away with anything, you understand. Too late for that. Drowning is a diagnosis of exclusion, he said. It cannot be proven in an autopsy, cannot be disproved. He told them about the actor who drives a spaceship through the universe, how he drowned his wife in Beverley Hills, and everyone knows he did, but they can’t prove it. You could see this guy any week on his new TV show, and he behaves like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. That’s acting.

Jordan slapped his mother awake. He told her what he’d done this morning. Vernal blinked, looked at Calbert with his face in the bowl, and laughed. This is the strangest dream, she said. He told her how he’d carved Caroldean’s throat with a serrated kitchen knife, how it felt like slicing through a mango when he hit the larynx. Oh dear, Vernal said. Whee! Jordan reached out his foot and rested it on the seat of Calbert’s chair. He kicked the chair over. Calbert hit his head on the concrete skirt of the pool. A floret of blood bloomed on his teal Marlins cap. Jordan stripped his parents to their undies and slid them into the pool. He sat under the umbrella and watched, saw those brief spasms when the water first hit the lungs, and then the flutter as the body fought for air. He watched them float, knock against each other, sink to the bottom of the pool. He knew it would take a couple of days for the bodies to bloat with gas and rise again. He knew they’d be discovered long before that. He fetched his dad’s Sony Handycam, sat at the edge of the pool, and taped the bodies, looking like the last two pickled eggs in a jar. Then he turned the camcorder on himself and told his story.

Jordan explained how he had a crew in his office tearing up the place. So could we meet at your place? he said. That way he could take some measurements, note the color scheme, kill two birds with one stone. I gave him my address. That’s over by the Fetish Box, isn’t it? Yes, it is. Twenty minutes.

He said, “Determination is often the first chapter in the book of excellence.”

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe the photo’s of a long-distance runner on her last leg, gritting it out to the finish line.”

“Do you have one for honesty?”

“I can give you serenity.”

“I wish you could.”

“Will truth do?”

“Close enough.”

“Okay. An old man, red jacket, floppy cap, walks through the autumn woods in New England. Glorious colors. Clear, crisp. We can see the steam of his breath. His head’s down. Below that the word truth — all caps — and below that, Purity is born of virtue.”

Jordan Delreese knocked shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits on my office door, pushed the door open with his shoulder, and poked his grinning face into the room. He held his BlackBerry to his ear, rolled his eyes, smiled at me, and told whomever he was speaking with or pretending to speak with that he’d get back to them with the figures a.s.a.p. He scratched his nose. Okeedoke. He nodded. Ciao!

He holstered the BlackBerry, clapped his hands, and stepped toward the desk where I sat. He said, “I pictured you bald, slight, with maybe a pitiful little mustache. Funny how a voice can fool you.” He admired my autographed Marlins baseball, gripped it like he was pitching a curve. “Well, here we are, Mr. Melville.”

“Call me Wylie. All my friends do.”

“I pegged you for a sociable guy.”

“Except Carlos. He calls me Coyote.”

“And you call him The Jackal, I suppose.”

“Have a seat, Mr. Delreese.”

He pointed to the wall above the sofa. “We’ll hang it there.” He put his fists on his hips, swivelled and looked left, then right, looked at me, and shrugged. “No photos of the wife and kiddies.”

“No wife and kiddies, I’m afraid.”

“Fag?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you a fag?”

“That’s an inappropriate question, Mr. Delreese.”

“If you say so.”

“But a revealing one.”

He sat, crossed his legs, folded his hands behind his head, smiled, and I knew that he knew that I knew. “No kids.” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Fruitless.” He raised an eyebrow, stuck out his lower lip, and cocked his head. “No regrets, Coyote?”

“Plenty.”

He picked up the photo of Dad and me squinting into the sun at the News Café. “They fuck you up, don’t they?”

“Who?”

“Your mom and dad.”

“They did their best.”

He smiled and aligned my Post-it note dispenser with my saucer of paper clips. Ordering his thoughts. He turned my little ceramic flamingo so she was facing me. He leaned back in his chair. I leaned back in mine.

He said, “I see what you’re doing.”

“You’re a perceptive man.”

“Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“Who says I didn’t?”

“Your need makes you transparent.” He steepled his fingers, brought them to his lips. “So what do we do now?”

“You tell me your story.”

“And you process my behavior and feed it back to me.”

“I listen.”

“Why should I tell you my story?” “Why did you kill your family?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s barbaric, illegal, immoral—”

“Insane?”

“Did you think you’d get away with it?”

“I already did, dipshit.” He laughed. “They’re dead.” He put his face in his hands. “My parents had outlived their usefulness. They disgusted me. They smelled like rancid milk.”

“How do you feel right now?”

“Like I’m wasting my time. If you’re looking for credible motivation, Melville, you won’t find it here.”

“Every lie is a victory for you, isn’t it?”

“You want to make sense of this so badly, you’ll believe anything I tell you so long as there’s an element of horror and remorse. Am I right? You want the world to make sense, but it doesn’t.”

“It does if you bother.”

“Most times nobody knows why they do anything.”

“Most times they don’t want to know.”

“Don’t you go to the movies? This is the twenty-first century, Wylie, the Age of Unreason. Kill someone in the morning; go to the theater at night. No reason, no resistance. Action is its own motivation. It’s kind of funny if you think about it.” Delreese pulled a snub-nosed revolver out of a shoulder holster, said he bet I wasn’t planning on this, and I told him he was right about that, and he told me he had nothing to lose, and I told him that I did. How on earth had I missed the signals? Had his lips narrowed while I blinked? Did the pitch of his voice rise, not in deceit, but in anger?

He said, “You know what’s easy, Wylie? Lying to someone who wants to be lied to.” He aimed the pistol at my heart and asked me if I was a religious man. I told him I was not. He said, “Too bad for you then. You don’t get saved.”

“There’s no salvation for you either, Delreese. Every child knows that this is our only life. Every pig knows it. Every snake. Just people like you who don’t.”

“People like me.”

“People who feel that the world has let them down, who can’t imagine existence without their own presence. Dishonest people.”

“The only honesty is a lie well-acted.”

I told him to put the gun away and let’s talk. I said it like I was soothing a feisty dog.

Delreese picked up the Marlins baseball, lobbed it across the room, fired the pistol at it, and put a bullet through the window. “I suspect we don’t have much time now.” He pointed the gun at my face. I squeezed my eyes shut. I tried to breathe deeply to keep my heart from exploding out of my chest. I trembled and held onto my chair. I thought about my father waiting for me on Sunday, sitting with the cigarette-smoking attendants on the shady bench outside the Clover House lobby, tapping his foot, chewing his lip, trying to remember why the hell he was sitting there, and I understood that without me around to fight for him, the health-care system would swallow him up, strap him to a bed in some shadowy ward, and let him waste away. When they told him I was dead, would he know who they were talking about?

Delreese said, “Cat got your tongue?”

I thought if I could talk, maybe I could save my life, but in order to talk I’d have to think; only I couldn’t think; I could only remember. I saw my brother Cameron and me, and we’re six and on the floor in the den with Oreos and milk watching The Lone Ranger. Dad’s snoring over on the couch, and Mom’s out on the patio smoking up a storm and reading another Harlequin romance. This bad guy from the Cavendish gang has the drop on the Lone Ranger and tells him to nice-and-easy-like take off his mask, which looks like my father’s eyeshade, and which, of course, he will never do, even though I kind of want him to myself, which is sort of a betrayal, I know, and the Lone Ranger pretends that someone’s behind the bad guy by making these not-so-subtle head and eye gestures that arouse the desperado’s suspicion, and then the Lone Ranger says, “Get ’em, Tonto,” and when the bad guy turns and fires, the Lone Ranger jumps him, grabs the six-shooter, and knocks the bad guy out with a single punch.

Delreese said, “I call this game Meet Your Maker.” He laughed. “Ten Mississippi,” he said. “Nine...”

Cameron changed the channel and told me to stop crying. I told him I wasn’t crying, but I could taste the tears on my lips. Bugs Bunny aimed a pistol at Elmer Fudd, pulled the trigger, and a flag popped out of the barrel of the gun, unfurled, and said Bang! Bugs gave Elmer a big wet kiss. I couldn’t remember my mother’s face, just the back of her head. I knew I wouldn’t hear the gunshot, wouldn’t feel a thing. Everything would be over before I knew it. What would be the last thought I thought, the last picture I saw?

“Five Mississippi.”

What I did remember about Mom was her silence, her ratty chenille robe, and her pink Deerfoam slippers. When she thought I was lying, she’d tell me to stick out my tongue, said that if I was lying it would be black. It was always black, even those times I was sure I wasn’t lying. She’d wash my mouth out with Lifebuoy soap or spoon horseradish on my tongue. Cameron called her The Beast. Cameron, my twin, who looked exactly like me, people said, but was somehow more handsome, who always knew what I was thinking and could make me laugh at the drop of a hat, who fell into a life of drug addiction and robbed my parents blind, died in room 201 at the Pirate’s Inn in Dania, beaten to death by his playmates with a studded mace and a stone war club. He was twenty-four.

I realized that Delreese had stopped counting, and I waited and thought maybe I was dead already, that this dark stillness was life after life, that I’d already been shot, that I’d been wrong about death too, and Willis had been right after all; there is no pain, no past, no present, no future, just the everything all at once, just a floating toward a resplendent and cleansing light, so I opened my eyes to see it, to let it wash over me, and I saw Delreese, who must have been waiting for this moment, with the black barrel of the gun in his mouth, saw him smile and wink. I reached for his arm, and he squeezed the trigger.

Boozanne, lemme be by Vicki Hendricks

Miami Beach

I never needed “stuff,” so it was easy to live — till Boozanne come along. Most stuff is just to impress women, and I didn’t need them either — till Boozanne. I had a cute face — like a puppy dog, I heard — but being 4’10", I was too short for normal chicks, too tall for a dwarf. I didn’t try to fit in. I could afford a handjob now and then. Did me fine. Keep it simple was my motto. When Danny DeVito retired, maybe I’d head out to Hollywood, but for a young guy like myself, the deal I had going was almost as good — till Boozanne messed me up.

Ma had always told me, if you’re gonna steal a VW, might as well steal a Cadillac. Well, Ma had that wrong. A VW would’ve been the right size for me. But when I got outta prison for stealing the Caddy, I gave up car theft altogether. My home was gone. Ma had passed on, bless her soul — Pop was never around. Being broke and alone, I hitched down to Florida, remembering how warm it was that winter when Ma and me took vacation, my best memory as a kid. I met Weasel in Miami, and he’s the one told me about this gig. It fit me perfect, even better than a VW.

What you do is find a big old wood house, with two foot of crawling space underneath, and cut a hole in the floor under the bed. Easy, if you can look in and measure. Beds are never moved. Weasel burgled his way around the islands, so by the time each hole got discovered, he was long gone. With my carpenter experience, and considering I needed a home more than anything, I went him one better by saving the piece of floor, so I could latch it back in place underneath. Not many nice wood houses left in Miami, but one should’ve been enough. No mortgage, no taxes, and free food as long as you’re not greedy. Nobody would notice, even if they ran a dust mop over the hardwood, a thing that — I’m telling you — most people never do.

My home with the Lamberts, Bob and Melodie, was walking-distance from the beach, came with Sports Illustrated and Gourmet subscriptions, cable, big-screen TV, and a cat. It had those wood Bahama shutters that hang down and cover the windows, so nobody passing by could see in. A carport instead of a garage was good for knowing if either car was home, and thick foliage around the perimeter made it easy to sneak to the back and go under, though I did most of my crawling in and out in the dark. I had plastic sheeting and a rug remnant from Goodwill under there, my clothes sealed up in black garbage bags to keep out the bugs, a flashlight, toss pillow, and a Playboy to pass the waiting time. I never needed toiletries like toothpaste, shampoo, or deodorant, cause the Lamberts were well supplied. Didn’t shave, or I would’ve got my own razor. It was like living in a full-service motel, except I had to clean up after myself. I was set — till fuckin’ Boozanne.

Bob and Melodie got home each night at 7 or later — depending if they ate out — so I’d drop down the hole around 6:30, crawl out at dark, and head to a cheap local bar, or out on a scrounge, then later to my chair on the beach to doze until it was getting toward dawn, time to head home. I’d picked ’em good — upper-middle-class workaholics, too distracted about their jobs to notice the house much, lotsa loose change and doggie-bag leftovers that they usually tossed into the bin within two days. Somebody might as well enjoy it all. Once in a while, I stuck a pepperoni down my pants at the grocery for extra meat. I didn’t take big chances, didn’t need much. Any violation would send me back to a cell.

I didn’t have to be too careful at home, as long as I remembered to pick my long black hairs off the pillowcase, go easy on the tidbits and liquor, and wash my lunch dishes. Sometimes I got sick of looking at Bob’s coffee cup that he’d leave on the bathroom sink, and I’d wash that too. I was kind of a dark male Goldilocks, only nicer. I grew attached to the Lamberts, seeing that I knew so much about their food tastes, possessions, and living habits. Melodie was like the sister I never had, little and dark-haired, big-eyed and innocent in her pictures. I felt protective toward her. Bob was like an older brother I could live without.

One day, Melodie came home early — I was lucky the lunch dishes were done — and I was in the living room to see the car pull in. I barely made it out the hole. She ran in and tossed herself on the bed and wailed. Her sobs broke my heart while I laid under there listening. I stuffed my face into my pillow not to make a whimper. I thought maybe her ma had died. After that, all signs of Melly disappeared for most of a week. Her black dresses were gone, and there were tons of used Kleenex left in the wastebasket in her bathroom. She must’ve had her monthly on top of it all, so I hoped no cramps. Eventually, from the sympathy cards, I figured out it was her pop that died.

Trying to be of help, I dusted, wiped out the refrigerator, vacuumed, and cleaned the toilets for her while she was gone. Bob didn’t go to the funeral, and I knew he wouldn’t take over the cleaning neither. I couldn’t do anything obvious, but I just thought she’d feel better if the place somehow didn’t seem to get dirty — and the refrigerator needed cleaning bad. Bob was your regular slob and never noticed nothin’.

Melly brought home some mementos from her father, his fishing license and a pin from the Marines, so I knew they were close. I admired the old fella, seeing he probably enjoyed life and had guts. I found some heavy dark-blue folders too, sitting in plain view on the desk. I thought they were books at first, but when I opened ’em up, they smelled musty and were filled with U.S. silver dollars in little slots marked with the years, the real silver dollars that this country don’t make no more. I could tell by the edges. I didn’t know what they were worth, but there were close to four hundred of ’em, from the 1880s to the 1960s. I wondered if Melodie knew the value. I wished I could warn her to put ’em in a safety deposit box, in case of burglars, like Weasel.

I buddied up with their cat. He liked his water freshened a couple times a day, and he would have starved while Melodie was gone if I didn’t refill his dry food. I really performed a service. He was smart, and I taught him to give paw and roll over for Whisker Lickin’s tuna-flavored treats. I hid the packet in the empty cabinet above the refrigerator, and I had to laugh every time I pictured the Lamberts finding it and being downright stumped. I expect Bones thought I was his owner, considering all the quality time we spent together. I wished I knew his real name. I listened sometimes, waiting under the house, but the words were usually too muffled to make out anything, unless Bob and Melodie were having a fight. Bob could get pretty loud. I went through their address book, hoping for something like Tiger’s vet, but no clues. He answered to Lazybones — or Bones — as much as any cat answers.

I generally took a long nap each day with Bones on my chest. It was like working the night shift, except no work! I sold off a lawn mower and weed eater — garage items from down the block — and got myself a gym membership so I could shower, swim, hot tub, and work out with the hardcore sissy fellas every evening if I wanted, and especially on weekends when I was stuck outside all day.

Things were going good. One night when I was still holding some cash, I thought I’d slug down a few shots at one of them outdoor South Beach bars, take in the fancy scenery, meaning women. It was just then, when I’d got my life all in order, I run into Boozanne. I come up to the bar and there she was, her back to me, lapping a little over the stool in the thigh area, a big girl with lots of curly orange hair and freckled white skin on her upper arms. She had on a thin nylon shirt that clung to every ripple of her — the handles of love and the lush flesh above the back of her brassiere. When she turned my way, there were those double-Ds staring at me, talcum still dry between ’em, and the smell of a baby wafting off her, even in eighty-five degrees and heavy humidity. Stars were winking in the black sky over her head, so I shoulda known the joke was on me.

A flamenco guitar strummed away in my left ear, traffic and ocean crashed together in the right. “Hi there!” I yelled. I pointed at the only empty seat, the one next to her, where she had parked her pocketbook.

“I’m Junior,” I said. I was more often called Mouse, but I didn’t like it.

“Name’s Susanne,” I thought she said.

I nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Susanne.”

She scrunched up her little pig nose with the freckles on it, but I didn’t know what the problem was. She had a puckered set of red lips to go with that nose. “Boooz-anne,” she drawled.

That there was the killer. Her voice flowed out like syrup and I damn near choked. I wondered if she could be a Kentucky girl, hot and smooth as the bourbon I’d left behind those two years ago. I musta stared at her — I wasn’t sure what was polite to say.

She picked up her beer can. “Booooz-anne!” she hollered. “Buy me one.”

The bartender looked at me, and I put up two fingers.

Boozanne stared at my legs. “You need a hoist onto that stool, pal?”

I ignored her and used the step under the bar to give me the extra lift. Boozanne lit a cigarette. Her cheeks sucked in and her lashes kinda flickered in pleasure as she drew the smoke. When her chin tipped back on the exhale, I remembered how Ma used to aim her smoke at the ceiling by protruding her bottom lip like a funnel. Boozanne’s white neck and the pattern of freckles spilling down resembled one of the girls’ chests in Bob’s porno video. The smoke hung in the air and the flamenco ripped to a finale as she focused on me.

“You’re pretty cute for a shortie. Been working out?”

“Some,” I said. It came to me that she might want to get naked, despite my body being two-thirds her size. I wasn’t against it.

“You know how long a man’s legs are supposed to be, don’t you?”

I shook my head, getting ready for a joke about my height, figuring it was worth the ridicule to get laid.

“Long enough to reach the ground,” she said. “Abraham Lincoln.”

“Abraham Lincoln said that?” I scratched my head. “He had real long legs, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point. Yours are long enough.”

I smiled. “It all evens out horizontal, don’t it?”

She laughed, and after that my memories are spotty. Sometime, Boozanne and me staggered across the street, holding hands and bumping together. We stumbled over the sand toward the water, to my favorite wooden lounge chair, chained behind a low dune of shore grass, far enough from the street to be dark. My mind wasn’t working too good, but I recall taking off my pants, falling over once into the sand.

Next thing, there was Boozanne, buck-naked and white as whip cream, like an art model with all the rich layers of her unfolding, as she laid down on the lounge and opened her arms to me. I stopped trying to brush off and leaned over her and straddled one of her thighs. We did some tonguing, I think, but mostly I remember the feel of her, meaty and cool, as I pawed over her big tits and nuzzled her neck. When I scooted on down, that baby powder drowned out the fishy smell of the beach. I suckled her nipples and crawled onto her lap. She weren’t my first woman, but there hadn’t been many, and none of this size. I poked into her soft gut and jelly thighs a few times, and then I located that sweet spot you don’t never forget.

Over the next week things heated up even more, and I needed extra money to show her a good time. Besides sorting most of the quarters out of the change jar, I made some easy pickings from a tree service trailer, and took a chain saw to the South Dixie Pawn Shop. Boozanne — surprise, surprise — could put away the liquor. I convinced her to go to my usual local bar, where it was homey. Quantity was more important to her than scenery, so she didn’t complain much.

Besides liking the sex, she was a woman who could tell a joke. I enjoyed her stories about idiots at the office, and the quick way she saw through her boss with his snooty manners. She had some schemes for easy money, and she promised to let me in. I’d started talking to Bones about her, and when I pictured her pretty face I felt something way stronger than the tightness in my balls.

One night when we were sitting on the lounge chair smoking some weed, I dropped the roach into my shirt pocket and the damn fabric flared right up. Boozanne was fast with her hand to pat it out. “Your heart’s on fire for me,” she said. She was laughing, but I couldn’t deny it. I took that as a sign.

Course, the subject came up of going to my place instead of the sticky, sandy lounge chair, and I couldn’t fend her off for long. She had an efficiency and a roommate, so it was up to me to make arrangements if I wanted to “continue enjoying her womanhood.” Now, I was really working her pussy hard, and I had a suspicion that she liked the fucking as much as me, but I knew there were plenty more men where I come from — taller ones, with better income — whereas she was the only woman ever come on to me that didn’t ask for money up front. The chair hurt her back, and she wouldn’t get on top cause she was embarrassed about how she outweighed me. She kept harping on it until I let loose of the truth.

I thought it would be the end of us, but it turned out my living conditions were a real amusement. I’d lied that I was on disability, but now I gave out all my secrets, including my nickname Mouse — which she promised never to use — and my recent incarceration.

Before I had time to think, she’d took the day off work, and I was sneaking her in between the air conditioner and Bob’s moldy garden hose. I had to bend some bushes to get her through, and they took some damage, but the Lamberts hardly went into the yard, far as I could tell.

I had a long sheet of plastic stretching to the edge under the house, so I could crawl on my stomach without getting dirty, and Boozanne surprised me with the ease she wormed on through. She weren’t afraid of the spiders or nothing. I went first and moved the bed aside, and she stood and took my hand, and stepped up into the room like a lady. It was a big hole, but she pretty much filled it. I’d told her I could go inside and unlock the back door for her, but she said the porch was too visible, and that was true. She went wandering around the house, while I slid the wood to cover the hole, enough so Bones couldn’t get out, and scooted the bed back in place so the room looked nice.

Boozanne came floating my way in the living room, with a cigarette, sipping from one of Melodie’s good glasses filled with a clear gold liquid. I hoped it wasn’t the scotch Bob was saving from his birthday. She’d stripped off her clothes and put on a see-through robe that left a gap in front, with pink nipples and red muff peeking out.

I grabbed her cigarette and flung it into the sink, even though the Lamberts wouldn’t be home for hours.

She clucked her tongue at me. “Such a worrier.” She held up her glass. “They’ve got all kinds of booze in the cabinet, Junior. I’m surprised you haven’t polished it off.”

“Now I shoulda told you — you got to be careful not to start suspicions. I hope that’s the Cutty’s.”

She tossed her curls. “Why drink Cutty’s when there’s Glenlivet?”

“Okay, just take it easy. We’ll add a little water. Don’t open new bottles and don’t drink more than a couple shots of any one thing.”

“No problem. There’s lots to try. I haven’t had this much fun since I was twelve and broke into the neighbors’.”

“Oh yeah? What’d you do?”

“Not much. Three of us girls — we just put a little hole in the screen door and got excited sneaking around, looking in the bedrooms. Adrenaline rush.”

“There is something to that,” I said.

“I don’t know why we didn’t check for money or take anything.”

“Maybe you didn’t need anything.”

“Oh, Junior, you always need money,” she said. She cuffed me on the chest.

“I don’t. Not always.”

“That’s why you’re special — besides this.”

She bent down and undid my belt and zipper, dropping my pants, and pulled me against her big powdered tits for a long sloppy kiss. I was useless, barely able to waddle to the bed and kick my pants off my knees so I could climb on top of her. I got her breathing hard, grunting and cooing, and we were both sweating rivers. I thought for a second about messing the sheets, but I had plenty of time to run laundry.

After that, Boozanne got the fancy platter out of the china cabinet, and the cloth napkins, and we ate a snack — olives and crackers and imported cheeses, a small chunk of goat cheese, Parmesan, some Stilton. I wouldn’t’ve touched the moldy stuff on my own, but the Lamberts had introduced me to lots of new food, and most of it was pretty damn tasty. Boozanne was still hungry so I made her a peanut butter and jelly, which was always safe, but she didn’t much like it.

She left around 3, and I was exhausted, but there was plenty of cleaning to do. I panicked when I picked up a juice glass and saw a white ring on the coffee table. I found some furniture spray that didn’t work, but while I stood there pulling out my hair, the ring started to lighten up, and it finally disappeared. I did the dishes and threw the napkins into the washer with the sheets. I hoped there was no ironing required.

Bones came out from somewhere to lay on me while I waited for the fabric softener cycle. He was purring and it felt good relaxing with him on my chest after the wild afternoon. “Bones,” I said, “here’s a woman who knows all about me and still likes me.” I massaged behind his ears and his jaw went slack because it felt so good. “I’m pretty damned fond of her too.” I couldn’t say the word love out loud, not even to Bones.

He stared me in the face with his big green eyes, and I thought I saw sadness. Course, he always looked like that, and just because Boozanne came around, I wasn’t gonna ditch him.

Soon Boozanne quit her job. It was understandable — all the typing they piled on her. She was consulting with a lawyer on some female issues too. I was glad to see more of her, but it was worrisome, her not having any money coming in. She had to turn in the car she had on lease, but luckily her apartment was on a bus route. We went on like that for a couple weeks, wild sex and a snack several afternoons. She passed some time looking through the Lamberts’s closets and drawers. I’d seen it all already, so I sipped whiskey and watched her flesh move around in that skimpy robe. Lucky I had the place memorized, cause caution was not her strong feature, and I had to make sure everything got put back. As it was, a wine glass got broke. They had plenty, so it was no problem, but she scared me sometimes — yet I couldn’t think of what I used to do without her.

I picked up bottles and cans for extra money, so I could pay for beer at night. A couple times I did dishes for cash. I wasn’t really allowed out of Kentucky, so I couldn’t take a job that checked records. I got into a neighbor’s storage shed and found an old waffle iron and ice skates to pawn, and let my gym membership go. I could swim and shower at the beach, and let my clothes dry on me Saturday and Sunday. I didn’t have much time to work out anyways with all the hours it took to scrounge. Boozanne got some kind of weekend job, just enough to keep up her rent until she could find something good. She wouldn’t take no cash from me.

In early July, the Lamberts went to California for a week. It was blocked out on their calendar ahead of time and Boozanne and me couldn’t wait. Boozanne moved right in and we took over the place. The first morning she cooked me biscuits and fluffy eggs like her grandma taught her, and we took our time eating, and left the dishes all day, and smoked a little of the weed that Boozanne found in Bob’s chest of drawers. The only problem was that Bones was shipped off somewhere so we didn’t have our pet. I wished I could have told Melly that I’d take care of him.

One day we were lazying around in the bedroom and I showed Boozanne Melodie’s “secret” drawer. Big mistake. My plan was to slip one of the old rings on her finger to see what she’d say, but she spotted Melodie’s gold heart right in front. It was a real delicate necklace that was usually missing, so I knew Melodie normally wore it a lot and must have left it home for safe keeping. Boozanne became instantly attached, but I didn’t want to let her take it. It wasn’t so much that I thought we’d get caught, but it was probably a present from Bob, or maybe even an heirloom. None of her other stuff was gold.

Boozanne put it around her neck and asked me to fasten it. “Please, baby?” She was stroking my bicep and I liked that.

“Just wear it while you’re here, then put it back.”

“My birthday’s coming up and I know you don’t have money to buy me a present.”

“When’s your birthday?”

“November, but you won’t have any money then either.”

It was true, and I had never bought her a gift.

“It’ll be a nice memento of our vacation,” she said. “Please, baby, please?”

I suggested a small silver heart that was far back in the drawer, but she was allergic to any metals except gold. I felt terrible about Melodie, but seeing how pretty the gold looked in Boozanne’s freckled cleavage, and how much she wanted it, I let her take it. Maybe I didn’t have a choice.

When the Lamberts got home, I checked for extra Kleenexes in Melodie’s bathroom trash, and there weren’t none, but over the weekend an extra lock was installed on each door, and that creeped me out. One more mistake and they’d start checking more carefully. I tried to get the heart back so I could plant it in a front pair of underwear in Melodie’s drawer, like it fell there, but Boozanne wouldn’t give it up. She didn’t understand my feelings about Melly and how I enjoyed having a home.

Things went good for a few more weeks, and then Boozanne got tired of the job hunt and lack of cash. Safe pickings for the pawn shop were running slim in the neighborhood, and without a car, it was tough. Boozanne said she had a plan to make some real money, live high on the hog for a while, do some traveling, then get an apartment of our own, a used car. Sneaking around was exciting at first, but she was tired of it. I didn’t want to leave the Lamberts, but my odds for getting caught were climbing, and I wanted Boozanne.

We were sitting on the couch, me petting Bones, when she told me the specifics.

“I’ll handle it,” she said. “We’ve got credit cards, Social Security numbers, birth certificates, checkbooks, bank statements, passports, and salable goods. You’ve heard of identity theft?”

“But they’re nice people. Melodie is. I don’t want to steal from them.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve been stealing from them for months.”

“Not enough to matter.”

“That’s what I’m saying. It’s time to do something that matters. They’ve got almost $10,000 in their checking account.”

“I can’t,” I said. “They’re like relatives.”

“And I’m not?”

When she put it like that, I had no argument. I’d only seen them at a distance and in pictures, but it still didn’t feel right.

“You don’t have to do anything,” she said. She went to the desk and brought back some insurance papers. “Look, they’re well-insured for their possessions — and the credit cards pay for fraudulent charges. I won’t write checks if you don’t want me to. It seems tricky anyway.”

“I can cut a hole somewhere else for the burglaring.”

“Too much trouble and you might not be as lucky. Besides, I already started.” She pulled two credit cards out of her pocketbook and held them in front of my face. There was one card for Melodie and one for Robert.

It was all real then, and my guts were shot out. “Jesus,” I said.

“We’ve got their spare cards, plus these new ones I applied for, $5,000 limit on each.”

She dug back into her pocketbook and pulled out a small satin pouch. Gold and cut stones glittered inside. “Necklace and earring set — charged off the Internet. I’ve got more stuff coming. We can get cash for these, and I bet you can find somebody to buy the passports.”

It was too late to stop her without calling in the law.

“I’ll fly us anywhere you want in the fifty states. You deserve it, baby,” she said.

I let her kiss me then, and when I felt those lips, my mind went into a haze, a vision of us sipping bourbon on the porch swing of a cozy cabin in the mountains of Kentucky, Boozanne exhaling smoke into the cool summer breeze.

Three weeks later was moving day. Boozanne had bought two suitcases on wheels, filled them with our new clothes and more high-end jewelry pieces she’d ordered. She was busy wrapping up old silver trays she’d found in a chest. I’d liquidated the necklace and earrings and some nice watches, and we had $6,000, airline tickets, and room reservations for someplace exotic — a surprise — and the new credit cards to charge whatever we needed when we got there. Visa and MasterCard had called about unusual activity, but Boozanne answered all their questions. We took the bills for those old cards out of the mailbox, so we had plenty of leeway before the Lamberts could notice anything wrong. She figured we could vacation for two weeks and still have resources to rent a place and get a cheap car after that. When we ran low on money, we’d start over, somewhere else. I was excited about traveling with Boozanne, but I still hated ripping off the Lamberts. They’d been good to me, in their way.

I finished wiping the furniture and appliances for fingerprints and closed the suitcases, and Boozanne was still poking around, wearing rubber gloves. Bones was sleeping on the couch and I gave him a goodbye pet, feeling real sad.

I went into the kitchen and looked at the clock. I couldn’t believe it. “Damn!” I yelled. “It’s a quarter to 7!”

I ran back into the living room. She was searching the bottom drawers of the desk.

“Boozanne! We gotta go. It’s not like we’re headed to a movie.”

“Five minutes. I don’t want to miss anything. Money goes fast on vacation.”

“We’re cutting it too close. I never stay this late.”

“No worries.” Just then she opened the drawer with the folders of silver dollars. I held my breath, hoping she’d pass them by again, thinking they were books.

She flipped open the first cover. “Oh, wow!” She lifted them out and carried them to the coffee table. She opened another and another.

“We don’t have room for those old coins. They’re too heavy,” I told her.

She pulled out a dollar and studied it. “Mouse, these could be worth a fortune! They’re antique silver dollars.”

“Naw, put ’em down. You’re allergic to silver. We gotta get out of here.”

“No way. Open the suitcase.”

“Boozanne, I won’t take ’em. They’re Melodie’s inheritance. It’s all she got.”

“You’re insane. Now open that suitcase, or I will. I’ll leave you here with your fucking Melodie.”

I didn’t have time to let that sink in. There was the sound of a car pulling into the carport. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered. I ducked and took a glance out the corner of the window. “It’s her.” I grabbed Boozanne’s hand, but she didn’t budge. “Come on!” I hollered. “We can make it out the hole.”

“I’m not leaving without the coins.”

I just stood there, unable to gather a thought. She was digging into her pocketbook.

“Stand next to the door,” she said. “Grab her mouth from behind and hold her.”

I did as I was told, and Boozanne ducked around the corner. In seconds, the key turned and poor Melly stepped inside. I yanked her from behind, clamping a hand over her mouth and kicking the door shut before she could scream. I pulled her down against me and fell half on top of her. She was more delicate than I thought, and her fine skin had wrinkles I never saw in the pictures, but she was beautiful. My eyes filled because I knew I hurt her. She whimpered and my heart broke. When I looked up, Boozanne was bent toward us, those freckled double-Ds spilling over her brassiere near my head, her purple shirt pulled up, covering her face and hair. The shirt was nylon, and she was stretching it so she could see through the thin mesh. A.25 in her other hand pointed straight into Melodie’s ear.

“What the fuck?” I was so stunned I let go of Melodie’s mouth, and she yanked her face sideways and screamed. I cut her off fast and pushed her head under my armpit, but she’d already seen my face. Bones was there, staring at me, his green eyes huge, not knowing whose side to be on.

“Move aside!” yelled Boozanne.

All I could think of was sweet Melodie’s brains splattered on my shirt. None of it her fault. I grabbed the barrel of the gun and tilted it toward the ceiling. I couldn’t risk any new ideas of Boozanne’s that might get Melly shot. “Go!” I yelled at Boozanne. “You go! I’ll hold her while you get away.”

“You sure?” she said. She didn’t sound too disappointed.

“Hurry up.”

She blew me a kiss, opened a suitcase, threw out my new clothes, and dropped in the books of coins. I stayed on top of Melodie, my head sagging onto her neck. I smelled her hair, clean and flowery. I tried to sooth her by stroking it. Bones gave paw onto my cheek, but seeing no treats, climbed up and sat on my back. I laid still while the squeaky wheels of the suitcases rolled past my nose.

“We could’ve been great together,” she said, “if one of us was a different person.”

I looked up and thought I saw a glint of tears in her eye, as she shut the door. Boozanne was gone, taking our dreams with her.

It all hit me then — Melodie would have no idea I saved her life, and she was never gonna think of me like a brother. She’d have a fit when she found out I’d been living there, intimate-like, with her and Bob, even if I did keep the house nice and feed Bones. Some of her ribs were likely broken too. I’d never be able to explain. I was headed back to the slammer for a long, long time.

I thought about Boozanne. I didn’t even know her real name and hadn’t never seen those airplane tickets to ponder where she was headed. It could’ve been so perfect, if she hadn’t got greedy. Our plan was to walk down to the bar, have a beer, call a taxi to the airport... She wouldn’t do that now.

Bob’s car pulled in, and I was still laying there, half on Melodie. My arm went limp, and Bones jumped off my back as I sat up. Melly rolled to her side wailing, her eyes glazed, flat as those silver dollars. I said, “Sorry, so sorry, Mel,” but she didn’t hear.

I leaned back against the wall and pictured Boozanne, down the block — big and bold as she was, in that purple shirt, sticking out her thumb — and a gold Cadillac stopping, its doors opening like wings, to fly her away.

The recipe by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera

Downtown

Listen, you either find a home for your mutt by tomorrow, or I’ll take it to the vet to put it to sleep.” Rob was speaking so loudly that I had to hold the cell phone a foot away from my ear. “I mean it, Lily, no more excuses — either you find it a home, or I swear I’ll do it for you.”

I knew Rob was not yet finished threatening me. Sure enough, less than ten seconds later, he added, “Lily, you have until 5 o’clock tomorrow afternoon — I already called the vet, and they’re open until 6.” In spite of the loud noises from the traffic, I could hear his breathing.

“Rob, I know you’re fed up with Royal. You’ve been so understanding, really — and I appreciate all you’ve put up with.” Although my heart was beating so fast that I thought it would burst through the cotton shirt I was wearing, I could not let Rob know how upset I was. I knew it was best to approach my husband from a position of strength. “I’m sorry, honey, but I can’t talk now — I’m late for an interview — can we please discuss it later, when I get home?”

“There’s nothing to discuss — you have twenty-four hours, period.” I flinched at the harsh sound the receiver made as Rob slammed the phone down. Although it was another unbearably hot steamy August day in Miami, I was ice cold.

I could feel my eyes begin to fill up with tears as I thought about what Rob had just said. I did not doubt for one second that he was capable of carrying out his threat. It was true that Royal, at his advanced age, would have accidents inside the house. Because he had problems with his digestion, he would pass gas often. In addition, it was easy for him to become disoriented: He would bark at odd hours and, every so often, wander outside and get lost. I had spent quite a few hours searching the neighborhood for him. In spite of those problems, though, Royal was in good health and, according to Dr. Roth, could last a few more years.

I had found Royal twelve years ago, late on a cold and wet night during the summer vacation after my freshman year in college. I had been gassing up my car when I heard a noise coming from the bushes next to the ladies’ room door and had gone to investigate. I found a tiny puppy, a bundle of shivering flesh no bigger than my hand, cowering in the corner. I picked him up, without any hesitation, and took him home. I bottle fed him every few hours for the next month, until he was healthy enough to eat on his own. Even Dr. Roth had not been able to tell what breed of dog Royal was — all he could say was that his mother had had a “hell of a Saturday night.”

Royal, who weighed over 140 pounds now, had wiry golden hair and enormous black eyes with lashes that curled up. One of his ears lay down and the other stood straight up. We had not spent a night apart since the day I had found him. I loved Royal with all my heart and could not imagine life without him.

Although it was clear that my relationship with Rob had been rocky for the past year, it was difficult for me to imagine how it had deteriorated to the point that Rob would actually threaten to put Royal down. As I sat there in my car, at the intersection of N.W. Twelfth Avenue and 12th Street, waiting for the traffic light to change, all I could do was ask myself: What happened to us? How could the relationship between two people who had been so in love, and so happy together, disintegrate in such a terrible way?

Rob and I had been married for five years. When we met, he had been a successful architect with a thriving practice, and I had been working as the in-house private investigator for one of Miami’s best known criminal defense attorneys.

I came from a family of lawyers, so, naturally, it was assumed that I would follow in my relatives’ footsteps and become an attorney, as they had. My parents, my brother, and a cousin, who all practiced criminal defense law, had offices located in a one-story, ramshackle building in Coconut Grove that they had purchased years before.

Due to the kind of law they practiced, they needed the services of a private investigator on a daily basis, so they always employed one in-house. During summer vacations, I would work in their offices, doing various clerical jobs. One summer, however, they had so many cases pending that I had to assist their in-house private investigator. After the first week of shadowing her as she went about, I knew I wanted to do.

I loved everything about the job — from interviewing witnesses to conducting surveillances. As soon as I graduated from college — I studied business at the University of Miami — I set my sights on my goal. For two years I interned at the office of one of the most successful criminal defense attorneys in Miami. Once I had fulfilled the state of Florida’s requirements to be issued a license, I began working.

Although I could have worked for my relatives, I did not think that was a good idea. I was fortunate in that the attorney at whose offices I had interned offered me a full-time job working for him, which I quickly accepted.

I met Rob while working a case that involved his architectural firm. When, a few days later, I bumped into him while shopping at my neighborhood deli, we struck up a conversation. It turned out we lived in the same neighborhood, had both studied at the University of Miami, and we went to the same church. As we were both unattached at the time, it seemed almost natural that we would begin dating. A year later we were engaged, and six months after that we were married.

The first four years of our marriage had been blissful — we lived in a town house in the Coconut Grove section of Miami that we had bought in a deplorable state but that with Rob’s know how and many contacts, had renovated to the point where it tripled in price.

Life had been good, so much so that we had even talked about starting a family. Then, suddenly and without notice, the architectural firm where Rob worked was forced to close, and he lost his job. It really wasn’t his fault: One of the senior partners had had a stroke and, as a result, had been unable to work, and the other partner then left his wife to marry his longtime mistress, something which was going to cost him plenty. Under such circumstances, the partners had decided to shut the office down, leaving twelve architects jobless.

Unfortunately, Rob had not been able to find another job — well, that was not exactly true. Other possibilities had materialized, but Rob insisted on holding out for a job with the same pay and status he had enjoyed at his old firm. Meanwhile, I became the sole supporter of the family.

Although I was making good money, it was not enough to pay our bills, so we had to take out a second mortgage, then, last month, a line of credit which enabled us to continue to live in the style we were used to. Our credit cards were maxed out and it was clear that we were in serious financial trouble. I was so worried that I actually began to listen to those credit counseling ads on television.

I had to sign all the loan documents as well — something which I strenuously objected to, but which Rob forced me to do. It was easier to give in than to fight him. Besides, at that point I was still in love with him, and believed in him and in what he told me. For a smart woman, sometimes I was pretty dumb.

Later, when the creditors were hounding us in full force, I found out that he had forged my signature on other loan applications. In spite of the fact that we were one step away from the poorhouse, Rob refused to cut down on our spending, proclaiming that we had to maintain our standard of living at all cost.

However, for the past few months, instead of going out and trying to find another job, Rob had been going to the gym, where he was now spending six to eight hours a day. As long as I had known him, he had never before shown any interest in working out, so I was a bit surprised that he threw himself into it so wholeheartedly.

At first I thought that he had begun seeing another woman, and was getting his body into shape for her, but after following him around for a few hours for a couple of days, I knew that I was mistaken. He actually did go to the gym to work out. In almost no time, he lost all kinds of weight, and his body became hard as a rock. Every night when I came home from work, he would show me his “six-pack” and tell me how low his body fat was. He had transformed himself from sedentary architect to full-fledged bodybuilder.

Exercising was normally considered beneficial for a person, but in Rob’s case it was completely different. He became mean and abusive, and would wait for me to come home from work to berate me. Our relationship collapsed to the point that, had I been able to do so, I would have left him. Unfortunately, our financial situation was so dire that I would have been saddled with much of his debt; I would be paying it off for the rest of my life. And it wasn’t just for financial reasons that I stayed with him. As a practicing Catholic, I took my marriage vows seriously and had married Rob for life. Evidently, we were now in the poorer part of the “for richer and for poorer” stage.

Now, with Rob’s threats to euthanize Royal, the situation had reached the point of no return. I had to find a way of keeping my dog, no matter what it took. At that point in our relationship, if I’d had to choose between my husband and my dog, the dog would win, hands down.

Unfortunately, I could not formulate a plan for how to deal with Rob and the Royal situation just then, as I was on my way to the Dade County Jail to interview a client represented by the criminal defense attorney for whom I worked. According to the preliminary notes that Adrian, my boss, had given me earlier that day, the client was charged with first degree murder.

It seems that Mr. Campos, our client, had plotted and planned to kill his next door neighbor, a young man he had come to loathe in such a way that living next to him had become unbearable. I had no idea what the circumstances surrounding the murder were, as Adrian had not given any details in his notes. We had been working together for so many years that he trusted me to get all the relevant information.

Once I arrived at the jail, I walked over to the far corner of the waiting room and handed my driver’s license to a corrections officer seated behind the bullet proof glass, along with my private investigator’s license and a letter from Adrian stating he was the attorney representing Mr. Lionel Campos.

Back at my office, I had skimmed the “A form” — the arrest affidavit — and learned that Mr. Campos had been born in Cuba, was sixty years of age, married, and lived in Hialeah, just like thousands of other Cubans who had come to Miami fleeing Fidel Castro. As I waited in the interview room, I decided to spend the time reading the rest of the A form. According to the report, Mr. Campos had killed his neighbor, a Mr. Kent Murphy, twenty-eight years old, Caucasian (or, as they were referred to in Miami demographics, a non-Hispanic white), single.

I was on my third reading of the A form when Mr. Campos walked in. I don’t know what I had expected, but it sure as hell was not the slight, sallow-looking, white-haired individual with the twinkling blue eyes that came into the interview room.

I stood up and extended my right hand. “Mr. Campos? I’m Lily Ramos, the investigator from your attorney Mr. Langer’s office.”

Mr. Campos shook my hand, even as he checked me over with a skeptical look on his face. I was not surprised at his reaction, as I knew I did not fit most individuals’ preconceived idea of what a private investigator should look like. I was small — five feet tall if the wind was blowing right — and, although curvy, I only tipped the scales at one hundred pounds. I was olive-skinned, with straight, shoulder-length, light-brown hair and caramel-colored eyes. Although I carried a big, heavy gun — a Colt .45 (I had bad vision, so I wanted to make sure that if I had to shoot someone, I would not miss my mark) — I was not exactly intimidating.

“You have some kind of ID?” Mr. Campos was not the first client who doubted me, so I had come prepared. I took out one of my business cards from inside my notepad and handed it over to him. I waited while Mr. Campos carefully examined it, turning the small white card over as if there might be a secret message somewhere on it. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine,” I answered. Then, thinking I was sounding just a bit too curt, I added, “I just had a birthday.”

“You look very young — maybe twenty,” Mr. Campos commented. It was not meant as a compliment and I did not take it as such. “Okay, we can start. What do you want to know?”

“Well, could you please tell me a bit about yourself, and then we’ll talk about what happened — ending up with how and why you’re here,” I said. “Whatever you tell me will be kept in the strictest of confidence.”

Mr. Campos, who had come over with his wife from Cuba thirty years before, had lived in the same house in Hialeah since then. He had worked as an automobile mechanic — he specialized in repairing air conditioners — at the same store since his arrival in Miami. His wife worked in a factory, as a seamstress. Although they had been very happy together, the couple had no children — “a great sadness,” as he said.

Mr. Campos told me that he had retired from his job five years before, not by choice, but on his doctor’s orders, due to a heart condition which was being aggravated by his work as an air conditioner repairman. His wife, who was ten years younger than him, continued to work. According to Mr. Campos, he did not like just hanging out with other old guys — all they did was drink cheap beer, play dominos, and tell lies about life back in Cuba — so he dedicated himself to improving their home, thinking that if he were to fix up the place nicely, he and his wife could sell it, and with the profits they were sure to make, move into an assisted-living community. He spent hours landscaping the garden, and took great pride in the results.

Mr. Campos also began to take an interest in cooking, and said he very much enjoyed surprising his wife with the meals he had prepared for her when she came home from work. He would try out new recipes, tweaking the ingredients here and there until he was satisfied. He even invented several recipes for marinating especially tough cuts of meat before barbequing them, some of which were so successful that his wife asked for a list of the ingredients. Life was good, and it seemed that it would only get better.

It had been two years ago, when the new neighbors moved in, that the “trouble” began. The owner of the house next door had died, and his children sold the home to a gay couple. At first, although he disapproved of gay people and the “gay lifestyle,” Mr. Campos had tried to be a good neighbor, greeting them whenever he saw them, even talking to them on occasion. Yet neither the Campos nor the couple ever went into each others’ homes, and it continued that way for the first year.

It was during the second year that the situation started to deteriorate. The gay couple began having trouble — first arguments, then shouting matches that escalated into physical attacks on each other, which became so violent that the police had to come on several occasions. Finally, much to everyone’s relief, one of the men moved out, and peace was restored in the neighborhood.

All was going well until the day when the remaining neighbor decided to buy a dog to help himself get over his loneliness. Everything would have been fine except for the fact that he was not just a dog, but a mastiff, a huge animal which barked all day. When he wasn’t barking, the dog was howling.

The neighbor, who worked as a personal trainer in one of the giant gyms located in a mall a few miles away from home, was away for hours at a time, which meant the dog was alone — and lonely — a condition that he let everyone know about.

Mr. Campos told me he liked dogs all right, but the neighbor’s mastiff drove him crazy. Not only did he bark and howl, he also left enormous smelly poops all over the neighborhood. The dog was especially fond of defecating on Mr. Campos’s front lawn, marring the landscaping he had so meticulously worked on. Mr. Campos told the neighbor on numerous occasions to pick up after his dog, but the neighbor did not pay any attention, and continued to let his dog run wild. Mr. Campos even put up a fence to keep the dog out, but the animal just jumped over it.

Mr. Campos went on to tell me that he began plotting how best to remedy the situation. He had become so consumed by his relationship with his neighbor and dog that he began thinking about it almost continuously. Things got so bad that his wife told him to get over it and deal with it, or, if he couldn’t do it by himself, get professional help. The fact that his wife told him he needed to see a psychiatrist had been the last straw. He had to do something about the dog, and he had to act fast, while he still had his sanity.

As I listened to Mr. Campos run through the events which led to him killing his neighbor, it was not difficult to see how it had been almost inevitable. As the time passed, it became clear to Mr. Campos that it was either the dog or him.

The longer the interview went on, the more I tried not to think about the situation with Rob, Royal, and me, and I slowly began listening to Mr. Campos’s story with more of a personal interest than a professional one.

Mr. Campos told me that he came to the conclusion that the only way to save his sanity — not to mention his property — was to kill the dog. It was after much contemplation that he decided that the best, most efficient, and least painful way to get rid of the animal was to poison him. That night, for the first time in months, instead of sitting by the window, lying in wait for the neighbor’s dog to shit on his front lawn, he slept through until morning.

First, he went to the library, where he conducted research on poisons, and he didn’t leave until he found one which would not only kill without leaving any trace, but which was so quick and effective that the victim would not suffer. Mr. Campos took a bus across town, to a neighborhood where he was not known, and purchased a bag of that same poison.

Then, Mr. Campos told me in a perfectly calm and detached manner, all he had to do was wait for the perfect opportunity. Not wanting to get caught, he knew he had to be patient and wait for the perfect time to carry out his plan. It was as if God was helping him, he said, when his wife announced that she was going away for a few days, to visit her sister in New Jersey. As soon as her taxi pulled out of their driveway, he set out to purchase a juicy steak at Publix.

Mr. Campos told me he returned home with a five-pound sirloin steak, red, plump, and marbled with just the right amount of fat. As he wanted to make sure that the dog would come over to eat the meat, Mr. Campos decided to light the barbeque in his backyard and let the smell of the meat on the grill waft over to his neighbor’s house. He lit the barbeque and, while the charcoals were getting nice and hot, stuffed a handful of the poison inside the steak. Then he placed the steak on the sizzling grill and waited for the dog to jump the fence.

Less than one minute later, he saw the dog stick his head over the fence. Mr. Campos, pleased that his plan was working so well, decided that it was time for nature to take its course and went inside the house. He sat in his favorite chair in the living room and turned on the television.

From the research he had conducted on the Internet, he knew that the poison would act almost instantaneously, but even so, he decided he would wait thirty minutes before going outside to check on the dog. It was a working-class neighborhood, and Mr. Campos knew there would not be anyone about at that time of the morning, so he was not worried that any of the other neighbors would see him dragging the dog around to the back of his yard to properly dispose of the body.

Imagine his surprise, Mr. Campos told me, upon discovering not a dead dog next to the barbeque, but its owner. The neighbor, dressed in his usual workout clothes, was lying next to the gym bag he always carried. The dog kept circling around his master’s body, whimpering softly.

The only explanation that Mr. Campos — in his near panicked state — could come up with was that the neighbor had arrived home unexpectedly, and had smelled the steak cooking on the Campos’s grill. The entire neighborhood knew of Mr. Campos’s predilection for barbequing — it was possible to smell from miles away the secret recipe he used to marinate the meat — so the fact that there had been something cooking on the grill was not unusual.

Seeing that there wasn’t anyone around, the neighbor must have decided to steal the meat, which looked and smelled so very appetizing. He must not have been able to wait until he had gotten home to taste it, and bit into the meat right then and there.

Seeing his neighbor lying in his yard had almost brought on a stroke. Mr. Campos told me that as repulsive as it was, he bent over the neighbor and touched him, to see if he could find a pulse. As he leaned over, he saw red juice coming out of the neighbor’s mouth, confirming his initial theory about how he had ended up there, lying dead next to the grill.

In spite of his shock at having killed the neighbor, Mr. Campos could not help being angry at him — the bastard had been stealing his steak!

Mr. Campos insisted that there was no way he was going to go to jail, especially as it had been a complete accident. Mr. Campos was no lawyer, but he knew that Florida had the death penalty, and he was determined to avoid that fate. After having successfully fled the giant prison that Castro had made of his beloved Cuba, he was not about to die in an American jail.

Mr. Campos told me that on that day he had been lucky that he had time on his hands — his wife was out of town, and for the next few hours there wouldn’t be many people walking around the neighborhood — so he could think clearly about how to properly dispose of the body. After deliberating for awhile, he decided that he would follow the plan he had thought of initially, had it been the dog who had died: He would chop up the body and bury it in the backyard. He headed to the garage where he had set up his workshop, got out his electric saw, the powerful one he had bought after Hurricane Andrew hit Miami and he’d had to cut up the trees littering his property.

First, he had to enlarge the hole he had dug earlier in the back part of the yard so it could accommodate a larger body. He had dug the hole as far away from the street — and prying eyes — as possible, to give himself time to bury the dog. Even though it meant more work for him — he now had to drag a heavier body — he was grateful he’d had the foresight to choose that spot. Even so, he was surprised to find out how much the man’s body weighed.

After placing the neighbor in the center of the hole, Mr. Campos got ready to cut it up. The first step was to put on his safety glasses — he certainly didn’t want to hurt himself during the sawing process — and then he plugged the cord into the outside wall with an extension cord. His preparations complete, Mr. Campos began the task of slicing up his neighbor. He told me that throughout the process, the dog had just lay silently by the wall, watching the proceedings. I tried to block out a mental image of Royal, and how he would react if someone were to cut me up. Somehow — old, sick, and senile as he was — I don’t think he would just sit quietly by and watch.

Mr. Campos told me that when he first began to cut up the body, he was a bit taken aback at how much effort it required. He figured that it had been so difficult because he’d had to slice through mostly bone and muscle. The neighbor had once told Mrs. Campos that he was not only a physical trainer, but a champion bodybuilder as well — and those types had no body fat at all.

I have to confess that it was difficult holding onto my composure as I listened to my client describe his actions on that horrific afternoon, especially when he spoke about the neighbor’s dog. Private investigators are never supposed to show emotion, as that can result in the interviewee clamming up. Even though the client may have committed unspeakable acts, no one wants to be openly judged, especially by someone who is supposed to be helping him or her. If a client were to suspect that I thought he or she was disgusting, they would hold back information, and might even lie to show themselves in the best light possible.

Mr. Campos, clearly, had no such hesitations: He was giving me all the gruesome details of what he had done, speaking in a plain and straightforward manner, without any attempt to make himself look good. In his eyes, he had done what he had done to protect his sanity and his property: He had come up with a viable plan to kill the dog that had caused so many problems. The fact that his carefully thought out plan had gone awry was simply too bad.

“So then, Lily — I can call you that, or would you prefer that I address you as Miss Ramos?” Suddenly, and without notice, Mr. Campos broke off from his narration, frightening me. I would have much rather kept the interview on an impersonal note.

“Lily is fine, Mr. Campos,” I replied. “So, after you cut up the neighbor’s body, then what did you do?”

He took a deep breath before answering. “As I told you, when I was cutting him up, I saw how very, very hard his body was — all muscle, no fat — and I was afraid that if I buried it that way, the gases that get into bodies after a few days would cause the body to stink, and then blow up. You see, Lily, the dog was easier to get rid of — smaller and all that.” He shook his head slowly, almost regretfully. “Now I had to think of a way of getting rid of a human body without leaving evidence.”

Because Rob had become such a gym rat, I too was aware of the fact that many bodybuilders have almost no body fat. After spending almost all of his waking hours in the gym lifting weights, Rob had sculpted his body to such an extent that on the very few occasions I touched him lately, it felt like I was running my hand over a rock. I knew exactly what Mr. Campos meant when he described the neighbor’s body.

“So what did you do?” It frightened me, but I had lost all pretense of asking for professional reasons.

“I marinated him,” Mr. Campos replied. “And then, when he was soft enough, I barbequed him.”

“You what?” I had to restrain myself from reaching across the interview table and shaking the answer out of him.

“Lily, remember that one of my specialties is creating marinades that break down the fibers of cheap, tough cuts of meat so they will be tender enough to barbeque.”

I nodded.

“Well, I figured if my marinades — there was one in particular which breaks down the sinews of chuck-grade meat — worked on a tough cut of low-grade steak, why wouldn’t it work on a human being?”

As much as I disliked admitting it, I could follow Mr. Campos’s logic perfectly — worst of all, however, was that my mind had now gone into overdrive. “So you marinated him?”

Mr. Campos just looked straight ahead. I took that to be a yes.

“For how long?”

He kept staring at the opposite wall. I hoped he was not shutting down on me — I still needed to extract certain information.

“Mr. Campos, please answer my question: How long did you marinate the body before you felt he was ready to be barbequed?”

“Overnight,” Mr. Campos finally answered. “I put him on the grill the next morning, after everyone in the neighborhood had left for work.” He shrugged his shoulders and continued with his explanation. “I would have liked to marinate him longer, but my wife called to tell me she was cutting her trip short and would be coming home that night.”

I sat back and thought about what he had just told me. “What happened to the dog?”

“Ah! The dog!” I could see the faint outlines of a sweet smile on Mr. Campos’s face. “It was because of the dog that I got caught. That’s why I’m here.”

“Can you explain that to me, please?” I couldn’t recall having read anything about the dog in the A form.

“Well, of course, after the death of the neighbor, the dog didn’t have any place to live, so my wife, bless her, decided to take him in until the owner came back.” Mr. Campos leaned over the interview table and shook his index finger at me to emphasize his point. “Remember, at that point no one knew what had happened to the owner. Everyone still figured he was coming back.”

I thought for a minute about what he had just said. “So why is it the dog’s fault you’re here? I mean, you did him a kindness — you offered him a home.”

“Ay, Lily — it was because one day he dug up his owner’s bones, dug them up from where I buried them in the backyard. And not just that — he did it while the detectives were at our house, interviewing my wife and me, asking us questions about our neighbor’s disappearance.” Mr. Campos shook his head at the absurdity of it all.

I thought about the dog, and how he had remained faithful to his owner until the very end. Then I thought about Rob, and what he intended to do to Royal tomorrow if I didn’t find him a home.

Suddenly, I shoved my notepad over to Mr. Campos. “Please write down the recipe for the marinade you used to break down the tough fibers in the neighbor’s body.”

Mr. Campos did not move — instead he just stared at me, a knowing look in his eyes. Then, just as I was about to lose hope, he picked up the pen and began to write.

T-Bird by John Bond

Miami River

Before poker I was an insurance claims investigator, a corporate private eye with a short-sleeved white shirt and skinny tie, sometimes catching scumbags but mostly helping big guys screw little guys out of benefits they were entitled to. I put ten years experience to work on my own disability claim — a psych claim, though you can’t buy a decent psych policy anymore. Now I just open the mail for my check once a month and play poker. I’m never wearing a tie or watch again. The trick is to keep your head straight, not be sucked in, not to want too much.

I play at McKool’s, a sweet two-table poker room in a Miami River warehouse, minutes from the Dolphin Expressway. Across the bridge from the downtown ramps to I-95, it has easy access, drawing players from Boca to Homestead. McKool runs six nights a week, says if you don’t give players Saturdays with their wives, then the wives won’t let ’em play. I wouldn’t know from wives, and with any luck never will.

Texas Hold’em’s hot, and I play it, but I prefer Omaha 8-or-better high-low split, which McKool spreads on Fridays. There’s more to think about in high-low, and a lot of seductive starting hands, trap hands which suck people in. I scoop both sides in split-pot games more than anybody. That’s why McKool calls me Bobby Two-ways. Everybody has a nick-name: Rebel, Bumper, Luckbucket, Goombah. Everybody except McKool.

McKool’s has a kitchen girl who knows how you take your coffee, what you want on your sandwich, what snacks you like. I catch two meals every play, and sometimes hit the fridge for a takeout bag at the end of the night. There’s a shower, for guys who play all night and then head straight to the office. McKool’s got a smoking room in back with its own vent system, and another room with two computers so people can play online poker while waiting for a seat. Both rooms have queen-size beds — some guys take a little nap then get up to play more, or snooze for an hour before heading to work.

I met McKool when he first came back to Miami after twenty years in the army, before he opened up his room. We were playing in the big game at Black Jack’s, down in Ocean Reef — $100-$200-limit Hold’em. We’d played all night and were down to the hard cores. Only four of us remained. Tommy Trash — he had the garbage contract for the Keys — had lost $20k-plus, and wanted to play a four-handed $25k freezeout, winner take all. McKool had gotten beat up pretty badly too, and didn’t have the buy-in. I’d been the big winner. So I bought McKool’s cherry-red 1962 Ford Thunderbird Sports Roadster convertible with a 390 V-8 300 hp engine for twenty-five grand — a steal. The four of us played for the hundred thousand. It only took a couple of hours for McKool and me to bust out Tommy and Jack and get heads up. We played and played and played. And played some more. Fourteen hours later McKool busted me. His mental toughness and physical conditioning for the long sit made the difference. He won the hundred grand, and offered me $30k to buy back the T-bird. But I liked it and said no.

McKool used that win to bankroll opening his place. He’s offered me forty, then fifty, and recently sixty grand for the car. I’m not much into things, but I love that ragtop. Besides, it’s good when The Man wants something he can’t have from you.

I don’t really have friends, but McKool and I know we can rely on each other. I think I’m the only player in the game who has his private cell. I do a lot for McKool: recruit from the parimutuels; deal when somebody calls in sick; give up my seat when he needs to fit a live one in. Mostly I show up for the afternoon gin game before start time and stay through the last hand. Starters and finishers are key to running a profitable house game, getting games off early and keeping them going late.

My trouble started at McKool’s Thursday game, No Limit Hold’em night, five hundred minimum/a thousand maximum buy-in, five and ten blinds. Rebel — Rebecca Ellen O’Shaunessy — strolled in after her shift as bartender at a trendy South Beach club, as she did a couple of nights a week.

Rebel’s easy on the eyes, all natural. To see her is to want her. She’d sweetly turned me down more than once. Mid-twenties, about 5’6", maybe 115 pounds, green eyes and auburn-almost-red hair, perfect spinner bod. The kind of girl men would leave their wives for in a heartbeat. McKool uses Rebel like he uses me, like he uses everybody — hustling here, cajoling there, pushing buttons, building up a stash of favors so butts are in seats and the cards are always in the air by 7:00, and the game goes on toward dawn and beyond. Knowing the hottie was coming kept early players hanging on late, and gave the late players reason to arrive early. We rarely broke before sunrise when Rebel played.

Poker’s not a game where you have to be the best player in the world — just the best at the table. Winning players aren’t welcome at most private games. We take cash from the game, use it to pay rent and buy groceries. A houseman wants action. Gambling fools. The suckers who look for any excuse to play a hand, who don’t understand that more often than not the right play is to pass, not get involved. Live ones attract players, working pros drive them away. I’ve been barred from the weekly games at the Coconut Grove Yacht Club and Lauderdale Country Club. I help McKool not because I’m a nice guy, but so he’ll let me play in his juicy lineup of fish.

Rebel did her grand-entrance thing, giving this one a wink, tousling that one’s hair, stroking the other’s arm. Escort Randy — he owns a low-rent Internet escort agency, buck-fifty-an-hour girls, mostly but not all skanks — asked her for the zillionth time if she’d work for him, and for the zillionth time she smacked him on the arm, then gave him a hug. I like Randy — he gives me a twenty-dollar discount on calls.

McKool had his usual crew on hand: three dealers, Lilith the kitchen girl, and Cartouche, the half-Senegalese half-Moroccan from Montreal McKool had hooked up with in some little jungle war. Cartouche didn’t exactly have a job, though he sometimes dealt and even sometimes cooked. He just stood by McKool’s side, a silent giant.

Rebel sat down and set off on a chip fry like she hated her money. No Limit’s a dangerous game for people who play fast. In limit games, when you make a mistake, you lose a bet or maybe a pot. In No Limit, when you make a mistake, you lose everything. Rebel got herself stuck fifteen hundred in less than twenty minutes, and soon had McKool pinned in a corner, stroking his arm, giving him that damsel-in-distress look.

McKool sometimes gives regulars a nickel or dime’s credit juice-free, but only until the next play, up to a week max. Having players on the book is a necessary evil of the business. Problem is, when they owe you money, the next time they have a few bucks they take that money someplace else to play, instead of paying you. McKool, after his twenty years in Special Forces, doesn’t have a lot of collection problems. Plus he has Cartouche. McKool’s rule is only lend to people who have money to pay you back right away. I knew Rebel wasn’t getting a penny more out of McKool.

She looked around the room, caught me eying her. She stuck out her lower lip in a pouty way, and mouthed “please.” I shook my head. She smiled and shrugged, then grabbed Skip Converse, one of Miami’s slimiest shysters, and pulled him away from the table. A minute later he plopped his big butt back in his seat — Skip’s a fish with no clue when to pass and hates to miss a hand. Reb sashayed over to the other table, draped her arms around Big Country’s shoulders, and whispered something in his ear. He got up and they stepped into one of the back rooms.

“Chick already owes me five hundred,” Skip said. “I told her the next nickel would require sex. Can’t imagine why she passed.”

Five minutes later they came out of the back, Big Country laughing like a schoolboy. He bought two racks of reds from McKool and handed them to Rebel. She gave him a full-contact hug, something more than affectionate, and a kiss on the cheek.

“Thanks, Country, you’re a real gentleman,” she said. “I’ll crush these fuckers, but if for some reason they escape, I promise you’ll have it back Sunday.” Then she terrorized the game. One hand she came over the top on Big Country and moved him off a big pot. I knew from the way she stared him down she’d bluffed him off. Lending people money to play against you is a bad bet. If they lose, you won’t see it anytime soon. If they win, you lose. But I understand not being able to say no to a pretty girl. What man doesn’t? In a couple of hours Reb won back the fifteen hundred she’d lost, the dime she’d borrowed from Big Country, and seven hundred sugar. Then she did something she almost never does. She locked up her win.

While McKool counted her down, Rebel came over, rested her hand oh-so-lightly on my inside thigh, and blew gently on my neck, sending a shiver down my neck and making my dick hard. She whispered in my ear, “Two-ways, I need your help. Meet me upstairs at the Road in an hour?”

I hate being manipulated by anybody, especially women. “Make it an hour and a half,” I said.

As she headed to the door, Skip called out to her: “Hey, Rebel, what about my five bills?”

She smiled sweetly. “Next week, Skip.”

Cartouche gave Rebel a look; she understood that really meant next week.

Every eye in the room followed her as she walked out. If God had ever made a more perfect ass than Rebel’s, he kept it for himself.

I cashed out then headed down South River, the full moon behind me. Downtown and Little Havana meet here in Riverside, not far from the Orange Bowl. I often play dominos with the old Cubanos at Marti Park before heading to afternoon gin at McKool’s.

Miami had been born along the river. South River Drive, with all its banyans, ficus, and palms, runs southeast-to-northwest by the riverbank, cul-de-sacs and dead ends off it on the river side. This once was a working river, but the fishing boats on the east end had given way to condos and office towers, though piles of lobster pots and crab traps lay stacked here and there along the banks. Scattered small freighter terminals serviced seedy tramps running back and forth to the Bahamas, Haiti, and other islands. Most of South Florida’s stolen bicycles and chopped-up car parts found their way into these cargo holds, and more than a little of the area’s dope came through here.

I parked by a sand-yellow, two-story stucco building on the riverbank: Miami’s oldest bar, Tobacco Road. During Prohibition, rum-runners out of Bimini had unloaded their wares from the river behind the building, under the protection of the local sheriff. The day Prohibition ended, the bar opened fully stocked and has never closed since. Most Miami bars close at 2, but the Road has a grandfathered late-night license. I arrived twenty minutes late, figured if Rebel wanted something then keeping her waiting a bit would establish negotiating control. I climbed the narrow staircase to the tiny upstairs bar, but she hadn’t arrived. I sat at a cocktail table, ordered a mojito from Maidel, the-waitress-who-wrote-blues-lyrics-about-three-legged-dogs-and-lovelorn-artists, listened to a frumpy grad student reading incomprehensible poetry from the tiny stage, and waited.

She arrived ten minutes later, on her arm a handsome blond guy. I stood as they approached. She kissed me on the lips, almost but not quite tonguing me. “Bobby, this is my boyfriend Dmitri. Dima, this is Bobby Two-ways, the poker player who used to do insurance investigations.”

Dmitri smiled, showing hillbilly teeth. “Rebecca tells me you are a man to be trusted,” he said with a thick Russian accent. “That you do the right thing.”

I shot a glance at Rebel. In an after-game bull session one night, I’d told her I could always be trusted to do the right thing. The right thing for me, that is. She’d laughed, and many times since had made sly comments about “the right thing” with a wink and a knowing smile. “What’s this about, Reb?”

“How’d you like to fuck me, Bobby?”

“Fuck you out of what?”

She licked her lips. “Really.”

“Really? Like in sex? How’s Dmitri here feel about that?”

“It’s his idea.”

“I’m not big on audiences.” I thought she was inviting me to do a three-way with them. “And he’s cute, but definitely not my type.”

Rebel shook her head. “No, no, nothing like that. I need money. Big money. Dima came up with a scam we can work. We need a third person. All you got to do is fuck me.”

“It would have to be after 2. I don’t do mornings.”

“You’d fuck me on I-95 in the middle of morning rush hour with your mother watching.”

She was right, of course. I’d drag my dick through a mile of broken glass for a chance at her. Anyplace, anytime. “Why do you need money so bad?”

She laughed, not an amused laugh but a sharp one. “Why does anybody need money? And why do you care? We can score. Big money. Low risk. If this was a no-limit hand you’d shove your stack in. You get ten percent for a half hour’s work.” She pressed her breasts against my arm, rested her hand high on my thigh under the table, breathed on my neck, and said huskily, “If you call this work.”

Dmitri leaned toward me, whispered the details — a law-suit scam, like those teams that stage car accidents to rip off insurance companies. I’d sent my share of those scumbags to jail, back when. He’d cased the target well, had the timing down. Litigation potential hit seven figures, easy. A quick settlement was worth a half mill, minimum.

Poker players make fast decisions, always on incomplete information — hundreds, thousands of dollars won or lost in a blink. Good players make quality reads of situations. We get into our opponent’s mind. What is he thinking? What does he think I’m thinking? What does he think I think he’s thinking? Anticipate what he’s going to do, what he wants you to do, make the play that uses his thoughts against him. Investigating this as a claim, what would I go after? As a scammer, how would I avoid what the investigator would look for? What would the investigator think a scammer would be thinking? How could I use those thoughts against him?

“It’s probably a winner,” I said. Solid poker players, like insurance companies, act on risk-reward ratio. But it’s more than just the odds. If ninety-nine percent of the time you get a good result, but one percent of the time the result is horrendous, then even a 99–1 favorite can be a bad bet. Dmitri’s scheme looked good, yet even a slim chance of winding up in the slam made this an easy fold for me. “But I like my life the way it is.” I laid a twenty on the table for my drink and Maidel’s tip, and stood up. “Sorry, I’m out.”

Rebel grabbed my wrist and yanked me back into my seat.

“Twenty-five percent,” Dmitri said.

I live well, but not fancy, in a nice one-bedroom a block from the beach in Surfside. I have my T-bird. I have $70k sitting in a box at Banque de Geneve in Nassau, $20k buried in coffee cans in the trees lining the seventh fairway at Doral, and my working bankroll of $10k stashed in a shoebox in my AC vent. If they hit for $1.5 mill, the lawyer took a third — $250k would make a gigantic difference in my life. Enough to bankroll me for a shot at the World Poker Tour, maybe the big one at Binion’s. Maybe even buy a little condo. “No,” I said.

Rebel moved her hand up under the table and unsnapped my pants, pulled down the zip of my jeans, and slipped her hand into my boxers.

“All right,” Dmitri said. “Even split. One-third each.”

Rebel gently ran her nails up and down my rock-hard dick. She came close and whispered in my ear with hot breath, “Please, Two-ways?”

I shook my head no. “Okay. A third.”

Friday I got up early, around noon, and drove up the Palmetto to Alligator Alley and cruised across the Everglades to Fort Myers in my T-bird with the top down. I found a Super Wal-Mart and bought a black long-sleeved shirt, two pairs of black socks, a Yankees cap, wraparound shades, a pair of flared black jeans a couple of inches longer in the inseam than usual, four dog leashes, a roll of duct tape, a box of flesh-colored latex gloves, a box of safety matches, a $12 Casio watch, a dark-blue bandanna, a showercap, a small plastic wastebin, a five-gallon gas can, a bottle of Astroglide, a package of three condoms, and a small backpack. Cash, of course. Then I went to Payless and purchased a pair of size-eleven shoes with four-inch cork platforms — told the nearly oblivious clerk they were a gift, to explain why a size-nine guy was buying elevens. I bought a roll of quarters at a beach-front arcade, then stopped into a Supercuts for a buzzcut.

I drove home across the Alley, the winter sun setting behind me. I headed to the never-ending traffic construction on Biscayne, found a job on a deserted side street, hopped out of the T-bird, grabbed two orange traffic cones and a barricade, threw them in my trunk, then drove across the bay. I cruised South Beach waiting for a suitable parking space to open up on Washington. One finally did right where I wanted, just south of Lincoln Road. I pulled up alongside it, set the cones and barricade in it, and headed home.

I filled the T-bird and the five-gallon gas can at the Mobil on Harding around the corner from my apartment, then put the gas can in the trunk. In my apartment-house parking lot I looked about, found a perfect pebble — about a quarter-inch, rounded, with no sharp edges — and pocketed it. I placed my purchases in the backpack in the order I’d need them, last items on the bottom, first on top, shoved in a big green trash bag, then set the radio alarm for 9:45 and settled in for a nap to catch up on my lost sleep.

Jimmy Buffet woke me singing “Margaritaville” on the classic rock station. I spent a half hour shaving every hair off my body from the eyes down. I trimmed my eyebrows, made sure I had no loose eyelashes, then showered, wiping every speck of hair off my body. I dressed in my usual blue jeans and tee, strapped on the Casio, grabbed the backpack, put the pebble, quarters, and a plastic hotel key card Dmitri had given me in my pocket and headed out. In the parking lot I unscrewed the little light bulb over my license tag, put the trash can from Wal-Mart in the trunk with the gas, and threw the backpack on the passenger seat. I checked the Casio — an hour forty to go.

I drove past the Jackie Gleason across Lincoln Road to Washington Avenue, with all its spiffed-up Deco buildings — pastel paint jobs and colored lights showing off the architectural accents. I pulled up to my space, threw the cones and barricade back in the trunk, and parallel parked. South Beach parking spaces on weekend nights are like gold. I filled the meter with four hours’ worth of quarters, then ambled down to the 11th Street Diner. The 11th is famous for the best meatloaf sandwiches this side of your mom’s kitchen and the best milkshakes anywhere. But it suited me this night because it’s 24/7 and bustles with club-goers from around 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

I made my way past the crowded booths to the john in back, stepped into a stall, and hung the backpack on the hook on the door. I pulled out the Wal-Mart black jeans, socks, and black shirt and changed into them. I put on the showercap, tied the bandanna around my head so that not a single hair showed, pulled the Yankees cap over it, and slipped on the wraparounds. I shoved the extra socks into the toes of the platforms and set the pebble carefully so it rested just under my arch, and put on the shoes. I pulled on a pair of the flesh-colored latex gloves, shoved my sneaks, jeans, and T-shirt into the backpack.

Then I sat on the pot for five minutes so nobody who’d been in the bathroom still lingered, stepped out of the stall, through the diner, and back onto Washington. The SoBe party crowd milled about, just starting to cook. Teenagers wanting to be older, boomers wanting to be younger, loads of twenty-somethings wanting to be seen. Glitz, glamour, and grunge, hip-hoppers in baggy shorts with legacy hoops jerseys and hooded sweatshirts, supermodel-wannabes in short, slinky dresses, random retros in Goth, buffed-up boys in muscle shirts, bikers and beachboys and babes. I blended right in.

Rap, industrial, and hip-hop boomed from a parade of tricked-out cars circling through the Deco District, bass throbbing from over-powered woofers. Lines formed outside the most popular clubs. I ambled amid the throng up and across to Collins Avenue, the platforms making me a six-foot-one guy, not five-nine, with a marked limp from the pebble in my shoe. Poker players not only observe body language as part of the art of reading tells, but notice what their opponents observe, and then try to use that knowledge to deceive them. Real winners make this observation a habit of their lives. I’d discovered over years of watching what people see that you always notice, at least subconsciously, how people walk. The limp disguised me as much as the shades and the platform shoes.

Two blocks up Collins stood the former Hotel Roosevelt, a streamlined, thirty-five-story Art Deco masterpiece, restored beyond its former glory, renamed the Delano and now owned by an over-the-hill rock diva struggling to stay cool. Right that moment I found myself in my own struggle to stay cool. My palms were sweating in the latex gloves, a sharp ache throbbed in my shoulders. I took a deep breath. Focus, I told myself. Think, don’t react. Adjust as each card comes off the deck. I breathed deeply, put myself in game mode, all focus, focus, focus. Just keep on reading the situation and make the right play. One card after another, one hand then the next, one step after another, then the next, until I found myself walking past the valets and doormen into the Delano’s ornate lobby. I checked the Casio — still running good.

Bodies ebbed and flowed through the lobby from the adjoining coffee shop and nightclub. Dmitri stood at the concierge’s desk. As I made my way through the bustle to the elevators at the back, the concierge handed him a slip of paper and made some motions with his hands as if giving directions. Dmitri tipped the concierge and headed out the grand entrance I had just come through.

I rode the elevator alone to the fourth floor. Dmitri had scouted two cameras on every floor, each pointing toward the center, showing half the hallway to the elevator. If he’d done his job, the camera at the east end would be tilted upward, leaving a blind spot so that the doors to the last four rooms or so were out of view.

I turned west and stopped at the end of the hall, in clear camera view, and tried a random door with the Holiday Inn key card Dmitri had given me at the Road. It wouldn’t open the door, of course, but I wanted the cameras to see. Then I tried another door. I slapped my forehead as if I’d screwed up and walked to the east end, and now out of camera view went through the fire-escape door and took the stairs down to the third floor.

The camera here should be tilted too, but ever so slightly, so just the last room was unwatched. I opened the fire-escape door a crack and peeked down the hall. A lone couple entangled in an embrace stood waiting for the elevator. I checked the room numbers on both sides of the fire escape door. On my left, 327, just as Dmitri had said. I pushed on the door and it gave way. The small piece of matchbook that Dmitri had stuck in the latch so it wouldn’t catch fell to the floor. I shut the door quietly behind me, picked up the bit of matchbook, put it in my pocket, and slipped into the room.

Rebel didn’t look up as the door latch clicked. She sat on the edge of the canopied, king-size bed wearing only her panties — pink bikini bottoms — sucking on a cigarette, clinking ice cubes in a cocktail glass. A half-empty bottle of Jack stood on the nightstand. The bedcovers had been tossed on the floor. She caressed the bed. “Never in my life have I slept on sheets this soft, Two-ways,” she said. “But at five hundred a night, you should get nice sheets.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just nodded.

She stood and faced me. Near-naked she was as perfect as I’d imagined.

Rebel handed me a buck knife. “Dima said you should cut the panties off with this, then before you go, hold it against my throat hard enough to make a mark. And leave the knife when you’re done. It leads someplace a million miles from any of us.”

I took the knife from her, opened it, slipped the blade between the skin of her hip and the panties, and cut. They fell to the floor. Her pubes were shaved. Above her pussy, DIMA was tattooed in script, inside a heart. “You look nice.”

“I don’t look ‘nice.’ I’m fucking hot. So fucking hot that you lose all control and just fucking take me. So hot you can’t think straight.” She grabbed my crotch. “Jesus Christ. Here I am, the hottest woman you’ll ever fuck as long as you live, standing buck-naked for you to take, and you don’t even have a hard-on.”

I’d wanted to bed Rebel since the first time I saw her. Here she stood naked in all her glory for me to have. I couldn’t remember a less erotic moment with a beautiful girl in my life.

“Two-ways, let’s do this. We’re on a schedule.”

I took the leashes, Astroglide, duct tape, and condoms from the backpack and set them on the bed.

“You’re going to wear a condom? Rapists don’t wear fucking condoms.”

“It’s the twenty-first century, Reb. Rapists worry about STDs as much as the next guy. And smart rapists don’t leave a load of DNA inside you for some crime-lab geek to analyze. If I’m going to be a rapist, I’m going to be as smart a rapist as I can be.”

“Dima won’t like it.”

“Screw Dima.”

“No — screw me. Right fucking now! Get naked already.”

I stripped clumsily, sure I looked foolish in the bandanna, platforms, and latex gloves.

“Jesus Christ, Bobby, you’re still not hard.” She grabbed my dick and squeezed. “Doesn’t this thing work?” She pushed me onto the bed, deftly manipulated my dick until it finally stood at attention, then tore open a condom and slipped it on. She crawled on the bed and threw her arms and legs wide, spread-eagled.

I looped a dog leash around each of her wrists and ankles, then tied them to the feet of the bed, snapped the d-ring at the end of each into place.

She strained at the leashes. “Left arm’s not tight enough,” she said.

I adjusted the leash securing her left arm, then crawled atop her — and realized I had gone soft.

She laughed. “Do you have this problem often?”

“N-n-never.”

“Jesus Christ, untie me.” I did as she said.

“You should have taken some Vitamin V.” She pressed against me, kissed my neck while holding my dick, wrapped her legs around me, massaged my thigh with her pussy. My dick grew, this time with conviction. She went down on me, playing with my balls while she moved her mouth up and down my shaft, until I was about to come. She climbed up my body, whispered in my ear, “Hold that thought for five minutes.”

I tied her again to the bed, opened another condom, pulled it on, climbed back atop her, and tried to slip myself into her. She was completely dry. I rolled off her and, rubbing my dick against her leg to keep my hard-on, began to massage her clit.

“That won’t work,” she said. “Use the Astroglide.”

I squirted the lube on her pussy, massaged her insides with my fingers, filling her with wetness. I climbed on top again — but again I had gone soft.

“Listen, Two-ways, you don’t have to come, but you do have to get it inside me. I know from experience the police rape kit will show whether or not you penetrated.”

I untied her and she repeated her oral magic, bringing me once more to the edge of orgasm. This time I didn’t tie her but let the animal in me take over — I threw her back on the bed and mounted her quickly, shoving and humping and grunting until I exploded. I rolled off her onto the bed and began to laugh, a little nervously — at myself.

“We’re behind schedule,” she said matter-of-factly. “Get me tied down.”

I tied her to the bed for the third time, pulled the leashes tight as I could.

“Now hit me in the face. Hard.”

I hesitated. “I’ve never hit a girl and I’m not going to start now.”

“Goddamnit, Two-ways. The more I’m hurt, the more we can win. Hit me.”

I shook my head no. “Sorry, Reb. I won’t. Can’t.”

“Dima’s going to be pissed.”

“Screw Dima.”

“You said that already. Don’t ever say it to him. He’s not one to be fucked with.”

I dressed in my Wal-Mart outfit, shoved the used condoms and wrappers into the pockets of the jeans, and put the Astroglide in the backpack. I picked up the knife.

“At least hold the knife against my throat,” Rebel said. “Cut me some.”

I did as she said, leaning over her with the blade held tight against her throat, but away from her jugular.

“Harder,” she said.

“Shit, Rebel, how the hell do I know how much is hard enough?”

“Just do it, Bobby. Harder!”

I pressed down harder, afraid that I might hurt her. I managed to break the skin without doing any more damage. A rivulet of blood trickled down her neck.

“Good,” she said. “Now hit me, goddamnit, Bobby. Leave bruises.”

“No, Reb.”

“Don’t be such a fucking wimp. There’s big fucking money at stake here.”

I cut a length of duct tape off the roll with the knife and slapped it across her mouth, perhaps the most satisfactory moment of the night so far. I stepped back and looked at her spread wide on the bed, helpless, her beauty almost perfect, her pussy glistening with the Astroglide. To see her was to want her.

Wanting is good. Even better than having.

I looked at the Casio. My bout of erectile dysfunction had put us behind schedule, even with the extra time Dmitri had built in for margin of error. He’d be coming up the elevator to discover his raped girlfriend any minute. I shoved the duct tape in the backpack, threw the knife on the bed. Fibers from generic Wal-Mart clothes, no prints or hairs, size-eleven footprints impressed on the lush carpet. I looked around the room to make sure I hadn’t left anything incriminating behind. I’d done what I could to minimize risk.

I slipped into the hall and ran down the stairwell to the first floor, moseyed out into the lobby. The Delano’s nightclub in full swing, even more people milled about the lobby than earlier. I saw Dmitri at the elevator. Then he saw me. He checked his watch, scowled. If looks could kill, I’d have been dead on the floor. The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and he stepped on. We’d cut it mighty close.

I walked briskly back to the 11th, changed back into my own clothes and sneaks, shoved the platforms and Wal-Mart clothes into the backpack, then again waited a few minutes before stepping out of the stall, through the diner, and onto the street. Less than ten minutes after leaving Rebel, I was driving west on 17th Street, feeling empty but relieved, glad that it was over. I drove across the MacArthur past the parade of cruise ships waiting at dock to sail off for temporary island fantasies, and got on I-95 north. I exited at State Road 84 twenty minutes later, turned down a small street, then into an alley between two warehouses.

I poured some gas into the Wal-Mart wastebin and dumped in everything I’d used and worn — only the knife, a piece of duct tape across Rebel’s mouth, and the four leashes that tied her to the bed remained. In life, as in poker, you can’t control all the variables, but you do what you can. I poured in some more gas, struck a safety match against the box, and flicked it in, then dropped in the rest of the box. Flame wooshed upward. I watched it burn and visualized Rebel spread-eagle on the canopied bed. My dick hardened at the vision. I had to laugh at myself; oh well, what can you do?

The blaze left a goo of plastic slag. After the fire died, I shoved the mess into the green garbage bag, tied it off tight, and drove to a complex I’d once lived in on Marina Mile, where they had Saturday-morning trash pickup. I threw the bag into a dumpster; in a few hours it would be lost in the daily refuse of a million people, with only the vultures circling overhead and the never-ending parade of garbage trucks for company. I set the cones and barricade at a construction site, then took I-95 to the Kennedy Causeway, home across the bay into the pink dawn.

I slept later than usual Saturday. I went to Miami Jai-Alai, yakked with the $2 poker players, ate a breakfast of hot dogs and beer, then headed to Gulfstream, where I relaxed in the cheap seats basking in the afternoon sun with the racing form. The hard work was now on Rebel — Monday she’d retain a lawyer. He’d file the suit for inadequate security resulting in Rebel’s rape, and the settlement dance would begin. Most cases like this never went to trial, but rarely settled before the eve of trial. All I had to do now was live my life and wait for my payday.

I cashed a $220 ticket in the last race, then went to the Porterhouse up in Sunny Isles to have a nice steak and flirt with the waitresses. As I ate, my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number, and didn’t answer. A few seconds later it rang again, from the same number. The third time, curious about who would be so persistent, I picked up.

“Bobby, thank God you answered. It’s Rebel.” She sounded as if she were crying. “I need your help.” She started to babble — Dima had gone crazy, beaten her. She was afraid. Could I meet her someplace private? No, not my place in Surfside, he’d check there. Freighter terminal #9 on the river, a few blocks from McKool’s. Just get there and we could decide together what to do. An hour, please hurry. She abruptly disconnected.

I didn’t like it a bit, but I didn’t see how I couldn’t go. I took 163rd Street to the Spaghetti Bowl, then I-95 to downtown and across the river. As I drove under the halogentinted sky, I slammed my fist on the wheel, telling myself this was wrong, that I was an idiot. Whatever Rebel wanted from me, I wasn’t going to want to do it. Why couldn’t my mother have raised a less chivalrous son?

Just past the Miami River Inn, I turned onto the street that dead-ended at terminal #9. The gate to the pier was open, the streetlight next to it burned out. I edged the T-bird past pallets loaded with construction materials waiting for the next freighter out, turned the corner along the ware-house, and saw Rebel’s car parked by the gantry crane. Lights from across the river cast oblong shadows. Rebel leaned on her car, smoking a cigarette. I climbed out of the T-bird and saw in the glow of the burning ash that her face was all mangled, bruised yellow and purple, one eye bandaged. “Holy shit, Rebel.”

“It pissed Dima off that you didn’t beat me,” she said. “The rape didn’t look real enough. So he added that touch himself.” She sobbed. “He likes hurting me too much. I’m scared, Bobby. I can’t go to the police. I don’t know what to do.” She stared into my eyes.

I stepped forward to take her in my arms. Something about that look.

“I’m sorry, Bobby,” Rebel whispered softly. “If it makes you feel any better...”

It was the same way she stared when she was trying to run a bluff!

“... Dima’s next.”

From behind me I heard the double-click of a revolver’s hammer pulling back.

Oh shit, I thought. I grabbed Rebel by the shoulders, ducked, and twirled around, holding her in front of me. Then came the explosion of a shot, the acrid smell of cordite, the blinding muzzle flash. The bullet that had been intended for me took her square in the chest, knocked her into me, came out her back, and hit me in the belly, but its momentum spent, didn’t penetrate. The slug clattered to the ground. Blood seeped out Rebel’s back all over my clothes. Dmitri stood in front of me, not ten feet away, a shocked look on his face that quickly turned to rage. It happened in seconds, but took forever.

He lunged toward me, screaming in Russian, pointing the pistol at my head. I pushed Rebel’s limp body at him, dropped, and threw my weight at his knees; the three of us rolled to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs. The gun went off again, near my ear, the explosion deafening me. I grabbed Dmitri’s hair, wrapping my fingers in tight, and smashed his head into the parking lot pavement with all my strength, and again and again and again and again, until he stopped moving.

I lay there covered in blood, entangled in two bodies, with no clue what to do next, where to turn. My head throbbed. How would I explain this to the cops? How did I know these people who had just reported a brutal rape? Any investigator worth a damn would toast me. Focus, I told myself. Think, don’t react. Breathe deep. What are your options? What’s the best play here?

I called McKool on his private cell. “McKool. Two-ways,” I said. “What’s that Explorer you drive worth?”

McKool started to say something, then started over. “Maybe 25, 30k. Why?”

“The Explorer and 25 for the T-bird,” I said.

McKool hesitated a second. “Twenty.”

“Deal. But I need your help with something right now...”

Less than ten minutes later he was there, with Cartouche. They quickly surveyed the scene. “Fine mess, Bobby,” McKool said, as he tossed me his keys.

I pulled the keys to the T-bird from my pocket, pulled off my apartment key, then handed them to McKool. “She set us both up.”

“Chicks can be that way,” McKool said.

Cartouche bent over, felt Rebel’s neck for a pulse. “Mort,” he said. Then he checked Dmitri and shook his head. “Il n’est pas tout a fait mort.”

“She’s dead. He’s not quite dead,” McKool translated for me. “This costs me. Rebel filled some seats.” He thought a moment, then made a small flick of his finger across his throat.

Cartouche took a handkerchief from his pocket and picked up the pistol, stuck the barrel in Dmitri’s ear, and pulled the trigger, then handed McKool the gun.

“He was near-dead anyway, and now he can’t mention your name before he goes,” McKool said. He stuffed the gun in his pocket. “We’ll dispose of the bodies. Go home and get rid of those clothes.”

“Thanks.”

“Come before gin tomorrow,” McKool said. “We’ll do the car titles and talk.”

I got the gas from the T-bird’s trunk, then drove the Explorer home. I disconnected my apartment’s smoke detector, threw my clothes in the bathtub, poured in the last of the gas, and burned my bloody clothes to ash. After making sure not a speck of fabric remained, I washed the ash down the drain, then stood under the shower until the hot water ran out, and fell into bed without even bothering to dry. I missed my T-bird.

Sunday afternoon, after a fitful sleep, I knocked on McKool’s door. The peephole darkened, and Cartouche let me in. Lilith stood at the stove making dinner for the crowd to come, and one of the dealers, Lefty Louie, sat at a poker table making up decks.

“Step into my office,” McKool said, and we went into one of the back rooms. He handed me the local section of Sunday’s Herald, opened to page five. A story halfway down the page read:

“They won’t find any family,” McKool said. “She had nobody.” There was a gentle tapping on the door. “Come.”

Lilith stuck her head in. “Luckbucket and Bumper are here.”

“We’ll be right out,” McKool said. He handed me a manila envelope full of hundreds rolled in rubber bands. I didn’t need to count it, knew the twenty grand was there. “You understand you owe me,” he said. “And last night never happened.” He signed the title to the Explorer and handed it to me with the pen.

“Never happened.”

“Make it out to Jean-Luc Cartouche.”

I looked at him, puzzled. “Cartouche? Why?”

“He wants it. I’d rather he have it and me want it. Ready for gin?”

I signed the title over to Cartouche. “Yeah.” Who knew wanting and having were so complicated?

We stepped into the main room, where Bumper and Luckbucket sat leafing through back issues of Card Player. Luckbucket’s was opened to an article by Roy Cooke headlined: Some Hands You Just Don’t Play!

Life is like the game, I thought. It’s supposed to be the fish who play the trap hands.

“Let’s gamble,” Bumper said.

McKool turned to Lefty and said, “Shuffle up and deal.”

And that’s exactly what happened.