Night vision

CHAPTER 10

"Senor Castillo," Nick Fox said in his silky politician's voice, "do you know any reason why you couldn't sit as a juror in this case?"

The small, dark man in his stiff Sunday suit shook his head from side to side.

"Sir, can you understand English?"

"Si," the man said proudly.

I waited until the jury was sworn and approached Nick Fox at the prosecution table. "Tennyson, anyone?" I whispered.

"Huh?"

"We gotta talk."

"You bet we do, slick. What the hell you doing with the Rosedahl homicide? You got no jurisdiction there."

"I have to cross the county line, like a cop in hot pursuit."

The judge was clearing his throat. "Mr. Fox, is the state ready to proceed?"

Nick Fox rose from his chair and bowed-"Ready, Your Honor"-then turned back to me. "Look, I got a double Murder One to try here. We'll talk at the lunch recess."

I nodded and started to move away.

"What's on your mind?" he called after me.

"Jack the Ripper," I said.

Judge Dixie Lee Boulton was just finishing her morning motion calendar when I strolled into the courtroom, a bulky black briefcase in one hand, a leash attached to a shaggy Angora goat in the other.

Arnie Two-Ton Tannenbaum was planted in front of the bench, thrusting a copy of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition, in the general direction of the bench. "Your Honor, the indictment charges my client with entering Cozzoli's Pizzeria 'unlawfully, feloniously, and burglariously.' Now, you can look high and you can look low, but there is no such word as 'burglariously.' The indictment must be quashed."

"On what ground?" the judge asked, scowling.

"Unconstitutional grammar."

"Is there any precedent for that?"

"No, and just as well," Two-Ton answered. "It would be a pity for Your Honor to be deprived the distinction of being the first to establish the rule."

I had taken a seat in the front row of the gallery, just between Marvin the Maven and Saul the Tailor. Marvin nodded hello and ignored the goat, having seen far stranger sights in Miami courtrooms. Saul petted the animal, then pulled away before he lost a chunk of the straw hat he kept in his lap.

"Seven-to-one Two-Ton loses the motion, then cops a plea," Marvin the Maven predicted.

The defendant, a skinny nineteen-year-old with bad skin, dirty hair, and bad posture, slumped in front of the judge, vacant and hopeless. No one took the Maven's bet, and five minutes later, the judge recited the Gospel of the Guilty Plea: "The court finds the defendant intelligent, of sound mind and body, and represented by competent counsel…"

It isn't easy to tell four lies in one sentence, I thought.

"He understands the nature of the charges against him and has made the plea freely and voluntarily. Three years in the state prison."

"Out in nine months," said Marvin the Maven.

"Next case," Dixie Lee Boulton announced. "South Coast Properties versus Babalu Aye Church of Santeria. Is the plaintiff ready?"

"South Coast Properties." Marvin tut-tutted, clucking his tongue. "What happened to representing honest murderers, Jake? Even a lying newspaper's better than a slumlord."

"Ready," I said, getting up and approaching the bench, leash in hand.

"Br-aah-aay," said the goat.

"Is the defendant ready?" the judge asked.

A dapper man of about fifty in a custom-made double-breasted powder-blue suit rose from the first row. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, had skin the purple-black of a polished eggplant, and strode to the bench with an air of authority. "I am Phillipe Jean Claude Phillipe, and I will represent my church."

"Are you an attorney, Phillipe…uh…Phillipe?" the judge asked.

"I am a Santero, a priest of Santeria," he said, an Afro-Caribbean lilt to his voice.

"Br-aah-aay," said the goat.

The judge raised her eyeglasses from their string of imitation pearls and peered down from the bench. "Mr. Lassiter, is that an animal?"

From behind me, Marvin the Maven whispered, "It ain't the Queen of England."

"Your Honor, this is exhibit one in our eviction proceeding. When the church leased my client's property, Mr. Phillipe here misrepresented-"

"The Right Reverend Phillipe Phillipe," he corrected me.

"Right…Phil. This gentleman misrepresented his intentions. He said the house would be used for pastor's living quarters. Now we find they're slaughtering animals there. Hundreds of people show up to watch."

"To pray," Phillipe Phillipe corrected me. "It is our ceremony to initiate new priests. We have thirteen gods, and to each we must sacrifice two roosters, a pigeon, a guinea hen, and…a goat."

"Your Honor, it's cruel and-"

"Is painless," said the Reverend.

" Br-aah-aay," said the goat, unless it was Marvin the Maven.

"The place is covered with blood," I said. "It attracts flies and rodents."

The judge looked a mite pale, so I toned it down. "This is a residential neighborhood, not a stockyard. They have no license to slaughter-"

"Under your First Amendment, we have freedom of religion," Phillipe Phillipe interrupted. "Our license comes from God."

"Which one?" I asked, but the Right Reverend just looked through me.

"Mr. Lassiter," the judge said, "are you representing the rights of the landlord or of the goat?"

Behind me, I heard Saul the Tailor: "Whichever one pays."

I spoke up. "Your Honor, the church has breached its lease with the landlord, and its ceremonies violate the state's animal cruelty laws."

"He represents both beasts," Marvin the Maven said.

"The evil of two lessors," Saul the Tailor chimed in.

"To sacrifice animals is inhumane," I said.

"Is painless," the Right Reverend protested.

"The animals are conscious when butchered, they're-"

I heard the whoosh but never saw the blade. The shiny steel machete effortlessly sliced through the goat's neck. Blood spurted onto Phillipe Phillipe's powder-blue suit, onto my right shoe, and onto the clerk's lap, splattering her Today's Woman magazine. But the goat never made a sound. It just dropped dead in its tracks, little hooves quivering.

"Is painless," Phillipe Phillipe said.

"What's this shit about Jack the Ripper?" Nick Fox demanded. He was attacking a rare cheeseburger, interrogating me, and howdying every judge, bailiff, and bureaucrat who passed our table in the courthouse cafeteria.

"You saw the lipstick message at the Diamond murder scene?"

"Yeah."

"It mimicked Jack the Ripper."

"So? Let the head cases at Metro Homicide worry about it. Better yet, call Sherlock Holmes."

"There's a link to Mary Rosedahl's murder."

Nick looked up from the cheeseburger, waved to a bondsman who contributed shoe boxes of cash to his campaigns, and slid his chair toward me. "What link?"

"A message there, too. A woman-bashing poem."

"That's it?"

"Plus they both belonged to a computer dating club and both were using its services the night they were killed."

He leaned back in his chair and smiled. It was the election victory smile. "Maybe they both belonged to Triple-A, or maybe both were Girl Scouts. That doesn't mean the same guy aced them."

"No, but it's all we've got."

"You got squat, Lassiter. I'm beginning to doubt my judgment in appointing you."

"So fire me."

"Not a chance. That fish wrapper you represent would nail me. 'Slipshod Administrator' or some other bullshit editorial."

He looked toward the floor. "Hey, Jake, you know one of your shoes is all wet? What the hell is that, looks like-"

"Truth is, Nick, you're more of a trial lawyer than an administrator."

"Damn right, and that's why the public loves me. I don't sit up in the office finagling budgets or figuring crime statistics. I do battle in the courtroom, where it's all on the line."

"And the television crews have permanent spots in the front row."

He laughed. "Today I wish they weren't there. Friggin' city cops got a confession the old-fashioned way."

"Forget to Mirandize?"

"Worse. They bring in this yahoo for a double homicide, charged with killing a couple on lovers' lane out on the causeway. Except they got no weapon, no prints, no witnesses that are still breathing. So they put a colander upside down on the yahoo's head-"

"A colander?"

"Yeah, like to wash lettuce. Then they put Walkman earphones on him and tape the jack to the photocopy machine. One of them writes on a piece of paper, 'He Lies,' and slips it under the lid of the machine. Then they ask the guy if he did the deed. He says no. One cop pushes the button, the light flashes, and out pops a piece of paper…"

"Which says, 'He Lies.'"

"You got it. Finally they tell him to admit the crime just to see what happens, like an experiment. One cop slips in another piece of paper…"

"'He Tells the Truth.'"

"Right. Plus they turn on a tape recorder."

"Judge throw out the confession?"

He picked up his Coke. "Faster'n you could say Earl Warren."

I laughed, but he didn't. He was thinking. I tried to pick up the shadow of the thought behind those dark eyes, but it stayed inside. Finally he said, "This club called Compu-Mate?"

"Yeah. You know it?"

"My wife joined when we got separated. I'd call at night, she'd be talking dirty on the computer."

"She tell you anything else, like who she connected with?"

"Nope. Didn't interest me."

"What about Marsha?"

"I never knew she joined. What's the big deal? Probably something else Prissy got her into."

"Like women's awareness?"

"Yeah."

"And seeing you."

"Yeah."

"What else?"

"How should I know? I didn't see them together, and I didn't talk a hell of a lot to either one."

He was getting irritated. It had been at least twenty minutes since anyone told him what a great guy he was. "Did Marsha ask you many personal questions?"

"Some."

"What'd you tell her?"

"Just the usual life-story bullshit you gotta toss at them to get in their pants. I told her what it was like growing up poor. The high school athlete stuff, going into the service. Told her all my cop stories from when I was a patrolman."

"What about war stories?"

Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed to lose a little of the color in his cheeks. "If you mean 'Nam, I don't talk about it. Not to her, not to Prissy, and sure as hell not to you."

"But you won the Silver Star, right?"

"Yeah, right."

"It's on your campaign brochures. You talked to the Journal about it as part of a profile before your first election."

"So?"

"Talk to me."

He looked at his watch. "All I'm gonna say is what's in the public record. We had a translator, a Vietnamese girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, educated in one of the French convents. We got pinned down in a firefight in a village. We lost two men in the first five minutes. It was getting dark. Raining, like always. The girl was supposed to stay with the RTO, the radio operator, but she got separated and Mister Charles grabbed her."

"Mister Charles?"

"Charley, Chuck…"

"VC."

"Right."

"Charley backed out of the village and scattered east across some mud dikes through the rice paddies. I led one platoon in a chase. A second platoon was two clicks-two kilometers-north of us. We moved parallel to each other to the east. We caught Charley in the open on the dikes. That's all."

"You rescued her?"

He paused and scanned the room. "We recovered her body."

"And the VC?"

"Killed seven, wounded twelve."

"And your men?"

"No casualties once we got out of the village."

There was more to it, I knew. But I didn't know what. "The other platoon?"

He straightened in the chair as if it were time to leave.

"Casualties?" I asked.

"Three dogwood six."

"Three dead…"

"Ferguson. It was his platoon."

"Ferguson."

"Yeah. And Epstein, the witch doctor, the medic. Plus the RTO, I don't remember his name. That's all I'm going to say."

I wanted to ask more about that day, about Ferguson, whose name popped out of Marsha Diamond's computer, but I wanted to know more first. I shook my head and tried to shift gears. "You know anything about Compu-Mate?"

"Like what?"

"Any men who belong?"

"Hell no!"

"What about you? Ever join, ever use your wife's password, get online?"

Nick Fox stared hard at me. "Whaddaya think, I'm some kind of weirdo? If I want a woman, I don't beat around the bush, no pun intended. I just walk right up and say, 'I'm Nick Fox, and you've got the greatest legs I've ever seen, and I've seen them from here to Hong Kong.' Gets them every time."

"Thanks for the lesson."

"Always the legs, Jake. Never say tits or ass. Always legs."

I considered taking notes but figured I could remember the basics. "Nick, I think I have someone for you. Her name's Bobbie."

"She hot to trot?" Nick Fox asked, deeply earnest.

"Like a Thoroughbred," I said, winking.

I stood up to leave. He stayed in his chair, "Hey, Jake, one piece of advice…"

"Yeah?"

"Like we used to say in-country, keep your ass down."

I looked at him and the politician's smile was gone. "Is that an order, sir?"

He summoned up a patronizing smile to take the edge off. "Just friendly advice, like yelling 'incoming' to your buddies. You stick your ass out in the wind, Jake, maybe it gets greased."

"Or maybe somebody else trips over it, takes a big fall."

I turned smartly on my heel and walked out, ramrod straight, feeling but never seeing his officer's glare.

I stood on the courthouse steps, blinking into the late-afternoon sun. To the west, thunderheads formed over the Everglades. The showers would be late, but just in time for rush hour. Overhead, a dozen black buzzards circled the wedding-cake upper tiers of the courthouse, gliding in the updrafts. The lawyers and the buzzards, birds of a feather, source of a thousand jokes.

They're really turkey vultures, Charlie Riggs informed me one day. Cathartes aura.

I told him not to spoil the fun.

With one eye on the birds overhead, I reached into my suitcoat pocket and pulled out the clipping Cindy had turned up when preparing to defend Nick Fox's libel suit. The article was seven years old, published a week before Fox's first election. I turned to the paragraphs I had circled near the end.

The candidate rarely speaks of his Vietnam service, and then only in modest terms, even when describing the incident for which he was awarded the Silver Star.

"We had a translator, a Vietnamese girl, maybe nineteen or twenty, educated in one of the French convents. We got pinned down in a firefight in a village, lost two men in the first five minutes. It was getting dark. Raining, like always. The girl was supposed to stay with the RTO, the radio operator, but she got separated and the VC grabbed her. I led one platoon in a chase across some dikes through rice paddies. A second platoon was two clicks-two kilometers- north of us. We moved parallel to each other to the east. We caught Charley in the open on the dikes. It was too late to save the girl, but we inflicted heavy casualties."

Okay, so once he flicked on the magnetic tape, out it came, same way every time. Rewind the tape, play it again, Nick. Nothing wrong with that, or was there? I thought of Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashed into his story of Korean War heroics. Maybe Nick Fox brainwashed himself, a tidy story of a rainy day in the rice paddies.

I was still thinking about it when one of the big birds suddenly swooped down and landed on the sidewalk next to an overturned garbage can. Spreading its wings a full six feet to ward off competition, it uncovered the remains of a chili dog. I approached to within a dozen feet, and when the bird turned to face me, ugly as death, I backpedaled with a scaredy-cat step of a Francis Macomber. In a moment another bird landed and picked through the rest of the garbage, keeping some distance from the wise guy who thought up the idea.

The black birds ignored me, so I tiptoed toward them. Two sets of wary eyes appraised me. Then I heard myself say in deep senatorial tones, "May it please my fine-feathered foraging friends. My fellow brethren at the bar. Nibblers of equity, scavengers of justice. Are we here to seek truth, or merely to gorge ourselves on the facts? If the truth is that the Fox is loose amongst the chickens…what then?"

"They got a place upstate for guys who talk to birds."

I whirled to see Cindy at the bottom of the steps, head cocked, chewing her gum happily. "Nice place," she said, "clean white sheets and rubber walls."

"I'm glad you're here," I said.

"I'll bet."

"Call Priscilla Fox for me. Mrs. Nicholas Fox. I want to see her as soon as possible."

"Tomorrow morning, the office?"

"No. Tonight. Her place. I need to see the lair of the Fox."

"Sure. But you oughta change first."

"What's wrong with a blue suit?"

"Fine, matches your eyes," she said. "But your loafers. One's black and one's cordovan."