Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

CHAPTER 2

Three’s a Crowd

I was late for dinner with Doc Riggs. But I hadn’t expected to make it at all. With a jury out, you never know.

I spotted Charlie’s unkempt hair and bushy beard, now streaked with gray. He wore a khaki bush jacket and sat at his usual table on the front porch of Tugboat Willie’s, a weather-beaten joint located behind the Marine Stadium on the causeway, halfway between the mainland and Key Biscayne. Charlie had been coming to the old restaurant since his early days as county medical examiner. It was one of the few places where neither the management nor patrons seemed to mind the whiff of formaldehyde. Sometimes Charlie caught his own fish and asked the cook to make it any old way as long as it was fried. Sometimes he ordered from the menu. Willie’s is a great place as long as the wind isn’t out of the northeast. The restaurant sits just southwest of the city sewage plant at Virginia Key. On a tropical island filled with cypress hammocks and white herons-one of the few bayfront spots not auctioned off to rapacious developers-Miami chose to dump its bodily wastes.

The evening was warm and muggy; not a breath of air stirred the queen palms in front of the ramshackle restaurant. Toward the mainland, low feathery clouds reflected an orange glow, not from the setting sun, but from the anticrime mercury-vapor lights of Liberty City.

Charlie was already digging into his fried snapper when I climbed the steps to the porch. Next to him was a woman with long auburn hair and fine porcelain skin. She wore a tailored blue suit that meant business and, best I could tell, no makeup. She didn’t need any. In the gauzy light of dusk she glowed with a look that Hollywood cinematographers crave for the starlet of the year. Her cheekbones were finely carved and high, the eyes green, wide set, and confident.

I slid into an empty chair next to the woman and tried to use my wit. “Charlie, I can’t leave you alone for one evening without your smooth-talking some sweet young woman…”

Then I gave her my best crinkly-eyed, pearly-toothed smile out of a face tanned from many indolent afternoons riding the small waves on a sailboard not far from where we sat. I am broad of shoulder, sandy of hair, and crooked of grin, but the lady’s eyes darted to me and back to Charlie without tarrying.

“I don’t mean to argue with you, Dr. Riggs,” she said in a clipped British accent that sounded like royalty, “but most of these so-called killer profiles are so much rubbish. Just the modern version of detecting criminals by the shape of their noses or the size of their ears.”

Charlie’s fork froze in mid-bite. “But even you have identified characteristics. In your book-”

“Yes, yes. But they’re of little import. What is consequential is that these men are incapable of forming normal relationships. They do not see themselves as separate human beings or recognize the separate humanity of any other being, and we don’t know why. To a Hillside Strangler or a Yorkshire Ripper, a human being is no more animate than a block of wood. We’ll never make any progress until we understand what made them that way.”

I nodded my agreement, hoping Charlie would bring me up to date, or at least introduce me. But the old billy goat was having too good a time to notice.

“This is the classic distinction between our disciplines,” Charlie said, sipping a glass of Saint-Veran white burgundy, while I sat, parched, irked, and apparently invisible. “The medical examiner searches for the clues of who did the crime and how. The forensic psychiatrist yearns for the why.”

“And the lawyer says the devil or his mother or irresistible impulse made the rascal do it,” I offered.

Charlie noticed me then. “Oh, my manners! Dr. Metcalf, this is Jacob Lassiter, a dear friend of mine. When I was the county ME, Jake was a young public defender, and how he made my life miserable. Now he’s a successful civil lawyer, eh, Jake?”

“Some days. How do you do, Dr. Metcalf.”

She nodded and seemed to appraise me with green eyes spiked with flint. The eyes lingered, decided I was an interesting specimen but hardly worth an afternoon tea, and returned to Charlie. I gave Doc my pleading, hang-dog look, which he recognized as acute deprivation of female companionship.

“Jake was quite creative when he was a PD,” Charlie said. His eyes twinkled behind thick glasses held together with a bent fishhook where they had lost a screw. “He’d be defending a Murder One and ask me on cross in very serious tones, ‘Isn’t the fact that the decedent fell from a tenth-floor balcony consistent with suicide?’”

I laughed and said, “And Charlie would look at the jury, scratch his beard, and say, ‘Only if we omit the fact that a second before falling, the decedent was shot in the back by a gun covered with your client’s fingerprints.’”

The English lady nearly smiled, and it didn’t seem to hurt.

“Pamela’s on a book tour,” Charlie told me, “and my old friend Warwick at Broadmoor asked her to look me up.”

“Warwick at Broadmoor?” I asked, with a blank face.

“Dr. Warwick heads the forensic unit at Broadmoor. Hospital for the criminally insane,” Charlie added, as if any dolt should know. “In London. Dr. Metcalf was instrumental in apprehending and then treating the Firebug Murderer.”

I was silent, not willing to admit my ignorance quite so often.

The lady psychiatrist rescued me. “Just a lad, really. The fellow would find lovers parked in their cars, snogging away-”

“Snogging, were they?” I asked, eyebrows raised in mock disapproval.

“Yes, what you would call… oh, Dr. Riggs, help me.”

Charlie coughed and said, “Necking and what have you.”

I nodded, knowingly.

“In any event,” Dr. Metcalf continued, “this poor wretch would seek out lovers, pour petrol over them, and set them alight.”

“Indeed?” I said, in an unintended imitation of her accent.

“Quite,” she replied, giving me a look that said she did not suffer fools, particularly of the American wise-guy variety.

I signaled the waiter for a beer by elegantly pointing a finger down my throat. Then I turned to the lady psychiatrist with practiced sincerity. “Tell me about your work, Dr. Metcalf. How do you treat these firebugs and murderers?”

“I study the psychopath,” she said. “I want to know why he acts the way he does.”

“Or she does,” I added, believing in equality of the sexes in all departments.

“The subject is so complex,” Pamela Metcalf said, ignoring me. “We study the childhood antecedents to murder-”

“Environment,” Charlie Riggs said.

“But we also know that there are neurological, genetic, and biophysiological components, too.”

“The extra Y chromosome in men.” Charlie nodded.

“Yes, we know the XYY abnormality is four times more prevalent among murderers.”

“So are killers made or born?” I asked.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to determine ever since I became fascinated with the Cotswolds Killer.”

I showed her my vague look. It comes naturally.

“You know the section called the Cotswolds?” she asked.

“The Catskills, I know…”

“In Oxfordshire, wonderful hilly sheep country. I grew up there near Chipping Camden. I was still a student when someone began killing farm girls. One near Bourton-on-the-Water, one just outside Upper Slaughter.”

“Upper Slaughter,” Charlie muttered.

“Each of the girls had been strangled. Like so many of them nowadays, each had been sexually active at age fifteen or so, highly active, and their several boyfriends were initially suspected.”

“Any of the boyfriends know both the girls?” Charlie asked, still trying to earn his detective’s shield.

“No. And no strangers were implicated, either. The crimes were never solved, and… well, it just got me started.”

I thought about pretty Miss Metcalf scouring the sylvan English countryside for clues of murder. The thought didn’t last. The waiter brought my beer, and I ordered yellowtail snapper broiled, some fried sweet plantains, and black beans with rice. The pathologist and the psychiatrist were still carrying on, regaling each other with tales of death and derangement.

“Dr. Riggs, I still can’t believe you’ve retired. I’ve so enjoyed your articles.”

Charlie beamed. “Oh, I continue my research. Vita non est vivere sed valere vita est. ‘Life is more than merely staying alive.’”

She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “For you, no taedium vitae.“

They both laughed, and I managed a weak smile. Maybe when I’m pushing sixty-five, women will fall all over me, too. They kept trading war stories and Latin phrases, and I kept popping the porcelain stoppers on sixteen-ounce Grolsches. I was on my third bottle, letting a soft buzz take the edge off, when I decided to break into the party. Having just been whacked by a jury, scolded by a client, and ignored by a beautiful woman from another continent, I figured there was very little to lose.

“Ah-chem,” I said.

No one seemed to notice my brilliant opening line. Pamela Metcalf was still focused on the old coroner who, until twenty minutes before, was my mentor and best friend.

“I was fascinated by your article on the forensic aspects of strangulation,” Dr. Metcalf gushed.

“It had me all choked up,” I said, then took a hit on the Grolsch.

Dr. Pamela Metcalfs emerald eyes shot me a pitying look, then returned their full concentration to the bearded wizard. “Your method for determining the time of death by assessing the degree of postmortem lividity in a hanging victim was quite helpful to homicide detectives.”

“Yep,” I offered, “the cops were at the end of their rope.”

Charlie Riggs furrowed his brow, and the air seeped further out of my ego. That peculiar macho known to all men ached to haul out the trophies and merit badges, maybe tell her about the days before I wore a blue suit and wingtip shoes. Hey, lady, I once came off the bench to sack Terry Bradshaw on an all-out blitz in a playoff game. Now playing at outside linebacker, from Penn State, number fifty-eight, Jake Las-siter! Maybe Charlie would ask me how the knees were doing, and I could ease right into-

“Mr. Lassiter… Mr. Lassiter.”

The waiter was tapping me on the shoulder. Now what? In fancy places they sometimes toss me out. But tonight I was wearing socks and long pants, and neither was required at Tugboat Willie’s.

“A policeman on the phone, Mr. Lassiter. Says it’s urgent.”

I followed the waiter to an open alcove near the kitchen. The air was pungent with fish and garlic. From behind the swinging metal door, I heard the singsong of Creole mixed with the clatter of dishes. A black cat with yellow eyes was pawing through a garbage can, debating between grouper and dolphin for an entree.

“Detective Alejandro Rodriguez here,” said the unfamiliar voice on the phone. “Hold for State Attorney Wolf.”

Ah, the accouterments of power. Using a policeman-a detective no less-for a secretary. Probably calling to rub it in. Nick Wolf had been so busy dispensing victory statements to the press, he hadn’t even needled me after the verdict. I waited, listening to the faint traffic noises that told me Wolf was calling from his state-owned Chrysler.

“Jake, you did a helluva job for that fish wrapper they call a newspaper,” Nick Wolf boomed.

“Maybe you can tell that to Symington Foote. He thought I should have attacked when I played defense.”

“He’s an asshole. Downtown power-clique country-club asshole. You low-keyed it, kept the damages down. A savvy lawyer knows when to do that.”

I didn’t tell him I get my savvy from Marvin the Maven.

Wolf paused, and so did I. We were out of conversation, or so I thought.

“Jake,” he said finally, “I’d like you to meet me at a homicide scene.”

“Should I have my alibi ready?”

He didn’t laugh. “Three seventy-five Ocean Drive, South Beach, second floor. I need independent counsel to head the investigation.”

“Why me?”

From somewhere at his end a police siren wailed. “Because you’re honest and not plugged into any of the political groups. I checked you out. Latin Builders, Save-Our-Guns, English Only… nobody’s heard of you since you used to sit on the bench for the Dolphins. I don’t even know if you’re a Democrat or Republican.”

“Audubon Society.”

“Huh?”

“My only affiliation. Charlie Riggs and I like to stomp through the Glades and look at the birds. Blue herons, snowy egrets, roseate spoonbills. Makes you believe in a Creator or at least a damn fortuitous Big Bang.”

“Charlie Riggs,” Wolf said, almost wistfully. “Tell that old grave robber to stop in and see me sometime.”

“Tell him yourself. He’s about ten yards yonder, putting away some key lime pie and amusing a British lady psychiatrist with murder and mayhem.”

“Her name Metcalf?”

I looked around for a hidden camera. “You’re getting some pretty good intelligence these days.”

“Lucky guess. I have a man waiting at her hotel. She was one of the last people to see the decedent alive.”

“This decedent have a name?”

“This line’s not secure. I’ll see you in twenty minutes. Bring Riggs and the lady.”

When I returned to the table, Charlie was halfway through the story of the widow whose first two husbands died after eating kidney pie laced with paraquat. The third husband was smart enough to refuse her cooking, but deaf enough not to move when she rode the El Toro mower over the spot where he was sunbathing.

Charlie looked up at me, a dab of whipped cream stuck to his beard.

“Saddle up,” I said. “We been deputized.”