Crime (42 page)

The colour and word ‘orange’ burn in his head: the Orange Bowl Stadium and the exterior decoration of Robyn’s apartment block. Pulling up outside the Latin American Art Museum, he asks a youthful couple for directions. They tell him to go left on 17th Avenue, and the faded grandeur of the college football arena contiguously comes into sight. But in the featureless rack of streets, locating Robyn’s apartment reminds him of trying to find Notman’s lost contact lens on an Edinburgh Parks Department football pitch. As he feels himself going in circles anger gnaws at him, unleashing a bilious frustration in his gut.
It would be easier to eat fresh sushi in Brigadoon
. He’s ready to hammer his car horn in exasperated despair when the orange building seems to step out in front of him. — Thank fuck, he gasps in gratitude, parking across the street.

He hesitates in exiting the car; inspects his bloody fingers, throbbing like toothache. Driving through Little Havana, that sense of alienation and despondency has swept back over him. He is not a cop here. Thankfully, he can see no sign of police in the quiet street. But they would arrive soon, either Chet’s testimony or his battering of Clemson would ensure that.

So Lennox steels himself, gets out and walks up the path, presses some buzzers that aren’t Robyn’s, shouting, — Pest control, and waits for the crackle before pushing the front door. He climbs the stair and bangs on the entrance of the apartment he visited two
nights
ago. Starry pulls it open in agitation. Her eyes widen in shock as she beholds Lennox. — What the fuck do you –

She never gets to finish the sentence as he rams his forehead into her face. The crack of bone splintering followed by a red spray tells him he’s snapped the bridge of her nose. Starry screams, bending forward and teetering back, uttering curses in Spanish, as insistent bombs of thick blood fall through her fingers on to the hardwood floor. Lennox grabs her hair in his left fist and jumps into the apartment with a twist, smashing her head against the door frame. She collapses to the deck, where she lies stunned and moaning as he closes the door behind them.

Robyn runs in from the lounge, leaky-eyed and halting. — Ray! Where’s Tia? Is she safe? She looks down at Starry in trembling bewilderment. — What have you done?

— Something you or some other cunt should have a long time ago. Anybody else in here?

— No … but what happened? Where’s Tianna?

Lennox realises that he’s never had violent contact with a woman before, if you discounted the obese lassie he’d had to sit on at the South Side station, after she’d freaked out and bitten off part of a uniformed spastic’s ear. But this one didn’t factor, because she was a beast, like the others. — Are there any firearms in the house?

— No … Robyn’s eyes are like a Halloween mask. It’s as if she’s been caught in a cycle of crying and applying more eyeliner without thinking to wash her face. It nauseates him to consider that he could have had sex with her: more so, when he thinks about her daughter and his own fiancée. Robyn bunches her fists in front of her chest. — Where’s Tianna?

— She’s okay. She’s with friends. What the fuck have they done to you? Where did they take ye?

— It was Lance … he said my drugs problem had gotten outta hand … an intervention, she rambles, then paralysis seizes her face as she’s smitten by the ineptitude of her own words. — They were my friends … they knew what was best. I … she begs, halting as her flimsy conviction deserts her. She’s a grotesque tear factory to him; afflicted by the strange notion that if she cried enough, she’d eventually excrete the source of her pain. Unlike Starry’s face with
the
Latin cheekbones and engorged lips, which grew more alluring in rage, Robyn’s small, fine Anglo-Saxon features become pinched; petty and ungenerous. Stiff-upper-lipped stoicism is the way for our race, ostentatious anger always demeans us, Lennox considers. It is fear that diminishes Starry. He grabs her and hauls her to her feet, jostling her into the lounge and shoving her on to the chair. — What have you done to her? Robyn asks again.

— You know what I’ve done and why I’ve done it, jabbing a finger at her, before turning back to his quarry in the chair. — You fuckin move a muscle and I’ll throttle you to death with my bare hands. Got that?

She forces a defiant sneer, still holding her nose.

Lennox’s face contorts as he takes a step closer to her. — HAVE YOU FUCKIN WELL GOT THAT?

And he thinks of when he lost it at his last interrogation, but now there’s no Horsburgh, only Starry’s abject shell, nodding in miserable deference. He charges through to the toilet, grabs a soiled towel and thinks of the uses it could be put to before he throws it at her. Then, remembering Robyn’s cuffs, he goes to the bedroom and removes them from the nightstand. He experiences Robyn’s presence as a background bleating sound as he snaps Starry’s hand to a radiator pipe behind her. — It’s fucking hot, she squawks through the towel.

— Good, Lennox says, as he looks back at Robyn.

— What’s going on, Ray? Robyn asks, nervously picking burrs from her faded green top — Where’s my baby? Did you take her to Chet’s?

— I’ve told you, she’s fine. Don’t give me any performances, Robyn. I’ve seen one of your performances, and he pulls the disc from his pocket.

— You found the tapes … Her hand goes to her hair, and Lennox has to repress the urge to scream at her.

She thinks I’m fucking jealous! The daft cunt actually thinks that’s what this is about!
— Yes.

— Johnnie and I met through Starry. He liked to video when we … were together.

Lennox nods, thinking about guys who wanted to become porn
stars
until they realised that they couldn’t get wood on camera. In a couple of generations, he considers, we won’t be able to get wood
unless
there’s a camera.

Robyn whines, — Then he got Lance involved.

— Lance was my boyfriend, bitch, Lennox hears Starry’s muffled hiss from behind the towel.

Robyn seems not to register, — … and it just got crazier and wilder. Then I found out that there were other women, other videos.

— Oh yeah, there were others, he caustically agrees.

Robyn looks to a broken-nosed Starry, holding her head up with the towel, groaning in agony, then back to Lennox. — Who …
who are
you, Ray? Who? Robyn’s rasping sobs are punctuated only by the sound of mucus sliding down her gullet in heavy swallows.

— Later, he says, wondering if he’ll ever be able to answer that question to his own satisfaction. — Did you see any of the other videos?

— No, of course I didn’t –

— Chet’s boat was where some of them were made.

— No, Robyn gasps. — No. No! I don’t believe it … not Chet … where’s Tianna?!

Lennox inserts the disc into the DVD player. — Here’s one you missed.

— What?! We’re going to watch one of these films? Now? What the hell –

— You need to see this. Need to see what the people you choose as friends are really about.

He didn’t want to watch it again, and instead sits studying her reaction as the images appear on the screen. The voice of her drugged daughter: — I feel sick … I wanna go home … Dearing’s kindly reply: — It’s okay, honey, jus you relax …

— NO! Oh my God … No! Robyn’s chest heaves. But her terror is real: he knows she wasn’t part of Tianna’s abuse.

— I’m sorry. He stops the disc with the remote. — I had to be sure that you weren’t involved in this.

— What? What do you … who … Robyn’s eyes bulge, her chest heaving as she struggles for breath.

Shame’s mass aggregates in him and his eyes fall to the floor. — They probably gave Tianna something, some kind of sedative. Not on the boat, most likely in the car on the way out there, on Alligator Alley. He looks back to her. — While you were in rehab.

— But she was with Sta— Robyn starts, looks to the couch and the face covered with the towel. — No … NO! WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BABY, YOU FUCKING EVIL BITCH?!

— Robyn, Lennox says, — do you remember Vince, back in Alabama?

— Yes. Robyn is barely audible as her hate-filled eyes screw into Starry, who holds the towel in front of her face like a mask.

He squeezes her hand to get her to focus on him. — You left Mobile to get away from him. Took Tianna, cause you knew what he was like? She told you, and you believed her, didn’t you?

— I … yes … He told me he loved me!

— Vince was involved in an organised paedophile ring: the same one as Lance and Johnnie. The same one that Jimmy Clemson in Jacksonville was part of.

— No … how can that be …? she cries, but a terrible understanding is starting to settle in her eyes.

— The deal is that they identify single women: marginal, lonely, with young children. They exchange information mainly through a website, but also on these sales training functions. I got the list of members from the computer. They devise a control strategy, pass the info around to other paedophiles, one or more of whom then stalk the woman and attempt to manipulate her into entering a sexual relationship with them. Once that goal’s achieved, they quickly move on to the child. If the mother develops any suspicion about what they’re up to, they simply withdraw, passing the woman’s contact details on to the next member who steps in and attempts to groom them again.

— Oh my God … Robyn whines through hands that cover her eyes. — Tianna … what have I done … what have they done to my Tia?

The ball in his throat burns again, but Lennox forces himself to carry on.

— The code of the group is not to take risks. Gaining the mother’s trust, they befriend the kid, taking an interest; becoming the surrogate father the child wants to have around, slowly building up the emotional intimacy and the physical contact. Take my hand. Give me a hug. A wee kiss. Then they declare love, but tell the child it must be a secret. All the time they praise the kid, singling them out, so they believe the love they share is special, thus rationalising the need to keep it secret and exclusive. That’s how it ends up, Lennox nods to the screen.

Miserable, low, rhythmic sobs emanate from Robyn, her eyes still covered by her hands. Her pores seem to have opened up, as if in order to absorb everything out of the fetid air. Then she glares in seething rage at Starry, who sits silently, bizarrely, with the towel now over her head. — PUT IT BACK ON, I WANNA FUCKING SEE WHAT THEY’VE DONE!

— No, Lennox says. — If you want to watch more, it’s on your own time. He looks to Starry, reminding him of a hooded falcon, a predator made passive by the cover. — This paedophile ring had a handover strategy. Once you worked out Vince’s game in Mobile, he got in touch with Clemson in Jacksonville.

— I didn’t know … how could I have known …?

— You couldn’t. When you sussed there was something dodgy about this Clemson guy, he got in touch with Johnnie and then Lance in Miami.

— He was a pig, Robyn spits. — Vince I would never have figured … but Clemson was a lousy fuckin pig!

— And some. So when they start getting more and more kinky, by this time, through the sheer process of erosion, you’re thinking: ‘That’s what guys are like, maybe I’m just a little hung-up.’ By now you’ve been isolated from all your girlfriends and family back home. And they have this fucker here, he points at Starry, — working for them, telling you it’s all hunky-dory. You were starting to get suspicious, but they’d already gotten everything they wanted from you. He nods to the videodisc.

— They got me so fucked up, gave me all that free shit: the coke, the meth, the grass, the downers …

— Starry had you in that specific bar the other night, to meet
someone
, who, all being well, would have been your next beau. Remember that guy I had the run-in with?

A miserable nod, followed by a bloodcurdling, — WHY? at Starry. — Just tell me
why
!

Starry, sequestered by the bloody towel, is murmuring what sounds like a prayer in Spanish.

Lennox talks over them: — She mistook me for him. Then, when the real deal came along, she realised she’d fucked up. After trying to throw us together, she then started to vie with you for my attention, remember?

— I can’t believe it. All of them … Vince, Jimmy, Johnnie, Lance … all in on it … Her eyes widen in stark horror. — Chet! Is Tianna with
him
!?

— No, she’s safe. Anyway, Chet was different. He was a lonely old guy who missed his wife. They befriended him in order to get use of the boat. They used him like they used you. Employed similar tactics. Became his buddies. Dearing was a cop; like a lot of people, Chet trusted cops, he says, and she’s so greedy for his words he feels like a parent bird feeding its fledgling. — They showed him some stag movies as buddies sometimes do. Lennox recoils at the thought:
sometimes buddies do more
. Then it was, ‘We like to film our own shows. Can we use your boat?’

For a while Robyn can’t speak. When she finally finds her voice she mutters, — My baby, my baby, my baby …

— She’s safe now. She’s a strong kid, he says briskly, — and she needs you,
we
need you to show some strength now. The cops’ll be here soon.

She nods in assent, but her face is crumbling as Lennox continues. — Chet liked to watch the home-made stag videos. When he saw you appear in one, he drew the line and left them to it. But then Johnnie and Lance started getting more outlandish. The women became younger. Sometimes they weren’t women. Chet was freaked out at those visitors to his boat, but by then it was plain blackmail. He’s a proud, straight old guy. He didn’t want the law or his respectable neighbours at Grove Marina thinking he moved in such circles. But they grew sloppy and careless, especially Johnnie. They started storing the videos on his boat.

Starry rattles the cuff against the pipes.

Lennox draws a deep breath. Clenches the fist that had pummelled itself into fragments. Never to be the same again. Shards floating around in cartilage and tendon. — Chet found their website. It wasn’t incriminating, but it posted their membership list and a meetings timetable. There’s eight of them, including Dearing, at the Embassy Hotel right now, or more likely by now on the run from the Miami–Dade PD. The subject of their conference was probably you and a few other single mothers in South Florida.