Miami Noir (28 page)
“In bed, was it?”
“In bed. Her bed. I have no evidence for that. But if I were to say she had done so, even now, would the police not at least speak to her?”
“Cops aren’t that eager to open settled cases from 1962.”
“But there was scandal and she’d become respectable again. And she might think the police would care. My impression was that she was scared that I’d appeared in her building.”
“Okay. Let’s say you’re right. She should’ve avoided you. Instead, what did she do?”
“She wanted to get together, she said. I agreed to see her, but said I had a lot of work.” He laughs his dry laugh. “So we made the date for a week from then. I was to come to her place, have a drink, then maybe we’d go out to dinner. I wanted a week to think. What would she do with the loose end? She’d be looking for a way to kill me, I felt. She had to. I considered running, but she would be able to find me now. People can’t disappear as easily they used to. So I put on my jacket and tie, and left my dog with plenty of food and water and the door ajar in case I didn’t come back, and went to see her.”
“Did you take your gun?” I gesture at it.
“No, I didn’t own it then. When I got there I was scared. She offered me a cigarette, but I don’t smoke. Offered me a drink, a martini, which I accepted, but didn’t drink, just lifted it to my lips and put it down. My dog, Archie, has quite a few ailments. I had a dog tranquilizer with me to put in her drink, but I didn’t get a chance. Her eyes were on me all the time. Intent.” He sighs. “I was raised to think of women as emotional creatures.”
“Creatures?”
“Weren’t you? Soft, dependent, lacking calculation. Of course, that’s a mistake we make about many other creatures too, underestimating them. In any case, believe me, she was rational, detached, watchful. She said she’d thought about me, a lot. That she’d been alone a long time. And she invited me into the bedroom. Perhaps I was supposed to be woozy. I know I was shaky, anyway, following her in.”
“My God,” I say. “That bedroom.”
“She lay back on the bed the same way she had when—” He pauses, clears his throat. “And I sat beside her and leaned forward and I put the pillow over her face.”
“That’s why you stole the pillowcase.”
He nods. “She died unexpectedly fast. I was thinking I would give her an empty injection, just put some air into her vein and cause an embolism.”
“You had a hypodermic on you?”
“I have a whole kit. You know, you can buy anything in Miami. But she just stopped breathing. She must have had a heart attack—perhaps the shock?”
“She was old.”
“And she smoked,” he says. “She may have had heart disease. I figured nobody pays attention to the death of an old lady in her own bed. I took off her shoes, and wiped them, and set them under the bed. I wanted it to look like she’d felt ill and had to lie down and then died. I cleaned up the glasses, dried them, put them away. I have them now—I got them from the kitchen. I believe I have washed them half a dozen times. Interestingly, among her liquor there was a bottle with a dropper, hand-labelled
Bitters
. I don’t know what was in it. Maybe it was bitters, maybe something else. I moved it to the kitchen cabinet, and later threw it out, then realized I should have kept it, had it tested if I needed to prove self-defense. I left her one cigarette butt in the ashtray. I wiped whatever I thought I’d touched. But I was fairly sure we’d be in there to do the estate clean-up and I’d handle a lot of things and so my fingerprints wouldn’t mean anything. I’m not going back to jail!” He shrieks this last.
“I understand,” I say, soothingly. “How did you know Alex would get the estate job?”
“Oh,” he says, “Alex left cards when we were there before—at the desk and by the mailboxes and so on. So I didn’t think anyone would find it odd that Helena had picked one up and had it in her desk, where she had other business cards. The daughter saw it and called. It was a gamble, but a good one. I left feeling fairly confident and calm. It was only afterwards that I started to doubt myself and worry about little things. I couldn’t have taken the pillowcase. That would have drawn attention. But later I kept thinking about it—forensics people can pick up tiny fibers, hairs. That day we were there, I never could get into the bedroom alone till after Jeff and Hank carted off the furniture, and by then Sharon had packed up the bedclothes. I am sorry I had to steal from her.”
“What’d you do with the pillowcases?”
“I burned them both. I didn’t know which one was which.”
“And the rest of the stuff you took?”
“In my van. I was going to put it in a dumpster, but I kept worrying it would be found.”
“Sharon was going to give it to abused women.”
He looks somewhat ashamed.
“Did you touch the dressing table?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. But afterwards I wasn’t sure.”
“So on Lincoln Road you touched it and you let the dog hop up there?” He nods. “Did you touch the portrait?”
“I don’t recall. There were a number of pictures in the living room that she showed me—her daughter and her grandchildren. I think it was there. I don’t think I touched it. Did I?”
I say, “Lucite does hold prints. But I had already cleaned it myself when I got it home. Here—look at it. You’re safe.”
He takes it, holding it between both palms, and I lift his pistol off the chair arm and put it on the floor beside me.
“So there’s no evidence,” he says.
“Just what’s in your head.”
“What are you going to do?”
I shake my head. “Don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt you, Ray,” he says. “Tonight, I didn’t even think you’d be here.”
“But you brought the gun. Where’d you get it?”
“In my neighborhood. I bought it from a sad woman, a…prostitute. I said I wanted it to defend myself. I just thought if the police were to surprise me—if I had no warning—I could use it on myself. Or wave it at them and they’d shoot me. I’m not going back to jail.” He says it calmly this time.
“Miami,” I say. “This place is full of killers. Guys who work on your car may have been in death squads in Peru, dictators own steak houses, drug kingpins become developers. I can’t fix every little thing. Go home. I know you did it, and you know I know, but there’s not a bit of evidence left, I promise you. She’s ash and her things are scattered, and scattering further every day.”
He uses his shirttails to wipe off the picture frame and hands it back to me. I clasp it. Her eyes smile at me in the lamplight.
“Is that how she looked when you knew her?”
“She’s a little younger, but yes.”
“It’s driving you nuts,” I say, “isn’t it?”
“What is?” he says, but he knows.
“The shred of a shadow of a glimpse of a chance that she might have been innocent. That the first story was true, the one she told, with Dorsett the killer and bully and you the rescuer. The one you went to jail on.”
He says, “I’m sure as one can be.”
“It’s just too bad you have a conscience.”
He blinks at me. “She didn’t,” he says. And sighs. He picks up his flashlight and nods to me and leaves. I bolt the door after him. On close inspection, his gun’s in even worse shape than I thought. I put it into a bag. I’ll drop it out to sea. I listen to the sound the palmettos make chattering against my windows and treat myself to a cigarette.
Three weeks later, on a Friday, I’m getting spruced up to go out. Two days after our long discussion, Cash was found dead in his apartment He had a needle beside him containing nothing but air. In a note he left his worldly goods to Alex and asked that I take care of his dog Archie. He left no explanation for his suicide other than to say,
I’m very tired
Our team cleared out his place. He had many old books, those of most interest with illustrated plates of birds and animals. He owned a complete medical bag and a collection of antique vet instruments that Guillermo says might be worth something. He’s researching it. These things might possibly realize enough to repay Alex for the cremation. None of us could start the van, but Alex located some of Cash’s buddies from the flea market in Fort Lauderdale and they came down and towed it away. The Kussrows declared his furniture of no resale value and we put it all out on the street for pickers to take. The building itself will soon be gutted.
Alex is looking for another trustworthy clean-up man. I haven’t told him about Cash. The morning after my talk with him, Sharon found the stolen clothing tossed behind her hibiscus bushes. Alex and Sharon like the theory that the burglar was a boy seeking women’s clothes who found them too dowdy.
Archie came to me with a list of what he eats and his ailments and a wardrobe of waistcoats and sweaters. I think Cash underestimated him. There’s a nip in the November air this evening, but I’m making Archie tough it out. We’ll walk down to Sharon’s to pick her up and have dinner at a new restaurant on Biscayne that Alex recommends. We’ll go on afterward to Café Nublado, and beyond that, who knows? She’s a warm woman, as I’m coming to appreciate.
On my way out I stop in the dining room—as I often do—to look at the portrait of Helena Dorsett. What was it she had? Beauty enough to kill for, any way you look at it. I strain to recapture the woman I met. Quite a lady, I remember thinking. Her face is a pattern of shadow and light. Now, just paper.
T
he Miami PD had beaten us to the scene. Yellow tape already circled the yard from one royal palm tree to the next. An officer in a rain poncho held up a hand and I waited, wipers flapping, while the fire-rescue truck pulled out of the driveway. No emergency lights, no siren. The bodies would be taken out later in the ME’s unmarked van.
I drove past the police vehicles and parked at the end of the block. The house was in Coconut Grove in a wealthy enclave of narrow streets that deadended at Biscayne Bay. Confined by the downpour, neighbors watched from their porches or second-floor windows.
The only thing I could find to keep myself dry was a plastic bag from Target in the backseat. I dumped out the jeans to be returned, grabbed my camera bag, and shoved the door open just as a silver BMW sedan lurched around me and skidded on wet leaves. Its brake lights went off, and through the misted rear window I could see Charlene on her cell phone. She disconnected and struggled out of the car with an umbrella as thunder rattled the sky.
I called out, “Did you reach her?”
“No. Doesn’t matter, we’re here. Come on, let’s go.” I could hear Brooklyn in her voice, though she’d practiced law in Miami longer than I’d been alive.
Charlene held the umbrella for both of us, but I told her to go ahead, and she clattered along beside me in her high heels and tight skirt. An officer stopped us at the end of the driveway.
“I’m Charlene Marks, Mrs. Zaden’s attorney. Would you kindly tell the lead investigator I want to see my client? Who’s in charge, by the way?”
Ignoring the question, the officer lifted a radio to his lips. Water dripped off the hood of his poncho. I looked at the house from under my white plastic bag. Standard South Florida mansion: red barrel-tile roof, a portico over the circular driveway, double doors with beveled glass, a chandelier in the foyer. The builder had probably bulldozed the little threebedroom-with-carport that used to sit on this lot. What can I say? I don’t like bling.
My name is Sara Morales. I do private investigations, and Charlene’s firm is one of my accounts. I used to work for the Miami Police Department until I slid down some stairs while chasing a supposedly docile suspect and broke two vertebrae. I’ve recovered from the injury; I run five miles a day, when the weather isn’t so hot it melts my shoes to the asphalt, but I won’t go back to police work. I’ve come to enjoy my freedom.
I rent a two-room office in a commercial strip on South Dixie Highway, walking distance to my apartment if I had to. My parents still live in Little Havana in the first house they bought after coming to the U.S. on a raft. Literally a raft: inner tubes and a wooden platform that broke up halfway across the straits. Three of the people who started out, including my grandfather, didn’t make it. Till the day she died, my nena claimed she could talk to him in the other world. Of course she could. She was into
Santería
big time. I moved out after high school, a sacrilege for a Cuban girl.
Twenty minutes ago I’d been at my desk writing invoices when the phone rang. I picked up and heard tires screaming down the ramp of a parking garage. Charlene had told me whatever the hell I was doing, drop it and meet her at Kathy Zaden’s house. She said a woman had come in and slashed Dr. Zaden with a machete. Kathy heard him yelling for help, and ran downstairs with a pistol. She killed the woman, but not soon enough.
“The idiot called 911 before she called me. Damn it!” Charlene wanted to get there before her client said anything stupid to the cops. She told me to bring my camera.
I was out the door in less than thirty seconds.
The uniformed officer lifted the tape. “You want to speak to Sergeant Bill Nance.”
“Thanks.” Charlene headed up the driveway. Water sheeted over the interlocking pavers.
Bill Nance. He’d been my supervisor in the detective bureau. I’d been promoted to homicide after only five years on the force, so to him I was a minority cutting in line. When I left, he didn’t send me a goodbye card.
We ran under the portico, where the mist was blowing in sideways. One of the front doors was wide open, and Nance stood there, feet spread, leaning back a little to balance his gut. Short white hair, gray slacks, gun on hip, silver shield clipped to the holster. He dismissed me with a glance and nodded at Charlene. They go back to her days at the prosecutor’s office. They’d been close, but damned if I can see why.
She propped her folded umbrella against a poured-concrete lion, one of a set flanking the entrance. The humidity had frizzed her curly gray hair. “Hello, Bill. Crummy day for this, isn’t it?”
“It’ll blow over.”
“What have you got so far?”
“Two dead downstairs in the study. Dr. Howard Zaden and a black female, early fifties. Mrs. Zaden ID’d her as Carmen Sánchez. She’s from the Dominican Republic. It appears she attacked Dr. Zaden with a machete, and Mrs. Zaden shot her. I’d like a few more details, but your client won’t talk to me.”
“It’s my fault. When she called, I told her to sit tight. Where is she?”
“Sitting tight.” Nance looked at me, at my camera. “No photos, Morales.”
“Nonsense,” Charlene said. “We have a right to record the scene, and if you make me call a judge, he’ll tell you so. You’ve got the gun, and Kathy Zaden admitted firing it. How could we possibly impede your investigation?”
There was an argument, which Charlene won by dangling the possibility that she’d let Kathy Zaden talk to him. I don’t think Nance bought it, but he took us inside.
My wet sneakers chirped on the marble floor and fell silent on the Oriental rug. A crowd at a door on the opposite side of the living room meant I’d find Dr. Zaden and his guest over there, but Charlene said to come with her.
Nance led us through a dining room overlooking the canal where the Zadens’s boat was docked, then to a kitchen done in stainless steel, cherry wood, and black granite. Either nobody cooked in here, or they had a better staff than I did.
Kathy Zaden was sitting at the counter with her head in her hands and a wad of tissue in her fist. She saw us and stood up, and her crop pants and sleeveless yellow top showed splashes of red. Her knees were bloody, and her forearms, like she’d crawled in it.
“Oh…Charlene!”
Making shushing noises, Charlene patted her on the shoulder. She didn’t bother setting down her purse. She wasn’t staying long enough to chat. “You need to put something else on, darling. We’re leaving. Pack your jammies and a toothbrush.”
“Will they let me go?”
“They will unless you have confessed to something extremely naughty.”
“I didn’t! I had to…oh. Oh—” She sobbed. “He’s dead. Oh, God. The blood. It was so terrible. I was sick. I threw up.”
“Let’s just run upstairs and get you into some clean clothes, shall we?”
“The detective said to give him these.”
“Oh, really.” Charlene looked darkly in toward the door, where Sergeant Nance lingered. “Well, if and when a warrant is issued, he can have them.”
“Why are they acting like I did something wrong? They swabbed my hands like I was a criminal. Why?”
“It’s routine. Come on, let’s go.”
Kathy blew her nose. A weak smile came my way. “Hi, Sara.”
I put an arm around her. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right.”
She lowered her head to mine and made another little sob.
Kathy Zaden and I are the same age, thirty-three. That’s as far as the similarity extends. I’m short and dark, thanks to my mulatta grandmother. Kathy Zaden is a sexy blonde with long, tanned legs. She had a realtor’s license, and she’d met Dr. Zaden four years ago showing him an apartment on South Beach. He had just dumped his first wife and was looking for something more exciting—in both real estate and women, I suppose. Howard had made a fortune doing plastic surgery. He had a good build, an easy smile, a Mercedes CL500 coupe, a forty-two-foot Bertram sport fisher, a condo in Vail, and a tax attorney who showed him how to shelter his assets. For her birthday, he’d done Kathy’s boobs.
You want to hate men like Howard Zaden. I’d wanted to hate Kathy, but I couldn’t. She’d been born poor in Valdosta, Georgia, and fought her way out. She sent money home; she organized charity events; she took in stray cats. But she finally got it: She believed Howard when he said that two kids from his previous marriage were enough. She believed that one day he would dump her too.
Kathy had gone to Charlene to see about breaking the twenty-page prenuptial agreement he’d made her sign. Needless to say, Charlene had not been Kathy’s lawyer for the prenup. I’d been shadowing Dr. Zaden for a couple of weeks to see if we could find anything useful, and I was getting nowhere. Now it didn’t matter.
We went upstairs. When I was finished taking shots of Kathy Zaden and the blood stains, Charlene shooed her into the bathroom, and I found my way to the study.
The cool stares I got from the crime scene technicians meant that Bill Nance had told them who I was. He gave me a pair of blue paper booties and said, “Don’t touch anything, and don’t get in the way. You’ve got five minutes.”
It was more a media room than a study, with a huge flatscreen television facing a leather sofa, rows of DVDs on the mahogany built-ins, and audio equipment behind glass doors. Hitting the shutter of my digital SLR, I maneuvered toward the other side of the room, where a desk and a clot of detectives hid my view. When they moved I saw two bodies in a puddle of dark red seeping into the ivory-colored carpet.
Howard Zaden lay on his back in a blue dress shirt, arms out like he was soaring, gold on his cuffs. A heavyset woman in black pants and a white knit top lay facedown across his lower legs. I barely saw her; my eyes were on Dr. Zaden.
His head had rolled to the side, and his neck looked like a piece of fresh steak. I could see something paler red protruding: bone, cartilage. His tie was gone just below the knot. Sweat prickled my scalp. This had not been the first cut; he’d survived long enough to scream and hold up his hands. Half his left hand was missing, and a long gash had opened his shoulder. More cuts went through his left bicep, his chest, his abdomen, as though she’d kept chopping after he hit the floor.
I forced myself to concentrate on what I saw through the viewfinder. Carmen Sánchez was black, or Afro-Cuban or Afro-something. Her hair was medium length, processed straight. I squatted to see her face, but her hair covered it. There were two red holes in her back, another in her neck. One shoe had come off, and I saw a brown foot, a tan sole. It reminded me of Nena’s feet, the calluses, her cheap plastic sandals. I didn’t see a purse.
If Kathy Zaden had said Carmen Sánchez was stalking her husband, then Charlene had to know about it. Charlene hadn’t told me, but then, I hadn’t been hired for that.
The machete lay near the bodies, a shiny curve about three feet long. Wood handle, blood drying to brown on the steel. I waited for a female officer to walk by, then zoomed in for a closeup. The edge had been honed till it shimmered. Something odd on the trailing edge: black smudges, like soot. Like she’d tried to burn it.
Why had Howard let her in? Most sane people would have slammed the door on a woman carrying a machete. Then I noticed a raincoat on the floor and pressed the shutter.
Sergeant Nance stood beside me. “What did she want with Dr. Zaden?”
“I have no idea.” My viewfinder showed the desk, the stuff on it. A checkbook lying open, the big kind with a leather-bound cover.
He said, “She doesn’t look like a disgruntled plastic surgery patient.”
“No, she’s a poor black Dominicana.”
“Take it easy, Morales.”
I shot images of the blood spatter up the side of the desk, over the bookshelves behind it, across the ceiling.
He asked, “Who was it answered the door? Mrs. Zaden?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody let this woman in.”
I looked at him. “You think?”
Nance made a little smile, showing his teeth. He was still smoking, I noticed. “This lady came to do harm to Dr. Zaden, and we don’t know why. His wife could shed some light. We’re not out to get her. We just want to clear things up.”
“Okay. I’ll be sure to tell her.”
“You’re done here,” Nance said. “Put it away.”
I shot one more for the principle of it. At the door I took off the booties and balled them into my pants pocket.
Nance leaned closer. “Lucky thing you tripped down those steps, Morales. Know why?”
I turned away, but his voice followed me.
“Because they gave you disability instead of firing your ass. You weren’t cutting it.”
I kept my reply to myself. You don’t get anywhere arguing with a cop.
The clouds had rumbled off, dragging the heat with them, leaving a gray overcast and a few stray drops of rain. Beyond the crime tape, the crowd of onlookers had grown. Two local satellite news trucks had set up operations on the street, and another was moving into position. The murder of a prominent Miami plastic surgeon would be breaking news at 6 o’clock.
Among the assorted police vehicles in the driveway, I spotted a red Toyota with a missing hubcap and a cracked side window. A Florida tag. I went over and took a picture of it, then the vehicle ID through the windshield. Whoever owned it would know Carmen Sánchez.
Nance would do the same thing. This case would be all over the front page, and Nance would work it. Somebody—hair stylist, personal trainer—would eventually tell him that Kathy had wanted out, and that she’d get more from a dead husband than an ex-husband. Nance knew that Carmen Sánchez had been stalking Dr. Zaden. He was wondering who let her in. Had Kathy waited until her husband was dead to fire the pistol into Mrs. Sánchez’s back?
A movement on the street caught my eye. A monster Hummer painted bright yellow turned into the front yard, tires digging into the wet grass, chrome snout pressing on the crime scene tape. The door opened, and a guy slid off the seat. Short brown hair, average build, a Hawaiian shirt. He shouted something to a uniformed officer and ran full speed toward the house.
