Strip Tease (13 page)

Moldy thought about it while he poured two cognacs. He handed one to Crandall and said, “I believe in influence for the sake of influence.”

“Pushing buttons.”

“It’s a kick—wouldn’t you agree?”

Crandall said, “To be honest, some days it sucks.”

“You’re still in the trenches, Erb. Be patient.”

“You mean someday I could end up like… him?” He pointed at John Mitchell’s toady visage. “Gee, Malcolm, I can hardly wait.”

“You are one cynical fuck.”

They sat in Moldowsky’s plush living room, which featured a panoramic vista of the Atlantic Ocean. Distant lights of freighters and cruise ships winked at them from the Gulf Stream. Crandall was soothed by the view and warmed by the cognac.

Moldowsky asked for an update on the reelection campaign. He was pleased to hear that David Dilbeck’s Republican opponent, a right-wing appliance dealer, had raised only sixty thousand dollars to date. The hapless yutz was spending most of his days fending off the press, and trying to explain two long-ago convictions for mail fraud back in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moldy himself had unearthed the obscure rap sheet, and passed it along to a friendly Miami columnist.

On the home front, Erb Crandall reported that every living Rojo, including scores of far-flung cousins, had dutifully sent cashier’s checks for the maximum allowable contribution to the Re-Elect Dave Dilbeck Committee. Additional thousands of dollars were pouring in from supposedly ordinary citizens wishing to support the congressman’s exemplary work. Crosschecking those contributors’ names with voter rolls, or even with the telephone book, would have been useless. The names belonged to Caribbean farm workers, imported by the sugar industry to work the cane fields. It was Moldowsky’s inspired idea to use the untraceable migrants as a cover for illegal Rojo donations.

“Davey still doesn’t know,” Crandall said.

“Don’t tell him,” said Moldy.

“He thinks he’s adored by the masses.”

“Encourage that notion, Erb. We like a candidate with confidence.”

“Oh, he’s confident,” Crandall said. “He’s so goddamn confident I can’t control him.” He handed Moldy the congressman’s most recent tab from the Flesh Farm. Mr. Ling had boldly tacked on forty bucks for “replacement of damaged pasties.”

“And where were you!” Moldowsky demanded of Crandall.

“He went out the back door, Malcolm. Chris Rojo sent the car.”

“I said, where were you?”

“Asleep in the living room.”

“Nice work.”

“Fuck off,” Crandall said. “Tonight you can tuck him in. That I’d pay to see.”

Moldowsky was disturbed to hear that Dilbeck was up to his old licentious tricks. Obviously the idiot had learned nothing from the Eager Beaver episode.

Erb Crandall said, “Can we put something in his food? I was thinking saltpeter.”

“Yeah? I was thinking thorazine.” Moldowsky was astounded by the congressman’s stupidity. Didn’t he realize how close he’d come to disaster? Jerry Killian was gone, but there would be other Killians, other dangerous blackmailers, if Dilbeck didn’t steer clear of the tittie bars.

“There’s something else,” Crandall said.

Moldowsky loosened his necktie vigorously, as if escaping a noose. “Let me guess: he’s gone and knocked up a cheerleader. Make that an under aged cheerleader. Catholic girl’s school?”

“You told me to keep you posted in the weirdo department.”

“So post me, Erb. Before I die of fucking suspense.”

Crandall popped a cough drop into his mouth. “The congressman got an unusual phone call this morning.”

“Here, or in the Washington office?”

“Washington. One of the secretaries took the message.” As he spoke, Erb Crandall clacked the lozenge from cheek to cheek. He said, “It was a woman calling.”

“There’s a shocker.”

“Said she was a friend of Jerry Killian.”

“You’re shitting me.” Moldy’s jaw hung. “Erb, this better be a joke.”

“You see me laughing?”

“What else?” Moldowsky barked. “What else did she say?”

“That’s it, Malcolm. She didn’t leave a name or a number. Very polite, according to the secretary. Said she’d call back another tune, when the congressman was available.”

Moldowsky ran his fingernails raggedly through his hair—that’s how Crandall knew he was upset. Impeccable grooming was one of Moldy’s trademarks.

“Did you tell Davey?” he asked.

“Of course not.”

“Which secretary took the call?”

“The older one—Beth Ann. Don’t worry, she doesn’t know a thing. The name Killian meant zero to her.” Crandall noisily chewed the cough drop and washed it down with cognac. “Malcolm, it’s about time you filled me in.”

“Be glad I haven’t.”

“But you said it was taken care of.”

Moldowsky stared out to sea. “I thought it was.”

At the moment his pager beeped, Sgt. Al Garcia was sitting on a meat freezer, chewing gum, filling out paperwork. Inside the freezer were Ira and Stephanie Fishman, ages eighty-one and seventy-seven, folded up like patio furniture. They had passed away within two days of each other in the month of July during the first full year of Gerald Ford’s presidency. Daughter Audrey, their only child, had placed the dead Fishmans in a Sears industrial-size deep freeze, which she’d purchased especially for that purpose. Between them, Ira and Stephanie Fishman had been collecting about $1,700 a month in Social Security, disability and veteran’s benefits. Being chronically unemployed and without prospects, Audrey felt no urgency to inform the government or anyone else that her parents had died. Friends assumed that the couple had grown tired of the hot weather and moved back to Long Island. No one but Audrey knew that Ira and Stephanie lay perfectly preserved beneath three dozen Swanson frozen dinners, mostly Salisbury steaks. The Social Security checks kept coming, and for all these years Audrey cashed them.

Her secret was safe until this day. She got up early and took the church bus to Seminole bingo, as usual. At about noon, a young outlaw named Johnnie Wilkinson broke a bedroom window and entered the Fishman residence in search of cash, handguns, credit cards and stereo equipment. Curiosity (or perhaps hunger) attracted Johnnie Wilkinson to the big freezer, and his subsequent screams were heard by a passing postal carrier. Audrey returned to find the small house swarming with cops. She was immediately taken into custody, but detectives were unsure what charges should be filed.

Days would pass before the Fishmans defrosted enough for a proper autopsy, although it appeared to Garcia that they’d died of natural causes. Florida had no specific law against freezing one’s own dead relatives, but Audrey had committed numerous misdemeanors by failing to report her parents’ deaths, and by storing the bodies in a residentially zoned neighborhood. As for her Social Security flimflam, that was a federal crime. Al Garcia had no jurisdiction, or interest. He was rather pleased when his pager went off.

Erin met him at a Denny’s on Biscayne Boulevard. They took the farthest booth from the frozen pie display. When Garcia attempted to light a cigar, Erin plucked it from his mouth and doused it in a cup of coffee.

“Unnecessary,” the detective groused.

“Get out your notebook,” she said.

Al Garcia smiled. “Good old FBI training.”

“You know about that?”

“I’m not as slow as I look.”

A waitress appeared, and Garcia ordered a burger and fries. Erin asked for a salad.

She said, “What else do you know?”

“You went through a blonde phase.”

Erin laughed. “God. Not my driver’s license!”

“You look better as a brunette.” Al Garcia took out the notebook. He clenched the cap of his pen in his teeth, to compensate for the missing cigar. He said, “All I got really is the basics. Height, weight, marital status. Big fat zilch on the FCIC, which is good. Oh yeah, you’re overextended about a hundred bucks on your Visa card. Boy, do I know that drill.”

“I’m impressed,” Erin said.

“Don’t be.”

“You know about Darrell?”

“He’s a hard one to miss. But let’s hear about the late Mr. Killian.”

The more Erin talked, the better she felt. Garcia acted as if he believed every word, although she wondered if it was part of the routine. The detective was non-threatening to a fault. He made notes in sloppy cop shorthand, careful not to let the transcribing interfere with the eating of his hamburger. Predictably, he perked up when he heard that Killian had boasted of a pipeline to a congressman. “I got the name from the judge,” Erin said. She watched as the detective printed the word DILBECK in neat block letters in his notebook.

She added: “Whatever Jerry tried, I’m praying that it isn’t what got him killed.”

“Love can be a dangerous item,” Garcia said.

“I didn’t stop him because—OK, I figured there was an outside chance to get my daughter back. I know it sounds a little crazy.”

“Not to me,” said Garcia. “I read the divorce.”

“Wonderful,” Erin said. The file was a trove of slander. Darrell Grant had invented lurid lies about her sexual appetite, and bribed two of his pals to corroborate the fiction. Then there were the cutting words of the judge himself, pontificating on Erin’s unfitness for motherhood. She looked hard at Garcia. “I wouldn’t hurt my daughter for the world.”

“I know you wouldn’t.”

Erin went for the salad with a vengeance. It tasted like wet napkins.

“What I meant,” Garcia said, “is it doesn’t sound so crazy, you’re going along with Mr. Killian’s scheme. Your ex-husband is a shitbird, if I can be blunt. He’s got no business raising the girl. It’s Angela, right?”

“What he told the judge, the stuff in the files—”

“Forget about it,” Garcia said.

“It’s lies.”

“I said don’t worry. How about some Key lime pie?”

Erin had a piece. Al Garcia ate two. Then he unwrapped a fresh cigar, holding it safely out of Erin’s reach. “Please,” he said, “I beg of you.” She found herself smiling. As Garcia clipped off the butt, Erin picked up his lighter and flicked it open. She reached across the table and lit the cigar.

“They shipped the body back from Montana,” Garcia said, puffing out the words. “Back to Atlanta, I should say. Killian’s ex-wife wants to bury him up there.”

“What about the murder investigation?”

“They don’t like that word out in Mineral County. Murder, I mean. Unclassified was the best they could do. The coroner says he’ll reopen the case if I turn up something new. Something besides a few drops of tap water in the lungs.”

“You’ll keep at it?”

“In my spare time, sure.” Garcia leaned back in a pose of total relaxation. He asked Erin if anything unusual had happened at the Eager Beaver lately. “Think hard,” he said.

“Things stay quiet. We’ve got a pretty large floor manager.”

“No incidents? No bad fights?”

Erin mentioned the lunatic drunk with the champagne bottle. “He sent a young man to the hospital,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a record.”

“So where was your bigshot floor manager’?”

“He couldn’t do much. They had a gun on him.”

“Don’t stop now,” Garcia said.

“It wasn’t the guy swinging the bottle. It was his bodyguard who had the gun.”

“You get lots of bodyguards in the Eager Beaver?”

“No shots were fired,” Erin said. “The whole thing was over in five minutes.”

“And you didn’t recognize this particular drunk.”

“I had another one attached to my thigh. The guy with the Korbel came out of nowhere.”

Garcia leaned forward. “Did you see his face? Would you know him if you saw him again?”

“Maybe.” Erin paused. “Shad got a better look than I did.”

“The bouncer?”

“Don’t ever call him that. ‘Floor Manager’ is the title.”

Garcia said, “I need to chat with him.”

Erin was skeptical. “He’s the strong, silent type.” She chose not to burden Garcia with Shad’s opinion of cops.

“I’ll come by the club some night,” the detective said. “You make the introductions and we’ll play it by ear. All he can do is say no.”

Wrong, thought Erin. That’s not all he can do.

Garcia asked if Jerry Killian had been in the audience on the night of the champagne-bottle attack. Erin didn’t remember; she said she’d check with the other dancers.

“This is probably a dumb question,” Al Garcia said, “but it’ll save me some time: Was anybody arrested?”

Erin giggled. She couldn’t help it.

“I’ll take that as a no,” said the detective. He signaled for the check.

Erin said that there was something else he should know. “Today I called the congressman’s office. I told them I was a close friend of Jerry Killian.”

“Cute,” Garcia said. “I’m guessing he didn’t take the call.”

“Right.”

“And I’m praying you didn’t leave your name.”

“Right,” Erin said. “Want me to try again?”