She tried to see if I was joking, and when she figured I was, gave me a full smile. 'Do you really want my help or are you just hoping to charm your way into my room?' she asked.
'I think I have a significantly greater chance at the former.'
'Dr. Riggs was right. You are smarter than you look.'
That was as close to a compliment as I was going to get. A winsome lass on a sailboard-perhaps overcome by sunstroke-once compared my eyes to the azure waters off Bimini. Later, she tossed me over for a scuba instructor.
Pamela Maxson declined a second drink and we looked at each other a moment, her thoughts imperceptible. She told me she was leaving for New York in the morning, a couple of network appearances, a book signing in the Doubleday store on Fifth Avenue, then back to England. I should call her if I learned anything or if there was another killing.
'Look for messages,' she said.
'Besides ones in lipstick?'
'Frankly, I'm puzzled by the reference to Jack the Ripper. Jack was a disorganized murderer, a slasher who was extremely violent and quite messy. He stalked women he did not know and used force, not persuasion, to subdue them.'
'So the killer's tossing a curveball?'
'A curve…'
'A red herring, a bum steer.'
'Perhaps. But even if the killer is tossing a…bum steer, the message is still meaningful. Whoever wrote it is well read, perhaps an amateur historian, or someone who knows a great deal about classic criminal cases, stories of law enforcement, that sort of thing.'
'Like the honorable state attorney,' I mused, mostly to myself.
'If that were the case, the crime would not be motiveless, would it? If the Diamond girl was his chippy and he killed her, there would have to be a motive. But if it's a random killing, the work of a serial murderer, you'll know soon enough.'
'How?'
'Because there'll be another one presently, won't there?'
I hadn't thought about that before, but now I did. Looking for a little excitement with the gun-and-badge set was one thing, hunting a serial killer was something else again. Serial killers are lifetime obsessions of guys with little offices and big file drawers. It takes forever to nab one. Isn't that what makes them serial killers, unsolved murders over several years? What had I gotten into?
'I don't know how to catch those guys,' I admitted.
Dr. Maxson smiled faintly. 'Don't feel sorry for yourself, Mr. Lassiter. The police are always complaining that serial killers are so difficult to apprehend because there is no connection between victims and no apparent motives. But they do leave clues, and usually they are quite careless. Often they contact the police or stand in the crowd that gathers at the scene.'
'So they want to be caught?'
'No, a common misconception. Part of the thrill is outwitting the police and reliving the crime. There was an ambulance driver who would abduct young women, kill them, call the police, then race back to the hospital so he would get the call to pick up the body.'
While I thought that over she smoothed her skirt in a gesture even my non-psychoanalytic mind could understand.
Thank you for the ride and the drink, Mr. Lassiter,' she said with British formality, and stood up to leave.
'All my friends call me Jake…Pamela,' I said.
She rewarded me with a second smile and then extended a finely tapered white hand. 'Good evening, Jake. And good luck.'
The hand was cool, the shake firm. She didn't ask me to share the view from her room, so I headed out the front where my 442 was parked in a space of honor next to a Rolls. The hood was still hot, and the gas tank was a nudge lower than an hour earlier.
I looked hard at the valet.
'Your shocks are a little soft on the turns,' he said sheepishly.
I gave him five bucks. 'You're telling me.'
CHAPTER 5
It was one of those muggy June days with fifteen hours of daylight but hardly any sunshine. A tropical depression hung over the Gulf of Mexico and raised the blood pressure of Miami's frothy weather guys. Come six and eleven, they show us their color radar and satellite photos, their computerized maps and digital barometers. They blather about wind speeds and waterspouts and reveal what we already know: baby, it's hot outside.
It wasn't even eight a.m., but already my little coral-rock pillbox was stifling. The storm in the Gulf had sucked all the wind from the Florida Straits. Ten days of rain and a month of inattention had left my overgrown yard a jungle that could get me fined if the zoning inspectors weren't busy collecting cash from condo builders who pour rotten slabs.
My house sits in the shade of chinaberry and live-oak trees just off Kumquat in the old part of Coconut Grove. It was built before air-conditioning and has plenty of cross ventilation. But when the wind stops blowing, and the heavy gray sky sags over the bay and the Glades, the old ceiling fans don't do the trick. One of these days I'm going to break down and put in central air. Sure, and maybe get a rooftop dish, a combination fax and photocopy machine, maybe an outdoor whirlpool and an indoor sauna.
Adio s, forty-dollar electricity bills.
Hola, the Grove trendy set.
I wore canvas shorts and nothing else and stood on my rear porch surveying the expanse of my estate-an eighth of an acre, give or take an inch or two. The neighborhood was quiet. The one-story stucco number hidden behind the Poinciana trees belonged to Geoffrey Thompson, who wouldn't be up until noon. He roamed the city streets each night as a free-lance cameraman, shooting videos of drug busts, race riots, and fatal car crashes. A budding entrepreneur, Geoffrey created his own industry when he learned that none of the local TV stations employed photo teams between midnight and eight a.m. When he was drunk enough, Geoffrey would show the outtakes considered too gruesome even for Miami's bloodthirsty viewers.
Next door there was no sign of life at Phoebe's place, which was exactly what it was called in an ad in Florida Swingers magazine. Phoebe had bright red hair and occasionally counted on her fingers, as she did the time she appeared at my door and asked if she could borrow three-no, make it four-condoms. Robert and Robert, who lived together and owned Robert's-what else-Art Gallery, were up and around, hauling out wine bottles and trimming their hibiscus hedge. A regular slice of Americana, that's my Mia-muh.
I dropped into the crabgrass and did my morning push-ups, fifty regular, then twenty one-armed, first right, then left. I rolled onto my back, brought my knees toward my face, and worked through a hundred stomach crunches. C'mon, Lassiter, Coach Sandusky yelled from some faraway field. Get in shape. The grass tickled my bare back and the sweat rolled down my chest. Overhead, an unseen laughing gull mocked me with its raucous call.
The ringing telephone was an excuse to declare victory in my battle to resurrect semi-glories of the past. It was Granny Lassiter calling to tell me a thirty-pound snook was swimming figure-eights under an Islamorada bridge, calling my name. I told her I had a murder to solve but I'd help her eat Mr. Snook if she could catch him.
She wasn't impressed by my work and allowed as how she would catch the fish without me, but wanted to be sporting and land that sucker on eight-pound test line, using live finger mullet for bait.
Granny wasn't my grandmother, but there was some relationship on my father's side, great-aunt maybe. She raised me in the very house of Dade County pine and coral rock where I now lived. When Coconut Grove became too chic, she gave me the house and headed for the Keys, where she fishes and fusses and makes a decent home
