'Nobody fucks with Bobbie,' Max Blinderman snarled, turning on his heel and disappearing into the grandstand.
CHAPTER 35
I had the top down and the pedal to the metal climbing our Miami mountain, the great looping causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The causeway soars skyward to let the sailboats pass underneath, and it gives you a copter's view of the city, sun-sparkled and gleaming. Cruise ships and condos, beaches and sports cars. It is the cinematographer's vision of the tropical paradise. Phony as a bar girl's smile.
The Olds roared over the crest, eastward toward the morning sun, and I eased off the gas, cruising past the marina and the Marine Stadium, past the entrance to Virginia Key, and on through Crandon Park into the small downtown of Key Biscayne. The Key is turned inside out. Surrounded by water, the condos and hotels on the east open onto the sea. The houses on the west open onto the bay. In northern climes, houses have front porches. You can walk the block and salute your neighbors. Here, we're all out back at the beach or pool. The fronts are deserted, out of the action.
I tried the house phone at the hotel. No answer in her room. At least the operator didn't give me the non disturbate message. I tried the lobby. No luck. The pool deck had its usual collection of buttocks in bikinis, the South American Tonga, alongside heavyset men weighted with gold. But no English lady from the Cotswolds. I stepped onto the beach, my black wingtips sinking into the sand. I don't know what's worse, being underdressed for your surroundings or overdressed. It is impossible to wear a shirt and tie on the beach and not feel both foolish about yourself and resentful of those properly unattired.
I checked the grill at the chickee hut, not thirty yards from the surf. Bare backs, the smell of coconut oil, icy red strawberry daiquiris, and the sizzle of burning burgers. But no Pam Maxson.
I tried the front desk, where a slim young man with a slim young mustache smiled at me and chirped g'morning. For a moment I thought I was two hundred twenty miles up yonder in the land of the mouse. The plastic tag on his brown blazer said 'Carlos.' I allowed as how it was a fine morning indeed and asked him for Dr. Maxson's room number. Still smiling under his whiskery lip, Carlos told me he couldn't do that but the operator would be oh- so-happy to dial the room she might fall off her ergonomic, three-hundred-sixty-degree swivel chair. So I flashed him my laminated, semiofficial badge, which was starting to show wear around the edges, and Carlos punched some buttons on his computer and gave me a suite number, twelfth floor, ocean side. I headed for the elevator and he looked after me. Smiling.
There was silence after the first knock on the double doors. And the second.
After the third she asked who it was.
When I told her, she cracked the door, chain still affixed, and asked what I wanted.
Beaches without footprints, I told her. Eternal happiness, too. But I'd settle for fresh-squeezed juice, eggs over lightly, and a basket of toast with three or four of those little jelly jars.
She unchained and let me in. We faced each other awkwardly in a sitting room tastefully done in muted tropical colors. A sliding glass door led to a balcony with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Atlantic. She wore an ankle- length floral satin robe and no makeup. The sculpted cheekbones still showed their granite planes. Her green eyes were still spiked with flint. Her auburn hair was pulled straight back and tied in a ponytail.
I was too late for breakfast. The room-service cart was there, covered with a white tablecloth and decorated by a vase with fresh-cut lavender flowers. An empty cereal bowl sat on one side of the table and the remains of a western omelet on the other. Two chairs, two place settings, one big pot with two coffee cups. My inductive reasoning told me that Pamela Maxson had not dined alone. I was getting so good at this I decided to ask Nick Fox for a raise.
'Kiss me quick before I die,' I said.
'What in heaven's-'
'The flowers on your table. I don't know the real name, but as kids, that's what we called them, kiss me quick-'
'Before I die.' She picked up one of the flowers, a white eye in the center circled by a lush lavender. 'How quaint.'
'The color doesn't last. Even on the shrub, it'll fade to pale lilac and then a ghostly white in just a few days.'
'Gather ye rosebuds,' she said, twirling the stem in her hand.
'Something like that. Flowers, people, we're all a-dying, aren't we?'
She didn't answer. I thought I heard the water running in the bathroom, but it might have been the next suite down the hall.
'Coffee?' she asked.
I nodded and she poured into a used cup. The coffee was still hot.
'Business or social call?' she asked.
'I was wondering how you were doing.'
'Fine.'
'Think you'll stay here long?'
'No.'
'You need anything?'
'No.'
Reluctant witnesses either blather incessantly about irrelevancies or one-word you to death. I drank somebody else's coffee and stared through the glass door at a tanker three miles offshore, heading south. I wanted to put all the little fishes on the reefs on red alert.
'Pam…'
'Yes?'
'I thought we could talk about-'
A sound from inside the bedroom stopped me. Maybe a dresser drawer closing. I watched the door.
'Oh, Jake. Just come out and ask. There's no reason to be so sensitive about it. I'm surely not.'
'All right. I'll ask. Why? Who? What's going on?'
The bedroom door opened and out walked Bobbie Blinderman.
She was dressed in a hot-orange, body-molding leather mini held up by two straps. The shoes were matching orange with stiletto heels. She puckered her orange glossy lips and blew me a kiss. ''Morning, Lassiter.'
I wished it had been Mel Gibson.
'Jake, don't look so surprised. My goodness, you're actually turning pale, isn't he, Bobbie?'
'As a ghost,' she said.
'Jake, I'm helping Bobbie with some of her problems. She's-'
'Great, who's helping with yours?'
'Oh Jake, don't.'
'Is the little boy angry?' Bobbie jeered. 'Somebody steal his candy bar?'
'Jake, bisexuality is quite normal, really. Some of the greatest figures in history were bisexual. Socrates, for example.'
'Elton John,' Bobbie added.
'Oscar Wilde,' Pam said.
'David Bowie,' Bobbie countered.
This went on for a while, like a vaudeville routine.
Pam said, 'Henry III.'
And Bobbie said, 'Janis Joplin.'
Pam said, 'Colette.'
And Bobbie said, 'Bessie Smith.'
