I looked at him hard. His girlfriend's body was drawing flies and he makes a little joke. A used little joke.
'I don't show much emotion,' Fox said, reading my mind. 'Not in public, anyway. Maybe tonight I'll get drunk by myself. Maybe I'll put my fist through a wall. But that's none of your business. Your job is to find the slime that did this, get an indictment, and try the case.'
Through the glass I saw Pamela Maxson talking to Detective Rodriguez. He was nodding and making notes on a little pad. Across the street the ocean breeze rattled the palm fronds. Traffic crept along Ocean Drive, young people cruising at a pace to see and be seen.
I came in and told Rodriguez what I wanted. A computer whiz to print out everything inside the beige box on Marsha Diamond's desk and the disks in her drawer. All her address books, appointment schedules, credit-card receipts, a list of her friends, relatives, and coworkers, and a chronology of her daily routine. I wanted statements from her gynecologist, her hairdresser, her pharmacist, her landlady, her maid, and her masseuse. I wanted to know every man she dated in the last three years and anyone she met in the last three months. Did any deliverymen bring her groceries or furniture or laundry? Where was she every minute of the last week? Within forty-eight hours, I wanted to know more about Marsha Diamond than her best friend, her mother, or her lover ever did.
It wasn't asking too much. Anyone who cares to can know everything about us. Somewhere, I am sure, there is a giant computer that stores a thousand megabytes about each of us. What we got in geography and who we took to the senior prom. Where we eat, what we buy, who we call. How much money we make and how much we give away. What airlines we use, where we sleep, how much we spend on clothes, booze, and pills. Traffic tickets, domestic disputes, diplomas, and the books we buy. Modern life is one sweeping, cradle-to-grave invasion of privacy. An encroachment on our ever-narrowing space. Behind us we leave a trail of carbon copies and floppy disks. Fodder for the snoop and the historian alike.
In the twenty-first century, they tell us, our houses will be smaller, our lawns nonexistent. We'll work at home and recycle our garbage into compost. Our bathroom scale will record our weight, pulse, and blood pressure, and transmit the information to the company physician and anyone else with the right seven-digit password. The computer will link us with the office, the grocery store, and each other. The paper trail will be obsolete, but in its place, microscopic chips and laser scanners will transcribe details even the most astute biographer would overlook.
'Lassiter, come take a look back here.'
It was Rodriguez, motioning me through the bedroom and toward the bathroom. I moseyed back there and stood, filling the doorway, peeking over Charlie Riggs' shoulder. It was old-fashioned but clean, a small porcelain sink, shower stall, and toilet crammed into a room without a window. There were powders and perfumes and white fluffy towels, and on the mirror above the sink was a message scrawled in blood red lipstick: Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk.
'We got ourselves a show-off,' I said. 'Now, who the hell is Mr. Lusk?'
'Probably some guy she was playing tag with,' Rodriguez said, 'and it looks like he caught her.'
In the mirror I saw Charlie's jaw drop in astonishment. It was not his usual expression. He moved closer, as if the image might disappear at any moment. 'Pamela, come here please!'
In a moment Pamela Maxson joined the party. And there the four of us stood. I hoped somebody knew more than I did.
'Mr. Lusk.' Pamela's voice trembled.
'Yes, Mr. Lusk,' Charlie said.
'You know the hombre?' Rodriguez asked.
'George Lusk,' Charlie Riggs mumbled, shaking his head in disbelief.
'I'll bring him in,' Rodriguez said.
Charlie laughed but there was no pleasure in it. 'Sorry, detective. Mr. Lusk is quite dead.'
Rodriguez squinted at the mirror. 'Then who's-'
'In the fall of 1888, in the East End of London, the Whitechapel section, there were a series of murders of young women.'
'I get it,' Rodriguez said. 'George Lusk was the cop who cracked the case.'
'Not exactly,' Charlie said. 'He was a private citizen who formed the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee to patrol the streets and help the police. One day Lusk received a parcel in the mail. It contained a kidney cut from the body of one of the victims and a most grisly note. I can't remember the contents exactly, but the note concluded-'
''Catch me if you can, Mr. Lusk,'' Pamela Maxson said.
Charlie nodded.
'Hey,' Rodriguez said. 'You're talking about Jack the Ripper.'
Charlie nodded again and looked straight at me.
'And I guess that makes me Mr. Lusk,' I said.
CHAPTER 4
They had already zipped the body into a plastic bag when I made a final pass through the living room. The assistant ME had packed his bag and capped his camera. The cops were growing bored and filing out; there were other bodies in other apartments and the night was young. Charlie Riggs was on the staircase outside with Pamela Maxson, reminiscing about murders most foul. I looked around and struggled to remember everything the old canoe maker had taught me.
Be alert to every detail. I tried to memorize everything in the room. The computer was an IBM clone, the desk white oak, the telephone a new Panasonic. Marsha Diamond had been sitting at the computer when she was killed. I looked closer at the phone. Two lines, a bunch of buttons. One button was for making conference calls, another put you on hold, a third activated the speaker phone.
Then the last one. 'Redial.'
I congratulated myself on how smart I was. Half a dozen cops and nobody thought about it-maybe the last person Marsha Diamond spoke to just a dial tone away. And maybe with some luck, that last person was the guy who squeezed the life out of her. Don't you dare come over here, Harry, we're through!
Then again, it could be the weather number, a wrong number, or the public library. Only one way to find out. I picked up the receiver and hit the button. Seven electronic notes played do-re-mi in my ear.
A click and then the whir of a woman's recorded voice. 'Welcome to Compu-Mate, where the person of your dreams awaits you. Dial ROMANCE, 766-2623, on your modem, and we'll put you in touch. Why not let Compu-Mate find your life mate?'
'Or your death mate,' I answered the mechanical voice, 'as the case may be.'
I put the top down on my ancient Olds 442 convertible, deposited Charlie Riggs in the back and Pamela Maxson in the passenger bucket seat. It's the Turbo 400, yellow body, black canvas top, black interior, Rallye wheels, four-speed stick. An overgrown kid's toy.
'No sign of a break-in, nothing missing from the apartment,' Charlie yelled over the roar of three hundred sixty-five horsepower. 'No apparent motive.'
It was a cloudy June night; the air was humid with a hint of salt. We were approaching the Miami Journal, just on the Miami side of the MacArthur Causeway. The boxy building sat there, lights twinkling against the blackness of the bay, taunting me.
'An organized crime scene,' Pamela Maxson added.
Above us, on the superstructure, yellow lights flashed and we came to a stop at the drawbridge. When the lights turned red, the traffic gate lowered into place, the tender yanked on a long steel lever, and the bridge started clanking skyward. Below us, a nighttime sailor aimed a sleek Hinckley with a towering mast through the
