Midnight Rambler: A Novel of Suspense

“No. He was going to Jonny's place to watch.”

I could not take my eyes off Melinda. The voyeur cam turned, and the Cuban who had shot out my windshield on 595 appeared on the big screen. It was Jonny Perez, wearing a bright red bandanna around his head and clutching a can of beer. He smiled and waved at the camera while doing a crazy little dance.

“Why is he dancing?” I asked.

“He's playing ‘Midnight Rambler,’” Bash said. “It's what we play when the girls are being tortured.”

“We?” I asked.

Bash nodded. Sensing that I wanted a more complete answer, he used the remote to start a CD player sitting on the floor beneath the TV. Out of its speakers came the opening harmonica riff from the live version of “Midnight Rambler.” The music was like a demonic chuckle.

I took a deep breath. If I saw any more, I was going to explode.

“Where's your address book?”

“In my bedroom. I'll get it for you.”

He started to get out of his chair, and Cheever shoved him back down.

“I told you not to move,” Cheever said.

“I was just going to get the address book for him,” Bash said.

“Don't you want Jack to go in there?”

Bash shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?” Cheever asked.

“He won't like it,” Bash said.

Bash's bedroom was in the rear of the trailer and reeked of cigarettes and a decayed conscience. There were no real furnishings, just a water bed and an upturned orange crate that served as a night table.

The address book lay on the crate. I found Jonny Perez under the J's. He lived in West Sunrise, which was as close as you could get to the Everglades without falling in.

As I slipped the address book into my pocket I realized I wasn't alone. The bedroom's ceiling was papered with photographs of naked women. It looked like pervert heaven, only with a twisted difference. The photographs were not torn from an X-rated magazine or copied off a pornographic website. They were real. They were the victims.

I choked up. The poses were sexual, the women smiling through clenched teeth. All eight were there. I silently recited their names as I pulled them down.

The last photograph was of Lola, a pretty Jamaican prostitute whose story I'd never known. I'd talked her into making her johns wear rubbers and getting doctor's checkups, and she'd lasted twelve years without getting sick. As strange as it sounded, I took a lot of pride in that.

I let Lola's photograph float to the bed. It flipped over as it landed, revealing writing on the back.

#7.

I checked the backs of the other photographs. They were also numbered. I realized this was how Bash and the rest of the gang saw their victims, as nameless objects. In their eyes, they were not worthy of proper names or identities, just numbers.

I gathered up the photographs. They were evidence, but a part of me didn't want anyone to see them. The victims had suffered enough, and having these images passed around a police station or at a trial seemed one more senseless indignity. As I weighed what to do with them, a man's screams shattered my thoughts.

I ran into the next room, and found Cheever punching Bash. Cheever outweighed me by forty pounds, and it took all of my strength to pull him off the struggling DJ.

“What are you trying to do?” I asked.

“Kill the son of a bitch,” Cheever said.

“Why? What did he do?”

“Look at the goddamn TV.”

I looked across the room at the giant screen. Jonny Perez and a second Hispanic were dancing naked around Melinda while using pieces of paper to cut her arms and legs. Each time she screamed, they cut her again. They seemed to be feasting on her fear.

“I caught Bash laughing under his breath, getting his rocks off,” Cheever said.

“I need to talk to him, Claude.”

“Wasn't the address book in the bedroom?”

“I've got the address book,” I said. “I need to ask him something.”

Cheever walked across the trailer to where my dog was sitting in the corner. He crossed his arms and stared murderously at Bash.

“Go ahead,” he said.

I knelt down beside Bash's oversized chair. The DJ was red in the face and was having a hard time breathing. I grasped his arm and pinched it.

“You said something on your show that I want explained,” I said. “You said Melinda had more dirt on me. What was she going to say?”

Bash started to reply, then thought better of it. I answered my own question.

“Was she going to say I was the Midnight Rambler?”

The DJ shut his eyes.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“That's why you've been attacking me on the radio, isn't it?”

The DJ nodded.

“Was that Skell's idea?”

“Yes. Skell thought it would take the heat off him.”

Since Carmella Lopez's body had been discovered in her sister's backyard I'd been painted to look like the kind of monster that I'd spent my life chasing. Now I knew why.

“He's all yours,” I told Cheever.

Bash opened his eyes and looked pleadingly at me. “What about our deal? You guys said you'd help me if I cooperated.”

“Fat chance,” Cheever told him.

“But you guys said—”

“The only deal you're getting is a one-way ticket to Starke,” Cheever said. “Either you'll get the needle shoved in your arm, or someone will shove a broomstick up your ass. Those are your options.”

“But we had a deal.

” “We lied, buttercup.”

Bash's eyes floated to the giant screen. Jonny Perez had ripped away Melinda's bikini top and was cutting perfect circles around her perfect breasts. Bash tore his eyes away long enough to look at me.

“No deal?” he asked.

“No deal,” I said.

Bash started to protest, then went rigid in his chair. He slapped his hand over his heart like a dramatic actor in a play. I knew what was happening, and pulled him out of his chair and laid him on the floor. Then I began to pound his chest. But it was too late. He had already stopped breathing.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Heart attacks are strange. Some could last for hours, the way my sister's did. Others were over in the blink of an eye.

Bash's was quick, and he was dead in less than thirty seconds. I could do nothing but watch.

Years earlier, I had plowed into a deer on a moonless night, and stood on the side of the road to comfort the poor thing. As the deer died, a smokelike substance escaped from its chest. I told a doctor I knew, and he'd said that he'd seen the same thing with many terminal patients. The substance, he believed, was their soul.

I looked for Bash's soul to escape, but saw nothing. Cheever edged up beside me.