Palm Beach Nasty (21 page)

Fulbright raised a shot of tequila and downed it.

It was three in the afternoon and Donnie was glued to a soap opera on the wall behind the bar.

“Look around this dump,” Fulbright said, his contemptuous slit eyes cruising the dark, dirty bar. “Guarantee you, half the scumbags in this place are laid off, the other half on food stamps. Guy over there’s been working the same beer for an hour.”

“Country’s in a world of hurt,” Donnie said, “when people are sipping instead of chugging.”

“You know, Donnie,” Fulbright said, hefting his empty shot glass, “you have a simple man’s way of capturing the basic essence of things.”

He tried to slap Donnie five, but Donnie kept his slapping hand to himself. Donnie watched the guy Fulbright pointed to take a quarter-ounce sip of beer.

“You’re going to rot your brain watching that shit,” Fulbright said.

“Got a problem with
The Young and the Restless
?”

Fulbright didn’t acknowledge it being a legitimate question.

“I should be doin’ your Za-dukey puzzles instead, is that it?” Donnie asked.

“Sudoku, numbnuts.”

Donnie kept his eyes on the tube. He had a major jones for the actress who was playing the tarty receptionist.

“Think I’ll stick to the
New York Times
crossword puzzle,” Donnie said.

Fulbright laughed. “Like you gotta fuckin’ clue what it is.”

Despite having forty IQ points on Donnie, it was usually a draw between the two when it came to banter.

“I’m thinking about getting a really nice car instead of a house,” Fulbright mumbled, after a while.

Donnie turned to him. “What? Like a Mini? Or one of them . . . Smart cars?”

Donnie sprung a lot of short jokes on Fulbright.

“Funny, I’m thinking Escalade or a Navigator, maybe a Hummer. Big old gas hog . . . fuck the environment.”

“Your feet gonna reach the pedals?”

That was how it went. Fulbright gave Donnie shit about his brain. Donnie gave it right back about Fulbright being five two, one twenty.

A moment later Fulbright’s cell phone rang.

“Rozzetti,” Fulbright answered, going by his real name.

For a full thirty seconds he just listened.

Donnie took his eyes off the tarty receptionist for just an instant to get a read from Fulbright’s face.

It was definitely another job, Donnie could tell. Fulbright was taking it all in . . . name, address, method of payment, not writing anything down.

Fulbright hung up. A lot of his business calls were one-word conversations just like this one. He’d say his name, memorize the information, then . . . click.

THIRTY-FOUR

C
rawford slept an hour. Maybe less. He could never sleep on his back, but he could think on it just fine. So after six hours of staring up at his moonlit popcorn ceiling, he had a plan. Well, actually more like a concept, but one that could easily make the leap to plan with the proper tweaking, refining and adjusting.

He had never had so little at this stage of two simultaneous murder investigations. On the other hand, he never had so much either. A confession. Now that was a first. But, of course, it was totally meaningless. All Jaynes’s confession really was was a taunt. Jaynes saying, “Okay, I’m going to tie one hand behind my back, and still beat the shit out of you.”

The reality of it hit him like a stiff fist to the jaw.

There was no way they were going to catch Jaynes with what they had. Because basically, they had nothing. No DNA. No prints. Nada. Nothing at all from the Bill crime scene. And one lousy button with a Z on it from Dexter.

Even if somehow they caught the guys Jaynes hired to hang Darryl Bill, where would that end up? What was the charge going to be? Murder? Hardly. The kid was already dead. Can’t kill someone twice.

So what was left?

Creative detective work was all he had. That was Crawford’s name for it. Some other guys up in New York might have had a different name for it. Anything from “going rogue” to “operating recklessly outside of the law,” though the latter was a little strong.

The way he had finally caught Artiste Willow was hardly by the book, after all.

The chief of detectives up at the Deuce had called it “outside-the-box crime solving” right before he pinned the Medal of Valor on Crawford’s chest for Willow’s takedown. But the same guy might have called it grounds for dismissal if it had all blown up.

Like most everything, it was all about results.

Like most everything, the end justified the means.

Another case of his, which the press dubbed the Skinny Texas Girl Murders—even though victims number two, three and four were from Iowa, New Jersey and Florida respectively—was way outside-the-box crime solving. And, in fact, a defense attorney for the killer tried to make an evidence-tampering charge stick.

But he couldn’t, because it wasn’t.

So—once again—as Crawford saw it, his only alternative was to get creative. Or else, there was a good chance Jaynes was going to get away with it.

The main thing Crawford’s just-hatched work-in-progress was going to rely on was convincing a certain person—female in this case—that she was the only one who could play the starring role he had created for her. He planned to ask her to dinner, casually broach it, then try to reel her in.

His alarm clock pounded unmercifully on his head at six o’clock.

At the station by seven, he got back-to-back telephone calls from Norm Rutledge and the mayor an hour later. They both used the same phrase; they needed to have a “little talk” with him. Crawford had met the mayor just once, right after he started work. His name was Malcolm Chace and he seemed like an okay guy. They set up a time to meet the next day. Crawford was about to hang up when the mayor said pointedly, “Season’s right around the corner you know, Charlie.”

It was straight out of
Jaws
. Crawford in the Roy Scheider role, the beleaguered police chief who was reminded every five minutes that the big shark was not just attacking people in the waters off Amity, but killing tourist business as well.

Chace had stopped short of the obvious, that dead people weren’t good for Palm Beach’s already depressed economy. That it was time to wrap up this messy murder business before it put an even bigger crimp in the all-important season. In fact, the mayor’s breezy tone made it sound as if he was saying this ought to be no big deal for Crawford, compared to all the other famous cases he had solved.

Maybe Crawford was reading too much into it.

He was pretty sure that he was going to hear it from the mayor about harassing Ward Jaynes in the confines of his $1 million gym. He decided to head Rutledge off at the pass before he went into full-scale rant.

He was keeping an eye out for him to come off the elevator as he sat in Ott’s cubicle.

At 8:05. Crawford saw him come in. He got up and walked toward him.

“Hey, Norm,” Crawford said, “how ’bout I buy you a cup of coffee? Make peace. Get back to being buddies again.”

Ott chuckled loudly.

“Sure, Charlie,” Rutledge said, “what’d you have in mind?”

“My private table, Dunkin’ Donuts on South Dixie.”

It was about four blocks from his condo, always his first stop of the day.

“You drink that shit?” Rutledge asked with a frown.

As if Rutledge hadn’t seen his hand glued to a Dunkin’ Donuts cup a few hundred times.

“On a daily basis.”

Five seconds after the olive branch had been extended, they were going at it.

“How ’bout we keep it local, Charlie?”

“Starbucks?” Crawford asked, trying not to grimace.

“Yeah, got a problem with that?”

Crawford was going to take the high road. Shrug and say something like, “Sure, man, coffee’s coffee.”

But he couldn’t.

“I fuckin’ hate that Kenny G shit they play there.”

“Yeah, but they don’t play anything at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

“Who the hell needs music to eat donuts by?”

Rutledge thought for a second.

“Plus Starbucks has wall-to-wall yummy mummies . . . and sweet young things that work in the shops.”

Another thing about Rutledge, guy was a lech.

They went in separate cars to the Starbucks on Worth.

Crawford got a “tall” coffee, which he knew in Starbucksese meant small, and Rutledge got a “venti”—the biggest, of course, since Crawford was paying.

They sat down at an outside table. Rutledge had a blueberry muffin with four pats of butter.

“I’ll buy next time,” Rutledge said.

Crawford had already decided there would be no next time.

Rutledge took a long, noisy slurp and looked up. There was coffee in his pubic-hair mustache, scorn in the slant of his mouth. He leaned back in his chair and sucked on his teeth. Crawford wondered if there was just one tacky habit the man didn’t have.

“Ward Jaynes’s house is off-limits from now on.”

Crawford wasn’t exactly blindsided. “So you’re
saying
my number-one suspect is off-limits?”

Rutledge gave him a look like it was the most stupid thing he had ever heard any human being say.

“No, just you don’t show up at his house unless you got ironclad proof.”

Unfortunately, Crawford knew, a confession—unless it was in writing, signed and notarized—was a long way from ironclad.

“I got stuff on him—”

“That doesn’t work for me, Charlie. Hey, I don’t love that asshole any more than you do, but the guy above me keeps telling me how much Jaynes does for the town. Like he gives a shitload to the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Fund and Fire Rescue. Paid for a bunch of new equipment. Guy’s a big supporter.”

“Yeah, sure, you would be, too,” Crawford said, “if you wanted to keep your ass out of Gun Club jail.”

Rutledge leaned in close to Crawford.

“Bottom line. You got nothing solid on the guy or you woulda told me. So go fucking get something.”

Rutledge had ratcheted it up a few decibels. A couple of customers looked over.

“It kills me,” he said, shaking his head, “you come down here with your Charlie-the-hero-cop bullshit and want everything done your way. Maybe that flies up in New York, but we got a quiet little town here, lots of prominent citizens whose feathers I ain’t about to ruffle.”

“Jesus, where the hell’d that come from?” Crawford asked, shaking his head. “We’re talking about Jaynes and out of nowhere you jump on my ass . . . get all personal.”

“I just don’t see what you bring to the party, Charlie. I mean, s’posed to be homicide Wonder Boy, and what are you doing? Out harassing citizens and duking it out at a fuckin’ lowlife bar.”

Crawford let that swish around.

“What is your
real
problem with me? What is it really, Norm?”

He stared at Rutledge, but Rutledge just scowled and looked away. A woman in a peach halter top suddenly had his undivided attention.

Crawford wondered why he had bothered. Out eight bucks and a total waste of time.

“It’s just this simple,” Rutledge said, his eyes undressing the woman, “you and your boyfriend ain’t got shit. Simple as that. Let’s get out of here, I gotta talk to you and Ott back at the station.”

Crawford stood up. Whatever it was Rutledge wanted to talk about, Crawford wanted to get it over with quick. He dialed Ott as he got into his car. Maybe Ott would be lucky enough to be out of the station.

U
NFORTUNATELY FOR
Ott, he was at his desk, and fifteen minutes later the three were sitting in Rutledge’s office. The office had too many cute family pictures for Crawford. There was a picture of Rutledge with his wife, Eileen, both in matching burgundy, smiling like no one smiled in real life. Then one of Rutledge, Eileen and their son, little Timmy, in a pathetic pyramid. Rutledge and Eileen were on their hands and knees on the bottom and six-year-old little Timmy on top, looking like he was already painfully aware that he had two complete a-holes for parents. Guys with family pictures all over the place, Crawford figured, were always the ones who screwed around.

Rutledge leaned back and put his hands behind his head.

“I wanted to give you guys the courtesy of telling you I got two other teams on the murders now. Shoulda done it in the first place. This is no two-man op any more.”

“So you’re goin’ to give it the old Philadelphia rat fuck,” Ott groaned.

“Call it what you want,” Rutledge said, glaring at Ott. “Way it was, wasn’t workin’ for me.”

Crawford was focusing on a black speck on the wall midway between Ott and Rutledge.

“I’m not hearin’ your two cents’ worth, Crawford?” Rutledge asked.

Crawford kept his eyes on his spot.

“Nah, you made up your mind already, plus . . . I agree with you.”

“Thank you, Charlie, love it when you got my back. So three teams, each working different angles and suspects.”

“I’m telling you, it’s gonna be a fuckin’ rat fuck,” Ott said again, looking at Crawford for backup. None came.

“Tough shit,” Rutledge said. “That’s the way it’s gonna be.”

Crawford stood up and headed to the door. Ott followed him back to his office.

Crawford closed his door and glared at Ott.