“Prince Charles of Wales,” came the sarcastic reply.
“I’m not about to tell you who I am, fool.”
“Okay, no problem. No problem at all.” He spoke in the even, understanding tone that had kept dozens of domestic disturbances from turning into bloodbaths. “I hear there’s an incident you want to report.”
“It’s no
incident.
It’s a homicide.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
“What do you want to hear, Sheriff? How she begged me not to do it? Or how she screamed when I did?”
He drew a deep breath, forcing himself to show no emotion. “So the victim’s a woman, I take it.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Who is she?” He closed his eyes and waited, fearing he might know her.
“Name’s Gerty. Lives over in Hainesville.”
He brought his hand to his forehead, grimacing with anguish. Hainesville had but one Gerty; the world knew but one Gerty. He bit back his anger and forced himself to maintain a congenial tone—anything to keep the guy talking. “You sure you don’t wanna tell me who you are now, pardner?”
“Sure thing. I’m your next-door neighbor, asshole.
17
THE INFORMANT
I’m the guy standing behind you in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“You got a name?”
“One more stupid question, Sheriff, and I’m going to have to ask you to put the girl back on the line.”
“Fair enough. Just stay on the line, okay?” He took a sip of cold coffee from Barbara’s Styrofoam cup, ignoring the lipstick on the rim. “Tell me this much: Did you know Gerty—or did she know you?”
“Never met her before. Never even laid eyes on her.”
“Then why in the world would you kill her?”
“Because I’m a bad person.”
“Well, you must have some kind of reason. You don’t just kill somebody for no reason.”
“You’re thinking
way
too logically, Sheriff.”
“I just want to know why you did it. That’s all.”
“All right. I’ll tell you why.” The voice tightened with anger. His speech became slow and deliberate, with eerie pauses between words, as if some other part of him were answering: “Because…I…
felt
like it.”
The sheriff winced. It sounded like he meant it—the guy just
felt
like it. “Where’s she now? Where’s the body?”
The man sighed, then there was silence. Precious seconds passed. The sheriff felt his throat going dry. He feared he was losing him. “Come on, pardner. Let’s not play games. Where’d you put the body?”
“I didn’t
put
her anywhere. I can’t believe you hick-town cops haven’t gotten over there yet. Shit, man, if I had to sit around waiting for you and Barney Fife to find her, no one would
ever
recognize my work.”
18
James Grippando
“Why? How long ago did you kill her? Just tell me that.”
“Two days ago.”
“Why’d you wait so long to call us?”
“I wasn’t through with her.”
“What does
that
mean?”
He let out a deep, sarcastic sigh of boredom. “It means that now I
am
through with her.”
“You son of a bitch. What did you
do to her
!” He was on the edge of his seat, his face flushed with anger.
“Sorry, Sheriff,” he said coolly. “That was your final stupid question.”
The line clicked, and then came the dial tone.
19
t
wo rapes, nine robberies and a fatal drive-by shooting.
After thirteen years with the
Miami Tribune,
Mike Posten had seen enough crime to recite the daily tally without emotion, like “two eggs and toast with a side of bacon.”
At six feet two he could be intimidating when necessary, and some of the characters he met made it absolutely necessary. He was easy to talk to but not a “smooth talker,” with warm brown eyes and a disarming smile that had once made him a bit of a heartthrob after hours. His J-school professors had told him that even though he was no pretty boy, he had the talent and presence to go far at a major television network. For him, however, the printed word was the most rewarding form of journalism. The morning newspaper was the world’s equilibrium. As irreverent as he could be sometimes, he maintained a dedica-tion to his craft that had earned him a Pulitzer and the grudging admiration of his colleagues.
20
James Grippando
That Monday morning had been particularly busy, and Mike had wasted most of it in Miami’s “Little Havana”
area trying to interview some drunk with vomit on his shoes who said he’d found a nice pair of sneakers in the Dumpster with the feet still in them. Normally Mike would have kept right on working through lunch, but today was a personal matter.
Lunch-hour traffic was moving briskly across MacArthur Causeway. The six east-west lanes almost seemed to float in the blue-green waters of Biscayne Bay, connecting the skyscrapers of downtown Miami to the neighboring island of Miami Beach. Along the south stretched Government Cut, a narrow waterway for cruise and cargo ships that probed like a mile-long finger from the Atlantic. Waterfront mansions rimmed the private residential islands to the north, home at one time or another to the likes of Al Capone and Julio Iglesias.
Mike and Karen Posten drove in separate cars from their marriage counselor’s office to the restaurant on Miami Beach. She led in her Infiniti. He followed in his black Saab convertible. It was a metaphor, he thought, for the current state of their marriage—separate, with him in pursuit. Two months ago, she’d suggested he take an apartment. She swore there was no other lover. There was no physical, mental or substance abuse. No money problems. And most of all, no passion. After eight years of marriage, they’d become two very successful people who took each other for granted. At least that’s what their counselor had told them.
“Lost her,” Mike muttered as he turned north on 21
THE INFORMANT
Ocean Drive. Probably a dozen cars looked exactly like hers—it was south Florida’s current luxury vehicle-of-choice. He would have bet a week’s salary that one of these days while eavesdropping on police radio he’d hear not that the suspect had fled in a white four-door sedan but that he was
not
driving an emerald black Infiniti.
He spotted his wife a few blocks ahead, entering one of the sidewalk cafés that made South Beach so popular.
Parking was impossible on Ocean Drive, so he curbed his convertible at the valet stand, right behind a flaming red Porsche with a personalized license plate reading UNWED MD. If ever a case could be made in support of drive-by shootings, this guy had to be it.
Ocean Drive was, by local consensus at least, the most colorful strip of restored Art Deco hotels in the world.
On a sunny afternoon like this one, it was a prime cruising lane for people watchers and scantily clad beachgoers.
Tourists sipped espresso and conversed in a dozen different languages. Speeding Rollerbladers weaved in and out of pedestrians, excusing everything from sweaty sideswipes to head-on collisions with a glib, “Sorry, dude.”
Mike had never considered himself one of South Beach’s so-called beautiful people, though his thirty-eight-year-old body was still fit, trimmed by years of discipline at the rowing machine and an undying passion for competitive sports—basketball and racquetball being his favorites.
His hairline had given him a brief scare in his early thirties, but the recession had stopped quickly, and it was clear now that his thick, dark mane with flecks of gray would survive middle age.
22
James Grippando
Karen was already seated at a wrought-iron table beneath a Cinzano umbrella by the time he got his valet ticket. He made eye contact and waved from across the restaurant. She seemed a little out of place in her pearl necklace and navy blue business suit, but she still looked great, fanning herself with the menu. Her thick auburn hair was shoulder length, slightly longer on the left than the right—a daring cut for the newest partner at Saunders
& Sires, Miami’s largest and, by all accounts, stodgiest law firm. At thirty-two she was six years younger than Mike, but she had an uncanny ability to look younger or more mature as the circumstances demanded. Either way, she was striking—deceptively so for a woman who’d finished at the top of her law school class and served as editor in chief of the
University of Miami Law Review.
Mike arrived just as the waiter was setting two salads on the table.
“I’m kind of in a hurry,” said Karen, “so I went ahead and ordered for you. Grilled chicken Caesar.”
“Sounds good.” He pulled up a chair, unfurled the cloth napkin, and then winced curiously at the distinctive shiny metal bowl holding his salad.
“The salads come in dog bowls,” explained Karen.
“That’s why it’s called the Dog Gone Café. Clever, huh?”
“Oh, it’s beyond clever,” he said, smirking. “I’d say it rivals the kind of trendy logic that would have the Russian Tea Room serving entrées in teacups.”
They made small talk for a while, then ate in silence, not for lack of anything to say but for lack of 23
THE INFORMANT
nerve to say it. The bowls were nearly empty before either could steer the conversation in a serious direction.
“Session went well today,” said Mike. “Don’t you think?”
“Better,” she said, shrugging. “I think we still have a ways to go, though.”
He looked at his bowl. He was starting to feel like a dog.
Throw me a bone, Karen.
“Mike, please don’t take this the wrong way, but I really wish you wouldn’t always look to me for status reports.
It seems like all you ever want to know is how close we are to solving the problem. But you don’t ever really talk about what we have to do to fix things.”
“Sorry. I was just feeling pretty good about what Dr.
Newsome said about our psychological profiles today—that we’re so much alike.”
Her brow furrowed. “That’s not what she was suggesting. She said we’re the psychological mirror image of each other.”
“Which means we’re exactly the same.”
“It means we’re total
opposites.
When you look in the mirror, everything’s reversed.”
He averted his eyes, befuddled. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”
“Anything else, folks?” the waiter interrupted.
“No, thanks,” said Karen. She checked her watch.
“Sorry, but I have to scoot back to the firm. I’m deposing a bank vice president at two-thirty.”
“You mean you’re not staying for the Milk-Bone soufflé?”
24
James Grippando
She smiled and opened her purse.
“My treat,” he said. “You can pay when we dine at the Russian Tea Room.”
“Deal.”
They said good-bye and exchanged a nothing kiss. He watched as she walked to her car, hoping she’d look back, maybe give him a smile. He didn’t get one.
He ordered another Evian with lemon, then turned his attention to the people parade along the extrawide sidewalk on Ocean Drive. A statuesque brunette clad in a strategically ripped dago-T scurried toward the Ford Agency. A geriatric retiree inched along on his walker.
Amazing, he thought, South Beach was the one place on earth where even the homophobic cop down from Brooklyn seemed to blend right in with the flamboyant transvestite walking six poodles on a leash. Peaceful coex-istence. So why did every conversation with Karen feel like a boxing match?
At ten after two he called his office voice mail on his portable phone, then dialed the answering machine back at his apartment. Actually, Zack’s apartment. As he waited for the fourth ring, it suddenly occurred to him that for nearly two decades he’d had the same best friend. Karen didn’t seem to keep in touch with anyone longer than a few months. Maybe they
were
opposites.
“Hello,” Zack answered.
“Dumbshit, what’d you pick up for? I’m calling in for messages.”
“Gee, it’s good to hear your voice too, man.”
“Sorry. I’m not exactly having a banner day.”
25
THE INFORMANT
“No problem. Anyway, the light’s not blinking on your machine, so I guess nobody loves you. But you did get a package this morning. Kind of weird. It’s got “urgent, open immediately” written all over it, but it came second-day, non-Saturday delivery—which means a three-day delay.”
“From who?”
“Not sure. Can’t read the name on the delivery invoice.
Looks like it was mailed from Atlanta.”
“Go ahead and open it.” Mike heard the package tearing open, then he couldn’t hear anything as a Jeep full of bikini-clad Brazilians rolled down Ocean Boulevard with the boom box blasting.
“Hmmm,” said Zack. “This is strange.”
“What?”
“Just a sheet of paper. Nothing on it but some woman’s name. Typed. Do you know a Gertrude Kincaid?”
Mike froze. He’d been following the gruesome trail of
“tongue murders” ever since the third victim had turned up in Miami. “Actually, I’m doing a story on her.”
“She one of your sources?”
“No. A victim. Looks like she’s body number six for that serial killer I’ve been covering. Her name just came over the wire this morning. Small town in Georgia. Police found her body yesterday, but they think it happened sometime Friday.”
“Friday?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Like I said, the package took three days to get here. It was sent on Thursday.”
26
James Grippando
Mike could suddenly hear himself breathing. “Don’t touch anything, all right? Just leave everything right where it is. I’ll be there in a minute.” He switched off the phone and ran to his car.
27
a
record-breaking cold front was working through south-central Georgia that Monday afternoon. Gray skies cast an eerie pall over a brown, rolling landscape that seemed shocked by the blast of Arctic air. Livestock herded together in the open fields along Highway 46, sheltering each other from the cold north wind. At the end of the long line of barbed-wire fencing, bare oaks and azaleas lined the quiet streets of Hainesville.
Special Agent Victoria Santos parked her rented Oldsmobile at the curb in front of 501 Peach Street. “Kincaid”