Suitcase City (33 page)

“Look,” he said, “you kind of took me by surprise with those pictures and all.” The woman smiled. Blood could see that taking people by surprise was her thing. He didn’t know where he was going with this. He had not anticipated this at all. “Where did you get those pictures?” he asked her.

She only smiled. “I can’t tell you that, Mr. Naylor. But I can tell you I’m doing a piece on the murders of several prostitutes. You knew one of them, Thalia Speaks. You obviously know Tyrone Battles, and I have reason to believe you know a Mr. James Teach. I’m wondering what connects the four of you. Would you care to comment on that?”

There was something Blood needed to know. He needed it very badly. He had to be careful now, ask her the right questions. He said, “The newspaper send you over here? The police think I did these murders?” Maybe she was just some crazy woman, trying to sell a story about him to the
Trib
. What was it they called them? Stringers? If no one knew she had come here, maybe he could do something about this.

“I told you I represent the
Tribune
, Mr. Naylor. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me. Do you read the paper?” Blood thinking:
Can you read, Mr. Naylor?
It made his hands shake with anger. She said, “Haven’t you seen my columns on the murdered women?”

Blood walked over to the crate of parts, reached into it, and took out a table leg. It was about the size and heft of a baseball bat.

“Look,” the woman said, getting impatient, “it’s hot back here, and I had a long night last night. If you aren’t willing to talk to me, I can just print what I have now. I think you’ll be happier with what comes out if you give me your side of it, starting with Tyrone Battles. Then maybe we can talk about your relationship with Thal—”

The table leg hit her in the mouth. Blood had accelerated the blow because he did not want to hear her say Thalia’s name. She fell back against the crate, stunned. Blood climbed aboard the forklift, started the engine. He needed the noise. When he stepped off the forklift, she was holding the notebook to her bleeding mouth. Her eyes were crossed, and she seemed to be trying to focus them on the notebook, trying to say something. When Blood hit her the second time, just above the right ear, the light went out of her eyes.

He knelt, grabbed her knees, and tipped her into the crate, tossing the notebook and the table leg on top of her. Then he got back aboard the forklift and raised the elevator to its maximum height. He set the lift lever in the locked position so that the crate would stay up there, and turned off the engine. “Sleep tight, baby,” he whispered. “No more tears on your pillow.”

Blood had to think. For the life of him he had to plan. He went to the little table where he cut his lines, grabbed the vodka, and swallowed until his eyes teared. He hid the bottle and the glass behind some crates and looked around, trying to see the place through the eyes of a stranger.

“Mr. Naylor!” Someone was calling from the front of the warehouse. Blood moved into the long aisle and saw two silhouettes against the windows of the lighted showroom. “Mr. Naylor?” one of them called again. “Your man out there told us we could find you back here.”

* * *

Aimes didn’t like Bloodworth Naylor. He knew that right away. There was something creepy about the guy. He was supposed to be a nonrecidivist case, a big success for the criminal justice system. Ghetto rat goes to prison for pimping and battery, does his time with a clean record, gets out and goes into business for himself, makes a success of it. But where did he get the money to start the business? Aimes figured Naylor had stashed his pandering proceeds before he was busted. Black women had bought this place—on their knees and on their backs.

And where was the business? The showroom looked shabby, nobody but a couple of hangdog salesmen and some scratch-and-dent furniture. This warehouse wasn’t any better. A lot of dusty crates and boxes, sofas and sectionals wrapped in plastic. Aimes wondered how long it had been since anybody had fired up that forklift behind Naylor, moved any of these goods onto a truck for shipment.

Aimes looked at Delbert. Their signal. Delbert showed Naylor his detective’s shield and said, “Mr. Naylor, we’re investigating the murders of some prostitutes here in Tampa. One of them was a Thalia Speaks. We understand you knew her.”

Naylor looked sad now, and it pissed Aimes off. It was that phony sadness scumbags pulled into their eyes when they needed it. Next thing the guy would be crying the tears of an alligator.

Naylor said, “I knew her around the neighborhood, but, you know, it was a long time ago. I don’t remember her much.”

* * *

Blood Naylor was standing under the crate, so close he could feel the heat from the forklift’s engine. He felt, also, the powerful urge to look up at the crate. He wasn’t sure why. He tried to concentrate on this cop’s face. Tried not to grind his jaws like the drug wanted him to do. He had heard of Aimes. They’d grown up about the same time, not far from each other. Blood getting into trouble early, running with the bad dogs. Aimes turning himself into a white man’s nigger. Football hero at Middleton High, then at A&M. Aimes one of the first black men to make detective in Tampa, twice the white cop’s age and letting the little cracker do the talking.
Yassuh, boss. Yassuh, boss.
Blood wanted to break into a buck and wing, sing a few bars of “Camptown Races.” He didn’t. What he did was go humble, stare at his feet, scratch the concrete floor with some shoe leather, and say, “I don’t remember her much.”
Oh, Thalia.

The little white cop said, “Do you know a Mr. James Teach?”

Blood let them see him think about it hard. He pursed his lips and squinted, reached up to scratch his head, and . . . that’s when he felt it, something wet. “Name don’t ring a bell. Was he a friend of Thalia’s?”

The white cop frowned, glanced over at his partner. Aimes didn’t look at him. He walked over to Blood’s left, into the corner where he kept the old record player, the stack of 45s. Little Anthony. Sam Cooke. Martha and the Vandellas. Blood turned his head very carefully and watched as the big black cop picked up some records, sorted through them, and put them back down. Aimes walked back over and stood beside the white cop.

Carefully, Blood rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, feeling the sticky wet. He knew what it was. He could smell it. Soon, the two cops would smell it, see it. Blood felt another warm drop strike the top of his head.

The white cop said, “We found some drugs in Thalia Speaks’s apartment. They came from Meador Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Teach works for Meador. We were wondering what would happen if we got a warrant and searched this place. Maybe we’d find some of the same stuff here. Maybe bring a dog in here, let him sniff around. You used to sell some drugs, didn’t you, Mr. Naylor? I mean, back before you became a taxpayer and all.”

Another drop, and this time Blood felt
and
heard it. It hit with a little
pat
. Sounded like that first big drop of rain slapping your dusty sidewalk on a summer afternoon. Those drops that come cold from high up in a dark cloud. Only this wasn’t water. It was warm. It was that woman up there. Blood Naylor didn’t know what to do. If he stepped away, the next drop would hit the concrete. The two cops would see it. If he took them out to the loading dock, they’d see the newspaperwoman’s car out there. If he walked them back into the showroom where the light was brighter, they might see the blood in his hair, see it run down the back of his neck, or worse, down his forehead.

The white cop looked angry now. Blood wasn’t taking this serious enough for him.
Concentrate
, Blood told himself.
You can pull this off.
He said, “I did the crime and I did my time. I don’t have nothing to do with drugs no more.”

“What about the ladies, Mr. Naylor? You still sell back?”

Blood shook his head, but not too hard. “I sell furniture. You can see that, man. I don’t have nothing to do with selling no back.” Blood looked an appeal at the black cop, Aimes.
Get this cracker off my ass, man.
Aimes looked back at him like he was a hole in the air. Not there.

The white cop said, “When was the last time you saw Thalia Speaks, Mr. Naylor?”

“It was a long time ago. Back before I went to Raiford, I think.”

“You think?”

“Oh, I might of seen her once or twice right after I got back. We might of talked then, but I don’t remember. She wasn’t no friend of mine after I got back.”

“Where were you on the night of May 25, Mr. Naylor? Do you recall that?”

“Yes sir, I was at a bar over in Ybor. It was a big crowd in there that night.”

After arranging Thalia’s apartment for the cops, Blood had gone to the Celebrity to show his face.

“Anybody see you there that night?”

“Sure, I imagine so. Imagine you could find somebody saw me in there. If you look for them. You gone look for them?”

“We’re gonna do what we have to do, Mr. Naylor.”

Blood smiled at the cop, and another drop hit him. He could feel the warm blood pooling on his scalp. He tilted his head back an inch and it crept toward the back of his neck.

It surprised Blood when Aimes spoke. “We’ve got your fingerprints on file, Mr. Naylor. We’re going to check them against the ones we found in the woman’s apartment. You’re telling us you were never involved with the woman, never had sex with her?”

Had sex? Jesus Christ,
Blood thought,
I lived inside her body for a year. She was my eyes opening in the morning and my last waking thought at night.
“No.” He shrugged, smiled. “I knew her around the neighborhood, you know. She was just some girl, that’s all. I don’t remember much about her.”

“All right, Mr. Naylor,” Aimes said, “we’ll be in touch.”

“I’m happy to help whenever you need me.” Another drop hit the top of Blood’s head. A warm rivulet ran into his collar, down the back of his shirt.

The two cops started walking toward the front of the store, leaving Blood standing very still under the forklift. He sighed his thank you, then Aimes stopped, turned back. “You used to be an evil man, Mr. Naylor. You sold drugs and women. You beat up women and you went to prison for it. Now you’re a good man. Is that what you want me to believe?”

Jesus, it was a crazy question. Blood held his head very still. “It happens,” he said. “Believe it.”

The black cop smiled, shook his head, and walked away with his little white partner.

* * *

Walking across Bloodworth Naylor’s empty parking lot, Aimes turned to Delbert. “Nervous,” he said.

“Scared,” said Delbert.

“Lying his ass off about not knowing the woman. Her not being his girlfriend.”

“The man has no ass,” Delbert said. “Lied it completely off.”

“Complete crock of shit about being in the bar?”

“Remembered it way too quick. Didn’t even have to think about it.”

“You interested in Naylor now?”

“I’m a blind dog in a meat house, and he’s a pork chop wrapped in bacon.”

FORTY-FOUR

After the two cops drove away, Blood Naylor fired up the forklift and lowered the elevator. The woman’s purse was still slung over her shoulder. He put on some work gloves and opened the purse, found her car keys. He tore a sheet of plastic from an old sectional and went out to her car, lined the trunk with it.

Back inside, he jumped onto the forklift and drove it out to the parking lot. He stopped beside the woman’s car and lowered the lift. It was late afternoon and quiet in the back lot. Mook and Soldier were off in the truck delivering furniture. Down the alley, the jacaranda tree where the two whores plied their trade stood on its carpet of purple petals. They’d be coming soon.

Blood reached into the crate and put his arms around the woman’s body. She was big, and it took all of his strength to lift her. As he raised her out of the crate, her head lolled against his, and he felt her hair brush his cheek and smelled her thick, musky perfume. This, and the warmth of her body and the odor of whiskey that rose from her, sickened him. As he turned and dropped her onto the bed of plastic in the trunk, his stomach turned. He stepped back, closed the trunk, and held his heaving stomach until it steadied.

Blood looked around again, saw no one, accepted his luck. He drove the forklift to the dumpster and lowered the elevator. He climbed up, stood on the forks, and shoved the crate into the dumpster. It fell among the scraps of plastic and cardboard with a hollow rumble and a geyser of dust.

Inside the warehouse, in the small bathroom used by the deliverymen, he washed the blood out of his hair. With a wad of wet paper towels, he followed the trail of blood drops from the crate out of the warehouse, down the ramp, and across the lot to the woman’s car. He wiped up the drops and went back into the warehouse to flush the towels.

Blood tried to remember when the city truck came to empty the dumpster. It was tomorrow—yes, tomorrow morning. His luck was holding. He walked across the parking lot and unlocked the door of his Bronco. He took the stainless Smith .357 from the glove box and put it in his waistband.

Inside the office, he told his secretary he was going out for an early dinner. The woman turned her face from a stack of invoices and gave him the usual response, “Unh-hunh.” Her way of telling him he didn’t spend enough time around the place. Blood smiled, waved. He had an errand to run.

* * *

Teach drove Bama’s Alfa past a big jacaranda in the alley behind Blood Naylor’s Rent-to-Own. The white Bronco was parked at the back of the lot, by the dumpster. Ahead of Teach, a dusty Ford Taurus moved across the lot and turned into the narrow lane that led to the front of the store at the corner of Fletcher Avenue. The slanting afternoon sun gave Teach a glimpse of the face behind the wheel. It was Naylor. The years had changed him, but underneath the work time did to faces, Teach saw the same guy he had said goodbye to that dark morning in a bar in Cedar Key.
I’m going to disappear. I advise you to do the same.

Naylor turned left and headed toward I-275, and Teach saw the
Tampa Tribune
parking sticker on the Ford’s rear bumper. What was Naylor doing in Marlie Turkel’s car? Teach had come here thinking he would try to get into the warehouse, find something that linked Naylor to Thalia Speaks. He followed the Taurus.