The Death Box (7 page)

“You all right, Carson?” Burnside frowned. “You look like you’re seeing a ghost.”

I blew out the door and dropped into a sprint with a gibbous moon lighting my way. I had to call Roy and have him set up a meeting first thing in the morning.

Dance music pulsing from below, Orlando Orzibel sipped a mineral water and considered his escapade with Leala Rosales. He’d lost control, a bad thing. But the little bitch had it coming, talking to him like that. Before leaving he’d told the weeping girl to wash herself, rinse the sheet, and keep silent on the matter if she valued her mother’s life. The little whore would not talk.

The cell phone buzzed from the glass table beside Orzibel. He snatched it up, checked the number, grinned and put the phone to his ear. “You must be finished with the business in the trunk, Chaks … Got that Ivy planted, right?”

After a few seconds the grin inverted, his voice a tense whisper. “A tent? A fucking tent? Bulldozers? I figured that hole would stay hidden until Christ himself showed up.”

Orzibel hung up and threw the phone to the couch. He went to his desk and retrieved a second phone, a burner, to be used and discarded. He dialed a number from memory.

“It’s Orlando, Jefé. It seems we have a problem.”

9

Roy had set the meeting at eight a.m. Instead of the three promised members of the investigative crew there was only Valdez. Luckily, Delmara, Morningstar and Gershwin made the table look less empty.

“Where’s Tatum and Canseco?” I asked Roy. “Degan?”

“Turns out they had other commitments.”

I gave him a look. He said, “They’re busy boys.”

“I got a crime scene needs me,” Morningstar said, long and elegant fingers ticking colorless nails on the tabletop. Gershwin yawned in his tipped-back chair. Delmara sat a pen and pad in front of him and scratched his beak.

“Dr Morningstar,” I said, laying out my case to the small audience, “would you outline the scope of the injuries you’ve been able to identify?”

“Like I’ve said, I’m seeing the kind of injuries I associate with high-impact vehicle accidents.” Her hands went to a file of photos on the table. “I have the exact details here if you—”

“Have you found any seams in the matrix, Doctor? Yesterday I theorized dry cement poured into the cistern atop added bodies. After further thought, I suspect the next layer would not perfectly adhere to the preceding concrete. It would leave discernible seams.”

She shook her head. “The concrete matrix appears to be contiguous. Where are you going with this?”

“I’m pretty sure I know how the bodies got there.”

“How?”

“In a cement-mixer truck.”

Eyes-wide stares from everyone. Roy said, “Explain that one, Carson.”

I spun my index fingers around one another. “Ever see the inside of a mixer drum? It’s an inside-out auger. The rotating vanes force concrete deeper to keep it mixed. At the jobsite the rotation is reversed and the screw action lifts the concrete up and out of the drum.”

“Jesus,” Morningstar said, reaching into her file and pulling out eight-by-ten photos of the column, staring at the jumble of arms and legs and faces and concrete. “It explains the brownish cast to the concrete,” she said quietly. “It’s blood.”

“Sure explains the damaged bodies,” Roy said.

I nodded. “It’s a blender on wheels.”

Morningstar rose, clamped shut her briefcase. “There’s a lot to do before I can verify anything like your mixer theory, but I have to say it’s decent, Ryder.”

I nodded my thanks and she was gone. Roy turned to Valdez and Delmara.

“Guys?”

“I gotta think about it,” Delmara said. He was trying to look upbeat, but I’d punctured part of his serial-killer explanation. Roy angled to Valdez.

“Ceel?” Roy said to Valdez.

“Just what is it you’re looking for, Ryder?” she said, aiming her big eyes into mine. They weren’t saying
Congratulations on a spiffy idea.

“Looking for, Detective Valdez?”

“The Carson Ryder morning show here. You want something, right?”

“We have to start looking into concrete mixing companies, Detective. We need someone who can ask the right questions and tell when the answers are shaky. A pro.” I used the inclusive
we
, hoping to spark camaraderie. There was a coterie of FCLE investigators at Roy’s disposal – and, I supposed, mine as well – but I wanted the experience of the department’s top people, hoping a few hours of working together might diminish the wall between us.

Valdez reached to the floor for her briefcase and popped it open, coming up with a two-inch-thick folder. She dropped it on the table,
whump.

“These are
my
current cases. Where does
we
fit in?”

I resisted the urge to look to Roy for assistance and didn’t hear any, the silence of the Buddha.

“Or,” I said, “I could grab some folks from the pool investigators downstairs.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Valdez said, standing.

Delmara followed suit, tucking his notepad into his suit jacket and forcing a half-smile to his face. “Nice idea on the mixer, Detective,” he said, following Valdez out the door.

Roy grabbed my shoulder. “Great theory, Carson! Morningstar was gushing over the idea.”

“Gushing?”

“If Vivian isn’t pissing on an idea, it’s gushing. You’re winning her over, bud.”

“Yeah? What about the others?”

We heard a cleared throat and turned to see Gershwin, chair tipped back, dressed in black jeans and a T-shirt advertising a surf shop. Both Roy and I had forgotten about the kid. “If y’all don’t need me for anything,” he said, “the folks in maintenance would like me to mop the bathroom with my tongue.”

Roy tucked away his notes and nodded absently. “Good for you, kid. Keep it up.”

Gershwin shook his head and was gone.

10

Roy and I elevatored down to the investigators’ floor, a horizontal hive of cubicles like I’d vacated in Mobile. Harry and I had our jammed-together desks closest to the elevator and my eyes turned there when the door opened, seeing not a lineman-sized black man dressed in a clashing color palette, but a white guy in his mid fifties with a wind-tunnel blowback of gray hair and Elvis Costello glasses. It wasn’t Harry but a Florida version of Martin Scorsese, and for a moment the world felt unsteady.

Where am I?

“Here you go, Carson,” Roy said, snapping me back to the present. “Grab who you need.”

I studied the cubicles, most empty. The ones holding people held busy people: some guys on phones furiously scribbling notes as they talked, two women and a man bent over a desk and arranging photos, a pair of guys arguing in another cube.

“Everyone looks busy, Roy.”

He laughed. “What … you think I keep my lovelies sitting in a corner and jiggling their nuts while they wait for an assignment? Who looks good, Carson? Pick an assistant or two. Shit … wait … let me introduce you to everyone.”

I heard myself giving my
Happy to Be on the Team
speech a dozen more times while trying to remember a roster of names.

“How about Gershwin?” I said, seeing the kid reading in a far corner. “He doesn’t look busy.”

Roy looked uneasy, like I might actually be serious. “That would make Gershwin a member of the crew, Carson, maybe not a great idea right now. The others might get a bit miffed that—”

“Who gave me the You’re-in-Charge speech, Roy?”

Roy puffed out a resigned breath. I walked across to Gershwin, still licking his thumb and turning pages. “What you reading?” I asked.

He held up the Yellow Pages for Miami-Dade. “I’m scoping out the concrete section. I didn’t know anything about this crap before.”

“You got anything going on right now?” I said. “I might be able to use you.”

He tossed the book and leaned back in the chair with his hands behind his head and kicked his heels up on the desk. His smile was as wide as it was false. “What, Alabama … you need coffee? A shoe shine? Someone to run your laundry to the cleaners?”

“You seem to have an attitude problem, Gershwin.”

“I came here to work and instead I get treated like I spit in the face of everyone in the FCLE. You know what F-C-L-E spells, right? Fickle. McDermott treats me like I’m transparent, and everyone else looks the other way when I walk in a room.”

I pushed his feet off the desk. He wasn’t expecting it and it brought him to sitting erect. I sat where his feet had been and looked him in the baby browns. “If you’re unhappy all you need to do is complain to the family of that kid you saved and have them pull strings on your behalf. Again.”

The chin jutted. “I never asked them to push for me.”

“Your refusal technique must be flawed. A powerful family offered you an unearned step up and you took it.”

I’d scored a hit. The kid started to argue, had nothing. He nodded at me. “Truth is, I was tired of handling DUIs, brain-dead methheads and crackers screwing their dogs and daughters. I wanted action and when the kid’s family said to pick my spot, I said Miami.”

“And here you are. What do you expect to happen?”

“What else? McDermott’s gonna dump me at some backwater desk until I get tired of pushing paper and retreat to the sticks.”

“And that’s what you plan to do … quit?”

“That’s McDermott’s plan. Mine is to, to …” He pulled up short and frowned.

“What?”

“I dunno,” he said, honestly perplexed. “I don’t have a clue.”

I pushed the Yellow Pages his way. “Here’s an idea: start checking concrete companies for employees with criminal records. Or does that lack the action you’re looking for?”

11

The dark-haired woman finished tapping on the MacBook Air and switched it off. She sat behind a mahogany desk, antique and polished to a soft gloss. The sole light flowed from a Tiffany-shaded desk lamp and the woman’s olive skin seemed to glow in the light. She wore a sedate navy ensemble, her dark hair curled in a businesslike chignon.

“I’ll be finished in a moment, Orlando,” she said.

There were no personal trappings in the room, no pictures of family or mugs with funny sayings. The desk held only an in and out basket, the latter holding a neat stack of various invoices. The office – painted in a sedate, mossy green with two windows draped in burgundy – was almost as large as Orzibel’s.

The woman turned to the credenza behind her desk. The doors opened to a built-in floor safe the size of a mini-fridge, welded to the frame of the building and immovable. The safe was designed to resist nearly any assault short of cannon fire. She locked the computer in the safe and reclosed the credenza.

“When is the man arriving?” she said, looking across the room.

“The client is downstairs with a bottle of Dom Pérignon,” Orzibel said, waiting in a wing-back chair with hands tented beneath his chin. He was in soft black leather: jacket, vest and pants. His boots were tipped with silver and ticked in time to the bass notes filtering through the floor.

“Dom? On the house?”

Orzibel laughed. “What he spends with us, I don’t care if he drinks a case of it.”

“Is the product ready?”

“Tericita, and Alicia. And Yolanda from the fresh shipment. I will present them when the client is ready, a parade. The man likes little parades before his party.”

“All dressed the same, right? For his choosing?”

“
Si
. It must be the pink dresses and pink canvas shoes. White panties. And red scarves for the hair. I keep a supply of several sizes in my office for when the client wants a party.”

“Mr Chalk hurt one last time, Orlando. Badly.”

“He paid well for his sport.” Orzibel’s long fingers made the money-whisk. “Are you suddenly concerned about their welfare?”

“I’m concerned about arousing attention. The man is not of normal mind.”

Orzibel waved her words away. “I have taken extra precautions by reserving a rear cabana suite at the Oceana, where sounds cannot travel through the trees. Chaku will stay nearby during the man’s festivities, though he will not interfere unless sounds carry.”

“We must be able to trust the owner of the Oceana, Orlando. Totally.”

“The owner has a side business selling various substances. He knows we know this. And I promised him an evening with one of our best products. Free.”

The woman gave Orzibel a look of irritation and turned to retrieve the MacBook from the safe, setting it on her lap. “You must always tell me when you make side arrangements, Orlando. I must note it or the records will be off.”

“Instead of praise for my careful planning I get a lecture on my memory? Would it be painful to your mouth to say something nice?”

“I have a duty to keep the accounting, Orlando.”

“Yes indeed,” Orzibel said, voice wet with sarcasm. “How dare anyone forget the numbers for your precious accounts.”

The woman’s eyes turned cold. “I keep precise numbers not for me, Orlando Orzibel, but for the one above. El Jefé. Mock me and you mock him.”

“I mock no one,” Orzibel said, sitting straighter and looking as if the room had grown tight. “I will go and start the parade.”

The woman nodded, then seemed to find an afterthought worthy of a frown. “One more thing, Orlando: What of the new one named Leala? Why haven’t you chosen her for the parade?”

A pause. “A
peon
, that Leala. The client deserves better. I’m sending her to Madame Cho. Cho will get stupid little Leala started in her career.”

“It’s not stupidity, Orlando. It’s ignorance … the naïveté of a peasant. There’s a difference.”

A mischievous light came to Orzibel’s eyes. “Were you ever that ignorant,
cariña
? That naïve?”

“How else did I get here?”

Orzibel uncurled from the couch and crossed the room, leaning against the desk with his arms crossed. “Ah, but you showed a special light,
amiga
. And you used it well, didn’t you?”

The woman returned the computer to the safe and turned to see Orzibel’s leer.

“Don’t look at me like that, Orlando. It’s not to be.”