West Palm: The Complete Novel (3 page)

W
hen Fiorello perused the
Palm Beach Post
each morning in his dignified office with its soothing lighting, he read everything he could about the potential dead. If someone was in critical condition, to Fiorello that was a person of interest.

He was particularly interested in an attack on a young woman in the early hours of Christmas morning on a yacht docked at Seafarers Landing, handy to his funeral home. Her condition was critical, which wasn't as promising as extremely critical, but still . . .

No apparent theft,
he read.
Unknown assailant,
he read. And suddenly he felt extremely cold, as if the corpses chilling in the preparation room had climbed out of their refrigerator drawers and were marching toward his office.

It couldn't be. It couldn't be that maniac he'd fired.
His
maniac.

Zach had never shown any tendency toward violence. In fact, until Christmas Eve Fiorello had considered him an ideal employee. The usual problem with unskilled help was they never stuck around. He paid them practically nothing under the table, and that's where they belonged, underneath the table. But Zach had never missed a single night and had stayed for a full year.

Now, of course, Fiorello knew why he never missed a single night. Still, that didn't mean Zach was violent. Only crazy.

But you never knew with crazy people.

Fiorello was starting to feel sick. Had he driven Zach to nearly kill this woman on the yacht?

Zach had nurtured ambitions, and Fiorello had smashed them. Had that pushed Zach over the edge?

Fiorello went from cold to hot, remembering the Christmas lights flickering on his corpses, especially remembering the angel in the girl's vagina. Of course Zach was violent. Sticking an angel in a girl's vagina was a violent act.

He put the back of his hand to his forehead. Did he have a fever?

He stared at the newspaper article in front of him.

He wished whoever wrote it had said just how the woman was attacked. Nothing about Christmas lights, nothing about angels in the vagina. But they always kept the good stuff back until the family was notified. Or they kept it back because it was a clue that only the murderer would know.

The murderer.

Jesus Christ. If the woman died, Zach murdered her. And he, Fiorello, was the catalyst. It wasn't like being an accessory, but it was enough to make him sick.

He hurried to the bathroom, telling himself he was imagining things. Anybody could've assaulted the young woman on the yacht. It didn't have to be a maniac. Could've been your average rapist.

That's what it was, he told himself, leaning over the toilet bowl, just your average rapist. There were rapes every day in Palm Beach County. Not necessarily on yachts, but that wasn't the point. The point was out-of-control testosterone.

There was no mention of rape in the article, but the woman couldn't very well complain about it if she was in critical condition. Convincing himself that by the law of averages it was just your average local rape, Fiorello forced the waves of nausea to subside.

And maybe she'd recover. While before he'd wished her state to be upgraded to extremely critical, now he was hoping it would be downgraded to stable.

He splashed his face with cold water, looking at his guilty reflection. A nut like Zach, it probably didn't take much to tip him. Fire him, smash his dreams, refuse to give him a reference, and he puts some girl in critical condition.

I'm damn lucky it wasn't me he put in critical condition.

And on this happy thought, Fiorello dried his face.

H
er attacker took possession of Tara's dreams.

Each time she awoke, his face remained suspended in the air, superimposed on the faces she knew were real—nurses, doctors, trauma counselor, and the violent crimes detective. Then the face would pixelate and disappear.

At night, the humming and beeping sounds monitoring her vital signs were interrupted by cries from the room next door.

“Water! Oh God, you could die waiting around here. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die . . .”

“Sure I'd like to get married,” a nurse was saying, “but when I think of the sleazeballs I've been with, the leeches, the cheaters, I couldn't have walked out on them so easy if we were married. I've got three cats. They don't lie to me, they don't cheat on me . . .”

As Tara improved, her attacker continued to invade her dreams just as he'd invaded her cabin on the boat, but he no longer bled into her waking hours or altered the faces of her visitors.

Her most faithful visitor was Mickey Zaratzian, who'd stayed in Florida on her account, and had the great white Caddy lowered onto land so he could drive to and from the hospital.

Seated by her bed in the private room for which he was paying, he offered words of wisdom.

“That first day when you dropped that handheld VHF in the drink, we should've both known then and there. This cruise wasn't for you.”

She too recalled the incident. She'd been crossing the gangway, carrying a lightweight piece of equipment, which wasn't even awkward to hold. She hadn't slipped or tripped; it was as if the VHF willed itself out of her hands. She'd been so embarrassed she immediately offered to resign, but Zaratzian had protested:
Are you crazy? It's just a piece of junk fell in the water. Forget about it.

“Now I understand,” he continued. “It was an omen straight to you, telling you to walk away from the cruise. You yourself wanted to walk, and I didn't let you. Me of all people, an Armenian who grew up in omens.” He shook his head. “The question is, why did I ignore such an omen? Because I wanted you on board. I still want you on board. My wife wants you on board. The whole crew wants you back on board.”

He removed his captain's cap, revealing that his thick black hair was just a fringe. Now he looked like a tonsured monk instead of a furry little rat in a cap.

“So answer me, Tara. Are you willing to continue on the cruise? Nod for
yes
. . . wait, don't nod, it'll hurt your stitches. Thumbs up for
yes
. The middle finger for
no
.”

As politely as she could, she gave him the middle finger.

“I'm not going to argue. I understand. Having your throat slit has made you boat shy.”

He rubbed his bald crown, clamped his cap back on, and pulled his chair closer. “Far be it for me to criticize the cops. But they've come up with zilch. I'm gonna hire someone on my own to nail the son of a bitch.”

She knew he was sincere, though she didn't have much faith he'd act on the idea. She'd grown accustomed to his style of hopping from one idea to the next. Along the way, enough of these inspirations had earned him a fortune, but he possessed a short attention span, and she was pretty sure his latest plan, to nail the son of a bitch, would be replaced by another, which would have nothing to do with her. This didn't detract from his generosity.

Predictably, he hopped on. “I've had businesses that folded. I've had my share of flops. You gotta expect to get your ass kicked now and then. You had more than your ass kicked, but it's a metaphor I'm using.”

He gazed at her bandaged form bristling with tubes and wires. “Your trauma's fresh. You think Armenians don't know about traumas? The Turks wiped out a million and a half of us.” He began reciting a poem in what she figured was Armenian, and then it turned into a sorrowful song, as if the little rat was grieving for a whole lost world. A nurse popped in to hush him.

After the nurse left, Zaratzian made the point he'd been driving at. “But we bounced back. And you're gonna bounce back too, Tara. Our association hasn't been a long one, you were only on board a few weeks. But with Armenians, family is a feeling, and I've got the feeling for you. Which my wife does too. Anytime you want to work for me, you're in. And not just on
King Rat.
I've got other businesses.”

She gave him the thumbs-up sign.

When she woke, Zaratzian was gone, and her attacker's face hovered on the ceiling, but only briefly.

Her stamina was returning.

On the day before her release, a new face appeared.

“Tim Smoker,” he said in a voice that matched his name. “I'm working for Zaratzian. Mind if I sit down, Tara?”

He was as big as his voice was deep. Worry lines, pouches beneath unshockable eyes, a face that had witnessed every horror show around.

“I'm a private investigator,” he said, pulling up a chair.

She stared, and he stared back.

Zaratzian had described her as an amazon, but she just looked white and fragile to him. Her blue eyes were the only spots of color in her face, and even they looked drained, the irises unusually pale, darkening to black at the edges. Her sandy hair was short and tousled like the petals of a dying flower. What happened to her could happen to anyone, but in his experience most young women who got their throats slit were looking for a good time, or living with a bad time. It was statistically unlikely that the first mate on a 50-meter yacht would end up this way unless she were kidnapped by Somali pirates, and last he looked there weren't any Somali pirates on the Intracoastal Waterway.

“I don't have the resources of the police department,” he explained. “On the other hand, Zaratzian's given me an open-ended budget.”

He studied her for a reaction. He'd been warned that her vocal cords were injured, but not that she was deaf or mute, so he plowed on. “Zaratzian said you didn't want to stay in any of his houses. As you know, he has many, in places far away from what happened here. You mind telling me why you wouldn't want to take him up on the offer?”

Her answer was just above a whisper, scratchy, like a case of laryngitis. “I don't run. It's against my training.”

“I hear you, Tara. You were Coast Guard and I was a cop and I'd like nothing better than to catch the joker, but I want to lay out your options first. I've been to Zaratzian's place on Syros. It's a hell of a vacation.”

She was sure it was a hell of a vacation, as opulent as
King Rat,
and she wouldn't even have to work, just be waited on. Well, she was being waited on in the hospital if that was any kind of goal worth having. She recalled how starry eyed she'd been, how entranced with luxury, and it seemed to her she'd exhausted an entire lifetime in her few weeks aboard. She'd considered herself dazzlingly lucky, then grown used to wealth as if she were born to it, and now the whole grandiose extravaganza meant nothing to her.

She swallowed but her voice stayed dry. “I don't want to be sunning my buns in Greece when another woman is attacked.” She paused to gather her strength. “I want to be on the spot to point my finger at him.”

“Glad to hear that. But if you stick around, you've got to lay low.”

She said hoarsely, “There's a friend I think I can stay with. I'll call him this evening.”

“Boyfriend?”

“Just a friend.”

“Because Zaratzian will pay for a hotel.”

“Can you think of anything more depressing than living alone in a hotel room?”

“My usual place in a hotel is the lobby, watching for irreconcilable differences.”

He seemed awfully big for unobtrusive snooping. As if reading her mind he gave a lopsided grin. “I hide behind a giant potted palm.” The grin transformed him. She was sorry to see it disappear.

“I'll hide behind my friend,” she said

“That's the housing situation then. Now a quick review. You told Zaratzian the guy's still after you. But why do you think that?”

“I'm afraid he wants to finish the job.”

“And you never met him before.”

“No, but I saw it in his eyes.”

“His eyes were filled with what?”

“Determination.”

“Forgive the question, but is there any chance the knife was just to scare you and if you'd let him–”

“No. I told everyone. He didn't want to rape me, he wanted to kill me.”

“Sorry, I had to ask. I need to know what I'm looking for. So, a nut job who hates women.”

“Except the expression in his eyes was the opposite of hate. It was . . . loving. Does that sound crazy?”

Smoker shook his head. “Stalkers develop a relationship in their mind. By the time they make their move, they're under the impression you return their feelings.”

“You've had experience with stalkers?”

“I've had experience with stalkers.”

“But how could he have stalked me? I was on board
King Rat
.”

“You were moored there a few days, he could've seen you from the pier. The security at that marina's crap.” He took out a notebook. “First, your cell phone. We can change the SIM card, but I'd rather close out your account altogether and get you a new phone under another name.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Now for your computer. We're going to change your e-mail address, and delete you from any social networking accounts. That means no more tweeting or Facebooking.”

He wrote down her user names and passwords. “I'm also going to remove any linked accounts, browsers, cookies . . .”

“Why don't you just wipe my hard drive?”

“Are you sure?”

“I haven't looked at it since I've been here. How important can it be?”

“Your information will still remain on Twitter for a couple of days and Facebook for a couple of weeks. But we can't worry about that. We have no reason to believe he knows your name, or, if he does, how computer savvy he is.”

Smoker set aside his notebook. “Can you tell me anything else about him?”

“He was about my age, late twenties. Shaved head. Muscular. It was hard to tell in that light, but I think he was suntanned. When I hit his arm with the flashlight, I heard metal meeting metal. He had a bracelet on each wrist. The kind that coils like a snake.” She was breathing with difficulty.

“Easy, Tara.”

“Something else I noticed. A chemical smell.”

“What kind of chemical?”

“Everything happened too fast for me to pin it down. It's been bothering me, because it was familiar.”

“Trauma wipes out certain memories, but it'll come back. And when it does, let me know right away. There wasn't much for the forensic team to work with.”

“They blamed the firemen for ruining the scene.”

“The police department keeps holding courses for Fire Rescue on how to tread lightly, but destroying crime scenes is still a Fire Rescue specialty. To be fair, in this case, a boat's cabin has one way in and one way out. It would've been hard for them to tiptoe around the evidence while keeping you from bleeding to death. They saved your life, which is more important than dusting the place for fingerprints and swabbing you for DNA.”

The door opened, and a nurse appeared. “Sorry to break this up. Visiting hours are over.”

Smoker rose to his feet, and Tara looked up at him apprehensively. She wished he didn't have to leave.

“Don't worry,” he said with his crooked grin. “I'll be here tomorrow for your graduation.”