“I stabbed your friend.”
“Knowing Rusty, he deserved it.”
She gave me a look, somewhere between relief and disbelief.
“Some women I know would give you a medal,” I said. “And trust me, the cops would be worse for Rusty than for you.” I opened my wallet and pulled out several twenties.
Jake the Fixer.
I jammed the bills into her hand. Years before I became a night-school lawyer, I was already massaging the justice system. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
She touched her neck with one hand, feeling where she had been choked.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.” I dabbed the blood from her lip with a napkin. Our faces were just inches apart, her green-gold eyes staring into mine.
“I need to get out of here,” she said.
“Good idea. Do you have a car?”
“Out of Miami. Out of this …” Her gesture took in the stained vinyl sofa, the cheesy nude prints, the entire mildewed, sleaziness of the place. “Can you help me?”
“I’m not a social worker. Come on.”
“You’re kind of cute. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Dozens. Now, where do you live? I’m gonna get you a cab.”
“Let’s go to your place.”
“Nope. Too many sharp objects in the kitchen.”
“Just for the night.”
“And then tomorrow, what?”
“I never worry about tomorrow.”
“Poetic. Where do you live?”
“Please. I’ll do anything you want.” In case I didn’t get the point, her tongue darted between painted lips. When I didn’t respond, she grabbed my hand and slipped it under the jersey and onto a warm, natural, silken breast. She took my other hand, raised it to her face, and stuck my thumb into her mouth. She sucked it. Hard and with plenty of tongue and slurping sound effects. Subtlety was not the girl’s strong suit.
I was tempted. Who the hell wouldn’t have been? But I was still thinking about Rusty and cops and curfews and Coach Shula. A human cold shower.
“Not gonna happen, kid,” I said.
She pushed my hand out from under the jersey and spit my thumb out of her mouth. “Asshole!”
“Right. Okay, where do you live?”
“Miami Springs, but I don’t want to go back there. There’s this guy.…”
“There usually is,” I said. Figuring she lived with some punk. A drug dealer or a pimp.
“An old guy,” she continued. “Like almost forty. He pays my rent and wants me to do these gross movies, and-”
“No time for life stories. I’m paying for a cab. You decide where to go.”
She looked at me then, her eyes empty and defeated. Another man letting her down. I imagined a father or a stepfather, a creep who did things that pushed her out the door and into a seedy place like this.
But I can’t save the world. I can’t even save one lost girl.
We didn’t exchange another word, and after I tucked her into the cab, I never saw her again.
3 The Road to Hell
That was the story I told Amy Larkin.
Most of it was true. Rusty. The knife. The busted lip. The cash.
But I had left things out and cut the story short. I hadn’t sent Krista home. No way would I tell Amy Larkin what really happened. The unedited version would feed her suspicion that I had a motive for wanting Krista to disappear.
“I don’t believe you,” Amy said, flatly.
“Why the hell not? If I was gonna lie, I’d have a better story.”
“It’s a smart story. Better than if you claimed to be a hero.”
“Right. Who would believe that?”
“You come out looking like a shit, but not a rapist or a killer.”
We were standing next to my Eldo convertible in the Justice Building parking lot, nearly empty now, the afternoon sun beating down on the pavement. A snowy white egret had migrated across the street from the river and was scratching at the asphalt where someone had spilled a bag of potato chips.
“Problem is, you’re lying,” she said.
“So you’re a human polygraph, that it?”
She pulled out a leather case and handed me a business card. Amy G. Larkin. Fraud Investigator. Auto Division of some insurance company in Toledo, Ohio.
“I interview liars every day,” she said.
“Lot of fender-bender cheats in Toledo, I’ll bet.”
“Do you have any witnesses? Anyone see Krista get into that cab? Who’ll back up your story?”
That’s the problem with lies, I thought. To keep them going, you have to fertilize and water them. Then they grow like strangler weeds.
“I told you the truth. Take it or leave it.”
“So even by your own account, you had a chance to be a Good Samaritan, and you turned away.”
“That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that I’m not the last person to see your sister alive.”
“The cabdriver you can’t name?”
“And the guy she didn’t want to go home to.”
“And his name is …?”
“No idea.”
Three toots of a horn came from the direction of the river, a freighter asking for the drawbridge to open, pissing off motorists who’d be stuck for the next five minutes.
“You might want to track down where Krista was living in Miami Springs,” I said. “Maybe there’s some record of who paid her rent.”
“I know how to investigate, Lassiter. It’s what I do.”
“Great. Then if there’s nothing more you need from me …”
“Why so anxious to get rid of me?”
I imagined her asking the same question to a guy with an inflated bill to repair his rocker panel.
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “Why’s it taken you so long to find me? Your sister disappeared what, eighteen years ago?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“Fine.” I pocketed her card. “I’ll call you if I think of anything else.”
“No, you won’t.”
She turned and headed toward her rental at the other end of the lot, forgetting to say what a pleasure it had been to meet me. I stood there a moment in the tropical heat, watching her go. Only when she had ducked into a red Taurus did I bring up the remaining memories of that long ago night.
The whole truth? I did not put Krista Larkin in a cab and send her home. Oh, I tried. But she refused to get in. Instead, standing in the street in front of Bozo’s, she thrust out a thumb and tried hitchhiking up LeJeune Road. It took about thirty seconds for a car to stop. Four guys were inside, windows down, hooting and hollering, and bragging about the size of their equipment. I grabbed her and dragged her to my car.
She was laughing as soon as her butt hit the seat. She’d gotten what she’d wanted. I drove to my apartment, telling myself it was with good intentions. Yeah, yeah. I know what paves the road to hell.
I gallantly gave Krista my bedroom. I’d sleep on the sofa, and in the morning, we’d figure out what to do.
Deep inside, I knew it was bullshit, and so did she. Teenage girl, beautiful and willing. Horny jock-or is that redundant? It was a sure thing, and no guy I knew would have turned it down.
The mating dance was a simple two-step. I asked if she wanted to shower. Yes. She asked if I wanted to join her. Yes. I took her standing up under the steaming water, her legs locked around my hips. Then on the chaise on the balcony, Krista wanting to feel the breeze from the bay. Finally in the bed, where we conked out until close to noon.