Crime Read online

  For some of the more extreme members of these groups, the thrill of picking up women and sharing in techniques and triumphs soon becomes passé. Many are openly dysfunctional; obvious victims of abuse, with an embittered and displaced vengeful aspect to their character. They are chickenhawks who’ve flocked together and their raison d’être is to seek and befriend vulnerable lone parents with prepubescent children.

  The seminar is a house of paedophiles, at least one of whom is a copper. Lennox had become a policeman because he hated bullies. Then he’d been disillusioned to find out that, like everywhere else, the police force had its share. Right across the world, men like Dearing, attracted to wielding power over others, would hide behind the badge of service. He could do nothing to stop them, so, in his cynicism, had almost become one himself.

  Without the righteous fire of his anti-nonce crusade, Lennox was too sensitive to cope with the savagery that surrounded him in Serious Crimes. Only through booze and cocaine could he talk its language, understand its dumb code on the requisite emotional level, even if the substances which gave him the zeal for the culture of violence curtailed his effectiveness at its practice. The martial arts, the kick-boxing, they only helped when he was physically capable of training three times a week. Then the gloved fists of other men in his face were reduced to annoyances, to be caught, blocked, sidestepped, countered.

  Lennox freezes as a rhythmic slash of propeller blades overhead signals a helicopter closing in. Its searching light beam lasers the road behind him. Surely Dearing couldn’t … But the sound is fading away over the Everglades, the biggest uninhabited roadless land mass in the United States. Of course choppers would scan its lush density; taking photographs, looking for drug smugglers, illegals, terrorists or just civilians behaving unconventionally.

  Dedicated swampland becomes uncompromising city within the toss of a Frisbee, and Ray Lennox, the displaced Scottish cop who knows he can never do this job again, pulls into the Embassy Hotel car park, the seminar already an hour in. After the grimy functionalism of airport-zone Miami, to step into the hotel’s ornate pink-marbled and gold-leafed courtyard of fountains and pillars is to enter corporate Eden. The diverse flora are so thoughtfully planted and meticulously maintained, through his glassy eyes they look like a shiny Photoshopped brochure. He studies the black felt-ribbed board, almost expecting to see NONCE CONFERENCE indicated by the white plastic lettering.

  CONFERENCES AT EMBASSY AIRPORT HOTEL

  Thursday, January 12

  JONES BOATYARD INC.

  Palm Beach Boardroom

  8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

  2005 HISPANIC JOB FAIR

  Key Largo 3 & 4

  10 a.m. – 8 p.m.

  SONY ELECTRONICS DEALER TRAINING

  Upper Atrium

  11 a.m. – 1 p.m.

  SUNDANCE MEDIA

  Binini

  3.30 p.m. – 9.30 p.m.

  FEUER NURSING REVIEW

  Key Biscayne

  3.30 p.m. – 4.30 p.m.

  SUICIDE SURVIVORS

  Key Largo 2

  7 p.m. – 9.30 p.m.

  SALES FORCE 4 TRAINING SEMINAR

  Key Largo 1

  8 p.m. – 11.30 p.m.

  Key Largo. Lennox thinks of the film. Bogart and Bacall. Asks a receptionist to point the way. She reminds him of Trudi in her body language and wary, slightly artful smile, to the extent of oblique but poignant arousal, as she indicates a flight of stairs. Climbing them quickly, he arrives at a mezzanine floor, clocks Key Largo. Head surreptitiously craned round the door, he looks inside from the back of the small room: five men seated round a table. Dearing isn’t present, but the others look furtive and traumatised. He steps inside to confront them. — So this is the place, is it?

  One bespectacled man in his thirties, sweating in spite of the air con, regards his approach. — I’m sorry, Mr …?

  — Lennox. Where’s our friend Dearing then?

  — I’m Mike Haskins, the man offers. — There’s no Dearing here. He puts his glasses on to his head and studies a folder. — And I’m afraid I don’t seem to have your name down here, Mr Lennox …

  — No. You won’t have. I just want you to tell Dearing –

  The man has put his specs back on his nose and is focusing on Lennox. — I think you might have the wrong room. This is the Suicide Survivors group.

  — Eh … Key Largo … Sales … Lennox says timidly.

  — This is Key Largo 2, the man patiently informs him, — Key Largo 1 is across the way.

  — Sorry … sorry. Lennox skulks out into the corridor. Guzzling some deep breaths, he composes himself, elects to play it softly. Let the police have the big showdown. He ducks his head round the door of what is a bigger seminar room. A man standing at the front makes a PowerPoint presentation. He can see the backs of eight heads, in a semicircle. Only one turns, glancing at Lennox, squinting, then looking back to the presenter. Lennox withdraws. He’s seen him before, in South Beach: the Deuce and Myopia. Close to him, another recognisable figure. He hasn’t turned round, but there is no mistaking the denim back of Lance Dearing.

  Lennox swiftly concealed himself behind some stacked chairs in the hallway. He can hear the speaker clearly. — What do I do when I get a lead? Nothing. I sit back and plan. I find out everything I can about the customer, before I present the product. The initial product is not your own wants and desires. This is crucial: the product is completely tailored to the customer, at first. Only when the customer is completely hooked do we start to think about modifying client behaviour.

  Then familiar tones set him on edge: Lance Dearing. — An ol dog knows you gotta hunt the fattest, juiciest lil’ fleas with a wet tongue rather than a sharp tooth.

  — Amen, another voice endorses.

  He has heard enough to know that confrontation will be useless, and the lack of any obvious police presence makes him wonder about Chet’s alarm-raising capabilities. But he has the evidence, and Chet and Johnnie. He decides to get Robyn and leave them to it.

  Then he hears the announcement of a coffee adjournment, and the gratified sounds of men stretching and rising eagerly, as chairs slide along the polished wooden floor. Instead of going downstairs, he quickly heads to the restroom, bolting the small cubicle shut, sitting and waiting. Two men enter: urine blasts against porcelain and the salts in the bottom of neighbouring latrines.

  — How ya doin, Tiger?

  — Ah’m good.

  Tiger. Lennox sweats, feeling his blood pounding as if his heart is where his brain should be. He pulls the flush and moves out of the cubicle; stands alongside one of the men, who is washing his hands, while the other still pees. He looks at the delegate badge on the man’s lapel: C.T. O’HARA. He’s a big, full-faced guy with a benign smile. Wedding ring. Looks like a regular dad. Away from home a lot, working hard in sales to generate a college fund for his kids. Who married this monster, slept with him every night? Wouldn’t they just know? Why would they?

  The big guy gives his hands a cursory blast under the electric dryer and in departure teases his colleague who has advanced to the basin by Lennox. — You’re gonna miss those chocolate-chip cookies, Tiger.

  — Don’t I know it. Them boys got appetites, Tiger grins, displaying a row of capped teeth, as his friend departs.

  Lennox looks at his oily black hair, the snidey, reptilian cast of the features and the name tag confirming: J.D. CLEMSON. He could envisage him buying Robyn drinks in a bar. See him alone with Tianna …

  He pulls his arm behind his back to scratch at his shoulder blade as he steps closer to Clemson. Sees the beast look up with a faint, vaguely uncomprehending smile on its lips, before he shoots the elbow forward at speed into Clemson’s face. A satisfying crunch is followed by a screech and blood erupts, splattering across the white sink. Lennox pivots behind Clemson and forces his face down on to the edge of the unit, hammering it repeatedly, as teeth and bone crack and the man grows limp in his now painless hands, emitting nothing oth
er than a low, gurgling groan. — Savour this moment, Lennox says to him, — cause this is as good as it gets for you from now on in. Your old life is over. This is what you were put here for.

  Lennox releases his grip. As the bloodied Clemson falls slowly, sliding down, drunkenly trying to cling on to the unit, Lennox kicks him in the face, assisting his sprawl to the marble floor. He can’t cease stomping Clemson, can’t end the intimacy, yet he makes himself halt. But not before his senses have been assailed by that brief insight all men might be permitted before they become killers, that the achievement of that goal will produce an irreperable emotional downshift.

  Phantom-like and serene as he opens the door and looks down the mezzanine’s narrow hallway, he feels as if he’s watching himself in a dream, where narrative perspective shifts from first to third person, usually when the nightmare becomes unbearable. He walks past the seminar rooms. Key Largo 2’s door is closed. He glides by the half-open Key Largo 1 without looking in, the buzz of men chatting over coffee never changing in register as he passes. Then adrenalin shoots into him with the realisation that the police might just arrive to witness his brutal assault. He scoots down the stairs, across the hotel lobby, vaguely aware of KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Don’t Go’ playing in piped music, and runs across the lot to the green car.

  As he drives past the airport, he thinks again about what Les endured, wondering how he would have coped with similar treatment. As a copper he was drawn to Serious Crimes, and he would often look through the sex offenders database, to see if he could recognise their three assailants. His mind played tricks; sometimes he was convinced he had identified one of them, only later to be certain it was someone else. But he knew that he hated all sex offenders: every one of those terrible, wretched specimens. Bringing them to book was the one and only thing he believed to be true policework. The system was played solely for the leverage to get to them, the real villains. This power was craved because he’d declared war on paedophiles. Never a policeman, Ray Lennox is a beast hunter and now that he has their scent he’s compelled to take this as far as he can.

  21

  Showdowns

  LENNOX REALISES HIS fraught and hasty retreat from Dearing has confused his mental map of Miami. He finds himself heading east on the Calle Ocho strip of SW 8th Street at Little Havana, past the Cuban bakers and furniture shops, where groups of old men chat and smoke in the cooling air, as the central business district’s skyscrapers glow in the distance.

  The colour and word ‘orange’ burn in his head: the Orange Bowl Stadium and the exterior decoration of Robyn’s apartment block. Pulling up outside the Latin American Art Museum, he asks a youthful couple for directions. They tell him to go left on 17th Avenue, and the faded grandeur of the college football arena contiguously comes into sight. But in the featureless rack of streets, locating Robyn’s apartment reminds him of trying to find Notman’s lost contact lens on an Edinburgh Parks Department football pitch. As he feels himself going in circles anger gnaws at him, unleashing a bilious frustration in his gut. It would be easier to eat fresh sushi in Brigadoon. He’s ready to hammer his car horn in exasperated despair when the orange building seems to step out in front of him. — Thank fuck, he gasps in gratitude, parking across the street.

  He hesitates in exiting the car; inspects his bloody fingers, throbbing like toothache. Driving through Little Havana, that sense of alienation and despondency has swept back over him. He is not a cop here. Thankfully, he can see no sign of police in the quiet street. But they would arrive soon, either Chet’s testimony or his battering of Clemson would ensure that.

  So Lennox steels himself, gets out and walks up the path, presses some buzzers that aren’t Robyn’s, shouting, — Pest control, and waits for the crackle before pushing the front door. He climbs the stair and bangs on the entrance of the apartment he visited two nights ago. Starry pulls it open in agitation. Her eyes widen in shock as she beholds Lennox. — What the fuck do you –

  She never gets to finish the sentence as he rams his forehead into her face. The crack of bone splintering followed by a red spray tells him he’s snapped the bridge of her nose. Starry screams, bending forward and teetering back, uttering curses in Spanish, as insistent bombs of thick blood fall through her fingers on to the hardwood floor. Lennox grabs her hair in his left fist and jumps into the apartment with a twist, smashing her head against the door frame. She collapses to the deck, where she lies stunned and moaning as he closes the door behind them.

  Robyn runs in from the lounge, leaky-eyed and halting. — Ray! Where’s Tia? Is she safe? She looks down at Starry in trembling bewilderment. — What have you done?

  — Something you or some other cunt should have a long time ago. Anybody else in here?

  — No … but what happened? Where’s Tianna?

  Lennox realises that he’s never had violent contact with a woman before, if you discounted the obese lassie he’d had to sit on at the South Side station, after she’d freaked out and bitten off part of a uniformed spastic’s ear. But this one didn’t factor, because she was a beast, like the others. — Are there any firearms in the house?

  — No … Robyn’s eyes are like a Halloween mask. It’s as if she’s been caught in a cycle of crying and applying more eyeliner without thinking to wash her face. It nauseates him to consider that he could have had sex with her: more so, when he thinks about her daughter and his own fiancée. Robyn bunches her fists in front of her chest. — Where’s Tianna?

  — She’s okay. She’s with friends. What the fuck have they done to you? Where did they take ye?

  — It was Lance … he said my drugs problem had gotten outta hand … an intervention, she rambles, then paralysis seizes her face as she’s smitten by the ineptitude of her own words. — They were my friends … they knew what was best. I … she begs, halting as her flimsy conviction deserts her. She’s a grotesque tear factory to him; afflicted by the strange notion that if she cried enough, she’d eventually excrete the source of her pain. Unlike Starry’s face with the Latin cheekbones and engorged lips, which grew more alluring in rage, Robyn’s small, fine Anglo-Saxon features become pinched; petty and ungenerous. Stiff-upper-lipped stoicism is the way for our race, ostentatious anger always demeans us, Lennox considers. It is fear that diminishes Starry. He grabs her and hauls her to her feet, jostling her into the lounge and shoving her on to the chair. — What have you done to her? Robyn asks again.

  — You know what I’ve done and why I’ve done it, jabbing a finger at her, before turning back to his quarry in the chair. — You fuckin move a muscle and I’ll throttle you to death with my bare hands. Got that?

  She forces a defiant sneer, still holding her nose.

  Lennox’s face contorts as he takes a step closer to her. — HAVE YOU FUCKIN WELL GOT THAT?

  And he thinks of when he lost it at his last interrogation, but now there’s no Horsburgh, only Starry’s abject shell, nodding in miserable deference. He charges through to the toilet, grabs a soiled towel and thinks of the uses it could be put to before he throws it at her. Then, remembering Robyn’s cuffs, he goes to the bedroom and removes them from the nightstand. He experiences Robyn’s presence as a background bleating sound as he snaps Starry’s hand to a radiator pipe behind her. — It’s fucking hot, she squawks through the towel.

  — Good, Lennox says, as he looks back at Robyn.

  — What’s going on, Ray? Robyn asks, nervously picking burrs from her faded green top — Where’s my baby? Did you take her to Chet’s?

  — I’ve told you, she’s fine. Don’t give me any performances, Robyn. I’ve seen one of your performances, and he pulls the disc from his pocket.

  — You found the tapes … Her hand goes to her hair, and Lennox has to repress the urge to scream at her.

  She thinks I’m fucking jealous! The daft cunt actually thinks that’s what this is about! — Yes.

  — Johnnie and I met through Starry. He liked to video when we … were together.

>   Lennox nods, thinking about guys who wanted to become porn stars until they realised that they couldn’t get wood on camera. In a couple of generations, he considers, we won’t be able to get wood unless there’s a camera.

  Robyn whines, — Then he got Lance involved.

  — Lance was my boyfriend, bitch, Lennox hears Starry’s muffled hiss from behind the towel.

  Robyn seems not to register, — … and it just got crazier and wilder. Then I found out that there were other women, other videos.

  — Oh yeah, there were others, he caustically agrees.

  Robyn looks to a broken-nosed Starry, holding her head up with the towel, groaning in agony, then back to Lennox. — Who … who are you, Ray? Who? Robyn’s rasping sobs are punctuated only by the sound of mucus sliding down her gullet in heavy swallows.

  — Later, he says, wondering if he’ll ever be able to answer that question to his own satisfaction. — Did you see any of the other videos?

  — No, of course I didn’t –

  — Chet’s boat was where some of them were made.

  — No, Robyn gasps. — No. No! I don’t believe it … not Chet … where’s Tianna?!

  Lennox inserts the disc into the DVD player. — Here’s one you missed.

  — What?! We’re going to watch one of these films? Now? What the hell –

  — You need to see this. Need to see what the people you choose as friends are really about.

  He didn’t want to watch it again, and instead sits studying her reaction as the images appear on the screen. The voice of her drugged daughter: — I feel sick … I wanna go home … Dearing’s kindly reply: — It’s okay, honey, jus you relax …