Peter Leonard - Back from the Dead

According to a neighbor Lynn Risdon was divorced and collecting $3,200 a month in alimony. Her relationship with her ex was acrimonious. He didn’t know the exact definition of the word, but he knew it wasn’t good. Looking for a motive, Conlin thought? There it was.

The bartender was a big guy with a gut, looked like a former athlete. He was busy behind the bar, getting ready for the happy-hour rush. Conlin walked in, got his attention and held up his shield.

The bartender grinned and said, “I’m innocent.” Thinking he was funny.

Conlin let it go and said, “I need to ask you some questions.”

“I’m kinda busy. The boozehounds are on their way, be here any time.”

“You can work while we talk.”

The bar was empty except for a couple of old dudes in golf shirts down to his right, drinking martinis. He could hear “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night coming from speakers somewhere in the room. Conlin held up a snapshot of Lynn Risdon he’d found in a desk drawer at her house. “You know her?”

The bartender looked up and nodded. “She’s a regular. Comes in has a few and leaves. Saw her last night.” He was slicing lemons and limes on a plastic cutting board.

“Was she with someone?” Conlin sat on a barstool, elbows on the bar top like a customer, thinking how good a beer would taste.

“Guy next to her, ordered a single malt, they started talking.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Salt ’n’ pepper hair, late forties, fifty, little shorter than you, little heavier. What happened?”

He slid the cut slices off the cutting board into a white plastic bucket.

“This guy she was talking to, they know each other?”

“I don’t think so.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a bartender,” he said, like being a bartender was an elite profession — right up there with neurosurgeons.

“What were they talking about?”

He looked up from the cutting board and shrugged.

“I thought you were a bartender.”

“He was telling her he was a producer, made porno flicks. I don’t know if he was making it up or not, but she was into it.”

“They leave together?”

“She had four martinis, could barely walk. He helped her out, practically carried her.”

“He drive her home?”

“How do I know? Ask Joey, the valet.”

“This look like him?” Conlin said, showing him the artist sketch of Gerd Klaus.

“Yeah.”

Joey looked like a valet, skinny dark-haired kid with a goatee, wearing skintight black Levis, black tee shirt and a red vest. Joey, Conlin noticed, had a ring on every finger. He was setting up his booth near the door when Conlin walked out of the restaurant at 5:12 p.m. After introductions, Conlin said, “What’s with the rings?”

“Each one represents a special memory.”

“A special memory, huh?” Conlin said, thinking this guy had to be a fruit. He showed him the picture of Lynn Risdon. “Know her?”

“She’s here a lot. Drives a white ’69 Mustang.”

“See her last night?”

“Uh-huh. Pulled in at six thirty. Left at around quarter to ten. She was wasted, couldn’t walk, some guy was helping her to her car.”

Joey had a heavy Boston accent. Conlin had to really listen to understand him. “He drive her home?”

“I don’t know, but he drove her somewhere.”

“What about his car?”

“Don’t think he had one. I saw him walk in from Gulfstream Road at about seven fifteen.” He paused. “I was here till closing, never saw him again.”

“Ever seen him before?”

“I don’t think so.”

Conlin showed him the artist sketch. “This look like him?”

“Definitely.”

Conlin got to Sunset Realty at about twenty to seven, parked on Worth, went in, flashed his shield and told the bleached blonde receptionist with silver hairpins holding up the front of her hair he was looking for Joyce Cantor.

“You just missed her. Went out the door a couple of minutes ago. She’s walking home. Lives at the Winthrop House. Know where that’s at, don’t you?”

Conlin nodded, thanked her and walked outside, looked east, trying to spot Joyce on the congested sidewalk. Didn’t see her. He got in his car. Worth Avenue was one-way so he drove to Cocoanut Row, went right and right again on Peruvian and took it all the way to the beach road, ocean straight ahead, took another right and pulled over in a no-parking zone in front of the Winthrop House. On the way he got a call from headquarters saying a patrolman had found Lynn Risdon’s car parked on Worth Avenue, first block.

Conlin had taken Joyce Cantor’s statement two weeks earlier in connection with the homicide of a security guard killed on the estate where Joyce was staying. Said she hadn’t heard a gunshot and had never met a German manufacturer’s rep named Gerd Klaus whose rental vehicle was discovered near the scene of the crime. Joyce’s story was corroborated by Harry Levin, and by a colored guy named Cordell Sims, who were also staying at the estate owned by some rich guy named Frankel from New York. Talk about a clusterfuck.

Conlin knew they were bullshitting him, but he couldn’t prove anything and had to let them go, all except for Sims who had an outstanding warrant against him — felony firearm — and ended up spending a day in county lockup until his legal problems were miraculously resolved. Now the German was back and he had a feeling Joyce would be interested to know about it.

Hess walked out of the restaurant and followed Joyce from the opposite side of the street, strolling along Worth Avenue in his new Palm Beach disguise, golf cap low over his eyes almost touching the frames of the aviator sunglasses. As far as Joyce was concerned he was dead. No one could have survived being shot and thrown in the ocean. That’s why he believed God had intervened.

He was thinking of the last time he’d seen her — she’d been right there on the bed a few feet away — regretting he hadn’t pulled the trigger when he had the chance. But there had been extenuating circumstances — like a crazy Jew with a gun, shooting at him.

He passed a police car double-parked next to Lynn Risdon’s Mustang. The policeman was on the passenger side, looking in the window. Hess continued on, a Palm Beach retiree, glancing at his reflection in store windows. Just past South County Road he crossed over on Joyce’s side of the street, thirty paces behind her, slowing down to maintain the distance between them.

A Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud was approaching, two-tone, silver and black, Hess admiring the classic motorcar with its long hood. When he looked down the sidewalk Joyce was gone. He quickened his pace, glanced left into a boutique, a big open shop, but didn’t see her. Passed two more stores and finally spotted her in a flower shop.

There was no place to stop and wait without being seen, so Hess walked to the end of Worth Avenue, crossed South Ocean Boulevard and leaned his hip against the seawall, gazing out at the Atlantic. He watched a seagull dive in the water and rise up with a fish twisting in its beak. He looked over his shoulder and saw Joyce on the sidewalk, coming toward him, carrying a bouquet of flowers wrapped in paper. He watched her stop, cross Worth Avenue and go into the Winthrop House through a side entrance. Hess crossed too and followed her into the building. The lobby was crowded with people talking, watching television, playing cards and backgammon. Joyce, he noticed, was at the reception desk in conversation with Conlin, the detective who had visited him at the hospital in Freeport.

Conlin flashed a grin. “For me?” he said, glancing at the flowers she was holding. “You shouldn’t have.”

“What can I do for you, Detective?” Joyce said, surprised to see him in the lobby. Assuming he was back to question her.