Paul Levine - Night vision

I felt like applauding. Lord Olivier might be gone, but we still had Arnie Two-Ton Tannenbaum.

"Meaning what, Mr. Taggleborn?" the judge demanded.

Two-Ton thought about it and licked a sweaty upper lip. He was better when he didn't have to ad-lib.

"Just as the king is powerless to invade the home, so too is Mr. Lassiter, wearing the color of state authority, forbidden from demanding entry and possession of items therein. The subpoena must be smitten, must be quashed under the righteous weight of judicial power. It must be torn into shreds and cast upon the wings of a zephyr. Let it be swept away on the breeze, on the…the…"

"'The wind they call Ma-ri-ah,'" I singsonged, but this time, he didn't take the bait.

"Very well," the judge concluded, then looked for me, hidden behind Two-Ton's bulk.

I elbowed my way around Tannenbaum to get into the judge's line of vision. "This is a murder investigation," I told her, "and the state has a compelling need for the information. We do not seek to invade anyone's home, but rather to gain access to certain business records of Compu-Mate, Inc., a Florida corporation that enjoys none of the personal rights so eloquently defended by Mr. Tannenbaum. Those business records may show the identity of the last person to communicate with a murder victim. In short, the corporation has no right to withhold the records. As for the authors of the messages, there is no precedent to suggest that there is a constitutional right of anonymity where a person blindly transmits electronic missives into the night, oblivious to the identity of the recipient."

"I see," the judge said, replacing the glasses on the bridge of her nose. Dixie Lee Boulton had worked for three Democratic governors, and when the last had been put out to pasture, she was rewarded with a judicial appointment. She hadn't read a law book since graduating from night school in 1949, but I wasn't worried. She had a fifty-fifty chance of being right.

"Motion to quash denied," she said. "Mr. Tottlebum, your client has forty-eight hours to produce the records."

Two-Ton exhaled a sigh like a foghorn and gave me a congenial slug on the shoulder. "I shouldn't have sung," he whimpered. "'Music is the brandy of the damned.'"

"William Pitt?" I inquired.

"George Bernard Shaw," he said, then waddled toward the door.

As the courtroom emptied, Roberta Blinderman slinked out of the gallery and approached me. Her feelings about me must have changed. "Mr. Lassiter," she breathed. "You were so very good just now. I almost wish you were on my team."

"Well, Arnie gets a little carried away."

She smiled and moved close, enough to give me a whiff of a sweet, heavy perfume. "You're telling me. He's one of my clients. Goes by the handle 'Big Ham.'"

"I'm looking forward to learning more about your customers," I told her.

"I can tell you about the clients," she said, gesturing with a small briefcase. "Periodically, I sample them to find out if they're getting what they want."

"Which is?"

"Satisfaction, of course. That's what we all want, isn't it, Mr. Lassiter?"

She opened the briefcase. Inside were a stack of computer printouts and two hardcover books. I thumbed through the papers. A bunch of questionnaires. On a scale of one to ten, rate the sensuous quality of your Compu-Mate calls.

"Our peter meter," Bobbie explained.

"Doesn't help me," I said. "No names."

"We try both ways. Some surveys I do myself. You get unusual feedback face-to-face. But for statistics, you get more truthful answers if it's anonymous. Have you ever made love to a woman without knowing her name and without her knowing yours?"

"The women I know usually demand a resume, a blood test, and three bank references."

"Try it sometime. The less you know about someone, the more honest you can be."

"I see," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"For instance, you really don't know me at all."

"What should I know about you, Mrs. Blinderman?"

"The less the better," she said, "and call me Bobbie."

We weren't good enough friends to be standing this close. She wore a black mini with fishnet stockings and stiletto heels. Our noses nearly touched. Her dark eyes flashed with black lightning, and in the fluorescence of the courtroom, a fine line of peach fuzz showed across her upper lip.

"Where's Max?" I asked. "Minding the store?"

She smiled and half turned so that her thigh pressed into my crotch. I didn't move. Why should I? It didn't hurt.

"Away," she said, drawing a long, painted fingernail across my chest, "and when Max is away…"

"Bobbie takes surveys," I said.

"You're a big man, Lassiter. I like a big man."

So why did she marry Max? "Uh-huh," I said.

"Max said you used to play some ball."

"Uh-huh," I repeated.

She smiled, licked her lips and recited:

"' There once was an athletic young jock

Who could shatter large rocks with his cock,

But a coed said, "Dear,

Please insert the thing here."

And he fainted away with the shock.'"

Maybe she was mocking me or teasing me, but then again, my feeble male mind thought, maybe the sight of a shaggy-haired ex-linebacker carrying a briefcase turned her on.

"Are you going to faint on me, Lassiter?"

"Mrs. Blinderman, considering the fact that you're married and I'm investigating-"

"When I lock my legs around a man," she murmured right there in front of the American flag, the Bible, and portraits of judges with fine chin whiskers, "I don't let him go."

"You've been reading too much of your customers' prose."

She smiled salaciously. "Really, counselor. Do you always carry a brief in your pants, or are you just glad to see me?"

Mocking me, I decided, and tried to think of a brilliant rejoinder.

"Jake! There you are!" Charlie Riggs was beside me, pulling me away. He wore his blue courthouse suit and seemed to have combed out his tangled beard. His dark eyes twinkled with excitement. Coming out of retirement apparently agreed with him. "There's another one."

"Another what?"

"Corpus delicti, of course. Same modus operandi."

Bobbie Blinderman strode toward the courtroom door on those long, allegedly locking legs and gave a little shrug. Another time, she seemed to say. I was looking at Charlie, but I was hearing the clack-clack of Bobbie's high heels, fading like the clangor of a distant train.

The house was on a leafy street in Coral Gables. In-law quarters, the real-estate ads call them. The main house was a big stucco Spanish number from the 1920s with a barrel-tile roof, lots of arches, balconies, and black iron railings. In back sat a squat one-story box for guests or a Honduran maid without a green card.

The cops were still stringing yellow tape around the building. The glass jalousie windows were being dusted for prints. Crime-scene technicians crawled around the building, looking for footprints, weapons, any evidence the killer might have dropped. A business card would do nicely.

Blood red leaves from the Poinciana trees covered the stone path to the little house. Inside, the stench of death hung in the humid air.

"Can't anybody get that AC to work?" Detective Alejandro Rodriguez pleaded.

The place was one room. A bed against a wall, a kitchenette at the far end, and a desk in the middle. Mostly empty bookshelves lined a wall, a small TV and VCR taking up some of the space. The body was facedown near the front door. A young woman in a short cotton chemise with a floral motif. On the desk, the computer monitor still glowed, black background, white fluttery letters. Taped to the computer was a plastic card the size of a driver's license. Name, handle, and secret password: her Compu-Mate membership card.

"Rosemary Rosedahl," Rodriguez said. His face was lathered with sweat, his blue short-sleeve shirt blotched under both arms. "Twenty-seven. Flight attendant for Pan Am. Part-time student at FIU. Rents the place from a doctor. Looks after the main house while he's gone. He's in New England for the summer, like any sensible person."