Paul Levine - Night vision

And how about my personal relationships, as long as we're engaging in self-flagellation? Ms. Pamela Maxson, where is she now, oh man of many charms? In a hotel room, ocean view. Do not disturb.

I'm sorry, Dr. Maxson is not taking any calls. Would you care to leave a message?

Yeah, tell her she wasn't that great, either. No, never mind.

Okay, Lassiter, you've struck out before. You've had good relationships go bad and bad relationships get worse. There've been lady executives who cared more for their work than you, new-age types who declared you obsolete, touchy-feely artistic types who found you impenetrable, and a couple of cocktail waitresses who thought you had a cute tush.

So don't start romanticizing this one. This was weird from day one. First she stiff-arms and belittles you. Then drops you in the soup with a bunch of sicko killers and gets angry when you fight your way out. Next she shows up under the sheets, then boom, she's furious. She cuddles again, sharing bed and board until she finds someone else. Who was it? A psychiatrist at one of her speeches. Or a beachboy type, Mel Gibson with a deep tan.

Okay, grow up already. She left. Accept it for what it was. "'Sweet love were slain,'" old Tennyson wrote. A meaningless joining of bodies, a sharing of mutual heat, a momentary exchange of breaths. Nothing more.

The ex-coroner and the ex-jockey hadn't come back, so I limped up the stairs to the mezzanine, the left foot still swollen and angry at me. There were cries of joy and anguish from the grandstand, and by the time I got to the bar, the TV monitor was showing the replay, number two, thundering down the stretch, five lengths ahead, Bellasario leaning forward, talking horse talk, I imagined, in Radar Vector's ears. He paid $25.80, $9.80, and $5.20.

I ordered a draft beer and was joined by two elderly men in polo shirts, golf slacks, and sneakers. A second TV was tuned to the Yankees-Red Sox game and it was clear these guys didn't come to drink. One had a hundred bucks on the Yankees at six-to-five.

Five minutes later, Charlie Riggs and Max Blinderman pulled up, laughing, slapping each other on the back, counting their money. Literally counting it, unfolding greenbacks as they walked.

"Jake, buy you a beer?" Charlie thundered.

I didn't say no.

"Never played a perfecta before," Charlie announced. He dropped two fifties on the bar and stuffed one in the pocket of the old geezer who was polishing glasses. "But couldn't resist pairing Radar Vector with Internal Medicine. How could I lose?"

How, indeed?

"Paid ninety-eight dollars on a two-dollar bet."

"Great, you can buy dinner," I said.

"He can buy more than that," Max said. "He bet a hundred bucks. Say, doc, you're not doing anything tomorrow, we'll have breakfast, study the charts."

"Tomorrow?" Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"Don't worry. I'll be at the lab by eleven, they can stick me, and we'll make the one o'clock post."

"Done," Charlie said.

The bartender drew a pitcher of beer for the coroner and the lawyer, then delivered a Preakness-rye and vermouth with a dash of Benedictine-for the jockey.

Max sipped his drink and looked at me, his smile gone. "Hey, shyster, that English-bred filly of yours came by the other day to sign up. What's the matter, she want to graze in other pastures?"

"Thanks for the news bulletin, Max," I said. "Give Bobbie my best."

He showed me a shit-eating grin. "Yow, I'll do better than that. I'll give her my best."

I laughed. Not at him. At us. A couple of immature punks in the school yard insulting each other's prowess with the opposite sex.

"Whaddaya laughing at, shyster?"

"Just wondering. When Bobbie comes sniffing around, should I tell her to skedaddle, go home to Max? Or should I give her a run around the track?"

I don't know why I said that. Stupid and vicious. That wasn't the man Granny Lassiter raised. There was no need to respond in kind to his ridicule. Charlie would tell me later how disappointed he was in me. Max told me something else. He came next to my bar stool and stood, maybe on tiptoes, pressing his face close to mine. His breath smelled of tobacco and whiskey.

"Look, shyster, you try anything with Bobbie, I make you a gelding quicker'n you can say Eddie Arcaro."

"Eddie Arcaro," I said.

Oh boy, aren't you big and tough, taunting someone who makes Michael J. Fox look like Rambo. Little guys always want to fight you, to prove something to themselves. If you take them up on it, throw them from here to second base, you're a bully. Get whupped, you're a wimp. Jockeys prove something to themselves squiring six-foot-tall models and driving block-long Lincolns. Don't ask me what or why. Maybe Pam Maxson knows. I'll ask her. Maybe get the promised therapy at the same time.

"Nobody fucks with Bobbie," Max Blinderman snarled, turning on his heel and disappearing into the grandstand.

I had the top down and the pedal to the metal climbing our Miami mountain, the great looping causeway from the mainland to Key Biscayne. The causeway soars skyward to let the sailboats pass underneath, and it gives you a copter's view of the city, sun-sparkled and gleaming. Cruise ships and condos, beaches and sports cars. It is the cinematographer's vision of the tropical paradise. Phony as a bar girl's smile.

The Olds roared over the crest, eastward toward the morning sun, and I eased off the gas, cruising past the marina and the Marine Stadium, past the entrance to Virginia Key, and on through Crandon Park into the small downtown of Key Biscayne. The Key is turned inside out. Surrounded by water, the condos and hotels on the east open onto the sea. The houses on the west open onto the bay. In northern climes, houses have front porches. You can walk the block and salute your neighbors. Here, we're all out back at the beach or pool. The fronts are deserted, out of the action.

I tried the house phone at the hotel. No answer in her room. At least the operator didn't give me the non disturbate message. I tried the lobby. No luck. The pool deck had its usual collection of buttocks in bikinis, the South American Tonga, alongside heavyset men weighted with gold. But no English lady from the Cotswolds. I stepped onto the beach, my black wingtips sinking into the sand. I don't know what's worse, being underdressed for your surroundings or overdressed. It is impossible to wear a shirt and tie on the beach and not feel both foolish about yourself and resentful of those properly unattired.

I checked the grill at the chickee hut, not thirty yards from the surf. Bare backs, the smell of coconut oil, icy red strawberry daiquiris, and the sizzle of burning burgers. But no Pam Maxson.

I tried the front desk, where a slim young man with a slim young mustache smiled at me and chirped g'morning. For a moment I thought I was two hundred twenty miles up yonder in the land of the mouse. The plastic tag on his brown blazer said "Carlos." I allowed as how it was a fine morning indeed and asked him for Dr. Maxson's room number. Still smiling under his whiskery lip, Carlos told me he couldn't do that but the operator would be oh-so-happy to dial the room she might fall off her ergonomic, three-hundred-sixty-degree swivel chair. So I flashed him my laminated, semiofficial badge, which was starting to show wear around the edges, and Carlos punched some buttons on his computer and gave me a suite number, twelfth floor, ocean side. I headed for the elevator and he looked after me. Smiling.

There was silence after the first knock on the double doors. And the second.

After the third she asked who it was.

When I told her, she cracked the door, chain still affixed, and asked what I wanted.

Beaches without footprints, I told her. Eternal happiness, too. But I'd settle for fresh-squeezed juice, eggs over lightly, and a basket of toast with three or four of those little jelly jars.