Crime (10 page)

As they chat, his ears quickly become desensitised to the superficial glamour of the American accent, and he can now see these women in any scuzzy backstreet Edinburgh pub. A lifetime of cigarette consumption seems to induce all the bar’s smoke to congregate around Robyn’s grey skin and cheap, flashy clothing like iron filings to a magnet.

— So you know a few strange women, Starry says, her eyes going to his bandaged hand. — Does that make you a strange man? Who am I kidding, is there any other kind?

Lennox has sparred in too many Edinburgh meat markets to be wrong-footed by some apolitical feminist jibes. — We do stupid very well, he says, then adds, — but you girls beat us hands down when it comes to crazy. That’s just the way we are.

Starry laughs, opening her jaws so wide it seems she could swallow up the bar and everybody in it. Lennox stares into the ribbed, pink cavern of that mouth, the protruding red tongue a welcome mat, quickly coiling into a threatening snake. — And don’t you forget it!

— Excuse me a second, ladies, while I answer the call of nature. Lennox slides from his stool and makes for the restrooms in the corner of the bar.

Why did they call it a restroom?

Lennox feels like he really wants to rest. To lie down on the tiled floor covered in men’s pish, shoe leather, dirt, cigarette ash, and sleep like a baby. Instead, he stretches out his bad hand and starts to unwrap the elasticised bandage with his good one. The dressing is discoloured and a stink rises from it. A spasm of fear seizes him, and he almost expects to be confronted by a withered,
black
and green gangrenous object. In the event his hand is stiff, red and a little swollen and angry-looking around the knuckles, and his eyes water when he tries to make a fist of it. But it’s still visibly his hand, and is probably on the mend. He entrusts it with the holding and pointing of his penis and can’t bear to watch his dark and stagnant urine splash against the metal of the latrine.

Lennox washes his hands with care, welcoming the other back into the family.

It took him thirty-five seconds to grab her, bundle her into the van, gag and secure her with electrical tape and drive off
.

Puts his hands under a dryer. Enjoys the heat sensation against the numbed, sore paw.

The two women face Lennox as he emerges back into the pub. Starry has picked up the copy of
Perfect Bride
and is leafing through it. But now there is someone else on the scene, another man who has emerged from the shadows at the back of the bar and who approaches the women at the same time as the returning Lennox. He looks at Starry in confusion.

Lennox realises that the guy is about the same height as him, around six two, and also in his mid-thirties. — I’m in sales, he beams at Starry and Robyn, ignoring Lennox, who gently seethes.
This cunt has been listening in to me talking, and now he’s taking the piss
.

Pulling on his shoulder, Lennox pivots him round. — I’ll tell what you’re in if you don’t fuck off right now. Trouble. Big fucking trouble. Is that clear?

The guy blinks, taken aback.

— Hey … Starry begins, laying down the magazine on the bar, — no need for that!

— Listen, buddy … the guy starts, but Lennox can see that any certainties he has are evaporating.

He feels himself smouldering with violence. This guy has rubbed him up the wrong way. — I’m no your buddy. Got that?

— Have it your way –

— I intend tae. Now fuck off.

The man shrugs, raises his palms in appeal and skulks back into the corner of the bar.

— What was that about? Starry says, evidently upset.

— I didn’t like him, Lennox tells her, as he keeps his eyes on the man, who promptly finishes his drink and leaves.

— He seemed a nice guy, she says, looking to Robyn.

— I dunno, I thought he was kinda creepy.

— I guess you would know all about that, honey.

Robyn screws up her face a little and shrugs, turning to Lennox with a tight smile.

Starry seems to relinquish her anger. — Look, let’s move on somewhere else.

They discuss where to go. Lennox thinks that he should head back to the hotel. Make his peace with Trudi. Tiredness is kicking in. But he can’t face her. Better to wait till she’s asleep.

— What’s this? Starry asks Lennox. She holds up the copy of
Perfect Bride
. — You planning a wedding?

— Aye. Not my own though, he says, surprised how effortlessly falsehoods pirouette from his mouth. The difference between a cop and a villain is that we get paid a salary and make better liars, his mentor Robbo once told him. — That’s what I sell, he qualifies. — Weddings; the whole package.

— You’re a wedding planner? Like the Adam Sandler movie? Robyn squeals in delight.

— Well, yeah. He looks at Starry who is forcing a grim smile, before her cellphone ringtone starts to play ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. She apologises, moving to the door of the bar to answer it.

— I guess that must be a happy job. A lot of fun, Robyn says.

— It’s stressful, but it has its uplifting moments.

Starry returns and is keen to go on to a place called Club Myopia, but Robyn is reluctant. — I gotta get back soon for Tia.

— She’ll be okay, Starry says. — Just one drink. I got us a little something.

Robyn’s eyes light up. — You mean you been – She stops herself.

Lennox knows that the little something is coke. It’s what he wants. Needs. One line of white powder. Something to make him strong. To make him not think about dead children. To make him not care.
Robyn
tells him that Club Myopia is just a few blocks south. It would be on the way back to the hotel. — I’ll keep this safe for you, she smiles, putting the copy of
Perfect Bride
into her shoulder bag, — it’s getting pretty messed up lying on that bar.

— Ta. Lennox winks in gratitude, and they head out and walk down Washington Avenue to the club.

For ID, Starry and Robyn flash driver’s licences at the doorman. Lennox offers his Lothian and Borders Police Authority pass, replete with an old mustachioed picture of him. The bouncer, a big black man, meets his eye with a downward head motion, minimal, stern. Lennox slips the card back into his pocket, taking care to conceal it from the girls. He badly wants them to get the coke out. Can envision it, sweating in the wrapper, inside Starry’s handbag. So, too, from the focus in her eyes, can Robyn.

Myopia is a dance-music club, and cast adrift amid a sea of toned, fit, beautiful youths, they are the oldest people there. Starry and Robyn waste no time in heading to the restrooms. They are gone for so long, Lennox fears that they might have slipped away. He grows restless then anxious standing at the bar alone, drenched in the pumping music and the strobe lights, with the well-dressed youngsters seeming to scan him in disapproval. The girls wear short, slinky dresses of largely one colour, which cling to their bodies as if by static electricity. The predominantly dressy shirts of the boys highlight the grubbiness of his Ramones tee. He thinks: Michael Douglas in the
Basic Instinct
nightclub scene, salving himself with the knowledge that he could never be quite that ludicrous.

His edginess heightens. Over by the bar, he is aware that he’s being watched. It’s the guy from Club Deuce, the smart-arse salesman. Letting anger energise him, Lennox hits the floor, snaking through the frolicking crowd to the back of the room, then sharply double-backing so he’s standing behind the guy who’s craning his neck, scanning the floor for him. — Looking for somebody? he shouts above the sound system’s quake, causing the man to jump. — You want tae fuckin dance, or something?

— Look, I – he begins, halted by Lennox’s hand, the one with the power in its fingers, which fastens on to his thin throat, choking him to silence.

— Naw. You look. I don’t know what your fuckin game is, but you turn round and you get your arse out of that fuckin door right now, he demands, his grip tightening further. — You know what I’m sayin?

In the man’s fearful eyes he can gauge the extent of his own murderous rancour. Aware that some people are observing the scene, he releases his grip. The heaving-chested man backs away, rubbing at his neck. A bouncer has partly observed proceedings, but, like Lennox, he’s content to merely track the salesman all the way to the Exit signs.

Ordering another drink to vainly compensate for his leaking adrenalin, he fretfully waits for the girls. He commands himself to stand still and do nothing, telling himself that real composure will boomerang back if he fronts it long enough. When they finally return, Robyn particularly looking flushed and animated, they discreetly present Lennox with the gear, in a small, resealable bag. — Thought you’d run out on me, he smiles.

— No chance of that, Robyn says. He sees the confidence the cocaine gives her. One sniff and she can be the person she’s always wanted to be. He understands. Starry doesn’t really need it. She tosses back her curly mane and grins at him. He heads to the men’s restrooms. The cubicles are flimsy with small doors. Not as private as the UK. You could see right in through the crack of them, or even look over, if you had a mind to.
Not to worry
. He racks up a big line on the top of the cistern. It looks good gear. Chops it finer with his Lothian and Borders Police ID card. He thinks for a second about Trudi, probably back in the hotel room, then Keith Goodwin at the NA and all the good work he’d done. Was it good work? Now he’ll flush it all away. Britney’s face: cold, blue and bruised. Mr Confectioner’s sickening gloat. He’ll flush it all away.

The line obliterates them and Lennox emerges striding on to the dance floor like a colossus, jaw protruding. Starry and Robyn are dancing, and he moves easily with them, sleazy and invincible. The other dancers, they can feel his power, his radiant contempt for them. They shrink away like the pygmies they are. He painlessly recalls his infidelities of the past, which wrecked things for
him
and Trudi the first time around; each conquest a trinket on a charm bracelet of fool’s gold, every single one of them executed when he felt
exactly
like this.

Why is he doing this, he asks, apart from the drive of the cocaine? His fiancée is back at the hotel, or so he assumes. Lennox is always beset with the notion that the big event, the real party, is happening somewhere else. His radar – that distressed feeling under his skin – tells him that this is the case. Then he realises that he is a cop and that the big party is
always
happening somewhere else, namely in civvy street. And if he finds it, his role is not to join in, but to break it up. Now, though, for these two weeks, he is a civilian. And it’s good here.
The world’s crumbling around us and thank fuck there’s people just too new or plain stupid to climb on that dance floor, and act as if the party’s just begun
.

Starry sweeps her hair back and meets his predator’s glance with hard, flinty eyes of her own. — We’re gonna go back to Robyn’s. She looks to her friend.

— You’re invited, Robyn says. — Come over and have some more blow?

By blow he assumes that she means coke, rather than marijuana, which he hates. — Okay. Whereabouts? he shouts above the beat.

— I live over in Miami.

— I thought this
was
Miami.

— No, this is Miami
Beach
, silly, Robyn playfully scolds. — Miami is across the causeway.

— Right. He recalls how both Trudi and then Ginger had explained it all to him.

They head outside, buzzing from the coke. Lennox goes to flag down a cab, but Starry stops him. — Here’s a bus, she says, nodding to the approaching vehicle. — Cheaper.

This time he pays the proper money. The bus is full of drunks: the ubiquitous mobile theatre of late-night public transport. They find seats at the back, Lennox at the window with Robyn by his side, Starry in front of them. She’s conversing in Spanish with somebody on her cell. Robyn looks agitated, this soon starting to infect Lennox. The bus has no windows at the back, which adds
to
his unease. It’s unnatural; not to be able to see where you’ve come from.

— Who were you talking to? Robyn asks suspiciously as her friend finishes the call.

— Just some friends from the diner, Starry cossets Robyn, rubbing her friend’s neck, while she expatiates about her workplace hassles. — That Mano, he’s such an asshole …

After courting the coastline, the vehicle suddenly veers, crossing a stretch of water on a long bridge and comes into what Lennox thinks must be Miami proper. Starry’s nail scrapes at some glitter that’s stuck to the bus windows, before she realises it’s outside. The docks come into view with the towering cranes, then the freight tankers. But most impressive are the cruise ships, about a dozen of them, like floating apartment blocks, grandiose yet still dwarfed by the big towers of downtown Miami, massive sentinels guarding the harbour. Lennox is impressed, as the coke pounds his head, making him strong. His teeth grind harshly. He wants those mysterious yellow lights that glisten on the water across that filthy, slithering, black bay. Wants to become part of it all: away from the sunlight and the spotless, white, perfect brides.

6

Party

THROUGH A MURKY
shroud of near darkness illuminated only by a peppering of lights from the overhanging skyscrapers of the commerce district, downtown Miami appears to Lennox not only scabrous and bedraggled, but also sinisterly deserted. This impression is confirmed as they step on to the concourse of the bus station at the Government Centre. Many of the tower blocks ahead are under construction. They stand like a silent army of zombies, emerging from the earth in varying degrees of composition but unsure of what to do next. Giant skeletal cranes seem to be feeding off them like monstrous birds of prey.

— Cheaper to get a cab from over here, Starry explains as they swagger with the purpose of the intoxicated across to a taxi rank, adjacent to the bus disembarkation point. The earlier stops at the Port of Miami, Omni Station, the American Airways Arena and the down-at-heel district of small jewellery stores, have been the points of egress for most passengers. Now only one lone drunk staggers ahead of them, his look of open-mouthed bemusement as the bus pulls away indicating that he’s alighted here by accident. Lennox looks up at the support pillars and overhead tracks of the Metromover as it snakes around and through the city buildings; Miami reminds him more of Bangkok than of any American or European city he’s previously encountered. The only older building he’s seen has been the grand, multi-tiered Dade County courtroom, impressive and beautiful with its steps and pillars, a stately home surrounded by tasteless imitations.