The Death Box(69)

Perlman’s second-floor door opened to cool air and the scent of cleanser. The dark blue carpet held the streaks of a recent vacuuming. The living room boasted the huge screen noted by Delmara, before it one of those goofy, overblown loungers touted in airline publications, pillow-thick cushions, arms and foot-rest, the monstrosity about the size of a double bed and having angle and massage settings, plus a folding platform for food and drink that currently held controllers for a PlayStation, Xbox and Wii, all running through the screen. I’d seen smaller screens at art-house cinemas.

“Pull the fridge closer, install a toilet, and I could live in a chair like that,” Gershwin said.

“Perlman had a shitload of DVDs,” Delmara said. “Eighties porn was big, a classicist. He also had a yen for space opera: Star Wars and Star Trek and so forth. Plus all the Disney animation flicks.”

“A boy at heart,” I said, imagining the hours Perlman must have spent in the geeky dream-chair switching between Captain Kirk, the Lion King, and Marilyn Chambers. I squatted to study a stack of DVDs set between the Wii and PlayStation boxes, all oddly without dust.

“This place looks like it was cleaned yesterday,” I noted.

Delmara nodded. “Mr Perlman’s sister has been paying a housekeeper for weekly cleaning. She’s convinced baby brother ran off to Mexico with a hottie girlfriend but he’ll be back when he comes to his senses.”

I glanced at the chair set-up and doubted Perlman had ever had a girlfriend. Gershwin came in from the bedroom, frowning.

“No reading material,” he said. “Zero.”

“Maybe he didn’t like reading,” Delmara said.

“I mean no accounting bulletins. My uncle Pete’s a CPA, has to read a shitload of IRS updates to tax laws. He’s got them everywhere, even by the crapper. Perlman’s got nothing like that. Probably means whatever funds he was accounting weren’t being reported.”

We tossed the condo and found nothing to indicate where or how Benny the Book lived so nicely on thirty-two grand a year. It was a sad kind of place, and I pictured Perlman as an oversized child who rented his services to whoever paid him the bucks, and never asked questions about what the numbers added up to. We went back outside after a fruitless hour.

“Got one other thing,” Delmara said, pulling a page from his dark jacket. “Traffic citations Perlman’s Benz gathered. Parkings and speedings, mainly, bullshit stuff. You wanna check them out?”

“Might be a pattern there, Big Ryde,” Gershwin said.

“Sure, Vince,” I said, taking the copy of the cites. “The boy and I will see if they mean anything.”

“Boy?” Gershwin said. “Ouch, Detective Ryder. Snap.”

Gershwin scanned the seven addresses where the Benz had been parked overtime or picked up a speeding citation. “All over town,” he said. “Except for the two speeding cites, which were on I-95 between exits eight and ten, and two parking tix … one for parking too close to a hydrant, another for parking in a loading zone. They’re on the same block.”

There are names for the location where we ended up. Some call it the Strip, to others it’s the Combat Zone. Some cities euphemistically refer to it as Nightclub Row, or Clubtown. I called such places Dregsville, because it’s where the dregs of society felt most at home: shot’n’beer bars, strip joints, pawn shops, used-car lots, liquor stores, storefront sandwich shops, hot-pillow motels; there was always a bail-bondsman’s office nearby. These establishments were interspersed with windowless warehouses and car-parts outlets and whitewashed shops selling second-hand tires, the sad stacks of balding rubber protected by high fences encircled with razor wire, like ten-buck tires were worth stealing.

“What do you call this neighborhood, Ziggy?” I asked.

“Technically, it’s part of Hialeah, but this part I call Shitsville.”

“No argument there. Where’d the cites get issued?”

Gershwin pointed at a fire hydrant. “The hydrant cite was here.” We continued slowly for another block and he had me pull to the curb. “And there’s the loading zone where he got ticketed.”

“Times?”

“Both Friday mornings, one at eight-fifteen, the other at nine twenty-five.”

We got out. The smell of urine rose from a gutter clogged with cigarette butts, fast-food wrappers, broken liquor bottles, crack vials and used condoms. A bus roared past and added its oily exhaust smell to the miasma.

“What a hellhole,” I said, scanning the block, seeing a warehouse on the far side, flanked by a two-story strip club called the Paraíso, beside it a broken-down motel. Closer was a closed taqueria and a muffler outlet. On the other end of the block stood another strip joint called the Pink Pussycat, another brick warehouse, and a pawnbroker. I watched a skinny, miniskirted hooker step from between two buildings, make us – they were as fast to ID cops as I was – then turn and disappear into the bricks. “What brought Perlman here?” I wondered aloud.