The Death Box

“What did you say to me?”

“Please, señor. No.”

Though she was terrified, there was something in her eyes. Dios … could it actually be defiance? He snapped the blanket away and threw it to the floor. “You do not make the rules here, Leala,” he said, unbuckling his belt. “Let me see … where did we leave off?”

“I do not w-want to—”

‘YOU DO NOT TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT. I TELL YOU WHAT TO DO!” Orzibel dove onto the bed and grabbed the girl’s arms. “Open that pretty mouth, Leala.”

“No!”

What was it with this one? His hand slashed and Leala’s head spun. “One call and I can have your mama’s eyes carved from her head. Do you know what that feels like, Leala?”

Crying. Orzibel’s frenzied hands pulled his pants and silk boxers lower as he perched on his knees, his fingers grasping the girl’s hair as he pulled her close. “Work on this the way I taught you. With tenderness.”

Her head moved closer and her lips parted. But her face seized in agony and her hands rose as if guided by a separate force, pushing him away. Leala’s legs kicked at Orzibel as she backpedaled across the mattress.

“Filthy little bitch,” he hissed, yanking his pants to his ankles. He seized her hair and wrestled her to him, climbing over her, clamping her arms to the mattress and spreading her with his knees. A hand tore away her underwear.

“OPEN IT UP!”

“NO NO NO …”

He spit in his palm and rubbed it over his penis, then grabbed Leala’s shoulders and fell across her, his tongue licking her face as his buttocks rose and fell. The act took under a minute and he emptied into her with a shuddering gasp. He startled to a sound at the open door but when he turned saw no one. He withdrew and Leala sprawled as if dead, her slender legs wide and a circle of blood at the apex.

“You are a woman, now, Leala,” Orzibel proclaimed as he stood unsteadily. “You can do a woman’s work.”

8 (#ulink_6d61861b-fab6-5fb9-837a-ad04c0b24846)

The horrific column at the forefront of my mind, I drove home to Matecumbe Key, unable to understand the level of violence frozen into the concrete. I had a couple of pieces of fried chicken in the fridge and took them to the deck. The sun was riding a pillow of purple clouds to the horizon and a golden light suffused the air. A wobbling strand of pelicans skimmed across the cove barely a foot above the waves.

“Hey neighbor,” a voice called, suspending my unsettled thoughts. I saw Dubois Burnside at the point of the cove. “You doing anything important?” he called through cupped hands.

“Not sure I ever have,” I returned.

“How about you come by the house?” he said, overlarge gestures miming the pouring of a drink.

I shot a thumbs up. “There in fifteen.”

I threw on a fresh shirt and snatched up a bottle of liquor I’d received at a going-away party last month, dropping it into a brown bag. Burnside’s home was past a football-field-long buffer of vegetation and surrounded by a cream-colored wall with an ornamental gate at the entrance, a pair of mirroring flamingos perched on single legs. I hit the buzzer and heard the gate unlatch.

I walked down the drive to his home, a combo of styles, Moorish Art Deco, I suppose, the Moorish displayed in two stories of textured stucco tinted yellow and topped with terracotta tiling, the Deco reflected in flamingo-themed grating over wide and manteled windows. The drive ended in a portico shading a blue 500-series Mercedes and a spiffy red Beamer convertible. The plate on the Merc said FUNRL 1, the Beamer’s said ZAZZI.

The front door was iron-belted mahogany recessed within an arched vestibule, more Moor. Marble slabs framing the portal sported bas reliefs that echoed the Deco flamingos. The door opened as my hand reached for the iron handle. Instead of Dubois Burnside, I beheld a handsome black woman in a floor-length red gown with a décolleté my eyes did not follow to its conclusion because that would have been impolite. I judged the lady in her early forties, and she was not much shorter than my six feet.

“You must be Mister Ryder. I’m Delita Matthews.”

She extended her hand on a long and slender arm dressed in silver hoops. “Dubois will be with us in a minute. I told him to change into some decent clothes and not wear them saggy old pants. Every time I catch up to them pants I toss ’em in the trash.”

“And every time I fish them out, baby,” Burnside said as he strolled into the room in threadbare cargo shorts beneath an extravagantly embroidered Mexican wedding shirt. His feet flapped in ancient huaraches.

Delita aimed a long red fingernail at me like I was Exhibit A in a courtroom. “We got company.”

“He ain’t company, he’s our neighbor.”

The woman shot Burnside a raw glare but when she spun to me the eyes were Kahlua and cream. “You must be thirsty, Mr Ryder. May I get you a drink?”

“Actually,” I said, pulling the bottle, “I brought this along. It’s supposed to be pretty fair and I thought—”

“Hot damn,” Burnside said, plucking the bottle from my hand and squinting at the label. “This is thirty-year-old brandy.” He held the bottle up to Delita Matthews. “Company brings hoity-toity wine, girl, neighbors bring fine brandy. Grab us a couple tumblers.”

“We have brandy snifters, Dubois.”

“I wanna drink it, not slosh it around.”

But snifters it was and I poured hefty tots for Burnside and myself, Miz Matthews demurring. “I’m meeting friends at the Saddle Club in a few minutes,” she said. “There’s an orchestra and dancing, but Dubois refuses to go.”

“I boogie,” Burnside proclaimed. “I don’t cha-cha.”

Miz Matthews sashayed across the floor to the door, opened it and started out. A second later she leaned back in. “You using them coasters ain’t you, Dubois?”

“Baby, you got ’em covering the table from end to end,” Burnside called over his shoulder. “A man can’t set down his glass without landing on a coaster.”

The door closed and Burnside took a sip of brandy. “I don’t know what this thing is I got for bossy-ass women, but I got it. Had four wives and ever’ one had a face like an angel and a thumb built for mashing me down.”

The psychologist in me wanted to ask about his mother, the diplomat in me demurred. We shot the breeze for twenty minutes, Burnside providing the low-down on local bars and eateries. Talk inevitably drifted to occupations. “In my line of work I’ve seen some badly mangled bodies, Dubois,” I offered. “I’m always amazed when I see what a good mortician can do.”

Burnside set his snifter on the table – between two coasters – and leaned forward. “Remember that scene in The Godfather, Sonny’s been shredded by machine guns and Marlon Brando tells the mortician to make Sonny presentable at the funeral? I been there, Carson.”

“You knew Marlon Brando?”

“Ha! I mean I’ve had to do reconstructions where the body was more putty and paint than person. A couple decades back two workers were on a catwalk at a paint company, standing above a huge mixing vat with these big steel propellers choppin’ through the paint. The catwalk tore from the wall and these two poor guys got dumped into the vat. Before the machine shut down the bodies got all busted up and mixed in together.”

“Jesus,” I said, aghast.

“You wouldn’t believe the time I had getting the deceased cleaned and arranged in whole bodies again. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle with meat.”

Pictures started to arrange in my mind. I saw bodies whirling in paint. Arms, legs, faces became a kaleidoscopic jumble as I set my glass down on one of a dozen coasters.

“I gotta go, Dubois. I need to make a call. Give Delita my regards.”

“You all right, Carson?” Burnside frowned. “You look like you’re seeing a ghost.”

I blew out the door and dropped into a sprint with a gibbous moon lighting my way. I had to call Roy and have him set up a meeting first thing in the morning.

Dance music pulsing from below, Orlando Orzibel sipped a mineral water and considered his escapade with Leala Rosales. He’d lost control, a bad thing. But the little bitch had it coming, talking to him like that. Before leaving he’d told the weeping girl to wash herself, rinse the sheet, and keep silent on the matter if she valued her mother’s life. The little whore would not talk.

The cell phone buzzed from the glass table beside Orzibel. He snatched it up, checked the number, grinned and put the phone to his ear. “You must be finished with the business in the trunk, Chaks … Got that Ivy planted, right?”