Part 2 (1/2)

When I told all that to Toba, she smiled. Her dark eyes were luminous from the wine, and perhaps also because prospects of more gracious living had opened to her.

”It's no crime, darling. You say it as if you're ashamed of it. That's what everyone wants.”

”I used to think I wasn't like everyone else,” I admitted. ”That seems to have turned out to be an illusion.”

”I love you, Ted,” she said.

I fingered her thick black hair. ”So let's think about it, although not for too long. They need an answer by Christmas.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Connie Zide dancing on the gra.s.s to the beat of a steel drum. I thought of her naked, of how her heels beat a wild tattoo on that September night when she'd come underneath me on this immaculate lawn, right there by the swimming pool. I dropped my hand to my wife's hip and said, ”Let's go into the bushes.”

Toba's eyes picked up an even deeper sparkle. She flushed a little. ”What's got into you?”

Oh, Toba, if only you knew.

If she knew, if she ever found out, would she be able to handle it? Please G.o.d, let me never know the answer to that question.

”It's your t.i.ts, Toba,” I said seriously. ”I love the way they slide around under silk. They bounce like little kittens. Come on.”

”You're serious?”

”Who'll miss us?” And there was a spot I knew, not twenty yards away in a grove of banana trees, where no one could see us.

Her flush deepened. ”If they knew downtown what you were really like, Ted, they might not let you practice law. Not even in Sarasota.”

Toba and I excused ourselves from the party a little after ten o'clock. Much of what happened I learned later. I was trained at asking questions and listening for significant details. I snoop. I have a good memory when it suits me.

JSO, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, determined that the last guests left the Zide estate by eleven-twenty. The caterers and other staff finished cleaning up around one o'clock in the morning. All the cigarette b.u.t.ts, giant shrimp heads, dirty napkins, and broken champagne gla.s.ses were swept up, bagged, pitched into a truck, driven off to the dump.

And then a silence settled over the Atlantic coast, a silence that was barely touched by the distant rumble of the surf. White tendrils of lightning crackled on the horizon. An occasional night bird flew by, croaking its melancholy song of alarm.

Some days later, on December 10, 1978, in Room 208 of Baptist Medical Center, Connie Zide made the following tape-recorded statement to Detectives Floyd J. Nickerson and Carmen M. Tanagra of the Homicide Division of JSO: ...We went to bed as soon as the caterers left, because that musicale, our party, had been tiring. But I couldn't sleep, and Solomon, my husband, is-was-a real night owl. He'd read in bed sometimes half the night, so around one-thirty in the morning I got up to make him a cup of camomile tea. And he followed me downstairs to the kitchen. We wound up playing backgammon-that was in the yellow drawing room. Then Neil, our son, came home from a party and sat down with us. It was probably 2:00 A.M., perhaps a little later. Right after that we all heard a sound from the patio, as if an urn had tipped over and crashed. Our electronic security is state-of-the-art. There's an armed night watchman at the gate-Terence is not young anymore, but he's a former Orlando police officer-and Paco, the Doberman, poor thing, was supposed to be down at the beach cabanas. So none of us was particularly alarmed by this crash. We didn't think of burglars at the time. It was late, we were tired. My husband just said, ”I'll go look.” He got up from the backgammon table and went off to do just that. I followed him, sort of trailed behind at a distance, not really concentrating, talking over my shoulder to Neil. Then I heard shots. Three, four, five in a row, I couldn't tell-I still don't remember. I went nuts, ran outside. Solomon was lying there on the terrace with blood all around him. Two men were standing there on the gra.s.s. One had a gun-a young black man, looking very frightened. I recognized him as one of our employees, although at the time I couldn't put a name to the face. I was in no state to think. And then the other man, who I believe was closer to me, yelled something and raised his hand and slashed at me with something. I imagine it was a knife, but I never saw it. I must have fallen down ... and I hardly remember anything else until I woke up here in the hospital. I a.s.sume I went into shock... .

Solomon Zide had been shot twice in the chest with a .38-caliber revolver. A third bullet had been found lodged in the Swedish oak paneling on the far side of the room. Connie Zide had been slashed twice, once in the upper arm and once in the face. Neither weapon was ever found; they were presumed to have been thrown into the Atlantic Ocean or the Intracoastal Waterway. Minutes later young Neil Zide, unhurt but close to hysteria, called the Jacksonville Beach police and then a man named Victor Gambrel, the head of security for Zide Industries. When Gambrel and the law and the paramedics all came storming up the driveway and into the house, Neil had recovered and was able to describe the murderer of his father. ”Young, black, wearing sneakers, jeans, and I seem to remember a dark T-s.h.i.+rt. There were two of them. I didn't get a decent look at the other one who cut my mother. They were obviously clumsy, they didn't expect anyone to be awake at that hour... . My father surprised them, and they panicked. No, I don't know how they got onto the property. They ran off that way.” He pointed in the direction of the beach.

By the time the JSO Homicide team arrived on the scene, the entire estate was locked in the hard yellow glare of its own floodlights. Detective Tanagra found the dead Doberman-poisoned by a piece of meat. She also found imprints of two pairs of sneakers in the wet sand near the beach cabanas. From the s.p.a.cing and the gouges in the dunes, it looked to her as if two men had been running. One of them wore size fourteen or fifteen shoes.

”Let's cruise around,” Floyd Nickerson said to her. ”Pair of bayou c.o.o.ns, where can they go? Feet like that you can't hide.”

The team of detectives drove off in their unmarked Plymouth and left the tech squad to do its work. Tanagra, at the wheel, headed south on A1A, then veered off to Marsh Landing before taking Roscoe Boulevard along the Intracoastal, while Nickerson broadcast an APB throughout the county. The detectives stopped at various bars and icehouses, then angled west and then north on Southern Boulevard. Over the mossy bayous and highways hovered a jungle darkness. They stopped at bars with pickup trucks out in front, talked to bartenders and waitresses. Black men drinking beer and rye whiskey peered at them with stoic dread. Nickerson, in his late thirties, was burly, mustached, his pockmarked white skin s.h.i.+ny with sweat; he was made instantly as a cop. Carmen Tanagra was thin, flat-chested, good-looking, often taken for a junkie.

The detectives turned east on Atlantic Boulevard, back toward the beaches and in the direction of the naval air station. They pa.s.sed gas stations and car dealers.h.i.+ps and pizza joints, empty lots overgrown with weeds, supermarkets, a Discount Auto Parts, intermittent Lil' Champ food stores. A big sign on an abandoned warehouse said GO GATORS. At nearly 5:00 A.M. the air was cool but still humid.

Nickerson had a nose for finding people. ”Turn in there... .” He pointed across the highway to a Lil' Champ, with its plastic statue of a kid standing with one gloved fist raised.

Tanagra slowed the Plymouth. ”You need something?”

”Smokes.”

They both smoked red Marlboros. ”I've got an extra pack,” she said.

With a blunt finger, Nickerson pointed again. ”Just turn in, Carmen.”

A blue, salt-pitted '68 Ford pickup, which had been smacked in the rear and had a caved-in panel behind the pa.s.senger's side door, stood isolated in one of the parking slots. A Pink Panther hung from the rearview mirror. The front b.u.mper was broken. A small puddle of leaking oil glistened in the blurry glow of a streetlamp.

”n.i.g.g.e.r truck,” Floyd Nickerson said.

Two young men came out of the Lil' Champ, carrying a carton of milk, a six-pack of Miller High Life, and several bags of potato chips. One of them, William Smith, was lean and tall. He wore a gray sweats.h.i.+rt and sported an Afro. The other youth, Darryl Morgan, wore faded jeans and a black Nike T-s.h.i.+rt. He was huge, probably six feet six, could have been a basketball player from U. of North Florida, except that as he ducked his skullcap of black crinkly hair to move through the door, he moved awkwardly, not the way an athlete would move. Nickerson glanced down at Darryl Morgan's sneakers. Feet like boats.

By the time the detectives stepped forth to be seen, William Smith had climbed behind the wheel of the pickup and slammed the door behind him. Darryl Morgan, the big-footed one, moved more slowly.

”Poh-lice! Hold it right there!” Nickerson flipped his gold s.h.i.+eld, which said JACKSONVILLE SHERIFF'S OFFICE. He made sure the crackling fluorescent light above the Lil' Champ shone on it. ”Let's see some ID, boys.”

No one moved. Moths struck and sizzled on the fluorescent tubes.

”He over twenty-one,” Morgan said, indicating Smith in the truck. Smith had carried the beer. ”I jus' along for the ride.”

Nickerson said, ”If I wanted to hear from an a.s.shole, I'd have farted.”

Smith turned the ignition key, starting the engine so that the pickup rattled violently.

Nickerson tugged at the Sat.u.r.day Night Special in his waistband.

Tanagra yelled at Smith, ”Hold it, hold it right there, hold it!” She reached for her own pistol. ”You hear me? Right there!”

Morgan backed his huge frame against the building. His eyes were wide as eggs.

Nickerson dropped to one knee and fired what he would later describe in the official police report as ”two warning shots when the suspect Smith attempted to escape.” One of the shots struck a nut on the front left wheel of the pickup, flinging sparks into the night like angry fireflies. The other pa.s.sed through the old metal of the driver's door and into William Smith's left thigh. Smith yelped in pain and fell forward. His left foot lifted off the clutch; the weight of his right leg was thrown onto the accelerator.

The pickup hurtled backward in a screeching curve. Before Smith could s.h.i.+ft his weight and lift himself up, the rear end of the truck smashed into a pair of concrete posts on the edge of the highway. The pickup tilted over, as if a dozen men had shoved it, and fell on its side with the sound of a thousand nails being dropped on a counter. Then it bounced and settled. The engine died. A shower of gla.s.s fell.

Silence slowly filled the damp air outside the Lil' Champ. Metal creaked for a minute or so. Until Darryl Morgan, his back still pressed flat against the building, said, ”Lord Jesus ...”

”Go take a look, Carmen,” Nickerson told his partner.

After a couple of minutes, Carmen Tanagra walked back from the wreck. The way she walked, hips undulating in tight slacks, a distinct s.p.a.ce between her upper thighs, often made men stare and calculate. She was not unaware of it.

”Boy seems to have a bullet in his leg. Definitely has a sliver of winds.h.i.+eld in his throat, and it's sticking out the back of his neck. He's looking poorly.”

”You gonna stand around talking, Carmen? Or call an ambulance?”

”No rush for that, Nick.”

”What are you saying?”

”Graveyard dead, that's what I'm saying.”

Nickerson's eyes rolled in his head. He wheeled on Darryl Morgan, who towered over him but looked as frightened as a rabbit dumped into a swamp teeming with alligators.