Part 21 (1/2)
”You're always an addict. No, David's att.i.tude was: 'I spent seventeen f.u.c.king months in that G.o.d-awful miserable freezing hole in the back of beyond, and if I go back to drugs now, then it was a total waste of time. That I won't accept.' He's a stubborn kid.”
”What does he do now?”
”He's a cab dispatcher in West Palm Beach. They don't turn you into lawyers and doctors. They just teach you to survive.”
We went back to Muriel's house after dinner. I hadn't planned anything, and I don't think she had, either. Since that calm kiss at the door when she'd fed me the lamb, nothing had happened between us, and I hadn't even fantasized about anything happening. But women have a way of letting you know what they want. It's in a look, an arch of the shoulders.
She took my hand at the door and drew me inside. And we kissed. She smelled of salt and charcoal and red snapper.
”I thought you liked women.”
”Well, that's true,” she murmured. ”But I don't dislike men, except guys like Jaime Ortiz, who made me jerk him off in the front seat of his Mustang back in high school.”
”I don't know,” I said honestly. ”I'd hate like h.e.l.l to convert you.” ”Not much chance,” she admitted.
”If it's a challenge, I'd rather stay friends.”
It was as simple as that. We had a drink together, and then I went home. And in time I was more grateful than I could have predicted.
The Zide Building was out in the suburbs, behind the Regency Plaza Mall.
Neil Zide ran the empire now and was the princ.i.p.al stockholder. He let more competent specialists and Ivy League M.B.A.'s handle the various arms of the Zide Industries octopuslike conglomerate. But ZiDevco was his. At that enlightened time in the seventies when county commissioners all over Florida set what was called the bulkhead line, theoretically protecting the wetlands and the coastal inlets, they also reserved unto themselves the right to change that line. Not long after his father's murder, Neil Zide on behalf of ZiDevco bought options on half the mud flats in seven coastal counties. He pet.i.tioned the county commissioners for a change in the bulkhead lines, and at the same time requested permission to buy the bay bottom from the State Internal Improvement Fund.
In North Florida the county commissioners met to consider the propositions. Cash changed hands in manila envelopes, shoe boxes, suitcases. Stock options were courier-delivered to corporations in Liechtenstein, Grand Cayman, Mexico. Permissions were granted. Neil Zide, who had been rich, became very rich. He let his hair grow down to his shoulders in unruly brown waves, shaved only when the whim took him, went to work in Levi's and Italian silk s.h.i.+rts with flowing d'Artagnan sleeves, and wore only scuffed basketball shoes with the laces loose and dragging on the parquet floor of his office. He looked like a young Hollywood producer. He was thirty- four years old now. He no longer needed to live in a wing of his mother's house but had built his own white Moorish fantasy down at Ponte Vedra and bought a flat on the lie de la Cite in Paris, an office-apartment on Central Park South in Manhattan, and a vacation home on Red Mountain in Aspen. Photographs of all these places, signed on the mats by Neil, lined the black walls of his office.
”You ski?” he asked me.
”Used to. Now I don't have the time.”
”I often hear that excuse. I've got two guest cottages on that Red Mountain property. You're certainly welcome to come out. Great skiing, greater partying, and the greatest air. Now that they've got the gondola, you get to the top of Ajax in fifteen minutes.”
”Sounds like progress of a sort. How's your mother?”
”Very well indeed. Thank you for asking. I'm pleased it's not a subject that has to be avoided.”
I leaned back in my chair and decided to do just that: avoid it. Neil was not the right person to discuss it with, if there was such a thing as a right person.
Neil was quick. He could hear what was being said by silence. Sitting behind his gla.s.s desk, he glanced at his watch to make sure I realized his time was valuable and limited. He looked up. In the past twelve years the eyes had gained no warmth.
”You're here in your capacity as an attorney, I take it. How can I help you?”
Beyond his desk, through a half-open doorway, I could see a bed with a golden bedspread, gold-colored sheets, and a gold headboard.
”I'm representing Darryl Morgan,” I said, ”to see if I can win a new trial for him.”
The flesh was still slack around Neil Zide's jawline. It seemed to go even slacker.
”Did I hear you correctly?”
”I think so.”
He studied me carefully, waiting. He was a bright man despite his foppishness. He knew when to shut up.
So I fired from the hip. ”There are a few questions I'd like to ask you about Floyd Nickerson and Victor Gambrel.”
Neil exhaled quietly, then inhaled deeply. But the blue eyes told me nothing. He said nothing. I waited, and so did he.
He ended the uncomfortable silence. ”Go ahead.”
”I'll refresh your memory. Nickerson was with Homicide. He investigated your father's death.”
”I remember that.”
”And until some five or six years ago Victor Gambrel was head of security for Zide Industries, the main Jacksonville office. Right?”
”That's correct.”
”Nickerson took a confession from Darryl Morgan-do you recall?”
”Yes, I do.”
”And Nickerson also dug up a cellmate who heard Darryl Morgan confess. Does that ring a bell?”
”I remember that too,” Neil said. He shook his head as if to free it from a web; the long brown locks waved and settled back into place.
”Jerry Lee Elroy.”
”I beg your pardon?”
”That was the name of the cellmate.”
”If you say so.”
”I'm not cross-examining you, Neil.” But in fact that's exactly what I'd been doing.
”You still haven't told me how I can help you.”
”You can satisfy my curiosity about a few things. I'd like to find out what happened to Floyd Nickerson. If you know.”
”I'm not sure.” Neil scratched his nose, then his unshaven cheeks, and blinked a few times.
”Well, I didn't mean I didn't know where he was,” I said easily. ”He's over at Orange Meadow Estates in Gainesville. What I meant to say was, I wondered how he got there.”
Neil shrugged.
”He's chief of security there,” I said.
”Oh?”
”It's a ZiDevco project.”