LITMIR.BIZ

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      “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?”

      After a few seconds the grin inverted, his voice a tense whisper. “A tent? A fucking tent? Bulldozers? I figured that hole would stay hidden until Christ himself showed up.”

      Orzibel hung up and threw the phone to the couch. He went to his desk and retrieved a second phone, a burner, to be used and discarded. He dialed a number from memory.

      “It’s Orlando, Jefé. It seems we have a problem.”

       9

      Roy had set the meeting at eight a.m. Instead of the three promised members of the investigative crew there was only Valdez. Luckily, Delmara, Morningstar and Gershwin made the table look less empty.

      “Where’s Tatum and Canseco?” I asked Roy. “Degan?”

      “Turns out they had other commitments.”

      I gave him a look. He said, “They’re busy boys.”

      “I got a crime scene needs me,” Morningstar said, long and elegant fingers ticking colorless nails on the tabletop. Gershwin yawned in his tipped-back chair. Delmara sat a pen and pad in front of him and scratched his beak.

      “Dr Morningstar,” I said, laying out my case to the small audience, “would you outline the scope of the injuries you’ve been able to identify?”

      “Like I’ve said, I’m seeing the kind of injuries I associate with high-impact vehicle accidents.” Her hands went to a file of photos on the table. “I have the exact details here if you—”

      “Have you found any seams in the matrix, Doctor? Yesterday I theorized dry cement poured into the cistern atop added bodies. After further thought, I suspect the next layer would not perfectly adhere to the preceding concrete. It would leave discernible seams.”

      She shook her head. “The concrete matrix appears to be contiguous. Where are you going with this?”

      “I’m pretty sure I know how the bodies got there.”

      “How?”

      “In a cement-mixer truck.”

      Eyes-wide stares from everyone. Roy said, “Explain that one, Carson.”

      I spun my index fingers around one another. “Ever see the inside of a mixer drum? It’s an inside-out auger. The rotating vanes force concrete deeper to keep it mixed. At the jobsite the rotation is reversed and the screw action lifts the concrete up and out of the drum.”

      “Jesus,” Morningstar said, reaching into her file and pulling out eight-by-ten photos of the column, staring at the jumble of arms and legs and faces and concrete. “It explains the brownish cast to the concrete,” she said quietly. “It’s blood.”

      “Sure explains the damaged bodies,” Roy said.

      I nodded. “It’s a blender on wheels.”

      Morningstar rose, clamped shut her briefcase. “There’s a lot to do before I can verify anything like your mixer theory, but I have to say it’s decent, Ryder.”

      I nodded my thanks and she was gone. Roy turned to Valdez and Delmara.

      “Guys?”

      “I gotta think about it,” Delmara said. He was trying to look upbeat, but I’d punctured part of his serial-killer explanation. Roy angled to Valdez.

      “Ceel?” Roy said to Valdez.

      “Just what is it you’re looking for, Ryder?” she said, aiming her big eyes into mine. They weren’t saying Congratulations on a spiffy idea.

      “Looking for, Detective Valdez?”

      “The Carson Ryder morning show here. You want something, right?”

      “We have to start looking into concrete mixing companies, Detective. We need someone who can ask the right questions and tell when the answers are shaky. A pro.” I used the inclusive we, hoping to spark camaraderie. There was a coterie of FCLE investigators at Roy’s disposal – and, I supposed, mine as well – but I wanted the experience of the department’s top people, hoping a few hours of working together might diminish the wall between us.

      Valdez reached to the floor for her briefcase and popped it open, coming up with a two-inch-thick folder. She dropped it on the table, whump.

      “These are my current cases. Where does we

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