Black Cat Weekly #74 E-Book

Phyllis Ann Karr

• Herausgeber: Wildside Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 283

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Our 74th issue features an essay from Norman Spinrad, the sort of non-fiction feature I’d like to see more of here in the future. (In fact, we have an interesting essay from Harlan Ellison coming up in an issue or two, too.) And I plan to resume running author interviews shortly as well.

This issue features an original story by Neil Plakcy, plus more recent tales by James A. Heart and Phyllis Ann Karr, plus classics by Norbert Davis, Ray Bradbury, Frank Belknap Long, and Edmond Hamilton. And no issue would be complete without a Hal Charles solve-it-yourself mystery.

Here’s this issue’s lineup:
Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:

“Flaking Out in Wilton Manors,” by Neil Plakcy [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“A Conundrum In Winter,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“Trip Among the Bluebonnets,” by James A. Hearn [short story]
“A Knotty Problem,” by Hal Meredith [short story]
“Dead Man’s Chest,” by Norbert Davis [novelet]

Non-Fiction:

“An SF Manifesto,” by Norman Spinrad [essay]

Science Fiction & Fantasy:

“Two Days Out of Sludgepocket,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [short story]
“The Shape of Things,” by Ray Bradbury [short story]
“Galactic Heritage,” by Frank Belknap Long [short story]
“Regulations,” by Murray Leinster [short story]
“Transuranic,” by Edmond Hamilton [novelet]

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

THE CAT’S MEOW

TEAM BLACK CAT

FLAKING OUT IN WILTON MANORS, by Neil Plakcy

A CONUNDRUM IN WINTER, by Hal Charles

TRIP AMONG THE BLUEBONNETS, by James A. Hearn

A KNOTTY PROBLEM, by Hal Meredith

DEAD MAN’S CHEST, by Norbert Davis

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

AN SF MANIFESTO, by Norman Spinrad

TWO DAYS OUT OF SLUDGEPOCKET, by Phyllis Ann Karr

THE SHAPE OF THINGS, by Ray Bradbury

GALACTIC HERITAGE, by Frank Belknap Long

REGULATIONS, by Murray Leinster

TRANSURANIC, by Edmond Hamilton

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

Published by Wildside Press, LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

*

“Flaking Out in Wilton Manors” is copyright © 2023 by Neil Plakcy and appears here for the first time.

“A Conundrum In Winter” is copyright © 2022 by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“Trip Among the Bluebonnets,” is copyright © 2019 by James A. Hearn. Originally published in The Eyes of Texas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“A Knotty Problem,” by Hal Meredith, was first published in Answers, November 28, 1908.

“Dead Man’s Chest,” by Norbert Davis, was originally published in Thrilling Adventures, November 1936.

“An SF Manifesto,” by Norman Spinrad, was published as part of Norman Spinrad at Large and Commons (2023) and is reprinted by permission of the author. See detailed note at end of article for more information,

“Two Days Out of Sludgepocket,” is copyright © 1985 by Phyllis Ann Karr. Originally published in Fighting Woman News, Vol. 9, no. 4, No. 28, Winter 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Galactic Heritage,” by Frank Belknap Long, was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1948.

“The Shape of Things,” by Ray Bradbury, was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1948.

“Regulations,” by Murray Leinster, was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1948.

“Transuranic,” by Edmond Hamilton, was originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1948.

THE CAT’S MEOW

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly.

Our 74th issue features an essay from Norman Spinrad, the sort of non-fiction feature I’d like to see more of here in the future. (In fact, we have an interesting essay from Harlan Ellison coming up in an issue or two, too.) And I plan to resume running author interviews shortly as well.

This issue features an original story by Neil Plakcy, plus more recent tales by James A. Heart and Phyllis Ann Karr, plus classics by Norbert Davis, Ray Bradbury, Frank Belknap Long, and Edmond Hamilton. And no issue would be complete without a Hal Charles solve-it-yourself mystery.

Here’s this issue’s lineup:

Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:

“Flaking Out in Wilton Manors,” by Neil Plakcy [Michael Bracken Presents short story]

“A Conundrum In Winter,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]

“Trip Among the Bluebonnets,” by James A. Hearn [short story]

“A Knotty Problem,” by Hal Meredith [short story]

“Dead Man’s Chest,” by Norbert Davis [novelet]

Non-Fiction:

“An SF Manifesto,” by Norman Spinrad [essay]

Science Fiction & Fantasy:

“Two Days Out of Sludgepocket,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [short story]

“The Shape of Things,” by Ray Bradbury [short story]

“Galactic Heritage,” by Frank Belknap Long [short story]

“Regulations,” by Murray Leinster [short story]

“Transuranic,” by Edmond Hamilton [novelet]

—John Betancourt

Editor, Black Cat Weekly

TEAM BLACK CAT

EDITOR

John Betancourt

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

Barb Goffman

Michael Bracken

Paul Di Filippo

Darrell Schweitzer

Cynthia M. Ward

PRODUCTION

Sam Hogan

Karl Wurf

FLAKING OUT IN WILTON MANORS,by Neil Plakcy

As I stood in the crowded bar at Lazy Dick’s, a gay bar in Wilton Manors near my house, a drag queen named Kitty L’Terr took the stage dressed like a thrift-shop reject from Cats in a leopard-print leotard, long red claws, and a lion’s mane made of brown ribbons around her neck. She was the visiting artist that week. That is, if you could all what she was doing art.

It had been a long week at the Miami office of the FBI, where I was a special agent assigned to the Violent Crimes Task Force, and I was happy to chill out at the Sunday evening show, though once Kitty began her medley of feline-inspired songs, I wished I’d brought earplugs with me.

As Kitty yowled, “Take me ou-woo-t tonight,” from the musical Rent, a skinny kid in the front row began dancing faster and faster, twirling around like one of those Middle Eastern holy men. The boy with a blond buzz cut who’d been dancing with him backed away, as did older men in tank tops and shorts, giving the young man room to spin, until he toppled over and hit the wooden dance floor hard.

The club’s bouncer, a muscular Russian named Ivan, rushed in as Kitty stopped singing, though the karaoke track continued to play. As the lights came up I saw Ivan, who did double duty as an EMT for the Broward Sheriff’s Office, leaning over the dancer, taking his pulse. Most of the guys crowded around the scenario on the floor, but I noticed the boy who’d been dancing with the victim backing away. He looked barely legal, and I wondered if Ivan hadn’t been as careful with IDs as he should have been.

As soon as he was free of the crowd, the blond boy turned and ran. I considered going after him—but for what reason? I had no way of knowing if he’d had something to do with the dervish’s delirium, or if he was just freaked out.

Kitty stood on the edge of the stage, and in the bright light the raggedness of her costume was even more evident. She paced back and forth nervously, as if she was worried the boy’s collapse was somehow her fault. “Get him some ice!” she said several times. “He needs to cool down.”

One of the bartenders brought some ice wrapped in a towel, and Ivan applied it to the boy’s head while he waited for the ambulance to arrive. Ivan was a friend of my boyfriend Lester, who’d worked with him in the past, and I went over to see if I could help.

“The drag queen was right that he needs to cool down,” Ivan said. “His head feels like it’s burning up and his vitals are way out of line.”

I looked down at the boy, who was breathing shallowly. His slim physique and his short light-brown hair reminded me of my brother Danny, five years younger than I was. I felt a curious sense of protectiveness—he was someone’s brother, someone’s son.

“What do you think is wrong?” I asked.

“Not sure. Probably some kind of drug.” He shook his head. “New synthetic ones in town all the time. We get at least one or two calls a week for overdoses and weird reactions. It’s super easy to order the chemicals online and do the mixing yourself.”

The front door popped open, an ambulance crew came in with a stretcher, and I backed off. Once the boy had been taken away, the lights went back down, and Kitty returned to the stage to screech her way through Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”

I abandoned my beer, worried someone might be spiking drinks, and left for home. I had an early meeting the next morning, but after it was over I looked up drug symptoms in the FBI database.

From what I read, it looked like the dancing fool had taken a synthetic cathinone, a designer drug that contained the same chemical as qat, chewed in the Middle East for its mild hallucinogenic properties. But the drugs on the market in the US, with names like Flakka, Boom, and Cloud Nine, were much more potent and dangerous.

Flakka had erupted on the scene in South Florida two years before with the news story of a crazed naked guy attacking a homeless man and trying to eat his face off. His bizarre behavior was eventually attributed to Flakka, which came in white crystals that could be snorted, eaten, or injected.

It was a synthetic drug manufactured primarily in one province of northern China, where it was called Alpha-PVP, and I read online that once the Chinese government had cracked down on the manufacturers the supply had dried up.

But was the pipeline flowing again? Did I have a responsibility to report what I’d seen the night before to someone in my office? And could I do anything to protect other kids from overdoses and illicit drugs?

I sought out Ferdy Etienne, one of the agents on the Organized Crime Task Force who specialized in drug crimes. He was a grizzled Haitian guy in his forties, with a bald head, a mustache, and a goatee. That day he was wearing a three-piece suit in burnt orange with brown pinstripes. Even though I was comfortable being the only openly gay Special Agent in my office, you’d never catch me in a suit like that. I’d been a Special Agent for less than a year, and so I stuck to dark suits, khaki slacks, and white shirts because I wanted everyone to think of me as just another agent.

I described the guy’s symptoms and my conclusions. “I know there was an epidemic of sorts a while ago with Flakka. Is it making a comeback?”

“My contact at the DEA copied me on the incident report this morning,” Ferdy said. “The hospital is doing a tox screen on the guy now, but it’s probably Flakka. There were a few incidents last month in Key West. Maybe it’s moving north.”

Flakka was similar to cocaine but much cheaper and more potent, and during its first appearance in South Florida it had come to symbolize the lunacy that designer drugs could induce. It was even called “$5 Insanity” in some circles.

“Sixty-three people died from Flakka last year,” Ferdy continued. “None so far this year, but if there’s a new source for the drugs, then we could be looking at another epidemic.”

He leaned forward. “The guy in the hospital says he can’t remember where he got the drugs,” Ferdy said, “which could mean one of two things. He could be suffering from the anterograde amnesia that’s more common with roofies, which would mean this is a new version of Flakka with previously unknown side effects.”

“Or the guy’s lying,” I said.

“Exactly. Can you do me a favor? Stop by and visit this victim in the hospital, see if he’ll tell you anything. Since you were at the club where it happened.”

And since I was gay, I thought. But I’d gotten accustomed to being asked into cases where my insight into the subculture, and my connections in the gay community, could be useful. The Bureau in general had been very welcoming to me, and I appreciated it.

I agreed, and Ferdy told me the boy’s name—Hunter Gallagher—and the facility where he was recuperating. I left work early and drove to the hospital, an imposing collection of white concrete buildings a few blocks south of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Hunter was propped up in bed in a single room, watching a talk show on TV.

“My name’s Angus Green,” I said. “I was at Lazy Dick’s on Sunday night when you…you know. I thought I’d come by and see how you’re doing.”

He sat up straighter and looked nervously between me and the door. “Do I know you?”

I shook my head, then walked over to his bedside and showed him my badge. “I work for the FBI,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what you were on and make sure nobody else gets the same crap.”

“What was an FBI agent doing at Lazy Dick’s?”

“Drinking a beer and watching the show.” I sat in the chair by his bedside. “I understand you don’t remember anything about that night.”

“It’s all a blur,” he said.

“You have any idea what you took?”

He shook his head.

“Come on, Hunter,” I said. “You want other guys to end up like you? Freaking out on the dance floor, ending up here with tubes stuck in you?”

“It was a little plastic package,” he said, after a moment or two. “White crystals. My friend told me to just tip it into my mouth, and I did. Then I drank a couple of beers, and I was really flying high.”

I pulled out a photo I’d printed from the internet of Flakka crystals. “Look like this?”

He took the picture and peered at it. “Yeah. Like that.”

He handed the picture back to me.

“The friend who told you how to take it,” I said. “He the one you got it from?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t say anything.

“A guy who gives you, or sells you, crap like that isn’t really your friend.”

“He didn’t know what it was,” Hunter said defensively. “He works at this gay resort, and he, you know, liberates drugs from the guests whenever he can.”

“Liberates. You mean steals?”

“These guys are rich,” Hunter said. “They won’t miss a couple of Vicodin or Xanax. Cody cleans their toilets and gets paid almost nothing.”

“Cody,” I said.

“You should go now,” Hunter said. “I need my rest.” He turned on his side away from me.

When I got home I did some searching for gay resorts in Fort Lauderdale. I hadn’t realized there were so many “all-male” resorts in town. There was a hotel downtown that advertised it was “by leather men, for leather men.” A half-dozen in Wilton Manors that were “cozy” or “tropical.” And another dozen clustered in a section of the beach just south of Sunrise Boulevard. I loved the one that boasted “clothing tolerated.”

The next morning before heading to work, I began with the ones in Wilton Manors, because they were close to the house I shared with my roommate. At each one, I introduced myself, showed my badge, and asked if they had someone named Cody cleaning rooms for them.

The answer was “no” at all of them, though there was general curiosity about what I was investigating. I deferred politely.

“Is he cute?” one guy asked. “Because we’re hiring.”

Had his brain been fried by something like Flakka? That was a dumb question to ask an FBI agent. “You don’t want this guy,” I said. “Trust me on that.”

After getting no results in Wilton Manors, or at the leather men’s hotel downtown, I drove over to the beach. Past the fancy Galleria Mall on Sunrise Boulevard, and over the high, arching bridge to the long, narrow barrier island where the hotels were located.

The sun was bright, the sky blue and cloudless, and the streets bustled with gay men in bikinis or board shorts on their way to the beach, carrying towels, water bottles, and beach chairs strapped to their backs.

I parked and went from hotel to hotel. They were all similar, two-story motels around a central pool, in an updated fifties style.

When I got to the Pride House All-Male Resort, I was impressed by the elegance of the lobby. A couple of couches that would have been at home in someone’s upscale living room, a coffee table that looked like an antique.

The man behind the desk didn’t answer my question right away. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

He was a beefy bear type with multiple piercings, including a silver ring in his nose. His name tag read “Gary.”

“I’m investigating some drug thefts, and his name came up,” I said.

“Son of a bitch,” Gary said.

“So he works here?”

“He does. And things are starting to make sense.”

“What kind of things?”

“We cater to a high-class clientele here,” Gary said. “And sometimes those guys are very…high maintenance.” He sighed. “You want a cappuccino? This might take a few minutes.”

I accepted, and he walked over to one of those pod machines and started fixing coffee for both of us. “About three months ago, this attorney from Manhattan stayed with us for a week,” Gary said, as the machine burbled. “When he was ready to check out, he came in and complained that he was missing some of his prescription medications.”

“You remember his name?”

“I’ll get it for you. Honestly, we thought the guy was a little nuts. Who takes an inventory of pills? We ended up comping him one night of his stay to keep him from blasting us on social media.”

He handed me the first cappuccino, then slipped another pod in the machine.

“Was Cody working here then?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s been here since the winter. It’s hard to get good help. So many of these young queens don’t want to get their hands dirty. And our clients expect some eye candy around the place.”

“How do things work here?” I asked. “You have more than one guy cleaning rooms?”

“Yeah. Four right now. We have sixty rooms, which means each guy should clean fifteen rooms. But some guests crap the rooms up so badly it takes extra time, and guys have to help each other out. So even though we have a schedule of who’s supposed to clean each room, it’s not set in stone.”

His own coffee finished and he took the cup. The he led me out to a small shaded patio, where we sat on wrought iron chairs with comfy fabric seat pads. “We have a routine for the cleaning staff,” he said. “They have to knock three times before entering the room. Nobody wants to have a cleaner burst in while you’re tied down or getting plowed.”

I ignored the visual that brought up.

“We promise clean linens each day, so first thing they do is put the new sheets on the nightstand, then the strip the bed, using the dirty fitted sheet as a package for the rest of the linens. Then the maid inspects the bed for stains and cleans as necessary.”

He began ticking things off on his fingers. “Put the clean fitted sheet on the bed, then the top sheet and the clean pillowcases. Each of the maids has an ultraviolet sterilization wand to use on the bedspread and all the surfaces. Make sure to clean the lamp base and shade, the telephone and the stand’s surfaces, including the drawers.”

“Sounds very thorough.”

“It is. And that’s just the start. Then they go into the bathroom, clean and sterilize all the surfaces, replace the towels with fresh ones, fold the first sheet of toilet paper. We want to provide the same level of service our clients would get in the fanciest hotel in Manhattan.”

“So the cleaning staff are in the room for quite a while,” I said.

“Yeah, but they’re supposed to be busy, always on the move. Shouldn’t have time to go rifling through the guests’ medications.”

I got Cody’s last name and his address from Gary, as well as the name and contact information for the guest who’d complained about the theft. “Was Cody assigned to a particular part of the property today?” I asked.

“Tuesday and Wednesday are his days off. But when he comes back on Thursday I’m going to read him the riot act and can his cute little ass.”

I asked Gary not to say anything to Cody right away. “Give me some time to investigate,” I said. “Remember the whole innocent until proven guilty thing? I don’t want to cause trouble for this kid until I’m sure he’s the one responsible. And I’d like to find out where he got the drugs he’s been pushing.”

Gary agreed reluctantly.

As I was saying goodbye, a willowy guy in his early thirties swept past us with an imperious air. He looked vaguely familiar but I didn’t expect Gary to violate his guests’ privacy by telling me who he was. Probably some minor celebrity I’d seen online.

When I reached the office I ran a report on Cody Flint. He had some low-level beefs for public intoxication and lewd behavior, but nothing drug-related. He lived in an apartment at a new complex on US 1, just north of downtown Fort Lauderdale.

On my way home, I stopped by Cody’s apartment. All I had was Hunter’s word that he’d gotten the Flakka from someone named Cody who worked at a gay resort, and that wasn’t enough to get a warrant for his arrest. I hoped that if I phrased my questions right, I could convince him to tell me where he’d gotten hold of the Flakka so I could shut down the supplier.

The guy who answered the door was in his mid-twenties, with a hipster goatee and multiple piercings. “Cody Flint?” I asked.

“No, he’s my roommate.”

I showed the guy my badge and asked for his ID, which he provided. His name was Shawn Esposito.

“What kind of trouble is that jerkoff in now?” Shawn asked.

“I’m just interested in speaking with him,” I said. “You know when he’ll be back?”

“He told me he was going to Orlando for a couple of days. He probably won’t be back till he has to go to work on Thursday morning.”

“He ever offer you any drugs? Pain pills, Molly, Flakka, anything like that?”

“No way, man,” Shawn said, and he took a step back. “I don’t do any of that kind of crap. I’m a microbrew and craft cocktail kind of guy.”

“You mind if I have a look around?” I asked. “See if maybe Cody has some drugs squirreled away somewhere?”

“If you find anything does that come back to me?”

“If I do find something, I’ll test it for fingerprints. If yours aren’t on it, then you’re not responsible.”

“Then be my guest. And if he’s got anything I’m kicking him to the curb. It’s my name on the lease and I don’t need any drama.”

I pulled on a pair of blue plastic gloves. As I walked around the apartment, Shawn explained that he tended bar on Himmarshee Street downtown, and that he didn’t often cross paths with Cody.

In the bathroom, I lifted the top off the toilet tank and found a double-sealed plastic bag of miscellaneous pills. Nothing that looked like Flakka, though.

Shawn insisted it didn’t belong to him. I bagged and tagged it all and got Shawn to sign off on my permission to confiscate it.

I gave Shawn my card and asked him to call me when Cody returned. He described the little Vespa scooter Cody used to travel to and from work and to the clubs downtown and in Wilton Manors, and I found it parked in the building’s lot. There was nothing else I could do but wait for Cody to come back from Orlando.

Thursday morning when I arrived at the office in Miramar, I handed the bag of pills over to Ferdy Etienne and told him where they came from. “But no Flakka,” I said. “I’m still trying to track down the guy who gave that drug to Hunter Gallagher, the guy in the hospital.”

He took the pills, then slipped on a blue rubber glove and spilled them out into his hand. “I can identify some of them right away. The white ones with the number ten are ten-milligram Oxycodone. On the flip side there’s the letters OP. The beige ones with the OP will have 40 on the other side; they’re forty milligram tablets.”

“What are the pretty ones?” I asked, pointing to some that were pink, some purple, and some green.

Ferdy frowned. “They’re called rainbow Fentanyl. Didn’t realize we had them here in South Florida yet.” He looked up at me. “Any idea which hotel guest these came from?”

“The only one who could tell us is Cody, and he’s still unaccounted for.”

As I spoke, my phone vibrated and I saw that a text had come in from Shawn. “Cody came in sometime last night but he’s already gone.”

I dialed the number I had for Pride House and Gary answered. “Sorry I didn’t call you sooner. I wasn’t sure what time you go on the clock. Cody got here a half-hour ago and he’s cleaning rooms now.”

“I’m coming up there,” I said. “Don’t tell him I’m on the way, though.” I hung up and looked at Ferdy. “Might have some answers for you soon.”

It took nearly an hour to fight my way to Fort Lauderdale in morning rush hour traffic. When I got there, I found Gary at the front desk. “Where would I find Cody?”

“He should be in the bottom quadrant,” Gary said. “I’ll show you.”

We walked out to the pool area. “Over there on the right,” Gary said. “That’s his cart.”

Gary pulled out his phone and checked an app. “Rooms 23 and 25 checked out early this morning,” he said. “He might be in one of those.”

Both doors were locked. Gary knocked three times on room 23, with no answer, and used his passkey to open the door. No one had been in to clean it yet. “Son of a bitch,” Gary said. “If he flaked out on me...”

We went next door to room 25, and repeated the knocking and pass key routine. It looked like someone had begun the cleaning, but then stopped. The bed had been made and the dirty sheets were gone, but the bathroom hadn’t been touched.

“Mind if I take a look around?” I asked. Gary agreed, and I grabbed a pair of rubber gloves from the cart outside the room. Gary watched as I began snooping around, trying to figure out what had caused Cody to abandon cleaning the room.

I spotted a bit of bed sheet sticking out from under the bed, and I leaned down to get a closer look.

I straightened up. “I’m going to need a hand here,” I said to Gary. “Get yourself a pair of gloves. And take a deep breath.”

Gary looked at me, then down at the floor. “Shit.”

Together we carefully tugged Cody’s body from beneath the bed. He was dead, his eyes wide open and striated with red, the mark of death by strangulation. A white bed sheet had been wrapped around his neck and tightened until death.

Gary freaked out and had to return to the office, probably to take a couple of tranquilizers. That was fine with me. I had a few minutes to snoop around unaccompanied before the police arrived. I called Ferdy Etienne to let him know what I’d discovered. “The police will want to interview the guests but I doubt any of them will admit to having those rainbow pills.”

“Keep me in the loop.”

A pair of uniformed officers arrived a few minutes later, along with crime scene techs and a homicide detective I’d met before, Ana Cespedes. She was about my age, a petite woman with a heart-shaped face and dark hair in ringlets. Three earrings in each ear, a mix of gold balls and stars.

“You dabbling in homicide investigation now, Agent Green?” she asked, as she shook my hand.

“Don’t need to, with such a competent detective around,” I said, and she smirked.

“What do we have here?” she asked.

I explained about the sequence of events that had brought me to Pride House, and to room 25. “Sorry to disturb the crime scene,” I said. “But we had to make sure Mr. Flint wasn’t breathing.”

“It happens.” She put on her own rubber gloves and she and I squatted beside Cody Flint’s body. “See that contusion?” she asked me, pointing to a bruise on the side of Cody’s head. “Any ideas what caused that?”

We looked around the room for something that could have caused the wound, but nothing looked right. I stood there, looking at the neatly made bed, and remembered something that Gary had told me the first time I was there.

He was back at the front desk, explaining the police presence to a couple of men in bikinis that were way too small and tight for their age and weight. Both of them dressed to the right.

Cespedes and I waited politely until the guests were gone. “The other day you said something about a sterilizing wand that the maids use,” I said. “Would Cody have had one with him?”

“Yup. They’re expensive, so we make the staff sign them in and out.” He checked a printed roster and said that Cody had a wand with him when he started his shift.

He showed us a wand, and Cespedes took a picture of it, then sent it to one of the uniformed officers on site and asked her to look around the property for it.

“How long are you guys going to be here?” Gary asked. “Because the guests are starting to get nervous about the police presence.”

“The Medical Examiner will take away Mr. Flint’s body soon,” Cespedes said. “It’ll be another hour or two after that before we can finish up. I’m going to have to string up crime scene tape, though, and you won’t be able to rent that room out for a few days.”

She and I walked back around the side of the pool, and a couple of guys in the water stopped talking to watch us. The sun was already high in the sky and the palms around the pool cast very little shade.

“How do you think this played out?” Cespedes asked me.

“Cody Flint’s friend Hunter told me that Cody stole small amounts of drugs from hotel guests,” I said. “I found a stash of prescription pills in the toilet tank at his apartment, including some rainbow fentanyl, and Gary told me that a guest complained recently about some pills he said were stolen from his room.”

Cespedes nodded.

“Last Saturday night, Hunter got overheated while dancing after taking some Flakka he got from Cody. My guess is that Cody stole the Flakka, or some of the other pills I found at his apartment, from someone here at the resort. I’d bet dollars to donuts that person confronted him this morning and killed him.”

“The manager’s not going to be happy if we interview every guest,” she said. “But I’ll have to get on that.”

We went back into the room, where the ME’s techs were ready to remove the body. Cespedes gave them the okay. As they lifted the body, a tiny piece of plastic fell to the carpet. I leaned down to look at it.

It was white, about two inches wide and an inch long, with what looked like small black spots painted onto it. “What do you think that is?” I asked Cespedes.

She squatted down beside me, then extended her right hand. Her nails were beautifully manicured, painted hot pink with white tips. “Looks like a broken fingernail,” she said. “Probably acrylic.”

She pulled an evidence bag from her pocket, turned it inside out, and carefully slid the nail tip into it.

As we stood up, the uniform Cespedes had sent to look for the wand knocked on the door. “We searched the trash bins all the way down the street to A1A,” she said. “We found this behind a hotel three buildings down.”

She held up what looked like a miniature light saber from the Star Wars movies, about ten inches long, encased in white plastic with a gray hand strap. “The guy at the front desk identified it as one of his sterilizing wands.”

Through the clear plastic evidence bag I could see that the wand had a long crack along the side.

By then it was clear that I wasn’t going to learn anything more about the stolen Flakka at Pride House, so I went back to the office in Miramar.

Cespedes emailed me the next day to say that she’d spoken to each of the guests at the hotel and none of them were willing to admit to illegal drugs or to being in room 25 with Cody Flint.

Saturday night found me back at Lazy Dick’s, listening to Kitty L’Terr’s farewell performance. She’d changed her outfit to something that looked more like Nala from The Lion King, all smooth tan suede with matching ears and a long tail that she waved at the crowd. “Wish I could stay here with you all, but a girl’s gotta make a living,” she said. “I’m on a Florida prowl. I was in Key West for two weeks and my next stop is Orlando. Playing some cat and mouse games, you know.”

She smiled and purred.

“But I’ll have my new manicure to remember you all by,” she said, holding out her hand. “Broke a nail the other day and decided to redo my look.”

The gears in my head clicked and I stepped outside the club where I could make a call. Gary was still on duty at the desk at Pride House, and he confirmed that Kitty L’Terr, aka Jason Giordano, had been staying at the hotel.

My next call was to Ana Cespedes. I explained what I’d heard—that Kitty had been in Key West recently, where there’d been an outbreak of Flakka overdoses. “Those little black spots could have been paw prints,” I said.

“Keep an eye on her,” Cespedes said. “I’m on my way.”

“Make sure you bring a big cat carrier with you,” I said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Neil Plakcy is a graduate of the FBI’s Citizen’s Police Academy. Brackish Water, the fourth of the Angus Green FBI thrillers, takes Angus to the Florida Keys to intercept the traffic of stolen paintings from Cuba. Neil’s website is www.mahubooks.com.

A CONUNDRUM IN WINTER,by Hal Charles