I spent the rest of the morning on the newspaper's work. I advised the business manager to accept the advertis.e.m.e.nt from the airport hotel that promised "freedom fighter" discounts to smugglers aiding the Nicaraguan contras. I told the photo editor that the picture of the model wearing a bra with a built-in holster for a Beretta was not an invasion of privacy and accurately portrayed Florida's new concealed-weapons law. I told the city editor to ignore complaints that property values would be hurt by the local map showing Dade County murders by zip code. Finally, I told the food editor that the grilled alligator recipe omitted cayenne pepper, and then I had lunch.

CHAPTER 6.

The Lady and the Jockey I wanted to get to Compu-Mate before the afternoon storms. In the summer, the rain begins at 3:17 P.M. or thereabouts, every day. For an hour or so, gully washers and palmetto pounders flood the streets. Drops form inside the canvas top of my old convertible, then plop one by one onto my head.

I aimed north on Okeechobee Road, storm clouds gathering, traffic crawling. Our highways have not caught up with our growth and never will. We built a high-speed rail system too late and too small. We are a great urban sprawl, Miami-Lauderdale-Palm Beach, four million people squeezed between the ocean and the Everglades. We are low on water and electricity, but high on asphalt and cement. Our public officials are beholden to predatory developers who ply them with greenbacks and concoct their own vocabulary.

Creeping overpopulation is "growth."

Building spindly condos on Indian burial grounds is "progress."

Environmentalists are "doomsayers."

So we bulldoze trees, fill swamps, drain the aquifer, and then we build on every square inch, erecting a concrete landscape of fast-food palaces, serve-yourself gas stations, and tawdry shopping centers. Their signs beckon us from the blazing pavement. Pizza parlors, video rentals, gun shops, and a thousand other fringe businesses hoping to hang on for another month's rent.

Compu-Mate was in a renovated warehouse in Hialeah, a city of ticky-tack duplexes and stucco houses with plaster statues of the Virgin Mary planted in front lawns. In the last thirty years, Hialeah has been transformed from a cracker town of Panhandle and Alabama immigrants to a new home for Cuban refugees. Not long ago, a Florida governor named Martinez was forced to suspend an indicted Hialeah mayor named Martinez and replace him with a city councilman named Martinez. None of the men was related. Hispanics now are the majority population group in the cities of Miami and Hialeah and are approaching fifty percent countywide. Within the community, there are old exilados, who dream of returning to a Cuba Libre, Cubanzo rednecks, who drive pickup trucks festooned with American and Cuban flags, and Yubans, Yuppie Cuban professionals downtown. They are, in fact, like every other ethnic group, a diverse lot that has added considerably to the community.

I parked next to an outdoor cafe where men with leathery skin smoked cigars and drank espresso from tiny plastic cups. Next door, three teenagers were making a mess of a transmission, pulled out of a twenty-year-old Chevy propped onto concrete blocks.

I already knew a lot about Compu-Mate. I knew it was the latest way to profit from people's fears of loneliness. Like-minded consenting adults just a whir and buzz away, courtesy of your personal computer. Talk sweet, talk dirty, t.i.tillate your partner, and tickle your fancy until you get a phone number and address. Then cross your fingers, take a deep breath, and wait for the truth. The guy who called himself "Paul Newman look-alike" has the gray hair, all right, but the blue eyes are milky, a paunch hangs over his belt, and he's three months behind on the alimony. "Buxom blonde looking for fun" means overweight and bleached, a manic-depressive.

I had some background on Max and Roberta Blinderman, president and secretary of Compu-Mate, Inc., a Florida for-profit corporation. Previously, they operated a video dating service that went belly up, and before that, a modeling studio that left a trail of unpaid bills and unfinished portfolios. As far as Cindy's research showed, Roberta had no criminal record. Max had been a fair-to-middling jockey twenty years ago, once nearly winning the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah before getting suspended in a horse-doping scheme. Lately he had pleaded guilty to bouncing some checks, was put on probation, and made rest.i.tution. Two other penny-ante cases: a mail-fraud case was nolle-prossed, and a buying-receiving charge was dropped when the state couldn't prove the jewelry was stolen. By local standards, he was clean enough to run for mayor.

The office was no-frills, a Formica counter up front, a green metal desk in back. Next to the desk was a decent-sized, freestanding computer that was probably leased month to month. No waiting room, no sofa, no friendly green plants. A man sat at the desk staring into a video display terminal. A woman stood at the counter licking stamps and pasting them onto envelopes-monthly bills to the customers, I figured.

"I'd like to sign up," I told the woman behind the counter.

"This ain't the army," she said, putting down her envelopes and shoving a form in front of my face.

She was six feet tall and seemed to like it. Her dark eyes were s.p.a.ced wide and the lashes were long, black as sin, and well tended. The complexion, which had that cocoa-b.u.t.ter, coppery-tanned look with a healthy dose of moisturizers, creams, powders, and blushes, was smoothly sanguine. The black hair was layered and purposely messed, a wild look. Her nose was thin and straight and so perfect it might have cost five grand at a clinic in Bal Harbour. Her body was long and lean with some muscle development in the shoulders and small b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were uncaged under a white cotton halter top. The top of a denim skirt was visible below her flat, browned tummy, but her legs were hidden behind the counter.

I licked the end of the pencil like Art Carney playing Ed Norton, made a whirling motion with my right arm, and began filling out the form in block letters.

"Most of our clients just punch us up on their modems and do the paperwork by filling out the form on their computer screen," she said.

"My modem's in the shop for an oil change."

If she thought I was funny, she kept it to herself. She just watched my seersuckered self as I filled in the blanks. I wrote my real name and address, chose "Stick Shift" as my handle, used my old jersey number as a secret pa.s.sword, and pretended to struggle with the rest. When I was done, I handed her the form. She scanned it and scowled.

"This ain't a dining club," she said.

"Or the army," I agreed.

"What's 'rare steak and cold beer' supposed to mean?"

"It asked my preferences," I said, putting some Iowa corn into my voice.

"Sheesh. Your preferences in bed, Gomer. Are you straight, gay, or bi?"

"Straight as an arrow, slim. Wanna see?"

"In your dreams. Hey, next blank you skipped. You go for French or Greek?"

"No habla nothin' but English."

"Oh brother! You got any fetishes? B and D, S and M, water sports?"

"I'm a pretty decent windsurfer," I admitted.

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "Where you been, the friggin' North Pole?"

"Maui, Aruba, the Baja," I told her. "North Pole's too cold, even with a dry suit."

"Listen, Ricky r.e.t.a.r.do, I ain't got all day. You don't fill in the blanks, the computer will spit out your application, so you gotta tell me what you like. Now, Greek, that means b.u.m f.u.c.king, get it?"

"Even the poor got a right to get laid," I said. "It's in the Const.i.tution."

She narrowed her dark eyes and gave me a sideways look. "You know what French is, right?"

I didn't say oui, madame.I just gave her my big, dumb-guy look. It isn't hard to do.

"Like in the poem," she said, "'The French, they are a funny race. They fight with their feet and f.u.c.k with their face.' Get it?"

I scrunched my face into its genius-at-thought mode. "I get part of it."

"Part of it?"

"I mean, fighting with their feet, I get ..."

She turned toward the back where the man was now hunched over the keyboard of the computer. "Max! C'mere."

A little guy, all wires and gristle in black pants, black knit shirt, and white patent-leather loafers. A tattoo of a snake showed green on a veined, browned forearm. A worm of a mustache wriggled under his nose. He squinted at me through suspicious eyes. All he needed was a switchblade to pick his teeth, and he could have been a small-time grifter in Guys and Dolls.

"Yow, Bobbie," he answered.

"Whyn't you help Mister ..."

"La.s.siter," I announced proudly.

They traded places. Her high heels clackety-clacked as she legged it toward the back. Sleek, fine legs with a comely curve of the calf undulating with each step. As she slinked by Max he said, "Foot Long's just about got Naughty Nurse's panties off."

She sat down at the desk and peered into the monitor. "Nurse's been putting out for everybody and their cousin," she called back.

Max took his time examining my application. I wondered if anyone ever failed the entrance exam. "You can listen in?" I asked.

"Huh?"

I pointed toward the computer where Bobbie sat, her long, lean body bent toward the screen.

"Someone's gotta be the sys-op," he said. "Work the panel in case there's a glitch on-line. We can tap into any talky-talk, just like Southern Bell."

"You must hear-or read-it all."

"Yow. Till after while, it puts you to sleep. Like how many ways can they describe it?"

He returned to the form, moving his lips and tracing each line with a finger. "Say, you were just kidding here, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Bobbie don't have much of a sense of humor. Comes from having a hard life as a kid. You gotta make allowances with a filly like that." He grinned and showed me two rows of shopping-center dental work. "You're a straight shooter looking for old-fashioned cooze in the missionary position, yow?"

"Yow," I answered right back at him.

He gave me a temporary membership card and a book of rules. I gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

"Ever have any trouble with your clients?" I asked.

The word "trouble" made the mustache twitch. "Whaddaya mean?"

"Like any women complain about guys putting the make on 'em, they don't like what's being offered?"

His eyes had put up a shield. "No trouble. Woman gets ha.s.sled, she can bug out of the call. She invites a guy over or goes out with him, that's her business. We don't give no guarantees."

"You keep records of the calls?"

He sneaked a peek at the wall where his occupational license was taped over a crack. Probably figured me for a city inspector and wondered when I'd show him my palm.

I pointed back to his main computer. "All the calls stored in there?"

"h.e.l.l no! I wouldn't clog up our hard memory with that s.h.i.t."

"How many members you have?"

"Three hundred fifty men. Almost two hundred women. Hey, we're a member of the BBB."

"So what's stored in there?"

"It's programmed to record how many times members call in and how long they talk. After fifty hours, you gotta renew."

"So it records who they talk to... ."

"That'd be an invasion of privacy," he said with undue formality.

"But it could be done, if you wanted to know who a client spoke with, say, two nights ago?"

"The calls are coded numerically. It could be-"

"What the h.e.l.l!" Bobbie Blinderman demanded, towering over Max the Jockey. "Just who the h.e.l.l are you, buster?" In her bare feet now, she was three inches shorter, but no friendlier. She had silently prowled back to the counter from her position as gatekeeper of erotica and her ebony eyes glared at me.

I gave her a daffy grin. "Just a lonely guy-"

"Get your jollies somewhere else!" she ordered, pointing toward the door.

"With a grand-jury subpoena," I added, pulling a blue-backed paper out of my back pocket and sliding it across the counter. Max stared at it a moment, then picked it up as if afraid to leave prints. Bobbie looked straight at me with those long-lashed eyes, the sanguine complexion a tone redder.

"Flatfoot f.a.ggot," she hissed.

"Your preference?" I politely inquired.

This and other e-books by Paul Levine may be found at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JAKELa.s.sITER

_____________.

Preview: REVERSAL.

PROLOGUE.

THE SILKEN SKY WAS ENDLESS, the stars infinite, the breeze sweet with a thousand promises. On a night like this, the past is forgotten and the future is forever.

Tony Kingston loved flying at night, the huge aircraft slicing through the tar black sky like some tri-masted sailing vessel on a great adventure. Which is what Kingston thought when feeling poetic, when he let the drone of the three ma.s.sive engines wash over him, playing their serene song.

Other times, burdened with the reality of a discount air carrier in the era of deregulation, he thought he was flying a bus, an over-crowded, undermaintained, ancient clunker of a bus. Now, as he acknowledged instructions from Miami Center and descended to eleven thousand feet he felt the big jet's power under his hands. It was still a remarkable beast, four hundred thousand pounds of muscle, one million separate parts in all. Looking as if it shouldn't be able to get off the ground at all, this huge aircraft was a testament to man's genius, he thought, just as surely as man was a testament to G.o.d's genius.

h.e.l.l, the fuselage of the DC-10 looks like one of those fat Cuban cigars-the Robustos-I bring back from Havana.

Tony Kingston looked through the V-shaped windshield and into the night. To the left was the vast darkness of the Atlantic Ocean. Below and to the right were the twinkling lights of Florida's Gold Coast, Palm Beach merging with Ft. Lauderdale and farther south, Miami Beach. In less than twenty minutes, they should be pulling up at the gate at MIA. Listening to the soothing white noise of the slipstream, he took the measure of his own life, calculating credits and debits, figuring he was solidly in the plus column.

A former combat pilot, Kingston sometimes missed the action, the camaraderie of the flight squadron. But he overly romanticized it, he knew, and flying a fighter was a young man's game. What he had now was a career: chief pilot for Atlantica Airlines. The t.i.tle almost sounded military. So why did the job often leave him wanting more?