Air Dance Iguana (22 page)

The house on
Eagle looked neat but dark. King Hang-dog answered the door, pushed it wide, and stood back to let me in. The place was stuffy. His center of action was a reclining chair, a gooseneck lamp, and a large flat-screen TV.

“Maybe you could open a window and turn on a second lamp,” I said. “What the hell have you been doing in here?”

“Absolut vodka and the evening news.” His voice sounded like a rusty hinge on a hatch cover.

Many moods traveled on Chicken Neck Liska’s glum face. If you thought he looked sad or displeased, you could be dead wrong. He might be basking in tranquility, ready to write you a million-dollar check. If you chose to ignore his sour expression and let his words tell the story, you saved time and brain cells.

I opened the fridge. “Two left in this six-pack. Can you spare one?”

“I’ll take a few bites of that blueberry pie.”

I handed over the whole pie. “You didn’t call for a pizza?”

“It’s coming. I’ll save room.” He dug a forkful from pie center, stuffed it in his mouth.

I twisted the cap from some kind of light beer. After the Kirin, it tasted like fizz water.

Liska quit chewing with his mouth half full. “Your reason for this house call?”

“This is Wednesday,” I said. “We haven’t seen each other since last Friday. As county sheriff, you would like to formally apologize for the brutal actions of your detective.”

“Right, your run-in with Millican. How are your nuts?” He put down the pie, tore off a paper towel, swiped it across his face. He sopped up more sweat than blueberry dribble. “Never mind my intrusive query. I presume your equipment worked fine three nights ago with the other detective.”

“I was convalescing, but my attorney will love your concern,” I said. “Let’s call those Millican episodes his run-ins with me, not the other way around.”

“Whatever you say.”

“What’s your opinion on why he risked his job to rough me up?”

Liska shook his head. “Maybe he was upset by the unique murder scene.”

“An old pro like Millican, upset?”

The doorbell rang. I walked across the room and opened up.

“Anchovies and mushrooms?” said the delivery man.

“That’s all the toppings we get?” I said.

“Double-extra cheese.”

Liska ate three pizza slabs while I sipped watery beer. He finally quit and said, “Why did you come here?”

“I had a chat with my secret weapon,” I said.

Liska pondered that a moment. “The old Cuban who lives on your lane?”

“You’re still a fine detective.”

“He worked for City Electric, didn’t he?”

“He remembered the sailors who took jobs at the city. Marnie found archived news on the suicide—investigated by you and Millican. By your titles, Millican was senior, probably your boss. She also found mentions of the city’s missing money and its sudden ordering of maintenance inventories. I think it all ties together.”

Liska looked me in the eye. “So I bungled my first case as a city lieutenant. Now my fears of being exposed have shafted this current investigation?”

“I couldn’t have said it better, Sheriff.”

“What do I do,” he said, “erase everything and start over?”

“Might be the best approach, all the bullshit of the past few days.”

“And these are days which you spent snooping around, piecing together the puzzle so you can astound the establishment with your deductive abilities?”

“I asked a few questions,” I said.

“Rutledge, have you ever walked past a house with a dog in its yard? That dog barks at your approach, keeps yipping as you pass, then barks you good-bye. He stops when you’re out of sight. You ever wonder what that dog’s thinking?”

“That question fits our discussion?”

“That dog defended his turf and your departure proved that he succeeded. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t attacking, or that you were going down the street anyway. In that dog’s mind, he drove you away.”

“So everything I think I do,” I said, “you’re a step ahead of me.”

“You deciphered the mutt analogy.”

Liska tried again to offer me pizza, closed the box, and dropped it to the floor. He stared at me without speaking, looked away, then brought his eyes back to mine.

“Did you recognize Kansas Jack the minute you saw him?” I said.

“It took me a minute or two. When I asked you to e-mail me photos, it was to compare them to the old file. Once I got the five-by-sevens from your man Duffy Lee Hall, I knew for sure.”

“Did Millican call and tell you that he’d recognized Navarre?”

“No,” said Liska, “but he didn’t spend years studying the cold case. He didn’t say shit, so neither did I.”

“You think his memory’s gone soft after all this time?”

“His brain’s like that orange juice I like.”

“Not from concentrate?”

“Close,” said Liska. “I was thinking ‘Lots of pulp.’”

“How did the whole mess get stovepiped into a cold-case file?”

“Got time for a long lead-in?” he said.

I shrugged in the affirmative.

He reached behind his reclining chair, extracted the bottle of Absolut, poured a triple into a juice glass. “I got an education in hearing lies,” he said. “I took a job where all day, all year long, people tell you lies. Every criminal’s mission as a lawbreaker is to confuse the issue and bullshit the Man. But never did I hear lies like from our government officials. I’ve never been a revolutionary or an anarchist, and I’m not going to tell you that our system doesn’t work and that any toad on government pay is full of crapola. But the batch I ran into, in 1973, would rather climb trees to tell lies than sit on their butts and tell the truth.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“You turning the tables here, Rutledge? Doing a one-man good cop, bad cop on the old master?”

“I have no desire to be a policeman, or to mimic their acting techniques.”

Liska took a sip of vodka. “Get yourself that last fucking beer, Rutledge. I’m not going to sit here and drink alone.”

I returned to his sofa, raised the bottle a notch before tilting it back.

“Brick walls were a dime a dozen,” said Liska. “The city, the county, the Navy. I went to an FBI agent. He freaked out. In those days they didn’t like to tread on the military, or on any other agency for that matter.”

“That’s changed?” I said.

He shook his head. “I got one good sniff on that case. I forget the wee details, but I wanted to interview a few more sailors, and the Navy didn’t want to pull men off the ship. By then the
Gilmore
was in the Mediterranean. Something was going on. A multinational submarine and amphibious exercise, whatever. They insinuated that we had a lame case and they couldn’t spare the manpower. I thought someone like the local commander had gotten to the mayor, but he denied it. The sheriff, Bobby Brown, denied it, too. I asked the state representative and got no answer, so that’s when I knew it came from Washington. Come to find out, the Navy wanted so bad for us to back off, they threatened to renege on an offer to give the city their surplus land.”

“Truman Annex?” I said.

“You got it,” said Liska. “The biggest land fiasco in county history. Anyway, after all the horseshit, the prosecutors couldn’t have budgeted a drawn-out trial. It would have cost a fortune to fly men in for grand juries and trials. The city pulled everyone off the case.”

“Just like that, it was closed down?”

“Yep.”

“Did the Navy conduct its own investigation?” I said. “Or make arrests?”

“Hell, back then the Navy was lax on haircuts and beards. You think they kept decent files?”

“There’s something missing.”

“Justice?”

“No,” I said. “You’re leaving something out.”

“What might that be?”

“Your determination.”

“You mean my months of work and years of concern? You’re right. To me, down deep, it always was a cold case, always unsolved.”

“That was then and this is now. This is a new century, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t the embarrassment of a blown case that kept you quiet this week.”

He took a deep breath. “Not entirely, no.”

“Did you make yourself as dirty as the rest of them?”

“The Navy was good for and good to Key West. I was a green recruit, and I didn’t want to single-handedly screw up the relationship. I was cautioned not to make waves.”

“Waves, Navy. Good imagery. Did someone slip you a thick envelope?”

He tilted the glass of vodka, then let it rest against his lower lip. “A new roof on my mother’s house.”

“For that you would never go to jail all these years later.”

“Might lose my job.”

“Who has the horsepower to fire you?” I said. “At worst, you retire early.”

“What would I do if I retired? I mean, what would fill my days? I’m packing too much bullroar in my head to relax. I’m better off working to the day I die. Otherwise I’ll go nuts.”

“Is anyone alive who even remembers that roof?”

“I don’t fucking know,” he said. “I mean, my mother died a year later, but I sure as hell couldn’t tell you who hauled shingles and pounded nails.”

“Don’t you think you would’ve heard from them by now, if they wanted to harm your reputation? When you testified against their cousin in court or when you ran for office?”

He tried to sip from the empty glass, then reached for the bottle. “You looking for me to unburden my soul, Rutledge?”

“I have a feeling that Millican’s name is coming back to our conversation.”

“He caught on to a scam run by some Navy guys who called themselves the Oblivion Division. He started taking little envelopes. I should have turned him in, but you know how that works. It got bigger and bigger. The envelopes turned into little brown bags like they wrap around beer bottles. There was plenty of cash going around, but I wouldn’t take any. Millican advised me to let them do my mother’s roof, so they wouldn’t see me as a risk. They almost got caught once or twice, for petty crap, but we smoothed it over. From then on, my silence as good as implicated me.”

“When did it fall apart?” I said.

“After the city and the Navy washed their hands of that flagpole hanging, I was plain disgusted. I didn’t care about being a cop, so I had nothing to lose when I told Millican he was history in the Keys. I told him, ‘You leave town, go away and leave my life, and this never happened.’”

“So he went up north and got a job?”

“One of those thieves was dead and Millican was scared shitless. He didn’t need much of a push.”

“Except he came back earlier this year and you hired him,” I said. “How did he pressure you into giving him a job?”

“The place he worked, he was right at mandatory retirement age. That wouldn’t have been a problem in my department. He had family down here, and I needed a good man. It was time to forgive and forget. Or let’s say I thought it was. I hadn’t done either one, and now I’m stuck with my decision.”

“Stuck with that dead sailor years ago and deaths by hanging of Kansas Jack, Milton Navarre, and Lucky Haskins. The chance of bad press from your mother’s free roof is the least of your worries.”

“End of history lesson,” he said. “Go the fuck away, Rutledge.”

“Something else went down. You either overlooked it, covered it up, or took part in it.”

Liska reached for the vodka and said nothing.

“Were you informed of a suicide in the city about ninety days ago?”

He nodded, took a slug. “Help me out of this chair.”

Liska spent about five minutes in the john. I heard the retching sounds, the flushes and sounds of a cleanup. Then a battery-operated toothbrush.

He came back to the living room, screwed the cap on the vodka, and sat.

I said, “Did you follow up, look into it yourself?”

“The old-style Navy uniform got my curiosity,” said Liska.

“How did you see it?”

“Like the city’s best detectives, I saw a typical sloppy, sad suicide. Unlike the others, I saw a well-orchestrated murder. When the fingerprints came back I confirmed that the dead man had been stationed on both the
Bushnell
and the
Gilmore.
I didn’t remember him from the old files, but…”

“Is that when you called Millican and told him to get his ass down here?”

Liska nodded again. “I told him his messy past might be coming back around to haunt him. I covered it up once, I wasn’t going to clean the decks again. You’re going to have to excuse me. I’m going to kick you out and go to bed.”

“One last thing,” I said. “Do you remember when the Full Moon Saloon moved from United Street to Simonton?”

Liska looked at the floor, didn’t move, didn’t even twitch a facial muscle. Right about the time I thought he’d gone to sleep he said, “If I had to guess, 1983. Don’t bother telling me why you wanted to know.”

There was another piece of history I wanted to dredge from his memory, but I forgot what it was.

“One last favor,” I said. “Can I bum a couple Ziploc bags?”

The Shelby has
a distinct exhaust sound, even more audible at night, so I parked on George and walked two blocks to Tanker Branigan’s house on Johnson. I didn’t see a soul or—local miracle—prompt dogs to bark. On a crapshoot I was going to harvest a recycling container for potential evidence, assuming that Tanker was a friend of both my brother and the environment. My thinking rode the concept that, if I could deliver Tim’s empties to the FBI, via Bobbi Lewis, his palm prints would condemn him or clear him. As Liska had said, it would all come out in the end. Forever the optimist, I saw no choice but to try.

I found the bin and cursed the darkness. I didn’t want to rattle bottles or cut my hand on a can lid. Master of stealth, I positioned myself to catch street-lamp reflections off the Michelob labels. Then I felt metal press against my neck.

“Move a muscle, motherfucker, and your mouth’s an exit wound.”

I froze, heard only the wind rustling the plastic bag in my hand. My penchant for quick comebacks died. I pictured my teeth in an outward spray of enamel and fillings.

“Jesus Christ, Alex,” said the gruff, sleepy voice. “You need deposit nickels that bad?”

My knees went soft but I felt the cold pistol barrel lift away. I turned to find Branigan looking sheepish, his weapon now pointed downward.

“Do you need to guard your trash with a gun?”

“My tow-truck days, I had to show this monster once a week, but I only flashed it. I never fucking aimed at a human before. What the hell are you doing?”

I explained why I was there. I knew the police had Tim’s fingerprints, but the key to the nightmare was a palm print. Tim’s palm print, even if obtained by unofficial means, might lift all suspicion before the legal machine put unstoppable gears in motion.

“You could’ve rung the bell,” he said. “I got two weeks’ worth of trash you can have for free. Just take it outside the door.”

“You might have been asleep. I’m sure this bin will give me plenty.”

“But that plastic bag will smear the shit out of prints. You want to pick them up, you need to run a stick inside their spouts. I’ll get you an empty six-pack carton to carry them. And take an empty Icehouse. They’ll need my palm print so they can differentiate.”

After we’d lifted six bottles and placed the carton in a paper sack, Tanker said, “We okay on every little thing?”

“I’ve been thinking about your plan,” I said. “You were going to challenge Tim to raise his self-esteem. It lifted my hopes for another shot at the friendship we had as kids. Now he’s sitting in jail, most likely in retribution for your trick with Millican on the star.”

“Fear not, big brother,” said Tanker. “He’s building character as we speak. It ain’t over ’til it’s over. He’ll surprise all of us one day real soon.”

I pissed off Bobbi Lewis by calling late.

“Why six bottles now?” she said. “I can’t do squat until morning, anyway.”

“We wouldn’t have to connect in the morning. I could go home now and sleep late.”

“Were you creeping around my house an hour and a half ago? I heard your dual mufflers.”

“I gave your neighbor a ride home,” I said.

“From which restaurant?”

“She was drinking and didn’t want to ride her crotch rocket.”

“She want to ride yours?” said Bobbi.

“It didn’t come up.”

“I’ll leave that line alone, thanks. If those bottles are so damned important, bring them to my office at eight-fifteen. You can personally hand them to a black suit with a Quantico accent.”

I began to say something, but I was talking to dead air.

My drinking plus the blood-pressure spike from Branigan’s weapon had me toasted. I didn’t feel like driving twenty-five miles to Little Torch, and I kept thinking of Teresa’s line about people hiring people to kill people. After all the info I’d pulled together, I felt closer to solving the puzzle. But that made me superstitious. What was to stop a pro from waiting in the shadows at Manning’s house, hoisting me up for a midnight ride, making me an air dance Dumbo?

I needed a spiritual lift, but not by the neck.

I drove fifteen blocks, parked in front of Sam and Marnie’s house, and dialed the inside number.

“Yes, Alex,” said Marnie. “I’m on the porch listening to tree frogs and eating Healthy Choice Ice Cream and looking at your car behind the hedge. You may think of our couch as your home away from home.”

Marnie was stretched out in a long T-shirt and surfer jams.

“This peaceful pose,” I said. “May I assume you heard from the man we knew as Sam Wheeler?”

“It’s rained for three straight days in Baldwin County, Alabama. He got fed up and he’ll drive as far as Gainesville tomorrow. We have an actual, real dinner date the next night.”

“Any response to your classified ad?” I said.

“One call, from one Mayra Culmer, a widow with the emphasis on lonely. Her late husband, Elmer Culmer, was a first-class boilerman on the
Bushnell.
Elmer went down to cancer in 1988.”

“Elmer’s going to miss the party.”

“Mayra said that the crew and their wives, especially those who lived in town, were a tight-knit group in the early days. She wants to help organize the festivities. She talked to me like her new best friend. I gather it’s been a long slog since ’88.”

The Conch Train woke me. Marnie was in her office on the phone. I hadn’t meant to sleep so late. When I came out from brushing my teeth, Marnie had coffee for me. “You didn’t hear the phone?”

I shook my head. “I heard the train driver on South Street yakking about sea-grape trees. Is that your reality gong every morning?”

“That was the third train today. You were out cold. Meanwhile, I got another call from Mayra, the lonely Navy widow. She’s going through some old boxes because she thought she still had a cruise book. She thought it might help me find
Bushnell
and
Gilmore
crew members.”

“We want that,” I said. “They were skinny, hardbound versions of your high school yearbook. Big on squadron logos and phony-ass pictures of the captain schmoozing with snipes and deck apes.”

Marnie’s phone rang again. She ducked away and I spread the morning’s newspaper across a table, sipped my coffee. The real estate ads inspired my next move, an idea that promised fewer speed bumps than pilfering bottles. The white pages had no listing for Sharon Woods. The Yellow Pages listed a title-insurance company on Big Pine. A bubbly-voiced woman answered my call. I told her I needed to find the owner of Deer Abbey Real Estate.

“Sharon?” she said. “We’ve been trying to reach her since last Friday.”

“I’m an old friend, not a client, but I can’t find her anywhere.”

“I’ve heard that she’s trying to cut back on work. Do you live on Big Pine?”

“Little Torch,” I said.

“Heck, honey, try the house.”

“I hate to barge in on her,” I said, “and I misplaced her number.”

“Well, that’s a problem. She’s unlisted, you know, which has always been odd for a real estate broker. You might have to drive by.”

“That’s another problem. We never socialized at her house. We met at restaurants, so I don’t know where she lives.”

“The lady I work with knows where it is, but she’s gambling in Nassau. I’d tell you to call the utility companies, but they’re sworn to secrecy anymore. All these new rules. If Edith calls in, you want me to get directions and call you back?”

“Love it.” I gave her my name and number.

“I’m Honey Groves,” she said. “I know it sounds fake, but it’s not.”

“That’s refreshing,” I said. “Our world is awash in fake names.”

I stopped on Stock Island to give the six-pack of empties to Bobbi Lewis. I had blown the eight-fifteen appointment, and Bobbi wasn’t in her office. The duty guard recognized me. He checked the paper sack and probably pegged it as a joke. He wasn’t anxious to believe that rattling bottles were possible evidence. I asked him to let Lewis decide.

I made good time up the Keys. The sky was so blue it looked plugged in, and I rode the easy chair between an Immigration and Naturalization bus and a box-shaped delivery truck. The INS bus had
BORDER PATROL
across its stern. Another boatload had hit the beach, the bumpy bus ride the best thing desperate Cubans had experienced for years.

No surprise, Deer Abbey Real Estate was closed up tight. The same
FAMILY EMERGENCY
sign hung in the window. I drove to the sandwich shop, parked out front. The smells and the sight of the cook stacking bacon, lettuce, and tomato made me instantly hungry. I was the only customer. I sat and offered the young counter server twenty bucks for the BLT. She laughed and said, “Fine. I was going to save it for after work, anyway.”

“Deal’s a deal,” I said, and opened my wallet.

She put the sandwich in front of me, along with a minibag of chips and a glass of iced tea. “We’ll settle for five dollars and fifty cents.”

“I might have to leave a fourteen-dollar tip.”

She smiled. “That’s up to you.”

I took time to enjoy the food. The young woman went about her job, set up her work station for the lunch rush. When I was down to my last few bites I said, “Sharon Woods come in for breakfast?”

The girl shook her head but tapped a photo tacked among a dozen others on the wall. A woman in a Halloween witch’s costume stood in front of a cute cottage. The print quality sucked. I couldn’t make out the face.

“You want to rent that house?” she said. “My daddy owns it. If you know Sharon, you probably know she’s going to a bigger place.”

“I’d be interested in renting, but I have to say, I didn’t know she was moving. Actually, for all these years I’ve known her, I’ve never been to her home.”

“My daddy’s cottage is too small for her wheelchair. I’m not supposed to show it until the day after tomorrow. Sharon doesn’t want to be bothered while she’s packing to leave.”

“I’m easy,” I said. “If I like the neighborhood, that’s eighty percent of my decision. Write down the address, and I’ll drive by and check it out. If I see her outside, I won’t let her know why I’m around. For certain, I won’t mention your name.”

She smiled. “You don’t know my name.”

“So your secret is safe with me.”

“Okay.” She wrote the address on her order pad. “It’s a mile and four tenths from here. Can I really keep the change?”

A white picket fence, a screened porch, board-and-batten siding, and a plastic trellis hid the double-wide aspects of Sharon Woods’s small “manufactured” house. A metal roof and green shutters made it look like a Conch cottage, or at least attempted. My knowledge of Big Pine put the closest canal four blocks distant. I’d expected to find a real estate broker in better circumstances.

I parked on the street and walked toward the house.

A graveled woman’s voice barked, “Stand out there in the sun and tell me why you’re here.”

She was behind a screen door and looked to be sitting. I couldn’t make out her face. “I’m looking for Sharon Woods. My name is Alex Rutledge.”

She coughed. “You’re a policeman?”

I shook my head. “No. I wanted to ask you about three of your real estate deals. Milton Navarre, Kansas Jack Mason, and—”

“Haskins,” she said. “Lucky and Tinkerbell Haskins. Can you imagine going through life with those names?”

I shook my head and kept quiet, tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness behind the door.

The rough voice: “I know about those killings and I hate the thought.”

“I know you sold—”

“Yes, I did, and I’ve been waiting five days for detectives to knock on my door. A woman called about Jack Mason but she never followed up. If you’re not a policeman, what’s your interest in those people?”

“I’m a part-time photographer for the county. I had to take the crime-scene pictures of the first two deaths. That got me involved. Then a detective showed me a photo she found in one of the men’s effects. It was a young girl standing in front of my home in Key West before I bought the house. I got to know the girl, a long time ago, then lost touch with her. Knowing that a murdered man had her photograph, I was worried about that girl I hadn’t seen in years. She’d be a grown woman by now.”

“And that”—the woman coughed again—“that brings you all the way to Big Pine?”

“Not that far.” I reached down to slap a mosquito on my leg. “I’m watching a friend’s house over on Little Torch, on Keelhaul Lane.”

She hesitated, then said, “I don’t mean the distance you traveled. I just wonder about your curiosity. Was that girl in the picture your only motivation for coming here?”

“It’s a long story, but there’s a real chance my brother will be accused of the first two murders. He’s had what they call a rough go all his life. What’s the old cliché, ‘bad choices’? The detectives might find him an easy target for suspicion, guilty or not.”

I saw her hand wave behind the dark screening. She pushed open the screen door and rolled forward a foot or two in a wheelchair. “Get out of the sun and bugs. There’s a bench up here.”

On the porch, in the shade, I had a better view of the coughing woman in her flower-pattern robe. She lit a cigarette, shifted her position, and rubbed her tongue on the front of her teeth. She took a drag, then said, “I take it you’re trying to be a private eye. You solve the case of the hanging bums and your brother’s off the hook, so to say.”