Basket Case (42 page)

Emma raises her head. "Today's your birthday? Why didn't you say something?"

"Slipped my mind." Incredible but true.

Emma snaps her fingers. "How old again?"

"Forty-seven."

So long, Mr. Presley. Hello, Mr. Kerouac. I suppose this will never end, until I do.

Emma springs out of bed. "Get up, you old fart. We're going shopping."

That was the most time I'd spent in a mall in ten years. Emma was buoyant and sassy; she likes birthdays. She bought me the new Neil Young CD, two pairs of stonewashed jeans and a bottle of cologne that she says is "the bomb." Then she wanted to treat me to a movie, and she wouldn't take no for an answer. It was an action remake of the TV series Petticoat Junction, starring Drew Barrymore, Charlize Theron and Catherine Zeta-Jones, three beautiful sisters who live at a rural railroad depot. In the old television show, the girls had weekly comic encounters with cranky relatives and colorful characters who came and went on the train. In the movie version, however, all three sisters are working undercover for the Mossad. For me, the plot never quite came together.

A small FedEx box is sitting by the door when Emma and I return to the apartment. My mother's birthday present: a first edition of Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage. Where she found it I can't imagine, but what a beauty! I've got a shelf devoted to books my mother has given me on birthdays. Tucked into the pages of the Zane Grey novel is a card, and also a long brown envelope. For some reason I open the envelope first.

Inside is a photocopy of my father's obituary.

Ever since my mother revealed that she'd seen it, I've been imagining what the article said. Not everybody's death gets written up by a newspaper, so it was intriguing to think that, after ditching Mom and me, Jack Tagger Sr. had done something in life to merit notice of his passing. Perhaps he'd become a beloved saxophone teacher, a crusading social worker or a feisty small-town politician. Maybe he'd invented something new and amazing, some nifty gizmo now taken for granted by the entire human race, including his estranged namesake—the electric nose-hair trimmer, for example, or Styrofoam peanuts.

I've also pondered the unappealing prospect that my father earned an obituary not because of anything good he'd done, but because of some newsworthy fuckup, scandal or felony. Bruno Hauptmann got quite a boisterous send-off in the media, though I doubt his family made a scrapbook of the clippings. I myself have written obits of local scoundrels that elicited sighs of relief if not cheers from our readers. Communities usually are pleased to be rid of bad eggs, and I've been bracing for the possibility that my father was one.

Yet it turns out he was neither a miscreant nor a pillar of the establishment. He was merely a character, small and harmless to the planet.

His obituary is from the Key West Citizen, and is dated March 12, 1973. That explains why it didn't turn up in a computerized library search—many newspapers didn't switch to electronic filing until the late seventies or early eighties. My telephone chase was fruitless because my mother never lived in Key West, so I'd had no reason to call the paper there.

The headline says:

Local Performer Dies in Tree Mishap

Emma, watching me from the opposite armchair, says, "What's the matter?"

It's the oddest sensation to read about my own father's death yet to hold no living memory of the man. I feel slightly guilty for not feeling sad, though truly I didn't know him. One lousy snapshot was all I had to go on.

"Read it to me, Jack."

"That's very funny."

"I mean it. Fair is fair," she says.

What the hell. I clear my throat and begin:

A popular Key West street entertainer died early Monday morning in an accident near Mallory Square.

Jack Tagger, known locally as "Juggling Jack," was killed when he fell out of a tree, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Tagger had been out walking with friends when he spotted a raccoon perched in the top of an old avocado tree on Whitehead Street. According to witnesses, he shouted, "I saw her first!" and began scrambling up the trunk.

A limb broke under Tagger's weight, and he plummeted headlong about thirty feet to the pavement.

The accident occurred at 2:30 a.m. Police said there is a possibility alcohol was involved.

Emma thinks I'm making this up.

The bad news is, my old man was a drunken goofball. The good news is, apparently I've got show business in my veins. I continue reading:

Tagger was a familiar figure during the nightly sunset celebration along the Old Town waterfront. He boasted that he could juggle anything and, to the delight of tourists, he tried. He tossed wine bottles, flaming tiki torches, conch shells, cactus plants and even live animals.

Last year, he debuted a new act in which he juggled four talking cockatoos. The birds had been taught to recite well-known passages from Shakespeare, Chekhov and Tennessee Williams, a hometown favorite.

Williams himself quipped, "Jack's damn cockatoos do a better job with 'Streetcar' than half the actors I've seen."

Emma says, "All right, stop. That's enough."

"No, please. Let me finish."

"This is your dad? Really?"

"It was."

The obituary is accompanied by a black-and-white photograph of my father juggling lobster buoys on a pier. He's wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and rectangular black sunglasses, but the smile is unmistakable; the same smile from my dreams.

Onward:

Little is known about Tagger's life before he arrived in Key West about three years ago. Like many of the island's vagabond street performers, he did odd jobs by day while honing his evening act for the crowds at Mallory Square.

"He was a fun-loving cat. He made me laugh," said Samuel "Snake Throat" Procter, a local sword-swallower who once crewed with Tagger on a lobster boat.

Police records show Tagger had been arrested here twice for marijuana possession, and once for driving a moped while intoxicated.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete at this time. A short sunset ceremony honoring the juggler will be held at the Mallory Square docks on Wednesday. He was 46 at the time of his death.

Forty-six at the time of his death. Damn, that was a close one. "Are you all right?" Emma asks.

I hand her the newspaper article, then I open my mother's birthday card. Inside it, she gaily wrote:

Happy 47th, Jack! (See? You made it!) Love, Mom.

30

I found a newsstand that sells the Palm Beach Post, and I'm reading it at the counter of the donut shop. The story about the airboat accident is in the local section, with an aerial photograph of the craft upturned in the lake. One of the dead men remains unidentified while the other is known to be Frederick Joseph Moulter, a sound engineer formerly of Santa Monica, California. The self-styled Loreal. His age is reported as twenty-nine, the same as Hank Williams when he died. I'm guessing Cleo's bodyguard eventually will be identified from fingerprints; a mug shot would be of no use.

At random moments my mind flashes back to that gothic image of Cleo's boys, Jerry sitting headless in the reeds and Loreal no less dead, scalped and gaping. Juan says we're not meant to forget such things—it's the price of surviving.

According to the news story, the crashed airboat was stolen from a deer camp near Palmdale. A game warden is quoted speculating that the men were probably out hunting for alligators when they got caught in rough weather and wiped out at high speed. A loaded.22 caliber pistol—a favorite of gator poachers—was found in a jacket worn by young Freddie Moulter. That sneaky little shit!

The Post says the police are continuing to investigate the two deaths, but foul play is not suspected. The absence of.38 caliber holes confirms my ineptitude with the Lady Colt.

"Hello, stranger!"

It's Janet Thrush. I give her a squeeze as I lead her to a booth in the corner. "You had me scared to death," I whisper.

"Dooms." She laughs. "All you had to do was check your messages." She's wearing a lime-colored halter, a flowered bikini bottom and feathered earrings made from salmon streamers. Her nose is sunburned and her ash-blond hair has been dyed auburn.

"Wanna hear what happened?"

"Oh heck, why not."

"This was, like, Friday a week. The afternoon you and me talked about Jimmy's last will and testimony. Anyways, that night I was get-tin' ready for work—hey, can I have a croissant or a muffin? Coffee would be good, too."

I snag a waitress so that Janet can order.

"Anyways, I'm gettin' dressed for work—"

"For Janet-Cam."

"Right. I'm in the bathroom puttin' on the SWAT gear when all hell breaks loose. The front door busts open and then there's voices, men's voices, and they're trashin' out my place big-time. I don't know whether to jump out the window or hide."

"Did they know you were home?"

"I don't think it mattered, Jack. I don't think they cared," she says. "So I'm locked in the John, scared shitless—pardon my French—when I hear the TV lights go crashin' down. I swear to God, I just lost it. I mean I really wigged… those damn lights cost me a week's pay. So I pull on the black hood and go busting out with my nine-dollar plastic rifle. 'Police! Police! You're all under arrest!' And the two guys, they freak. I don't know what they were expectin' but they took one look at me in that SWAT getup and they hauled ass."

"Did you recognize them?" I ask.

The croissants arrive and Janet pauses to gobble one. "Never saw 'em before in my life. One guy was bald and had a pirate patch over one eye. The other was tall and freckly."

"Longhair?"

"Down to his butt. I first saw him, I thought he was a chick. He was messin' with my computer—that's another thing, Jack, these assholes ripped off my PC. I got no idea why."

"I'll tell you in a minute."

"Anyway, they ran off like their balls were on fire."

"And then… ?"

Janet calls another time-out for a blueberry muffin. Afterwards she says, "They garbaged my car, so a friend came and got me. I've been down in Lauderdale ever since, just chillin'."

"Was it you who called the sheriff's office and told them not to check the house?"

She nods guiltily. "I remembered I had a bag of buds under the mattress. I knew the cops'd find it and I wasn't up for a hassle, so I gave 'em a story—'My boyfriend raised some hell but everything's okay now so please don't send a squad car.'"

"Well, it worked."

"Remember I told you about the Convent-Cam setup, the girls who dress up like nuns? That's who I've been stayin' with. To be honest, Jack, I been scared to go home."

"You want to know what scared me? The blood on the carpet, Janet. What the hell happened?"

"I stepped on a broken lightbulb, that's what." She swings a long leg up on the breakfast table and kicks off her sandal, revealing a large dirty bandage on the sole of her foot. "When they broke my kliegs, the glass went all over the place. I bled like a hippo."

A waitress carrying a coffeepot is poised beside our table, staring uneasily at the grungy gauze.

"Stitches?" I inquire politely.

"Seven," Janet reports. "No biggie."

"The big bald goon was Cleo's bodyguard. The long-haired one was her so-called record producer."

Janet hoots. "That little bimbo has a bodyguard!" She pulls her leg off the table. "Why'd they bust into my place? What'd they want?"

"Your brother's music." I signal for the waitress to deliver the check. "Jimmy's final album."

"No way!" Janet sits forward, smoldering. "No way. That is not happening."

"Don't worry. They're both dead."

"If only."

I slide the Post across the table and point to the headline next to the picture: Airboat Theft Ends in Fatal Crash. Her eyes widen.

"Come on," I say. "Let's go for a drive."

Certain details of the story need not be disclosed. For instance, there's no reason for Janet to know that Emma was kidnapped, or that I was shooting a gun at Jerry and Loreal when they swamped.

But I'm telling her enough to paint the picture.

"What they wanted was the master recording of everything Jimmy wrote in the islands. We found it hidden on the boat after Jay Burns was killed."

"Jay was in on this?"

"At least the pirating of the tracks, yeah. Maybe more."

"His 'best friend,' "Janet says acidly. "I'm so over these people. But why'd they kill him?"

"He got spooked."

"And what's with this 'accident'?" She taps two fingers on the newspaper photo.

"I told Cleo Rio I had the master. We set up a trade. The guys on the airboat were coming to get it when they wrecked."

"A trade for what?"

"Something personal. Something they stole from me."

We're cruising in the Mustang because a busy donut shop isn't the best place to be chit-chatting about murder.