Bone Island Mambo (18 page)

“They must’ve been young when you went to the Far East”

“Oh, yeah. Grade school. There I was, a pump jockey in Andytown, which then was the Everglades. The intersection of Florida 84 and U.S. 27, out by that man-made wonder of sluice, the North New River Canal. Pumping gas was one of only two jobs in Andytown. The other job was pumping gas. You might say my future looked brighter in the Cambodian jungle.” Sam laughed to himself. “Those stories about boys who went off to ‘Nam, did a year, then came home? They’d knock on their parents’ door and a stranger would answer it? The parents had moved away, and the letter with their new address hadn’t reached the grunt in-country. Well, I came back to Andytown, not only to no parents, but the whole damned village was gone. Obliterated by a freeway interchange, Interstate 75, at the start of Alligator Alley. Not even the
real
Alligator Alley. All of it paved and landscaped. Like those cities up North that ceased to exist when valleys were turned into reservoirs. I look back, I think that was the main reason I reupped, stayed on active duty, and went the long twenty with Uncle Sugar. No place to call home.”

I said, “Where would you live if you left Key West? Alabama?”

“My cabin up there’s too small to be any kind of permanent
place. I guess I’d drive north through Florida until I saw the first road sign that says ‘Bridge May Freeze in Cold Weather.’ That hard freeze line is my imaginary fence. I’d find that sign, I’d turn around, come back fifty miles, and find a home. But hell, I don’t know for sure where I’d go.”

“I assume you found your parents.”

“What was left of the old man. I think the remote life got to him. Nothing in the boonies to jostle his mind. He suffered . . . I don’t know what to call it. A hermit’s senility, I guess. Some people thrive on it, like that photographer up there, Clyde Butcher. The man’s a genius. He must live for the isolation. I’ve always figured my old man died to prove he could finally do something right. My mother moved to Hallandale, learned to be a keypunch operator. One more occupation by the wayside. Then she became a typesetter at the Fort Lauderdale
Sun-Sentinel.
Computers killed that job, too. Like she’d caught the bug from my father, got phased out of life. She said she got to see Ronald Reagan elected. It made her happy about something before she croaked. She put up with a lot. She gave me a good childhood before we came south.”

Our chat lapsed into silence. I wondered how someone with Sam’s background had evolved into the man I’d known for fifteen years, a little more. Career men I’d known in the service, the “lifers,” had tended to be refugees from rural America. For many, their military years had insulated them even farther from the mainstream. But here was a man whose thought patterns went beyond linear, a man who provided me week-to-week common sense, who liked to play devil’s advocate with consistent, clear thinking. The man who, long ago, had saved my life during a storm in the Gulf Stream, and who claimed to this day that I had saved his. He’d rarely discussed the past, and for damned sure never used it as a crutch.

Sam said, “So someone who mugged you is now dead.” “Must’ve been killed within two hours of attacking me.” “And his head appeared in my woman’s Jeep.”

I juggled the facts. “Someone’s sick game is pointing fingers at me.”

“And at Marnie and Butler, too,” said Sam. “Can we bank on the fact that you didn’t do anything like tell a witness or die sheriff or a detective that you wanted to find Bug?”

Oh, shit.

Sam read my forehead furrows. “What was your exact wording?”

“Trying to remember.”

“Who got to hear it?”

“Dexter Hayes, Junior.”

We were drawn to the sound of Captain Turk’s engine. Turk and Kaiser stood at the center console.
Flats Broke
popped quickly to a plane and began to circle toward us, avoiding shallows in the center basin.

Sam pointed to the northwest. “Look what he’s running from. We need to boogie. We’re going to get our asses kicked.” Four hundred feet above the water, under a high scattering of stratocumulus, a smudged-charcoal storm pushed southward at thirty-five or forty knots. A strip of white weather, like frosting on a gray countertop, loomed ten miles farther off. “These usually happen in late spring,” added Sam. ‘Time to go drink beer on the porch.”

Flats Broke
approached from the east Captain Turk slowed fifty yards off so his wake wash could dissipate, not pitch
Fancy Fool.
Philip Kaiser, with the thick neck and stocky build of an ex-jock, stood even with Turk’s five-ten and matched his muscular bulk. He showed only slight graying near his sideburns. I wondered if he’d given his hair store-bought help. He wore bleached Levi’s and ratty Topsider sneaks, a threadbare denim shirt. In the spooky light his skin had an olive tone. He’d let his hair go long, perhaps to mask encroaching baldness.

“Thanks for hanging off,” called Turk. “You didn’t miss much.”

“Bullshit,” yelled Sam. “I saw you hook and release two
fish in twenty minutes. Bet a hundred bucks, you’ll be right there in the morning.”

In spite of what Julie had said about Kaiser’s viewing me as a threat, he nodded to acknowledge me. “Don’t usually see you without your camera,” he said.

“Day off for everybody.” I thrust my arm toward the scenery around us.

“Half day for me.” He scowled. “I’ll take it. I understand you’ve got some old pictures of the Island City.”

“A few, boxed away.”

“Love to see ’em someday.” His face radiated patronage. “You’re going to work with my father-in-law?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“What’s he got you doing?”

Why wouldn’t Kaiser already know that? I shrugged as if I didn’t know. “That’s why I’m not sure.”

He said, “Watch yourself. He’s a crafty old coot.”

Odd that a man of his success and civic stature could feel threatened by his wife’s friends. People respected Philip Kaiser, enjoyed his company. He’d always been part of the in-crowd, tuned in to island humor, running off in groups to Miami Dolphins or Heat games, conversant in topics common to gatherings of bachelors, power brokers, the newly wedded. He’d rarely used foul language. He was reputed to be scrupulous in business dealings. Being Holloway’s son-in-law had put him in positions of favor. I’d heard that he had gone out of his way to be fair to associates, to include in sure-bet real estate deals friends who’d needed help.

Turk checked the sky. “First to the dock gets Mud Keys in the morning.”

Sam laughed. “Turk, you just lost a hundred bucks.”

The
Flats Broke
idled away from us, aimed across shallow water to the meandering channel, down-tilted its engine, accelerated to speed.

“Philip Kaiser is an odd one.” Sam twisted his ignition key. The motor popped and rumbled.

“I’m used to his shit. Anyone who knows Julie is the enemy.”

“He’s one of them? They never get it, do they? They spend years driving away competition, wind up driving away the spouse.”

“Or whuppin’ on the spouse,” I said.

“Maybe so. Being an ex-policeman, he’d’ve gotten away with it.”

I’d forgotten. Years ago Kaiser had been a cop. “What’re you talking?”

“Abuse cases. Except they don’t cover each other now like they used to. I guess a lot of them are second-generation law enforcement. They watched their mothers absorb rage. Or their personal attorneys have wised them up.”

The weather came quickly, with violent gusts but little rain. Under dark clouds the water became an ugly gray. Away from clouds, the sun reflected the bay as a mirror, directly in our faces with disorienting brilliance. Running with the wind in
Fancy Fool,
there were moments when the motor’s exhaust wafted about and we spoke at normal, closed-vehicle voice levels. Then buffeting would put us to silence, toss salt spray across the bare decks, make our eyes water behind our dark glasses. About the time we reached Garrison Bight, the strange dry squall passed. Straggling clouds, smoke puffs, moved southward, lifted a thousand feet. The water behind us became a milky pale green. The sun gained a new yellow tone, with more intensity. Sailboats at anchor between Fleming Key and Sigsbee nosed into the wind.

Sam idled toward the Hilton Haven peninsula to drop me off. “For the most part,” he said, “I’m normal. I vote. I don’t hoard old newspapers. I have never pawned my shoes to buy beer.”

“Your point is?”

“Getting to it.”

“Go direct,” I said. “My fatigue won’t allow layered communications.”

“You’re worried about two things. Violence and job ethics. You need the money, stop worrying about the job. Take it. Take the money. Worry about the violence, the connections, why you’re riding a tangent to it all. It’s come around to me, too; the package in Mamie’s Jeep. I told you I’d be a willing coconspirator. This is no time to ignore warnings.”

“They keep sneaking up on me.”

“We had a saying in-country, back then. When a battle’s inevitable, don’t wait for it to come to you. Take your fight to the field. You sometimes get to do it your way. Take the offensive.”

“If I dabble in the field, I might end up in jail.”

“What’d Mark Knopfler say?”

I’d heard this one before, on a Dire Straits album. “ ‘Sometimes you’re the windshield, and sometimes you’re the bug.’ You wanna shake six hands?”

“What’d Alejandro Escovedo say?”

That one I didn’t know. “He’s a singer?”

“Bunch of good albums. On one he said, ‘You feed a dog a bloody bone, he’s your friend for the rest of your life.’”

I stepped onto Wirthwein’s dock, peered around the side of his house to make sure the Kawasaki was still there. I said, “The longer you live, the more people you knew. We’re supposed to live longer than dogs.”

Sam shook his head. “Not in the Bloody Bone League.”

“Stay in touch. Any more tips for a man on the offensive?”

He pointed. “Remember the sign on the seawall.”

I looked.

LEAVE NO WAKE
.

I exited east onto Roosevelt from the Hilton Haven residential strip. Two sheriff’s department cruisers passed going west, one in each lane, a rolling roadblock. Deputy Fennerty, in the far car, didn’t look. Billy “No Jokes” Bohner, in the closer car, turned to scope me. I had last seen Bohner, an officious bully, six months earlier. I knew that turning his head was a major effort, not to be ignored. If Liska had put a
BOLO
on me, Billy would love to be the matchmaker. He’d loop my wrists with circulation-robbing restraints, escort me to his boss, urge me to hurry with the rubber stick. He was that sweet a guy.

A quarter-mile east I ducked left into the Hampton Inn. I found a parking slot in the sea of white Sebrings and green Mustang convertibles. With luck I’d dodge the flashers if Deputy Bohner chose to illuminate North Roosevelt. There was another reason to be there. With the standard glassed-in phone booth fading into the past, motel lobbies offered the best weather-sheltered, semiprivate coin phones in the Sunshine State.

I walked past the registration desk, put a lost look on my face so I’d look like I belonged there. The icy A/C ensured my shocked expression. I found two wall booths in a hallway with writing shelves, piped-in music, the noise of a housekeeping vacuum in the background. One phone
in use. A young man in khakis and a knit sports shirt. Next to him, an open briefcase full of white pill bottles, medical implements in plastic bags. Years ago they’d have been ups and downs, straight from the boat Dealers back then were brazen enough to spread out their wares in plain view. These days sales associates market the real thing: antidepressants for residents of paradise.

I checked home. Six messages. No pencil or paper.

First message: a hangup.

Sheriff Fred “Chicken Neck” Liska: “If you screw me over, you better plan on living out of the country, in poverty. Make it Haiti. That’s the only place I won’t go to beat your ass. Call me. Do I need to spell it for you?”

Spell “Haiti” or “screw”?

Donovan Cosgrove: “Alex, we’re hoping to work with you this morning. Please call or come by before eight-thirty. Mr. Holloway will be meeting with a man from the Ford dealership. He’ll have several vans to pick from. Also, we noticed you haven’t ordered supplies from Conch Photo. We assume you made other arrangements.”

Blew that one. Had Cosgrove left that message before or after his meeting with Butler Dunwoody?

Teresa: “My neck hurts from that pillow. My eyes hurt from when you stopped your car so fast The minute you get this, call and tell me why Dexter Hayes is treating me like dog shit.”

Dexter Hayes, Jr.: “A gentle guy like you, Mr. Rutledge. Your name came up this morning at the year’s first meeting of the Monroe County Violent Crimes Task Force. Do you have knowledge about violent crimes to share with me? If so, please call my office, my home, or my pager. You have my card. I’m in the book.”

Dexter hadn’t given me a card. Sheriff Liska was pivot man for the VCTF, no doubt had attended the meeting. He’d probably told about my midnight phone call. His turn to redefine our professional relationship. Or shit-can it.

Teresa: “It’s nine forty-five. The least you could do, with the wind out of the north, is lunch at Louie’s. Pay me back
for a rotten night’s sleep on a saggy mattress with no explanation.”

I didn’t need pencil and paper. I needed a new address, a new job, a new girlfriend, and a handful of
GET OUT OF JAIL FREE
cards. I sat in the motel lobby, in neutral territory, to think things through. I had no faith in my ability to remember details. A day ago Marnie had become part of the mess. Twelve hours ago I confirmed that I was a target. Four hours ago I learned that the cops wanted me, too. Liska had puzzle pieces two, four, and six. Dexter Hayes had three, five, and seven. I held the keystone, the tie-in of Bug Thorsby’s attack team to the mutilated corpse. If Hayes and Liska discovered the link, it would take fewer than five minutes for them to deduce my guilt. Even if I had an alibi. Even if the crime had yet to be defined. It would take them longer to decide which could claim me. Maybe they’d have me drawn and quartered—with a lawyer present—then divvy the severed parts.