Bone Island Mambo (32 page)

Hayes started to walk away. “Sounds like out of a movie.”

I tried it anyway. “Was he a loser?”

“Yep.”

“Druggie?” I said.

“Yep.”

“Close to his family?”

“Enough to jingle the purse. Year or two before he died, the idiot declared bankruptcy.”

“Close to his sisters?”

“No,” he said. “He embarrassed them, and vice versa.
They were yuppie, he was street. Julie once told me she got tired of waiting for him to grow up.”

“You ever go to law school?” I said.

He cocked an eye, silently questioned my having checked into his past. “I quit after eight months of that crap. Decided the weight I carried, my father’s reputation, was easier than facing an attorney in the mirror every morning. Know what I mean? I dropped out. I picked up enough undergraduate hours to certify myself for the police exam.”

“Put the arm on Carpona yet?”

“What’d the Treasure Salvors used to say? ‘Today’s the day.’”

“They said it for years,” I said.

Dexter stuck his little finger in his ear, wiggled it. “They found the gold.”

Chicken Neck Liska was in the last booth on Harpoon Harry’s east wall. He glanced up from his newspaper. “Another bacon and eggs down the toilet.”

“I can’t stay, thanks.” I sat opposite him. “What’s a typical murder count, per year, in the Lower Keys?”

“Two.” He lifted his coffee cup, sipped gingerly, as if it was boiling.

“The past four years, total?”

Liska overplayed the care with which he set down his cup. ‘Twelve.”

“The national rate on solved versus unsolved?”

He looked toward the kitchen door. “Six-, seven-to-one. Maybe better.”

“And . . .”

“Fifty-fifty. That answer your next question?” He finally faced me. “We got a flake doing life in an upstate jail, he wants to admit to two. That’ll help. Our stats on all other major crimes are lower than the national averages.”

I said, “You know things about the unsolveds that no one who’s not a cop knows, especially the press. Has the killer copied non-public details? Or could there be a bad cop somewhere?”

Sheriff Liska screwed up his face, looked at me oddly. I sensed the flicker of a distant lightbulb. He said, “Go the fuck away.”

“One more question. Any chance Jemison Thorsby’s a car thief?”

“You’re still hoping there’s a hot-vehicle ring on Stock Island.”

“Could be anywhere.”

“That’s right,” said Sheriff Liska. “Could be anytime, too. But not now. Go away.”

“Yep,” I said. “Gotta read some newspapers.”

I rode the bike down Margaret. The sun a gentle pastel, fresh sounds of birds, an odd absence of power tools. Morning people on foot, on bicycles. Everyone not jogging looked to be running errands, going to jobs. Morning people in Key West are different than night people. Or even noon people.

It wasn’t really Hayes who looked bad, I thought, with all the unsolved murders being copied. Dexter was a newcomer focused on adapting to the department, the city. He’s had no time to spend on old cases. It was Liska who’d left behind unfinished business. A reasonable man might suspect that the murderer had multiple purposes. In copying unsolved cases, someone was trying to drag Liska’s reputation in the dirt. And Liska didn’t care?

At the house, a message from Heidi Norquist: “Could you call me back, please, Alex? I want to see if you have information I don’t have.”

I hoped to hell I did.

I called Sam’s dock. A man at the weather bureau, Marnie, and I were the only people who knew the number. Sam picked up.

“Can I bum a ride up the Keys?”

“My client’s on the boat. I’m out of here,” he said. “I’ll leave the Bronco keys under the floor mat. What’s wrong with the Shelby?”

“It’s perfect. I’m talking your boat, to Summerland, after
dark. We need to know what Jemison Thorsby’s doing. The deputies aren’t interested.”

He waited a moment. “Why is it up to you?”

“I’m stringing beads of knowledge. Bug attacks me where a murder victim is later found. Bug’s body’s in a car that chases me. The second victim’s head shows up in Marine’s Jeep. I visit Jemison on Tuesday, and an hour later my motorcycle’s a cinder. Heidi’s car is stolen. Teresa’s car is stolen. On Sunday I saw Jemison driving a forklift on Stock Island, following a stolen car. All this overlap in names and victims, I want to finish the puzzle.”

“Knowledge is good,” said Sam. “This angler’s a full-day ride, but he’ll jump enough fish to quit early. We can go anytime.”

“Trailer?”

“Pain in the butt. The time it’d take to put a hitch on Mamie’s Jeep, I’d be halfway there. Lemme think.” The line went silent for a few seconds. “Stay by the phone,” he said. “Call you back in two minutes.”

I knew him well. I didn’t even go to the kitchen for a glass of OJ.

The phone rang ninety seconds later. “I’ll drop off my client at three,” said Sam. “Then I’ll load gear and take the backcountry to the east side of Cudjoe. Johnny Baker’s on Blue Gill Lane. I’ll stash the boat in his canal, Marnie’ll pick me up. They’ve still got her Jeep in impound. She borrowed a car from a woman she works with. We’ll go back tonight, start from there. You want us both to go ashore?”

“No. You’re already risking your boat. I can slip onto the beach, check out the dock, check out those sheds.”

“Once we leave Thorsby’s, we can’t go back to Baker’s. We might lead bad people to his house. We can weave our way through the bottom end of Kemp Channel, run back here full-tilt Ninefoot Shoal to Pelican Shoal is no more than a half hour.”

The phone rang. Please, don’t let it be Heidi.

I gave it the morning gruff: “Rutledge.”

I recognized Teresa; she inhaled before she said, “Hi.” The exasperation in her voice expressed a dozen emotions. Twelve shades of frustration.

“You okay?”

“I’m okay,” she said. A quivering voice. “We were the last people to see him alive.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But don’t repeat that at work.”

“Salesberry wants me at the county. They’ve arrested Donovan Cosgrove. He wants me to watch the sheriff’s media rep in action.”

“Arrest? Or just in for questions?”

“He threatened to kill one of Mercer’s tenants a couple of months back. Weird timing, but they arrested him for it forty minutes ago.”

“Perfect timing, but it’s weird policy,” I said.

“What’re you going to do?” said Teresa.

“Get out of here, away from distractions. Go read some old newspaper clippings. Maybe hide in the library.”

What had I said?
My house, my terms, and the rough parts lump by lump.
Great macho, but I hadn’t considered my evil telephone.

“Use my condo,” said Teresa. “I’ve got the line forwarding to my cell.”

“You are my dream woman.”

“Alex, you laugh when you dream.”

I rode my bike down Southard, thought about my trust in Sam Wheeler. He’d always clammed up when people on the docks or in bars began to spin tales of Southeast Asia. I knew he’d been in combat, been awarded a medal for action that required courage beyond imagination. He’d explained it once, without detail. He’d said that bravery resulted from planning and reflexes. And clear focus when the brain is overloaded.

Overload I could claim. Focus, no chance.

A simple question, phrased as a statement in 1989.

“One of my clients, a doctor from Savannah, wants his sailboat delivered this week to Bimini,” Sam had said. “I’m a motorboat guy. Sailboats, bow and stern “I’m okay, but nothing in the middle. Like Noah in that Cosby routine, asking God, ‘What’s a cubit?’ I need a man of your talents. “

“When?”

“Thinking we could leave tomorrow morning. WX-2 says three-foot chop, light southeast winds through Wednesday. Possible storm formation in the Gulf, likely to move northeast. We motor out of Key West Harbor, four miles due south. Then we shut down the iron genny, cruise to the Bahamas. We’ve got a dock spot at Brown’s and a room at Bimini Big Game.”

“No Compleat Angler?”

“Full. We’ll drink with Ossie in the bar. We’ll play the ring-and-hook game, go back to Big Game, wake up to scrambled eggs and grilled snapper. Milk it for a couple days, fly home on Chalk’s.”

I packed two pairs of shorts, spare underwear, four T-shirts, one pair of jeans, and my foul-weather jacket. I brought the ditty bag I’d prepared for sailing transits: sunblock, extra shoelaces, a referee’s whistle, an eyeglass-repair
kit for my shades, a “church key “-style can opener, single-edged razor blades, a corkscrew, two tubes of Turns, six stainless U-bolts in varying sizes, a rope weaver’s fid, a pair of needle-nose pliers, a packet of No-Doz, Visine, and floss. I’d strung the whistle on a thick strand of nylon. I wore it around my neck at sea. If I fell over the side, it’d be louder than my voice, take less energy than yelling for help.

The beamy, Luders-design Cheoy Lee 48 cutter ketch displaced fifteen tons. It probably had set its owner back the value of my house. We sailed from the Key West Redevelopment Agency Marina, the wharves of the old Sub Base with its huge bollards and pilings. Sam brought along his powerful portable radio—for backup
—
and a plastic bag full of sunblock and aloe gel. He brought less clothing and good reading:
Briarpatch,
a new one by Ross Thomas, and
The Neon Rain
by an author named Burke. He let me take the departure helm.

“We’ll take a running fix, line of sight, and confirm that the stream’s pushing us,” he ‘d said. “Then we ‘11 steer zero-five-five for twenty hours. By then we pick up the South Bimini beacon and keep heading south of the RDF bearing. Gun Cay, south of Bimini, has a ten-second white flasher, twenty-three-mile visibility. Worst thing, we go too far north, find Great Isaac, have to beat back against the current to make the slot between North and South Bimini.”

The storm from the Gulf of Mexico did not go northeast. It swept across the Everglades and hit us two-thirds of the way across the Stream. We had seen it coming. We’d checked Miami weather radio, secured our topside gear, swapped out the genoa for a storm jib, and dropped the mizzen. We wolfed down sandwiches and a couple of Cokes. We attempted a LORAN reading, to pinpoint our location. The signal became weaker as we moved east. We wouldn’t be doing much navigation during the weather. We’d have to estimate our speed and, factoring wind, current, and maneuvers, our overall direction.

The sky became dull, dark at first, then ugly, though we
stopped taking time to look. The wind picked up quickly, blew up to thirty-five or forty knots before the seas became rough. Storm-driven mist soaked us, worked inside our waterproof jackets. We were three hours out of Bimini. We had six hours of daylight ahead of us.

Sam went below to secure loose gear. I heard clatter, slamming cabinet doors. He shouted from below: “I’m not believing this.”

“Weather sneaks up all the time,” I called back “It happened to me on that Mariel trip nine years ago. Monster storm. We’ll do fine in this boat.”

“I don’t mean the weather,” he said. “I just broke my fucking ankle.”

I lashed the helm to hold a rough attempt at our course, went below to splint Sam’s lower leg. Two spatulas wrapped in dish towels, duct-taped to his ankle. He asked me to lash him into a berth adjacent to the radio and electrical control panels. He emphasized square knots, easily untied.

“You’re the sailor,” he said. “What do we do next?”

“If it gets hairy, we throw a sea anchor, shorten sail, and play the waves to save the boat.”

“Sounds good,” he said.

“So, let’s go to Bimini. I can taste that rum in the Angler.”

He sneered. “Don’t worry about land. Worry about saving the boat from ugly waves. It’s going to feel like the storm’ll never end. The boat’s in okay shape. We’ll make land eventually. Too many people mess up boats trying to make a harbor.”

Sam was right. My inclination had been rookie-stupid. Sam viewed the dilemma with a focus on survival. We knew that Bimini should not be entered during a strong west wind, especially in someone else’s boat.

He added: “I’ll be okay.”

Then the storm turned mean.

Two months earlier I’d read Joshua Slocum’s
Sailing Alone Around the World,
the story of his 1895-1898 voyage
aboard his sloop
Spray.
No crew, no radio, no modern equipment, navigating treacherous latitudes. Each time I thought waves would pound our Cheoy Lee to pieces or rip the rudder, or the wind would knock us down, split the mast, I put myself aboard
Spray,
in forty-foot waves for hours, then days. A man had survived worse, in tougher times, for weeks on end.

The waves began to show what Slocum had called white teeth. I allowed the craft to head up, luff into the wind, then took a final reef in the main. I thought at one point that bare poles would give us controllable headway. I threw a sea anchor, tried to approximate our planned course, but played the waves to save the boat. Fierce wind bellowed, the hull shivered and pounded into compound waves that I fought to keep ahead of midships. I envisioned cracks in the fiberglass, shorted-out bilge pumps, a snapped bow sprit. I knew that each shudder of the keel sent shock waves into Sam’s splintered anklebone. Sam had been correct about feeling that the storm never would end.

Sam called from below: “Problems?” It was reassuring to hear his voice.

Yes, I thought. The constant taste of sea water in my mouth. I had to shout over the wind roar: “No beer!”

Sam became mailman. He delivered gifts to the cockpit. He’d crack the cabin hatch, flip out items for comfort and safety. The first of several cans of beer rolled toward me, bounced around, fizzed on opening. Then candy bars. And, sure as hell, music on the exterior speakers. A new Little Feat album—without Lowell George—but hot.

Three times I heard the boat’s generator kick in. I couldn’t imagine why Sam needed it; radar wouldn’t tell us much with the seas tossing. Sam knew as well as I did that running an engine is dangerous when the boat’s heeling to one side. Oil flows to the sump’s low side and doesn’t circulate properly.