Choke (6 page)

The black-and-white had its lights going, and Daryl steered the car into the lane ahead of it.

Tommy got out. They were at a point where a number of houseboats were moored in the channel that separated Key West from Stock Island. The Mercedes had crashed through a wooden barrier and come to rest balanced neatly on the edge of the highway. Another foot or two and it would have gone into the channel. Harry Carras was leaning against the black-and-white, looking shaken, giving a statement to a uniformed cop.

Tommy hung back until their talk was over, then approached, flashing his badge. “Afternoon, sir,” he said to Carras. “You all right?”

“I think so,” Carras replied.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Carras said. “I was just driving along, and I braked for the curve and nothing happened. The pedal went right to the floor. The barrier stopped me, I guess.”

“You were lucky,” Tommy said. “A little further and we would have been diving for you.”

“I guess I am at that,” Carras said. “Is my car drivable, do you think?”

“Not without brakes,” Tommy replied. “Officer, will you give the gentleman a ride home, and we’ll wait for the tow truck.”

“Sure,” the cop said. “Mr. Carras, do you want to go to the emergency room and have them take a look at you?”

“No, no, I’m all right,” Carras said. “The airbag worked.” He got into the patrol car and was driven away.

Tommy looked at the car and smiled.

The tow truck unhitched the Mercedes just as Daryl approached with a mechanic in tow. “Tommy, this is Mark, who does all our work. Mark, Tommy.”

Tommy shook the man’s hand. “Mark, the brakes on this car went, and it nearly ended up in the drink. Could you give it a quick once-over and see if you can figure out what went wrong?”

“Sure,” Mark said.

While Mark rummaged around under the hood and under the car, Tommy took the opportunity to go over the rest of the car.

“Don’t we need a search warrant or something?” Daryl asked.

“What for? We’re just trying to find out what’s wrong with a citizen’s car,” he said, riffling the glove compartment. “Here’s the registration. Harry Carras on Dey Street; that much we know.” He unfolded another sheet of paper.

“What’s that?” Daryl asked.

“Looks like a maintenance bill from something called Island City Air Service. What’s that?”

“FBO out at the airport,” Daryl replied.

“FB what?”

“Fixed Base Operator. Sounds like Mr. Carras owns an airplane.”

“You know anybody at this place?”

“I know a guy who’s a mechanic. We went to high school together.”

Tommy opened the trunk of their patrol car and extracted a fingerprint kit. He walked around to the driver’s-side door and peered at the handle. “Maybe we’ll go talk to your friend just as soon as I lift a print or two.”

“Uh-oh,” Mark said from under the car.

“What?” Tommy asked.

Mark rolled out from under the car on his creeper, a length of aluminum tubing in his hand. “Here’s the problem,” he said, standing up and holding it out for Tommy and Daryl to see.

“I don’t see anything,” Tommy said.

“Right here; not much more than a pinprick; maybe a little bigger than a pin, like the tip of an icepick.”

“What kind of tubing is this?” Tommy asked.

“Hydraulic,” Daryl said. “Looks like somebody tapped into Mr. Carras’s brake line.”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Just a little hole. It would leak slowly while the car was parked, but when he was driving, every time he put on the brakes, some fluid would squirt out under pressure. Wouldn’t take long to empty the hydraulic fluid reservoir.”

“Looks like somebody’s trying to make Mr. Carras dead,” Daryl said.

“Looks like,” Tommy agreed. “Any way this could have happened accidentally?” he asked Mark.

“Not likely,” Mark said. “I think it would have to be deliberate.”

“Let me lift a print or two, and we’ll go back to the station,” Tommy said to Daryl.

The two detectives stood and watched the fax machine spit out the document. Tommy picked it up and read it while Daryl looked over his shoulder.

“No fingerprint record with the FBI,” Tommy said.

“That means he’s never been arrested, huh?” Daryl asked.

“Or been in the army or done anything else that would get him fingerprinted,” Tommy said.

“Another blank, then, like the credit report?”

“Another blank,” Tommy said. “Let’s go out to the airport.”

They were buzzed through the security gate and Daryl drove the car along the ramp, past dozens of parked aircraft, toward the maintenance hangars. They parked, got out of the car, and approached an airplane being worked on by a young man.

“Hey, Buddy,” Daryl said, and the two exchanged some sort of teenage handshake.

Tommy stuck out his hand. “So you’re Buddy, huh? Daryl says you’re the best airplane mechanic around.”

“How the hell would he know?” Buddy said, laughing.

“Hey, Buddy, need a favor,” Daryl said. “You know a guy named Harry Carras?”

“Yeah, he keeps an airplane here, a Piper Malibu Mirage.”

“What’s that?” Tommy asked. “I don’t know a thing about airplanes.”

“It’s about the biggest and best piston single on the market,” Buddy replied. “Twin turbocharged and inter-cooled, does about two hundred and twenty-five knots at altitude. We change the oil and do little things to it. He seems to get his major work done on the mainland, probably at Vero Beach; there’s a big Piper shop up there, right next door to the factory.”

“Where’s the airplane?” Tommy asked.

“In a T-hangar,” Buddy said. “We only got a few, but Carras has one.”

“Locked?” Tommy asked.

“Yep.”

Daryl spoke up. “Buddy, I need a favor; can we have a look inside the airplane?”

Buddy looked around. “My boss has gone to town for a few minutes; I guess I can manage that, if you keep it to yourself.”

“Right on,” Daryl said.

Buddy went to a key safe and rummaged around, then came back with a key ring. “It’s the second T-hangar along there,” he said, pointing the way. “Maybe I better open the door for you; it’s tricky.”

The two detectives followed the mechanic and waited while he lifted the hangar door.

“Pretty,” Tommy said.

“Yeah,” Buddy replied. “It’s a slick bird, all right. Wish I had one.”

They followed him into the hangar and watched as he unlocked and opened the door. It was in two parts, upper and lower, and the lower half became steps.

Tommy climbed inside the airplane and went forward to the cockpit. Myriad dials stared back at him. The airplane smelled of new leather. He found a couple of little cabinets behind the pilot’s seat that contained a cooler and a drawer full of aeronautical charts. Tommy went aft and looked over the rear seats into a luggage compartment. At the rear of the compartment, attached to the aft bulkhead, was a clear plastic envelope containing some documents. He opened the envelope and extracted half a dozen sheets of paper.

“What’s that?” Daryl asked.

“Let’s see—certificate of registration, airworthiness certificate, radio license. It’s registered to Sky Blue, Inc.” He put the documents back into the envelope and replaced it, then climbed out of the airplane.

“Buddy, thanks, we appreciate it,” he said to the mechanic.

Daryl shook the man’s hand, and they got back into the car. “So, what does that do for us?” he asked.

“We’ll check out the corporation, see who the officers and the board of directors are,” Tommy replied. “Then maybe we’ll go see Mr. Harry Carras.”

T
ommy rang the bell and waited outside the screen door. The front door was open, and he heard a loud splash from the side garden. Sky Blue, Inc., had turned out to be a Florida corporation; the president was Carras and his wife was secretary and treasurer. He turned to Daryl. “While we talk, sort of look around and see if you can see anything that might say something about who he is.”

“Like a college diploma?” Daryl asked.

“Like that.” Tommy rang the bell again. As he did, he saw Carras’s wife enter the house through a side door at the other end of the ground-floor hallway. He got just a glimpse of her wet, naked body before she could wrap the light robe around herself.

“Hello,” she said, stopping on the other side of the screen door.

“Mrs. Carras?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Detective Sculley of the Key West Police Department; this is Detective Haynes. Could we speak with your husband for a minute?”

“Of course,” she replied, opening the door. “He’s out at the pool; you two go on upstairs to the living room, and I’ll get him.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Tommy replied. He led the way up the stairs, emerging into a large, airy room. “Okay, Daryl, let’s see what we can find before Carras gets here.”

The two detectives began walking around the room. Tommy thought it was nicely furnished, but not quite complete. There were corners that could use a chair, and there were no curtains in place. He found some snapshots of Carras and his wife on a desk—all of them appeared to have been taken in or around Key West, one of them on a large motor yacht that reminded him of something, he couldn’t remember what. “Anybody coming?” he asked Daryl, who was near a window on the pool side of the house.

Daryl looked out the window. “You’ve got thirty seconds,” he said.

Tommy opened the middle desk drawer and found a checkbook from the First State Bank, a local outfit. There was a balance of $81,000, and, he saw as he flipped through the ledger, the checks had been written mostly for household expenses.

“Fifteen seconds,” Daryl whispered loudly.

Tommy continued to flip through pages of the check ledger until he heard a footstep on the stairs. He closed the drawer and looked at Daryl, who seemed lost in a leatherbound book from a shelf across the room. Daryl put the book down just as Carras reached the top of the stairs. The man was dressed in a robe and was drying his thick white hair with a towel.

“Oh, hello,” Carras said. “You were at the scene of my accident.”

“Yes, sir,” Tommy replied. “I didn’t introduce myself at the time. I’m Detective Sculley and this is my partner, Detective Haynes.”

Carras shook both their hands. “You’re pretty young for a detective, aren’t you?” he said to Daryl.

“Yes, sir, I guess I am,” Daryl replied pleasantly.

“Won’t you gentlemen have a seat,” Carras said. “Can I get you something to drink?”

Both detectives declined.

“How can I help you, then?” Carras asked, sitting on one of the matching sofas while the detectives sat opposite him.

“I just wanted to let you know that we found out what was wrong with your car,” Tommy said.

“Good,” Carras replied. “It’s still on warranty.”

“There’s no warranty for this, I’m afraid; there was a hole in your brake line,” Tommy said. “All the fluid had drained out, and I’m afraid the police mechanic thinks someone deliberately punctured the line.” He looked up to see Mrs. Carras at the top of the stairs. Her robe was wet, and he could see the outline of her nipples against the thin fabric. She came and sat next to her husband.

Carras stared at Tommy. “Do you mean that you think someone
sabotaged
my car?”

“It looks that way, sir. I’d like to ask you some questions, if I may.”

“But who would have done such a thing?” Carras asked.

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Tommy replied. “How long have you been in Key West, Mr. Carras?”

“About seven months, I guess.”

“Where did you live before?”

“New York.”

“And what sort of work do you do, sir?”

“I’m retired, mostly.”

“Retired from what?”

“Oh, I did a bit of this and that. I guess you could call me an entrepreneur.”

“I see. And what sort of businesses were you involved in?”

“Varied investments; real estate, commodities, the stock market, that sort of thing.”

“You said mostly retired; what business are you currently involved in?”

“I have some real estate deals going around South Florida; the West Coast, mainly. Nothing I have to pay a lot of attention to.”

“Are any of your investments in anything to do with gambling? Horse racing, casinos, hotels, that sort of thing?”

“No.”

“Are you involved in any sort of business where some of the other investors might have what might be thought of as shady backgrounds?”

“Good lord, no! All my partners are pillars of the community, I assure you.”

“Do you have any enemies, Mr. Carras?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you think there might be someone in your past, a business partner, for instance, who might feel that he got the short end of some deal?”

“Certainly not. Everyone who’s ever been in business with me has done very well for himself, I assure you.”

“Have you had any sort of disagreement or altercation with anyone locally in Key West?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Have you ever sued anyone, or been sued?”

“Locally?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No.”

“How about elsewhere?”

“The only lawsuit I’ve ever been involved in was more than twenty years ago, and I lost. It was quite expensive, and no one on the other side would have any reason to hold a grudge.”

“Mrs. Carras, where are you from, originally?” Tommy asked.

“I’m from California.”

“Where in California?”

“San Diego.”

“Where did you meet your husband?”

“We met in Las Vegas, where I was working for a hotel.”

“And what took you to Las Vegas, Mr. Carras?”

“I was on a golfing vacation; that, and a little light gambling.”

“How much did you lose?”

“I won a couple of thousand dollars, as a matter of fact.”

“Do you gamble a lot?” “Rarely.”

“Do you have any debts?”

“Nothing more than thirty days old,” Carras replied. “I don’t like to owe money.”

“Mrs. Carras, do you know anyone who might wish your husband ill?”

“No, I don’t. Harry is very well liked by everyone who knows him.”

“Well,” Tommy said, rising. “Looks like we’re at a dead end.”