Hemingway's Ghost (2 page)

“What’s that?” Champ said.

Papa grinned his words. “One of us knew about it.”

The rest of them grew still as they realized the thought did carry some weight, even though it wasn’t completely logical. For instance, if whoever hid the letter was killing off the rest of them, why reveal the hiding place? Besides, the one-page letter to a mistress, signed by the Man himself, was a thrilling find possibly worth a few grand on the black market, but hardly worth murder.

Idiots.

Bumby took a deep breath. “That’s ridiculous. The four of us were drinking the night Max was killed.”

“Yeah,” Papa said, “except you left early, and the rest of us closed it down.”

“I had to open the restaurant the next morning. I went straight to bed.”

“Bumby didn’t kill anyone,” Ernie said, although his voice didn’t drip with conviction. “Let’s do what we came to do and talk about this later. So who’s first?”

“Let’s start how we did the last time,” Champ said, then lowered his voice to a somber drone. “Is anyone there?”

They all stilled, making sure not to influence the planchette, then waited in uneasy silence until the planchette made a skittish progression to the word in capital letters in the top right corner. The hairs rose on the backs of their necks.

-YES-

Champ swallowed. “Who are you?”

-ME-

“Stupid,” Papa said to Champ, then, “Are you Churchill?”

-NO-

“Mother Teresa?”

-NO-

“John Updike?”

-NO-

“Ernest Miller Hemingway?”

-YES-

Papa hesitated, and the other three glanced nervously around the dusty room, as if waiting for someone to jump out of hiding.

But there was no one there.

Bumby said, “What year is this?”

-1961-

“The year he died,” Ernie murmured. “For sure it’s him again.”

“What’d you do last night?” Bumby said, and Champ looked at him sideways.

-GOT TIGHT ON ABSINTHE-

“Did he drink absinthe?” Champ whispered, as if spirits could only hear loud voices.

“Of course he did,” Papa said. “He drank everything.”

Bumby leaned forward while maintaining the lightest of pressure on the planchette. “Do you know who this is?”

-PAULINE-

“Do you know where you are?”

For the first time, the planchette failed to go to a letter or a word. Instead it moved in a slow, jerky circle, stopping and then starting on various letters, as if unsure of what to do.

Bumby gave the Ouija Board a sad, pitying look. “He’s quite mad, isn’t he? Poor guy doesn’t even know he’s dead.”

A greedy light illuminated Ernie’s eyes, and he spoke in a high-pitched voice. “Ernest, do you remember those secret pages you told me about? Those poems you wrote for me? I’ve forgotten where they are. Can you tell me so I can make sure they’re safe?”

-CORNER BRICK-

Good lord, the poor sap wouldn’t want Pauline to find those!

“No, not the letter. The
other
pages.”

There was a pause, and then-

—TOLSTOY-

The four of them looked at each other in confusion, and then Bumby’s eyes widened. He said, “It’s still there?”

-YES-

Bumby’s face quivered with excitement, and then softened. “Ernest?”

-YES-

“I love you.”

Before they got a response Bumby sprang to his feet as fast as a round and tired fifty year old man can spring, and the others followed suit. Champ gathered the Ouija Board.

“Tolstoy?” Ernie said. “What the hell’s he mean by that?”

Papa snorted. “Nothing, you half-wit. Surely he can’t think it’s 1961 and he’s with Pauline. I guess one of our subconscious screwed that one up.”

“It’s him all right,” Bumby said. “He’s just confused.”

“It’s not him.”

“We’re about to find out once and for all,” Bumby said.

“How’s that?”

“Because I know where Tolstoy is.”

They followed Bumby up the stairs and into the humid night air. He led them down the garden path around the back of the house, then veered off to the right once they passed the pool house. The caretaker’s house was now visible to their right, a grim patch of blighted architecture hovering on the corner of the property.

Papa leered at Bumby. “I love you? You’re creeping me out with that shit.”

“He thought we were Pauline, and I was giving him some peace. I think he deserves it.”

“That’s sure not what it sounded like.”

Bumby cut onto a smaller path that wound through dense vegetation. They shrank from the spider webs strewn between the palms and banana trees. After a short ways the path opened onto a small clearing filled with miniature headstones and a number of carved stone blocks set into the ground. The stones bore the names of famous people: Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, Errol Flynn.

“The cat graveyard?” Ernie said. “There’s no Tolstoy here.”

“This graveyard was built after his death,” Papa said. “So it can’t be him.”

Bumby grinned, then plunged into the foliage, brushing aside fronds and vines, the others on his heels. “The graveyard was built after he died, but Tolstoy was his cat—he revered Tolstoy for his descriptions of war—and it’s a little known fact that Tolstoy was the first cat buried on the property, and that he was buried
by Hemingway himself
.”

Champ snapped his fingers. “Yeah, I remember reading that in one of the bios.”

Ten feet behind the cat cemetery, almost obscured by the vegetation, was a rectangular stone set into the ground. Bumby kicked away the vines and weeds and bent down.

He read aloud. “Here lies Tolstoi, our beloved friend and ally.”

Ernie and Champ looked shocked, and Ernie reached down and pried the stone loose. Packed earth lay beneath. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured.

Bumby said, “It’s clear, gentleman, that this grave hasn’t been disturbed in quite some time.” He looked upwards, at the night sky that was already tinged with pink light. Lester would be up soon, and the first worshippers were probably already drooling at the gates. “We’ll come back tomorrow night with a shovel, and I think it’s safe to say that if we find something, we can know for sure who led us to it.”

Ernie and Champ nodded, and Papa crossed his arms and said nothing.

The next day they lost Champ.

A fishermen found him face up in the harbor, his poor lifeless head bumping gently against the concrete wall next to Monty’s Seafood Palace. The fisherman screamed, and then a group of early-bird tourists from Utah rushed over and screamed, the people across the street in Key Lime Nirvana screamed, and then it was business as usual on the block.

Papa heard the news first. He was down the street in Mallory Square, preening for the morning crowd, and when he heard the screams he felt a cold prickle of fear. He gathered up his tips and went down to the harbor to see what the fuss was about. His face went white when he saw the police gathered around poor Champ, and he called Bumby and Ernie and told them to meet him right goddamn now at the pastry place on Duval.

Papa was shoving down his second apple cinnamon croissant when Ernie and Bumby joined him at the patio table, both as pale as he had been. Ernie’s eyes were red and he was about to lose it, which the Man most certainly would have frowned upon in public.

Papa looked straight at Bumby. He didn’t really think Bumby had done it, or Papa wouldn’t have been sitting there, but it was a good opportunity to act tough and put Bumby in his place. “So where’d you go after we split last night?”

Bumby’s mouth dropped. “That’s all you have to say, you Neanderthal? One of my closest friends was just murdered and you ask me where I was?”

Papa guffawed. “Closest friends. He thought you were a lily-livered writer who didn’t know how to steer a boat.”

“Shut up, Papa. Not now.”

“So where were you?”

“None of your damned business. If you don’t trust me then why don’t you go to the police?”

Papa cocked his head as he chewed. “Maybe we all should. Together.”

“Fine by me.”

Ernie said, “You don’t think
he’s
doing it?”

“Who?”

Ernie looked nervously around the patio, which had begun to fill with patrons. He lowered his voice. “You know who. Because we disturbed him.”

Papa stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and turned back to Bumby. “What are the possible motives for these murders? By my count we have competition-”

“Competition?”

“For the Head Hemingway.”

“Then I suppose that makes you suspect numero uno.”

Papa chuckled. “Cheap shot. If it was me I’d have done it a long time ago.”

“Maybe you came in last place at the finals one too many times. Maybe a herd of tourists left you standing with your dick in your hand in Mallory Square and came to one of us one too many times.” Bumby leaned in. “Maybe you finally snapped, Papa. Maybe your deeds finally matched your tough words.”

“You’re lucky I don’t pound your flabby ass right here. We’ll see how many adoring fans you get after I turn your charming red alcoholic face into a purple mess.” He tried to stare Bumby down, but Bumby wasn’t even looking at him anymore.

“Jealousy,” Bumby said as he watched the early shoppers whisk down Duval, “is one motive, or maybe someone doesn’t want us poking around the old house. Maybe there’s something there someone doesn’t want us to find.”

The greed dripped from Papa’s words. “Maybe there really are lost pages, or even a new book. Can you imagine? It’d be worth
millions
.”

“Even assuming there is one, which is impossible,” Bumby said, “who would know about it and keep it secret?”

“Maybe it’s that half-wit caretaker.”

“He’s creepy enough, but why give us access in the first place?”

“Yeah, it don’t make sense.” Papa snapped his fingers. “What about that wealthy douchebag from France? The one who always pays us to do his birthday?”

“Jean-Paul? In the huge house a few doors down? He is one of the biggest donors to the museum.”

“And,” Papa said with a flash of insight, “if there’s something valuable in there, he probably wants to keep it for himself. Probably goes in there at night and wanks it while he looks at it.”

“Maybe he pays off the caretaker too. It could make sense—maybe he was in there the same night we were, and saw what we were doing.”

Ernie started to weep quietly, and Bumby put his hand over Ernie’s. “God, Ernie, I’m sorry. We’ve been acting like a bunch of horses’ asses.” He pulled out a flask and three tumblers, poured everyone a shot, and held up his glass. “To Champ, a good man, a great fisherman, and an even better Hemingway. May his soul rest in peace above the waters and pages he loved so dear.”

“Here here,” Ernie said, and even Papa felt empty.

They clinked glasses, downed their shots and sat in silence for the rest of the morning.

For lunch they had lobster rolls at Blue Heaven, an eclectic little spot where the Man used to referee boxing matches. They smacked their fat lips at the delicious food, had another couple of drinks to work up their courage, and piled into Papa’s rusty golf cart for the ride to the police station.

They parked and crossed Roosevelt, the Atlantic Ocean hovering in the background, palms rustling, a rare overcast sky the only blemish. They bunched together as they walked inside the station, not wanting to be singled out, a product of living on the outskirts of society.

The station was full of the usual drunks and deadbeats who stuffed the town like a rotten Thanksgiving turkey. They came to Key West in droves, those who couldn’t make it anywhere else and then pretended they were living it up in paradise, whooping and hollering down the packaged edginess of Duval and eking out a pathetic existence in the rat-infested dives and trailer parks outside Old Town.

The Hemingways grimaced as the cops stopped working to watch them, wondering who ordered the practical joke. Papa strode to the front desk and slapped his beefy forearms down. “We need to speak to a detective.”

The bald cop behind the desk looked up from his papers and pushed his glasses higher up on his Roman nose. “What’s that, pops?”

“I said we need to talk to a detective.”

“About what?”

“About the
murders
.”

The cop’s eyebrows rose and he picked up a phone. “Sarge, you’ve got some…people…in here say they want to talk about the murders.”

The cop nodded at the phone, hung up and then led them down a hallway to a tiny glass-walled office overlooking the ocean. The plate on the door read “Sergeant Cohn.” The cop opened the door and they filed inside.

Sergeant Cohn was an average-sized man with a round face and droopy eyes that gave him a hangdog look. He had sandy hair and sunspots on his forehead, and looked more like a dentist with a golfing habit than a cop.

Papa seemed to gain courage from Sergeant Cohn’s bland appearance. “We want to know why more isn’t being done—”

“Sit down,” Sergeant Cohn said.

They sat.

“I imagine you’re some of the most nervous people in town right now,” he said. His voice, though quiet, possessed an assumption of control that was far more intimidating than bluster. “We’re not going to discuss my job and how I’m doing it. All three of you were on my short list of people to see today, so I’m glad you came. Now, do any of you have anything to tell me about this investigation?”

They remained silent, and he smiled a most non-dentist smile. “If you do, I suggest you tell me right now, because I
will
find out.”

Papa wanted to blurt out that Bumby had no alibi, but he could hardly lead the Sergeant down that path.

“Nah,” Papa said, with a poor attempt at humility. “We’re afraid we’re next on the list, and wanted to know if you knew anything we should know about.”

Sergeant Cohn looked at them in turn, holding his gaze on each one until they looked away. “I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the Hemingway look-alike contest at the end of this month? The one with the five thousand dollar prize?” He looked at Papa, and cocked his head towards Bumby. “The one I believe your friend here has won three years in a row?”