Key West Connection (18 page)

So, reluctantly, Stormin' Norman had driven me to the naval hospital. He made all the arrangements: private room, military doctors and nurses; people with high security clearance. They worked to make me live while perpetrating news of my death.

And after a few days, and after a huge bank of tests, the doctors, shaking their heads in curious disbelief, agreed that I was fit to go.

“So where are you going to stay?” Fizer asked as he watched me dress.

“I've got some friends on Cow Key. Good people. Man and a wife and a teenage daughter. I think they'll help me out. And I can trust them.”

Stormin' Norman cleared his throat and toyed with his wedding band nervously.

“Like I said, Dusky, you did a good job for us. Damn good job. That caretaker's finding the drugged dogs wasn't your fault. It was a difficult mission, and you had to play the odds.”

I pulled a clean black Key West Conchs T-shirt tenderly over my head and tucked it in. “Wait a minute, Norm. You're not about to say what I think you're going to say?”

He motioned for me to sit down. “What I'm getting at is this. They found all but one of your bugs. Putting one in the sauna bath was a real stroke of genius, by the way. We've got all the information we need. The Senator is going to spread the word among his political buddies that, on Friday night, he's going on a big fishing trip to the Dry Tortugas. In that big two-hundred-thousand-dollar sportfisherman of his. Only he's not going to make it. The boat's going to burn and sink.”

Norm smiled. “You catch on quick. He's going to rig his own death. Kill some of his own people, dress one to look like him, then take a seaplane to some as yet undisclosed South American country. He knows we're on to him.”

“So what's your move?”

“On Thursday we're going to arrest our own Mr. Lenze. We've got him good: falsified reports, et cetera. And we're going to put him away for a long, long time.”

“And what about the Senator and Ellsworth?”

Fizer cleared his throat. “The Senator needs more rope yet. We're talking about an extremely powerful man here, Dusky. We're going to let him go to South America. We're going to let him hang himself. And then we'll go after extradition papers. We'll use all the political clout the American government has.”

“Which isn't all that much, thanks to a certain wishy-washy Pres—”

“I
know
that, Dusky! Goddammit, don't you have any faith in me after Cambodia? I'm not one of their flunkies. I have the job I have because I'm good at it. Damn good at it. I'm telling you we'll get him. And we will. It may take a year or two.”

“And what about Ellsworth?”

Stormin' Norman sighed a heavy sigh. One more military man who, I could tell, hated the political bureaucracy as much as I. But he dealt with it; dealt with it because that was the way it had to be done. And if he didn't do it . . . well, America, land of the free, home of the brave, and harbor of the bureaucratic noblemen; the political upper class that rules us and uses our money as if we were the fools of serfdom. And in many ways, we are fools: fools to let them; to let them ravage our forests and rivers, arm and arm with big business; fools to let them condemn to slavery the poor blacks and Indians and Hispanics through their plush welfare programs which would rob any race, any people, of the most inalienable of all rights—human initiative.

“We've got to let Ellsworth go, too, Dusky. He'll be on the boat.”

“He killed my wife, my kids, my best friend, goddammit!”

“He's the rope, Dusky. He's the rope that's going to hang the Senator. And even if we tried to arrest him, we probably couldn't make it stick. Attempted murder—maybe. If you got the right judge, the right jury, the right lawyer. But that's small potatoes.”

I rubbed my face with my hands. I wiggled my wrist. It was feeling better. A deep cut, down to the bone, but I could still use it, once the stitches were out. I wondered what had happened to Sammy. Dead, probably.

“So you're telling me that I'm out of the picture, right, Norman?”

“In your present physical condition? Yes.”

“I feel fine!”

“And you look like hell. Don't feed me that ‘I feel fine' crap. You're not fit, Dusky. The gang-war ploy is out. I'm not going to be responsible for your death.”

“You won't have to.”

He looked at me in open appraisal. “We won't allow a slaughter, Dusky. Good people or bad, we won't allow it. If you were fit, we would want certain things destroyed. A boat or two, part of the house—just enough chaos to force them into trying to rescue the important papers, the big money stash—the stuff we need to find to nail them in court.”

“And if I was fit, and if I did try it and a few people got in my way, then what?”

Fizer shook his head wearily. “I can't believe I'm going along with this conversation.”

“But what if?”

“
If
you tried it—which you won't because I can't allow it—if you tried it, it would be strictly hands off the Senator. A couple of local drug runners get killed, and it barely makes the inside page of the Miami
Herald
. But if a Senator gets killed in a druggang war, the world press will come here on the run. Big federal investigation, Senate hearings—and we don't need that kind of publicity. There's been too much of it as it is.”

“Okay, Norm, I'm too sick for the mission. Case closed, okay?”

He snorted sarcastically. “Right. Sure, MacMorgan.” And then he allowed a narrow smile to cross his face. “Do you think you're too sick to give me a full report?”

So I told him all about Cuda Key. I told him about the layout of the island, the layout of the house, and I told him about the woman, Bimini—minus a few of the more private details.

“She really did save my life, Norm. And she helped me effect my escape. She's trapped there. Kind of a well-paid prisoner. So if you do close in on them, go easy on her. I owe her a lot.”

Fizer snickered. “Why is it all the dames go for you, MacMorgan? God, even over in Nam.”

“Must be my boyish charm,” I said. Fizer caught the sourness in my voice.

“Sorry, Dusky. I was out of line there. She was some woman, your wife. I'm sorry.”

By the time I had finished my report, answering and reanswering Fizer's questions, we were at my friend Hervey Yarbrough's house on Cow Key. A little plank-and-tin shanty at the water's edge, yard cluttered with old boat hulls and crab traps; the typical household retreat of the native Floridian all caught in the sweep of headlights.

Slowly I climbed out of the car and looked back in. “Good luck, Norm. I hope you get them all. And if you can, smack that bastard Lenze for me.”

I expected the familiar chuckle, but it never came. In the soft glow of the car's dome light, I saw an honest concern in the dark, tough eyes of my friend.

“And good luck to you, Captain MacMorgan. I hope we can work together again sometime.”

“We will, Norm. We will.”

As the car roared away down the dirt-and-shell road, Hervey's big Chesapeake Bay retriever came charging out at me. I remembered what the caretaker on Cuda Key had said about Chesapeakes and I laughed softly—but not before first calling the dog's name out to let him know that I was a friend. He trotted up fearlessly, short curl of hair bristling, sniffed me, recognized me, then trotted heavily away, wonderfully arrogant. I might be a friend of the family, but I was no friend of his. He would tolerate my presence, but I should expect no tail-wagging foolishness from him. Strictly a one-family dog, to the death.

At the Chesapeake's warning, lights in the Yarbrough residence started blinking on. The front screen door swung open, and I could see Hervey's bulky silhouette, shotgun in his hand, trying to peer through the darkness.

“Whoever's out there better have a dang good excuse!”

“It's me, Hervey. Dusky MacMorgan.”

Hervey took two steps backward, sort of sagged, and dropped the gun. “Great God a'mighty . . . is that really you, Dusky?”

I walked toward the house. “Yeah, it's me, Hervey. What in the world is wrong with you?”

I could see his face by that time. His eyes were wide and round as if he were about to have a heart attack.

“Hey, Hervey! What's the matter?”

He studied me for a moment. “You
are
alive! You ain't no ghost!” He backed away and finally plopped down in an old chair. And then he started laughing. Laughing like a maniac; laughing until the tears rolled. Mrs. Yarbrough and their teenage daughter were up by that time. They looked at Hervey, then looked at me, and then they started roaring too.

“What in the world is going on here?” I demanded. “I just stopped in to ask—”

“We thought you was dead!” the woman howled, her shoulders and heavy breasts shaking beneath her nightgown. “The ol' man there thought you was a
ghost
!”

I started to ask for an explanation, but before I could, the daughter, shy in her soft blue nightshirt, brought me the front page of a newspaper. It was the Key West
Citizen
.

“Charter Captain Missing, Now Presumed Dead.”

The story which followed quoted unnamed federal authorities, detailed my life in Key West, mentioned the recent deaths of Janet and Ernest and Honor.

So that was it. A plant. A newspaper plant from one Stormin' Norman Fizer. He had known what I was going to do all along. His pleas for me to give up the mission, to turn it back over to them, had all been a ruse. He wanted me to make the decision, and he wanted me to make it on my own—but he was obviously planning on me to go ahead with it.

I too started to chuckle. And then laugh. And then roar, in long sweeping bursts. It felt good to be with that family, in the warm confines of a solid home base, laughing among friends. It was the first time I had laughed in a very long time, and, momentarily, I felt the hatred and the thirst for revenge drain out of me.

The teenage daughter, April, was the first to recover. She came to me, touched the bandage on my head tenderly. “Daddy, now stop that laughin', hear me? Cap'n MacMorgan here has been hurt. We got to take care of him.”

Hervey and his wife sobered momentarily, but the craziness of it all got to them again.

“A
ghost
! Hahahahahahahaha. . . . ”

The two of them sagged back in their chairs helplessly.

The girl turned to me. “You got to forgive them, cap'n. My momma and daddy is crazy as loons when the spell's on them.
Daddy, quit that laughin'!
”

“
A ghost!
Hahahahahahahaha. . . . ”

She smiled at me in embarrassment. “Well, can I get somethin' for you to eat? We got some beans and fish in the icebox. Won't take me a minute to heat it.”

I stood up shakily. “No, I'm not hungry, little one. A little sleepy, maybe. But not hungry.”

She took me by the elbow and started to steer me toward the bedroom; a short, raven-haired teenager, pretty plain face with heavy thrust of country-girl breasts beneath the blue nightshirt. “You take my bed, cap'n. Sheets are clean. You sleep in my bed tonight.”

“No, no, little one, just give me a pillow and I'll take the couch.”

“You're a guest in our house, an' we won't have no guest sleepin' on the couch. You can talk to Momma and Daddy in the mornin'. But now you need sleep. Your eyes tell me as much.”

“Now listen to me, little one,” I started to protest, but she cut me off.

“I won't hear another word about it—an' quit callin' me ‘little one.' It was okay a few years ago, but now I'm a grow'd woman, cap'n. I'm eighteen years old an' I won't have it.”

“Then call me Dusky.”

“Okay, I'm April, an' you're Dusky, and now Dusky is gonna lay back an' go to sleep in April's bed.”

I think I was still fronting shaky arguments when my head hit the pillow and I collapsed into sleep. . . .

 

I spent the next few days getting my strength back and eating like a horse. I wanted rare steaks and black beans, Cuban bread, and I even managed a beer or two. I might not be at my best, but I would be strong enough when I made my second visit to Cuda Key.

The morning after my arrival, I had walked out into the yard with Hervey, his little corner of secluded estate alive with the cackle of scruffy chickens, the lumbering Chesapeake, and August sun.

“I've got a favor to ask of you and your family, Hervey.”

But he was way ahead of me. He carefully opened a fresh foil packet of Red Man chewing tobacco and stuck a big wad of it in his mouth. “You don' have to worry, Dusky. My ol' lady or the girl won't say nothin' to nobody 'bout your stayin' here. Me neither, o'course. You got your reasons, an' I don't care what they are. I trust you. An' tha's enough.”

So I stayed. I pressed money on them to buy the groceries I wanted, and they accepted reluctantly. I knew about the Yarbroughs and I knew of their pride. A strange thing about them, and native Floridians like them: they could have sold their corner of waterfront jungle for well over a million dollars; money enough to see them moved through two generations. And they could have sat back in their new Cadillacs or looked on from the confines of their new concrete-and-plastic houses and watched the bigbusiness builders rip the old wooden house down and replace it with a multistory concrete block of condominiums that would have housed three hundred Northerners. But what is a million dollars when it means watching your life and your heritage being ripped out by the roots? Too many Floridians made that dismal error. But not the proud ones, the strong ones; not people like the Yarbroughs. They would rather have their homes and their happy poverty.