Murder Key

Murder Key

ONE

             
At dawn, the
naked man squatted in the surf
building sand castles. A boat, no longer than fifteen feet, lay on its side near him, its occupants sprawled lifeless and unnoticed on the sand. Attached to the boat’s transom was a small outboard engine with a rusted propeller. The lower unit was pitted by electrol
y
sis, and bare metal showed through the black paint
, sure
signs of neglect. The placid green water of the Gulf of Mexico provided an incongruous back-drop to tragedy and farce.

             
An accident,
I thought.
There shouldn’t be dead men on our beach on a bright fall morning
.
I pulled
my cell phone from the pocket of my shorts
and
approached the bodies.
There were three small dark
men wearing jeans and T-shirts.
They were bar
efoot, lying askew on the beach
like so much seaweed discarded by the tide.

             
Two of the men had gunshot wounds to the head. I thought I saw chest mov
e
ment in the third
.
I leaned down close, listening for breath sounds. He was alive. I dialed 911 and told the operator that we needed ambulances and police on the beach behind the Isla Grande Condominiums on Gulf of Mexico Drive.

             
I sat on the sand next to the nearly dead man and held his hand. If he was about to die, he would at least have the touch of a human being in his last moments. I’m not a religious man, but I said a little prayer. I sat. And I waited. There was nothing more that I could do for him until the paramedics arrived
.

             
The naked man had  not changed his position. He sat on his haunches and piled more sand on his castles. His eyes were vacant, staring straight ahead.

             
“Joe,” I said to the naked man, “did you see the boat?”

             
“What boat?” He turned to look at me.

             
“The one behind you.”

             
“Oh, yeah. With the greasers.”

             
“Did you check them out?”

             
“Nah, the police will do it.”

             
“Well, they’re on their way.”

             
“Shit.
A
m I going to be arrested again?”

             
“I’ll take care of it.” He went back to his castle building.

             
I heard the siren of an approaching ambulance, growing louder as it rushed toward us. It stopped, leaving the morning silence unbroken. In a few moments, two paramedics scam
p
ered down to the beach, their medical bags sitting on a wheeled stretcher that bounced over the packed sand.

             
I held the man’s hand as I watched the medics trot toward us. I told him help was co
ming. Did he hear me? Who knows?
I hope so. I wanted him to know that somebody gave a shit about him and his dead buddies.

             
The medics bent over the patient, using a blood pressure cuff and stethoscopes. One of them spoke into his radio, relaying the man’s vitals. The hospital, I assumed.

             
I told them what I knew and walked the few steps to where Joe was intent on his building project. “Let’s get you up to Grace,” I said.

             
“She’ll be pissed at me,” he said, petulance written on his face.

             
We walked across the beach to the condo complex where Joe and his wife Grace lived. As we neared the steps leading over the dunes, an anc
ient lady met us coming down.

             
“Morning, Joe,” said the woman, looking him in the eyes.
             
Joe nodded.

             
Turning to me, she said, “Hey, Matt. Grace will have his hide for this.”

             
“I know,” I said. “There are some dead guys on the beach, and the police are on their way. I’ve got to get back. Will you take him home?”

             
“Sure,” she said. “What’s this about dead guys?”

             
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Just take Joe home.”

             
As I turned toward the surf, I could hear the
police sirens in the distance.
Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the elderly woman gently leading Joe back across the dunes.

* * * * *

             
Tiny’s was jumping, the Friday evening crowd in full swing. Susie and Debbie were behind the
bar
and a shaggy looking man
sat in a corner playing his guitar and singing the oldies. My buddy Logan
Hamilton was perched on a stool
sipping an amber drink. A brown bag was next to his glass, an unopened liter bottle of
scotch
peeking out of the top. Logan had been to the package store next door, stocking up for the weekend.

             
Dotty Johansen, a widow in her seventies, the doyenne of the North End, held court at her usual table. She was surroun
d
ed by her friends, all retired ladies who had lost their husbands to the grim reaper. Smoke filled the place with a volume that even the best air handlers couldn’t dent.

             
It was
Friday evening on Longboat Key
and the crowd was breathing a sigh of relief at having survived another week in the workaday world. There was the usual mix of wealthy retirees, middle-aged professionals and construction workers, all come to Tiny’s to sit and talk and drink. It was late October on this barrier island just south of Tampa Bay, halfway down Florida’s west coast. Our summer had ended the week before, when the humidity dropped to a bearable level and the tempera
ture hovered in the mid-to-low-
seventies. Except for a few cold days in January and February, this would be our weather until the middle of May, when summer again blew its hot breath down our necks.

             
Tiny’s was not really “Tiny’s.” Some new people had come to the island a few years before, bought the place from a guy named Tiny, and renamed it. The locals didn’t like the new name, and most couldn’t remember it, so Tiny’s remained Tiny’s. It’s a little bar, tucked away in the corner of a building in a small shopping plaza on the north end of the key. When the voters of Florida passed an amendment to the state constitution a few years back requiring all places that served food to be smoke-free, Tiny’s, because it was the only bar on the island that didn’t serve food, became the oasis of necessity for thirsty smokers. There are more of those people than you might expect, and Tiny’s gained a popularity far above its humble status in the world of bars. The new owners, who had already become part of the island fabric, were content with the place as it was, and so were the patrons.

             
“Hey, Matt,” Dotty Johansen called to me as I walked in, “I heard you found those dead Mexicans this morning.”

             
Dotty knew everything, and perhaps the greatest mystery on the key was how she knew so much, so quickly.

             
“Actually, Joe Turnicoff found them,” I said.

             
Dotty laughed. “I heard he was out naked again. He’s crazy.”

             
I nodded. “Yeah,
but he still has some good days.
”

             
Dotty made a face. “Not enough
.
Grace is going to have to put him in a nursin
g home. He scares the tourists
and Bill Lester’s going to run out of patience with him.”

             
Bill Lester was the Longboat Key Chief of Police, a well-liked cop who had worked his way through the ranks of the small force until he was in charge. Joe had once been a powerful businessman in Chicago, but Alzheimer’s was taking a terrible toll on him. His wife Grace tried to keep him at home, but once in a while Joe would get up early in the morning, before he
r, and sit on the beach naked.
During the winter season, tourists would call the police a
bout the crazy man on the beach
and a cruiser would come. The patrol officer would drape a towel around Joe and take him home. Most mornings though, Grace found Joe before he could cause any trouble.

             
Dotty swallowed a little of her vodka. “I heard one of them was still alive,” she said.

             
I said, “He is, but he’s still unconscious. The docs don’t know if the guy will pull through or be a vegetable.”

             
Logan turned on his bar stool. “Do they know what ha
p
pened?” he
asked
.

             
I said, “Bill says it looks like the one still alive shot the other two, then fell and hit his head. His
fingerprints are on the pistol
and blood and hair were on the gunwale.”

             
Logan said, “That was a big off
shore wind last night. It must’ve pushed the boat up on the beach.”

             
I took the seat next to Logan
and sipped
from the Miller Lite Debbie had set on the bar. “Looks that way,” I said.

             
A heavily accented voice said, “Are you Matt Royal?”

             
I turned to my left. A man I had never seen before was standing behind Logan. The accent was Spanish. His face was pitted with acne scars, and his black hair was combed back from a widow’s peak, no part. He had a thick
mustache and a trim goatee. A
big man, a couple of inches taller than my six feet. He was wearing one of those gray sweatshirts with a hood. There were slits in the front, giving access to the pocket in which his hands were concealed. The sweatshirt had “Property of Univers
i
ty of Florida Athletic Department” written across its front in bold orange letters. I remember thinking that those preppie kids in Gainesville would never wear such a ratty-looking thing.

             
“That would be me,” I said, sticking out my hand to shake, a reflex action among us lawyers. His right hand came out of the pocket holding a snub-nosed revolver. He was raising it toward my chest, his eyes starting to squint in anticipation of the report that would follow the bullet entering my body.

             
My world slowed down, like in those cheesy movies where the lovers are running toward each other in slow motion. I was starting to react, to reach toward the gun, to grab the hand that held it and twist downward, as the Army had taught me so long ago. B
ut I knew I’d waited too long.
The shock of death stalking amid the gaiety of Tiny’s slowed my reaction time just long enough to seal my fate. My killer was grinning. He was enjoying this.

             
A hand holding a fu
ll bottle of
Scotch
by its neck
shot into my line of vision. The bottle came down onto the arm of my killer. I was expecting to hear the s
ound of a gunshot, but instead
I heard the bones of the shooter’s forearm breaking. Two people screamed, Logan in anger as he followed through with the chop that saved my life, and the Hispanic guy in agony, as he dropped his revolver.

             
There was silence. Nobody moved for a second, except the shooter, who turned and headed for the door. He was gone before anyone could react. As I rushed toward the entrance to stop him, I heard a motorcycle revving its engine. Several agitated people were right behind me, all of us pushing out the door at the same time. All we saw of the shooter was his back as he climbed aboard the bike, placing his good arm around the driver’s waist and holding the broken one between his chest and his rescuer’s back. The bike shot out of the parking lot and headed for the Longboat Pass Bridge, less than a mile to the north. He’d be across Anna Maria Island and onto the mainland before the police could get organized to chase him.

             
I returned to my seat at the bar. Logan was still nursing his
scotch
. He hadn’t moved during the rush to the door.
I was shaken by the events, by my near death experience. If not for Logan’s quick reaction, I’d be dead. I’d have to think on that some. Get my equilibrium back. It’s not every day that some maniac tries to kill you.