Octopus Alibi (10 page)

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An hour later I had finished coffee, showered, repacked the duffel, and checklisted my camera bag. I had decided that my old tripod carrying case could make one last trip. I took a bowl of cereal salad to the porch: equal portions of Cinnamon Life, Toasted Oatmeal Squares, Cranberry Almond Crunch, and Smart Start. Like blending coffee, one of my small indulgences.

Rule of life: If cereal’s in your plans, the phone always rings after you’ve poured milk. Marnie spoke the instant I picked up. “Check out the ‘Opinion’ page in the
Citizen
before you go.”

“You can’t read it to me?”

She grunted.

I said, “Naomi named me her executor. She wanted a going-away party at Louie’s.”

Marnie told me to plan it soon and to have a good trip. She hung up before my cereal went soggy.

It wasn’t a good morning for cereal.

I heard a hissing muffler in the lane. It took me a moment to recognize the deep-discount Taurus that Cootie Ortega had lowballed at a fixed city auction. Its window-tint film had peeled. The white paint had oxidized to a dull blue-gray. Corrosion pocked the hood, trunk, and roof. I doubted that any water but rain had touched the sedan during Ortega’s tenancy. Cootie kicked his door shut, carried a small paper sack and a frayed tote toward my door. I went outside to intercept. I wanted our meeting to take place on my porch, not in my house. Exhaust smoke lingered in the lane, threatened to drift toward the screening. I could count on the fact that Ortega had never changed his car’s oil.

He wore a thin cotton V-neck T-shirt, shiny suit trousers, and a pair of antique Hush Puppies. His cat’s-eye sunglasses looked like a prop Jayne Mansfield might have worn in a B-minus movie. Ortega was buffoon enough without promoting the fact. I couldn’t wait to hear his sales pitch. I didn’t need equipment. The cameras would have to be giveaways for me to bite.

“Brought you some Conch fritters, bubba,” he said.

Sure as hell, grease oozed through the brown paper bag. I’d packed my Tums in my Dopp kit. I couldn’t figure why Cootie wanted to re-exercise the old Conch political method of buttering-up, offering bollos from the vendor’s stand by the aquarium. I was going to buy camera gear, or decline. I wasn’t going to do the man any favors. Gut bombs would not sway my decision. I thanked my stars that he had brought fritters rather than bollos.

“Sweet of you, Cootie.” I pointed at my unfinished cereal. “Can I simply admire them, or do I have to eat?”

“Eat. You got some paper towels?”

Cootie followed me into the kitchen, took care to check out my house for anything with salvage value. He looked too long at my broiler oven. Ironic. I had never seen him notice details at a crime scene.

“How are things at the city?” I found a new roll of towels, led him to the porch table. “Any changes going down? Or will they show some respect for Steve’s memory a day or two?”

He spread eight fritters on two towels. “You mean, like…”

“Right. Anybody want your job to vanish, and mine with it?”

“I don’t think so, bubba. The idiots adjust to everything down there. I mean, what could happen? Worse is they’d fire me, and that might be the best thing. I been kicking serious money on eBay.”

I asked what he was buying and selling.

“This and that, whatever’s moving.”

I tried to pin him down. “Lately?”

He wouldn’t budge. Shook his head. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Cootie, I’ve worked the same crime scene as you eight or ten times in the past three years. What’s that mean, I don’t remember you?”

“I mean, not now, bubba. I mean in the 1970s. That coffee window next to the El Sol coin laundry on Duval. That place was my mama’s, you know that? She have me runnin’ her window seven days, all year, selling plastic cups of Cuban coffee, seven cents back then. You ride up there every day, ten-thirty, on that gold three-speed English racer with the high handlebars, put your elbow into my buche window. You order two little cups, pay your fourteen cents, tip me eleven. You toss ’em back, the sweat come out your forehead, you ride away high as a blimp.”

I never had paid a moment’s attention to the man who had served me Cuban coffee for years. He had always been yakking in rapid-fire Spanish with people inside the kitchen, always treated me like any other customer, another lazy newcomer to his island. I had never connected the young man from back then with the one I now knew. I smiled at Ortega, shook my head.

He tossed a fritter into his mouth and pointed to another, then at my mouth. “You one of the few hippies then, one of the few who had a regular wire bike basket instead of a stolen blue MacArthur milk crate tied to your handlebar. One day you know, you wore a tourist-looking T-shirt, a sailfish jumping each side of your ribs, crossed fishing poles in the middle, I told you that day that’s the stupidest shirt I ever saw. You laughed, and you told me that’s why you bought it. You said you paid three dollars at McCrory’s at Eaton and Duval.”

His sales pitch was better than I had expected.

I took a bite of conch fritter to placate him, tasted bell pepper and onion and hot sauce. Amazing how little we know about people we see and work with. I couldn’t believe that he recalled more about my early days in town than I did, details that long ago escaped my brain. If he had paid that much attention to professional details, he might have made a decent crime photographer and darkroom technician. But he’d failed that gig. I couldn’t believe that Cootie Ortega had ever been observant, ever given a half a damn about anything except getting by on the cheap.

“I’ve got a noon plane to catch, Cootie. Show me what’s for sale.”

“Lenses, including a twenty-eight, and this OM-1 body for a low price, bubba. Don’t worry about instant cash, you know?”

I reminded myself to visit an ATM.

Cootie picked up on my worried expression. “You ain’t got lots of loose money, maybe you got stuff to sell. You’re talking to a collector, here, buyin’ and sellin’ Beanie Babies, old worthless stock certificates, pre-1990 NASCAR items. The list goes on, brother, however you want. You tell me. I know you ain’t got Barbies, but certificates, racing collectibles, old Hot Wheels—lots of guys got that stuff. You pay me anytime. We’ll work it out.”

I had assumed he’d want instant dollars. And I hadn’t expected to buy a thing. Four lenses were priced so low I’d be a fool not to get them. I also bought the OM-1 camera body and an old T-20 flash unit. I passed on the twenty-eight lens; I had one that I used rarely. I gave Ortega two hundred, told him I’d write him a check for the balance when I returned from Grand Cayman. He took his fritters to his Taurus. I called a taxi.

For a moment I stood on the porch and appreciated for the thousandth time the morning sunlight washing through my screens. I searched my mind, imagined the shoulder-height coffee window, the man in that window. The man had no features, no face. I couldn’t change my memory. My opinion of Cootie Ortega, however, had shifted. Not so much upward as sideways, to account for his memory and the fact that he’d cut me a deal on the lenses.

I was dumping out cereal mush when the phone rang.

Sam said, “Glad I caught you before you dusted off to the airport. Get a pencil while I piss and moan about you, down in Grand Cayman this evening, knocking back tall rum, staring at bare-breasted beach lovelies. I can almost hear the reggae music from here, you bastard.”

He’d read my mind, but I didn’t want to rub it in. “I got a pen in my hand. Paper, too.”

“Okay, I’ll quit the crap. I need some favors. I don’t know how you’ll do them on quick notice, but you’ve got sources in that graft-ridden city of ours, and the newspaper frowns on Marnie doing this stuff. Write down Florida tag XSW-252, on a puke-green Chevy Cavalier. I need full info on that one. This guy likes to play tag, likes to follow people, but I turned the tables. It’s a long story for another day. Next is MJC-547, a recent Toyota Camry, dark green or black. This dude was a fellow-followee, near as I could tell. Call Marnie if you get a hit on either one and give her what you learn. I’ll get it from her. You got those numbers okay?”

I told him I had them.

“New subject. These pictures my sister overnighted could’ve been taken any time from the late Seventies until Lorie disappeared. One’s a group shot. I’ve found people here who don’t recognize Lorie, but they say it looks like the crowd that hung at the Parrot, maybe in ’eighty-three or ’eighty-four. So I need names of bartenders who worked there, and anybody you can think of who might have been in Lauderdale then.”

“Nobody right off, but I’ll put my mind to it.”

“Damn,” he said. “Where is my head? Captain Turk used to bop back and forth, and I’ll bet he hung at the Parrot. He used to chase Gold Coast rich girls so he could get a sugar mama to be his ticket out of fishing. I’ll call him at the dock. You think of anything, tell Marnie and I’ll get it from her. Slurp a Cayman toddy for us working stiffs, bubba.”

I copied the tag numbers onto another scrap of paper and put them in my wallet.

A benefit of having a roommate was that I didn’t have to close up my house. I took one safety precaution: I left a note for my neighbor and close friend, Carmen Sosa. I told her that I’d be gone, but Teresa would be around. I also copied the tag numbers for Carmen, and asked her to get Marnie any info she could.

The cab showed, and I was out of there with a half hour to pick up my passport and hit the ATM. A stress-free exit.

I asked the cabbie to wait in a loading zone on Southard. I was inside the bank, lifting my passport from the lock box when I realized I had left Sam’s ten thousand stashed in my house. Whose memory was thinning in times of stress? I withdrew eight hundred for travel cash and decided Sam’s money was safe enough where I’d hidden it.

I hurried back outside. Whit Randolph had angled his yellow BMW to the curb, just ahead of the cab. He was at the money machine. I wanted to dodge him, tiptoe to the taxi.

“Rutledge, thank God it’s you, just in time to save my ass. I can never make these things work. These damned arrows point between two buttons to push, they got language choices, and Christ! I want my money, and this bastard’s asking me how much I want to deposit.”

“I’ve used this one a few times,” I said.

“Here, hold this.” He handed me a plastic water bottle and glanced at my face. “Take a hit if you want.”

I sniffed. Straight vodka. The constant cocktail before lunch.

Randolph read me. “Every journey begins with a first stagger, Rutledge. Especially on this island.” He poked the buttons, ran the prompts one more time. The machine beeped and spit back his card.

I said, “Let me show you…”

“Good, good. My PIN’s four-nine-oh-five. See if you can get me a hundred bucks.”

I wasn’t comfortable with his telling me his secret number, but what the hell. I wasn’t going to steal his debit card. I handed the plastic bottle back to him, pressed a few buttons, watched the twenties spit out. I showed him how to close out the transaction and forgo the receipt.

He put the five twenties in his sport shirt pocket. “You’ve saved my day, Alex. Let me tell you, man, I love your fine cottage. I love that brass bell out front, your different-colored croton bushes, all that art on your walls.”

“Thanks for saying…”

“I mean it. It’s a great funky hideaway. You’ve got a yard for puttering, the perfect porch for rum drinks. If I wanted a treasure like that today, I’d have to shell out big money.”

I had zoned out the fact that Randolph had picked up Teresa for dinner. I felt invaded, upset more by his being inside my home than my knowledge of his PIN.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s a quiet lane, and it was cheap by today’s prices. Call it a lucky pick a long time ago.”

He looked at the damp stains on his sport shirt. “You sure sweat a lot down here, don’t you?”

“Me, or people in general?”

He chuckled. “Do you sweat anything? The way Teresa talks, I doubt you do. I meant people in general, but mainly me. Right now, I can’t fucking stand myself.” He looked toward Duval Street. “Buy you a beer?”

“No thanks,” I said.

“What’s the matter, man? I rub you wrong?”

“Nope. It’s just that everybody’s new in town.”

“You get a lot of beer offers?”

“That’s not it. Once you’re here for a while, you don’t have that much time for midday drinking. You follow?”

“Sorry if I offended you.”

I started back to my taxi. “You caught me in a hurry and a weird mood.”

“Are those legal in Key West?”

“This is a place without many rules,” I said. “Don’t ask permission, and you know the rest.”

“I like that setup. If I don’t get forgiven, what do I do, change my name?”

“That won’t work. You’ll have to leave town.”

He grinned but didn’t look at me. “Once you’re here for a while, that’s harder to do.”

9

M
Y TURN TO LEAVE
town. Not a minute too soon.

Years ago, five times a day, a twin-prop commuter would land, swap milk bottles for Hershey Bars, and depart. Two dozen people came and went, and foot traffic vanished, leaving the airport quiet as an empty church until the next turnaround. These days you still see pale skin inbound, sunburns outbound, but activity in the airport never stops.

I fought the crowd to check in for my flight.

I felt a welcome mental departure forty minutes before takeoff, a weight off my shoulders. I was going to Grand Cayman to work, but also for reasons people came to Key West: fewer reminders, better vibes. I needed to escape day-to-day crap, realign my priorities. My first moment of peace came when I told myself not to worry about having a housemate when I returned. There wasn’t much I could do about it, even if I stayed.

I bought a
Key West Citizen
, but couldn’t find a wall to lean against. Too many racks of brochures, weekly papers, dining guides, real estate tabloids. The vinyl chairs in the small lounge were taken. I walked outside to sit on a park-style bench, but the Lower Keys Smoke-Out Squad had picked the zone for a bull session. I went back in, stood near baggage claim, and found the editorial that Marnie had mentioned.