The Mango Opera (12 page)

As those who’ve not been in touch with the deceased will do, I signed the small leather-bound register and found a seat toward the rear. The oak pews were three-quarters filled. Solemn Latin men wearing the tobacco-tint eyeglasses popular in Central America shook hands. Women in black lace mantillas nodded forlorn hellos. The older children looked to be caring for the elderly or tending to young siblings. I sensed no surreptitious business being transacted, and just a trace of political seating and deferral. Few tears were evident. A sense of wariness pervaded.

To the side and two rows back sat a group of professional-looking people, including several black women and two older men, no doubt the group from the office, Julia’s co-workers. Behind them sat a group of blacks. The men looked thin, like so many Haitians, and wore loud ties. Perhaps Balbuena family employees. There were not many single men seated alone. Until a bearded man in an ill-fitting sport coat entered, I might have laid sole claim to the ex-lovers’ category.

I recognized him through the beard. I had once seen almost two weeks’ growth; Ray Kemp hadn’t shaved during the Mariel ordeal. But he’d gone gray in the years since. I had never seen him without a suntan. He hadn’t missed many meals, either. The sport coat was either the veteran of a previous decade or a number from a secondhand store and contributed to his looking several notches down the far side of seedy. Kemp hung toward the rear of the church, sat apart, and did not appear to notice me. I had just decided to move nearer to him when the organ music began. I remained in my seat. Until someone rose to speak in English of Julia, I spent the time studying stained-glass-window images. Several related to how I had felt in the past forty-eight hours.

Thirty minutes into the service, I looked around. Kemp had slid out the far end of his row and was headed for a side exit. We had not been in touch for years. I wanted to say hello. I also wanted his views on Julia’s murder.

I almost didn’t catch him. I found him in a sedan about seventy-five feet from the church doors. The security goons must have found his new Pontiac acceptable. Maroon with red upholstery, the color of so many rental cars, and clean. He’d left the driver’s door open to cool the interior as he fumbled to insert the ignition key.

“Ray.” I started to perspire immediately in the afternoon heat.

Kemp looked up, looked baffled, then showed genuine surprise. “Not in a million years…” he said. He climbed out, pocketed the keys and extended his hand. The years had scrawled webs of age lines around his eyes. Along with graying, his hair had thinned and headed aft. His shoulders were rounded, his posture poor.

“Been a while, Captain Kemp. They talk about you in Cayo Hueso, you know. People wonder what happened to you. Not just the bill collectors…”

“Yeah, I don’t know.” A smirk appeared and vanished in an instant. “I’ve promised myself a Key West vacation for years. I wondered who was still left down there. Every time a new Buffett album comes out, I get homesick.”

“Every time one does, ten thousand more tourists hit Duval Street. You wouldn’t recognize it. You know Phil Clark died, don’t you?”

“Well, I thought so. I caught something in Jimmy’s lyrics a while back.” He scratched at his beard and shook his head. “What got him?”

“Drowned in San Francisco Bay. Overextended the party.”

“How’d he get that far from the Keys? Of course, I say that. I’m near Seattle, still trying to live a storybook life. Kind of like Phil always did.”

“He was hiding from bondsmen and lawmen and ex-wives. Fake name and all, bartending in Marin County.”

“I tried bartending after I left Key West. No way, José. I built a spec house in the Carolinas and, dumbass me, I followed a young bimbo out to Bremerton, Washington. I lost track of her, thank God for that, but I’ve been fishing out of Port Angeles for … I don’t know … eight years. Off-season, I’m into vehicle recovery. Motor homes, big vans, delivery truck repos. I even got domestic and bought a house. You still taking pictures?”

“I’m still at it.” Unless there’s a dead body on the beach.

“I figured you’d be famous by now. Articles about you in
Time
or
GQ.
”

I shook my head. “Fame sucks. How’d you hear about Julia?”

“Local papers up there. Something hits the press wires as a ‘Twin Peaks Copycat Slaying,’ it gets picked up in Washington State. That’s where they filmed most of those segments. Man, it broke my heart. I can’t begin to tell you how often I’ve thought of that woman. They were all supposed to drift away and not be memories. If I had to think of all of ’em, my brain’d weigh fifty pounds. She never did go away. Not for me.”

“Well, I always felt something, too. Enough that I drove all this way to remember that I’m not much for religious rituals. I’ve always wondered when they’d phase in the collection plate at weddings and funerals.”

“They figure who might have done it?”

I told him about the father and the Cuban-American intramural spat. “I guess there’s been other violence, but nothing like this.”

“You couldn’t get me to live in Miami. Hell, Rutledge, you couldn’t pay me to leave where I’m at. You want to know a secret? It doesn’t rain all the time in Seattle. They keep the myth going so the place doesn’t get crowded out by tourists and big money.”

“I remember in the Keys, back about ’75, they would have piggybacked tourists down the highway just to sell postcards. We should have had our own rain rumor. A permanent hurricane warning.”

“Yeah, maybe that would’ve helped.”

The conversation stalled. The reunion had sputtered out.

I waved my arm in a direction away from the church. “You want to go grab a beer?”

He checked his watch. “Like to, but I can’t.”

“Ah, the mating call of the Monroe County woman.”

“I’m out of here in an hour and forty minutes. The only flight I could get, unless I wanted to stick around until Tuesday. This time of year, the job calls. I’ve got to turn in this car to East Coast and—”

“No sweat, Ray. Good to see you. Hurry your ass back down this way. Man, you wouldn’t believe some of the old crew. Sid’s running Sloppy’s, and a bunch of people are on the wagon. Norman’s still got the
Petticoat III.
Even Trucker’s got a nine-to-five.”

“That I do not believe. I’ll bet Tripper’s still peddling bad acid down on Telegraph Lane.”

“See, your memory hasn’t drained out completely.” I reached to shake Ray’s hand and we paused to look each other in the eye. Many years had gone down the pike. There had been moments, after Ray and Julia had found each other, and during the Mariel trip, when I’d hoped never to see the man again. Time has a way of healing even the most painful wounds. Somehow we all become comrades in survival.

As our hands came apart I felt no calluses. I glanced down, then back at Ray’s eyes. In a brief moment I saw another look. The look of a man with too many secrets and too many failures. We promised to stay in touch, to look each other up, somewhere down the line. I did not mention Sam Wheeler, nor did I offer an invitation to bunk at my house should he visit the Keys.

I passed a hefty security gentleman as I returned to my car. His leather pouch was the perfect size for a weapon. Probably a cellular phone. He would conceal his weapon under the expensive suit coat. People began to walk out of the church. I had missed the grand finale. Julia would understand. She might even appreciate this five-minute reunion of two ex-suitors.

On the drive up to Miami I had promised myself a culinary treat. I found a shopping area, parked in front of a combo Laundromat and Cuban deli, and ordered two espressos to go. The first to burn my tongue and bring beads of sweat to my forehead. The second to taste like heaven and keep me awake until I’d returned to Dredgers Lane. The middle-aged woman behind the counter wore gold necklaces and bracelets and rings and had the flashing Cuban eyes one reads about in old books, hears sung about in ballads. She bounced back and forth between mile-a-minute Spanish with another lady and taking my order in perfect, unaccented English.

As she worked the espresso machine, I thought back to my chance meeting with Ray Kemp. Our reunion at the church had started to bug me. Considering the animosities in our past, I couldn’t help feeling that the meeting had been too easygoing. Something had not been genuine. Ray had looked like a doughboy, with the pasty skin of a long-term couch potato. He claimed to have lived a life of manual labor, but his shoulders had grown close together, as if his upper body had atrophied. His hands had not been those of a seagoing man, though I knew Ray was familiar with knots and lines and hawsers. After all these years, he had reappeared. At Julia’s funeral.

Outside the deli I put one of my coffees on the Mustang’s transmission hump and carried the other to a phone booth near the sidewalk. I swatted gnats and dialed a local number.

“Thank you for calling East Coast. How may we help?” A pleasant singsong voice. A surprise in Miami.

“Manny Cline, detective division, Miami-Dade.” I tried to sound as bored and snide as possible. “We got a possible hit-and-run on a tag that DMV-Tallahassee says is one of yours. Let’s see, HV2-74G. Maroon sedan. Can we check that, and get us some rental-record particulars and a vehicle status report?”

“Hold, please.” I waited about thirty seconds. “Sir, that car’s already been turned in. There’s no damage on this report.”

“Well, you better look again. What’s the operator’s number?”

“Um, MI072551-04569.”

“Jesus, what state is that?”

“Michigan.”

This was too easy. “Oh, shit.” A profane word for the cause of authenticity. “What city in Michigan?”

“Saginaw.”

“Saginaw, Michigan.” I used my Columbo exasperation. “Okay, what’s the street address?”

“4901 Stockton Street.”

“Operator name?”

“Frank R. Johnson.”

“What’d he do, Visa, what?”

“Lemme see … MasterCard. By the way, Detective. Our garageman just inspected the car again. He says there’s no damage anywhere.”

“You’re lucky. You got less paperwork than me. Thanks for your time.”

I called Monty, got no answer, and left a voice-mail message asking him to start scouting the names Ray Kemp and Frank R. Johnson. See what the NCIC data bank might tell us about Ray’s past. About that time of day Sam was almost always on the dock. I tried him. Again, no answer. I said, “I found a rat, but it may not be the right woodpile. Home by ten. Call if you’re still awake.”

It took far too long to leave Miami. Friday rush hour went in every direction. The old shortcut into Florida City, along the western edge of the metro area, had become a horticultural mega-mall. I cursed the Magic City and let my sour mood fester until I hooked up with six or eight Florida weekenders just below Card Sound Road. They towed flat-bottomed speedboats behind new pickups, and ran between seventy and eighty to the top of the Keys. I reached Mile Marker 106 in time for a fifty-dollar sunset.

Crazed traffic or not, it felt good to be on the road home. The blat of the Mustang’s tailpipes echoed off bridge railings. The sea air fresh from the late-afternoon rain carried pungent barnacles and beached seaweed. I saw running lights on several small fishing boats changing positions on the bay side.

Even in traffic, the ride down the Overseas Highway, after dark, drags on. You wouldn’t think paradise could lull you to inattention. I didn’t want to drift off as I had earlier that afternoon, when I’d almost daydreamed myself into a bloody wedge between those trucks, so I tuned in an AM station from Cuba for some meringue music and regretted my limited Spanish.

My mind kept juggling the facts. The knots and their possible link in the murders of Ellen and Julia clamored to offer a giant clue. I also played back in my mind my conversation with Kemp, trying to recall what we had said, every word he’d used to respond to my chatter. It was time to process another thought—one I had kept submerged until after the funeral: Annie Minnette was the common denominator. She had heard me speak of Sally Ann and Shelly. Though she claimed never to have heard of Julia, I recalled having included Julia in several retellings of the Mariel ordeal. The closer I got to Key West, the more I found to consider, the less sure I felt about what I knew.

*   *   *

A stained towel hung over
Barracuda
’s cabin window to block reflections off the greasy waters of Mariel Bay. Facedown, my nose pressed into a musty life jacket, I recalled smells of boyhood—military-surplus duffel bags, soggy pillows in tents, hand-me-down slickers. Sweat puddled under my stomach and soaked into my three-day-old shorts. A rhumba tune floated across the water. People on a nearby boat discussed Jimmy Carter and the fifty hostages being held in Iran. A wind shift brought the relief of a cooling zephyr, an invitation to drift into a nap where five minutes delivers three hours’ rest.

But
Barracuda
began to shudder with the wind. I pushed aside the towel Upwind, beyond the shallow hills to the northwest, the sky had darkened. Other boats began to swing with the stirring air. After nine days as captives of Third World paper pushers, we’d looked for ways to kill the boredom. This would do it.

I hurried aft. Julia Balbuena snatched clothing from makeshift hooks. The temperature dropped. In nests of boats clumped at center harbor, men hung over railings and fought tangled anchor lines. On the elevation that faced the Gulf of Mexico, patches of casuarina whipped and Australian pines thrashed in the wind. Nearer, I heard ominous whistling in the shore trees, flapping canvas on sailing vessels, the throaty sputtering of diesel engines.

In the forward compartment, suspended in sleep, the captain embraced a stuffed laundry bag. I did not wish to know its contents.

“Crank the motor, Captain,” I said. “Time for drastic measures.”

Ray Kemp’s voice growled from deep slumber: “Look who’s giving orders. You forget I own the boat. You’re just the hired help.”

“It’s bad weather. We need to move. Get up and drive now, or your boat’ll be trash in ten minutes.”