The Mango Opera (19 page)

“I agree, that’s weird.”

“We even spied on this guy. He reads the cards and looks worried as hell, and he stuffs them inside his sport coat or suit jacket and goes away. One said, ‘You never hear the bullet that gets you.’ We expected him to bring that one to the Postmaster’s attention. Anyway, I thought this was a strange coincidence, you might be interested. Annie just walked in the door.”

I could hear the receiver being handed over.

“Hi.”

“How goes your vacation in Miami, Florida?”

“It’s paradise and it sucks. Carmen and I had a wonderful day, and I have sunburned boobs and a sore throat from talking so much. But I want this death-threat crap to stop.”

“I think Ray Kemp may be the bad man. The captain of the boat I rode to Mariel. He was at the funeral yesterday.”

“At Ellen’s funeral or Julia’s funeral?”

“In Miami.”

“So how could he have put a bomb in my car?”

“I thought about that. He got to the funeral just as it began. You walked to the cemetery just before one o’clock. He was in Coral Gables at four. That’s three hours to plant the device and drive up the Keys. He’d have to hurry, but it’s possible.”

“Where is he now?”

“Last I saw him, he claimed he had to hop a flight to Seattle.”

“But he could be in Miami right now.”

“He also could be in Key West. By the way, a reporter from the paper has been calling and leaving you messages.”

“Like I’ve got something Earth-shattering to reveal to her readers … Look, can you come up here tonight? I still haven’t had a chance to explain things face-to-face. If you still want to listen to me.”

I had started the day at six-thirty, dealt with Monty, the Balbuenas, Laura Tate, and Avery Hatch, and I still had another sit-down ahead of me. I waited too long to answer her.

“Is this like ‘No’?” Her voice thin.

Our romance was turning into a Bosnian cease-fire. Assuming she was sincere, it couldn’t hurt to hear her side of things. “Can I bring wine?”

“Not if it slows you down.”

18

Bob Bernier, Monty’s friend in the FBI, had claimed a table under a sea-grape tree at Louie’s Back Yard. Fifteen or twenty other people sat closer to the water on the restaurant’s Afterdeck and stared at the ocean as if any minute it might perform a back flip. Alert to my entrance, Bernier recognized my shirt, pushed his chair back and stood to identify himself. He was my height, just shy of six-two, though more slender. The way he moved made me think of a football halfback. I pictured him as sturdy but quick.

We shook hands like opposing captains on the fifty-yard line. Bernier’s thick forearms looked as if he had grown up pitching hay bales. He wore horn-rimmed eyeglasses, a blue button-down short-sleeved shirt, and dark cotton slacks. His ash-colored hair showed advanced effects of male-pattern baldness as well as a home-grown trim, the unnatural curve made by electric clippers above the collar. I’ve always wondered about the fifty-thou-a-year guys who go to the missus for cash-saving touch-ups. Bob Bernier’s aura of straightness was not so much the stereotyped bureaucrat as one of those cloned fellows who bike around town in a white shirt and tie handing out religious tracts. Still, he was observant and not immune to life’s pleasures. The regulars at Louie’s knew that the table he’d picked offered the best view of sunbathing women at Vernon Street beach.

The waitress headed our way.

“Name your poison.”

I ordered a Mount Gay rum and soda in a tall glass, and we sat down.

“Monty couldn’t make it,” said Bernier. “Some kind of family deal.”

“You’ve known him a long time?” I said.

“Not all that long. We linked up on a couple joint ops maybe thirty months ago. Back when he was single. It’s not often that the bureau works well with local law enforcement.”

It’s not often, I thought, that a Fed will admit to the tradition of friction.

Bernier continued. “For some reason Monty and I hit it off. We were good at sharing info. He was a first-rate police officer.” Bernier slid his chair closer. “Let me get right to it, Alex. First off, I’m on the fence. So far the Bureau has no jurisdiction in this case. ATF is here because of the bomb, and FDLE because of the link between the bomb and the Albury murder. By the way, you should warn Annie Minnette that the ATF investigation may delay her insurance claim. They haven’t let the adjuster near the car. For the record, you didn’t see it up close or take pictures this morning.”

I tried not to show surprise.

“Don’t worry. Monty’s not in any kind of jam. That was city business. It changed to federal business before noon.”

“Okay.”

“Meanwhile I’m here for … let’s call it ‘guidance.’ We’re keeping a watch on all this political drumbeating in Dade County. Monty tells me that you’ve turned up a few interesting details regarding the Balbuena murder.”

“It’s been a busy day, Bob. Avery Hatch from the Sheriff’s Department just dropped by the house to accuse me of being a serial murderer.”

“I hope you denied it.”

The waitress arrived with my drink. She refilled Bernier’s iced tea. I’d have felt more trusting of the meeting’s unofficial nature if Bob had been drinking something alcoholic. But he was the lawman most removed from local politics, most capable of an overview, the person with the power to pursue every angle. Except for Monty, I couldn’t think of another badge to trust.

I spun the web for him, including the knots, my call to the car-rental agency, my warning calls to the five women, and the arrival of the Balbuenas with their photos. I mentioned seeing Billy Fernandez at the Hyatt. I told him how Sam Wheeler had blown Hatch’s ruse regarding his not having known Julia. I let Bob compare the slide from Mariel and the print of the anchor in Ellen Albury’s front room. I offered the possibility that Ray had triggered the car bomb, then driven straight to Miami for Julia’s funeral.

We watched a young woman race shoreward on a sailboard. To reverse tack she steered into the wind and pirouetted forward of the mast to gain the starboard rail. She wore a neon-red thong bikini and mooned the Afterdeck as she sped away on an offshore gust. Returning to check on our drink levels, the waitress affected an expression of admonishment for our being interested in the windsurfer’s bum, then walked away with a twist of her hips, confident that our attention had shifted.

Bernier got back to business. “Ray Kemp acted like your long-lost friend in Coral Gables. But Avery Hatch told you that the guy disliked you in the old days. Distrusted you with his woman. Now he’s your pal again?”

“I treated yesterday like a reunion, too. On the trip home from Mariel, it wouldn’t have bothered me to see his sorry ass washed over the side. He was dangerous on his own boat. I guess time smoothes out the rough spots.”

“You don’t think Kemp ever went down?”

“At one point in ’78, early ’79, I could have named you three dozen of the boys involved. Back then I didn’t know Kemp was one of them. I found out yesterday he was a major player. If I’d known, I never would have gone to Mariel on his boat. If he’s been to prison, I never heard about it.”

Bernier looked back toward the water. “Did you get involved?”

Dodge this bullet: “There wasn’t a man on the island who didn’t think about it. I was lucky. I started to make money with my photography. I turned down a couple of rides.”

Now he turned back toward me. I sensed the care he was taking not to lose the conversational tone. “You make it sound so casual. The ‘boys’ and their ‘rides.’ They weren’t afraid of being turned in?”

“It was a convoy mentality, like truck drivers speeding in packs. The scammers thought they were immune. They were all coming home with suntans and grocery sacks full of cash. I guess they figured no cop could stop them all.”

“Wide open.”

“You bet. Guys who’d been waiters at Tony’s Fish Market showed up in new BMWs. Spreading around the wealth got them laid like rock stars. Their girlfriends all sported Rolexes.”

“And they never thought the IRS would get on their backs?”

“I don’t think they were thinking. In their eyes, they’d beaten Mother Ocean all the way from Florida to South America and back again in small sailboats. They’d had to dodge Colombian pirates and bad weather and the Coast Guard … like living their own adventure movies. But there’d never be a Jimmy Buffett lyric about them. So they told the tales themselves.”

Bernier nodded. “Internal Revenue was a million miles away.”

“Plus,” I said, “around here a lot of law-enforcement people were directly involved. Nobody held back. Eventually, all of the boys got popped, including the cops, usually by the snitch system. I never heard Ray’s name. Not once.”

“So if we took him down, it was somewhere far away. Or else he played the system into Witness Protection. And he bought the boat with drug money?”

“I assume so. Easy enough to cover. He had a job. Not many scammers had real jobs, and I can’t remember any other charter captains getting involved. They all found floaters … small potatoes.”

Bernier screwed up his face.

“A boatload of smugglers would see the Coast Guard on the horizon, they’d push the pot bales over the side. It was cheaper to lose the load than pay lawyers or do prison time. The evidence drifted away with the currents. A lot of people found them. The charter captains would haul aboard a soggy bale, their customers got a free day of fishing, and there was a number the captains could call. A van would come by the Bight docks after dark. The captain would collect two or three thousand cash. Tropical enterprise. Nobody looked down their nose at it. They called the bales ‘square groupers.’ Somebody even printed ‘Save the Bales’ T-shirts. Picture of a guy with a harpoon on the foredeck of a Hewes flats skiff.”

“Christ, Rutledge.” Bernier tilted back his iced tea. “You’ve got your details down pat on these operations.”

This diehard bastard could not believe that I wasn’t a bad guy. I wondered if I’d made a mistake spilling out my evidence gems. “Believe me, Bob,” I said, “there was no social stigma, and there were no secrets.”

That stopped him. He became silent. I did not interrupt.

“So when did Ray leave Key West?”

“I don’t know. One day I realized he hadn’t been around for a while.”

“You know if he sold the boat?”

“To a military guy. Friend of a friend of a friend. I’m not sure when.”

Bernier took out a notepad and a gold pen. “Any idea of his full name?”

“Raymond, and there’s a middle name. He had his passport in Cuba. The middle name was Irish, an O’-something, because I called him by that name and he got pissed. Not O’Rourke or O’Hara. Something out of the ordinary, like O’Johnson, or O’Clinton.”

Bernier wrote and I looked around. The bartender was leaning over the bar to eat a salad. The waitress put out red and green candle jars in preparation for the evening cocktail hour. Two barflies I knew as Stacy and C.J. stood among the stools near the waitress station. A slow day. Post-season.

“What do we do about Avery Hatch?” I said.

Bernier thought about that one for a moment. “That visit an hour ago was less than official. In Case One, he either knows something, or he wants to steer the suspicions toward you.”

“And Case Two?”

“Maybe it’s what he said before. Maybe he’s a good detective. Maybe he’s on the level.”

“Even when you consider his past connection to Kemp?”

Bernier looked up at the sea-grape tree, then made another note. “Yes, that’s strong.” He looked back up toward the tree. “On that train of thought, Alex, it’s not unusual for police officers, no matter their background, to harbor deep, unexplained rage.” Bernier turned to face me. “You know the man. Do you think Monty Aghajanian is capable of committing a violent crime?”

I wanted to make sure Bernier believed my response. It was my turn to look up into the sea-grape tree. It wasn’t to ponder the possibility of Monty’s being a murderer. I was counting to twenty.

“No, I don’t think so,” I said in a firm, quiet tone.

“Did he date many women?”

I thought a moment. “I remember two before he met his wife.”

Bernier looked again through the photographs. “Balbuena’s picture, that shot of Ray putting his coat in the packed trunk of the rental car. Where would Kemp have kept all those boxes of boat equipment? Someone’s home? He sure as hell didn’t fly into Miami with a fifty-pound anchor.”

“The gear on that boat was ratty. He’d have no reason to keep it.”

“We’re assuming he hasn’t lived around here all along.”

“Here’s the zinger. How did he get the names of my ex-girlfriends?”

“Let’s work on that. Who would know their names? Did you ever tell any of these women about the other ones?”

“Sometimes I’ve introduced them to each other.”

“Your current girlfriend. Does she know…?”

I didn’t want to start a wild-goose chase by suggesting Annie as the source of the names. “We’ve been open about telling each other things. We understand that everyone has a past.”

“No jealousies?”

Good question. “It’s the growing process. You learn to be a good partner. Some things you learn from some people, some from others. It all adds up to make today’s relationship all that much better.”

Bernier looked at me with a cocked eye. I had to admit to myself that it sounded pretty corny.

“Now that I think about it,” he said, “she couldn’t be the source anyway. If someone wanted to kill girlfriends or if he wanted to kill his source, either way he wouldn’t have done the wrong person. Ellen Albury wouldn’t have been hit. I say all this assuming the killer is not female. Can you think of any drinking pals you might have confided in, talking about the ladies?”

“Plenty of people have seen me with one woman or another. Sam Wheeler’s met most of these women, at least in the past six or eight years. Or he’s heard me speak of them from time to time.”

“Okay, but you’ve described him as a close friend. Is there anyone else you can think of?”

“Who knows who talks about what? I’m out in a bar or a restaurant with one woman or another over the years, the bartenders may remember one or two. But who would keep track, make a list?”