The Naked Detective (17 page)

He loudly chewed an ice cube before he answered. "Lemme tell ya somethin'. Key West is the best town in America. The last grown-up, raunchy, sleazy place. God bless it! Ya know when I realized this? When they had that court case about what was naked and what was not. Remember?"

It so happened that I did remember. It had to do with Fantasy Fest, two, three years ago. Some killjoys were alleging that it was illegal for people to parade naked and simulate sex acts in front of thousands of onlookers on Duval Street. Several arrests were made.

"The hearings made the news," Mickey Veale went on. "National. One woman said, 'I wasn't naked, I was wearing body paint.' Another woman said, 'I wasn't naked, I had glitter on.' And I thought, Yes! A town where painted titties count as clothes, where sparkles in the pubic hair count as underpants, this is a town for me! So I closed up shop in Vegas, and here I am." He finished off the rest of his drink in one heroic swallow and gestured for another. "And what brings you here? Vacation?"

I didn't answer right away. I was still sorting through my first impressions of Mickey Veale. So far he struck me as crude, profane, and in-your-face; which is to say I liked him pretty well. But now that it was my turn to talk, I wasn't sure how to begin. Caginess did not seem suited to the time or place; Veale's at least seeming unguardedness called for a response in kind. So I thought the hell with it and blurted, "I came to Key West because my life kind of sucked, and I came to your boat because of a couple of murders."

Mickey Veale said, "What?"

He was looking at me like I was a nut, and I wished that I could start again, could swim upward through the empty air and regain the comfort of the diving board. My throat closing down around the word, I said again, "Murders."

Was this getting personal? A two-bit gambling boat in a two-bit town—what was he expecting, Robert Mitchum? I shrugged and stared at him. His big face had changed and was changing some more. Gone was the shmoozing-with-customers smile. His eyes had turned cautious and he seemed beset. He might have even flinched. But of course there are a lot of different kinds of flinches. Guilty ones; affronted ones; ones that mean nothing and only have to do with gas.

After a moment, he shot a nervous look across his shoulder at the sluggish action on his gambling floor and said, "Look, I'm running a business here. Let's not have any trouble."

I put my glass down on the bar and suavely dried my hand on my shorts. "Then maybe there's someplace quiet we could talk."

Veale led me down the narrow flight of stairs. Even before the door to his office was fully opened, I received a very unpleasant surprise.

Sitting at a desk, playing solitaire in a pool of greenish light, was one of the last people in the world I hoped to see: Officer Cruz. One of the homicide cops who'd interrogated me the other night. Who'd ordered me to drop this thing. Who'd threatened me with evidence tampering and warned me of the erotic horrors that would befall me in the pen. He looked up at me and the skin tightened at his improbable hairline. "Fuck you doing here?" he said.

At that, Mickey Veale brightened somewhat, seemed to get his balance back. He even managed to get a little playfulness into his tone. "Ah," he said, "you gentlemen know each other."

"We've met," said Cruz, and he continued turning cards. "Amsterdam likes to poke around crime scenes."

His dismissive tone annoyed me. I paid taxes. I had rights. I said, "Somebody has to. I mean, if the cops are playing solitaire on gambling boats —"

Cruz bristled but Veale seemed to enjoy the repartee. Smiling once again, he said, "Officer Cruz does security for me. So does his partner, Officer Corallo. On their own time. Perfectly legit. Have a seat."

Sitting, I thought, Security, right. A do-nothing job for very good pay; a vaguely lawful kind of bribery. Ozzie Kimmel had nailed it—the cops were in the pocket of the handful of players who ran the town. Why was I surprised?

I must have been brooding on this, because Mickey Veale, seated opposite me by now, said, "So, Pete, you wanted to talk?"

I cleared my throat, said, "Right." Then I remembered a familiar dream, probably one of those that everybody has: You're in a play. Maybe you're the lead. And as the curtain lifts you suddenly realize that you've never seen a script.... I started anyway. "Lefty Ortega—I believe you knew him?"

I drummed fingers on the desk. Thinking aloud, I said, "She hates you. You hate her. Why would people who hate each other's guts be partners in a business?"

"You think that's unusual?" said Veale.

He had me there.

He paused a moment, then continued rather condescendingly, rubbing my face in my naivete. "Pete," he said, "have you ever done business in a foreign country? That's what it's like down here. You need a local partner to get you in. You don't have to like them. You have to give them a piece of something, in exchange for which they grease the wheels for you."

At this I could not help glancing at the moonlighting homicide detective, sulking over his now suspended game of cards. "Like what wheels do they grease?" I asked.

Casually, Mickey Veale said, "Licenses, permits, variances. Boring municipal crap."

I expected it got more exciting than permits but I let it slide. "Okay," I said. "So you gave the Ortegas a piece of the watersports business. What else?"

The big man slowly folded his pudgy hands. "Sorry, that isn't public information."

In semiconscious mimicry, I folded my hands too. Leaning forward I said, "That's okay. I'm not a public eye."

I thought that was rather clever. No one else did. There was an awkward moment that turned out to serve a useful purpose. A failed joke creates embarrassment, and embarrassment breeds hostility, and I'd badly needed something to get my juices flowing. More aggressive now, I said, "Look, two people have been killed—"

I got loudly interrupted at that point. Officer Cruz had been sitting there as taut as a chained-up dog. Now he jumped in so fast that it was clear he'd just been waiting for me to cross a certain line,
hoping
I'd cross a certain line. "I told you to stay away from—"

I surprised myself by pointing a finger and shouting him down in turn. "Are you off duty? Then back off and let me talk."

Cruz was halfway out of his chair by now. I was about one-tenth out of mine, when it dawned on me, to my horror and amazement, that I was close to striking a fighting pose. This was preposterous. I remembered reading, as a kid, that the person who threw the first punch was the one who'd run out of ideas. This notion had struck me as pretty wise but now I saw it was baloney. Who threw the first punch was the guy who believed he could score a quick knockout and not get hit back. By increments I hoped would be invisible, I started lowering my cowardly ass back into the seat.

Luckily for me, Mickey Veale decided to play peacemaker. "Gents," he said, "let's not get all excited. I've got nothing to hide. Go ahead and ask your questions."

Easy for him to say. By now my heart was in my mouth. I took a long, slow breath and tried to remember what my questions ought to be. "Okay, okay," I said. "Let's start with the first guy who was killed. Kenny Lukens. Worked at Lefty's bar. A couple of years ago he faked a robbery and ended up with something Lefty wanted pretty badly."

I noticed then that Officer Cruz was shaking his head and smirking. I knew this was a comment on my interrogating skills and I confess it rattled me. I felt like an intern hacking off his first appendix with the master surgeon looking on. I bit my lip and blundered ahead. "Lukens bolted. Went to the Bahamas. Some time thereafter, a Key West guy showed up and threatened him."

I was studying Veale, trying to gauge how much of this tale he already knew. His fat face had the elastic puffiness of rising dough, and about as much expression. "I'm not sure I follow you," he said.

"This guy," I said, "was a regular at Lefty's. I think maybe he worked for you at Paradise."

Veale poked a finger in his cheek. It sank in knuckle deep. "And what makes you think that?"

I'd already started pushing breath when I realized that I couldn't tell him. If I told him about finding the matchbook, I'd have to mention the Hibiscus guest house in front of Cruz, and that might make trouble for Vanessa, which I'd promised that I wouldn't do. Worse, how would I know any of this except through a confidante of Kenny's?—and the thought of implicating Maggie made me feel ill. Some interrogator. I'm getting one-word answers or no answers at all, and had come a hairbreadth from spilling everything I knew. I sucked back whatever it was I'd started to say, and said instead, "Sorry—that isn't public information either."

Veale turned his palms up, gave a little shrug, and looked at Cruz. Cruz shot him a disgusted glance then smirked again at me. I tried to sit tight but I squirmed. Squirmed, and tried to figure out what my next gambit ought to be. I felt outflanked, outclassed, and lousy.

But it so happened that I'd brought with me a trump card. I hadn't decided if I would play it or save it; its mere possession was delectable. It should not, I knew, be played in desperation; but this was a rather desperate moment, and playing it was the only thing I could think of to do. So, with a gesture I envisioned as a compact yet dramatic flourish, I reached into a pocket of my shorts and produced the broken swizzle stick I'd dug up on Sunset Key. Slowly and portentously I placed it on the desk in front of Veale and Cruz.

They looked at it and blinked.

Speaking barely above a whisper; I said, "I found this right where Kenny Lukens was killed."

A pregnant silence followed. I didn't actually expect a breakdown, tears, a spontaneous confession, but stranger things have happened. I leaned slightly forward in my chair.

At last Cruz said, "Ah. Exhibit A. A piece of flotsam. You're pathetic, Amsterdam."

I was less hurt by this than dazed. I eased back in my chair; crossed my arms in self-defense.

"You know how much crap washes up on that beach?" the cop went on. "We've got twenty things like this already in the lab. Cigarette packs, sun-block tubes, plastic hotel keys. They mean nothing. Get a job, Amsterdam. Get a life."

A life. For a while there I'd thought I had one. Now I shrank inside myself and pouted.

The boat rocked. With malice posing as indifference, I watched as Cruz's fingers moved lazily, disdainfully toward my swizzle stick. I let the fingers get close enough that I could see the texture of their cuticles and discern the whorls on their tips, and then I snatched the stick away and returned it to my pocket. This was childish, I admit. But he'd insulted my find, my one and only piece of evidence, laughed it off as flotsam. I wasn't about to let him play with it, still less have it.

A ridiculous standoff ensued—Cruz's empty fingers dangling in space, me sulking like a brat. Mickey Veale loomed larger than ever on the far side of the desk, seemed actually to swell into the role of grown-up referee in a scrap between ragged boys. He smiled in mock benignity and said, "Any more questions, Mr. Amsterdam?"

I sulked and squirmed and could think of only one. "When the hell can I get off this boat?"

The answer, to my sorrow, was 6:00
a.m.

I went back upstairs to the small hell of the casino and watched people die by the increments of a quarter or a buck. Around four o'clock a breeze came up, and things got really strange. The people playing slots were sitting in tall chairs with casters on the legs. When they pulled the handle, their momentum, added to the rocking of the boat, sent them rolling downhill through the haze of cigarettes to the far side of the cabin. Sometimes they slammed into a bulkhead. When the boat tipped back the other way, they hurtled once again toward their machine to see that they had lost. Now and then a slot spit forth a rain of coins at a trajectory like someone throwing up.

I stepped outside to get some air. The moon was near the zenith, but the sky was soggy and there was a lack of conviction in the way it shone. Something awfully melancholy too—the humble sorrow of the perennial warm-up act, doing its best but doomed to be outdone, erased, by the gaudier talents of the headliner, the sun. Still, I watched awhile. The wind raised a light chop on the sea; moonlight put a milky gleam in the topmost curls of the wavelets. Now and then a green-gold arc of phosphorescence tracked the passing of an unseen ray. The drone of the casino was muted by the walls and windows and scattered by the breeze, spread thin till it could almost pass for quiet.