The Quick Adios (Times Six) (18 page)

You play by unspoken rules in El Siboney. The servers are all third- or fourth-generation Conchs who never slow down. They ration their patience, speak Spanish to each other and pretend that they don’t speak English. They own their homes. A few have put their kids through colleges in Tampa, Gainesville, Tallahassee and Miami. One or two own nice boats, plush cars they don’t drive to work. They got it all through hard work. If you want good service, you cater to their moods and pace.

Three minutes later Liska walked straight to the table. He wore brown trousers and a floral shirt that looked like a Beall’s Outlet markdown. He sat, slammed the coffee, up-ended the sangria and held out the cup and glass to our server for refills.

She took them and paused, maybe two seconds.

“
Dorado a la plancha,
” said Liska. “Yellow rice,
plantanos
.”

So much for his health-food regimen.

She looked at me for two seconds. It was the wrong time to admit that I wasn’t hungry.

“Puerco asado, white rice, pantanos, por favor.”

She disappeared for ten seconds then returned with a plastic basket full of warm buttered Cuban bread wrapped in white paper.

“Give anything for that kind of efficiency in my department,” said Liska.

“You’re the sheriff,” I said. “Go back to the office and fire somebody. The others will perk up.”

“Paperwork ‘til next Christmas.” He pulled the bread basket closer and dug in.

I began to bounce back another one-liner of questionable wisdom.

“Look, stop right there,” he said. “There’s a reason for this lunch. I’m not in the mood for distractions.”

I nodded, reached for my sangria. “I’ll shut up.”

“I’ve had to rethink something I said to you two days ago. Hear me out on this and please let me finish what I have to say. Agreed?”

I knew what was coming. I shrugged and nodded simultaneously.

“To launch this tirade,” he said. “I want to make sure you understand that Greg Pulver’s murder was a cold execution. It was not a crime of passion, an unpredicted moment of rage. It was an ugly and quick adiós. His killer planned that he would get a bullet up through his chin and out the top of his skull.”

He paused for effect. I looked around. People at nearby tables had noticed Liska’s intensity, his choice of words, his focused tirade. I splayed my hands, palms down, to shush him.

He resumed speaking with his teeth clamped together, his eyes squinting with hatred, his words coming out as hissing sounds. “After he was shot, Greg Pulver was kicked in the balls. It was a grotesque post-mortem injury that targeted his genitals, broke a pelvic bone called the ischium and came directly from hatred. We have little choice but to see it as revenge. Tell me your take on that, five sentences or less.”

“Not many women wear shoes capable of cracking bone.”

“Good, Alex, so follow this logic. We don’t know if the killer was one person or several. It could have been a man or a woman or one of each, but I’m using ‘he’ for this discussion. We don’t know if
he
is still in town. We’re all running around pushing paper, talking shop, reporting to each other, but we’re not finding shit. Have you got me so far?”

I nodded again and kept my mouth shut.

Liska retreated into his thoughts, began fiddling with the paper packets of sugar substitutes. “Let’s say a murderer is still on the island,” he said. “If said killer believes that any of us is close, he has no choice. He will act to protect himself. And we have no idea what he will do or how to stop him because we can’t identify where he’s coming from. When I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘we the cops,’ which starting right now no longer includes you or the Bumsnoops.”

“Little late in the game to change the rules,” I said.

“Have you any idea who will catch the next bullet?”

I shook my head and put a finger to my lip, reminding him again to tone it down.

“Do you want to put your private eye rookies at death’s door?” he said. “Draw bad guys to your doorstep? Endanger your girlfriend? Count the bullet holes through your porch screening?”

“No.”

“When I was a city detective, Rutledge, some shitbird came within two seconds of piercing your forehead with a large, ugly hunk of lead. Since I’ve been sheriff, you’ve had your house torched, been in a car wreck, taken a beating that required a hospital stay, and been run down by a car near Fausto’s. Am I forgetting anything?”

Half the restaurant was staring at me. I felt like a misfortune magnet. Like a freak on one of those TV shows where people eat roaches and gargle with snakes.

Again Liska lowered his voice. “Your Bumsnoops rode past Ocilla’s place this morning and took their damned time checking out my surveillance team. Please understand, that team is not just watching the woman. She was Pulver’s business partner. For all we know of the killer, Ocilla could be his next target.”

“You want that to happen, right?” I said. “To identify the shooter by drawing him to the woman?”

“Make no mistake,”said Liska. “I want the process to begin, but not to the point of murder. My men have orders to protect a probable scam artist from being killed herself. We will take down the sharks, if they appear, and we can’t have sloppiness. I can’t have amateurs wallowing around on my turf. Argument?”

“Your words are well taken.”

“You’re a fine photographer,” he said, his words quieter. “I’ve been a good cop for years. Everyone has talent, and you’ve been a great help to me in the past. But you’re not a deputy. You have no weapons training, no body armor. And, for once, I suspect, no comeback at all.” He went silent.

I took his pause as an invitation to rebuttal.

“I have a minor critique,” I said. “Please don’t take this personally. Wiley Fecko, prior to being a street person and a licensed investigator, worked for years at a major phone company. Your ‘cable’ guys were blowing their own cover. They were using the wrong tools for their job and ignoring safety regulations. If Fecko can spot them, who else can do it?”

Our food arrived at the table. Liska excused himself to step outside to make a call. After he returned we picked at our meals, spooned beans into the rice, passed the hot sauce. Liska’s fish sat there looking fresh-caught. My roast pork smelled like heaven, but I was still full of fruit and granola.

Liska crumpled his paper napkin, dropped it on his food. “I am glad to note that I have not wasted my time and words.”

“What have I done to transmit that message?” I said.

“I’ve never seen you not finish a plate of Cuban food.”

“I had a big breakfast.”

“One other thing I need to tell you about,” he said. “I got a call from an old friend in Manatee County, and you’ll get one too. Glenn Steffey will play dumb with you, but don’t fall for it. He told me he’s hasn’t seen a better crime scene photo in years. He said you kept your cool, didn’t lose your shit at the sight of a mutilated corpse. He’s a fine detective, so that’s high praise.”

“Still not my preferred line of work,” I said. “I was glad to turn my back on that situation.”

“I can sympathize,” said the sheriff. “But my take on his words is that you might want to anticipate a call from their grand jury. Thank you for paying the tab.”

Our fair weather vanished while we failed to eat our lunch. The sky was overcast, Catherine Street a strip of washed-out colors, the palms on Margaret more purple-gray than tropical. I guessed that rain was a quarter-hour away, maybe less. I reminded myself of the cliché that never fails: a stormy winter day in Cayo Hueso beats every option north of Tampa.

Feeling pleased that my delivery of Wiley Fecko’s tech critique had inspired a corrective phone call, I replayed our little chat in my mind. I quickly realized that I had never seen Sheriff Liska so animated, or heard such gravity in his words. For years he had dealt with danger. Monroe County is a haven for those who stray from “normalcy,” whatever that is, and thank goodness. But it’s a magnet for dysfunctional strangers who want to misbehave under palm trees rather than snow drifts. It can be, on occasion, a volatile social scene, and that is when most law-abiding citizens of the Keys leave worry and dread to others. Cops and deputies, each of them an employee of those citizens, have a two-word job description: Confront It. They all know that evil doesn’t take breaks.

I came away from the meal with a ball cap that smelled of fried plantains and a mind full of worthwhile advice. His warnings had been genuine this time, not a ploy. Not a mind game.

T
hrough shortage of time or lack of money, I have been my own shrink for years. I have been known to pool my resources for self-medication. I felt it was time to take my full belly, caffeine and sangria to a therapy session. That always meant a ride next to the ocean.

Key West is a four-by-two-mile island halfway between Puerto Escondito, Cuba, and Marco Island, south of Naples, Florida. It’s attached to America by a constricted hundred-mile asphalt umbilical cord, and it’s smack in the middle of nowhere except the Gulf of Mexico.

My ‘70 Triumph T120R Bonneville is a 650cc twin rated at forty-six horsepower. It has a four-speed transmission and weighs 600 pounds with me aboard. When new it would do better than 100 mph. I baby the old beast these days and try to keep it under 85. I store its original seat and carburetors in a box in the house. I’ve added turn signals and fresh rubber, but I kept the drum brakes and wire wheels. It rarely fails to jack my mood, blow dust from my brain.

I stupidly ignored the fact that a trip to Smathers Beach would take me past The Tideline condos. It wasn’t as if I could have worn blinders, and Beth might forgive the image from the past:

For some reason Teresa and I started early one morning. She worked five days a week. I tried never to schedule clients before ten. On the day that came to mind, our best shot to beat the clock was to share my outdoor shower. As lovers will, we messed around, did everything we could dream up to make ourselves late. It was her idea to put her feet on the bench seat and face away from me. She got hers first then tried to get fancy. It worked like she knew it would. When my knees buckled we both went down like playing cards in a failed stack. We spent more time laughing than we did having sex. I can’t recall if either of us got to work on time.

Maybe, when he found time, my budget shrink in the mirror would explain my desire to sift through brambles and barbed wire to find the thoughts of Teresa that most effectively crushed my heart.

My restorative ride took me to the smells of distant fish and coconut skin lotion. Folks quitting their beach time carried oversized towels and folding chairs from the sand back to their vans. Hot dog vendors were packing it in for the day. A young couple leaned against their car and dumped sand out of their shoes. A die-hard paraglider headed ashore. License tags on parked cars were from Michigan, New York, Delaware. The island joke: What do you call people who swim in January? The answer: North Dakotans.

The city derives great income from vista gawkers who creep above thirty. This was not a race against the clock. I rolled slowly eastward. I kept to the left lane to avoid chuckholes. Salt spray, cops and thousands of gawkers have played hell with the slow lane’s surface. I scanned the horizon, let my mind drift. A bad idea on a motorcycle, but traffic was light.

“Have you any idea who will catch the next bullet?”

Leaning through the bend where A1A curves to the north, I passed the stretch of waterfront where the original Houseboat Row lost its fight to Hurricane Georges in 1998. I rode by the hotels and condos built since then, buildings whose scenic views would have been spoiled by a line of funky houseboats. Many islanders would prefer, of course, the houseboats, but we cannot argue with the weather. Nor the passing of time. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen a shrimp boat in the main harbor. I wished I could hear Captain Tony say one more time, “All you need is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego. Brains don’t mean a shit.”

My thoughts about Key West dodge the maudlin, for the most part. I have felt for years that my future holds promise for experiences equal to those in my past. Not the same events, which risks boredom, but fresh ones. Not the same me, either, which I can accept most of the time.

Nostalgia has its moments. The trick, I believe, is to shed regret.

Liska had guessed correctly that Tanner and Fecko were answering to me. And he was right about the danger of not knowing our adversary. Until law enforcement could determine the killer’s identity or a hint of his motive, the Aristocrats were at risk. But I couldn’t see how any trail might lead back to me. I was simply a messenger boy. The sheriff also had skipped over, practically swerved to avoid the fact that Greg Pulver hadn’t died alone. Emerson Caldwell and Teresa Barga had died in the same condo the day Pulver was found.

The sheriff had no real reason to discuss Caldwell. There was nothing messy and threatening about cardiac arrest or, from what I knew, death by poisoning. But he hadn’t described Teresa, how she looked after being strangled and having her neck snapped. His silence sent the exact message he wanted to plant in my brain. He knew that my photographer’s mind would provide sufficient impact and horror. He also believed that his left-field approach would keep me from acting the rebel, tracking mud into his department.

Chicken Neck was a detective at the city when I met him. He didn’t promote his own reputation. He didn’t have time for that. It grew from his crime solutions, case closings and convictions. I had worried that he might slack off after his election, get discouraged by the office routine and supervisory chores, get caught up in politics or human resource flaps. But as Monroe County’s sheriff, he had proved himself effective and worthy.

Maybe his health-food regimen was making him smarter. He set up our lunch chat as a one-sided debate. Having armed himself with details, he delivered his barrage, pushed procedure, stayed away from jerking tears. He had tried to bully me into backing off.

He almost made it work, but he left me with two huge questions. What could we do to screw up his investigation? How could we endanger ourselves or his officers? We weren’t out pounding the streets, walking solo in iffy sections of town, cruising bad alleys at night. We were gathering data.
They,
Wiley and Dubbie, were gathering data while I was going around in circles.