CHAPTER FOUR
Key West floats 154 miles from Miami, the last in a necklace of 5 precious island gems, held together by an elevated silver strand known as U.S. Highway 1. There are actually hundreds of mostly uninhabited Keys; but Key Largo, Marathon, Islamorada, Big Pine Key, and Key West are the crown jewels.
Built on a bedrock of coral, Key West is two miles wide and four miles long. While small, it’s large enough to contain a riotous history of inflated egos, brash pirates, treasure hunters, the United State Navy, more than its fair share of bizarre happenings, and even the White House.
When sixteenth-century Spaniards arrived on the island, they found the bones of the dead leftover from the Calusa and Seminole Indian battle, bleaching in the subtropical sun. The Spaniards dubbed the macabre slab of coral Cayo Hueso, the Island of Bones. Later, English settlers changed Cayo Hueso to Key West, something easier to pronounce in their tongue.
To the literary-minded, the island is the impecunious, down-on-its-heels backdrop for onetime resident Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. History buffs know it is as President Harry Truman’s favorite vacation spot, home of his “Little White House.” JFK held a summit with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan there in 1961, though it was Nassau, not Key West, where Kennedy is rumored to have told Macmillan he needed “sex once a day” to avoid headaches.
Not unkindly, some have said, “more than a few nuts roll downhill to Florida” in general, to Key West specifically. A spectacularly macabre example is the story of Carl Tanzler, aka Count Carl von Cosel. The German-born Key West resident developed an obsession with Maria, a Cuban beauty nearly thirty years his junior.
Maria was dying of tuberculosis, a tragically common diagnosis for many in 1930s America.
Tanzler tried to cure the object of his obsession, but neither Depression-era medicine nor Tanzler’s quack cures were up to the task of preventing his beloved’s death from TB. A few days before Halloween 1931, Maria succumbed.
Tanzler grieved for Maria, but he was far from giving up on her, even after her heart stopped beating for him or anyone else. He stole her body from the crypt, mummified it, and slept with her corpse for nearly a decade before suspicious family members discovered his gruesome living arrangements. He was arrested with the discovery, but the charges were eventually dropped. It has been reported that Tanzler committed repeated acts of necrophilia on Maria’s corpse.
A particularly ham-fisted attempt at controlling illegal immigration by the U.S. Border Patrol in 1982 led to Key West briefly seceding from the union, establishing itself as the Conch Republic. The legendary Conch rebellion lasted precisely one minute before the “prime minister” surrendered to the U.S. and demanded a billion dollars in foreign aid.
To this day, this beautiful coral strip attracts the strange, the enchanted, the disenchanted, and those looking for a quiet life under the palms and Geiger trees. It’s also a floating Casablanca, an island of conflicting agendas, artists, commerce, piracy, snowbirds, tourists, and eccentrics—a Mecca where people prosper or go bankrupt, live or die.
Truly, Key West remains the Island of Bones.
Juan pushed aside the plate of chicken bones leftover from his basket of hot wings. He pounded down his third shot of rum; the throbbing in his ears had worsened with every beat and strum of the band. A chicken—a cock, in fact—brushed his leg under the table as the feathered scavenger hunted for peck-worthy scraps, even willing to cannibalistically devour remnants of its de-feathered kin, trying to avoid being trampled underfoot on the red brick floor.
The intense spices in the true-to-their-name hot wings made Juan sweat more than usual, even though a mild harbor breeze wafted over him as he staked out a plastic table in the so-called courtyard of the Hog’s Snout Saloon. He knew better than to be out in the open like that, but he had to get his crew together, and he was in dire need of a drink to cool him off in more ways than one. The shack he had holed up in was stifling anyway.
Besides, he doubted the Bahamian would think him stupid enough to be so overtly “out” as to be seen at the legendary Hog’s Snout.
He held up a finger for another shot of rum and raised his bottle to signal for a fresh Kalik. The Bahamian will be amused to see me drinking Bahamian beer, Juan thought. Juan had developed a taste for it, though it had an odor he didn’t like. That odor is nothing, though, Juan thought, compared to the stink of Marchand’s sweaty, shit-stained corpse.
Juan looked away from the bar area, where the band prepared to jam again, to stroke his head back to throbbing. Their fifteen-minute break had thankfully lasted twenty minutes, but now it was past time for another round of Jimmy Buffett and Dan Fogelberg covers.
A reddened and sun-dried white man, dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, khaki shorts, and flip-flops, walked past the band and sat gracelessly in the chair at a table that was butted against the large tree growing amidst the bar courtyard. The table was only a foot or so from Juan’s. The sunburned man picked up the laminated menu, squinted at the print, and smirked. “I’ll have the conch fritters and a double Stoli, on the rocks, with lime,” he said. Juan noted he pronounced the word conch correctly, “conk,” a remarkable achievement that most tourists fail to do.
The waitress navigated the throng of customers and put his order in. Juan returned his gaze to the lobster-red stranger and observed the man removing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket and placing them on the table. When the guy began fumbling around, looking for an ashtray amidst the salt and pepper shakers and advertisements, Juan reached over and offered the dirty red plastic one from his own table to the man. “No fumar,” Juan said, shrugging.
“Thank you very much,” the man said, smiling and nodding.
Juan thought the man looked to be in his late thirties, but something about his eyes seemed older. “De nada,” Juan said.
Both received their drink orders at the same time. The red white man raised his up as a polite gesture to Juan, and Juan did the same.
Both sipped their drinks as the music started, a commendable attempt at a Junkanoo-style tune.
Juan enjoyed the music this time, thinking again that the Bahamian would be amused, now by Juan’s enjoyment of the native music of the Bahamas. By the time the sunburned man’s conch fritters arrived, Juan was preoccupied with something else.
The man at the table next to him waved. He was talking on a cell phone, waving in Juan’s direction. Juan’s eyes darted from the man to the general direction he waved.
The man spoke loudly over the music. “No really! Log on now, and you’ll see!”
Juan’s English wasn’t great, but he knew enough to realize that the man was talking about being on the Internet and trying to get someone “back home” to look.
Juan looked closer. A sign hanging over the doorway to the restrooms advertised that he was sitting dead center in front of a live webcam, and anyone who cared to look on the Web could see his face and the distinctive tattoos of Jesus and Mary on each of his bare biceps. He muttered under his breath and looked down into his drink, his face almost parallel with the table. He covered each bicep with his hands, as if to rub them in the cold. Juan didn’t know much about the Internet, but a camera was a camera. Without looking up, he moved to the opposite of the two chairs at his table, facing away from the camera view.
A few minutes of conversation later, the man put his cell phone away and finished off his plate of conch fritters. He ordered another drink and winked broadly at the webcam.
Juan pretended not to notice. He needed to move, so he ducked his head and went to the bar, where he ordered another Kalik. The bartender promptly informed him that the weekly Kalik shipment was late, so his supply was exhausted. Juan ordered a Red Stripe and eyed the patronage of Hog’s Snout, looking for his contact.
A young Hispanic man with a well-trimmed mustache eased in through the entrance on the north side of the bar.
Hector.
Hector caught sight of Juan and
nodded in acknowledgment. Juan nodded back, then jerked his head toward the webcam sign.
Hector looked puzzled. He read the sign but didn’t seem to twig Juan’s concern.
Juan gritted his teeth and exposed them with a grimace. At that point, while Hector may not have understood the sign, he definitely caught Juan’s drift.
Meanwhile, the sunburned man stood and walked unsteadily to the restroom, leaving his cigarettes on the table beside the empty beer bottles and conch fritter basket.
Juan thought the man comical, but he quickly shrugged off the thought and looked at Hector, who self-consciously drank a rum and Coke on the far side of the bar.
Juan gave him an “abort” warning look and turned his back. Since the meeting was clearly canceled for security reasons—or lack thereof—Juan walked back to his table, his face situated carefully away from the camera. He reached for the check and started counting bills.
Pop! Pop-pop-pop!
Juan jumped at the loud sound—not quite like a gunshot, but it still did nothing to calm his already edgy nerves. He realized that in that same second, the music stopped; the lead guitarist had blown his amp out.
“Sorry, folks,” said the musician, waving his hands around the smoking amp.
Juan started to look back at the bills when he saw the Bahamian, dressed in a pale blue linen shirt, white pants, and dark sunglasses under a straw Panama hat. His black skin glistened with sweat. Hector stood beside him, pointing at Juan.
Bastardo.
A quick reconnaissance revealed that the Bahamian’s men blocked all exits.
Juan threw bills on the table, scooped up the white man’s cigarettes, and calmly and confidently strode to the restroom. In the men’s room, Juan’s heart sank when he saw the tiny window. No escape here either. Shit! I’ll have to fight my way out, he thought, though he didn’t like his odds.
The white man washed his hands in the tiny white sink. He saw Juan’s reflection in the mirror and nodded with a drunken smile.
Juan held out the cigarettes. “Somebody could take,” Juan said.
Drying his hands, the man nodded. “Well, thanks. I appreciate it.” He accepted the cigarettes and put them in his pocket. “All yours,” the man said to Juan as he brushed past, opening the door. The gringo bumped into Hector as he crowded past to get to the toilet.
“De nada,” Juan said. He looked in the mirror and splashed water on his face.
“Hola, Juan,” Hector said as he violently introduced Juan’s face to the bathroom mirror.
Pilate sat back down at his table and finished the dregs of his vodka. Man, I could use another drink—just one more. He cast back his recollection to Jack Lindstrom and the mess at Cross College. Blew his face off. With a shotgun. “Hmm.” Pilate grunted.
The waitress brought another drink.
“What happened to the music?”
“Oh, his amp went out again,” she said. “He needs to get a new one. That piece of shit blows more than my big sister after prom.”
Pilate had no reply other than to offer thanks for the drink. He absentmindedly reached for his cigarettes, but he was interrupted by shouting from below the webcam sign.
“Jesus! Get an ambulance!” a fat man in a tank top screamed, his hands and shirt covered in a fresh coat of crimson spatters.
The sight of blood paralyzed Pilate for a moment, but then he leapt to his feet and headed for the man.
“Are you all right?” Pilate demanded of the fat man, adrenaline blowing his vodka buzz to smithereens.
The fat man shook his head and pointed silently to the restroom.
Pilate brushed him aside.
Inside the restroom was the man who had given him his cigarettes not five minutes earlier, sprawled against the walls of the toilet stall. His nose was broken and bleeding profusely, but that wasn’t the worst of it. His throat was slashed; the stall painted in his blood.
“Oh my God,” Pilate muttered.
Juan’s hand twitched at his throat, where it had failed to stanch the blood that jetted from his wound like a lawn sprinkler. His eyes opened briefly and met Pilate’s.
Pilate caught a flicker of recognition before the murdered man’s eyes closed for the very last time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Pilate held onto the drink in his hand as if it were a link to his sanity, a liquid security blanket. The police questioned him for fifteen minutes before they let him go. Truthfully, he hadn’t much to say; he’d only exchanged a few words with the guy who coincidentally shared the same first name, albeit the Spanish version.
He felt a tightening in his chest. The blood, the violence, the cops—it tore him away from the palm trees and sands of Key West, jerked him right back to those unpleasantly familiar snowy cornfields of Cross Township.
The lights from the patrol cars illuminated Front Street as Pilate downed the rest of the drink at the bar adjacent to the Hog’s Snout. His hands shook as he pulled the cigarette pack from his pocket. Yeah, I’ll quit with these damn things. Just not tonight.
He tried to shake a cigarette from the pack, but none came out. There were only three filters sticking out of the pack, but they were stuck. He pinched one cigarette filter between his thumb and index finger and gently tugged. Finally, the filter cooperated and came loose, dragging something else along with it—something heavier and round that landed right in his lap.
Pilate picked it up and squinted at it in the dim neon glow of the bar lights. It was a poker chip, pink with two wedges of blue on the edges. A label pasted in the center of the chip read: PARADISE ISLAND CASINO BAHAMAS $2.50.
What the…? How the hell did a pink poker chip from the Bahamas get into my pack of cigs?
Pilate turned the clay chip over in his hands. It had the heft of a real casino chip, and it was very clean, almost pristine, as if it had never been used or hardly touched.
Juan! Oh my God! Juan, the dead guy, put this in my cigarettes and gave it to me in the bathroom. But why?
Pilate shrugged, put the chip in his pocket, and lit a cigarette. The next few moments were lost in a fog of confusion, a fading of adrenaline, and the effects of the alcohol.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket.
“Hi,” he said.
“What happened?” Kate said. “I was watching you on that webcam, and after you hung up, I put Kara to bed,” she said, worry dripping from her voice. “When I came back to the computer, the webcam was still up, but all I could see in that bar were cops milling around.”
Pilate sighed. “Well, I was minding my own business, and—”
“John, are you okay?”
“Yeah, babe—just a little shook up. I, uh…hmm,” Pilate didn’t feel much like talking. “Can I call you back when I get to Trevathan’s?”
“Of course. Just let me know you’re all right, okay?”
“I’m all right. It was just weird, that’s all,” he said. “Really weird.” And as scary as the shit that went down in Cross.
After the two said their goodbyes, Pilate slipped the phone in his pocket and felt it slide against the poker chip.
He finished his drink, smoked another cigarette, and walked back to Trevathan’s place, looking over his shoulder more than once along the way.
Her English accent, though blunted by years stateside, was still evident when she sleepily answered the phone. “Hello?”
“Hi, Sam,” Pilate said. “Did I wake you?”
“John?” she said. “Is that you? Really?”
“Yeah,” he scratched his head, drunk and fidgety. “Thought I’d call you back.”
“It’s been weeks since I’ve called you,” she said, her voice just a husky whisper. “Hang on a mo’.”
He heard the rustling of sheets and the mumbling of someone else in the room.
“Sorry if I disturbed what’s-his-name too,” Pilate said. “Actually, uh…no. I take that back. I’m glad I woke the bastard up.”
He heard her close the door and pad through the h
ouse to another room. “John, where are you? What are you doing?”
“I’m south, down south.”
“South of where?” she said.
“Everything,” he said. “Key West. Look, this is a bad idea. I just wanted to call and tell you—”
“Tell me what?”
“That I…that I don’t have cancer,” he said.
“Well I know that now, you prat. Since you wouldn’t talk to me, I had to call your mum. She told me your surgery revealed something benign, something in your throat,” she said.
“I wish you would leave my parents out of this, Samantha,” he said. “You’ve already done a number on my family.”
“Tell her, John,” Simon said from a corner of his skull. “Let her have it!”
“A number? What’s that supposed to mean? “
“Telling my aunt and uncle that I beat you?” Pilate said, his voice bumping the ceiling of a shout. “That I raised a hand to you? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I never said that,” she said. “All I said was that you could be rough sometimes.”
“Oh, I see. So I suppose, being British, that you didn’t quite know the language well enough to say, ‘John shouts at me when I can’t account for my whereabouts. See, when I’m out screwing the bartender and he can’t find me, he tends to gets angry and shouts a lot.’ That might be rough, from your perspective, but it’s by no means the same damn thing as me hitting you. You implied it, they inferred it, and you didn’t dissuade them from believing it. And, by the way, fuck them for believing that I’d put my hands on you.”
Samantha cleared her throat. “I better go, John.”
Pilate stood there, huffing heavily into the phone.
“John?”
“Yeah?” He felt the poison drain away in a trickle.
“I read in the newspapers about you getting shot in that small town in South Dakota—”
“Close enough,” he said.
Pilate's Key Page 3