An hour later she was onstage, dancing in a dreamlike state, the horse running through her veins like it was on fire. She peeled the clothes off one piece at a time, somewhat in rhythm to the heavy drums and throaty sax. She could hear the crowd go wild as the g-string fell to the ground, and she realized she was doing the same moves she’d seen the other girls do, the moves that made her embarrassed to watch. But she realized that it wasn’t so bad, having all those men admiring her, applauding her, throwing crisp five and ten dollar bills at her. The song ended and she scooped up the tips...and when she was sober enough to count them, her total for the night was over one hundred dollars...more than anyone she knew made in a week. Yet no matter how much she made, it never seemed to be enough...the prices were always rising, the house fees were getting higher too, and it wasn’t long before a man named Bachman came to her with a proposition.
“I have a client,” he told her, “That is very important. And this particular man just happens to have an appetite for very young girls, such as yourself.” Still a teenager and looking very young, she was the perfect fit for Bachman’s out of town client, a wealthy European who stayed at Tiki Island Resort up in the middle Keys a few times a year. “I can offer you five hundred dollars to spend the night with him,” he said without a run-around. “Plus I can guarantee you no house fees here for your dancing for one month, and, as an added bonus...the price of your...medication...will be reduced by twenty percent.”
Jessica’s mind whirled. She really needed the money, and the lower price on the H would really be helpful...but to sleep with a man...a stranger...for money...
“This is a one-time offer,” Bachman told her. “You can leave with me now, for Tiki Island, or stay here for nothing. Did you get your fix?”
“Not yet, not today.”
“I can give it to you, on the Island. Come with me, Jessica. You won’t regret it.”
+++
“That’s how I met Bachman,” Jessica told me as she rearranged the pillows behind her frail head. It was depressing to see her like this, the pale, parchment-like skin, the yellowish eyes, the shaking. I did everything I could to act like I didn’t notice, but the poor chick looked like hell. Gaddamned monkey.
“How long ago was that?”
“About six years ago, I guess. I dunno, really, time sort of means nothing to me anymore. Anyway, I had already known Melinda, and it wasn’t long before Melinda and I became close friends, then, over a jug of wine on the beach, we became more than friends...we became lovers in the most taboo sense of the word. But Melinda was all over the place. She’d been having an affair with Eliot, then with Bachman. She slept with cute men who would come here on vacation, she would have quickies with the kitchen help on a dare. She talked me into sleeping with her and Eliot together, and eventually together with you, although that didn’t take much convincing.”
I just smiled. I really didn’t want to hear any of this. I had no idea why she was telling me any of this, either. I just wanted it to be over so she could have her peace and I could go back to New York. That may sound insensitive, but you have no idea what this poor kid looked like. Besides, this haunted freaking Island gave me the creeps.
She continued, “It was Bachman who made me a prostitute, although I suppose Roberts had a lot to do with it too. And myself, of course. I just couldn’t get the monkey off my back. I hated him for that, I think you can understand.”
“Losing your mother, then your grandparents so young...no one to take care of you...I can see how you got mixed up in that life, kid.”
Jessica laughed. “Oh, Billy, it wasn’t that. I could handle my grandparents dying in that crash. I could even handle Ricardo leaving me. No, there was something else that happened at the same time, something that at first I thought was wonderful, then realized too late how horrible it was. Something...something so horrific, it changed me, and it made me change my life, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to do anything about it.”
“What happened?”
“I found out that my mama had been murdered, that’s what happened, and everything went to hell after that.”
Chapter Seven
April, 1951
It was late on a hot, wet day when Jessica awoke in her small apartment above the bar in Key West. The clock ticked away as she lie in her bed, thinking about what she needed to do in a few hours: work. Stripping, baring her young body for a bunch of sleazy, sex-crazed lowlifes so they could get it up to give it to the hookers that were waiting to take them upstairs at the club. It was a disgusting way to make a living, she thought, but it was a quick way to make easy money... money she needed to feed the monkey, the one that made life feel so good, even when things were so screwed up.
It was already past five, and she needed to be onstage at the The Low Key Club by eight. She jumped in the shower, threw on her clothes, grabbed her work suitcase and headed out.
She arrived early and got herself set up in the dressing room. With an hour to spare, she decided to head out for a bite to eat before taking her shift. There was a little sandwich shop a block away, perfect for something light before her shift.
The minute she walked in she wished she’d made something at home. There was Sheriff Roberts, that fat som’bitch that kept her on a leash, calling her over to sit with him. It was too late to turn around and leave, so she obliged.
“Eve’nin, Sheriff,” she said politely. She detested him, but in general he was good to her, giving her a fix whenever she wanted it, making sure she got time off when she wanted it, supplying her with pretty much anything else she needed.
“Hey, ya’ll lil’ darlin’,” he said, obviously drunk. She sat and ordered a ham and cheese sandwich and a ginger ale. Roberts started talking, and wouldn’t shut up. She missed half of what he said, as his speech was so slurred it was impossible to catch it all, but when she heard the word, “Mother,” that got her attention.
“Wait, Sheriff, what did ya’ll jus’ say?”
“Your mother. I known your mama. She was as sweet a child as you can imagine, an’ a real looker, too. Jus’ like you.”
“Wow!” she exclaimed feeling kind of silly afterwards, but it wasn’t every day she talked to someone who knew her mother. “Well tell me more, how did you know her? What was she like?”
“Well hell, she done worked for me, darlin’! Thought ya’ll knew that!”
“Worked for you...you mean, she worked for the Sheriff’s department?”
Roberts let out a huge laugh, the kind only large men can conjure. “Oh, hell no, baby! She was a workin’ girl, jus’ like you!”
Jessica reeled. “What? You mean she was a stripper?”
“A stripper? No, no, darlin’, she was...well, ya’ll know...a lady of the evenin’, in fact she worked in that same house that ya’ll are workin’ in tonight!” He laughed again as Jessica began to tremble. She stood up and smacked Roberts hard across the face.
“You take that back you som’bitch,” she said. Everyone stopped and stared. The diner was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Roberts rubbed his face. He wasn’t expecting that, but when he thought about it he realized he deserved it. Then he said very seriously, “Girly, I thought ya’ll known about that, and I’m truly sorry that I’d been the one to tell you.” He motioned for her to sit down, and she did. “Yo’ Mama was a fine, decent and wonderful women, Miss Jessica. She was the sweetest, most darlin’ girl you’d ever meet. But she was what she was, and that was a lady of the evenin’, workin’ in that there cathouse where you shake yo’ ass currently. That don’t make her any mo’ or any less of a good person, ya’ll remember that, girly. Jus’ like it don’t make you no better or worse.”
He got up, left a five on the table and left. Jessica broke down in tears, crying for her mother for the first time in over fifteen years.
A few hours later, a man named Rutger Bachman would offer her a chance to make $500 to sleep with one of his VIP clients, and Jessic
a would say yes.
Late October, 1952
Jessica and Melinda were comfortably spread out next to each other on towels on the beach near Jessica’s apartment in Key West. The sun was hot, and they soaked up the rays, ‘going native’ on the secluded beach for that no-tan-line look. At five, they decided to head back to Duval for a quick dinner before going back to Tiki Island.
They ended up at a little out-of-the-way place that served Caribbean dishes. The last person they ever expected to see there was Sheriff Roberts.
“Oh, Jesus, this guy’s like horse manure, he’s everywhere and he stinks,” Jessica whispered to Melinda and they had a good laugh. They took a table far away from the bar, but it didn’t help. The inebriated man stumbled over to the two girls.
“Good even’n ladies, mind if I join ya’ll?”
“Well actually –”
“Thank ya, don’t mind if I do.” He pulled up a chair and sat on it backwards, something Melinda detested. Then, as usual, Roberts started shooting off at the mouth the way he was known to do when he had a few too many mint juleps. He talked about the weather, about the citrus trees, about a secretary in the police station who got knocked up by a night janitor.
“Roberts,” Jessica finally interrupted, “Did you follow us down here? Seems like a kind of an odd place for ya’ll to be drinkin’.”
“Well, lil’ darlin’, matter of fact, maybe...maybe I did.”
“Why?”
“Uh...” he searched around for a good reason. He had none.
“Jus’ checkin’ up on ya’ll.”
Melinda said, “Well, we’re fine. And we’d like a little privacy, if you don’t mind Sheriff.”
Roberts got slightly indignant. “Well, ok then, ya stuck-up hussy, you and your little whore can be all alone! God damned lezzies.” He tried to get up, but for the second time Jessica let loose a full-handed slap that nearly knocked him off the chair.
“Some day, you som’bitch, ya’ll are gonna go to far, and I ain’t jus’ gonna slap yo’ fat face, boy,” Jessica said, trembling. Melinda tried to calm her down but it was no use.
Roberts knew he’d done it again, he’d stuck his fat foot in his fat mouth. He didn’t mean to be such a prick, it was just that he so much wanted to get close to Jessica, Rose’s daughter, and he didn’t have a half a brain in his head to know how to do it right.
“Miss Jessica,” Roberts said, humbled, “I am sorry. I don’t know what come over me. It’s jus...”
He stopped talking. Jessica hovered over him, Melinda remained seated. “Well, what is it?”
“It’s jus’ that this time a’ year always reminds me of yo’ Mama, that’s all,” he said, almost in tears.
“What? What the hell do you care about my Mama? She died almost seventeen years ago.”
“I knowed it.”
“So what you care?”
“I...I jus...”
“You jus’ what?”
“I...I wish I coulda saved her, that’s all.”
“You? What in hell could you have done against that storm? They ain’t nobody that coulda saved her from that ’cane, and ya’ll know it!”
“Cane!” Roberts said, “Aw, fuwk that ’cane. Ain’t no hurricane done killed yo’ mama, she was murdered, sure as shit she was murdered and that ’cane was just a way to cover it...aw, shit,” he continued, then hung his head down low. Under his breath he whispered, “Ya done fuwked up this time, boy.”
Jessica was in shock. “Murdered?” she asked quietly, her heart beating fast, her whole life turned upside down with the single word. “Who? How?”
Roberts looked up at the girl, the spitting image of her beautiful mother, the only woman Maynard Roberts ever loved, ever considered loving, but would never dare confess. Certainly he had paid for Rose’s services a few times, but that was as close as he ever dared to get to the blonde angel that he dreamed about, the woman he thought about day and night...the woman that was murdered by that evil som’bitch Hawthorn, in cold blood, just to cover his own ass. The woman who was used as a changeling, murdered by the man he continued to work for all these years. Murdered by the man that Rose’s beautiful, precious daughter Jessica and that lowlife slut Melinda Hawthorn were both taking to town every night. It killed him to imagine it, twisted his guts to think of Jessica bedding that disgusting man after he murdered her mother. Roberts couldn’t stand it any longer. He’d held Hawthorn’s secrets for seventeen years, but he couldn’t hold them a minute longer. He had to tell her. He had only found out a year or so ago that Jessica Rutledge was in fact Rose Divine’s daughter, as he had never known Rose’s real last name. But now that he knew, now things were different. He couldn’t allow her to go on the way she was. He had to stop it.
Funny, he thought, how he found out by chance that Rose’s daughter was now working for him, at The Low Key Club, as a prostitute. Funny, that she was conceived around the same time that Roberts first took Rose to bed upstairs at the Low Key Club...And he couldn’t stand it any more, couldn’t stand what Rose’s daughter had become, couldn’t stand that he allowed Rose’s murder to go unknown for so many years.
He took a swallow of his booze and said very shakily, “She was murdered, Miss Jessica, beat to death with a lead pipe and thrown over the side of a boat during that horrific storm. The storm was just a way to cover it up, cover many things up,” he said flatly, using every ounce of courage he had to spit it out.
“But who? Who would do such a thing?” Jessica asked, now letting the tears fall to the table.
Roberts said, “It was...” and he stopped short, not able, even now, to admit to the world who and what Eliot Hawthorn really was. He wasn’t sure why he couldn’t allow the words to leave his lips. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he couldn’t really believe it himself. Maybe, it was just too heartbreaking to say it out loud. “It was never solved,” he said, “I’m sorry.” He got up from the chair, tipped his hat, and stumbled away leaving Jessica and Melinda with that Earth-shattering news to hang around their necks.
December, 1952
Her rage consumed her. She found Roberts and asked him time and time again about her mother’s murder but he insisted that he only had circumstantial evidence that it was even really a murder, and had no idea who the ‘mysterious’ man who took her away from Key West in a boat that fateful weekend had been.
Finally, Jessica couldn’t stand it anymore. She knew a lot of people in the Keys, some good, some bad, many helpful. She called Melinda and told her what she wanted to do.
“Are you sure about this?” Melinda asked over the phone. “Being half Hawaiian, I take these things very, very seriously. I’ve heard some very disturbing stories about people who have tried this, and things went seriously wrong.”
“It’s the only way I know of,” Jessica answered. “And I have to know. I’ve tried others...Gypsies, a VooDoo priestess...no one could help me. You’re my last hope. Will you help me or not?”
“I will,” Melinda sighed, “Come to Tiki Island tonight. I’ll have everything prepared.”
+++
Jessica arrived on the Island at eight p.m. A storm was brewing in the Gulf, somewhat unusual for this time of year, but appropriate, she thought. Melinda met her at the dock.
“Do you want a drink first, or some supper?” she asked shakily. Always the good hostess, Jessica thought.
“Nah, Lin, I just want to get this started. Where is she?”
“The Tiki Hut on the north side of the Island. I have everything set. We can go right now if you’d like.”
“Yeah, let’s get crackin’, shug’. I’m anxious as hell.”
Melinda could tell by Jessica’s demeanor that she’d had a little help getting to the Island. Speed, she thought, possibly cocaine. She was concerned about Jessica using the stuff. She was young, but had already seen what it could do to people...and wished she’d never gotten mixed up in the business of it to begin with. But that was between her and Rutger Bachman, and she’d take that
cause up at a later time.
She led Jessica around the Island path, through the gardens where the criss-crossed palm trees grew, past the Tiki beach bar where the Hawaiian band played, past the ‘cheap’ rooms and to the secluded thatch and bamboo hut built over the water, reserved for private parties and currently empty...except for one soul.
“She’s in here. Now remember, she is very old and very strange, but very wise. Don’t say anything that might upset her.”
“Upset her? It’s my mother who was murdered!”
“See,” Melinda said, “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Ok, fine, I’ll be calm. Does she know why I’m here?” Jessica asked as they opened the door.
“Jessica Rutledge,” the old woman said in a strange, gruff voice, the accent of which was difficult to discern. She was surrounded by small clay jars and bowls, feathers, open coconuts, fresh palm fronds, colored rocks and a few other items that seemed strangely out of place. “Yes, I know why you are here. Sit down. This will take some time.”
Thunder rolled in from the Gulf. Jessica and Melinda watched as the old woman said some strange things in Hawaiian, rattled some sticks, stirred some ingredients into the coconut bowls and made several unusual signs with her hands. To Jessica, it seemed like something out of a carnival sideshow. To Melinda, this was a very serious, very ancient ritual, one very seldom discussed let alone seen in person.
The woman chanted something three times and beat a small drum four times. Unearthly blue and green lights seemed to grow from behind the woman. She chanted again and beat the drum. The lights intensified and a dark, ominous shadow began to form behind the woman, taking the form of a winged creature as she spoke.
“Tell now,” she said to Jessica, “Tell the Goddesses of the Earth what it is you want to know!”
Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Page 54