by Tom Corcoran
“I don’t even know what year you’re talking about.”
“We knew he was legitimate. We knew he’d spent money for charter boats, hotel rooms, and all. For some reason, some other visit, he’d given one of the boys his business card. The bank logo. We understood he was the real thing. Not a cop, and not likely to run to the DEA even if he declined to play a part.”
“You’re saying, the reason they approached him, he was a friend of mine?”
“You were the silent stamp of approval. After you left, I left, too. The three of them went up to your buddy’s room and hatched the deal.”
“Did Cahill agree that day? Or did he think it over?”
“That, I don’t know. Looks like we got here just before the rush.”
The hubbub intensified around the checkout lanes and photo-processing area. People were talking like crazy, indignant and worried. I watched several women hurry outside without bothering to raise their umbrellas. I wondered if a purse had been snatched in the lot, or someone had spotted a waterspout between the highway and Sigsbee Park.
“We’re all set, here.” Marshall Hoff waved a packet in my direction. Even Hoff appeared agitated.
I scoped my watch. Fifteen minutes flat. Not bad, if the work turned out okay. I handed Hoff my credit card and he whipped through the auto-dial and charge slip—signing process. “Your receipt and two sets of pictures for each roll are in the bag there. Today’s Double Prints Day, two for the price of one.”
“Wonderful.”
“Your negatives are in that separate envelope.”
“I appreciate the hurry-up,” I said. “What’s all this commotion?”
“You didn’t hear? Everybody in the store is talking about it. I can’t believe it, Key West of all places. A drive-by shooting. Some woman next to the bus stop across from Blockbuster. Shot right off her bicycle.”
6
Two full sets of photographs in my hand argued against a random act of violence. Someone had targeted Abby Womack.
If word of the shooting had already grapevined to Publix, I’d see little and learn nothing if I fought my way down U.S. 1. The bus stop would be a frenzy of cops and rubberneckers. I went for the logical alternative. The ambulance, with a patient or a corpse, had only one place to go. Spence had an odd look on his face. He agreed to drive me to Florida Keys Hospital.
College Road parallels Cow Key Channel, then dodges hammocks of thin pines and old landlocked mangroves before it cuts east across Stock Island. At forty-five in a twenty-five-mile zone, Spence’s Sunbird felt like the slowest piece of crap rolling. I bitched about his throttle foot. Spence muttered something about headwind. His mood had been dark ninety minutes earlier. It was pitch-black now.
We heard a piercing whine as we passed the asphalt cutoff to the sheriffs headquarters. A bad sign: the Aero-Med chopper warming its jet engine. The doctors had elected to airlift Abby Womack to Jackson Memorial in Miami. Closer to the hospital, a tall EMS van chirped its siren and teetered past the Sunbird, its blood-red strobes flashing only for us. Spence followed it down the narrow Emergency Services access road. The copter engine’s whistle suddenly dropped in tone. The blades’ whir slowed to a sloppy flutter. A worse sign: they were shutting down the bird.
The Emergency Services Wing had two entrances, twenty yards apart. The EMS vehicle swung a slow one-eighty and stopped under an awning marked AMBULANCE. Spence let me out near the canopy marked EMERGENCY. I entered the walk-in receiving area, moving slowly, not sure of my access, not wanting to draw attention that might get me ejected. A man with stringy, unwashed hair, perhaps in his early twenties, wearing only weathered jeans, sat on a metal chair, one foot wrapped in a bloody towel, the other bare. An ace of spades and the word TURD were tattooed on his left upper arm. The man stared into space, baffled by the view. Two staffers on duty: a nurse engrossed in paperwork, and an attendant who pushed a polished gurney toward a hallway that joined the two entrances.
I followed the attendant, a hefty, middle-aged white man with the short hair and stern demeanor of ex-military. He heard me and turned. The name STAPLETON was embroidered above his left shirt pocket.
“Slow day at Action Central,” I said.
“Righto.” He aimed the gurney around a water cooler. “Zero hustle, since six A.M. One moped accident needed gravel tweezed out of his knees, one guy with a bent face got punched by a bull dyke, one asshole with a burned hand. I’m off in twenty minutes. I start my sandwich, give the roast beef a chance to digest before I hit the rack, I take my first bite. Then we get this ap-cray. You here for the gunshot victim?”
“Yep. Is it a city call or the county?”
“Beats the shit outa me. Who you want?”
“Depends on the detective. Good and bad in both camps.”
Stapleton gave a qualified chuckle. “Man knows his territory. My money, you should hope it’s the city.”
I agreed, but didn’t let on. “Victim going to Surgery?”
“How in God’s name would I know? You think they tell me that kinda crap? They’ll put her in Room 7, and they‘ll—” He stopped the gurney. “Tell me you’re not the assailant. Make me believe it.”
“Name’s Rutledge. Forensic photography, both agencies.”
He sized me up, his eyes disbelieving. “Nice camera you ain’t got.”
The ambulance entrance door swung open. The receiving area filled with commotion: the trailing-off sound of the Aero-Med; flat-toned treble squawks from a hand-held radio, the EMS van’s motor idling about 400 rpm too high, the clatter of a gurney running over doorsills. They wouldn’t be needing Stapleton’s roller.
Then, out of the din, Abby Womack’s weak voice: “I don’t give a fuck if you’re the goddamned janitor. Give me a shot for this pain!”
I didn’t have time to slide into Trauma Room 7 ahead of the techs wheeling Abby. Her right arm had been wrapped in gauze and taped across her midsection. A strap across her upper arms and chest held her flat on a slim pad. Another strap below her knees held her legs. A thick white pad covered the right side of her head. She snagged a one-eyed glimpse of me. A puzzled, fearful look froze her cheek and jaw. As the Room 7 door closed, a six-six EMT ducked back into the hallway: crewcut, a square jaw, and stiff posture. Another ex-military type, but much younger. He saw Stapleton and shook his head. “They murdered this sweetie-pie’s cell telephone, and she’s pissed about inconvenience.”
Stapleton chuckled. “Somebody got tired of her yakkin‘, betcha.”
“No shit,” said the EMT. “Shot it out of her grip like a sixgun, some old cowboy flick. Buddy of mine’s wife said she didn’t want a tit lift, she wanted her cell telephone grafted to her ear. They’ll be picking plastic shrapnel out of this one’s face the next few hours. Rebuilding her right hand.”
“This town’s getting crazier,” said Stapleton. “I didn’t think it had capacity for more. A lot I know.” He jockeyed his gurney to reverse direction. I followed him back down the hallway. “Work nights, this place, I’m in position to see the Looney Tunes. Bar fights getting meaner, beer-bottle cuts, wives kicking the shit out of their husbands, S&M mistakes with dildoes and candle wax, people trying to burn each other. Guy in here, five o’clock this morning, claims he fell asleep with a cigarette. Shit. I know cigarette burns a mile away. Somebody tried to light him up with gasoline. He’s scared to rat the guy out. Good God. What is that?” Stapleton shoved the gurney against the wall to give room.
In tightly tailored olive green, Detective Fred “Chicken Neck” Liska looked like a one-man Saturday Night Fever. Under his pinched suit coat he wore a psychedelic Nik-Nik shirt. Pastel floral on a solid black background. His shoes had a polished olive-colored finish. He’d slicked back his hair; a sleazy Jack Nicholson touch. He’d perspired into the orchids on his shirt collar.
“What the fuck, Rutledge?”
“Morning, Detective.”
He scowled. “Great morning, for the second goddamn time today. You got my pictures?
”
“Out in the car. What’s this shit with Zack Cahill?”
“Come here a minute.” He beckoned me to the ambulance entrance, held open the glass door, and ushered me outside. Wind kicked dust into our faces. The weather was still trying to turn around. The air smelled of rain, but I felt no drops. Faint sun shadows lay next to cars and posts.
“What’s so classified about answering my question?”
“First things first. I need to know why the expensive bicycle in the trunk of my car’s got your phone number etched into its frame. And why you’re the first one here. This lady with the gunshot wound, you got a name for me?”
I shot a glance across the parking lot. Spence was out of the Sunbird, his butt against the fender, his head turned to watch me with the detective. “I met her last night,” I said. “Her name’s Abby.”
He lit a cigarette, milked the pause. “That’s it? No last name? I suppose she happened by your house this morning? Happened to borrow your bike?”
“That’s a reasonable start.”
“We just got finished having a bunch of your acquaintances end up dead, what, three, four months ago? This gonna happen again?”
“I hope not.” By chance and timing I’d helped solve four local murders, all women. I had dated three of the victims years earlier. Since their deaths I had been troubled by occasional bouts of dread, imagining the terror that went through my friends’ minds in their last minutes of life. I did not want a repeat of that nightmare.
“This Cahill,” said Liska. “I need background.”
“You said that before. Tell me what’s the deal.”
He pretended to juggle the pros and cons. “We found evidence to link …” He looked away. “Look, we found the Boudreau murder weapon in a bin out back the Harbor House. Cute hypodermic, miniature motherfucker. Straight out of an East Berlin spy novel, Cold War spooks and spies. But clear as a spotlight, a single fingerprint, thin, like he’d soaked his fingertip in paraffin. We got a hot hit on AFIS. A buncha people want to talk to Mr. Cahill …”
“Murder?”
“Maybe your friend’s innocent. But now’s the time to come up with his side of it.”
An adulterer, now a murderer? End of thought. He wasn’t a murderer. Also, what murderer with half a brain, and with Mallory Pier and the deep-dredged Main Ship Channel a hundred yards away, would chuck a murder weapon into a Dumpster? I smelled fish, but the fingerprint suggested another dimension. Assuming the attack on Abby Womack was not a random act, Zack—if he was still alive—certainly was in danger, too.
Target or suspect, getting poked at both ends. Perhaps, in hiding, Cahill knew that as well as I did.
“Cahill’s a banker from Illinois,” I said to Liska. “He’s not into murdering. He’s into annuities and bond funds. He’s got a job and a wife and three kids. A couple times a year he’s into cognac and cigars. The rest of the time he’s a working stiff who happens to make more money than God.”
“So maybe your friend took an interest in Omar Boudreau’s cocaine.”
“One time he tried it, twenty years ago, at a party on Dey Street.”
Liska stared at me.
“The next morning he said to screw that stuff. He said he’d grown up in the Alcohol Generation and beer offered a better value. He said whoever paid a buck and a quarter for that fluff got hosed. For the same money he could buy two dozen Dexamyl pills and a case of good French wine.”
“Astute. But you’re talking twenty years ago.” Liska flicked his cigarette butt at a curb. “Maybe he’s not using it. Maybe he’s financing it.”
“Sure,” I said. “Why screw around with legal income when you can team up with Omar? Why mess with pork bellies and coffee futures if pot and blow are showing revenue growth? Think of the choices. Why tolerate the country club when a federal prison’s out there beckoning?”
I let Liska mull that, then said, “Did your people connect with anybody holding a video camera? Or an eyewitness who saw someone run toward the Harbor House? Because Omar didn’t look the type to hop a Conch Train in the heat of the day so he could spend an afternoon playing tourist. Someone set him up. Someone he knew and probably trusted.”
Two cars pulled near. Marnie Dunwoody’s Jeep—with a rainy-day roof in place—and Teresa Barga in the sun-bleached Taurus.
“Get me those pictures,” barked Liska, “and think about two things. The state penalties for withholding evidence and obstructing justice. And how your buddy even knew the word Dexamyl.”
Back in his car, staring off at the mangroves, Jesse Spence had set both doors ajar to catch a breeze. He didn’t look as I approached. He knew I was there. The double-copy photos of his ruined apartment were spread across his lap. “She alive?”
“She’s hurt. It’s not life-threatening.”
“Listen here, Rutledge. I need to bug out quick. I gotta be at work in forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll get a taxi.”
He twisted in his seat to face me. “This shooting victim … The investment lady, right?”
“Same person,” I said. “It’d be wise to assume that your problem is bigger than microwaved Lava lamps.”
Spence forced a wry smile. “That’s on the same level as death by sniper.”
I reached into the Sunbird. The Publix bag of photographs had already absorbed the stink of mildewed vinyl. “You own a weapon?”
“Ex-felon.”
“I don’t want to force a lifestyle change, but you might want to put one in grabbing range.”
Spence thought a second, looking straight at me but not quite focused. “Deep down,” he said, “I feel more disappointment than fear. I carried a briefcase or two on airplanes. I sat around during meetings, paid off a few crews, partied with the profits. But I don’t know what those boys did with the dope or the bulk of the money. I knew there might be a bonus for me, someday. All these years, tending bar, I thought about that bonus. I guess it was too good to be true.” He looked away as if searching for some great salve, or one more thing to say. Then he figured it out. “What do I owe you?”
“Film and processing, twenty bucks. The work didn’t take any time. It put a slight delay on my first drink yesterday afternoon. No big deal.”
“I didn’t expect you to work for free.”
“You collect insurance, let me know. Buy a beer, next time you see me.”
He pulled a twenty from his wallet and held it out the door.
I said, “One other thing.”
Spence twisted his head to look at me again.
“You need that little device in the Baggie?”
He dipped into his front pocket, then handed me the Ziploc. He started the Sunbird, pulled it into Drive, and floored it. The forward motion slammed both doors. Jesse hit damp pavement, fishtailed around four parked cars, then vanished down the blacktop.
Keeping my back to the emergency room entrance, I separated out one set of prints for Liska. I wasn’t sure why I wanted the extra set until I noticed the grab shot, the zoom photo of Marnie Dunwoody and Teresa Barga conversing at the Conch Train murder scene. I lifted that print from Liska’s stack, at the same time trying to think what to tell him when he pressed for details on my friendship with Abby Womack. I hoped he wouldn’t ask for a recent photo of Zack Cahill. In the picture of the two women next to the Quay Restaurant, a reflection off a plate-glass window had turned Teresa’s blouse translucent.
A moment of hope, and sanity.
I folded the Publix bag and wedged my set of prints and the negatives into my back pocket. I never gave up negs. The county and city both had histories of damage and loss. The original “no recourse” scenario: no one ever took the blame.
I turned to walk back. Chicken Neck Liska had gone. I hadn’t heard his car leave. Teresa and Marnie stood under the AMBULANCE canopy. Teresa wore a dark silk blouse and a straight white knee-length skirt. She held a felt-tip pen crosswise in her mouth as she looked for something in her purse. She glanced up to see
me walking toward her and did something with her tongue to angle the pen differently. It stuck straight out, pointed directly at me. She slowly pursed her lips, removed the pen, and began to write herself a note.
Marnie held a legal pad and a small tape recorder. She looked disheveled, rough around the edges. “Detective Liska had to leave. Understand you know the wounded woman.”
Marnie had witnessed my nightmare earlier in the year, the violent deaths of my friends.
“I met the woman last night.”
Teresa Barga winced. Too late, I understood why. By the time she’d left the message on the machine, saying she wanted company, I’d already found company.
“Anything about her you’d want to share with me and my readers?”
Yes. If Abby Womack had been a target, someone must have followed her from my house. “Can we leave the readers out of this? I was not a witness. I have no idea why it happened.”
“It’s just that I’m on the clock, and there’s this incident. My asshole boss is going to want something besides a blank page. Does it have something to do with what you told Sam and me last night?”
I looked directly at Teresa. A hundred questions in her eyes. I looked back at Marnie. She’d put herself close to blowing a confidence. I’d never seen her this far out of tune.
“What I told you and Sam last night was … that I wanted to buy two new cameras. How could that have anything to do with a wounded woman?”
Marnie caught the wave. “Yeah. You shoot pictures, not people.”
Good answer. I looked back at Teresa. A thousand questions in her eyes.
7
I spent thirty-five cents to drop a dime just inside the emergency room door. Someone had scratched HELP! in the painted surface of the pay phone. The place smelled of something other than cleanliness. When I fumbled for coins, the pocket jingle prompted the shirtless ace of spades to turn his head. Focusfixed. The leer of a hungry wolf. One drooping eyelid, Pavlovian spittle slo-mo down the chin. I noted that the TURD tattoo on his arm had once read TORO. I assumed that fellow inmates had customized the lettering. Ballpoint pens and shank punctures. I hoped that his treatment wasn’t being delayed until his insurance claim cleared.