Basket Case

by Carl Hiassen

  "One quote, Rick, come on. It doesn't have to be substantial, for Christ's sake."

  "Oh, there's a load off." Tarkington scowls.

  I try dusting off an old standby from my hard-news days. "What if you were to say the state attorney is 'investigating a possible link' between the deaths of Jimmy Stoma and Jay Burns, and the coldblooded shooting of a third member of the band. You don't have to mention Cleo or the song. Just say you want to find out if somebody's bumping off the Slut Puppies. It's a helluva headline, you've got to admit."

  "Except we're not investigating a damn thing."

  "Yes, but you wouldinvestigate—wouldn't you, Rick?—if more evidence turned up. Startling new evidence, as we say."

  "Be sure and call me when that happens. Then you'll get your precious quote."

  My predicament, which I'd rather not explain to Tarkington, is that I'll need more than a string of baroque incidents to sell the Jimmy Stoma story to our managing editor. Abkazion might be a Slut Puppies fan, but he's also a hardass when it comes to the front page. He'll want to see a quote from somebody in law enforcement saying they smell a rat. Tarkington would be ideal. Unfortunately, he's a hardass, too.

  "Are you telling me," I plod on, "it's all coincidence, everything that's happened since Jimmy died?"

  "Hell, I don't believe much in coincidence," he replies matter-of-factly. "I think you're probably onto something."

  "And the blood's not enough to make you pick up the phone? His own sister's blood?"

  Tarkington glares as if I've just spit up on his boots. "What blood, you fucking bonehead? The sample you stolewhen you broke into the lady's house? Jesus W. Christ."

  "Rick, I needed to know for sure. That's why I did it."

  "And I need a warrant, old buddy. You find me some PC and I'll find a judge and then we'll go cut us a piece of that rug, nice and legal." He stands up, stretches his arms. Throws in a yawn, in case I'm not taking the hint. "Jack, don't get bummed. You've got quite a story here ... "

  "But what?"

  "A helluva story, as you say. But you're not done yet. It's still missing the pretty ribbon and the bow." Tarkington nods toward his stack of files. "Now you'll excuse me, I've got a couple widows of my own to interview. They aren't nearly as chipper as yours."

  "Okay, but first give me your impression—in a word, Rick—of everything you've heard so far."

  "Intriguing," he says.

  That's good, but it's not what I'm looking for. Abkazion will demand something stronger.

  "How about 'suspicious'?" I venture.

  "Yeah, all right. It's suspicious."

  "Highlysuspicious, would you say?"

  "I would say goodbye now, Mr. Tagger. And if my name appears in the paper this week under your byline, it'd better be because I've croaked in some newsworthy way."

  That's what I mean about Rick. I couldn't even joke about something like that. As soon as the office door closes, I take out my notebook and jot the following:

  Asst. State Atty. R. Tarkington says he's preparing to investigate circumstances of J. Stoma death and disappearance of Stoma's sister. "Highly suspicious," says the veteran prosecutor.

  Forgive me, Woodward, for I have sinned.

  The pier at Silver Beach is not a big draw at high noon on a hot August day. I arrive half an hour early and, from the safety of my car, I scope the place thoroughly with binoculars. Team Cleo has had two days to run the phone number I wrote on the compact disc, an easy job for any private investigator.

  But I don't see any egregious lurkers, anyone who looks as if they don't belong. There are a couple of shirtless teenagers drinking beer and snagging pilchards; a row of retirees in folding chairs, dozing under hats the size of garbage-can lids; a smoochy young Hispanic couple sharing a single fishing rod, taking turns reeling in baby snappers; a trio of weekday regulars, leathery and windblown, laden with bait buckets and bristling with heavy tackle.

  After yanking off my necktie and loosening my shirt at the collar, I set off at a breezy amble for the phone booth at the end of the pier.

  Each step puts me that much farther from a clean escape, but it's not as if I haven't got a backup plan—should one-eyed Jerry burst out of a trash bin and start shooting, I'll simply dive over the rail and swim away like a dolphin.

  Pretty darn clever. Always be halfway prepared, that's my motto.

  And naturally some old guy is tying up the damn phone. I check my watch—twelve minutes until noon. I hope Cleo doesn't give up because the line rings busy once or twice.

  Assuming she tries to call.

  I sit down on a worn wooden bench and notice too late that it doubles as a bait table, leaving the seat of my pants covered with lady-fish scales and gummy snippets of rotting shrimp. I am one smooth operator.

  The man at the phone booth hangs up and waves to me. "It's all yours, son."

  A cheery little fellow topping out at maybe five-two, he's got small wet eyes and fluffy gray hair and a pink pointy face with sparse white whiskers. He looks like a 120-pound opossum.

  "Thanks, I'm waiting for a call," I tell him. "Shouldn't be long."

  He says his name is Ike and he was talking to his bookie in North Miami. "Don't ever bet on a horse named after a blonde," he advises ruefully.

  Ike is fishing three spinning rods. He reels in one and rebaits with a dead pilchard plucked from a five-gallon bucket. "I caught a twenty-three-pound red drum standing at this very spot," he says, "on August 14, 1979. That's my personal best. What's your name, son?"

  "Jack."

  "Strange place to take a phone call, this pier."

  "It's going to be a strange phone call."

  "You look familiar. Then again, everybody looks familiar when you reach ninety-two." He laughs, flashing a mouthful of shiny dentures. "Either that, or nobodylooks familiar."

  I whistle. "Ninety-two. That's fabulous."

  "When I get to ninety-three," he says, "I'll have lived longer than Deng Xiaoping."

  "That's right."

  "And Miss Claudette Colbert, too." Ike's button-sized eyes are twinkling.

  "And Greer Garson!" I exclaim.

  "And Alger Hiss!"

  "Hey, you're good."

  "Well, I been at it a long damn time," the opossum man says.

  This is too much. I can't help but laugh.

  "Just look at you!" I say.

  "It's this healthy salt air. And the fishing, too." Ike rears back and casts the silvery minnow over the rail. "But that's not all," he says. "What I did, son, early on I made up my mind not to die of anything but old age. Stopped smoking because I was afraid of the cancer. Swore off booze because I was scared of driving my car into a tree. Gave up hunting because I was scared of blowing my own head off. Quit chasing trim because I was afraid of being murdered by a jealous husband. Shaved the odds, is what I set out to do. Missed out on a ton of fun, but that's all right. All my friends are planted in the ground and here I am!"

  "Where'd you start out?" I ask him.

  "At The Oregonian.After that, three years at the Post-Intelligencerin Seattle." He pauses to put on a faded long-billed boat cap with a cotton flap in the back. After nearly a century under the ozone, Ike's still worrying about sun damage. "Then the Beacon-Journalin Akron, briefly at the Tribin Chicago, and a bunch of rags that aren't around anymore."

  Phenomenal. He's probably the world's oldest living ex-obituary writer. I ask him what else he covered.

  "You name it. Cops, courts, politics." Ike shrugs. "But obits is what stayed with me. Funny, isn't it, how it gets a grip? That was the first beat I had out of college and the last beat I had before retiring. Twenty-seven years ago that was ... "

  The opossum man has noticed a subtle twitch at the tip of one of his rods. He reels up the slack and sets the hook so zestfully that he nearly loses his balance. With bony kneecaps braced against the rail, he hauls in a husky mutton snapper, quickly thrown on ice.

  "Don't get me wrong, Jack," he says. "I was a fairly
decent writer but not in your league."

  His delivery is downright rabbinical, otherwise I'd swear he's blowing smoke. "How'd you know who I was?"

  "I read the Union-Registerfaithfully every morning," he declares. "Also I had my eyes peeled, because some young lady phoned here about twenty minutes ago asking for you by name."

  "That's impossible."

  "She'll be calling back any second, I expect," Ike says.

  Suddenly the sun is blinding and the heat is suffocating and I'm breathing nothing but dead-fish stink. Frantically I scan the pier to make sure no one's coming, while Ike is saying he'd be honored to loan me his Norwegian fillet knife, which he assures me is sharp enough to penetrate dinosaur hide. The sensible microfraction of my brain issues the signal to run like hell, but the reckless remainder says I should stay and ascertain how Cleo Rio already figured out that I'm responsible for the disc in the deli bag.

  And they could be anywhere, the widow's boys, watching and waiting—on the beach, in a boat, even in a small plane.

  Yes, this was quite the crafty plan of mine.

  "Ike, you might want to try your luck someplace else."

  "Hell, I'm not budging." He chuckles as he cranks in another fish. "I've had three heart attacks, son. I lost half my stomach, fourteen feet of intestines and even my trusty old prostate to one nasty thing or another. Plus I've been through two divorces, both in community-property states, so there's not much on God's green earth that scares me anymore. These are rough customers?"

  "You could say that."

  "Just tell me it's not over dope."

  "This isn't about drugs, Ike. It's about a newspaper story."

  The old opossum man beams. "Good for you, Jack Tagger."

  Then the phone rings.

  Here's how I messed up. I assumed Cleo would panic the moment she discovered the compact disc in the deli bag—or at least after she listened to it. I figured she'd be too rattled to bother snooping after the phony delivery boy, our intrepid Evan.

  But I underestimated the little barracuda. She must have called up the restaurant manager to find out if there'd been a pickup order for meatball subs with a side of slaw. From there it would have been easy to match the bogus delivery to my phone order. Lots of takeout joints use caller-ID logs, which work just dandy on most non-published numbers. That's likely how the deli man got my name, which he provided to Jimmy Stoma's wife as blithely as he would to any booty-flashing celebrity customer.

  Big mistake on my part. Major fuckage. Tomorrow I'm calling the phone company and springing for the trace-blocking option.

  For now, there's nothing to do but strap on an attitude and act like I'm having a ball. I wait until the fourth ring before lifting the receiver.

  "Is this Cindy?" I say sweetly. "Of oyster fame?"

  The desired effect is achieved—a long pause, broken by edgy breathing, on the other end of the line.

  Finally: "Fuck you, Tagger."

  "How's widowhood treating you, Mrs. Stomarti? Is it all you hoped it would be?"

  "What a flaming asshole you are. I don't even know why we're talking."

  "I'll tell you why. Because, A, you're dying to find out how I got a copy of that track. And, B, you want to know if I've figured out what really happened to your husband."

  Not much return fire from Cleo's end. The static leads me to think she's on a cellular.

  "Listen closely," I tell her. "I know you don't give a shit about 'Cindy's Oyster' but there's another song you've been searching all over creation for. I've got that one, too. Your title cut."

  "Oh, I'm so sure."

  Snideness is such an unattractive quality in the bereaved. Now I'm thinking I ought to sing the song, just to give the needle to Cleo. So I do the verse that has the nice line about night whispering to the shore—Ike, gutting a fish, sways appreciatively—and for good measure I finish big with:

  Shipwrecked heart, my shipwrecked heart ...

  Watching for your sails on the horizon.

  Not a peep from Cleo's end.

  "I'd sound a whole lot better with a band," I tell her. "By the way, if you're charting the chords on the refrain, it's C, G, A-minor, A-minor seven, then hack to G—"

  "You bastard!" she explodes in the strangled cadence of a nine-year-old brat.

  I suppose I should be more sensitive. "Cleo, I'm just trying to help. You missed that minor seven when you did the song at Jimmy's funeral."

  Three years of lessons and I'm spouting off like I'm frigging Segovia. I've played barely a lick since college, though I've still got my old Yamaha and a fairly reliable ear.

  "Hey, Tagger? You're done." Impressively, Cleo Rio has composed herself. I get a sense of what young Evan experienced that night in the condo—her voice has turned glacial. She says, "You're fucking done. I'm not wasting another minute on you."

  Lord, who can blame her.

  A man comes on the line.

  "We got your girlfriend," he says.

  "She's not my girlfriend, but she'd better be alive."

  "She is."

  "Can this be Jerry?" I say. "Bodyguard to the stars?"

  "Be at Jizz tonight. Main room. Ten sharp."

  Exactly what I'd hoped for: They're offering to trade Janet for Jimmy Stoma's song.

  "Ten sharp, dickhead. Bring the package."

  Package? This is what comes from watching reruns of Hawaii Five-0.

  "Oh," I say. "You must mean the master recording that belongs to the estate of the late James Bradley Stomarti?"

  "Ten o'clock. Come alone." Jerry doesn't seem eager to get to know me over the phone.

  "How's that empty eye socket, big fella?"

  Boy, when I get rolling I just can't shut it down. It used to drive my mother nuts; Anne, too.

  "Jerry, you listening? I want my laptop back, you worthless simian fuck."

  "I shoulda"—more heavy interference, like they're driving past an airport radar tower—"when I had the chance."

  "Put her on the phone," I tell him.

  "No, dickhead. She don't wanna talk anymore."

  "Not Cleo. Your guest."

  "She ain't here," Jerry informs me.

  "That's convenient."

  "She's alive, okay? Just like I told you."

  "I'd love to take your word for it, Jer, but that would require me having an IQ no higher than my shoe size. So I won't be making another move until I hear the lady's voice."

  Out of the corner of my eye I spy the eavesdropping opossum man, loping nimbly away. From the end of the phone line comes a muffled rustling—Jerry, covering the receiver while he and Jimmy's widow debate strategy. Then: "Okay. The girl, she'll call you at three-thirty. Gimme a number."

  "It's 555-2169."

  "Where the hell's that?"

  "Brad and Jennifer's place. We play rummy every Thursday," I say. "It's my office phone, you ass-scratching baboon."

  Jerry unleashes a string of bilious epithets. It's possible I've offended him. In the background, the former Cynthia Jane Zigler is yowling like a bobcat caught in a belt sander.

  "They should make a movie about you two," I tell Jerry. "Whitney Houston could play Cleo. For you I'm thinking either Kevin Costner or Ru Paul."

  "Blow me," he responds, then hangs up.

  Instantly I feel drained and fuzzy-headed. Frightened, too, mostly for Janet. I rest on the bait bench, drying my sweaty palms on my trousers. Ninety-two-year-old Ike is chasing a larcenous pelican down the length of the pier. He's my new hero. Buying a fresh set of teeth at the dawn of one's tenth decade—talk about a positive outlook! He returns triumphant from the pursuit, brandishing a slimy handful of mushed pilchards. He alights next to me, saying, "Jack, that was the ballsiest half of an interview I ever heard."

  "Sorry. I got caught up in the moment."

  "Don't be sorry, it was priceless. All my years in the business, I could've never gotten away with something like that."

  Putting an arm around his spindly shoulders, I hear myself say
, "What makes you think I'll get away with it?"

  26

  A cardinal rule of the business is that reporters should never become part of the story. I'm hopelessly up to my nuts in this one. And while I'm dying to tell Emma about the telephone call from Cleo, I know she'd want me to call the cops.

  But here's what would happen: Hill and Goldman or some equally unsmooth detectives would show up at Jizz to confront Jimmy's widow. Indignantly she would deny drowning her husband or snuffing Jay Burns or kidnapping her sister-in-law. She'd claim to have no interest in obtaining the master copy of Jimmy's recording sessions, and insist she didn't even know it was missing. And she'd say that meeting at the nightclub was my idea, and she had no idea what we were to discuss. The detectives would bluff, badger and ask a series of uninformed questions before calling it a night. Tomorrow Cleo would quietly start shopping for a songwriter to hammer out a new version of "Shipwrecked Heart," Janet Thrush would never be seen again and I'd have no story for the newspaper.

  On the other hand, it won't be my story anyway if I meet with Cleo and things get ugly. Griffin, the crime reporter, would be writing about me, possibly followed by young Evan, which is no less than I deserve: an obituary penned by a college intern. At least the kid would get a front-page byline, which might be enough to change his mind about law school.

  Dying is not in my plans, though it would certainly elevate my profile at the Union-Register.American journalists are rarely slain in pursuit of a story, so the paper would trumpet my heroic demise with moonwalk-type headlines. Abkazion, smelling a Pulitzer, would unleash a squad of all-stars to unravel the crime. Emma, stoically overcoming her grief, would volunteer to edit the project ...

  I wouldn't be so worried if Cleo Rio were smart, because a smart criminal would never bother to kill a reporter. It's easier, and infinitely more effective, to discredit them. Killing one only brings out an infestation of others, banging on doors, asking impertinent questions. In fact, dying in the line of duty is one of the few ways for an obscure middle-aged obituary writer to make a splash, the last thing Cleo should want. Tonight I'll explain to her the downside of murdering me, in case she and Jerry haven't thought that far ahead.