by Tom Corcoran
9
Tanker Branigan presented me with two of the four dozen antique Cuban postcards he had bought at the Big Pine flea market. One was a hundred-year-old lithograph card with a picture of Key West’s Havana American Cigar Factory. The other had no photograph but read, “The Cosmopolitan Bakery, Obispo Street 101, Splendid Restaurant and Bar, We Employ English Speaking Waiters.”
“Some boy in hitch-up overalls thought he bent me over for these,” said Tanker. “I was the better actor, and I knew what they were worth. Join me in my mercenary happiness.”
“You could frame them,” I said. “Sell them as art.”
“He’d need a thousand damned frames,” said Francie. “His walls would look better, but his party budget would go straight to hell.”
Before she drove—insisted on driving—her two bad boys back to town, Francie pulled me aside, but not too far. “If you forced me to ride that boat, Alex Rutledge, I might loosen you up a bit.”
“I could stand a few hours of ocean time,” I said. “No offense, but I was hoping to be alone.”
Francie scratched her breastbone. She understood the power of jiggle. “It’s quicker and better on the buddy system.”
I checked Tanker’s reaction to her banter. His little cough-laugh told me he’d heard it all before.
Before they pulled away Tim offered me a beer from his dwindling twelve-pack. In a brotherly gesture of solidarity, I accepted it. As his Caprice started down the street, he stuck out his arm and flashed me Winston Churchill’s V sign. I wondered what kind of victory he had in mind. Victory over self-pity?
Or had it been a peace sign?
I put up the cleanser and brush, coiled the hose, and chucked all the empty bottles into Manning’s recycle bin. Then I stood under the house to sip Tim’s beer and stare again at the canal. Our exchange had been similar to re-hashes of the past, but Tim had shown a shift in thinking. He finally recognized the evil and foul luck that had grown from his bullheaded nature. He hadn’t indicted our father as much as admitted to his own demons, his desire to reshape his own destiny.
Perhaps the years had caught hold of him, and he really wanted to change. All this was one or two levels up from the days when not giving a shit was his mastered art. He’d closed it out with a vehement “Fuck it all,” but I suspected that was a remnant of his old stage routine. Perhaps my inclination to back off, to ease judgment and forgiveness, wasn’t the sucker bet it had been most of my life. Maybe it was time to let Tim start with a clean slate, no demerits, no probation. It sure would make my life more pleasant to call him a brother instead of a liability.
I heard a motorcycle zip Pirates Road and thanked myself for not being one of those testosterone-charged boys who thought that high-revving café racers possessed magical powers to fend off injury and death. Like GTOs were supposed to do a generation ago. A half-minute passed before the ketchup-red Ducati SS-800, growling like a miniature Ferrari, rolled down Keelhaul into Al Manning’s yard and stopped behind my Triumph. The rider wore tight Levi’s, Adidas sneaks, and a long-sleeved light blue shirt with a front zipper. I figured someone had the wrong address until the new Key West detective, Beth Watkins, peeled off her matching red helmet.
She pointed at the Triumph. “Alex Rutledge, you up for a ride?”
I envisioned her blasting the West Coast freeways on her European road rocket. “Your hot machine would outrun my old beast,” I said. “It’d be like a Porsche Targa playing with an Austin Healey, but I give great Lower Keys tours.”
“Let’s go.”
“I appreciate your coming by to say hello, but I’ve had a weird morning. I’m not up for much riding.”
She checked out the beer in my hand and notched down her excitement level. “I met your ex–lady friend, Teresa. She spoke highly of you.”
“I haven’t seen her in a couple of months,” I said.
“I gathered as much. She said she was dating your brother these days.”
“Quick work on both their parts,” I said. “He’s been in town all of fifty hours.”
“She also told me some more details about that day you and Detective Lewis secured the ‘officer down’ situation with gunfire involved. Again, I commend you for that.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But I guess my days with the city are done, what with your new full-time photographer.”
“We’ll see,” said Watkins. “He’s just finished his photo training. I was among those who approved his résumé.”
“He’s bound to be better than the last full-timer. Was the training forensic?”
“It covered everything, including on-the-job success. He documented and helped solve two murder cases while he was in graduate school.”
“Where was that?”
“University of Missouri,” she said. “You don’t seem too upset about all this.”
“I wasn’t looking for more crime work, Beth, especially after Thursday with the county,” I said. “I’m sorry for being rude. Can I offer you anything? Water, or a Coke, or beer?”
“No alcohol on this machine, thanks, and I’ve got a water bottle. Did you work one of those murders?”
“I shot photos at both scenes,” I said.
“Lewis told me they’re being treated as separate crimes. Does that make sense?”
I shook my head. “It makes even less that I’m the only person in the county who saw both scenes firsthand. All three scenes, if you count Haskins.”
“Florida gets some strange ones,” she said.
“Where did you live in California?”
She placed her helmet on the Ducati’s seat. “Marin County, last, but I grew up in Santa Cruz. I went to college in San Jose.”
“How did you make it to the southernmost end of the road?”
“Six weeks ago I found a job ad on a law-enforcement Web site. It felt like a good time for me to leave California. I applied by e-mail. They hired me after two phone calls.”
“Your opinion, now that you’re here?”
“Tahiti’s the true Promised Land. But I signed up in good faith, and I can give this island a couple of years.”
“You’ve been to Tahiti?”
She nodded but did not elaborate.
“You’ll find the city unique.”
“We’re talking the same lingo, right?” she said. “When you say ‘the city,’ you mean the local bureaucracy?”
I nodded. “The attitudes and crazy crap. Our elected officials aren’t all wizards. Some are good, maybe better than we deserve. But the others, I wouldn’t count on their common sense.”
“What’s their motivation, overall?”
“Their view of the island economy is that any time you make something more complicated, someone makes more money. It almost doesn’t matter who benefits. They think that, in the end, even if the island’s in knots, we all get richer. A wise economist might argue the concept, but his voice would be a whisper in a wind tunnel.”
She smiled, mouth only, then blanked her expression. “Did you hear about Matilda?”
“The blow-up doll?”
Her eyes narrowed. “You played with her, too?”
“I read about her last month in The Citizen.” To slow traffic, the police had parked a squad car on Flagler and put a uniformed vinyl doll in the driver’s seat.
“I didn’t realize she was so well known.”
“What do you mean, play with her?” I said. “You sound peeved at her existence.”
“Some of my colleagues don’t know they’re boorish and sexist. A few chauvinist jokers bought her a peekaboo bra and thong panties. Like a bunch of horny teenagers, they had a dress-up party two days ago in the first-floor weight-lifting room. I walked in to see one officer stuffing Kleenex wads in the bra to make her look more stacked.”
“How would I have heard about that?”
“That’s not the news,” she said. “The duty desk forgot to bring her into the station last night. There was no sign of forced entry, so someone forgot t
o lock the cruiser. Matilda was stolen between sundown and sunup.”
I almost asked Watkins what time she had made the heist. “Maybe they need to replace her with a male mannequin.”
She dropped her eyelids a fraction and chilled her gaze. “How would that fix sexism?”
“You’re right. It wouldn’t.” Instinct told me to shift the subject. I walked around her Ducati, admired its hardware and fairings. “Did you have this shipped with your furniture?”
“I gave my furniture to my ex-roommate. I drove here three weeks ago with four suitcases and a box of DVDs in my car. A friend rode the Ducati cross-country last week.”
“A trip of large temptation,” I said. “He get many speeding tickets?”
“She got three. It took her forty hours, counting six to sleep. She also has windburn and blisters on her hands and butt. She slept twenty straight hours when she arrived here.”
“Is she on the island to stay?”
“She works with her husband in San Mateo, and he wanted her back right away.”
“One thing you might need to know,” I said. “Last month a multi-agency safety check near Garrison Bight pulled every third passing vehicle into a parking lot. The officers claimed they wanted to make sure everyone had brake lights, taillight lamps, and horns. They brought the Bill of Rights into heavy question, but they busted a few DUIs and gave seat-belt tickets.”
A puzzled look wrinkled her face. “How does that affect me?”
“They also ticketed three people who worked in Key West but still held their out-of-state registrations.”
She turned to look at her license tag.
“Just a tip,” I said.
“Thanks.” She lifted her helmet and tugged it on. “Let’s ride soon.”
An odd visit. I could’ve taken it as a put-down, a come-on, a challenge, or an attempt at insider alliance. I decided to stick with face value, a future date for a tandem tour.
She took it slowly on Keelhaul Lane and quicker on Pirates Road. Her upshifts were timed for torque peak rather than sound effects.
Someone had taught her well.
Later that afternoon I heard tires crunch Manning’s pea-rock driveway. I walked to the far end of the second-deck screened porch in time to glimpse a fender, the tinted side glass of a plain white Crown Vic. Was this Bobbi Lewis’s weekend visit with smiles, boat rides included? Odd that she hadn’t called ahead. I was halfway down the stairs when a second vehicle rolled into the yard. The Ford had green-and-white county markings, KEY LARGO on its front fender, and it carried two men. The driver stopped with his side of the car facing me. It was not Billy Bohner.
A throat-graveled bark: “Rutledge?”
Sheriff’s Detective Chet Millican stood with his rear end pressed against my car, his thumbs hooked in his belt. “Got a sec?” he said. “Couple questions for you.”
I looked at the cruiser. Both occupants sat watching, not moving. “You drove all this way with two questions and you had to bring backup?”
“The man on the far side of the vehicle’s a witness,” said Millican. “Also happens to be my son-in-law.”
“What’s he going to witness, harassment?”
“Not yet. What we need, though, he’s already seen.”
Millican’s head was a rectangle, wider than tall.
“Is this about Navarre’s murder?” I said.
“Now that you mention it, how did my crime scene look in broad daylight, Rutledge?”
“Like a slum.”
Millican nodded. “Where were you Thursday morning before sunrise? Humor me with a timeline.”
I couldn’t imagine humor making its way to his brain. “I was asleep until wakened by a call from Detective Lewis.”
“Which phone?” he said. “Your home or your cell?”
I could see where this was leading. “Surely you don’t believe I hung a man. How did you work your way around to that?”
“Are you refusing to cooperate? We can do this in Marathon.”
“A town I admire,” I said. “Your questions won’t get answered until my lawyer drives up from Key West.”
He hesitated, checked out my motorcycle as if memorizing its parts, then pointed his finger at the cruiser. “Turn around. Hands on your head.”
The uniformed deputy was out within a half-second, crouched, with a pistol aimed.
I turned around, touched the hair above my ears. “What’s my infraction, expired tag?”
“Living in a world of shit,” he said. “A mouth that’s full of it, too. Pull down one hand at a time to your waist.”
Millican strung a plastic cuff to my wrists, yanked it tight, then turned me around and backed me up to the house pillar. He smelled of cheap cologne and failing deodorant. The day’s humidity had set in and the wind had died. My first fear of being handcuffed was not being able to swat mosquitoes.
“Sure looks like our boy to me.” The Key Largo deputy looked thirteen years old but had the arms of a home-run hitter.
Millican crooked his finger to summon the second man from the green-and-white. A moment later the son-in-law, a Brad Pitt lookalike with a high-pitched voice said, “That’s the crook right there.” He strode back to the cruiser and reclaimed his seat.
Millican put his face six inches from mine. “You showed up all smart-ass in Marathon on Thursday, I knew I knew you. I saw you on videotape earlier that morning, sliding your bogus credit card up in Rock Harbor. We must’ve watched that gas-station security video five times. I saw you at the murder scene, and blame it on context, your face didn’t register right off. But I slept late this morning and caught your ass in a dream. How does it feel to be busted in another man’s dream?”
No better, I thought, than for another man’s crime. “I’d drive a hundred-fifty-mile round trip to scam gasoline?” I said. “You might want to go back and check that video.”
“My eyes got me this job, bubba, and a thirty-year career before it. You accusing me of bad eyes? You don’t accuse me of shit.”
“You want me to take him in my vehicle?” said the Key Largo deputy.
“I’ll do it,” said Millican. “While you’re driving Mitchell back to Rock Harbor, I can sit this goofball at the substation, maybe clear some other hot cards.” He gave me a tough look. He had spent years at his mirror, perfecting the Clint Eastwood jaw set and cold eye.
“That your billfold in the front pocket?” he said.
I nodded.
He asked the uniformed deputy to pull and inventory my wallet so they could verify each other’s version of events. “We might get lucky and find the card that financed his cruise up and down the Keys.”
The deputy fanned the wallet contents. “Library card, driver’s license, a MasterCard, a Visa, and a membership in B.O.’s Fishin’ and Yacht Club. Both credit cards are current and show his name.” He handed over the wallet.
Millican said, “Go up and close his door, would you?”
“Lock it?” said the deputy.
“Just pull it shut. This is Little Torch. No one commits crimes around here.”
I heard the deputy reach the top of the wood stairs. Millican said, “I keep thinking about your wiseass mouth making me look dumb in front of my people. This is for your crack about my memory.” He kneed me in the balls.
I heard myself grunt, felt him grab my shirt and jerk upward. I felt like I might throw up. Fighting to stay on my feet, I ran a mental movie of what would happen next. Two dozen dead-end roads could provide the setting. I would try to escape, attempt to kick an officer in the groin, maybe make a play for his weapon. No matter what else, he would claim that I spat in his face, tried to infect him with an exotic roster of diseases. After he drummed my skull and worked a while longer on my privates, he would chuck me into his backseat and drive me to Fishermen’s Hospital for a “checkup.”
What was the worst he could do? Broken bones? Disfiguring my hands? No way he’d risk it. He would squander his career, put himself up for a civil ri
ghts beef.
The deputy stomped to ground level and looked at my face. “He resist arrest or has he got the flu?”
“He took sick thinking about his future cell mates.”
“Those HIV-positive Jamaicans? They wear necklaces strung with whiteboys’ teeth.” The deputy grinned, threw a thumbs-up, and walked toward his car.
“Hold a sec, so you can back me up,” said Millican. “I want to clean out my rear seat before I load him. Make sure he doesn’t run and jump in the canal. He might kick-swim himself to Cuba, be Castro’s next houseboy.”
“I give swim lessons,” said the uniform. “If he passes the handcuff test, he gets to sew a star on his bathing suit. But not a gold star.”
“You barf in my car,” said Millican, “I’m going to let you escape over the Bahia Honda Bridge rail, you hear me?”
I didn’t answer.
He bellowed a drill sergeant’s “I can’t hear you!”
“Shit, Millican, you slug me again, anything could happen.” I crouched to get into his cruiser’s backseat, and he pushed my head down to clear the door frame. He began to close the door but yanked it open again. “Holy shit, there’s a skeeter.” His open palm caught the side of my head. I felt neck tendons snap, pain bloom in my ear. “I think I got it,” he said.
“You saved him from West Nile, Detective,” said the deputy. “I can tell by this boy’s looks, he’s going to write you a thank-you note.”
Millican grunted. “With a pencil stub and jail-issue paper, if I have anything to do with it.”
The whole car smelled just like Millican.
I caught sight of Wendell Glavin standing under his stilt home across the street, peering at my parade. I could bet he couldn’t wait to tell the neighborhood hippies and the muumuu lady. I was gossip fodder after less than one day in Al’s house. Forty-eight hours after being chauffeured to Marathon by Bohner, I was making the same trip in a rear seat in shackles.
So much for dodging a sucker bet. A serious timeline would suggest that I was about to own a fraud charge that belonged to my brother. If I tried to explain the error to Millican, he’d see no sense in boosting my ego by hearing my argument. He’d invite me to tell it to my lawyer at the substation after they took me through the booking process, swapped out my clothes, hosed me down, and cloistered me with a few feces-tossing derelicts. From Millican’s viewpoint, my ass now belonged to the county.