by Tom Corcoran
“Maybe that’s how they approached the dead man on the flagpole,” said Marnie. “Or better yet, maybe that’s the opposite of their actions back then. Liska was eager to solve it and Millican withdrew. Was that about the time Millican left the Keys?”
“Could’ve been,” I said. “But let’s not get trapped in overanalyzing.”
Marnie tapped the paperwork on her desk. “Reporters love to get hypothetical, Alex. If I take identical lighters with engraved dates coinciding with the flagpole suicide or murder, whatever it was, the Navy connection, and three hangings, something smells like low tide. I’ve got a page-one story.”
“I can see the headline,” I said. “THIRTY YEARS, THREE HANGINGS, TWO COPS.”
“Can I have that?”
“It would sell one day’s newspaper, and you’d never hear another peep about any of it.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “It would break open the hornet’s nest. The rest of the story would tumble out of the palm trees.”
“Not in this town. Mouths would slam shut, records would vanish, and your boss would never trust you again.”
“The early bird gets the word,” she said. “It’s a reporter’s rule.”
“Except this story exists in our minds and nowhere else.”
“Don’t forget the murderer’s.”
“Okay, but that makes it almost certain that you won’t get scooped. Take a couple more days. When it grows into a real story, the exclusive byline will be yours.”
“Good old ‘Watch-and-Wait’ Dunwoody.”
She joined me at the window. We listened to mopeds on South Street and said nothing for a minute or two. A bunch of Cuban Conch kids in the next yard attacked a Spanish lime tree. One was in the tree, tossing down fruit. Three others stood below, catching it with an upturned umbrella.
“What if it’s all bogus and I strike out for the week?” she said.
I shook my head. “Liska’s been here all along. He may be your best source, but he’s not the issue. Millican left the Keys after investigating a hanging. He comes back to this county where no hangings have occurred in thirty years, and the hangings start again?”
She went to her office chair and plopped down. “Damn.”
“I’m the one with sore ribs and back muscles,” I said. “Why are you walking funny?”
“They had us kicking a hard bag last night in karate,” she said. “The bottoms of my feet are still numb.”
“You won’t be doing the jitterbug this week?”
“Alex, I couldn’t even do the funky air dance. Have you found anything to help your brother with an alibi?”
I shook my head, deciding not to reveal that Tim had been drinking in the same saloon as Milton Navarre the night Milton died.
We agreed to keep digging without spooking Liska. Marnie would research the 1973 hanging, and I would concentrate on my campaign for Tim’s innocence.
Possible innocence.
The half hour with Marnie energized my thirst. I started to walk to Louie’s Afterdeck but decided I needed a fish sandwich at B.O.’s instead. I parked in the Caroline Street lot and was locking the Shelby when Tanker’s friend Francie called to me. She wore spray-on biking shorts, a sleeveless top with a puppy’s face on each breast, and two-dollar flip-flops. She hugged me like a lost lover, with a little hip-bump and a smooch on the cheek.
“Stay clear of Tanker,” she said. “He’s in the Turtle Kraals in a mopey fuckin’ mood.”
“In the restaurant?”
“Up in the Tower Bar. He thinks he’s Dylan or Darwin or some damn intellectual. I gotta go find a twenty-year-old who treats a girl nice.”
My curiosity won out. I climbed the stairs. Seven people sat around the bar. At a table near the railing, overlooking the harbor, Tanker Branigan had his feet on a chair, the sun on his face, a shot and a beer next to his huge arm. He saw me arrive and pushed a chair my way. “Welcome to join me in my max-overview, Rutledge. It’s a three-screen drive-in and this feature’s called Key West Bight. One of those skies, if you don’t like what you see, turn your head.”
I wanted shade but the low, late-day sun rendered the broad umbrella useless. The bartender delivered two beers and two shots and took Tanker’s empties. I sniffed the tequila and put it back on the table. “I ran into the little wild one on her way out.”
“We’re a gang, not a team. Same toilet and separate ways.” His voice sounded like a broken bottle scraping on a concrete wall. He pointed northward, beyond the dinghy corral. “What was that building over there?”
“Fish house, sponge shed, fuel dock, bait shop,” I said. “I’ve seen pictures of it back to 1906. When I hit town it was Young’s Diesel Repair and Admiral Busby’s charters. A boatbuilder was in there for years. A few years ago it was an art gallery. That old crane hoisted turtles off boats, back when catching was legal.”
“Who owns it?”
“The city.”
“’Bout time for them to rip it down and put up a Mickey D’s, isn’t it? I mean, the last known fishnets on the island are decorations at Schooner Wharf.”
“Did I interrupt a bad mood?” I said.
“The biggest one in a while.”
“You pissed about progress?”
He shook his head. “My genius idea to boost your brother’s self-esteem? I blew it.”
“It already happened?”
He tossed back his shot, waved the glass at the bartender, waved two fingers with his other hand. “Please don’t play dumb. I get enough of that from Timmy.”
“After our talk on Sugarloaf, I wondered…You put a lot of creativity into it.”
“That’s just it. I was too interested in my own fun, my set design, to leave an obvious trail back to Tim. I used his car and drove it into the roadside dirt. As if anyone wanted to bother with tire tracks.”
“If it’s any consolation, I heard that a couple of deputies saw Millican on the star and kept on going. They pretended not to notice him.”
Tanker wasn’t cheered. “Anyway, I was hoping they’d bust Tim so he’d have to work his way out of it. Now, no news is bad news. There’s nothing in the Citizen, so they aren’t going to pursue it. I haven’t been around long, but I know how it works.”
A server put fresh shots of tequila in front of each of us. I hadn’t touched my first one, so I drained it and let the kid take the empty.
“Wasn’t your plan not to get him arrested?” I said.
Tanker hissed an exhale. “No test, no loss of esteem, no lesson learned.”
“You can’t dream up another one? Maybe a bit lighter than kidnapping a cop?”
“Easy to say, tough to do. With that one, I put revenge motivation right in his hand. If I come up with something else, it can’t be contrived.”
“Did cute little Francie help?” I said.
“The superglue was her idea. I let her handle it, so to say.”
“The blow-up doll was brilliant.”
“Ah, Matilda. Sweet Matilda. She cost me a hundred dollars. Three winos clipped her, and I suspect they each had a few dates with her. They had her hidden under a bridge, but they were scared of getting busted.”
“She was back on the job yesterday.”
“The past tense is perfect. They left her on Flagler, like no one knows how to slim-jim a cruiser’s rear door. I got her at the house, sitting on top of our TV, wearing a grass skirt and coconut boobs. Saved myself a hundred bucks.”
“Taking all these risks, it’s like you’re testing yourself,” I said.
“Just honing my street skills. Some people worry about the difference between right and wrong. I worry about the difference between wrong and fun.”
“I believe P. J. O’Rourke said that first.”
“Whatever.” He grabbed my tequila and shot it down. “It proves I can read.”
We listened to a recording of the military’s call to colors, then watched sunset. I wondered about this man who collected old postcards, revered the past, disli
ked change. I wanted to ask him where he was from, what he had done, how he made his living. The kinds of questions you don’t ask in Key West. From the look of him, I thought construction or factory work. I saw no reason why a laborer couldn’t become absorbed in history. Or practical jokes on the police.
“You mind if I ask you something?” I said. “It might put me over the top for Key West rudeness.”
“How can I afford to live here and not work?”
“My exact words.”
“I proved inside of seven years that the definition of ‘entrepreneur’ is a lazy schmuck with one brilliant idea.”
“Not so lazy that you didn’t take action?” I said.
“True. The ugliest part of a University of Michigan football scholarship is you have to do menial campus jobs to pay back the administrative wallet. I slung cafeteria chow for my whole second freshman semester. Then I started walking the streets of Ann Arbor, wondering if there wasn’t a better way. I befriended a drunk in his mid-thirties who owned a tow truck. He’d lost most of his best clients, the ones who own those permit parking lots where violators are towed. I quit school, became his partner, busted my ass, rebuilt the business he’d almost destroyed, and put us both in the money. Two years into it, he was a worse drunk and not a bit grateful, so I bought him out. I became a tycoon by mistake. Crowded streets, not enough legal parking, kids with give-a-shit attitudes and Daddy’s credit cards. I lived on the cheap, didn’t piss away my bread on booze and drugs, paid most of my taxes, and made a bundle. I sold the business to a national outfit that started to specialize in college towns and more than tripled my fortune.” He pulled a plastic bank card from his front pocket. “Now me and Mr. Schwab are loose in the world. Even if I make a pig of myself, I won’t have to go back to work for at least six or seven years.”
I looked around the bar, now full. The woman I’d pissed off on the airplane sat there, bobbed her pointed nose at two men who looked straight and hard. I pegged them as FBI. They all wore upscale sports clothes, like dress-down day at the office. The men drank from rocks glasses, and she sipped an up martini.
“You’re a towing tycoon,” I said.
“Yep, was. Now I’m a sit-on-my-ass tycoon, but that’ll get old. Maybe I’ll get into the boatbuilding business.” Tanker waved again at the bartender.
“I gotta go,” I said. “Long drive to Little Torch.”
“Fuck that,” he said. “You got this beautiful view, and you want to go up where they’re murdering people? Hang here, get your head right, you can crash on the couch. Tim’s never there.”
“Was he with Teresa last night?”
“All I know is he wasn’t sprawled on my sofa,” said Tanker. “The house smelled better than usual this morning.”
“Thanks for the offer. I need to be up the Keys.”
“What’s with need?” he said. “Did you join a vigilante group?”
I shook my head. “Zip for clues, zip for motives. Everyone’s waiting for another snuff to happen. I’m curious enough to wonder who and why.”
He tilted his beer to straight up and down, then said, “I’m glad somebody’s on duty. I got the check.”
Ten minutes later I was outbound in light traffic. The bastard rang.
Bobbi said, “I can tell by the noise that you’re in your hot rod. Where are you going, to snoop some more?”
“I’m two minutes from your house, behind a slug with his ball-cap biography on his back-window package tray.”
“Tell me why I shouldn’t have your ass grabbed for obstruction of justice.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You gave me that duct tape. Does that make you my accomplice?”
“I’m not talking duct tape. I’m just leaving Marathon.”
“So you took my advice?”
“You were right about Millican,” she said. “He closed out the Navarre case on Saturday morning. Liska told me to reopen it. I drove up and found Gail Downer. That’s why I said snooping.”
“That takes me off the hook. It was a closed case when I found her first. All I did was ask her not to throw anything out. She called me about the Zippo.”
“I don’t know whether to bless you or curse you.”
“Split the difference,” I said. “Stop by Little Torch and jump me.”
“Not tonight, dear. I have pain-in-the-ass reports to write.”
“That’s a disappointment but a relief, too. I was afraid my brother’s situation had come between us. Did you ever learn the details of Millican’s kidnapping?”
“That’s a weird one, Alex. He hasn’t shared particulars with either the feds or Internal Affairs.”
“Was Lucky Haskins ever in the Navy?”
“It’s another good question and I don’t know the answer. I will say this. Guys his age, you don’t find many with military backgrounds. They didn’t have a war to fight.”
Wendell Glavin was raking pea rock around his mailbox when I turned in to Manning’s driveway. I loaded my arms with groceries so he would take the hint, allow me to lug them upstairs rather than stand and chat. The ploy failed. “Ahoy!” he shouted from across the street.
“Humid day today, Rutledge,” he said.
I didn’t want to say, “Duh.”
“I know, it’s always humid in the summer.”
I nodded and thought about “ahoy.”
“But when the air smells like fish,” he said, “it’s really humid.”
“Wendell, were you in the Navy?”
“Almost, bubba. I grew up in Green Cove Springs, near St. Augustine. We had that mothball fleet, World War II ships harbored in the St. Johns River. My pals and me, we’d sneak aboard the ghost boats and play Okinawa Attack every summer. Hell, we found parts of uniforms, manuals, and what all. We were swabbies and commanders and gunners. We dreamed of going to sea, and for us poor kids, it was like a free summer camp.”
“Expensive playground,” I said.
“They should’ve turned it into an amusement park. Who were they fooling with that mothball ridiculousness? In the end they torpedoed all those ships in sub exercises. Sent them to that big trash can and toilet that poses as a major ocean.”
I started up the stairs. “Sounds like the catch-22 of retirement, eh, Wendell?”
“You bet, Rutledge. You think you’re parked and then you’re sunk. I’m not going to fall for it. I’m a true believer in ‘Use it or lose it.’ You won’t ever see me slow down. My dream is to die in the saddle.”
Or choke to death on clichés.
Tim did me a favor when he rapped on the kitchen door at two in the morning. I had zonked on a sofa with all the lights on, my head jammed at an angle to my spine and my face wedged into a rank throw pillow. By morning I would have been a walking, wheezing hockey stick.
Behind his watery-eyed version of Lost Black Sheep, Tim looked more stoned than drunk. “Gotta put paradise behind me,” he said. “I wanted to say good-bye in person.”
“So the new girl and new job…down the dumper?”
“Maybe someday I’ll come back under brighter clouds.”
“Or no clouds at all?” I said.
“Too much to hope for.”
“You okay for gas cash?”
“I’m set.”
“Anyone expecting to be paid back?”
“Let’s end this on a high note. Tanker said he never wanted to hear about it again, but he’ll get a money order inside a week.”
“Where to next?” I said.
“Ten feet the far side of the Florida state line. From there, the idea of sawing wood and pounding nails appeals to my stress-repellent nature.”
“You want one piece of nonjudgmental brotherly advice?”
“I’ll risk it,” said Tim.
“Top of the Keys, go left on 997. Take it to U.S. 27 and take 27 past Ocala before you get on I-75.”
“There’s got to be a reason…”
I nodded. “Not a single toll booth.”
“I can afford
a few—”
“They use cameras these days,” I said. “Not a single picture of your car.”
He started down the stairs. “I never would’ve thought of that.”
There but for a shake of chance went I.
Ahead of the qualifiers I always used to describe him, the anger, his ratshit luck, his hollow self-respect, I loved my brother. If you told me he could kill a man, I might punch you in the nose.
Then I would think about it.
20
At 6:55 Wednesday morning a trash-collection truck’s squealing brakes hauled me out of a dream. I tried to rewind it, but saw only sea grass and pinfish without clear blue water or the nude woman. I concentrated on the underwater hum for maybe a minute, then the truck, having U-turned at the dead end, rumbled the length of Keelhaul Lane, rattled the headboard, and that was it.
As I carried my coffee to Al’s porch for a blast of sunlight, I heard a vehicle stop under the house. A car door slammed shut. I pictured a mob of people climbing the stairs, coming to me with bad news, threats, problems, horoscopes for all I knew. Millican with a ball bat and reenergized attitude; Tim with a twelve-pack, a changed mind, and a two-hour apology; even Bobbi Lewis looking for just the right morning man. For the traffic I drew, I could have built a booth near the pavement and peddled lemonade, grubstaked a calming career. Better, I should have built a guardhouse.
With all the possibilities, the last person I expected was my ex-lover, Teresa Barga, but I knew the top of her head before I saw her face. I opened the door and sensed that she was leaning inward for a hug. I didn’t know why she had come, but it sure as hell involved Tim, and a comfort hug wasn’t in me.
The look on her face prompted me to say, “Is he dead or alive?”
“He’s alive and unhurt so far,” she said.
I stepped back to let her in. She had dressed in a hurry, not for work. She wore nylon shorts, tennis shoes, and a gray T-shirt. Her hair was tucked under a Panama Jack visor.
“Did he really stop to say good-bye?” she said.