by Tom Corcoran
“What do you mean?”
“Friendship. I was going after it on the barter system.”
“Tell me about the Oblivion Division.”
“My word, Alex, you’ve done your homework. Before I start, I’ll warn you. This isn’t going to help stop or solve a single damned crime.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’ll take it as a history lesson. Local color.”
“There’ll be a mess of that. God, I’ve been waiting a long time to spew this out. You’re going to hear more than any job-whipped cop, that’s for sure.”
“I’m in no hurry to be anywhere else,” I said.
She coughed a few more times, picked up a pack of cigarettes, looked at it, then put it aside. “Lucky Haskins’s daddy was a chief in the Bushnell disbursing office and later on the USS Gilmore. He died, I don’t know, around 1980. But back in 1970 Chief Haskins was a card player. He got himself into a game upstairs at Captain Tony’s. That bar’s still there, I believe, but I haven’t been on Greene Street since a Fantasy Fest twenty years ago. Anyway, there were some charter-boat captains, the Monroe County sheriff, a few bartenders, the city manager, Captain Tony, and a dentist they called Dr. Bill. Those are the ones I remember, because I used to pick up fancy cash making their drinks and letting them pinch my fanny. They played once a week, hot and heavy, from ten at night until whenever.
“Anyway, one of those games, the city manager complained about a major problem with the accounting in his maintenance department. The chief told him, ‘Let me come in and take over, and your grief is ended.’ The city manager asked if he would get in trouble with the Navy, and Chief Haskins assured him that he could take care of that. The ship was a tender; it was there to service submarines and never left the dock. All the chief needed was forty minutes’ notice of meetings ashore so he could get himself off the ship and over to city hall.
“Well, that started it all, and this was back in the Bushnell days. I guess the chief got the city manager out of a bind and put the books in fine shape. But he found a loophole in the system, and real quick four or five boys from the ship were employed off-base. And wasn’t my new boyfriend one of them?”
“Your first lover?” I said.
“Paul was the only boy I ever loved,” she said.
“Was he the one who died?”
“Don’t get ahead of my story, okay?”
I sucked in my lips to show her my mouth was sealed.
“There were five sailors moonlighting in broad daylight,” she said. “People in town never suspected, and aboard ship Chief Haskins covered for their absences. It began with each man earning two incomes. Paul told me that the chief figured how to skim each man’s Navy paycheck—that was his profit on the deal. But the chief didn’t stop there. He came up with a larger scheme that took a brilliant mind to dream up, even though sooner or later it would fail. He and those boys weren’t thinking too far ahead, and it started to crumble in 1972 when word came down that the submarine base was closing. The Gilmore received deployment orders for the Mediterranean, and Chief Haskins was first to go. The war was ending, and they needed disbursing personnel to process Vietnam discharges on the West Coast. The chief hadn’t been gone three weeks when a clerk at the city found a pattern of overpayments.”
That must have been the city’s $300,000 shortfall in autumn of 1972.
“Real quick, it all went to hell,” she said. “The city commission ordered an investigation and an inventory, and it took them about six weeks to find a major hitch. Chief Haskins had decentralized storage to save transportation costs and time. The city procurement people had been ordering for three maintenance sheds around the island. For two full years the city had ordered three of each tool, pipe, spare part, and piece of gear. The inventory of the first two sheds came out almost on the money. But the last one, they found an empty building on Whitehead Street.”
“A bogus shed?”
“Only the BlivDivs knew about it—the Oblivion Division.”
“How did they sell the stolen equipment?” I said.
“Construction crews out of Miami. Like clockwork. I don’t think a delivery truck left the island empty for almost two years.”
“Did you know about it all?” I said.
“Let me finish. A city personnel-records check showed that five people in maintenance hadn’t shown up for work after January 1, 1973. No one knew where they lived or where they had gone.”
“So they went back aboard to wait for the ship to sail to the Mediterranean?”
“For the most part. In mid-January, they all took leaves and went to Reno, Nevada, to celebrate their great wealth. What could it have been, maybe ten or twelve grand apiece? Anyway, yes, they confined themselves to the ship, with one exception.”
“And none of the city’s discoveries made the news?”
“Oh, major embarrassment,” said Pokey. “The politicos didn’t want to know about it. There was so much other crap going down—commissioners smuggling pot, cops on the take, you name it—a few missing lawn mowers was small-time. No one in town ever linked it to the Navy. Of course, the city manager who hired Chief Haskins in the first place kept his mouth shut. I assume that cost somebody some cash.”
“What was the exception?” I said.
“When they came back from Reno, everything was different.”
“How so?” I said.
“They made a pact to stick together and never rat on each other. Even if one of them was caught, he would never tell on the others. They wanted my boyfriend to promise not to sneak off the ship so he could visit me, and of course he was sneaking off to see me. One night at dinnertime Paul went to Carlos Market on Caroline to buy us some burger meat. A city maintenance supervisor recognized him and called the police dispatcher and Paul was arrested. He bonded out the next day, but BlivDivs heard that the city was going to send a bunch of people onto the Gilmore to look at faces, to see if they could find the missing maintenance workers.”
“Was Chief Haskins’s son named Lucky?”
Pokey nodded. “He was a teenager who became the Oblivion Division’s mascot. He may have made some pocket change, but no more than that. He stayed in town to finish high school when his father shipped out for San Diego.”
“Did the city send people on board?”
“I think the ship left port before they had a chance.”
“You mind if I ask your boyfriend’s full name?”
“His first name was Harvey,” she said. “He went by his middle name, Paul. His last name was Evans.”
I pressed on. “And you, after he died?”
“I cried for ten hours and I married him the next day. He couldn’t make the ceremony, but I had friends in town who fixed the paperwork. You could get stuff like that done in Key West back then. If it hadn’t been for that Navy widow’s pension, I might have starved those first couple of years.”
“You were still in high school?”
“My senior year,” she said. “And my father wouldn’t allow me in his home. Even when my mother died, I couldn’t go inside. That’s why I came around after you bought it.”
“Must have been tough.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face. “It still is, Alex. You have to go now.”
28
After three tries I connected with Bobbi.
“Where are you?” she said. “Talk fast, I’m in a hurry.”
“On the bridge between Big Pine and Little Torch. Did you get the bottles?”
“They’re being analyzed as we speak. What else?”
“The Michelobs were Tim’s. The Icehouse, for reference, was his roommate’s.”
“What else?” she said.
“I found and spoke with your little girl in the photo. I’m out on a limb here, but there’s a chance she hired the hit man who killed Kansas Jack, Navarre, and Haskins.”
“Meddling again, Rutledge?”
“And here I am, fool that I am, trying to pass credit to you.”
&n
bsp; “Her name and address?”
“Sharon Woods.” I told her the street address on Big Pine. “Get her phone records and you’ll find the FBI’s secret Most Wanted man.”
“You know too much for your own good,” said Bobbi. “But thank you.”
I found Tanker’s roommate, Francie, in a chair under Al Manning’s house on Little Torch. Her jaw was set tough, but she curled one side of her mouth to a sly grin. She wore a forehead sweatband, running shorts, and a cut-off tank top that said, IT AIN’T GONNA LICK ITSELF. Perspiration sparkled on her upper lip.
I shut down the car and stared at her.
“The horny toad I picked up in the Hog’s Breath last night had a dentist’s appointment on Big Pine,” she said. “I’m looking for new accommodations.”
“Tanker jealous of your new chauffeur?”
“Tanker and me were mostly just roommates,” she said, “but he watched sometimes.”
“Watched.”
“Me and other guys,” said Francie. “That’s why he let me stay there. This morning he said he was closing down the hotel. I was riding a cockhorse to Banbury Cross. Next thing I know I’m on the sidewalk with my hair dryer and four grocery bags full of laundry.” She pointed. The kayak held her makeshift luggage. “Can I use your outside shower? I smell like a gym locker.”
“It was on my list, too,” I said. “This time of year, you go two days without a bath, you don’t even get solicitation calls.” I gestured toward the yard.
“I already looked inside. It’s big enough for two.”
She walked toward the rear of the house, checked over her shoulder to make sure I was following, and peeled off her top. She gave me a dirty smile and swung open the shower door. Off came the sandals and shorts. She had an all-over tan, not a wisp of hair from the neck down.
“I’ll let you go first,” I said.
“You don’t like my looks, Alex, I’m not gonna get my imaginary panties in a wad over it.” She tapped her finger on a bar of soap. “Can I borrow shampoo?”
I came back down with a washcloth, a towel, and Pantene. She was lathered up, looking slippery. “I like the philodendron in here,” she said. “All we need is a tiger peeking through the leaves, we could be a tropical painting. Come in and I’ll scrub your back.”
“You ever wear a bathing suit?”
“The two things I need least in my life are boring people and tan lines.”
“And I get categorized if I don’t strip down?”
“You’re already categorized. You’re bashful.”
“Let’s work slowly on our relationship,” I said. “It’ll mean more to us down the road.”
“I’m almost done here.”
“Take your time.”
Twenty minutes later, after our separate showers, we sat on the porch, beers in hand. Francie stared at the canal view as if it were a big movie screen. “We’re a long way from Kansas,” she said. “Four months ago me and my girlfriend were evicted from a trailer east of Lawrence. We thought we’d wind up sleeping on benches with newspaper quilts. We had a yard sale that lasted only an hour. Some creep gave us three hundred bucks for all our old underwear. That night we caught a Greyhound to Miami, and the next day a pimp from the bus station brought us down here. He got creepier than the thong-sniffer, so we ditched him on Duval.”
“What happened to your friend?” I said.
“Found herself a boyfriend who mates on a charter boat. When he first met us, he called us the wild sport fuck and the pink frustration.”
“You being…”
“I’m not the chicken-head, if that’s what you mean. I like to project the image of being almost a virgin. Does that mentally show on my face, from your way of seeing it? Or does that make sense?”
“I almost couldn’t have said it better,” I said. “How did you meet Tanker?”
“I met him in Rick’s Bar. He gave me the ultimate pickup line. He was impressed because I could walk and chew gum at the same time. My dirty mind went to work, and I asked what he could do at the same time. He said, ‘Floss and piss,’ so I said, ‘You either floss one-handed, or piss hands-free. Who cleans your toilet after you clean your teeth?’”
“How did he react to that one?”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s when he said he loved me.”
“Other than sex games, how was he as a roommate?”
“In this town, you have to be careful when you complain about cheap rent.”
“So you admit to an issue or two?” I said.
“When Tanker cleaned the bathroom, he called it ‘the Annual.’ He got pissed a couple times when I left the toilet seat down. And he cared more for that policewoman blow-up doll than he did about me. The doll and his precious stack of little blue books.”
“He was a reader?”
“Skinnier books than ones you’d read. I got the impression they were bankbooks. The top one was a passport, and the rest I never saw. He waved that stack at me once and said, ‘Don’t ever forget that money buys freedom.’ He counts his pennies and cries poverty all the time, but I think he’s rich.”
“Does my brother know he doesn’t have a place to live anymore?”
“What do you mean?” said Francie. “After the second night, he never came back. That Teresa works for the city and she was his sugar mama, best we could guess.”
“Were you the Michelob drinker?” I said.
She grinned again. “Tim left a case and a half and the price was right…Wait, was that you last night in the garbage? Tanker said some asshole was looking for deposit bottles.”
I nodded. “It’s a long story. You came here looking for a place to crash? Why me?”
“I need short-term stability.”
“What about mine?”
“Is that your cell phone?”
I caught Marnie’s call before my message service did its thing. “If you’re in town, you might want to drive over,” she said. “Mayra Culmer found that cruise book, and it’s full of photographs.”
“I’m on Little Torch,” I said. “I can be there in a half hour. What was the date of that Navy flagpole hanging in ’73?”
“Hold on…January twenty-third.”
I couldn’t remember the date engraved on the silver Zippo from Reno. But I knew it was before the twenty-third.
“You might want to start looking for a Harvey Paul Evans.”
“I found his name in an old police report on the flagpole hanging,” she said. “He was a machinist’s mate.”
Francie proposed that she take a nap while I went into town.
“It’s not my house,” I said. “I can’t invite houseguests.”
“I make a mean cheese-and-sausage omelette and a beef stew that will turn you into a sex fiend.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid you’ll turn me into a thong-sniffer.”
“So much for stability,” she said. “Take me back to the crazy island.”
I helped Francie load her bags into the car and made sure Wendell Glavin wasn’t in my rearview. Inbound was a piece of cake. Outbound rush hour was a long train of bumper jumpers, Lower Keys commuters heading home to Cudjoe and Summerland.
I made four calls from the four-lane around Boca Chica Naval Air Station. A woman I knew at a downtown bail-bond outfit assured me that, for anything short of felony weapon use or manslaughter, Tim would see daylight by sundown. Good trick, I thought. Tim might show his appreciation by throwing us a moon at high noon.
The second call was to Carmen. With her job at the post office, she knew how to find little-known apartments and decent landlords. She told me to drop off Francie on my way into town and promised to find her the cheapest efficiency on the island. She also said that Johnny Griffin had kept his promise. Dredgers Lane had enjoyed a silent night.
My call log gave me Gail Downer’s office number. It was late but I gave it a try. Maybe it would forward to her home phone. It rang twice and jumped to a recording. I was trying to click off when she picked
up.
“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour,” I said. “I need a favor. If you have that Zippo lighter handy, I need to know those engraved initials.”
“Easy,” she said. “It’s with those papers in the trunk of my car. Hold a sec.”
I dug a ballpoint and a paper scrap out of my glove compartment and handed them to Francie.
Gail returned to the line. “The date is 1/12/73.”
“Okay,” I said. “But go slowly. I have to repeat all this to my secretary.”
“The next line reads ‘Nevada,’ and under that is “R.I.”
“R.I., as in Rhode Island.” I said. “Then?”
“M.J.W.”
I told Francie and said, “Next?”
“Umm, E.J.B.”
Coincidence? Only Bixby knew for sure. “E.J.B.,” I said. “Got it. Keep going.”
“J.P. Mc-W., with a small ‘C,’ not ‘M-A-C.’”
I repeated it for Francie.
“Then H.P.E.”
I said, “H.P.E.” Harvey Paul Evans.
“Is this information good for my father?” said Gail. “Or your brother?”
“I’m still not sure of a damned thing, but I think it’s good news and I’ll let you know as soon as anything makes sense.”
Finally, I called Liska’s home number.
“There’s no more beer, there’s no more vodka.”
“Don’t need either, Sheriff,” I said. “Who was the ex–Navy man who died on Olivia Street in April?”
“He used a fake name for fifteen years. His real name, which I assume you want, was Morris J. Wells. Can I ask why you need to know this?”
“His initials were on that Zippo lighter that Lewis found.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
I kept telling myself that the weeklong puzzle had come full circle. But a few stations on the circumference remained in fog. Twenty-four hours earlier I was banging my shin on a blue recycling bin. Now I felt close to banging my nose on a solution to three murder cases and, from a personal standpoint, to getting out of the police-photo business. Perhaps Johnny Griffin’s rent cash would kick off my easy future, my world travels, my precious collection of little blue bankbooks topped by a passport.