The Quick Adios (Times Six) (Alex Rutledge Mystery Series)

by Tom Corcoran

  On the verge of ordering a breakfast beer and blowing off the whole morning, I paid up and hiked back to the lane. A weather-worn bicycle leaning against the screen door warned me. Dubbie Tanner stood inside my porch door. He wore a SCRUB CLUB ball cap and a faded plaid madras sport shirt. He sipped from a can wrapped in a small brown paper bag.

  “I like hosting parties at my house,” I said. “I never have to drive home through cop stops and roadblocks. What’s up?”

  “Ocilla Ramirez,” he said. “Your call last evening at cocktail hour…” He raised his beer then continued. “You asked that we delay Internet and hit the streets, right?”

  I nodded, fearful that the Aristocrats had run afoul of Sheriff Liska’s observers.

  “Fecko and I were a step ahead of you. We drove out to Big Coppitt at lunchtime yesterday. I gotta say, it’s getting cute out there. Bunch of townhouses alongside the highway, pastel all to hell like Necco Wafers.”

  “Whoa,” I said. “Didn’t we already decide that Ocilla sub-leases?”

  “Right, we guessed… correctly. But my associate and I speculated, as private eyes will do, that it couldn’t hurt to look around.”

  “Ignoring the sheriff’s office warning to keep clear of this woman…”

  “We checked for surveillance from a block away,” said Wiley.

  “But on Big Coppitt?” I said. “Even the sheriff can afford to pay a homeowner to mount a camera in the bushes. They could be watching Ocilla’s property around the clock.”

  Dubbie agreed. “We thought of that after the fact,” he said. “That’s part two of the story.”

  “Out of curiosity,” I said, “what color is Ocilla’s house on Big Coppitt?”

  He didn’t have to think about it. “Stale yellow jelly bean.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Continuing here,” said Tanner, “we went to her so-called address and eagle-eye recognized a food thief. In his tough times Fecko used to buy stolen pork chops from the guy.”

  “Wiley was a food fence?”

  “No, he bought them for himself,” said Dubbie. “Even winos have to eat. But don’t ask about his Night Train marinade.”

  “What did this thief have to say?”

  “He was the actual tenant’s cousin. He washes dishes for a living, in four different restaurants. The actual tenant’s brother works in five other kitchens. They’re all from Nicaragua, not Guatemala, and nine family members share the house.”

  “Where’s this going?” I said.

  “Immigration looks hard at restaurants, so kitchens stick to hiring legals for their shit work. People with up-to-date papers, Social Security numbers, people they can put on the books. Once these people are hired, the kitchen never sees them again. But someone always shows up for work. Always. It’s the most dependable labor on the island.”

  “The jobs are sub-leased?” I said.

  “Our actual tenant on Crawford has his green card, or white, whatever it takes to please Immigration. He’s the actual employee, too. He takes his cut across the board, gets a paycheck, pays taxes, and pays his relatives in cash. He’s the one paying the utility bill.”

  For the second day in a row I felt like I was being schooled, reintroduced to Key West. “And the guys without documents sell pork chops clipped from restaurants?”

  “Their jockstrap discount,”said Tanner.

  Not a pretty picture. “Does this put us closer to Ocilla?” I said.

  “Wiley called the cousin to the car, slipped him ten and asked in Spanish how to find the landlady. Wiley speaks the language like a champ. Because of that, we got an address on Seidenberg which brings us to Chapter Two.”

  “Call it what you want,” I said. “But we keep away from Seidenberg.”

  “We know that now,” said Tanner. “We bum-cruised the block and saw the dudes with fresh sunburns posing as cable repair techs. Wiley thinks they were pretending to replace a power supply on a repeater. But they were really swapping out the video transmitter.”

  “So that’s where they have their twenty-four-seven surveillance,” I said.

  “Either way,” added Tanner. “Wiley spotted their safety infractions and improper tools. There was an olive-green Honda Element wedged into the yard. It looked like there were broomsticks inside its back windows. We kept on rolling.”

  “A handy work vehicle,” I said.

  “And there’s one last thing,” he said. “A blip or two in her social life. I’m not sure they pertain to matters at hand.”

  “Blips tell tales,” I said.

  “She might be a one-woman escort service.” Tanner drank from his beer. “This comes from a bartender at the Casa Marina who shall remain nameless. Except her name is Holly and she happens to drink at the Bottle Cap. Anyway, Holly went home one night last year with a wealthy local man who has since gotten married to a shrew from Dallas. He owns a well-disguised mini-mansion on Riviera. Holly and wealthy man were into a robust Round Two the next morning when his housekeeper, Ocilla Ramirez, walked into the bedroom. Ocilla made a few jealous remarks, so the guy invited her to join in. That’s how Holly came to know Ocilla.”

  “Not the first three-way on the island,” I said.

  “It was a first for Holly, but to quote: ‘I wasn’t going to tell her to stop.’ A couple of months later Holly saw Ocilla with an elderly tourist fellow at the Casa, doing the leg rub and chug-a-lug routine. Ocilla either didn’t recognize or pretended not to know Holly. The drunk pair left together, headed for the elevator. Couple of months after that, the same routine, in the Casa Marina bar, with a middle-aged woman.”

  “That’s a significant blip,” I said.

  “Not really,” said Tanner. “Not on this island. But Ocilla sounds like she’d do a snake with its lack of ears no problem.”

  “How do you stumble into these tidbits, people like Holly?”

  Dubbie scowled as if he disliked analyzing the process. “You’ve taken pictures for so many years, you know this town, right?”

  “I thought I knew it well. I guess I do, visually.”

  “You know about morning and evening light, blue or cloudy skies, cheerful and depressing colors. It’s all in the light and shadows.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s second-nature to me now, but that’s about right.”

  “While you master the scenery,” said Dubbie, “I do the social end, the highlights and the dark side, especially the shadows. I understand the street scene and what happens in parked vans and behind frosted jalousie windows. It’s part of the reason Wiley and I are going to succeed.”

  “May I ask how you mastered your expertise?” I said.

  Dubbie shook his head. “Nope, you can’t. For a long time I had to live by my wits. That’s all I’m going to say. How was your fancy breakfast?”

  I asked by raising my eyebrows.

  “I figured you’d gone to 5 Brothers for con leche. Worth the walk to find out.” He lifted his beer-in-a-bag. “You weren’t there, I played the possibilities and looked in a window at Azur.”

  “One last thing,” I said. “Have Wiley look around for five more names, whatever he can find. First off, Justin Beeson and the late Amanda Beeson out of Sarasota. The other three share the last name Timber, what you yell when you chop a tree. Their first names are Anya, Sonya and Tonya.” I spelled all three. “To relieve you of undue confusion, Anya and Tonya are the same person.”

  “On it, boss,” said Tanner.

  He read my face.

  “You are ‘boss’ no longer.” He crushed his beer can in his hand. “And, I suppose, ‘sir’ is forbidden, too.”

  Ten minutes later my cell rang. Chicken Neck Liska, Monroe County Sheriff.

  “When you’re out this way,” he said, “do me a favor. Drop by my office for a minute.”

  “Stock Island isn’t one of my regular routes.”

  “You never know,” he said. “Lunch at Hogfish, yesterday about this time. Drinks and beers, whooping it up, living your carefree
life. Anything’s possible. If you could make it today, all the better. In, say, forty minutes.” He hung up.

  A paperless summons. A cheap notice that he could find me, or I couldn’t hide, anywhere in his county. I decided to ride the Triumph. I was in no hurry.

  He called back. “All right, El Siboney, but you buy.”

  “And your healthy diet?”

  “Oh, shit,” he said. “Make it the salad aisle at Publix.”

  “You win. El Siboney in fifteen.”

  We long for the days when El Siboney on Catherine was a quick, cheap meal for locals. The place has “gone snowbird,” but the food is still close enough to true Cuban fare to please everyone. I might need a yardstick to confirm this, but El Siboney could well be the Cuban-American restaurant nearest Havana. If you ever see them use that line for an ad slogan, you will know it came from the addled mind of Rutledge.

  I got there early enough to avoid waiting in line. I asked for a back room table so Liska wouldn’t have to schmooze every bubba who came through the door. The place smelled of fish, plantains and grilled pork chops. It was packed with large tourists in golf clothes. I ordered espresso and sangria for each of us and asked the server to keep an eye out for “El Jefe.”

  You play by unspoken rules in El Siboney. The servers are all third- or fourth-generation Conchs who never slow down. They ration their patience, speak Spanish to each other and pretend that they don’t speak English. They own their homes. A few have put their kids through colleges in Tampa, Gainesville, Tallahassee and Miami. One or two own nice boats, plush cars they don’t drive to work. They got it all through hard work. If you want good service, you cater to their moods and pace.

  Three minutes later Liska walked straight to the table. He wore brown trousers and a floral shirt that looked like a Beall’s Outlet markdown. He sat, slammed the coffee, up-ended the sangria and held out the cup and glass to our server for refills.

  She took them and paused, maybe two seconds.

  “Dorado a la plancha,” said Liska. “Yellow rice, plantanos.”

  So much for his health-food regimen.

  She looked at me for two seconds. It was the wrong time to admit that I wasn’t hungry.

  “Puerco asado, white rice, pantanos, por favor.”

  She disappeared for ten seconds then returned with a plastic basket full of warm buttered Cuban bread wrapped in white paper.

  “Give anything for that kind of efficiency in my department,” said Liska.

  “You’re the sheriff,” I said. “Go back to the office and fire somebody. The others will perk up.”

  “Paperwork ‘til next Christmas.” He pulled the bread basket closer and dug in.

  I began to bounce back another one-liner of questionable wisdom.

  “Look, stop right there,” he said. “There’s a reason for this lunch. I’m not in the mood for distractions.”

  I nodded, reached for my sangria. “I’ll shut up.”

  “I’ve had to rethink something I said to you two days ago. Hear me out on this and please let me finish what I have to say. Agreed?”

  I knew what was coming. I shrugged and nodded simultaneously.

  “To launch this tirade,” he said. “I want to make sure you understand that Greg Pulver’s murder was a cold execution. It was not a crime of passion, an unpredicted moment of rage. It was an ugly and quick adiós. His killer planned that he would get a bullet up through his chin and out the top of his skull.”

  He paused for effect. I looked around. People at nearby tables had noticed Liska’s intensity, his choice of words, his focused tirade. I splayed my hands, palms down, to shush him.

  He resumed speaking with his teeth clamped together, his eyes squinting with hatred, his words coming out as hissing sounds. “After he was shot, Greg Pulver was kicked in the balls. It was a grotesque post-mortem injury that targeted his genitals, broke a pelvic bone called the ischium and came directly from hatred. We have little choice but to see it as revenge. Tell me your take on that, five sentences or less.”

  “Not many women wear shoes capable of cracking bone.”

  “Good, Alex, so follow this logic. We don’t know if the killer was one person or several. It could have been a man or a woman or one of each, but I’m using ‘he’ for this discussion. We don’t know if he is still in town. We’re all running around pushing paper, talking shop, reporting to each other, but we’re not finding shit. Have you got me so far?”

  I nodded again and kept my mouth shut.

  Liska retreated into his thoughts, began fiddling with the paper packets of sugar substitutes. “Let’s say a murderer is still on the island,” he said. “If said killer believes that any of us is close, he has no choice. He will act to protect himself. And we have no idea what he will do or how to stop him because we can’t identify where he’s coming from. When I say ‘we,’ I mean ‘we the cops,’ which starting right now no longer includes you or the Bumsnoops.”

  “Little late in the game to change the rules,” I said.

  “Have you any idea who will catch the next bullet?”

  I shook my head and put a finger to my lip, reminding him again to tone it down.

  “Do you want to put your private eye rookies at death’s door?” he said. “Draw bad guys to your doorstep? Endanger your girlfriend? Count the bullet holes through your porch screening?”

  “No.”

  “When I was a city detective, Rutledge, some shitbird came within two seconds of piercing your forehead with a large, ugly hunk of lead. Since I’ve been sheriff, you’ve had your house torched, been in a car wreck, taken a beating that required a hospital stay, and been run down by a car near Fausto’s. Am I forgetting anything?”

  Half the restaurant was staring at me. I felt like a misfortune magnet. Like a freak on one of those TV shows where people eat roaches and gargle with snakes.

  Again Liska lowered his voice. “Your Bumsnoops rode past Ocilla’s place this morning and took their damned time checking out my surveillance team. Please understand, that team is not just watching the woman. She was Pulver’s business partner. For all we know of the killer, Ocilla could be his next target.”

  “You want that to happen, right?” I said. “To identify the shooter by drawing him to the woman?”

  “Make no mistake,”said Liska. “I want the process to begin, but not to the point of murder. My men have orders to protect a probable scam artist from being killed herself. We will take down the sharks, if they appear, and we can’t have sloppiness. I can’t have amateurs wallowing around on my turf. Argument?”

  “Your words are well taken.”

  “You’re a fine photographer,” he said, his words quieter. “I’ve been a good cop for years. Everyone has talent, and you’ve been a great help to me in the past. But you’re not a deputy. You have no weapons training, no body armor. And, for once, I suspect, no comeback at all.” He went silent.

  I took his pause as an invitation to rebuttal.

  “I have a minor critique,” I said. “Please don’t take this personally. Wiley Fecko, prior to being a street person and a licensed investigator, worked for years at a major phone company. Your ‘cable’ guys were blowing their own cover. They were using the wrong tools for their job and ignoring safety regulations. If Fecko can spot them, who else can do it?”

  Our food arrived at the table. Liska excused himself to step outside to make a call. After he returned we picked at our meals, spooned beans into the rice, passed the hot sauce. Liska’s fish sat there looking fresh-caught. My roast pork smelled like heaven, but I was still full of fruit and granola.

  Liska crumpled his paper napkin, dropped it on his food. “I am glad to note that I have not wasted my time and words.”

  “What have I done to transmit that message?” I said.

  “I’ve never seen you not finish a plate of Cuban food.”

  “I had a big breakfast.”

  “One other thing I need to tell you about,” he said. “I got
a call from an old friend in Manatee County, and you’ll get one too. Glenn Steffey will play dumb with you, but don’t fall for it. He told me he’s hasn’t seen a better crime scene photo in years. He said you kept your cool, didn’t lose your shit at the sight of a mutilated corpse. He’s a fine detective, so that’s high praise.”

  “Still not my preferred line of work,” I said. “I was glad to turn my back on that situation.”

  “I can sympathize,” said the sheriff. “But my take on his words is that you might want to anticipate a call from their grand jury. Thank you for paying the tab.”

  Our fair weather vanished while we failed to eat our lunch. The sky was overcast, Catherine Street a strip of washed-out colors, the palms on Margaret more purple-gray than tropical. I guessed that rain was a quarter-hour away, maybe less. I reminded myself of the cliché that never fails: a stormy winter day in Cayo Hueso beats every option north of Tampa.

  Feeling pleased that my delivery of Wiley Fecko’s tech critique had inspired a corrective phone call, I replayed our little chat in my mind. I quickly realized that I had never seen Sheriff Liska so animated, or heard such gravity in his words. For years he had dealt with danger. Monroe County is a haven for those who stray from “normalcy,” whatever that is, and thank goodness. But it’s a magnet for dysfunctional strangers who want to misbehave under palm trees rather than snow drifts. It can be, on occasion, a volatile social scene, and that is when most law-abiding citizens of the Keys leave worry and dread to others. Cops and deputies, each of them an employee of those citizens, have a two-word job description: Confront It. They all know that evil doesn’t take breaks.

  I came away from the meal with a ball cap that smelled of fried plantains and a mind full of worthwhile advice. His warnings had been genuine this time, not a ploy. Not a mind game.

  13.

  Through shortage of time or lack of money, I have been my own shrink for years. I have been known to pool my resources for self-medication. I felt it was time to take my full belly, caffeine and sangria to a therapy session. That always meant a ride next to the ocean.