by Tom Corcoran
Sam said, “See you at home. Let’s call for a Thai supper.” He stepped out of the Jeep, slugged my knee—a nonverbal “thank you”—and ducked traffic to cross the street. I moved up front before the light changed. Marnie had a small metallic sticker on her dashboard: SIT DOWN, BUCKLE UP, HOLD ON, SHUT UP.
As we crossed the boulevard and started up the Bight bridge, I looked back. Turk reached into a sack and handed over a Miller Lite. Sam twisted the cap, tilted back the cold beer.
Marnie stopped for the light at the Naval Station Annex. “Shall I assume that he needs time alone?”
I felt the thirst that I knew Sam was quenching. “Between the MEs, the cops, and a woman cabdriver, he got his head twisted in six directions.”
“Which direction did it send him, going forward?”
“You’d better let Sam explain,” I said. “I saw it from my point of view. His take, I might get wrong.”
“I’ve never seen him so … detached.”
“He used the word ‘distracted,’ but yes.”
“He was too embarrassed to tell me that his Bronco was right there in airport parking.”
“You were good not to mention it. You look like you’ve had a long day yourself.”
“Long for fifteen reasons, Alex.” A minute later she turned onto Fleming. “How’s your new living arrangement?”
“Remains to be seen.”
“The remains of what?” She grinned. “Shouldn’t it be perfect?”
A loaded question. But Marnie and I had been friends since before I had met Teresa Barga. Marnie never had tattled or betrayed a conversation.
“I’ve seen her four times in three days,” I said. “Two of those were in bed while one of us was ninety percent asleep. Our affair has turned into April weather: cloudy, windy, and eighty.”
“As opposed to…?”
“Sunny and hot.”
“I get the picture.” She turned down Dredgers Lane, stopped near my porch, shut off her motor. She turned to face me and look me in the eye. “Look, Alex. I’ve got bad news. I wish I didn’t have to say this. I wish I didn’t have to tell anyone. Besides worrying about Sam, this was a big part of my long day. Naomi Douglas died in her sleep last night.”
I felt as if she had slugged me. I felt as if I’d dropped through a hole in the car floor, through a crack in the crust of the earth, into a dark cavern where nothing goes right or makes sense. I managed to say, “I didn’t know she’d been sick.”
Marnie shook her head. “She plum wore out, is all I can figure. It gets us all, eventually. I know you’ve been her friend the past few years.”
“But … damn. You saw her. She was healthy, perfectly alive.”
“Some people reach old age before others,” she said. “Most of the time you can’t tell by the outside what the inside is doing.”
“How old was she? After all this time, I don’t even know.”
“She was only sixty-eight,” said Marnie.
“She acted half that.”
“Right, she did. But in this town age is relative. Some people come to Key West to get a new life. Some people come here to die. Naomi did both.”
“With flair,” I said, “and a happy attitude. Is this her reward?”
Marnie was quiet a moment, then said, “She probably looked young because she didn’t hang out in bars.”
“Does Teresa know?”
Marnie squinted, looked away. “I have no idea.”
Naomi Douglas had come to Florida in the mid-Eighties from the upper Midwest. Widowed, she had used her late husband’s insurance proceeds to resettle herself far from reminders of old contentment and new heartbreak. She had bought an attractive two-story home on Grinnell, two blocks from my place on Dredgers Lane. I knew that she’d invested in stocks after the market’s mini-crash in ’eighty-seven. The boom of the Nineties had allowed her to remodel her home and yard and become a supporter of numerous Key West causes and charities. She had asked me several times to donate my photo expertise to promote historic restoration projects. Her charming manner had made it impossible to turn her down. She had paid me back by touting my name for several lucrative jobs, and by purchasing two of my photographs and displaying them in her home. She never remarried. I had seen her many times in the company of the island’s older, wealthy men, gay and straight. I’d never had the impression that any of them might be a love interest. More than once I had wondered about my feelings toward her. I had always found her attractive, never worried that she was of my parents’ generation. I had been in other relationships throughout the time I’d known her. Nothing had come of my feelings, or the attraction.
I said, “How old would Sam’s sister be?”
“Lorie’d be close to forty. You think she didn’t make it?”
“I don’t think Sam’s holding much hope.”
Marnie hadn’t moved in two minutes. She finally turned, looked toward the porch. “Your phone’s ringing.”
I don’t know why I hurried, but I did. Perhaps to run from the fact of my friend’s death. The front door was unlocked, wide open. I caught it before the answering service clicked in. Key West Police Detective Dexter Hayes Jr. monotoned, “Oh. You’re not dead.”
I took a moment to think through his words, then said, “They won’t have me in the club.”
“I haven’t seen you in a while. I assumed the worst.”
“Was I supposed to be calling you? I thought our deal worked the other way around. I hoped it did.”
“Too true,” he said. “There’s only one reason I’m calling.”
“You got told to call me.”
“Not in so many words, Rutledge. Please say you’re too busy…”
“I’m too busy…”
“… to snap photos of a suicide victim.”
“I’ve pledged my late afternoon to a special project.”
“That piece-of-crap Mustang you got?”
“It’s a Shelby.”
“Once again I’m right?”
“No. I’m redoing my Weber grill. They should use me in ads. Like people who drive cars for a half-million miles. This is an early-Eighties model.”
“Lotta value in those relics,” said Hayes.
“I paid to have the grate sandblasted. I bought heat-resistant paint for the outside of it.”
“This guy took himself out with a shotgun on his canal bulkhead.”
“What did he do?” I said. “Ricochet the shot off the sidewalk?”
“He did a Hemingway, put the barrel in his mouth.”
“So, it wasn’t a question of aim?”
“There isn’t much left from the earlobes back. It’s all in the canal. He was facing the house. He blew brain salad into the mangroves.”
“I’m photographing a void? Pictures won’t show a damn thing.”
“I was hoping you’d say that. It reaffirms my opinion of your attitude.”
“Anybody we know?” I said.
“Mayor Steve Gomez.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s what a lot of people are saying,” said Hayes. “City Hall will echo with the sentiments come morning.”
“What happened to the ‘Happiest Man in Politics’?”
“Steve cashed it in.”
“Cootie Ortega’s not an option?”
“He’s grieving.”
Cootie was the city’s full-time forensic photographer and lab man. Over the past ten years he’d built a reputation for screwing up but had kept his job thanks to the century-old Conch tradition of nepotism.
“Is Cootie grieving over Uncle Steve, or his soon-to-go patronage gig?”
“Let’s say fifty-fifty,” said Hayes. “He started to document the scene, went maybe ten minutes, but he lost it. Broke down and wept. I have to admit it looked like genuine anguish. Maybe the guy has human emotions. Took me by surprise.”
Hayes went silent. I stayed silent.
He blinked first: “Okay, I’ll beg. Just this once? Out of respect for O
rtega’s mourning?’”
“If it’s open-and-shut suicide, why pictures?”
“Butt-covering one-oh-one. In case any little thing comes up—down the road, couple of months, couple of years. It’ll look like I followed procedures, went through the motions.”
“I’ve had a long day. You’re sweet to call.”
“That’s the kind of guy I am. Trouble is,” he said, “you turn me down, they’ll tell me to lose your number. You’ve come to the attention of my boss, the lieutenant, the bureau commander. He wants me to find someone more dependable.”
“I’ve always liked the odd dollar or two. You sound like you’re on your cell.”
“Like there’s a phone booth in the mayor’s yard?”
“They’ll be able to tell by your phone records that we talked.”
“You better come on over.”
“What’s his wife’s name?” I said. “I met her once.”
“Yvonne’s a wreck. Her boss at City Electric broke the news to her. She heaved her lunch into a computer. A four-grand puke. You probably don’t know they separated a year ago.”
“News to me.”
“Maybe it’s what brought this on. I hear he’s been into the bottle for a few months, hiding it like most alcoholics. But, yes, she’s in the house with a dozen Cuban relatives, sisters, cousins—including Cootie, who happens to be the only male relative—and two aunts. Sometimes I think it’s worse when people are divorced or split up. The ones left behind are thinking ‘What if’ and feeling guilty. Anyway, she’s audibly upset.”
“Gotcha. Gomez wasn’t a Conch, was he?”
“Nope. First time I met him was when I got back to town last September. You know the house?”
“I think so. Two big sago palms, Riviera Drive?”
“Forty-one twenty-four,” said Hayes. “Hurry. Don’t wear shorts.”
* * *
I walked outside, wondering why Teresa had neglected to lock the house. Marnie Dunwoody sat sideways in the driver’s seat, her legs dangling to the Jeep’s small running board, her cell phone to her ear. I stood back to give her privacy, watched a half-dozen palm warblers maneuver crazily around the yard’s trees and shrubs. They looked drunk, almost colliding with each other and with tree limbs. I guessed they had copped a buzz off ripe berries in the trees. Warblers are more common in October, rarely stopping in the Keys on spring migration. I’d heard that this year’s constant easterlies had forced them to land.
Something made me look back at Marnie. Her face was fixed, ashen, her gaze unfocused. A moment later she clicked off.
She read the same look on my face. She said, “Gomez?”
“Dexter just hired me.”
“Two in one day. Get your stuff. I’ll give you a ride.”
“You look like you just lost a relative.”
Marnie nodded. “Maybe the same way you feel about Naomi. A year before I started with the Citizen, a friend of mine volunteered me to help with Steve’s first campaign, when he ran for city commissioner that one term before he ran for mayor. I went into it two-faced, like a cynical bitch, looking to get the goods on a wily politician.” She stopped to take a deep breath. “For the life of me, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the guy. He had good ideas, he treated people fairly. If he said he’d do something, he did it, or he tried. He was a dork, socially, around women. I guess he was one of ‘the guys.’ He liked to have a few drinks and hang out. But he never chased groupies. As a politician, he fascinated me.”
“So, you kept up with him?”
“I’ve kept a file on him since my first week at the paper. He was my silent specialty, my pet project. I saw him as a man with a future. I kept track of his career and his decisions. Every two years I studied his campaigns. All this time, I hoped it would form a pattern—where he was coming from, who might own him, what he might do in the future. I thought I knew how he ticked. If he’d gotten into state or national politics, he was my story. If he’d gotten into a scandal, he was my story.”
I said, “How does suicide fit the picture?”
She shook her head. “Too many important things going on. Most of them good for the island. It’s like the city’s lost its last fragment of a conscience.”
In spite of Marnie’s admiration, I knew that, in recent years, Steve Gomez had been tagged the “absentee mayor.” He’d missed commission meetings because he’d gone to hunt deer with friends in Texas or near the Everglades, or to shoot birds in Wyoming and Nebraska. He’d gone to out-of-town expos to promote industry for a tourist-trap island that needed new industry like Duval Street needed more T-shirt stores. He’d been zipped by the media for distant conferences on the public’s nickel. Mayor Gomez had ignored his critics. He’d let them have their say, refused to explain himself, and refused comment. He’d let his voting record speak for itself. He’d won each election with an overwhelming majority.
For some reason, victory hadn’t been enough.
“Maybe he had a health problem,” I said. “Depression, or indicators of Alzheimer’s. Maybe cancer that he’d kept secret.”
Marnie looked at Fleming Street as if an answer might appear next to the stop sign. “Why do I have a feeling this town’s going to change because he died? I mean change big, and not for the better. I always thought the whole country got skewed after JFK was killed. Same idea, different scale.”
“Teresa’s in for it,” I said. “This’ll be a PR nightmare.”
“Hey, that’s why the police department calls her a media liaison. She’s a spokesperson, she’s got a business card, and she’s got to deal with the likes of me. It’s what she wants on her résumé, and it’s what they pay her for.”
Tough summation, I thought. No sympathy, either.
“It’ll be more of everything,” I said. “Emotion, the bullshit. No fun.”
“She was having fun at lunch today.”
“Do I want to know about this?”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said.
“We don’t keep tabs on each other.”
Marnie nodded. “I know. Sam and I thrive on trust, too. I apologize.”
“You were thinking about my ‘April weather’ remark.”
“Cloudy, windy, and eighty.” She almost smiled. “That’s actually funny.”
“This has been a long one for all of us. It’s about to start up again.”
She agreed. “Go get your cameras. If you’ve got any crackers or bananas in there, my stomach’s crying for help.”
As I turned back to the house, my mind spun. Two in one day? Naomi, just like that?
Who else was crying for help?
I needed a long nap. I needed to keep my eyes wide open.
4
RIVIERA DRIVE IS A mix of luxury homes, cement-block Florida specials, and dumps disguised by vegetation. By Key West standards, it’s an upscale neighborhood. Houses to the north have back-fence neighbors. Southside homes, like Steve Gomez’s, back up to a deep canal and a shallow salt pond bordered by twisted, bug-filled mangroves.
Marnie and I didn’t need an address. Four unmarked Crown Vics had jammed to within fifty feet of Gomez’s twin sago palms. Spotlights, beefed shocks, window tint dark enough to win civilians a love note from city hall. Not exactly unmarked. The house looked new, from what I could see beyond the wall. I had heard that Gomez had knocked down an eyesore to build before he ran for office, had turned his double-lot yard into a showplace.
Marnie wedged her Jeep into the last spot in sight, snug behind Teresa’s blue Shimano motor scooter. A blowsy middle-aged woman in a huge denim shirt and strained cutoffs marched to the edge of her sparse lawn. She stood guard, made sure the Jeep’s tires didn’t dig up her turf.
Marnie faced forward, reached behind my seat to grab her briefcase. “The old bag has eight toilets out behind her house,” she said quietly. “She turned them into yard planters. She called the paper and asked us to do a story on her. She’s a chatter. Let’s move fast.”
/> We saw no one out front. Except for a fifteen-by-fifteen-foot square of turf for the palms, only a two-car garage was open to the street. Key West’s Crime Scene van sat on a short, peach-colored apron in front of the garage.
Riding across town I had recalled the last time I had seen Naomi Douglas. She had been sitting on the deck at Louie’s Backyard, smirking in the late-day sun, not quite enjoying a ribald joke. I had wanted to capture the life in her eyes, the mischief and goodwill that matched her smile, but I hadn’t brought my camera. Now, two weeks later, I would have to focus on the shredded remains of a man’s head, details of nature I didn’t want to know. I felt as if I had reversed my priorities in life. I took peace in the idea that a week on Grand Cayman might fix my brain as well as my wallet.
“No sheriff’s car,” said Marnie. “Not even his fancy-ass Lexus.”
“He must have caught a ride with someone else.”
Four years ago Fred “Chicken Neck” Liska had waggled money in my face. I blamed him for drawing me into my grim sideline. He had been a detective with the KWPD and had asked me to photograph evidence. Before he turned in his city badge, then won last year’s election to become Monroe County’s sheriff, he had worked six years under Mayor Gomez. I recalled times when Liska had spoken of the mayor. His tone had shown respect for the way the man did business. From Fred Liska, those words had amounted to effusive praise. If this had been murder rather than a suicide, he could have opted to take jurisdiction. I knew he would be shaken by the mayor’s suicide. I was equally certain of his relief at not having to take the case.
The Crime Scene van began to roll down the apron. The driver spotted Marnie, recognized her, and shook his head. He drove east a half block, then turned north toward Flagler.
“What the hell was that?” said Marnie. “He’s going to Stock Island. They can’t be taking Gomez away.”
“Hayes wouldn’t call me to shoot scenery.”
“They keep that van downtown all the time, on Angela.”
“So he’s rolling empty,” I said. “He got another call.”
“More important than the mayor?”
Set into the bordering wall, seven feet from the street pavement, was an opaque door and an access keypad. I nudged the door and bumped a uniformed officer who’d been posted guard. After a beat or two of posturing, he recognized us. He did a double take on Marnie’s height, waved me in, then held up his hand to stop her. “Identification.”