The Mango Opera

by Tom Corcoran

  I stood in the doorway in my jockey shorts, scratching my stomach.

  Hatch threw out the first ball. “I find out after all the rigmarole at the Olivia scene that you and the Minnette lady are friends.” He twisted his head to peer into the house, then turned to face me again. “My compliments. Then I dwell on the fact that I don’t know shit about this Albury case, which, as the pivot man for Monroe County’s Violent Crimes Task Force, I need to know.”

  I refused to respond.

  Avery hunched forward for a sip of coffee, taking care not to drip on his shirt. “You identify the corpse in the sand. It’s okay you didn’t take pictures. I understand you’re under a strain, the shock and all. But Forsythe, in his words, either overexposed the film or underdeveloped the film or vice versa. I know when he uses technical words it’s an excuse for a fuckup. So in his pictures the deceased looks like a Norwegian blonde instead of a Latina brunette. Like I said, it’s okay you didn’t take pictures. But I wonder could I learn more about this magnificent world by sitting here and drinking my third cup of burned coffee and listening to you talk about said deceased. You follow me?”

  A verbal response would give him permission—after the fact—for helping himself to my porch.

  Hatch figured out that I had no reason to speak. “Since we got the unique circumstance of you and Miss Minnette in the same house, I want to listen to both of you talk. You sure sleep late.”

  Now he was going to sit there and critique my schedule. “You got big feet,” I mumbled. “I had a long day yesterday.”

  He twisted his neck to look around his thigh. “Size-ten foot, size-eleven shoe. Sale at Burdines. They were out of tens. We married guys don’t have the incentive to stay in the sack much past the rooster hour. Do me a favor.”

  More strategic silence.

  “I killed the open speaker in the car so the two-way radio wouldn’t rile the neighborhood. I pride myself in community service, being sensitive to the populace. You mind flipping your scanner to the county freak?”

  “I don’t own a scanner.”

  He shot me an expression. Phony surprise. “And you work for us?”

  “I try not to be on constant alert. I’m a photographer, not a groupie.”

  “We can provide a beeper. We got beepers out the ying-yang.”

  I stared at him with the dumbest expression I could muster.

  “Go fix your coffee,” said Hatch. “I can wait. This is kinda nice out here. I had a cubbyhole like this, I’d go terminal lazyass myself. All you need is elevator music. Light jazz. A little bare-boobed Tahitian girl with a paper fan.”

  He looked too comfortable. And smug, on the Monroe County time clock. In that regard, I couldn’t forget that the man authorized paychecks, though I planned to reconsider my commitment to crime photography. In this case I had no legal problems, but I wanted some information myself. I told myself to hold my tongue and keep an open mind.

  Wrapped in a robe, Annie tiptoed into the kitchen as I measured out Cuban coffee. “What does he want?”

  “Why are you sneaking around? He knows you’re here. Now he knows you’ve got a birthmark on your inner thigh.”

  “I just want to know what he’s after.”

  “He wants to hear us talk. So far he’s been sociable.”

  “I think we can count on this not being a social call.”

  “You afraid of something?”

  She thought a second. “Him in general. Wasting my time.”

  “We’ll get it done quickly.” I called out to Hatch: “You want cup number four? It’s high-test. Like they used to make at El Cacique.”

  “I’d spend the rest of the morning in the john.”

  “Lovely man,” said Annie. She spun and headed back to the bedroom.

  “Mind if I use your phone? I gotta call in.” I heard Hatch shuffle on the porch, then step onto the hardwood living room floor.

  “It’s on a long cord,” I said. “Could be anywhere.”

  “Sounds like the people who work for me.”

  Audible punctuation from Annie: the bedroom door slammed shut.

  I carried my Bustelo out to the morning breeze while Hatch made his call. The close-up of Julia in the Herald looked recent. She looked like an executive being promoted, a real estate broker joining the Million Dollar Club. The headline went for the sensational, calling the murder TWIN PEAKS–STYLED. No photo accompanied the two-column LOCAL LEGAL WORKER FOUND SLAIN article about Ellen Albury.

  Hatch returned to the porch, fumbling with his pocketful of cigars. Annie walked out behind him, dressed for the office. She’d pulled back her hair with an antique silver barrette. She looked great.

  “This going to take long, Detective?” Her words had that courtroom ring, the resonance that made her sound like a different Annie.

  “A minute or two. You and I kept missing each other yesterday.”

  “I hadn’t realized that. I recall a Q and A session in the backyard on Olivia.”

  He pushed the newspaper aside and pulled a three-by-five card out of his shirt pocket. “You’d been gone less than two minutes when I stopped at the Embry house. And your car was leaving the Federal Building when I arrived to speak with the assistant federal prosecutor. I grabbed your parking space, and I thank you for that. You’d been to his office, too.”

  Hatch’s attitude and words were crowding the edge of accusatory. Worse, he had referred to Michael Anselmo, Monty Aghajanian’s nemesis. It shouldn’t have surprised me that Annie might know Anselmo, but I didn’t like where this was going.

  “I had a number of appointments yesterday,” said Annie. “As you know, I got a late start.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We all got a rough start yesterday. My timetable was screwed from the time I got up.”

  “So what do you mean, missing each other?” she said.

  Hatch glanced at me, then looked off through the screening. “I had a few more questions for you, that’s all.”

  I didn’t want to butt in, but I didn’t like his tone. “What are we trying to nail down here?” I said. “You’re talking about a murder inside the city limits, you’re talking about Bahia Honda, which is in Monroe County, and you’re talking about a federal prosecutor. That’s three separate jurisdictions.”

  Hatch checked the bottom of his Styrofoam cup, grimaced, and decided against a last sip. He fumbled again with his cigars, then turned to Annie. “I need to double-check the timetable, for one thing. We know you discovered the body at 7:08—according to your statement—but the 911 call didn’t come through till 7:25. Also, according to our tracing system, the call didn’t originate at the Olivia Street house. You called from the home phone of Michael Anselmo.”

  Annie nodded in agreement.

  I felt tall walls crumbling around me. I knew what she had been afraid of.

  “So, what the hell?” Hatch’s eyes locked on her.

  “That’s your question?” snapped Annie. “‘What the hell?’”

  “We’re not stupid people, Miss Minnette.”

  I had to agree.

  Annie turned red but maintained a poker face.

  Hatch splayed out his hands as if to calm things. “Let me make myself clear. You are not a suspect, Miss Minnette. You’ve got an alibi. I’m sorry if I offended either of you. I’m just digging for information. Here’s another question, Miss Minnette. Did you know that Miss Albury’s biological father, Pepper Neice of Riviera Beach, was convicted of the sexual abuse of young girls?”

  “Oh, Jesus.” She exhaled, disgusted.

  Hatch checked another three-by-five card. “According to the court’s records, neither conviction involved his daughter. Some people in City Hall recall that he skated in that regard at least twice. Once when she was in grade school, and again later. He was a gentleman of the shrimping trade. A deckhand and a real late-sixties dock bum. Mrs. Embry—the former Mrs. Neice—met him in Captain Tony’s Saloon. She married him a week later and divorced him a year after that. Out came El
len. Daddy was in and out of town until he got busted with a naked nine-year-old playmate of Ellen’s in ’75. He did a scoot in Raiford, then moved to Shallotte, North Carolina, to resume his career in the shrimp business. Seven years later he was back.

  “When Ellen was about fifteen, she moved out of her mother’s home and into his. At that time there were two domestic dispute calls over a period of weeks with no complaints filed. Then she moved back into her mother’s house. A short while later he got nailed again with a minor. This time the judge plain fixed him. He didn’t get out of prison until three weeks ago.”

  Annie’s eyes had dampened. She took a seat at the end of the chaise, put her elbows on her knees, and rested her forehead on her hands. It took her a moment to speak again. She sat up straight. “I have a huge caseload. I missed an entire day’s work yesterday, and you allow that I am not a suspect. Can we meet later in the day, in my office, to discuss all this?”

  “That’d be fine,” said Hatch, “but one more thing. I got a call from Mrs. Embry last night. She and her husband had gone to the Olivia Street house to pack up her daughter’s belongings. She said that she found a few things that belonged to you—surprisingly few things for someone who had lived there. And she said that an expensive bicycle is missing. It had been a gift from them to Annie … Ellen, sorry. They suggested if we could find the bike, it might help us find the murderer.”

  Annie showed me a frozen expression of disgust, then spoke to Hatch with forced civility. “I borrowed the bike. It’s safe, and I’ll make sure that it’s returned to the Embrys. How about one-thirty this afternoon?”

  “Okay.”

  She ducked into the house and reemerged with freshened lipstick and her briefcase in hand. She leaned to kiss my cheek, caught my eye for an instant, but looked downward. “Hang in with me, Alex,” she whispered. “This is a tough one. I’m glad to be back.”

  She went out the porch door. Hatch and I sat listening to the VW speed through the stop sign and accelerate up Fleming.

  “I take it you’ve got a problem with Michael Anselmo,” said Hatch.

  “I knew I had a problem. I didn’t know it was another lawyer.”

  “Sometimes I think the women on this island are affected by sea air,” he said. “Been a mystery since my first piece, they all want to sneak around, give it away to geeks. Pisses me off bad. Only way to get even, lemme tell you, you knock down strange and bang it regular. Only goddamn thing that works.”

  I wanted another cup of Bustelo. I went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of beer. Twelve ounces of self-indulgence to fend off stupidity.

  Hatch sneaked a glance at his watch. “Starting early?”

  “Not my usual routine.”

  “You don’t have a scanner.”

  “Never will.”

  “Nobody down at the city contacted you yesterday. I know because I just called and asked. With no scanner, how is it you happened to show up at Olivia Street, camera in hand, ready for work? How’d you know?”

  “She told me.”

  “She called you from Anselmo’s?”

  “She showed up right here on the doorstep with her suitcases. She was afraid you’d quarantine the Olivia Street house and keep her clothes. She put her stuff in her car before she made the first emergency call. I guess she decided to leave it all here instead of Anselmo’s. She said you were waiting for her back on Olivia. Why is this a surprise to you?”

  Hatch smiled and shook his head. “Loaded her car. That explains the delayed call to 911. Before I could start taking her statement, she had to go to the bathroom. I told her she couldn’t use the one in her house, so she said she’d be right back.”

  “She came here. But she didn’t use the bathroom.”

  “If I ever need a lawyer, I want her number.”

  Five sips into my beer, I caught myself wishing for elevator music, too.

  “Speakin’ of the bathroom, mind if I drain the dragon?”

  “All yours.”

  While I waited for Hatch, I looked again at the photograph of Julia. It could have taken me into an all-day daydream, except that a headline on the same page caught my eye: COP RISKS LIFE FOR YEARS, STATE SAYS NO THANKS. The opening lines described the revocation of Monty Aghajanian’s badge and his original problem with the car thieves. Perhaps this would shake some action out of Tallahassee. Three cheers for Sam Wheeler.

  Hatch eased himself back into the chair. He pretended to clear his throat and attempted a sympathetic approach. “Tell me about Julia.” He tapped the paper next to her picture. “I want to get a feel for the woman, to understand her personality, her views … enough to consider theories and reject impossibles.”

  “You want the two-hour version?”

  “Five minutes or less.”

  I summoned the daydream. “Where to start? A moral version of the whore with a heart of gold. I mean, she played it tough, streetwise, but she was normal under the facade. Better educated than most of the women who show up in this town. I was around her for a week in ’77 and eleven days’ worth of Mariel Boatlift bullshit in May of 1980. We fell in lust, she went for another guy named Ray Kemp, she lived with him until Mariel, and she went back to Miami. In the mid-eighties she came here with a boyfriend and looked me up. We had rum drinks down at Louie’s on the Afterdeck, said good-bye, and I never heard from her again.”

  “She ever talk about her father’s politics?”

  “Just that he’d been one of Fidel’s boys until the Commies decided that he wasn’t so faithful and put him in the clink. I don’t think we talked about him the last time she was here.”

  Hatch stared off in thought for about fifteen seconds, then heaved himself to his feet, smoothed the wrinkles in his trousers, and readied the cigar he would light the instant he left the porch.

  “Bad things happen in threes,” I said. “You waiting for the third shoe to drop?”

  “You count the dead girl on Stock Island five days ago, you got your three. Or you could count three in one day with that attempted car-jacking yesterday afternoon. You hear about that?”

  I shook my head.

  “Story’s been told fifty times down to the city, and all the deputies got it memorized. Lady at Key Plaza walks out of the pet store. A guy grabs her, he’s waving a big fillet knife, wants her keys and wants her in the car. Cool lady ignores the knife. She unbuttons her blouse to show him her titties. The idiot’s drooling through his fake beard, she nails him with a tear-gas zapper on her key ring.”

  “Catch the guy?”

  “He ran off. Nobody around to chase or identify him except the lady. But like I said, he’s wearing the false beard. She buttons up, walks back in the pet store, and asks them to call the police. Like there was nothin’ to it at all. She’s been in town for years. You know Shelly Standish?”

  I knew Shelly Standish. But I didn’t say so.

  Hatch handed me the cellophane cigar wrapper. “So I won’t litter your yard.” He stepped outside and let the porch door slam.

  He’d walked about fifteen feet when I said, “You recall the victim’s name on Stock Island?”

  Hatch stopped but he was facing downwind, so he didn’t turn. “Sally Ann Guthery. Another one in her late thirties.” He finally fired up his cigar.

  I knew how old she was. Exactly how old she was. A small coincidence we’d discovered. She and I had shared the same birthday. Same date, same year.

  The tall walls that had been crumbling began to fall down on me.

  8

  Sam Wheeler swore he would never allow a cellular phone near his skiff unless a client had health problems. “Contrary to bad lyrics and old movie scripts,” he’d said, “you can run and you can hide. Imagine some natty angler on the flats, whispering to his colleagues about rate of return while fifteen permit tail by…”

  To stay in touch with customers and his darling companions—Sam’s term—he kept an old rotary style on the dock, plugged into a jack he’d installed next to his s
hore power box. When he was on the water he’d stash the phone in a dock locker, and an answering machine did the dirty work.

  I got the machine: “Gone fishing. I’ll be back when I return.”

  “Rutledge. Call me.”

  I called Monty Aghajanian. He was in.

  “Saw your name in the paper,” I said.

  He breathed out a false chuckle. “Once in a while my problem comes up. It’s because I’ve gotten to know the media people.”

  “Anything helps.” I decided not to mention Wheeler’s mission with the newspaper reporters.

  “Nothing ever comes of it. Bernier—my buddy in the FBI—saw the article. He called to say that the door was still open if I get recertified for my badge. It gets to be a vicious circle. I’ve been around four times already, like penalty laps in gym class. I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.”

  “Gotta keep plugging.”

  “Always. Chicken Neck asked me did I see you.”

  “I had to run to Bahia Honda for that one, so I missed him.”

  “Man, I was sorry to hear. I saw her name, I knew you’d hit it head-on.”

  “Thanks. I floated some anguish over that woman.”

  “Goddamn shame. They’re saying Cubans.”

  “Oh, I hope not. I mean, I don’t much care who did it beyond I want him caught. But such a waste. What do you know about this Shelly Standish thing? I heard a story from Hatch, first thing this morning…”

  “The insensitive rumor here at the city is that she’s going to be the new spokesperson for Hooters.”

  A knock at my screen door. Carmen Sosa, in her post-office uniform. I motioned her in. “Has this fake beard struck before?” I said to Monty.