Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery

by Michael Haskins

  Billy Wardlow walked by and stopped, keeping away from the EOC’s window.

  “Mick, Luis had Donny run the ID check on Walsh and then all hell broke loose,” Billy whispered. “Your name wasn’t mentioned, if that means anything.”

  “Thanks, Billy,” I said as the door to the EOC opened.

  Billy turned into the copy room and quickly looked busy.

  “Come here,” Richard beckoned with his hand. He closed the door. “You know, I want to believe you but you make it so hard.”

  “I’m lost, Richard,” I said, confused about his change of perspective. “What are you talking about?”

  “Sit down.” He pointed at an empty desk. “Donny ran a check on Walsh. Do you know what came back?”

  “He’s the missing president of New Zealand?” I quipped. I had a feeling the question didn’t call for wit.

  “You think this is funny?” Luis said furiously.

  “Luis, I don’t know what the hell this is.” I banged my hand on the tin desk and shattered the stillness of the room. “And I am tired of your accusations. I called the police when I found the body and now, for some goddamn reason, I’m beginning to feel like a suspect and don’t know why. You wanna tell me?”

  “New Zealand you said?” He lowered his voice and Richard stood behind me.

  “Yeah, he told me he was from New Zealand.”

  “Did he have an accent?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Don’t you think New Zealanders would have an accent?” He paced in a small circle.

  “I didn’t care where he was from or how he talked,” I said. “I don’t care where you’re from or about your accent. You’re an asshole, but that doesn’t make all people with accents assholes.”

  “Hold on,” Richard said, calling timeout again. “This isn’t about you two and your feud. This is about a murdered woman and her killer. If you,” he pointed to Luis, “can’t separate your personal feelings from this, I’ll put someone else on the case.”

  Richard surprised me and I could tell from the look on Luis’ face he was caught off guard too. In the past, no matter how wild Luis’ accusations were, Richard, as chief of police, supported him. Maybe Luis’ attitude was wearing thin throughout the whole department. Maybe.

  “This doesn’t distance him,” Luis said, shaking the papers in his hand. “It draws him in closer.”

  “It raises questions, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t explain his calling us,” Richard said quietly. He sat next to me. “Why not dump the body? Take it out on a Jet Ski while it’s dark and plop her in the water. Why get the police involved? Hell, Murphy has a dinghy that could handle the dumping.”

  “So he walks?”

  “Murphy?”

  “Yeah, Murphy,” Luis grumbled.

  “Yeah,” Richard said with a groan, “after he answers a few more questions.” He stared up at Luis. “Give him the papers, then sit down and explain them to him.”

  Luis dropped the papers on the desk. They scattered along the top. I waited a beat before collecting them.

  “What’s here?” I looked toward Richard.

  “Dick Walsh is three years old,” Luis said and sat across from me. “He has no history before that.”

  I looked at the first sheet that showed a copy of his Florida driver’s license listing his Key West address. Other pages had credit information on him and his bank accounts. He had a few bucks in the bank, but he wasn’t wealthy. No parking tickets, no arrests, no criminal activity whatsoever.

  “Maybe credit reports only go back three years.”

  “It’s not a credit report, its NCIC and FCIC,” Luis grunted. “It’s a law enforcement report and it should go back forever.”

  He had run the information through the National and Florida Crime Information Center computers for a criminal history on Dick Walsh. He had almost no history, criminal or otherwise.

  “Go on,” Richard ordered.

  “Less than an hour after I ran the background check, the U.S. Marshal’s Service called,” Luis said reluctantly and stopped.

  I looked at Richard and he smiled like a parent refereeing between bickering siblings.

  “The whole thing,” Richard said.

  Luis didn’t like it, but knew he had no choice. “Your buddy Walsh is in the federal witness protection program. All I could get out of the reporting deputy marshal was that Walsh has been missing for three years and they are on their way here from Miami.”

  “Missing?” I was confused. How do you go missing from federal witness protection?

  “They’ve had him for almost thirteen years and then one day he wasn’t there,” Luis recited what he had been told.

  “They looked for him and presumed he’d been murdered.”

  “Why was he in the program?”

  “They wouldn’t say, but I was told that they took him from Boston,” he looked accusingly at me. “You’re from Boston, Walsh is from Boston, you’re both Irish…”

  “Hold on, Luis,” I protested. “Walsh can’t be his real name. Witness protection gives you a new identity, so he could be Italian or Polish for that matter.”

  “You didn’t know him in Boston?”

  “Do you know everyone from Cuba?”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you’re getting.” I stood up. “Can I go?”

  “The marshals are going to want to talk to you,” Richard stood. “You’ll come back.” It wasn’t a question.

  “They’ll want to talk with you first, see your reports and the crime scene,” I said. “Check the photo ID and make sure you’re talking about the right guy.”

  “What’s your point?” Richard sighed.

  “They’re going to be busy with you, so when they want to talk to me, call,” I said. “I am not going to wait around here for them. When they’re ready to talk, I’ll come in.”

  “They may want to take care of as much as possible tonight.”

  “Call me, like I said, and we’ll see if I am in any condition to be interviewed.” I touched my hand to my forehead, like a salute, and left. Billy hadn’t heard my name mentioned. Now that was curious.

  I was outside before I remembered my Jeep was at the crime scene and I’d forgotten to ask about the victim’s ID.

  Chapter 7

  Garrison Bight begins across from the police station, so I walked to my sailboat. On the way, I called Bob Lynds and asked him to pick me up at the marina. The late afternoon sun was bright and hot. Small clouds moved lazily across the robin-egg-blue sky. Charter boat crews cleaned their customers’ catch on the dock, as I crossed the commercial section of the marina. The pungent fish odor was counterpoint to the weather but it came with the territory.

  It would have been a perfect Key West day, if it hadn’t been for the murder.

  Bob met me at the marina and drove me to my Jeep. It was close enough to happy hour, so he followed me to Schooner Wharf Bar.

  Bob is a lanky six-footer, with long silvery-white hair and my sailing buddy from Oklahoma. Yeah, I know, Oklahoma and blue water sailing aren’t synonymous. Still, he’s a hell of a sailor. He’s also quiet, soft spoken. He would rather walk away from an argument than follow it to a confrontation. He is a friend who has been there for me no matter how messy things were.

  We both found parking off Eaton Street and walked the two blocks to the waterfront bar. Meter parking is twenty-five cents for ten minutes, so locals avoid it when they can. We’ve come a long way since Jesse James needed a gun to rob you.

  Schooner Wharf is a ramshackle watering hole that doesn’t have many walls to speak of. The stage is walled in on three sides to protect the band equipment from sun and rain, the kitchen has four walls but one of them is screen and the small poolroom has three walls, and one of them is large French-styled doors that look out at the harbor. The wide staircase leading to the poolroom is at an open section of the bar. A pea rock courtyard separates the large bar, stage and kitchen.
The barroom is open on three sides with gnarled driftwood, trap buoys and fish nets on the roof shielding patrons from the sun. Kind of.

  The working bar itself is a collection of driftwood and other planks nailed together, and customers can sit around all four sides. There are small tables located in the barroom and in the pea-rock courtyard there are more tables and a few large ones with thatched roofs that seat six or more.

  We sat at the bar and ordered beers from Missy, a tall, talkative blonde bartender with inquisitive eyes. Liz, a short brunette hustled behind the bar like the battery-driven TV rabbit, moving between customers, taking orders. I like Kalik, a Bahamian beer, and Bob likes anything cold. We had two Kaliks. Angus, brawny and not as eye-catching as the female bartenders, brought an order from the kitchen to two of his customers. It’s tough being the only guy among women, but his strong sense of humor helps. Bar customers, and the four waitresses delivering drink orders from table patrons, kept the three bartenders on the move.

  Late Sunday afternoon and the bar was full and tourists strolled by on the boardwalk, looking at the harbor’s collection of skiffs and million-dollar yachts while four-foot tarpon swam near the surface of the clear water. Michael McCloud entertained with many of his original Key West songs, backed up by Carl Peachy.

  Mostly tourists sat at patio tables, trying to look cool braving the sun and heat, drinking beer and colorful mixed drinks, while locals packed around the four-sided bar avoiding the sun, drinking beer or rum. Misting fans hanged from the beams, spinning furiously, pretending to offer relief from the heat.

  We took our beers and moved to the railing by the T-shirt booth and two misting fans. There were too many people we knew at the bar for us to talk privately.

  “You know the cop’s got a point,” Bob said and went to the cigar kiosk.

  “Thanks.” I took the handmade Churchill he offered, cut the end and borrowed his lighter. “Because Walsh called me so many times?” I lit the cigar

  “Yeah,” Bob said between tokes on his cigar and sips of beer. “You have no idea why?”

  “None, and now you’re sounding like Luis,” I said. “What have I done with Walsh that you’d consider socializing? Nothing. Bar etiquette, I told them, that’s all.”

  Padre Thomas Collins came up to us, a cigarette in his hand and a wild grin on his tanned face. Bob wasn’t a big fan of Padre Thomas. He thought the priest was a fraud and used the angels as a way to get free drinks. They tolerated each other for my sake.

  I greeted him. “Padre Thomas, what brings you out on a hot day like this?”

  “A cold beer,” he grinned and puffed heavily on the cigarette.

  Padre Thomas is an Irish-born Jesuit missionary who walked away from his mission in Guatemala years ago because the angels that protect him told him to. Later, government soldiers murdered most of the villagers and he lives with survivor’s guilt. I’ve come to believe him about the angels because it explains how he knows things he shouldn’t. I try not to think of it, to save what sanity I have left.

  He dressed in a sleeveless, button-downed collar, faded-yellow Oxford dress shirt that had two packages of cigarettes in the pocket. He cut the sleeves off himself and the shirt came from the Goodwill Thrift Shop. His shorts were wrinkled and his sandals worn. Soaking wet he weighed one-hundred-twenty pounds, stood about five-eight, was balding and had intense pale blue eyes.

  I caught a server and ordered three beers.

  “You found the body at Dick’s house,” he said. “I don’t understand Luis’ attitude.”

  Sunday morning, there were no news radio or TV stations in Key West, so how did he find out about the murder? Bill Becker or Bill Hoebee wouldn’t report it until Monday on their radio shows. The cops wouldn’t talk about it and it was too early to make the coconut telegraph. I laughed quietly to myself, because, even if I didn’t want to believe, I knew how he acquired the information. Bob grunted but kept quiet.

  Chapter 8

  Padre Thomas stubbed out his cigarette and accepted a beer from the waitress. Bob took his beer, decided he was hungry, and went in search of a menu, even though we knew it by heart.

  “What do you know about Dick Walsh?” I drained my warm beer, replaced it with the cold one, and puffed on the cigar.

  “I have to be careful,” Padre Thomas said and lit another cigarette.

  “Of what? I have Luis trying to tie me into the woman’s murder. Help me out here, Padre.” My words came out more severely than I meant them to.

  “I heard his confession.” He sighed and dragged on the cigarette. “I can’t reveal what he told me. You can’t ask me to.”

  “Confession? Where? When?” His response surprised me and I doubted the Church would tolerate his hearing confessions.

  He dropped the cigarette onto the worn floor and crushed it. “We often talked at the bar.” He nodded toward Missy. “One day he was real down, maybe drunk, too, and he started to tell me things he shouldn’t and I told him to stop. ‘But you’re a priest and I want you to hear my confession,’ he said. I told him I would not hear a drunk’s confession but if he met me at Saint Mary’s the next morning I’d hear it.”

  “You hear confessions at Saint Mary’s?” Something sounded wrong to me.

  “No.” He lit a cigarette. “Not officially, but I didn’t think he’d show up sober and I was going to seven-thirty Mass anyway.”

  “But he did.”

  “Yes.” He frowned and looked away. “We sat in the back of the church after Mass and I heard his confession. He’s a sick and troubled man, I can tell you that. I gave him absolution. If he killed that woman, it was something he didn’t want to do.”

  “Why are you here, Padre, if you can’t tell me anything?” I sipped beer and snuffed the cigar. “Why did he run?”

  “I want to help Dick.” He turned his gaze back to me. “I don’t know why he ran.”

  “Help without talking to me?” I was a little pissed at that. “What he told you before confession, at the bar when he was drunk, you can talk about that, right?” I was reaching into a pond of piranhas that he called faith.

  He drank and smoked while he thought before answering. “Yes, I can, but don’t know how much it will help.”

  “What did he tell you?” I had almost finished the second beer and my frustration was on the rise.

  “I would be more comfortable telling you about him, what I got from talking to him,” he whispered. “It would be easier for me.”

  “Talk to me,” I said. “I’m assuming he’s Catholic.”

  “Yes, he is, though he left the Church long ago,” he muttered. “He’s from Boston, originally, and did some horrible things while he was there. Now he’s wondering about his soul. He doesn’t feel well.”

  “He left Boston years ago, right? And now he wants to come back to the Church because he’s sick. He wants forgiveness for something.” It was a little bit of knowledge and a lot of guessing on my part.

  He stared at me and I think I surprised him.

  “Yes,” he said. “How do you know that?”

  “The cops ran a check on him and soon after that representatives from the marshal’s service called. They didn’t say much, but mentioned he’d been in the witness protection program for years,” I said. “You’re not in the program because you’re one of the good guys, Padre. Do you know why he was there?”

  “Yes, but…” He looked at me, frowned, and shook his head.

  “Can’t say.” I took a deep breath and shook my head. I wanted to walk away and toss my cell phone in the harbor.

  “Sorry.” He sulked.

  “Do you know what happened at the house?” I lowered my voice.

  “No.” He lit a new cigarette off the old one. “I haven’t talked to him, so how would I know?”

  “Can you tell me why he called me all night? Why not you?”

  “I haven’t talked to him in a couple of days, I told you. I have no way to answer that.”

  “Why are you
concerned now, if it isn’t about what happened at the house?”

  He looked toward the water, took a long drag on the cigarette, dropped it on the floor and turned back. “I woke up early this morning and had a vision of him riding off on a Jet Ski, scared, sick and confused. The angels helped me understand.”

  “I wish they’d help me understand,” I said and swallowed a mouthful of warm beer. “Your vision didn’t show where he’d gone, by any chance?”

  Padre Thomas shook his head. “He needs help.”

  “He needs legal help.”

  “That too. Will you help, Mick?” His pale blue-eyes pleaded with me.

  “How, Padre? I don’t know what happened or why. I don’t know where he’s gone or what he’s up to. How can I help?” I almost shouted out of frustration, but caught myself in time to soften my words.

  “It will come to you in time,” he said, smiling.

  “What will?” I challenged the smile.

  “The answer of how to help.”

  “I’ll keep an eye out for it, Padre,” I said and began to see the futility of it all.

  “You won’t have to look for it, Mick, it will find you.” His eyes brightened and he walked away.

  I watched the old priest make his way through the crowd and shuddered with concern when I remembered how often he’d been right with his visions.

  Chapter 9

  “You want to eat?” Bob asked delivering my third beer as he watched Padre Thomas walk to the bar.

  “I want a lot of things,” I said and took a long swallow of cold beer. “Fish tacos?” I looked at the menu.

  “I already ordered them,” he said.

  I decided that I might as well be fed while I waited for whatever is going to find me. We didn’t always have the tacos, but it was a safe bet on Bob’s part.

  “Good guess,” I said. “You needed to find menus?”

  Bob smirked. “Yeah, for my sanity.”