Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  The server tried to sell after-dinner liqueurs, oversized desserts. We chose to drive home and attack the French vanilla in my freezer.

  I paid the bill, told myself not to check Lolita as we departed. I made it.

  Four steps outside the restaurant door, Teresa stopped. She grabbed my forearm. “What’s wrong with your car?”

  The Shelby’s front wheels were angled oddly. I hurried to the driver’s side door. The lock had been forced. Strands of wiring hung loose below the dash. The thief had made a mess, but my fuel-shutoff “insurance” had paid off. I flashed to the burly tourist in the huge SUV. No way. Since the stock market surge of the Clinton years, Republican car thieves were few. It had been someone else. I was surprised that I hadn’t heard the engine cranking, trying to catch. I spent a minute looking around the parking area. No other cars looked damaged. Mine had been the only target. Perhaps it had been judged an easy target because of its age, its easy-access ignition, its lack of a locking steering column. Perhaps the target had been me, not the car.

  Me and my paranoia.

  By the glow of the lamppost, stripping insulation with my penknife, I restrung the color-coded wires. The motor cranked and ran fine. I backed the Shelby, then eased forward to the main road.

  New problem. While I waited for passing traffic, a car appeared behind me. Thin, beam-directed halogen headlamps. I sensed something amiss. I’d had a clear view of the restaurant’s front door. No one but the two of us had left in the previous ten minutes. There was an entrance by the bar, behind the patio, but the bar had closed a half hour earlier. I’d seen the lights dim, watched the bartender walk to the office with her cash drawer.

  I turned left when I pulled onto the highway. If there was going to be a problem, going north gave me more evasion options than heading to Key West. I accelerated normally in first and second gears. The strange headlights came our way but hung back.

  “Alex, what are you doing?”

  I said, “Guy wants to put his nose up my butt.”

  “So, let him pass. This is not the best place to play macho.”

  “He doesn’t want to go around. I think it’s whoever tried to steal it.”

  I gave the Shelby more oomph in third past a LIGHTS ON FOR SAFETY sign and sped over the Bow Channel Bridge. I was doing fifty-five—ten over the limit—past the sheriff’s department substation on Cudjoe Key. A Shelby is not quiet at that speed. Three cruisers and a van in the rear parking area. No deputies in the lot. If things got ugly, there was no time for help, anyway.

  Suddenly the headlights in the mirror were two car lengths behind us. I stuffed my gas foot.

  Teresa twisted in her seat to look. “Maybe it’s kids who want to race.”

  The tailgater flashed his brights, then flicked his headlights. I thought back. I hadn’t recognized anyone in the restaurant. I couldn’t think of any reason to stop. If he’d wanted information, he could have approached me—without a weapon—in Mangrove’s parking lot.

  Screw his intentions. He wanted no witnesses. Once we chatted, I’d be toast and Teresa would be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Fear is good, as long as it doesn’t cloud judgment.

  “Is your gun in your purse?”

  She hesitated. “It’s locked up at home.”

  I added ten miles per hour to our speed. I was tracking thirty over Cudjoe’s posted forty-five limit. The vehicle drew closer. A prolonged chase could only end ugly. I knew there was no way to outrun him on a public-access two-lane with nowhere to turn that didn’t dead-end at the ocean.

  “Tighten your seat belt.”

  A flutter of concern in her voice: “I did that already. It’s tight.”

  “Tighten it till it hurts.”

  “It hurts.”

  No oncoming traffic. No radar-toting FHP sedans that, any other time, are common as rental ragtops. The headlights quit flashing, but the car moved to tailgate, weaving slightly, maybe prepping to pass. I was in fourth, adding speed, probably over ninety-five, but I wasn’t going to look down to check. I felt a tap, a light nerf on the rear bumper. A moment later the car pulled out to pass. Bingo, oncoming, a big van flipping his high beams. My butt buddy slowed, tucked in behind me. The van’s horn was constant, grating, doing Doppler like a southbound locomotive.

  I rounded a right-curving bend, spotted a car about to pull out of a side road. The perfect setup for a T-bone, with us the meat. I slowed an instant, ensured that the car had seen us. My drop-in speed gave the chasing car its chance. He jerked into the southbound lane. He began to edge alongside.

  I glanced over my shoulder. A dark, four-door late-model import. Prelude or Altima. Maybe a Sentra. Who discerns differences? They all end in vowels. A south-side street lamp illuminated the sedan. Its passenger’s hand was out the window. It wasn’t just his hand. The sight of the gun almost brought up my fish dinner. I heard a soft pop, a loud rap on the Shelby’s floor pan.

  The bastard was trying to shoot my rear tire.

  “Unbuckle, Teresa,” I said loudly. “You’re on the floor.”

  She yelled, muffled, “Yes, I am!”

  I turned my head for an instant. She was still buckled in. She’d leaned to fit her head under the dash.

  I looked left. The sedan was alongside. I slammed the brakes, dropped enough speed to dump the shifter into third. The engine didn’t like it. I juked the wheel, then floored it. The Shelby shifted sideways, then a little forward, like dancing the mambo. The other car attempted to slow, to match my speed, but my move put me directly behind him. A Maxima. I kissed its rear bumper and used the Shelby’s torque to push it faster. We smacked when I upshifted. Probably didn’t scratch the newer car—my two-hundred-dollar front bumper wasn’t made for minimized damage. The crunching noises got worse when I slipped left, forced the other car right. His right front wheel caught the pavement’s edge. I lifted my gas foot. Teresa sat up straight, watched the Maxima begin a slow clockwise spin onto the shoulder.

  The other driver was good: he had the wisdom not to counter rotation by steering into the skid. To do so would have caused the Maxima to roll, to ball up like a pita sandwich. The driver turned his wheel right, hurried the spin, left the road backwards, doing at least sixty. The gun waver would survive unhurt, or die. No need to check on their welfare.

  I heard two gunshots. They weren’t dead yet.

  I was surprised the Maxima had kept up with the Shelby. I should’ve read its license number.

  “You okay?” I said.

  No answer.

  Ahead, opposite a grocery store, was Blimp Road, access to Fat Albert, the government spy balloon that monitors Cuba. The feds had used the tethered blimp for thirty years to monitor Communist entertainment, ship-to-shore, air traffic control, television, and military radio. Blimp Road is a ruler-straight two-lane. Streetlights line the first fifty yards. After that, total darkness.

  In case the other team survived their off-road excursion, I wanted extra insurance. I hung a left, late-braking, moving too quickly. The left front brake caliper snagged, pushed the car to the outside of the turn. I slid across the narrow service road, scrubbed off speed, just missed a utility pole, swapped paint with a landscaping outfit’s security fence.

  I faced two miles of deteriorated pavement. Gravel shoulders on both sides, with grass interspersed. Beyond the roadbed, sparse mangroves, open areas. No other vehicles on the road. I accelerated rapidly to sixty-five, then eased off, maintained speed. I doused the headlights, a try for concealment in case the Maxima pursued us. Moonlight on swampy water flashed past, a river in the opposite direction. An optical illusion: the roadway appeared to be well below sea level. I knew it wasn’t too far above. Four inches lower, I’d be aquaplaning, leaving twin rooster-tail wakes.

  “Be my backup eyes.” I raised my voice to counter wind and road noise. “Anything you think you see—an alligator, a wild dog, anything—yell out.”

  Teresa faced forward, steeled, not happy, not complaining.
A sour brine scent filled the car. Focus, I thought. Focus.

  The first half mile’s rough surface gave to smoother, still imperfect concrete. Lights popped into my rearview. The halogens’ beam angle lifted as the other car accelerated. The lights swung side-to-side—anxiousness or a blown tire. Front-wheel-drive cars suffer torque-steering, but don’t fishtail.

  I suddenly realized I’d blown it. I could have U-turned, gone back to the sheriff’s substation. Instead, I’d run away to a dead end. The only way to depart Blimp Road was by retracing my path.

  Within ten seconds I knew they’d blown it, too. If the Maxima driver had been familiar with the area, he’d have understood that my only escape was a bicycle trail. He would have only to sit in darkness, near the highway, and wait for me. But he rolled on, his headlights moving perceptibly closer. If my luck and timing held out, he’d be sorry he’d bothered to chase. If things went the other way, there was always the bike trail. I bumped the mirror upward so the halogens wouldn’t spoil my night vision.

  In a vintage Mustang, you step on the brake, the pedal-swing arm trips a switch, and the brake lights come on. I knew that the halogens already had found the reflectors molded into my taillamp lenses. But distance is difficult to judge at night, and I wanted every advantage. I reached between my feet, kept my eyes above the dashboard. I fumbled with the swing arm, found two insulated wires leading into the switch. I pulled gently. Nothing happened. I yanked. A wire fell loose. No sparks, no short circuit, no red glow behind the Shelby. I couldn’t tap the brake pedal to assure myself of success. I’d find out soon enough.

  We passed the westbound cutoff to Waste Management’s Cudjoe Key Station—the one-mile point, if my memory was working. Farther along, to the right, we passed a hiking path cut into the refuge area. I didn’t want to spend hours fleeing on foot, in darkness, especially if people with weapons chased us.

  “Tell me when you see a vertical sign with letters on it. Yell it out.”

  The lights in the mirror approached rapidly. The guy was past eighty, maybe close to a hundred. He’d be on my bumper in twenty seconds.

  An instant later Teresa shouted: “The sign!” A six-foot post, red reflector, and vertical lettering: CKAFS. Whatever that meant.

  I was into the last hundred yards. My next cue was the government’s half-hidden “authorized vehicles only” access road on the left. Then a sign: NO MOLESTING OF CRAWFISH TRAPS.

  This, I thought, could go horribly wrong.

  I stabbed the brakes to drop speed, spun the steering wheel left, gave it the gas for a movie turn. The right front disc brake caliper grabbed early. Steve McQueen, please be with me. I hit the right shoulder, a twelve-foot-wide gravel turn-off area. Two trash drums loomed forty feet away. The Shelby did a quick one-eighty. We faced the Maxima’s rapidly approaching headlights. I jammed my foot on the brake pedal. Gravel showered the Shelby’s inner fenders and floor pan. The tire treads shuddered. Momentum skidded us backward and across the road. We hit a wide spot on the far shoulder. I feared for a moment that he would aim for me. The Shelby grabbed traction as the Maxima flashed past, its nose down, its headlights pulsing with the action of its anti-lock brakes. I heard three gunshots, then another. No pings on the car. Mangrove limbs scraped the Shelby’s trunk and rear bumper as we crunched to a stop.

  I’d come closer to the water’s edge than I’d intended. I’d also let the Shelby’s engine stall.

  The noise from the Maxima didn’t last long. When it hit gravel at the road’s end, its high-tech brake system couldn’t keep it from its destination. We heard a springy thud as the sedan’s undercarriage hit the top edge of the boat ramp, the downslope that extended eight feet past the tideline. I’d expected the next sound to be a splash, not a crash. But it sounded like a two-car collision. The bursting air bags echoed off the mangroves, rumbled into the empty night. Only a small splash, then sizzling, then quiet.

  I felt a cloud of marl dust enter the car, smelled shoreline odors mixed with burned rubber and my toasted clutch.

  I said, “Welcome to the Great White Heron National Wildlife Refuge. We blew some carbon out of the motor. Oughta run better now.”

  Teresa whispered, “I was just kidding, wanting to eat a tree. Isn’t this where you wanted to go kayaking on Sunday?”

  “Don’t you wish we had?”

  I twisted the key. A low, slow moan from the starter motor—my classic’s weak link. My triple-A dues weren’t up-to-date. After six or seven agonizing seconds it cranked the overheated motor enough to catch ignition. I pushed the lever into first, silently apologized to the vehicle once again for mistreatment. I flipped on my headlights and started south.

  “You want to stop at Mangrove Mama’s for a drink?” I said.

  Teresa laughed, then began to cry. Then she just as quickly quit.

  I slowed for the stop at U.S. 1. A sheriff’s cruiser veered off the highway’s northbound lane, hit the brakes, lighted its red-and-blue roof bar. The deputies must have heard the Shelby pass the substation. Or the gunshots.

  I pulled to the shoulder. Cooperation is my watchword. Candor is my command. Especially when I’ve just suckered two pistol-toting maniacs into six feet of salt water. A dash-mounted laptop glowed, lit the deputy’s effort to handle his power window and his spotlight at the same time. The window descended in three start-stop stages. The spot swiveled.

  “You gonna turn that on and night-blind us all?” I shouted.

  The light remained dark. “Whatcha doin’ out here, sir?”

  “Kissin’ my girlfriend. We’re going home to Key West to finish the job.”

  “Car come by here, moving fast?”

  “Yessir. Two of them, bumper-taggin’. That’s why we’re leaving.”

  “Your car smells like it’s been workin’ out, too. You been down here burnin’ doughnuts on private property?”

  “This old thing, it overheats just idling.”

  “Your antifreeze smells like fried brake pads.” He flung open his door, played a flashlight on my front wheel. “I need to see paperwork.”

  If I dropped Liska’s name, he’d never believe me. “How about a character reference? Detective Bobbi Lewis.”

  He climbed out of his car. Eight feet tall. “Everybody knows somebody.”

  “I work for the department. I did the evidence shots, that body on Stock Island yesterday.”

  He tested me. “With the bullet through the forehead?”

  I passed his test: “There wasn’t a forehead attached.” I also turned the table: “What do you know about a gunshot wound?”

  He stared at me.

  I said, “Pretty damn quiet down the road, there.”

  He stared some more, tried to memorize the Mustang. He barked, “Get your ass outa here.”

  I did so. I turned south on U.S. 1 and rolled by the Freeman Substation doing forty-four in the forty-five zone. Two cruisers scrambled as we passed, exited the parking area, whipped north off Drost Drive.

  “They’re delivering towels and dry clothing for the marksmen.”

  Teresa was silent a minute, then said, “I’m trying to recall what I learned in college. About the point where self-defense becomes attempted murder. You did good with that car chase. You also did good with the deputy.”

  “Creative solutions for complicated problems.”

  “Now you’ve got a bigger problem,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “You either tell me what’s going on, or your antifreeze is going to smell like fried brake pads.”

  12

  I drove into Key West, monitored the rearview. If the Maxima’s occupants had been saved by air bags and made it to shore, they could cause problems. A cell phone to summon friends, if the phone had survived the salt water. Or a wild fiction for the deputy. Some bullshit to shift the blame. I didn’t want to talk my way around another blue-and-red flasher.

  I was hiding from bad guys and good guys. I didn’t understand any of it.

  Insid
e of two days I’d been street-jumped, chased in my car, and shot at. Scumbags with loud music and cheap blades had marked me. Jerk-offs with a medium-caliber gun had drenched me in sweat, pock-marked the Shelby’s left side-frame rail. I hadn’t gone looking for trouble. Both times trouble had come straight to me.

  On the other hand, I’d made us perfect victims for an imperfect crime. The Caroline Street mess should have put me on notice. But I’d gone out in public when lying low would have been wiser. And I’d taken Teresa with me. We’d been lucky. Our pursuers could’ve used silencers, shot us in Mangrove Mama’s parking lot. Quieter, sliced our throats. Less messy, snugged our windpipes with heavy monofilament or nylon rope. The shooter could have aimed for my head instead of my rear tire. Instead—for want of an action word—they had messed with us.

  The head in Marnie’s Jeep had confirmed that the violence was focused on driving away Butler Dunwoody. I couldn’t guess how messing with me, or stealing my car, could stop a construction project Meanwhile, two men had died, one of them a scumbag. Two more people could have died but for someone’s deficient killing skills. Not that Teresa and I wished them higher scores.

  I wished I’d had the sense not to expose her to a threat.

  I assumed that the sanctity of my house was as threatened as my ass. I didn’t want either of us to spend the night on Dredgers Lane. But I wanted my car out of sight.

  I drove up Fleming, quietly coasted into the guests-only lot at the Eden House, the inn adjacent to the lane. No open spaces. Is it double-parking when you block six cars at once?

  “Lock yourself in. If anyone shows, pretend you’re passed out” I said. “I’ll be back in two minutes.”

  She gave me a cold look.

  “Is that okay?” I said.

  She opened the car door, stepped out. “Crap’s been going on for thirty-six hours, Alex. This is the first time you’ve asked my opinion.” She closed the door. She was coming with me.

  I’d asked her opinion of Dexter Hayes’s actions at the Caroline Street murder scene. Bad time to argue the point I still didn’t want to tell her about the purple birthmark, the connection between my Caroline Street muggers and the body on the dumped sofa.