Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  A cold front had blown itself south of Lake Okeechobee. The midday norther now had a bite to it. It took us three minutes to scope Dredgers Lane on foot. The lane looked safe, my house unmolested. Sure as hell, we returned to a minivan owner who wanted to kick my butt. Poor son of a bitch probably on his dream vacation, tapping out the MasterCard, trying to get some squeeze, having to make a midnight run for Pampers. Teresa shivered, acted drunk, bitched about no rooms at the inn. After inspecting my expression up close, the van owner backed down.

  I lease the garage behind Carmen Sosa’s house in the lane. Her four-year-old Saturn gets parked in open weather, next to her porch. But my rental cash makes up for young Maria’s long-gone daddy’s failure to make child-support payments. With the Shelby’s minimal exhaust system, I try not to come and go after Carmen’s and Maria’s bedtimes. I’d considered spending the night at Teresa’s condo, parking the Shelby there, behind the Shipyard security gates. Who’s kidding whom? The swinging gates are cued by coded keypad; every pizza and package and grocery delivery service, every garbage and recycling-truck driver, every taxi driver had this month’s code. Not that it matters. Anyone can walk into the parking area by sidewalk. The gates open automatically for any vehicle departing. I’d left my car there all night only once and hadn’t slept well.

  I coasted to the dead end, hid the Shelby, secured its garage. A night light in Carmen’s bedroom. Her friend in for a visit. He must have parked out on Fleming. I pondered the call I needed to make while Teresa and I walked to my yard. I wasn’t quite prepared to enter my house without making sure no one waited inside.

  I stashed the Shelby’s distributor cap in the Weber grill. Then I peed in the bushes. Teresa, not to be outdone, squatted and peed next to the mango tree. Something about team spirit and cool weather . . .

  I wasn’t accustomed to thinking like a commando. I faked it. Anyone waiting would have heard the Shelby return. They’d have jumped us while I was locking up. Or watering the foliage. Maybe they knew more about stealth and preferred to wait until I entered the house. Should I go flat on the porch floor, reach up, twist the door handle, hope that the gunfire went high? Or walk on in? I wasn’t going to find the carpet cutter’s head next to the kitchen sink.

  I hand-signaled Teresa. She understood. We went in opposite directions, walked the perimeter a second time, checked each window. There was no way to enter without two keys or causing damage. We found no damage. I waved her away from me, unlocked the door, walked in, flipped the lights. I waited for the bullet I’d never hear.

  I didn’t hear a thing. I waved Teresa inside and dialed the phone.

  A drowsy voice: “Do you know what fucking time it is?”

  A mental picture: Liska in a pitch-black bedroom, knocking over an ashtray, grasping the Caller ID module.

  I said, “It’s important.”

  “A problem worth waking me, this hour of night? I’m nine-one-one? I’ve been asleep all of forty minutes.”

  “Your deputies are pulling bad people out of the water at the north end of Blimp Road. Find out who they are before you release them.”

  “Who are they, your Stock Island car thieves?”

  “They tried to steal mine.”

  “This is a great midnight chat.”

  “I can explain in the morning. They shot at me, if that matters.”

  “Like I said, nine-one-one.” He clicked off.

  Bad planning.

  I’d lost Double Jeopardy. First, I’d pissed off the sheriff. Second, it was better than fifty-fifty that Chicken Neck would check with the deputies. If someone was injured, he’d send his boys after me as a witness. If anyone had been shot—God forbid, a deputy—they’d find a prosecutor to charge me as an accessory. Even if it was just two wet renegades, they’d want to know my connection. They’d check my house and, on Liska’s direction, Teresa’s condo. They’d detain me until the crack-of-dawn office hours. I needed more sleep than that. I didn’t want to drain the checking account to the favor of a bondsman. Or open-endorse the deed to my house so I could walk free by lunchtime.

  I called Sam. Marnie answered on the third ring. Immediate concern in her voice. I told her about the chase. I asked her to keep her ears open about a car in the water, but not to connect me to it. She handed off the phone. I told Sam I’d get a room at Eden House.

  “I’ve got a guest room right here,” he said.

  “If they can find Mamie’s Jeep, they can find your house. You might want to think that way.”

  “Strength in numbers.”

  “I don’t want to drag a menace to your place.”

  He grunted, paused, then said, “You need a day on the water. Good for your health.”

  I found the phone number for Eden House. I recognized Helen’s drowsy voice. She told me they were booked up. I thought again about strength in numbers. I called Sam to warn him about incoming house guests. Asked for a ten-minute moratorium on shooting at shadows.

  I called a taxi, asked for a pickup in front of Eden House. Then I dug out a foul-weather jacket for Teresa and walked her to the cab. She said she’d stop at her condo, to pick up her toothbrush and work clothes for the morning.

  I asked her to start carrying her purse pistol.

  Back at the house I grabbed a flannel shirt and a flashlight, and unlocked the Cannondale. I beam-reached Southard, let the breeze push me down Simonton to the Atlantic side. People struggled toward me on bicycles and mopeds, bundled in heavy coats, locked into their own worlds. I passed a woman on a motor scooter who’d mastered the art of dragging on a cigarette while doing twenty into a fifteen-knot headwind.

  Funny how outerwear suggests biographies during cold weather in Key West. The last time many residents had worn a protective coat had been the first day they’d hit the Florida line. They refused to buy new ones, given rare cold snaps and no wish to travel northward during winter. Old-fashioned varsity jackets, fat thermal parkas, foul-weather gear, preppy zip-ups, fraternity logos—was that Rastafarian once a Sigma Nu?—plaid woolen coats, Irish knit pullovers. Dozens of hooded sweatshirts. Once a year the Goodwill sold out of coats. Not that real-world style ever ranked high among locals’ concerns . . .

  In the dim light of Sam’s rarely used extra bedroom—a twenty-five-watt bedside lamp, the dappling of a neighbor’s yard light through foliage—I saw a vacant glaze in Teresa’s eyes. Fatigue, plus her thoughts about what had happened on Blimp Road. As I undressed for bed she moved close to me. It wasn’t pure affection. It was the jitters. On other occasions each article of removed clothing marked another wee act of love, another rung up the ladder to our pleasing. This time our moves were mechanical.

  We both wore T-shirts in bed, nothing else. We held on tightly, absorbing each other at first for security more than passion. We took comfort in the knowledge of chance, the momentary belief that our problems were small jokes in the big world when we held each other. We talked with our breathing, adjusted pillows, brushed the sheets thigh-to-thigh, minute after minute, before relaxation took over, before we shut out everything not us. Our closeness slowly became passion, touches became tranquility. Teresa moved on top, set the rhythm, slowed, wanted something else but the bed was too small and we were almost there, and then she was there and she gave me trembling permission to join her, to melt together, to keep the big world outside the door, away from the bedsheet, out of our minds.

  I was almost asleep when Teresa smoothed my damp hair. She mumbled, “The way you drove tonight? Promise me that you knew how it would end.”

  “I had a plan, and it worked out okay.”

  “Just tell me you knew.”

  “I knew.”

  “You’ve got something to tell me?”

  “Can it wait until morning?”

  She grasped my upper arm like a ship’s lifeline. “Fine.”

  When you hear a woman say “Fine,” in a certain tone, you’d better get ready to pay one, in some form or another.

  13

 
; I slept lightly in spite of the lovemaking. I heard noises—structural creaks, footsteps in Sam’s yard, whispers of home invaders. Palm fronds ticked the tin roof. I woke before dawn after a truck on South shook the neighborhood. Two guttural Harleys followed. Cats prowled and whined.

  The road chase replayed itself in my mind. I wished that the deputy had not shown up. I wished that I’d been alone. I’d have found a way to slip back to the boat ramp, hide between the mosquitoes and random bullets, find out who’d been so eager to chat. Find out why they’d wanted to swipe my car.

  One solid fact. No one was after my money, if they knew anything about me. Financial truth was nigh. I’d love to turn him down, tell Mercer Holloway that I had a conflict. But I needed a boost. A freelancer living off the savings account needs career repair. Then again, location shots are difficult for a man hiding from cops and felons. For health and cash-flow reasons, I needed to stop the crap, soon.

  Teresa stirred when I got out of bed. Her eyes asked a question.

  I asked my own: “Did you tell anyone we were going to Mangrove’s for dinner?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m going to get a paper. I’ll call you at work.”

  She pursed her lips for a good-bye kiss. We spent a minute holding each other before I left.

  I pulled on my jeans, tucked in my flannel shirt. It would be colder at dawn than it had been at midnight. I borrowed a windbreaker from Sam’s pegboard. Even my bicycle felt creaky in the cold, made sounds similar to cat howls. I knew that the submerged car couldn’t have made the papers’ deadlines. But I wanted to check the Herald for news about the deaths of Richard Engram and Richard Engram.

  I didn’t have pocket change for the vending flip-downs. Valladares’s newsstand—Key West’s daybreak cultural center—wouldn’t open for twenty more minutes. I seized the moment. How often does anyone get the chance to ride the center line of Duval?

  Key West at sunrise is closest to the island of twenty-five years ago. Smells of hot Cuban bread and night-blooming vines. Air fresh with the salt tang of onshore breezes before being weighted by exhaust fumes. Muted pre-dawn grays turning into pastels fuzzy with the humidity that will blow away in the first daylight hour. A few people were up early. A few staggered home from a long night of it.

  A lemming-like tourist line had crowded Duval’s top end. Folks got up early for this. They could stay in their cars, glance at the Gulf of Mexico, turn left, continue on their way. No chance of spray or ocean scent soiling their vacation duds. One after another they found the dead end, U-turned through huge puddles. They thought it was rainwater. They did not understand high tide and low pavement. The salty seawater would take two years to cause its havoc. The tourists would forget about puddles. They would blame the car makers for faulty brake rotors and rotten shock absorbers.

  Inside the Pier House, I got change from the desk clerk, bought a paper. The lobby smelled of eucalyptus and stale coffee. A nervous couple waited for an airport taxi, checked and rechecked their watches. They asked the desk clerk to confirm the van. The tropical sojourn had failed to chill their inner turmoil.

  I sifted for the Keys section, found two follow-up articles. No names—”pending notification of next of kin.” No incident details beyond “foul play” and “under investigation.” Authorities refused to release causes of death after Monday’s autopsies by Medical Examiner Larry Riley. Sheriff Fred Liska “declined comment on rumors or leaks at this time.” No mention of the head found in Mamie’s Jeep.

  The lobby’s French doors swung open. Butler Dunwoody and two men in suits—therefore not locals—entered the lobby. Dunwoody stopped, shook my hand. He sent the men ahead, told them to follow signs to the beachside restaurant. No introductions. He’d see them in a minute. Butler eyeballed the desk clerk, then asked to speak with me in the motel’s atrium.

  “Your photography . . .” He studied the water fountain, the broad philodendrons. He avoided facing me. “I need building progress documents for the big city bankers. After that ugly deal Sunday, all the rules changed.”

  “Thanks for asking. I’m booked the next several weeks.”

  He nodded, refused to show disappointment. “Crazy island you live on, Rutledge. I always heard in college that the farther you drove down the Keys, the smaller the islands became, the narrower the bridges. Somebody said I’d know I hit Key West when I found twenty naked people smoking weed around a sun-faded stop sign at the end of the pavement. I spent all day yesterday on city business, arguing with a woman who spoke no English. I mean, permits? Builders in Florida don’t ask permission. They ask forgiveness.”

  “Those women speak English as well as you do,” I said. “If she stuck to Spanish, you’d already pissed her off.”

  “This is stuff Engram handled for me. I explained to the zoning man, time is of the essence. Let’s straighten out this bogus dispute on fence height. He says to me, ‘I’m sixty-two. My only hurry in this world is to move my boongie out of the path of a choo-choo train. And there ain’t one here.’ That’s the mentality I’m up against. Sweet Jesus.”

  “It’s a bitch to get on their wavelength, Dunwoody. Sometimes even the townies complain. Not being from here, you need to watch your back.”

  A family of four walked past in shorts and T-shirts. Canadians, unaware that every Key West resident was bundling up against the chill. Dunwoody delayed our chat until they’d entered the lobby.

  “I thought I was on the right course,” he said. “I’d heard stories about classic business failures on the island, how the machine could grind you up, suck your money. It’d all happen so clever, you couldn’t blame any single person or official office. Leave you standing, thinking, I’m lucky to still have my shorts. The people in power call you ‘amigo’ and ‘bubba.’ They build houses on Key Haven and boats in Lauderdale. They sit around the Yacht Club packing in prime rib and twice-stuffed potatoes, and they won’t let me join. I heard about, what, three or four commuter airline companies in the seventies? Air Sunshine and a couple others. I heard tales of fifteen bistros, cafés, future five-star restaurants. Airplane tours of the Tortugas, electric car rental outfits, you name it All I’m doing, I’m knocking up a three-story, traditional-design shopping arcade.”

  I said, “Some people don’t see it as innocuous.”

  He looked at me, nodded. “Some people think I’m an asshole, too.”

  “You begging an argument?”

  “Look, I’m still alive, still working. Unlike my right-hand man. Tell you what. I’ve got to comply with the Monroe County Comprehensive Plan, the county’s Rate of Growth Ordinance, the Utility Board’s Advisory Committee, the Monroe County Tourist Development Council, Florida Keys Audubon, and the City Board of Adjustment. That’s just part of the list. Hell, I could be building nuclear warheads in a lean-to and not have to deal with so many damn rules, so much petty oversight. These people are trying to preserve their island by passing laws. Laws never changed the mind of a community.”

  “They’re meant to change the actions of newcomers,” I said. “For fifty years in the middle of the last century, poverty preserved the island. When money showed up, the laws came right behind.”

  “So you claim a state of poverty’s ideal?”

  I said, “There’s an excuse the real estate people use, that land tends to find its ‘highest and best’ use. But I see it like this: When hard cash and greed meet at closing, some piece of turf’s headed downhill.”

  He shook his head. “Let me tell you something. I’ve been saving this up. You’re the lucky listener who gets to hear it first. Before I tore up that parking lot to build my building, before I closed on the property, I did my homework. I memorized the title abstract. I went to the library and got the local historian to help me research the land. It will pain you to learn that, in 1952, someone tore down a lovely piece of architecture to pave that lot. Before the destruction of that building, which had fallen into disuse as a sponge-storage shed and flop hotel, anothe
r building had occupied the land. That one had been designed by a boat builder named Sweeting out of Green Turtle Key in the Bahamas. It was damaged in the hurricanes of 1909 and 1910. Its owner decided to level it rather than repair it. Before that, a three-story building identical to the one that’s still at Caroline and Peacon Lane—on the southeast corner—was owned by a ship chandler and barrel maker named Allen. That one burned in 1886, when the city’s steam fire truck was getting repaired in New York. The fire started at Fleming and Duval and worked its way northwest to Whitehead and Greene and northeast to my lot. All those changes happened on a single piece of property.

  “So I ask you, who’s the bad guy? The one who tears down? Or the one who builds? I just happen to be in line to build right now.”

  I kept my mouth shut. I admired his absorption of history.

  “Would you like this island so much if nothing ever changed? Like a song repeating itself three hundred and sixty-five times a year? Like every time you turned on your TV, you watched reruns of Hee Haw?”

  He’d made good points. I didn’t try to interrupt.

  “I’m unpopular,” he said. “I know that. I’m flamboyant My mannerisms get me ridiculed. I came to town, I wanted to turn a vacant lot into a source of income for me and my future tenants. I thought I could add some spirit to Old Town. Change is inevitable. And any change brings criticism. It goes with the territory. Wasn’t there a city commissioner who learned that change is unstoppable? After he left office, he went back to his profession—he was a builder, too—and worked on the same principle. If people are going to build, money’s going to come in. Why not have it be a guy with a sense of taste? Why shouldn’t I earn a profit, instead of the other guy? It’s the American way.”

  “You’re a patriot, no argument.”