Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  Oh, shit. Why hadn’t I put that together? Thorsby had been driving the forklift. He’d waved, but not to be friendly. He’d waved to hide his face.

  I said, “Carmen, what’s that horrible noise?”

  “The people across from me bought new wind chimes. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “We’ll steal them tonight.”

  “Sometimes you say things that make me regret not marrying you years ago.”

  The phone rang. Sam Wheeler: “What’ll happen next?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s focused on Dunwoody, and nobody’s dropped a skull in his fancy convertible. Nobody’s shot a bullet into his front door. Maybe he’s the bad guy.”

  Sam said, “We’ve got all the evidence we need to convict Dunwoody of being an asshole. From an objective juror’s viewpoint, I sure as hell don’t know. But I’ll say this. Mamie’s got a lifetime of evidence and good judgment ninety-nine percent of the time. She brought up the subject two or three days ago. She said that people would start to suspect her brother. She said, in spite of his bluster and his aggressive business ways, in spite of her personal bias, he’s nothing but a puppy dog. Ask me what else is new.”

  “What else?”

  “Do we need any more?”

  “We need to sit on the porch and drink beer,” I said.

  “See you in a half hour.”

  I hung up, began to walk away. The phone rang.

  Teresa, calling from her condo. “Did you borrow my car?”

  “I had no intention of borrowing it.”

  “It’s not here.” Her voice shook. I heard sniffles. “Someone else borrowed it.”

  “Call the Highway Patrol, and call Bobbi Lewis at the county. Also call the Marathon substation, ask for Deputy Saunders. Use my name.”

  Shaky: “Okay.” She hung up.

  My thoughts echoed Bobbi Lewis’s question. Why would anyone steal cars with only one road to the mainland?

  Jemison Thorsby had been driving a forklift. With oversized hatches, the right hoist, cars could be put aboard shrimp boats. How did they keep them from being damaged once they went into the hold?

  The phone rang. Teresa’s voice had hardened. “They stole my gun, too.”

  24

  The black mood of our early supper at Camille’s spoiled the food flavor and the company of Sam Wheeler and Marnie Dunwoody. We waited for our meals, wedged into a corner table next to the front window. It looked like Freaks and Families Night on Duval. Suburban moms dodged transvestites, chubby bikers took care not to trample the kids. Teresa told us that she’d requested a middle-shift city cop to take her statement on the missing Grand Am and nine-millimeter pistol. Officer Chris Ericson sounded like the polar opposite of our boy Tisdell. He’d pointed out that the typical complaint, week to week, was the naked man in a tree. But this week they’d had more murders than drag pops. He’d assured her that she lived in weird times. Her losses were not her fault. He’d left her feeling two percent better about losing her car, having her home tossed. His words had helped.

  Marnie informed us that her boss at the Citizen had taken the high road. He’d decided to run the Holloway bullet-damage piece. It would run below the fold because three county commissioners had been seen lunching in a motor home next to a movie shoot. The report suggested that the men had violated the Florida “Sunshine Law,” a thirty-year-old statute requiring all meetings of elected officials to be open and public. Unprinted speculation at the Citizen held that the commissioners’ greater risk lay in the fact that they’d hung around to scope a “partial nudity” scene that required multiple retakes and jogging.

  Sam declined for all of us when the server offered coffee and dessert. He handed her a fifty, asked her to keep the change. I promised next time would be my nickel. Sam and Marnie had parked in a metered spot on Simonton, had dropped in eight quarters to be safe. They still worried they’d get a parking award from the tickets-for-profit brigade. We walked east on Angela, found shadows under a tree. Sam slid a Walther pistol from under his shirt, handed it to Teresa. A loaner, for peace of mind. It went into her purse. Sam and Marnie continued east. Teresa and I walked the opposite direction, back to her condo. The evening had turned cool. Even the light breeze kicked up street dust.

  Teresa said, “Did you hear someone call your name?”

  “Constantly, the past four days. It echoes.”

  “Seriously . . .”

  With the Duval traffic and sidewalk crowd noise, I was surprised she’d noticed anything. Then I heard the strained, gravelly voice. Wiley Fecko? I turned, didn’t recognize him at first. Mercer Holloway, dazed, disheveled, seated alone on Mangoes’s patio. Not the puffed-up tyrant who, hours earlier, had railed against the press and the police. He looked ten years older than he had at Blue Heaven.

  “Join me?” he said. There were two extra chairs at his table. The only vacant chairs on the patio.

  I stood where I was. “Thanks, we just ate.”

  “A nightcap, then? Help me finish this pizza?”

  He looked fried. His hair was uncombed, his shirt wrinkled. He’d bad-mouthed boozers and weirdos in his mid-afternoon tirade. Now he looked as odd as any downtown street dweller. He was inviting us in for a drink.

  Mangoes had turned on their exterior radiant heaters. Looked inviting.

  Okay, I thought. He can’t murder us in an open-air restaurant. I wanted to view him from a new angle, lightly pick his mind on the subject of Donovan Cosgrove.

  I looked at Teresa. I hadn’t turned him down. She must have known that I was curious about something.

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “You don’t have to sit through this. Go home if you want to,” I said. “I’ll be over in a while. Not long.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not ready to be there alone.”

  The greeter made a big deal about leading us to Mercer’s table, handing us menus, summoning a server with a water pitcher. Teresa wanted only the glass of water. I almost ordered a Corona. I’d been Honest Alex eight hours earlier, given back the man’s twenty-five-hundred-dollar check. I ordered a cognac and a chocolate dessert. Holloway didn’t flinch. The server removed an empty Cabernet bottle. Holloway asked for another.

  A ground-hugging compact sedan cruised Duval, its stereo thud strong enough to shake the streetlights. Then two Harleys with straight-pipes, then two more Harleys not so loud. I half-expected to see Bug Thorsby’s black truck roll by. Where was that truck?

  Holloway said, “Believe these crowds? A joke in the early seventies said the Chamber of Commerce had a man on the Seven-Mile Bridge who’d call ahead. He’d warn the Duval Street merchants if a southbound tourist was spotted.”

  “Key West got discovered,” I said. “But so did every city in America. The highways are jammed, real estate’s up—”

  “You can tell the world’s overpopulated.” Holloway was on a roll. He’d be doing the interrupting, not me. “People going for groceries risk their kids’ lives for a fifty-yard advantage in traffic,” he said. “They tempt fate trying to make a yellow light. It’s a universal death wish. The earth exercising its own checks and balances.” He looked at the sidewalk. “The Conch Train used to cost a buck.”

  I didn’t go back that far, but I remembered it being two or three dollars. “We used to ride for the fun of it,” I said. “Cheap way to kill an afternoon. Get a little buzz, take a ride—especially when Rex was driving—sit in the last car and goof on the scenery. We’d learn something new every time. Back when my body would tolerate a flat-back bench seat.”

  The server arrived with the wine. He began the ritual of showing the label, cutting the foil, pulling out an antiquated “traditional” corkscrew. Holloway asked Teresa if she wanted a glass, then asked the server to quit the act, just open it and pour. When the man had left, Holloway said, “They make you sit and watch so they can justify a twenty percent tip for ninety seconds of work. It’s like a real-estate broker sending a for
ty-dollar bouquet after collecting a fifty-thousand-dollar commission. I’ll pay a sawbuck tip, but only if I don’t have to sit through the show.”

  He sipped wine, then said, “What did you expect of this town when you first arrived, Alex?”

  “I liked it fine the way it was.”

  He turned to Teresa. “And you, Ms. Barga?”

  “I liked it fine the way it was.”

  “Let the record show,” said Holloway, “that these two people did not get to Key West on the same day. Do you mind my asking how many years apart were your first days in town?”

  Teresa said, “More than twenty.”

  “And you saw change during those twenty years, Alex?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you expect not to see change?”

  “Everything changes. I wanted change to suit my tastes.”

  “So, it’s a question of taste instead of inevitability?”

  Point well made. I nodded. I also liked the fact that he’d included Teresa in the conversation. Her bum mood had shut her up. But his willingness to ask for her input had put a trace of spark back in her face.

  “That historical museum at Mallory Square,” he said. “I went in there—for eight dollars. They’ve got actors playing the parts of pioneer fishermen and wreckers. There was this broad-chested, burly, bearded guy trying hard but talking with a contrived accent and archaic lingo. In all my years I never met an overweight fisherman. They were ninety-nine percent muscle, and they were all too skinny. Those old coots who used to sit around the Fisherman’s Café, the old salts who’d spent their lives on the ocean looked worse off than the winos that came later. You could fit six of them in a rain barrel.”

  Mercer paused, leaned toward me. “I know what you think of me. You think we’ve got a finger in every pie, we’ve fixed everything with our fabulous riches. But you must remember that as a family, we’ve always been like this island. We’ve been under economic attack from every newcomer with a half-baked dream. The island hit its real low point in the thirties. The federal government came to run this town. Since then, the people who’ve stuck it out have sworn that no one would ever again take away that power. That’s why you hear about strange alliances fighting outside money growth. We’re not connivers. We’re survivalists. We’re guarding the fort We’re not padding our wallets. Our proprietary approach is not greed. It’s cover-your-ass, for the benefit of children and grandchildren. The endangered species on this island are old-time residents. Half of them have fled to Ocala, run off by noise and dirt and taxes. The rest are wealthy and powerful, or else destitute and getting worse. I made a decision, years back, to be ruthless, to do anything it took. But my goal is not evil.”

  I said, “Where does Butler Dunwoody fall on the scale of carpetbaggers to fort defenders?”

  “Dunwoody’s new in town. He’s trying to buck generations of players. Those players are always successful unless intramural squabbles escalate.”

  “Do these successes always require the other guy to fail?”

  “You bet,” he said. “It’s a small island.”

  “Do they require murder?”

  “Never. And he’s a special breed. He’s the kind we need. Do you know what was going to happen to that parking lot he’s building on?”

  “Under your rule of inevitability,” I said, “I’d be a fool to imagine it might remain ‘as is.’ ”

  “Some idiot had an idea he could buy up that trailer court behind the property, extend a building all the way to the Bight boardwalk, put in a giant combination brewery, de-sal plant, and aquarian museum. Supposedly had big Texas money to back him, some movie star to be a five percent owner for the sake of name power. Why these people think they can crap on the pavement like a stray dog, I do not know. Excuse my language, Ms. Barga.”

  Teresa leaned forward. “Crap is a tame word for what you’re describing, Mr. Holloway.”

  I said, “So what’U happen to the buildings I’m supposed to photograph?”

  “Those buildings will not be gentrified. They won’t be part of a palm-tree Epcot. Nobody’s going to have to pay admission to soak up the past in my Key West. Some people in this town are peddling history they got for free, selling it with Florida-resident discounts and package deals.”

  I thought: It takes a worried man to sing a worried song. Whatever my guilt in acceptance of growth, tempered by my not having been born here, wrapped in nostalgia for the seventies, Mercer was right. Everyone’s first day in Key West is a visit to paradise. Every morning I wake up here, I thank fortune and my priorities for not having to wake up to snow chains and dead batteries, slush, bare trees, urban sprawl, and the foul moods of those who must endure it all.

  I said, “All that you’ve just said, and you’re helping Dunwoody?”

  Mercer refilled his empty wineglass. “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” he said. “The profit motive made America great But competition must be based on ‘Do unto others . . .’ The profit motive warped by greed has inspired some of the most awful human tragedies of our time. I decided a year ago that Dunwoody’s motive wasn’t warped by greed.”

  “Monday morning you said something like, ‘We aren’t permitted to pick our families, and we’re not allowed to choose their moods.’ Do Suzanne and Julie view progress with your sense of history?”

  “I love my daughters, faults and all. You can’t help but love your children, unless they’re mass murderers or Una-bombers or whatever. But even then, I might love them anyway. Thank goodness, I’ll never have to know. But my big mistake, long ago, was my choice of wife. I was in love with two women at the same time. I had to make a choice. One was the daughter of drunken parents. Her upbringing was a shamble of strife and what we’d call high-class poverty. The other young woman had a traditional family, salt of the earth, hardworking father, homemaker mother. I saw my future in the mothers. My parents were boozers. I’d had enough of drunks. I didn’t want to live with a drunk. I picked the girl who promised me pleasant calm. Unfortunately, she became a drunk, and she tore my political scene to shreds. I divorced her. The woman I cast aside is married to a future Senatorial candidate.

  “I also paid the rich man’s tithe, straight out of a Greek tragedy. It’s happened to other men. Mel Fisher paid the price, twenty-five, almost thirty years ago, searching for gold and silver and emeralds. Bill Cosby, too. I lost my son four years ago next month. That event stole any happiness I might have found at the end of my life. The old people are supposed to die first. No amount of success or wealth can make up for that kind of loss.”

  Once again, point well made.

  “I can’t say much more about these property trusts, Rutledge,” he said. “But I know you’re worried about a taint of your professional reputation. I’ll tell you this. The town will reap benefits. Think what you want, but it won’t be a black mark.”

  Teresa said, “I’m going to have to excuse myself.”

  She looked beat. Her hair looked beat. Even her clothes looked beat.

  Holloway attempted a pleasant smile. It almost turned into a yawn. “I wish I were younger and could stay out all night. It’s time for me to walk home, too.”

  We did our thank-yous. Holloway sent us on our way. We walked down Angela, hugged the pavement’s edge where there was no sidewalk. A tipsy bicyclist wobbled toward us, veered just before colliding.

  I came away from Mangoes believing in Mercer Holloway’s brilliance. His genius was directed. He was expert at molding history to match his personal goals. I was no closer to knowing if his pompous wizardry propelled altruism or murder.

  History is full of tyrants who deeply believed their goals were good.

  “He’s an odd man,” Teresa said suddenly. ‘If one person is behind all these murders and attacks, it’s Mercer Holloway.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’ve never heard so much bullshit in my life. He’s guilty of something.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I said.

 
“People like Holloway have ways to make things happen, and they’re never directly involved. We could argue that he’s not the bad person, but this sure is revolving around him.”

  “So power’s the pivot point for trouble?”

  “Money, power, volatile family scene. He matches all the stats I’ve ever read.”

  “You might be right,” I said. “That bit at the table was like a salesman’s presentation. Too perfect.”

  My gut told me that Donovan Cosgrove’s stock had risen.

  When we reached Teresa’s condo she said, “You’re going to hate me. I don’t think I could sleep a wink in here. Can we go to your house?”

  We spent a half hour in the condo while she retrieved messages—about eight condolence calls; the word had spread about her car—and gathered clothes she could wear in the morning. Then we risked a traffic citation, rode double on her blue motor scooter to Dredgers Lane. She wore the helmet to fool the fuzz if they saw us from behind. I shut it off on Fleming under the three modem crime lights between Grinnell and Francis, and I rolled it from there. All I could hear were the tires in the gravel and Teresa’s footsteps ahead of me. The odd stillness in the lane reminded me of a power drop. Not quite as silent, but the same effect. Everything closer to your skin, thoughts booming inside your head.

  At six A.M. the phone rang. Teresa moaned. She had it right. Couldn’t be anything good.

  Dexter Hayes said: “I need your help, man. I can’t even start to tell you. I’m sorry about yesterday afternoon. Bring your stuff down to Mercer’s. The poor man’s dead. He hung himself in the back patio.”