by Tom Corcoran
We listened to a neurotic woodpecker tap an aluminum rain gutter across the lane. A waft of kitchen-prep odors, what I would peg as capers, mushrooms and olive oil in a white wine reduction sauce, came through my screening. The restaurant down on Grinnell finally had opened for lunch, a promise of good eats. A reminder that I might need to buy a bathroom scale.
“You shoot for, like, national magazines, or what?” he said.
I placed the photograph on the table next to the money envelope. “I’ve done that, yes. Three or four advertising agencies outside the state.”
“So you don’t just work locally…”
“I was in the Bahamas this past week. I have Costa Rica scheduled for early November and four days in Sanibel right after that. How long have you been in real estate?”
“Not very damn long,” he said.
“How do you get all those letters after your name on the business card?”
“Cram courses in Miami and the Internet. For some you go to one or two seminars and some you sign up once a year. Why do you ask?”
Instead of saying “Just nosy,” I shrugged.
“I ran the press room for a commercial printer in Clearwater until three years ago. The sales people were always drunk so the business went south. They downsized and kicked me to the sidewalk. The shift work caused my divorce, but I was still trying to get back with my ex. Having no work at all flat did in my chance of that. So I came down here, and one thing led to another. Turned out to be best anyway.”
“Sometimes change is good,” I said. “Were you trying to buy every house in town?”
“Certain houses, certain sizes. My client wants privacy, places that are off the beaten track.”
“Even if it’s only seventy-five yards off the beaten track?”
“That’s a long way in a small town. Are you and I making progress here?”
It was my turn to think clear thoughts and select proper words. I juggled the missing young woman’s odds on the spectrum between voluntary departure and outright abduction. These were the Keys. Anything could happen and usually did. If she had vanished by her own decision, she probably was in fine shape. If someone had grabbed her, had she been targeted because of her fundamental innocence? I dropped that line of thought. Who can define “target” in the mind of a sicko? Plus, that same sweetness could prevent her father or friends from imagining that she might, someday, engage in sex or make awful choices in her romantic pursuits.
I couldn’t muster a post-crime image of the young woman in the photo hurt or flung dead on the roadside or dumped in the ocean. I trusted, for the moment, that she was alive, having a better time than her father thought possible.
It made it easier for me to turn him down.
“Mr. Catherman, I’m not licensed to be an investigator and I can’t pretend to be a cop. In the eyes of the police, that makes me a pest. If they choose to see it another way, I would be a fraud and a felon. And right from scratch, looking for Sally, whom I’ve never met and I don’t know how she thinks or what she does with her days, how could I do any better than you?”
“How about experience and success?” he said. “How about guts and local knowledge?”
“My entire track record consists of getting out of jams. I don’t know the first damned thing about finding and working my way into, to borrow your term, situations. I never had to locate anything. It always found me.”
“You’re saying my money’s no good.”
“I’m saying…”
“Why have you been wasting my time?”
“Just to give you free beer and a hot drink. Your time, my porch. Ears and eyes better than walls. You were a wreck I wanted to salvage.”
“Why did you ask me all those questions? To pull my chain?”
“Maybe to help you focus on more than your shoelaces.”
“As we say in my field, time is of the essence. Have you got Mason jars buried out back?”
“Come again?”
“First you blow off my purchase offer. Now you’re giving up an envelope full of cash. You’re too good for the job, too rich to help a guy in real need? You must have money buried in the yard.”
I shook my head. “You can’t put a dollar value on your worry. I can’t put a price on my reasons.”
“You put me through all this yammering and pissing and moaning just to say no?”
“I wanted to show you a workable pattern of thinking. But, yes, the legwork is up to you. I can’t invent a new occupation just because… ”
Catherman jerked to his feet and bloomed into the bulky jock he’d been two days earlier. “You can kiss my ass, fucknut. You have pissed off the wrong guy.”
“If you didn’t want to be pissed, you shouldn’t have knocked on my door.”
He almost pushed the screen door off its hinges, almost fell down the short stairway. Five steps into the yard he said, “You just fucked any chance of selling this dump for a million-plus.”
“In that case you owe me five bucks for the beers.”
He shook his head with exaggerated disgust and headed toward Fleming, again checking the lane for concealed, undefined dangers. I stared at his back, sensed an odd chill, and wondered what experience in his past gave him his insight to “weird cops who have mostly bad days.”
I told myself to think thoughts that wouldn’t jinx the status quo. Told myself to believe in the absolute power of pretty-picture cheerleaders, the warm promise of walking good moods.
2
In Bimini I had feasted on conch salad and snapper seviche, and a massive craving flew home with me. I could score seafood from Sam Wheeler, my close friend who ran light-tackle trips in the lower Keys. Or buy fresh at the fish market on Eaton, but I needed green peppers, onions, lemons and a bird pepper, plus a bag of key limes to replenish my Old Sour bottle. I also wanted to fix my beer shortage. I braved the midday heat to pedal the Cannondale to Fausto’s.
I was riding back up Fleming, balancing groceries and a six of Amstel Light, when Marnie Dunwoody flagged me down in front of the library.
“Question,” said Marnie. “If you don’t want to answer, say so.” She wore her standard work casual. Khaki slacks and a polo top, sunglasses dangling from a braided lanyard. Her expression looked more harried than relaxed. “I mean, you’re his best friend, and I’m about to put you on the spot. Tell me to shut my trap, and I won’t be offended.”
“I can’t refuse until you ask.”
In thirty seconds we had created a traffic jam. Cyclists in the bike lane, utility vehicles wide as tennis courts barging up the narrow street. I pulled my bike to the sidewalk, and we moved to the library’s palm garden, one bench removed from a wino reading the Money section from USA Today.
Marnie had occupied a pedestal since the week I met her in the early 1990s. Her athletic grace and natural height weren’t factors, they simply added to her elevated stature. Nor was my admiration founded on the fact that she shared a home with Sam. If she had been a cop instead of a reporter, her investigative skills could have taken her to the top of that profession too. She wrote well, never bent or extended the truth with the hope of selling extra newspapers. I had never seen her back down from a scornful attorney, a slimy commissioner, a sleazy businessman, a bitchy tourist. Her finest success was her refusal to formulate articles ahead of time then plan her questions and facts to match a prejudice or a lazy way out.
Marnie perched so close to the bench edge that I feared a slight shift might drop her ass to the stone walkway. She held back tears and began with the tap of a sledge: “I think Sam’s seeing someone else.”
All I could do was shake my head. The simplest question in his defense was how could he find time? Somehow I found the wisdom not to voice that thought. “Not on the sly, Marnie,” I said. “Not without telling you first.”
“Why not the sly? If he met someone, wanted to test the water, he’d have to give up his housemate. He’d have to squander a long-term love. Why not run a test drive, say
, the first few weeks, see if his newfound squeeze made the grade?”
“Because he’s beyond honest. How long have we suffered the pain of his truth? He also knows you’d customize his dick with a rusty garden tool. Where would he meet another woman, anyway? It’s not like he hangs in bars.”
“He charters to both sexes, Alex. His clients tend to be successful, wealthy and sociable. Female fisherman, on average, tend to be lookers.”
I still disagreed but kept my mouth shut.
“He didn’t come home last night,” she said. “He pulled the same thing ten days ago and twice before, three weeks and a month ago. Each time he claimed that he slept on his boat, but his skin gave him away. Lots of windburn and no mosquito bites.”
“It’s hard to get windburn in a bimbo’s bed.”
She looked at the wino then back at me. “If you’re out in a boat, it’s easy to get laid and not get caught. It’s rough on the knees and elbows, but it can be done.”
For a moment my thoughts wandered.
“Several times, Alex, if that’s where your dirty little mind…”
“He called yesterday afternoon,” I said. “He bitched about an awful morning charter and another odd one for today.”
“What did he say about yesterday?”
“Word for word?”
“Or verbatim, your choice. I can take it.”
“The angler was late to the boat, rude to the dockmaster. He announced to Sam on the way out of the harbor that he wanted to chop a tarpon into steaks to freeze and ship to his brother in Dubuque. He lied about his fishing skills, which became evident on their arrival in the Snipe Keys. After the jerk flubbed three casts, Sam restarted his motor and beelined back to the Bight. He refused the man’s check and pointed him out to all the guides at the dock to make sure that no one else would take the schmuck back to the backcountry. He called the guy a flaming, full-tilt, unrelenting asshole.”
“Is that more than he usually says about his clients?” she said.
“Sure, but most are repeats. No surprises.”
“So, thinking back,” said Marnie, “what does all that sound like?”
I didn’t have to ponder long. “An overtold lie.”
“And you don’t know who she is?”
“He talked about this other guy for today and tomorrow. Can’t we assume it’s some circumstance other than a woman?”
“Like he’s sneaking off to church, Alex? You think he’s volunteering at a Big Pine soup kitchen?”
“Like we give him the benefit of the doubt. Because he’s Sam.”
She shook her head. “That’s the reason for no benefit. Sam’s a man with zero speed bumps. Now he’s hit three and we’re supposed to ignore them? If we were counting strikes instead of bumps, he’d be out.”
“He’s a man of integrity. So far, they’re your bumps, not his.”
“Your words were ‘overtold lie,’ Alex.”
“Then trust my judgment. You can’t condemn the man for having fewer mosquito bites than you see fit for punishment.”
“Damn. I put you on the spot and you dodged it,” she said. “Clever man.”
The wino threw down his Money section, stood and stomped on it. “If I was a CEO and had a parachute, I wouldn’t take all that money from my shareholders, no sir, no ma’am. And I’d damn well be one right now if my Chrysler hadn’t been stolen before that job interview in ’84. That ripped-off car led me to poverty and a life of shame, and I swear I regret it.”
The man stormed out of the garden like a saint on a mission.
“Is that the way I’m acting?” said Marnie. “Like I’m the hub of the universe? I’ve had a double dose today. I’m brainwashed and bottled up.”
“Work issues?”
“Some crap went down before sundown last night, but there’s a lid on it. The sheriff’s people in the Lower Keys scrambled, even the crime scene techs who don’t get bothered unless it’s a sure mess. Suddenly it’s a non-event. We know their techs got U-turned on US 1 because the Miami Herald stringer was right behind their van. They told us to pull back, then screwed their mouths shut tight.”
“False alarm or what?” I said.
“They’re trying too hard to make it look like that. I don’t buy it.”
“Maybe FDLE claimed jurisdiction,” I said. “Maybe a drug sting went bad.”
“Or a politician’s kid, or a cop’s wife, or a mayor’s mistress, a rich man and his dog. Maybe a jackpot, a Saudi spy. Or any of two dozen other system loopholes.”
“A rich man and his what?”
“Please forget I said that,” she said.
“Did you check the airport? See if a private helicopter or a small plane went down? The FAA could have put the clamps on it.”
“That’s good, Alex. I’ll check but they’ve always been open before. When that Cessna hit the tether…”
A year earlier, a private plane not only entered Fat Albert’s restricted airspace, but struck the cable that secured the surveillance balloon to its base on Cudjoe Key. A chance in ten million, and three people died.
“Or some Cubans came ashore,” I said. “All it takes is one tourist to see ten or twelve scruffy people on the beach to start a panic.”
“Cubans happen all the time, Alex, unless Fidel himself caught a ride to Miami. Whatever, it pisses me off. It’s a secrecy virus that’s trickled down from the feds to the staties to the locals. Mark my words. In three years you’ll need to give your thumb print and an eyeball scan to pay your goddamned water bill.”
“If there’s still any water.” I waited for a loud motorscooter to pass. “Do you have any idea which key they were scrambling to?”
“I got the impression it was Sugarloaf, but no one was saying. You need to get your groceries home.” We stood and she quick-hugged me goodbye. “Now that I feel better for having learned nothing, I need to chase a story at the courthouse.”
I found Carmen Sosa on my porch recliner, her palm pressed to her forehead.
“Is this meditation?” I said.
She didn’t respond. I stopped and stared, waited for her to speak.
Except for a two-year hiatus, Carmen had been my neighbor on Dredgers Lane since I bought my house. Her parents, Cecilia and Hector Ayusa, bought their home across from mine about twenty-five years before I arrived. That’s where Carmen grew up. After high school she married, moved to a two-bedroom on Staples and gave birth to a daughter, Maria Rolley. The marriage went south, she divorced the loser, and landed a job with the Postal Service. Hector learned about the cottage at the end of the lane before the owners listed it. He staked a claim for Carmen and helped with the down payment. Throughout Maria’s childhood, she and her grandparents have loved the proximity.
A few years ago Carmen and I tried to be lovers. We went through the motions of an affair for a month or two, then called the game on account of friendship. Our friendship has endured.
She finally lowered her hand. I saw tears.
“I feel guilty,” she said. “I think I’m happy but I can’t be sure.”
“You’re on the glad-sad spectrum. It’s the in-thing today, so don’t feel lonely.”
“Don’t give me shit right now, Alex.”
“You got offered a ridiculous amount for your house?”
She raised her eyebrows, inhaled deeply, bugged her eyes and exhaled. “So did my parents. And you must have gotten an offer, or you wouldn’t have guessed so quickly. Is someone trying to buy the whole lane?”
“It’d make sense, for the right multi-millionaire.”
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
For a moment, I did too. I’ve always known that I counted on Carmen, but at that moment I understood my need, my attachment. Having her move away would turn me into a shaky boat with a slipping anchor.
I sat on a canvas chair and replayed my joy in watching her daughter grow up, being “Uncle Alex.” Hector and Cecilia for years had been my link to island history with their sto
ries, their love of the island and human nature, their humor and the old Conch nicknames. Hector’s best friend Ed Sawyer, long deceased, was always Gabby Frijoles. I couldn’t count the times Cecilia had proudly shown me the 1948 edition of the cookbook published by the Key West Woman’s Club. Each recipe was reproduced in its creator’s handwriting. Her entries were adjacent to submissions by island legends such as Floy Thompson, Betty Moreno Bruce, Lorine Thompson, Thelma Strabel, and Helen (Mrs. Oliver) Griswold. One faced a woodcut by Martha Watson Sauer, the WPA artist who remained in the Keys until she died in 2005 at age ninety-three. Sharing those memories and details had made me feel more a part of the island, the community I had chosen as home.
Plus, I knew exactly what Carmen had been through, dumping a loser husband, raising her daughter alone, sticking close to her parents, surviving financially. And now the changing island, the economic wedge…
“There is one other thing,” said Carmen. “Remember Carol Anne?”
“Your high school co-conspirator in craziness,” I said, “now in central Florida.”
“Right, she divorced Bobby Dudak and moved with her son Jason to Ocala the day before Hurricane Georges. As of last night and for no more than five days, Jason and his pal Russell are sleeping on my living room floor. Remind me never again. ”
“Down here early for Fantasy Fest?”
“They say they’re not here to party. They’re here to reclaim their lost youth. Russell’s dad, Ovie Hernandez, sold his house on Von Phister when the kid was three, and took him to Ocala, too. The boys want to find jobs, stick around, get in touch with what they missed growing up away from the Keys.”
“The Honda with the yawning chrome tailpipe I saw yesterday?”
Carmen nodded. “They live out of their backpacks and subsist on junk food and diet soda. They’ve got a lead on an apartment which can’t come too soon because I’m totally uncomfortable with young Russell. I don’t like the way he looks at my daughter. Maria’s twelve going on sixteen. She doesn’t need close-up college-age boys in her life.”