Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  “Jobs doing what?” I said.

  “I think they’d settle for anything. I can’t imagine they’re presenting a positive image to prospective employers. The way Jason wears his shorts, he looks like he’s got a load in his diaper. Russell has a line on washing dishes in some restaurant. He said the whole kitchen crew was about to be arrested by Immigration.”

  “Pretty good inside info for a kid new to the island,” I said.

  “They’ve got their ears to the ground. Or the Duval concrete.”

  “Being under twenty-five helps with the language,” I said. “You want me to chat them up, be a male presence, be the bad guy if I have to?”

  “Let’s wait another day or two,” she said, standing to leave. “Maybe if you see them tomorrow.”

  “I’ll introduce myself, ask for a progress report. Speaking of employment, why aren’t you at work today?”

  She shook her head. “They boogered up the schedule again.”

  I put away the groceries and took a time-out in the bamboo rocker, secure in knowing that my ceiling fan was sending me healthy air. On top of the cleansing effect Bimini had had on my brain, the beer I’d drunk during Catherman’s visit demanded that I grab a nap. Then again, the disturbing news delivered by Marnie and Carmen ensured that I wouldn’t fall asleep. My perfectly good morning had turned into a tabloid day.

  Bob Catherman carried the backing to offer me tall cash for my home. But my reluctance to locate his daughter didn’t mean I was bluffing, pushing him for more money. Every word I had spoken in defense of my photo work was true. I had no desire to be a soldier of fortune, a gumshoe, a night sneak, a fixer. I didn’t want to get rich by solving the myriad problems of the wealthy. I wanted to earn enough to keep my checking account fluid, maybe park a little for the future. I had learned over the years that solvency was a prime requirement in maintaining a Keys lifestyle. Not that it wasn’t a tougher challenge as years passed, as Key West became known to the world’s upper crust, as taxes rose to fund changes to meet the needs of a more demanding population. I took what some might call naive pride in maintaining that solvency without selling out.

  I called Detective Bobbi Lewis’s work number.

  She caught the second ring. “Call you back, Alex? Say an hour? It’s a bitch of a morning.”

  Go lightly, I thought. “What’s the matter? Robberies, car wrecks or politics?”

  She hesitated a beat too long. “A mountain of the usual. Lemme go right now.” She clicked off.

  Shitfire, I thought. I love you too. I hung up and slapped the wall.

  The phone rang, and I was tempted to run for the door.

  So I did. After a morning of crazy bullshit, I deserved a break, a late lunch at Louie’s Backyard. Let the message service earn its keep. Give the old Triumph 650 Bonneville some air, eat a fancy-damn salad on the Afterdeck and listen to the ocean under my barstool.

  I took White Street, running in light traffic until I tried to turn right on Von Phister. Two wobbly tourists in the bike lane and a Dodge pickup on my ass prompted me to venture 100 yards farther. A beautiful day in paradise, and what was my hurry? I caught a green at Flagler, turned, then spotted Sam Wheeler’s funky Ford Bronco parked near the corner of Whalton. The area was residential, and Sam was supposed to be fishing. Unless the old Bronco had broken down and he had abandoned it, the only sense I could discern was that his client lived nearby. I couldn’t think of anyone who lived along that stretch. But I knew there was a plausible explanation, if Sam cared to volunteer it.

  In an expanded old Conch house, Louie’s Backyard dominates the beachfront where Waddell meets Vernon. The Afterdeck, wedged between an elegant dining patio and the waters of Hawk Channel, has been a refuge for twenty years. It’s a mix of fashion and funk, rich tourists and all brands of locals, pillars of the town and dregs of the harbor. I’ve been there hundreds of times and never seen the water the same color, the wind from the same direction. I probably have viewed more lovely sunsets from that deck than most people see in a lifetime. My stability has wandered each time Louie’s closed for an annual break or hurricane repairs. I worry that I am one of those terminally drawn to the combo of alcohol and salt water, a drooler camouflaged by nautical lingo and a fisherman’s ball cap. I have no desire to become one of the loopy ones.

  The peace I needed went down the tubes. I found Sheriff Fred “Chicken Neck” Liska with one of his ops officers, Dick Wonsetler, drinking lunch at the tide line. Like his boss, Dick was a veteran of the Key West police force. I didn’t know much of his history, but he always looked fatigued, always wore the sneer of a man who disliked his job, maybe his whole life.

  Liska was the cop who had drawn me into photographing crime scenes. It had started when he was a city detective, three or four small jobs that expanded into actual sleuthing. He plugged me into several more gigs after being elected Monroe County’s sheriff and still called once in a while, despite my constant refusal of forensic work. We never talked about the times I had saved his ass. I knew that rubbing it in would only incite him to call more often. Local rules dictated that it was better to store blue chips than to spend them in public. I had never interacted with Wonsetler.

  The men were seated at the far end of the bar, their backs to the water’s glare. Liska held a mixed drink in a tall glass. Wonsetler was waving an empty Corona bottle at the server, ordering a fresh one. The Afterdeck was all but empty, with three other men at the bar, a young woman working behind it and, in the heat of the day, no one at the tables. Odd, I thought, that Liska was with only one of his two operations officers. That fact suggested that it wasn’t a strategy meeting, a business lunch. It was a hump day escape.

  I walked over to shake hands. Up close, Liska looked hangdog and war weary in one of his old disco shirts, the period attire he’d forsaken when he’d quit his city job to run for sheriff. “Did I miss a BeeGees concert? ABBA on the beach?”

  He put a disgusted look on his face, swiped at his shirt with the backs of his fingers. “Some days you don’t give a shit.”

  “Remember you once told me about a certain person having bad luck with a love affair?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I knew he was fibbing, probably for a good reason. I assumed it was because of the man to his right.

  I let it drop. “No big deal. I was trying to remember a name.”

  “Thanks for the background,” said Liska. “I still don’t know who the fuck you got in mind.”

  “You’re sporting a cheerful outlook today,” I said.

  “Do my job for a month, Rutledge. Then tell me outlook.”

  I backed away. “I’m going to feel sorry for you, Sheriff, but I’m going to do it over here.” I found a tall chair at the far end of the bar, asked for a menu and, on impulse, ordered a mojito. I had a beer for breakfast. Why not rum before sundown? Just this once.

  Ten minutes later the ops officer went into the restaurant. I assumed he’d gone to the men’s room. I stood, walked over to Liska but said nothing.

  “Look, Rutledge, I don’t play social games. You know as well as I do, the only important gossip in town comes from dental hygienists and legal secretaries.”

  “I’m not looking for trash talk, Sheriff. I need a dose of counseling.”

  Liska considered my phrasing. “First, just for today, call me Fred. Second, you didn’t hear this from me. I sympathize with your plight, you might say. The lady’s got issues. She can be her own worst enemy.”

  “You told me she had a fling a few years ago and got double-whammied.”

  “Right,” he said. “The guy bought the farm in a plane crash and that was when Deputy Lewis, before she made detective, found out he was married.”

  “You also said that she’d had couple of boyfriends after that. They didn’t work out.”

  “I know where you’re going, Rutledge. You’re perceptive and you’re right. Two of them were fellow deputies.”

  “And
of those two…”

  “Both left the sheriff’s office before I took over. And, yes, one of them has been in the Keys for the past three weeks. He works for another agency and he and Lewis have been in touch. That’s all I know and all I want to know.”

  “That might explain a few things,” I said.

  “They’re all flaky, from time to time,” said Liska. “That one I was seeing, five, six years ago? She told me once… her name was Carla. I don’t think you met her. She said denial made her the happy woman she faced each day in the mirror. She worshiped her own bliss. She couldn’t find enough bad history to deny.”

  “And you became excess?” I said.

  “I declared myself such. Here comes Wonsetler. Go the fuck away.”

  Mission accomplished, with a typical Liska send-off. Now I knew why Bobbi Lewis had been running hot and cold. The insight offered me no relief, no clues toward salvaging our romance.

  I returned to my mojito. Two boardsailors, college-age kids, male and female, swooped toward the beach and changed direction in the shallows. Silence engulfed the Afterdeck. The young woman wore a huge sports bra and a skin-toned thong that was lost in the shadow of her ass crack. It was a matter of perspective and perception. I guessed that every man present would bet his own home that she’d been naked from her belly button down.

  A man two stools away from me broke the spell. He leaned toward Liska and said with a slur, “Hey, I overheard. You really the county sheriff?”

  Liska shrugged and stared at the man for a moment.

  “What was all that horseshit yesterday, Sheriff? I couldn’t go home.”

  “Am I supposed to ask you what shit?” said Chicken Neck. “You got questions, call the office.”

  “Bay Point. They wouldn’t let me go to my house. They finally let me go to my house and nobody could tell me why they wouldn’t let me go to my house. That, by any doofus explanation, is horseshit, wouldn’t you say?”

  I could see Liska sizing this up as far too public. “I’ll have to check and let you know. Write down your phone number for me.”

  “They evacuated the neighborhood, Sheriff. You didn’t know?”

  Liska stared at him.

  “Come on, Sheriff, pile it a bit higher,” the man said. “We can stick a fork in it.”

  Stone-faced, pissed, Liska said nothing. Everyone within earshot expected the bartender to stifle the heckler. That wasn’t happening. Miranda was about one-third the guy’s size.

  “My neighbor didn’t answer his door, Sheriff. He saw them making our other neighbors leave their houses. They all had to get into their cars and drive away. So he pretended he wasn’t home. He saw all those county cars surrounding that vacant house on stilts. He couldn’t see what had their attention, but he saw more unmarked cars than he’d ever seen in one place. Car after car after car. Some of them didn’t even have license plates, Sheriff.”

  “Sounds like a movie script to me,” said Wonsetler.

  “My take, too,” said Liska. “UFO flick or a sea monster epic. Subtitles, flaming eyeballs.”

  “Well they stayed so long that someone brought in pizza. They spread it out on the hood of an unmarked cruiser. Pizza, two-liter jugs of Pepsi, what have you. A damn picnic.”

  “That wouldn’t have been our people,” said Wonsetler.

  “You’re flaming out your stupid, frigging…”

  Everyone but the drunk saw it coming. He was grabbed by the restaurant owner’s son and hustled toward the deck’s exit. It was probably the quickest the man had walked backward in years.

  Liska nudged Wonsetler, tilted his head toward the exit. The men pushed back their bar stools, stood, and reached for their wallets. Liska waved a fifty, indicated that he’d cover the tab. He must have felt me staring at him. It took him a while to look my way. He growled, “Don’t fucking ask.”

  Liska and Wonsetler walked toward the next-level dining patio so they could exit through the lobby entrance, probably to avoid the man who had been eighty-sixed. At the top of the short stairway a man in a business suit approached Liska.

  “You left a message?” he said.

  Liska nodded and made a “shh” sign, his finger to his lip. The three men departed through the inside dining room.

  I borrowed the bar’s phone, called Marnie, and got her voice mail. I let her know that the non-event on Sugarloaf was the real thing, an official non-event.

  I hung up and stared at the dregs of my drink.

  Someone tapped my shoulder. Twice, lightly.

  3

  “If I bought two Bacardi 8 mojitos, which is more than I need, would you drink my second one?” A sugar voice, shoulder length honey blonde hair, five-eight, in a pale gray woman’s executive suit, jacket, slacks, white silk blouse. On closer look, small earrings, a small platinum Rolex on her thin left wrist, a single silver bracelet on the lightly tanned right arm. Difficult to miss: the elegant diamond wedding ring. She placed a large paisley patterned tote on the bar and eased into a teak curved-back bar stool.

  “I’ll drink both if you say the word,” I said. “What are we celebrating?”

  She caught the bartender’s attention with two raised fingers and pointed at my empty glass. “We like the fact that I finally tracked down Alex Rutledge, the well-known magazine and advertising photographer. We like the weather and we love this restaurant and we have nothing to do until whatever time is suppertime.”

  “I worry about the possibility that you’re an attorney or a judge.”

  “Neither.” She leaned forward and began to remove her jacket. Always the gentleman, I stuck out my arm to assist. I hadn’t seen her unbutton the blouse, but when she lifted her elbows two garments came off. I was left holding laundry and she was wearing an expensive-looking and immodest bathing suit top. I caught the momentary crescent of aureole as the suit top’s hem hung on a nipple.

  She stuck out her hand. “Lisa Cormier. Atlanta and points south.”

  I left that one alone.

  Our server, the lovely, mischievous Miranda, stood ready to confirm the drink order. In her eyes-front frozen expression I detected a trace of astonishment at the disrobing and a good-natured reproach for my having glimpsed private skin.

  Lisa Cormier looked down at her breast, said, “Shocking,” and adjusted her garment. She looked back to Miranda. “You must love working here.”

  “Most of the time. Did you say two mojitos?”

  “I did.” Lisa turned to me, said, “Bacardi 8, right?” then peered southward to the pastel blue-green water. “God, I love this place. I live most of the year on the cloudy side of a baby foothill that’s damp and cold except when it’s incredibly hot and dusty. That’s when I ache for the beach. I ache from my neck to my knees.”

  Somewhere in the distance, over toward Simonton, a siren wailed then quit.

  “You just arrived in town?” I said.

  “Two weeks ago. And please don’t think I’ve been stalking you. I asked the woman inside at the podium if you ever came in here. She pointed you out.”

  “The fact that I liked Bacardi 8, that was just a good guess?”

  “Key West is a small town,” she said. “We have mutual friends, and I happen to prefer that flavor, too.”

  I was ten yards from the ocean with a sunny wide-angle view of twelve-mile horizon. But I felt more claustrophobic than I might in a dark, cold cellar. As if the next things on the menu were batting eyelashes and a pistol in my ribs.

  Miranda placed our drinks on square cardboard coasters. She gave me a grin far too wide, then moved away to chat up a tourist.

  Lisa raised her glass to propose a toast. I hefted mine, drank it in one slam and said, “Gotta go. Thanks for the kind words.”

  “Maybe I’ve muddied the waters,” said Lisa Cormier. “I was coming around to a job offer. My husband needs advertising photography. Will you stay for another minute, let me make a call here?”

  I looked at Miranda, wished I had taken a few minutes for foo
d then realized I hadn’t paid for my first mojito. While I settled my tab, Lisa made her call. All I caught was, “Hi, Honey,” and muffled conversation.

  Then she handed me the phone.

  “Mr. Rutledge, I’m Copeland Cormier. Can you meet me in the lobby of the La Concha Hotel in, say, twenty-five minutes?”

  “Is this about location work, product shots or stock from my files?” I said.

  “It’s location, local, a minimum of three days.”

  I glanced at Lisa Cormier. She stared at the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar, slowly sipped her mojito through its straw.

  “Are you with a magazine, Mr. Cormier?” I said.

  “Can I explain everything when we’re face-to-face? I assure you, Mr. Rutledge, I have no intention of wasting your time.”

  I handed the phone back to Lisa and said, “Okay.”

  She conveyed my assent to her husband, spoke another fifteen seconds then flipped the thing shut. “It’ll be fun to work with you,” she said, pushing her hair behind the ear closest to me. “I’ve learned that most locals know who you are, but very few know you well.”

  With no coins in my pocket for high-rent meters, I parked my Triumph near the library on Fleming, walked past the Key West Island Book Store and entered the La Concha through its Duval Street entrance. My soles squeaked as I weaved through a forest of potted date palms. I found refuge in the elevated sitting room adjacent to the lobby. Under twelve vertically rotating fan paddles on a long horizontal post, I studied a massive mahogany bookcase, now a Hemingway shrine. An Underwood manual typewriter, a bust, a modest book collection. Even the room’s leather sofas and chairs, the tables’ steamer trunk motif, and the tufted ottoman had a rustic author-in-Kenya feel. I thought I heard the distant trumpeting of an elephant. Then I heard it again. It was a cruise ship’s whistle summoning the flock for departure.

  The La Concha had seen more downs than ups since its mid-1920s debut. Several times in the late seventies I visited a friend who spun records from WKWF’s third-floor studios, the only part of the hotel open at that time except for a rooftop lunchroom and saloon. On those evenings when I smuggled clandestine beers and a stack of my own record albums through the threadbare lobby to the studio, the seedy, half-asleep desk clerk advised me to use the unswept stairs rather than the balky elevator.