by Tom Corcoran
“Aside from the November Bravo Rule, my style requires only frequent bank deposits.”
“The November Bravo twins,” said Bobbi. “No babies, no brides.”
“Actually triplets,” I said. “I’ve quit photographing bodies, too.”
“No Bobbis?”
“You heard what I said.”
“What else are you doing up there?”
What the hell did that mean? “Nothing. Talking out details.”
“Are we still on for six-thirty?”
“How about eight?” I said.
“See you at seven.” She clicked off.
“What’s with this money?” said Polan. “I won’t ask how you earned it, but the story’s on the paper. You got a safe buried under your bedroom floor?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at the dates. You’re holding old money. These bills are from ’96 and ’99 and nothing newer. Which might be smart on your part. A friend of mine, getting divorced, his wife tried to put the screws. She told the tax office about his secret money stash. They went to look, made him open his safe. It was old money. He told them he saved it before he got married. They couldn’t prove that he was hiding income. He got to keep it.”
“But law enforcement might see it another way?” I said.
“Bingo,” he said. “But I’m okay with it.”
I assured Polan that his home was a masterpiece of clean.
“Okay,” he said. “I won’t spend your money on a power washer.”
I rode toward Key West feeling as if I had done nothing to earn a penny of Catherman’s money. Beyond blowing the speed limit and badgering a slimy store owner, I had turned up diddley. Worse, I couldn’t think of anything else to do except chase down Sally’s classmates, maybe an instructor or two. Someone who might have clues to her habits or good friends. Or her bad habits and enemies. Maybe real private eyes have a secret checklist or standard routine that gets them results. Maybe I was still running at Bahamas pace, on a Bimini clock. A neighbor had been found dead and I hadn’t taken a moment to think about it. My love life was floundering and I couldn’t drum up an opinion. I wasn’t in denial as much as disgust. One thing I knew for sure. At some point in the near future I would dump that spooky grin off Cecil Colding’s face.
Astronomical note: during early autumn the afternoon sun is directly in your eyes when you ride toward Key West between mile markers 23 and 21. You can’t see ahead at all and you don’t have time to look behind. Crossing the bridge onto Upper Sugarloaf, I decided my best approach would be to stop for a think session. Stop the Triumph and stop worrying about being followed. There’s a chance that I dreamed up this strategy because I was about to turn into Mangrove Mama’s.
The restaurant bar was behind the dining patio. I pulled around back and found the missing car.
Catherman had said, “The only orange Mazda Miata in the Keys. You can see it a mile away.” But no one could see it stashed in this parking area, two-thirds surrounded by trees and shrubs, three-quarters hidden from the highway. Blinded by the rollback-style tow truck’s flashing halogen roof rack, I failed at first to notice the small car from twenty yards away.
The Storms Tow Jobs driver defined a modern-day biker. He was a bulked-out, ex-weightlifting, beer-drinking pirate with a POW-MIA logo bandanna head-wrap, full-arm tattoos, and a short leather vest over a black Sturgis T-shirt. A stout chain linked his trucker’s wallet to a frayed belt loop.
I parked the Triumph, walked over to watch. “What’s up?”
“If it’s yours, you’re too late, dude. It’s ours for the time being.” He tilted his head toward the restaurant. “These people called. It’s been sitting here for three days.”
“A friend of mine reported it stolen.”
He shook his head, turned back to tightening straps. The name carved into the back of his two-inch belt read HARLAND. “I can spot stolen a hundred yards away. This thing, it’s closed up and locked. No cut top, no broken window, no jimmied ignition. Your friend maybe took drunk, got fucked up, forgot where he lost it. Or she, whatever. It happens. Bad for them, good for me.”
“Where you going to haul it?”
“Our locked lot on No Name Key,” said Harland. “Tell your friend not to try to liberate it. Our guard dogs are plain ugly. We time their feedings by a random computer-generated schedule. It keeps them healthy and hungry. And… even if your friend’s car is stolen, we still get our fees.”
I was tempted to ride to Catherman’s home, to tell him the news. But hurrying wouldn’t change things. He couldn’t get the vehicle processed and released any sooner than Harland wanted it to happen. And keeping it in secure storage might preserve evidence, if there was any to be found. With the car so carefully hidden and locked, a reasonable person might assume that Sally had put it there. Plus, I had overlooked one detail. Even though Bob Catherman had handed me five grand less than two hours earlier, I didn’t know where he lived. I walked to my Triumph and peeled back the damp foam liner in my helmet. Its backing material had protected the envelope of pictures and photocopies. Catherman’s address on Scabbard Road was printed on the envelope. It didn’t prompt me to head his way.
I had imagined that finding the car would offer us a breakthrough. Instead it had handed me more things to ponder.
I hung the helmet on the bike and walked through the patio and into the bar. I didn’t know the woman setting up for the late-afternoon rush.
I ordered an Amstel and said, “Do you know if Anne’s working tonight?”
“She works at Square Grouper now. You must’ve been gone for a while.”
“I live in town. I’m down there most of the time. But I’ve got to say, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a car towed out of here.”
“That Miata, I wondered,” she said. “Last couple months I’ve seen a cute little girl driving it on the highway. Our schedules must have caused that we passed all the time. I didn’t know where she was going and she sure-as-shit didn’t notice me, but it’s hard to miss a car like that. Anyway, a man parked it here and got out, I don’t know, Monday or Tuesday, right as I got here for work. I thought maybe he was leaving it for her, or she was driving his car and they were meeting here. That can happen. Last I saw, he was walking around to the front. Maybe he didn’t go in the front entrance. Maybe he got a ride out of here.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?” I asked.
“Like a hundred other guys, I suppose. Not too tall or short, no clothing that stood out so I would have noticed. I guess I’m saying I can’t bring a picture of the dude into my brain right now. Anyway, there was that car the next day, yesterday. So what does that make it, Monday he parked it? So the next day I think maybe it was stolen. This Key West cop comes like he does in most days for his after-work beer, to get stewed before he goes home to his bitch of a girlfriend. I tell him about that little car, how long it’s been sitting there and it might be stolen. He tells me not to bother calling the county. They’d just tell me to call a wrecker. So, finally we did, we called the wrecker four hours ago. Took him long enough to get here, and it’s not like its a hundred miles. Good thing it wasn’t a real wreck.”
Good thing I didn’t ask a third question, not that I didn’t appreciate her info. I slugged down my beer before the conversation could grow into a burdensome exchange of hunches and clichés.
I pulled out of Mangrove Mama’s and twisted it on. The limit was forty-five and I was doing ten over in six seconds. A new medium-blue Mustang came toward me, doing about the same speed. It honked as it passed. It wasn’t a car I knew. It looked to be a rental, and people like my Triumph. I watched it fade in my mirror. I didn’t see it cut a U-turn. Before I reached the Crane Boulevard traffic signal, a mile west, the Mustang was on my butt and passing me. It slowed for the light. Sam Wheeler beckoned me to turn right and follow. A quarter-mile farther he went left onto Bad George Road and drove to the dead end.
With “dead” the operativ
e description. The mudhole-pocked turnaround was the last repository of shit no one wanted. Chunks of docks, washing machines, used tires, a scattering of gravel from another era.
Looking more weather-beaten than usual, Sam climbed out of the low-slung GT while I unstrapped my helmet. He stared down the empty street for a half-minute to watch for company. He pressed a key ring button that popped his deck lid, then pulled three Beck’s Lights from a cooler that was bungee-corded upright inside the trunk. Using yachtsman’s smarts and the skin between his left thumb and forefinger as a fulcrum, Sam hooked one bottle cap under the sharp base of each of the others to lever them off. He returned the unopened one to the cooler.
We raised a quick, silent toast to the blue sky and our predicament.
“Catch me up,” I said.
“You go first.”
It took me four minutes to tell all. I described the real estate offer, the agent’s return the next day and his attempt to hire me. I mentioned Marnie’s concern, Lisa Cormier’s come-on and Copeland’s recruitment, their request that I look for the girl. Then the cash delivery, the spy boys watching the post office, and Cecil’s attitude which I described as more slimy than suspicious. I told him about the drunk at Louie’s who blasted Liska about the Bay Point roadblock.
“It’s still blocked where the road splits,” he said. “They’re letting in residents only.”
Sam went for two more beers, came back and handed me mine. The man I had known for two decades to be rock solid and energized looked depleted. He sat and studied the bottle in his hand. “I’ve been trying to cut back.”
“You been on the pussy trail?” I said.
“Trail, yes, but not that one. I should have guessed that she would worry in that regard. But that isn’t it.”
I looked him in the eye. “What is it? Is there any of the old Sam left in the shell?”
He risked a quick grin, really a smirk. “I saw this obese woman on Simonton Street last weekend with a T-shirt that said, IT’S NOT NICE TO STARE. Half an hour later, out by the Bight, I saw a knockout. She was maybe forty-five, great legs, nice figure, beautiful hair. She was wearing a T-shirt that said, IT’S NOT NICE TO STARE. So that begs the question. What do we nice guys do? Gouge out our eyes?”
“That’s a passable version of the old Sam.” I tried not to stare at the three or four days of stubble on his chin.
“This is my fish camp look,” he said. “The girl you’re looking for. Is her name Sally?”
I didn’t move a muscle.
“Oh, fuck,” he said.
“Do I give the man back his money?”
Perspiration streamed down his face. “No, keep looking for her. Just act as if you don’t know a thing. If her old man gets outraged and goes to the media, my dear Marnie included, we’ll have a worse cluster on our hands.”
“Do I want to know?”
He looked away, fixed his gaze focused down the road. “Can I wait to tell you? Now is not a good time.”
A small brown dog ambled up the road, saw us, stopped and started to bark. Sam kneeled down, held out his hand, whistled softly. The dog, quieted, hurried over to sniff us out, then retreated to other territory.
“I spoke with Liska ninety minutes ago,” I said. “I brought up Sally by name and he got upset.”
Sam turned his head, closed one eye against the sun, waited for more.
“Liska said it was only by chance that he learned the names.”
“He used the word, ‘names,’ plural?”
I nodded.
“Double fuck.” He stood and looked around. “That’s especially not good.”
“Where’s Fancy Fool?” I said.
“Hung on a davit in seawall suburbia, where it will stay. Totally out of sight.”
“I saw the Bronco parked on Flagler.”
“Right,” he said. “The result of an evasive action.”
“You found a GPS transmitter?”
Sam nodded.
I said, “They may have put something on the Triumph.”
Sam grinned. “A GPS tracker device? They’d need a search warrant. Which is not to say they won’t try. If you happen to find one in the next day or two, don’t mess with it. They wire it to your battery and if their signal goes out, they know you’re trying to evade. That could bring down a full-court press.”
“You act like you’re on the lam,” I said. “You sound like you’re in the eighth inning of a doom game.”
“Everybody’s normal life is a doom game, Alex. I just hope I’m in the fourth or fifth inning. Certainly no farther than the seventh-inning stretch.”
“I didn’t mean life span,” I said. “I meant this week.”
“Shit, we may only be in the top half of the first inning.”
“Where to from here? Are you through making deliveries to Cuba?”
“The first few times we knew that I was clear to go down and back. The last time I went, this past weekend, I had the same assurance. But I had to make use of my… call it local knowledge. I had to evade an ugly boat with multiple motors.”
“So until someone straightens out the mix-up…”
“Right,” he said. “The whole deal’s on hold. Or washed up. Which is too bad because I know we were helping out.”
“So I keep pretending to be a private eye?”
“Do everything you should be doing,” he said. “Just don’t do too good a job. If you learn something that, say, takes you to another level, that’s when you back off and shut up and play stupid as a weed.”
“Meanwhile, where will you be?” I said. “Full tilt or heavy whoa?”
“I’ll be around. If I have to leave the county, I’ll go up into Florida and find a down-and-out motel that will let me register without a credit card.”
“Go stay with Annie Minnette.”
“If things go as I suspect they might, at least at first, she could be disbarred for harboring me.”
“Have you got any money?”
Sam scratched his head, looked puzzled, then held out his hand. I dug out the ten Bens.
“Take it one day at a time,” he said. “Whatever you’d give the father for his money, which I’ll match. Double-dip your ass off.”
“Not a cent,” I said.
“Cash only,” he said. “This is not a beer job. One thing, though. See who she was with. Get a name. But cut the father out of your moves.”
“I already did. Can I have one more clue?”
“Stay alert for the name Cliff Brock.”
“Is that mister or sergeant or…”
“Mister civilian,” said Sam. “Though some are more equal than others.”
“Is that the other name that Liska knew?”
“We hope not,” said Sam.
I had never seen such a forlorn expression on his face.
“Is there anything you can do in person for Marnie?” I said. “I’m not too good with it falling on me.”
“I’ll figure something tonight or tomorrow. Where’s that pistol I loaned you a couple of years ago?”
“Back with you,” I said.
“You got that concealed permit, right?”
“Last year.”
“Next chance I get, I’ll loan it to you. Make it a habit to carry.”
“Let’s not use that hook behind the shower,” I said. “Copeland Cormier knows about it.”
“Why should he be a worry?” said Sam.
“This is all new to me, captain. I trust only you, sunrise, sundown and the brakes on the Triumph.”
“That may be one too many,” he said. “That garage Carmen rents you for your Shelby, what kind of lock has it got?”
“Bingo,” I said, and told him the combination. “There’s an old Granday canned turtle crate in there. It’s full of wax and WD-40 and towels.”
“I’ll wrap it in the towels.”
“Maybe you should tell me one or two things that might constitute red flags. Reasons to carry a weapon.”
He look
ed away, said nothing.
“Have I ever pushed you for anything?”
“Okay,” he said. “Be alert to cops you’ve never met being far too friendly. Don’t tell Copeland or his wife that you spoke with me. You’re a wise man, Alex. If it gets hinky, you’ll know when to back off.”
“And for two beers you’d send me into a cave full of razor blades?”
He knew I was making light of the dilemma, but his tone went grim. “If anything weird goes down, get in touch with Captain Turk at the Bight. He’s on our side. But don’t talk to him before any odd shit comes down. Turk can get a little frantic.”
“Does truly weird mean you’ll be dead?”
A cell phone rang, not mine. It was in the fish-knife pocket of Sam’s shorts.
“Just as you never saw me, you did not hear that,” he said.
“In exchange for one favor,” I replied.
“Name it.”
“If I die, please keep an eye on my obituary. I hate the phrase ‘sorely missed’ and I don’t know what it means, anyway.”
Sam smiled. “It’s a way of saying you pulled out too fast.”
I let myself grin. “Thanks for the beer.”
Explaining that he needed to be “up the road, right about now,” Sam put our empties back in the Igloo, wedged himself into the Mustang, and dragged a dust cloud down Bad George.
I sat on the Triumph and viewed my surroundings. Two abandoned utility poles capped with insulators, aluminum scrap. A gutted Volvo. The upturned base of an office chair. A stripped, rusted-out motorscooter. Even the grass and shrubs looked depleted. I didn’t hear birds, but a quarter-mile away the dog barked at a new target. A few miles to the south, one mile higher, a military jet hot out of Boca Chica sped toward the Gulf of Mexico.
I was back to playing solo.
9
This time I knew why Carmen Sosa was on my porch recliner, palm to her forehead. I locked the Triumph in its Shed Deluxe, tossed my helmet in the front room then joined her in the warm shade. An open bottle on the porcelain-top table dripped condensation. The wine glass in Carmen’s other hand tilted almost to the point of spilling. She hadn’t changed out of her postal service uniform.