I met my friends Bob and Burt at PT’s for dinner and told them more than I should have, but they had already heard a rumor about the floater. I filled them in during the meal. The coconut telegraph carries an abundance of rumors, but most of them turnout to be just that, rumors. As the editor of the local rag says, never let facts get in the way of a titillating story.
After eating, we lit fresh cigars and walked to the Hog’s Breath. Bruce and Red were playing the mid shift gig, so we hung around, had a few beers and finished our cigars. Padre Thomas showed up, I bought him a beer, and Bob and Burt left. I waited around for the California band to play.
The band, Malibu, began playing at 10:30 p.m. and was not a surfer band, contrary to its name. They had a pretty good repertoire of classic rock hits, but I enjoyed their original music the most. It was a mixture of folk and rock and Coco Joe was the lead singer.
He wanted to see the Fenian Bastard, so Padre Thomas, Coco Joe, and I taxied to the marina at 2 a.m. The rest of the band went to Duval Street to explore the nightlife.
Street light reflection, from North Roosevelt Boulevard, streaked across the black water and highlighted the marina’s docks; a steady stream of traffic hummed along the four lanes. A full moon hung in the cloudless sky, surrounded by a protective army of stars, and a soft wind rippled the bight. I gave Coco Joe a tour down below, brought out three Mexican Bohemia beers, and we sat in the dim lit cockpit, facing the Gulf of Mexico.
“What are the lights out there?” Coco Joe pointed toward the cut where a few small windows radiated light.
“To the left is Navy housing,” I tasted the beer. “Over there,” I pointed right, “is Hilton Haven, where homes begin around a million.”
He whistled at the price. “So you got the same water view, but for a lot less dough. Way to go, dude.”
“I got the view, but they have the land.”
The homes on Hilton Haven have seawall docks. One home had a pontoon boat tied off to its seawall. A little further, a 40-foot fishing boat was tied off to a dark seawall.
Padre Thomas used his empty beer bottle for an ashtray.
“A girl was murdered over there less than twenty-four hours ago,” Padre Thomas’ tone was somber as he looked across to the homes on Hilton Haven. “They killed her somewhere over there.” He pointed into the dimness.
Coco Joe and I remained silent and finally Padre Thomas went below and brought us beers we didn’t need.
He lit another Camel and exhaled smoke into the breeze. Coco Joe didn’t smoke, what do you expect from a Southern California boy, but he didn’t complain about the cigarette or cigar. His first beer remained mostly full.
“Padre Thomas told me about his vision,” he sipped a little of the Bohemia and waited for my reply.
“You know about his angles?” I took a long swallow of my beer.
“I was in Guatemala when the visions first started. Do you believe him?”
“Do you?’
“I find it easier to explain what he knows from his visions, if I believe him.”
He stood and walked to the stern of the boat. “I want to be a skeptic,” he stared across the bight, “because it seems to be the politically correct thing to do,” he laughed. “I guess no one has looked on the back of their money recently.”
“He doesn’t see God, he sees angels.” I tossed my cigar butt into the bight.Padre Thomas had fallen asleep, while we talked, and a soft snore belched from his lips. I stuffed his burning cigarette into a beer bottle and walked to Coco Joe, who was laughing to himself.
“Look at him,” he pointed to Thomas. “If angels weren’t looking out for him, do you think he’d survive?”
“I don’t know why any of us survive.”
“Maybe we all have angels.”
“Maybe.”
Coco Joe stared across the bight, intent on seeing something, while Thomas continued to snore.
“I need your help,” he said, the California youthfulness gone from his voice. “I’ve read your jacket.”
With those few words, I was taken back to a life I thought I’d left behind; a life of trying to avoid my government’s intimidation as I traveled civil-war-torn Central America as a journalist. I turned and looked at him with his sun-bleached curly hair and peach skinned face. I didn’t answer.
A small outboard engine twittered from the other side of the cut. Street traffic was sporadic, but the sound of humming tires echoed off the night water.
“I worked with Gabriela,” he looked across to Hilton Haven. “Someone over there killed her and I want to take him down.”
“Who are you? Really?”
“You know who I am, what I am.” He spoke into the darkness.
“A spook.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Are you with …”
“No,” he cut me off. “I’m supposed to be here, she’s supposed to be here, and Cluny is here.”
“Cluny is the Limey.”
“Yes and I think he’s still here.”
“Why?”
“Are you going to help me?”
“Do what?”
“Whatever it takes,” the Californian idioms were gone.
“If I can help you find him, I will, but I’m not gonna take him down,” I turned to face him. “The DEA and Colombians are here looking for him, too.”
“They don’t think he’s here, I do.”
“And that’s because?”
“He always talked to Gabriela about Key West and how he liked it, his home away from home.” He paused and stared across the bight. “He wasn’t delivering drugs to Key West for sale.
The drugs came here by boat to be transported to Miami. It’s slower but a safer route.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“You see that fishing boat?” he pointed to the 40-foot boat tied off at the seawall. “I bet in the daylight you can see a flag pole in the back yard, and a tree too. And I’ll bet you the pole’s flying the Union Jack.”
All the homes at the end section of Hilton Haven are walled in, for privacy. But, he was right, I had seen the flag poll.
“I haven’t seen a flag on the pole.”
“Whoever lives there is a part-time resident, right?”
“Yeah, who likes to party after fishing,” I checked my watch it was almost 3 a.m.
He walked to his backpack and pulled out a large pair of binoculars. He looked toward the fishing boat, adjusting the binoculars.
“There are lights on in the house and people in the yard,” he kept staring across the bight to the seawall dock. “What time is it?”
“Three a.m. How can you see across there?”
“Night-vision goggles,” he handed them to me.
Twenty years ago, night-vision goggles were bulky; this pair wasn’t much larger than the binoculars I had on board. I looked across the bight and, as my eyes adjusted to the strangeness, I saw movement by the back gate and a dim light in one window.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I scanned the seawall before giving the binoculars back.
“They’ve moved the drugs off the boat and I bet they’re loading a truck right now,” he stared through the binoculars toward the house.
“Let’s call …”
“No,” he almost yelled through clenched teeth. “I don’t want the Colombians to get him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t trust them,” he turned to me, the binoculars hung at his side. “She didn’t trust a lot of them and I don’t know which ones are here.”
“I don’t know what my jacket said about me,” I sipped my warm beer, “but I was never an operative. I didn’t take people down.”
In the darkness, his smile was brighter than it should have been.
“Yeah, you were listed as a fellow traveler with the guerrillas but,” he smiled again, “you had no problem turning in drug runners. Cluny is a drug runner and a murderer.”
“We don’t know how many are there or how well ar
med they are.”
“You still have your Glock?”
“Down below.”
“And I’ve got mine and we have surprise on our side.”
“The odds are on their side.”
“You wanna let ‘em get away?”
“No.”
“Then let’s do something. Damn it, you found her, you saw what he did.”
Staring into the night, I saw her again, as I turned her over in the water and realized how young she was. My insides trembled and I wondered why I felt this attachment to someone I had never known.
“Are people still in the yard?”
He looked through the binoculars and nodded.
“Listen to my idea.”
“Go ahead.”
“We dinghy over to the cut and get on the road. From there, we can see the truck pull out. We ID it, license plate, color, whatever and I call the chief of police, he’s a friend.”
“The Colombians still get them.”
“If Cluny’s smart, he isn’t going to travel with the drugs.”
“Good point.”
“There may only be the smugglers and Cluny and they’ll go with the vehicle.”
“Then we take Cluny down,” he said excitedly.
I wondered if take down meant kill, his excited tone made me think he did.
“Cluny wouldn’t be alone,” he said. “He’ll have one or two people with him.”
“It’s still better odds than going after them all.”
“Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
I got my Glock out of its hidey-hole below deck and took the three extra magazines I had. One clip was too many and three wasn’t going to be enough. Coco Joe waited on the dock, by my dinghy, his backpack already on board. I wondered what kind of arsenal he had.
We got on, without speaking, I started the engine, and we moved through the black water, past the cut and into the Gulf of Mexico. Off to our right a large condominium unit raised up and I steered toward its docks. A false dawn was beginning as we tied off.
“When we come out,” I whispered, “we’ll be about three houses up and can watch when the vehicle leaves.”
We quietly moved toward the road and sat behind some shrubs. At 4 a.m., a white Cadillac Escalade left Cluny’s gated property. It had tinted windows, so we couldn’t see how many were inside. I caught the Florida license plate number and called Chief Dowley. He wasn’t happy to hear from me.
“Are you drunk?” He fought to wake up.
“Listen to me,” and I told him about the Cadillac and the drugs.
“Mick, how do you know this?” he was waking up.
“I stumbled across it by accident, but you need to get them before they cross Cow Key Channel or they belong to the sheriff.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” but it was said in an unfriendly way, and he hung up.
“Show time,” Coco Joe slapped my shoulder. He walked slowly toward Cluny’s, fumbling in his backpack. “Here,” he held out two hand grenades.
“What the hell are those?” We were almost at the gate.
“Equalizers.”
I didn’t take them.
“One is a flash grenade, the other,” he raised his right hand, “is a fragment grenade.”
I shook my head in disbelief and kept walking.
The gate was closed. Coco Joe took something out of his backpack, fooled with the lock on the pedestrian door, and got it to open. He racked his Glock. I racked mine and we crept through the door into a quiet front yard. We froze up against the gate and listened, but heard nothing.
I was about to say that maybe they all left, but he held his finger to his lips and we inched our way along the wall toward the backyard. He stopped at a green plastic Waste Management rubbish bin and opened it. Pieces of women’s clothing were tangled up inside. Coco Joe’s eyes were angry, but he let the top down quietly and just looked at me for a second, nodded and we kept moving. There were two motorcycles and a Jeep Wrangler in the carport.
We could see the marina’s lights as we entered the backyard. A large tree stood in the middle, between the house and back wall, a tipped over stool underneath and uncoiled length of rope spread out on the ground. My stomach knotted, because I knew Coco Joe had been right, this was where they had murdered Gabriela.
He took a hand grenade out of the backpack, indicating one with his finger and then handed me another and raised two fingers. He motioned me to stay there and indicated he would go around to the front.
I nodded my understanding.
Using his fingers, he pointed one finger toward the window and made a tossing motion, and then he pointed two fingers.
I nodded.
He held up one finger and mouthed ‘minute.’ I nodded as he headed back toward the front of the house.
I counted to sixty, saying Mississippi between numbers. I guess he figured I knew how these worked, or maybe it was in my jacket. After I said ‘sixty Mississippi,’ I pulled the pin out of the first grenade and tossed it through the window. In the quiet morning, the breaking glass seemed to reverberate. The grenade exploded loudly and with a blinding light that lit up a few windows. The window I tossed it through shattered.
I don’t know how long I waited, I was no longer counting, but I pulled the pin in the second grenade and tossed it through another window and when it exploded it was twice as loud and all the windows in back shattered. A neighbor would be calling the police.
Alarms went off inside and the backyard security lights came on. I ran to the tree for cover, almost tripping on the rope. The backdoor opened, smoke came out, followed by a man holding a rifle. He fired wildly into the yard. I fired back and hit the door. He closed it quickly and I heard the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire out front.
I was positioned in the back to force people out the front, so I stayed put, while the popping continued, with an intermittent sound of Coco Joe’s Glock firing. He must have tossed another flash-bang because I heard it explode and saw the light from the backyard. There was rapid fire from the Glock and then quiet.
The quiet didn’t last long. The pop-pop-pop returned, and I could tell it was more than one weapon firing. In between the popping sound, I heard a motorcycle start and then the explosion of another grenade rocked the house and it was quiet, again. The air burnt with the smell of spent gunpowder.
I heard the motorcycle, again, and knew it was speeding off. I ran along the side yard toward Coco Joe. When I passed the carport both motorcycles were gone. Out front, two men lay dead. There was no sign of Coco Joe. Smoke began to come out of the broken windows and I heard sirens. The front gate was open and I rushed out to my dinghy.
• • •
Richard Dowley stood with a cup of my good coffee in the cockpit of the Fenian Bastard. Padre Thomas was sleeping in the main cabin.
“You wanna run that by me again?” He wanted to pace, but there wasn’t room.
“Padre Thomas had a little too much to drink last night, so I was trying to walk him sober and saw these guys loading drugs into the Cadillac in the Lyons Club parking lot. Simple as that, and I called you.”
“Then you heard all the commotion across the way earlier, right?” he sipped coffee and looked across the bight to the burnt out house.
“It could’ve woke the dead,” I smiled and drank from my coffee mug. “What happened?”
“Not sure,” he frowned. “Two dead outside, one dead inside. Sherlock said it looked like grenades, automatic and small arms fire. Lots of brass on the ground.”
“Well, that would explain the explosions I heard.”
“How many,” he refused to sit down.
“Three, maybe four.”
“He’ll corroborate your story?” Richard pointed down into the cabin.
“I doubt it, I think he’s still drunk. He slept through the whole thing.”
“I meant about the walk.”
“If he remembers.”
Richard finally sat down and I got him a fresh cup of cof
fee.
“The guy who rents the house,” he pointed across the way, “took off in his small plane just about the time we got calls about the gunfire.”
“He’s gotta land.”
“Yeah, well, he flew below radar, but we think he went to Cuba.”
“That’s illegal,” I said and then laughed.
“It gets better.” He didn’t laugh.
“How’s that possible?”
“About fifteen minutes later, someone stole a small plane and went in the same direction, like they were following him.” He finished his coffee. “You don’t know anything about this, right?”
“I know what I saw and what I heard, but you already know that.”
“The sheriffs caught your drug smugglers and the DEA is coming for them, so this closes the case on the floater too,” he put his cup down and stood up.
“I’m glad it worked out,” I stood and walked with him to the dock.
“I didn’t say that, I said it closes the case. That’s what the Feds told me. I don’t like any of it, but I’m glad they’re gone. If you want lunch, give me a call about one.”
He gave me a tired smile and walked away.
# # #
THE FLOATER
Footnote
“The Floater” was my first attempt at a long short story. No one bought it, so I edited it some, especially the ending, and included it as a few chapters in another book. Let me know when you figure out which one.
You might remember Joe Bolter from “Finding Picasso,” but he was Joseph then and now he’s just plain Joe. Or should I say Coco Joe.
Murphy’s old nemeses, Neville Cluny, the Brit mercenary is back. Did you read “Revenge,” the first Mick Murphy novel? Neville shows up there.
This story might have been the first forming of the idea for “Free Range Institution.”
It was a fun story to write and I hope you enjoy it, even if you recall reading most of it in one of my books.
DRUMSTICK MURDER
Dallas Lucas hadn’t eaten brunch with us earlier, unless you counted the stick of celery in his bloody Mary. Of the people gathered for the breakfast reception for the Key West Songwriters Festival, half those that knew Dallas wish they didn’t. The other half hated him. The handful of songwriters at the reception that didn’t know Dallas didn’t know him on purpose. But that never kept him away from gatherings where drinks were free and there was sure be an up-and-coming songwriter or two eager to meet the legend, especially the pretty ones.
Vampire Slayer Murdered in Key West - Mick Murphy Short Stories Page 6