Apparent Wind

by Dallas Murphy

  “Doom?”

  “Huh?”

  “Have you noticed how happy everybody is? Duncan, the professor, Longnecker, Bert. All of them. They’re having a ball. Even Marvis is having fun accounting all the crooked money.”

  “How come we’re not?”

  “…I feel sorry for everyone. Even Donny Sikes and Big Al. I never thought I’d feel sorry for Big Al Broadnax.”

  That was because she was hanging around with Doom Loomis, but he didn’t say so for fear she wouldn’t contradict him. “Professor Goode told me this can only end badly. He says violently. Are you scared of that?”

  “Yes. That too. Are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I’m here with you, I’m scared they’re hurting my grandmother. With her, I’m scared for you. This place isn’t the end of the world, even if it looks like it. They could find you anytime they set their minds to looking. I don’t know—”

  “What?”

  “You’re so good at it…”

  “Conspiracy?”

  “Yes.”

  Doom was afraid of that. “I didn’t want to do it,” he said lamely.

  “I know it.”

  “Maybe we should go away by ourselves.”

  “Just forget the whole thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they’d be free to kill Small Hope Bay.”

  “Maybe Small Hope Bay isn’t worth it.”

  “What do you mean? Of course it’s worth it…Worth what?”

  “What we’ll have to do to save it.”

  Rosalind rolled over and hugged him close. Doom nestled his head between her breasts, in that place where children and adult males long to live, nipples plugging their ears against rude sounds.

  The phone rang. Doom had had a telephone installed aboard Staggerlee. Naked, he padded aft to take the call at his navigation station and conspiratorial nerve center.

  “It’s me, Plotner. I’m up at the hospital, and I got one Roger Vespucci here. You know, the guy with the droopy mustache. Well, he’s half drowned. A widow from Ohio found him washed up on Omnium Beach, gave him artificial respiration. He’s been delirious, rantin’ about sharks, saying how Donny Sikes tried to murder him. I guess your plan worked right out. I guess that makes you one smart fellow.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  ROGER LIVES

  Rosalind dropped Doom under the porticoed entrance to the emergency room, where Sheriff Plotner and the Annes waited, then went in search of a parking spot. How did the Annes always know what was happening? Sheriff Plotner led Doom through the waiting room, past the distraught kin of the cut, clobbered, gouged, and gut-shot into the Authorized Personnel Only elevator. The Annes followed, filming. None of the hospital staff questioned their movements. That would have meant subjecting themselves to the sheriff’s stink.

  When the aluminum elevator door closed, Sheriff Plotner turned on Doom: “Lemme tell you something, son. I don’t give a crap what you got on me, I ain’t gonna be your slave. I’m a duly elected peace officer. It don’t matter that Big Al rigged the election—I’m still sheriff here. I ain’t gonna be nobody’s gofer. What we got here is anarchism, people strivin’ to kill each other like there ain’t no law in Broadnax County. I’m here to tell you there is, and I’m it. You ain’t it. I’m gonna start acting like it, and, boy, you best not get beneath my wheels.”

  “Okay, Sheriff Plotner.”

  “…Okay? Just like that?”

  “You’re the law here. I’d welcome your ideas.”

  “You would?”

  “Yes, I would. What do you think we should do about Roger Vespucci, Sheriff?”

  The sheriff clapped Doom on the shoulder. “Watch.”

  Longnecker stood guard at Roger Vespucci’s door. Seeing the sheriff enthusiastically leading the way, Longnecker leapt to attention, clicked his heels, and sarcastically saluted. “Nothing to report, sir!”

  Sheriff Plotner ignored him.

  Doom shook his hand.

  “I always wanted to be a screw,” Longnecker said.

  “Me too,” said Doom.

  The sheriff flung the door open. Roger Vespucci was sitting up in bed, combing his mustache, smoking a cigarette that burned the back of his salt-scratched throat, and watching pregnant women do aerobics on TV. “Hey, Sheriff, you can’t keep me here against my will. It’s unconstitutional.” Roger saw Doom. “You? What the fuck are you doing here? Hey, get these cameras out of here!”

  “You’re under arrest for the murders of Ozzie Mertz, Doris Florian, and Dennis Loomis,” said the sheriff.

  On TV someone said, “There’s gotta be a cure for athlete’s foot.”

  “Never heard of them,” insisted Roger.

  “I know you killed them on orders from Donny Sikes. We’ll go easy on you in return for your testimony.”

  Roger stared resolutely at the ceiling.

  “I also know Donny Sikes tried to pop you.”

  “I tripped on a banana peel and fell overboard. It was an accident. The boss is probably worried about me right now.” And damn right he should worry about Roger Vespucci, the great navigator of the undiscovered land from whose bourn no traveler returns. He oughta be quaking in his boots.

  “You said so yourself—that he tried to kill you.”

  “I never said that. When’d I say that?”

  “When you was unconscious.”

  “Unconscious don’t mean dick. You got nothing on me, you’re peeing into the wind. What’s that stink?”

  “Could I have a word with you in private, Sheriff?” asked Doom gently. The Annes followed them out into the hall.

  Roger Vespucci moaned. What did they have on him, and how did they get it? Had that bloat Donny Sikes set him up for the fall? Roger considered bolting for parts unknown right then and there. He got out of bed and tiptoed to the window, his hospital garment falling away from his hairy white cheeks. A jump for it would break both his legs like pretzel sticks, besides which the goddamn windows didn’t open. Someone on TV said, “Five hundred dead in renewed shelling.”

  Sheriff Plotner held the door open for Doom, who said, “Maybe we can work something out, Mr. Vespucci.”

  “Just who the fuck are you!”

  “Agent Armbrister of the FBI.” Doom showed him ID to prove it.

  “Let me see that, don’t just go waving badges at me. I wasn’t born yesterday. You could be showing me your Discover Card.” Roger clutched Doom’s hand for a close gander. Christ, it looked genuine. Then they had him for bopping an agent on the coconut. What else? Illegal possession of a firearm, kidnapping a federal officer, enough to land him in the hard-time house if they chose to press it.

  Doom explained that the real Doom Loomis was still cooling his heels in prison. He, Agent Armbrister, had assumed Loomis’s identity as part of an extensive sting operation aimed at Donny Sikes. They had substantial evidence against Mr. Sikes, and they were nearly ready to move for indictment. Doom spoke softly, a reasonable man, a stand-up guy. He said: “But, off the record, we have a problem. A smart lawyer might be able to prove entrapment within reasonable doubt. That’s just the way our system works. I wouldn’t have it any other way, but I mean to protect my case. Call it professional pride. Now, since his attempt on your life, I thought we might be able to work something out.”

  “I fell off the boat—”

  “Bullshit, let’s just nail him for kidnapping an agent of the federal gum’ment,” said Sheriff Plotner right on cue.

  “I appreciate your zeal, Sheriff, but Mr. Sikes is a wealthy man with the finest of legal representation. I’d much rather have Mr. Vespucci’s willing testimony. Failing that, of course, we’ll have no choice but to press for Mr. Vespucci’s indictment as you suggest.”

  “I guess you’re right, Armbrister. Like usual.”

  Roger Vespucci gave that some thought. On TV a beer drinker said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” Roger Vespucci said, “I ain’t about to talk for
cameras.”

  “These are official Bureau photographers. Specifically, we’d like you to participate in a new phase of our sting operation as a gesture of your good faith. In return for which I shall move the grand jury to grant you immunity, and we’ll keep the fact that you kidnapped me between ourselves.”

  “Or you can go down with Donny Sikes,” said Sheriff Plotner.

  “…What do you want me to do?”

  “We want you to play dead,” said Doom.

  “Play dead?” Roger’s head was spinning. He needed time to think. There was a lot here that just didn’t wash. This Agent Armbrister, for one, but playing along at least to the extent of playing dead seemed in his own best interests.

  DOA

  Donny Sikes hadn’t expected the body to show up. He paced the fantail, feeling edgy, finishing his second piña, but his piñas weren’t nearly as good as Roger’s, no tang, and the purser’s piñas were worse. Why hadn’t the sharks gotten Roger? Did sharks nap at night? And now the coroner wanted him to identify the body. What could he say but yes? That was an oversight, Donny guessed. The sea does cast up its dead. It cast up Dennis Loomis.

  What would the authorities want to know?…Why he hadn’t reported Roger missing? No, Roger had been missing only twelve hours. Actually, as far as Donny was concerned, Roger wasn’t missing at all. He was merely away. He’d say Roger went into town to buy a piña blender and never came back. No, they could trace that. Dumb hicks probably wouldn’t, but assuming so would be reckless. No, he’d tell them that Roger had a lady friend on Tequesta Key, where he often went to get laid. Nothing unusual in his absence. No, Donny didn’t know her name.

  Donny told himself to relax, don’t volunteer any information, don’t act like a guy with an alibi to protect. They had no cause to suspect foul play. After getting laid, Roger must have returned to the boat drunk, tripped over a cleat, and fallen overboard. Accidental drowning. Happens…At least Gramps wasn’t there when Plotner called. Gramps was ashore, watching the bulldozers assemble at Omnium Settlement to take out that nest of squatters and put up something the right kind of people would like. Pretty soon the way would be clear, but this Roger Vespucci corpse-viewing could be sticky. He’d have to remain on the ball.

  Donny Sikes ordered the skiff run out and had the purser, a sneaky young man, deliver him to the town dock on Tequesta Key, where he hired a Lincoln Town Car in which the purser drove him to the Broadnax County Hospital. During the slow, snarled ride, Donny considered the question of grief. Should he display same? Or would manly stoicism, a slight twitter of the jaw muscles, be more appropriate? He’d see how he felt when he got there.

  “Wait!” said Donny. “Stop here!”

  “Where, Mr. Sikes?”

  “There. The Wreck Bar. See the puce neon sign?”

  “The what neon sign?”

  “Puce! Puce!” Donny got a couple of piñas in plastic cups to go. “Hold the umbrellas.”

  Sheriff Plotner met Donny under the portico, called him Mr. Sikes, and thanked him for coming. Then he led Donny down a long white corridor to the morgue.

  When, earlier, Doom had taken the morgue trip—with Sheriff Plotner and Roger Vespucci—to set things up, he had thought about his mother’s own walk down this long white corridor, through swinging aluminum doors with round portholes, to the periphery, where all pretense of decor expired, to view his father’s crab-bitten body, and he had hoped she was happy with Norman Futterman in Wyandanch. Painted walls, acoustic tile ceilings, and indoor/outdoor carpet runners gave way to naked pipes and cement floors, along which Roger had hopped, trying to coax his skimpy hospital garment to cover his ass, while the Annes filmed from astern. Corridors became tunnels. Cellars don’t exist in south Florida because seawater lurks a scant six feet down, but this place had all the earmarks of one. Down here they washed the bloody, bile-befouled laundry, stored the cleaning agents, the heavy equipment—and the corpses.

  Roger Vespucci had smelled a rat on the way. This was very weird police procedure, even for the FBI, but he figured he’d play along, covering his ass in every sense. Besides, it might serve his own best interests for that pumped-up sot of a pudgy lunatic to think he was dead. But how did his death serve the interests of the law? Unless of course they were running their own scam for unknown reasons. Roger couldn’t wait to see how Donny would play it.

  “He don’t look dead to me,” Sheriff Plotner said about Roger on the aluminum slab with the nasty-looking fluid channels running down each side.

  “Maybe some makeup,” Anne suggested.

  “To make his eyes look sunken,” added Anne.

  “Yeah,” said the sheriff, “he needs to look more hideous, cuts and contusions, like that—”

  “Come on,” said Roger, sitting up, “I drowned. I didn’t go through a windshield. I don’t want no makeup—” Roger didn’t want to look ridiculous in death. “Here, you want hideous, check this.” Roger lay back down on the cold table, stuck the tip of his tongue behind his lower front teeth and made the middle of it protrude grotesquely. He rolled his eyes up and to the side and lolled his head on his shoulder…

  “Not bad,” observed the sheriff.

  “Can you hold that long enough?” Doom asked.

  “Hell, he’s just gonna look at me, right? He ain’t gonna perform an autopsy, is he?”

  “Okay,” said Doom.

  Donny Sikes walked silently down those same halls with Sheriff Plotner, who paused at the morgue door for dramatic effect, then flung it open. Roger Vespucci lay on the table, his face covered with a green sheet. The conspirators had placed an instrument stand, like a breakfast-in-bed table, over his midsection so Donny couldn’t see him breathe.

  Identity obscured beneath a surgeon’s scrubbies and mask, Doom pretended to autopsy another green-sheet-covered body (Longnecker’s) while the Annes filmed the operation. When Donny Sikes entered, Anne sneaked her camera up onto his face.

  “That there’s Professor Armbrister from up to the college. Don’t mind him,” said Sheriff Plotner. “He’s doing a guy got eaten by a alligator. Ain’t pretty.”

  Doom got nervous when the sheriff started ad-libbing, because he tended to get carried away. But it didn’t seem to matter. Donny had eyes for nothing but his victim. Sheriff Plotner paused again for effect, then snapped the sheet from Roger Vespucci’s face. Roger had added variations to his hideous visage—he had pinched his left eye shut, scrunching that side of his face into a contorted mask, and he had twisted one wing of his Fu Manchu upward at a crazy angle. Not bad touches, Doom thought.

  “That him?” the sheriff asked.

  Donny Sikes nodded. The sheriff re-covered Roger.

  “I—I think I’m going to—” Donny swallowed hard to return the piñas to their appropriate place, but they didn’t go. “I’m gonna—”

  “Down the hall, first door on the left,” said the sheriff, trying to suppress a grin.

  Roger Vespucci sat up and glared at the still-swinging morgue door, and the Annes caught on film the violence in his eyes. Doom didn’t miss it either. Then Longnecker sat up, and Doom removed his mask. Longnecker looked at Doom as if to say what now, chief?

  Sheriff Plotner was surprised at Donny’s softness, a bag of feathers, as he poured Donny into the backseat of the idling Lincoln Town Car. He thanked Donny for the performance of his civic duty, and Donny gurgled in reply. Then the sheriff returned to the morgue to escort Roger Vespucci back to his room.

  “Look, Sheriff, my ass is hanging out. No dignity. How about some clothes?”

  “That’s hospital clothes. You’re in the hospital.”

  The Annes filmed Doom, thinking. He said to Longnecker, “Let him escape after dark, okay?”

  This Doom Loomis was one devious guy, and Longnecker loved it.

  In the hall outside Roger’s room, Sheriff Plotner’s radio crackled.

  “Plotner here, over.” Cheap Jap radios, you had to hold them right up to your ear. Sounded like someone was wa
dding up newspaper on the other end. Sheriff Plotner thought he caught something about bulldozers. “Huh? What do you mean bulldozers? Over.” Burning bulldozers? “Did you say burnin’? Over.” Fifty bulldozers burning in Omnium Settlement? “Jumpin’ Judaica! Over.” Nobody’s going to burn up bulldozers on his beat and get away with it. Probably Miami drug kingpins. Sheriff Plotner waddled down the hall, heading for his car to nip it in the bud.

  Doom decided to follow him.

  BATTLE HYMN

  Carmine Blunchelli wanted to know what the flying fuck those five yellow dozers were doing on his job site.

  “Search me, chief,” said Carmine’s foreman and brother-in-law, Mario Gepetto.

  Carmine’s own bulldozers were russet, and there were no yellow ones here yesterday when he trucked in his entire fleet of six from Opa-locka. Carmine Blunchelli glared at the yellows—they must have slunk in under the cover of darkness—and flicked his upper plate with his tongue, a sure sign, Mario knew, that Carmine was pissed.

  “Hey, chief, look. Ain’t that Frankie O’Mera over there?”

  “Over where?”

  “By the old motel—”

  “Goddamn is! Miami micks! Lower’n snake shit in a wagon rut.”

  Even as Carmine and Mario squinted at them, spouts of acrid blue exhaust puffed from the capped exhaust pipes on the yellow bulldozers. Frankie O’Mera was getting under way, forming up his charges to push down the squalid remains of Omnium Settlement under the terms of his contract with Big Al Broadnax. O’Mera thought Big Al was a crazy old asshole, but business was business and most clients assholes, anyhow. Frankie O’Mera was a self-made man, like Carmine Blunchelli, and that’s why neither trusted the other. Those wops were trying to cut him right out of the picture. They’d have to get up a lot earlier than this to fuck over Frankie O’Mera from County Mayo.

  “Saddle up, Mario,” said Carmine, who knew his rights. He had a hard-and-fast contract, fifty percent down, with Donald Sikes, the tycoon, and he meant to execute it, even if he had to squash some micks under his treads while he was at it.