Key West Connection

by Randy Wayne White

  “We’ve got to let Ellsworth go, too, Dusky. He’ll be on the boat.”

  “He killed my wife, my kids, my best friend, goddammit!”

  “He’s the rope, Dusky. He’s the rope that’s going to hang the Senator. And even if we tried to arrest him, we probably couldn’t make it stick. Attempted murder—maybe. If you got the right judge, the right jury, the right lawyer. But that’s small potatoes.”

  I rubbed my face with my hands. I wiggled my wrist. It was feeling better. A deep cut, down to the bone, but I could still use it, once the stitches were out. I wondered what had happened to Sammy. Dead, probably.

  “So you’re telling me that I’m out of the picture, right, Norman?”

  “In your present physical condition? Yes.”

  “I feel fine!”

  “And you look like hell. Don’t feed me that ‘I feel fine’ crap. You’re not fit, Dusky. The gang-war ploy is out. I’m not going to be responsible for your death.”

  “You won’t have to.”

  He looked at me in open appraisal. “We won’t allow a slaughter, Dusky. Good people or bad, we won’t allow it. If you were fit, we would want certain things destroyed. A boat or two, part of the house—just enough chaos to force them into trying to rescue the important papers, the big money stash—the stuff we need to find to nail them in court.”

  “And if I was fit, and if I did try it and a few people got in my way, then what?”

  Fizer shook his head wearily. “I can’t believe I’m going along with this conversation.”

  “But what if?”

  “If you tried it—which you won’t because I can’t allow it—if you tried it, it would be strictly hands off the Senator. A couple of local drug runners get killed, and it barely makes the inside page of the Miami Herald. But if a Senator gets killed in a druggang war, the world press will come here on the run. Big federal investigation, Senate hearings—and we don’t need that kind of publicity. There’s been too much of it as it is.”

  “Okay, Norm, I’m too sick for the mission. Case closed, okay?”

  He snorted sarcastically. “Right. Sure, MacMorgan.” And then he allowed a narrow smile to cross his face. “Do you think you’re too sick to give me a full report?”

  So I told him all about Cuda Key. I told him about the layout of the island, the layout of the house, and I told him about the woman, Bimini—minus a few of the more private details.

  “She really did save my life, Norm. And she helped me effect my escape. She’s trapped there. Kind of a well-paid prisoner. So if you do close in on them, go easy on her. I owe her a lot.”

  Fizer snickered. “Why is it all the dames go for you, MacMorgan? God, even over in Nam.”

  “Must be my boyish charm,” I said. Fizer caught the sourness in my voice.

  “Sorry, Dusky. I was out of line there. She was some woman, your wife. I’m sorry.”

  By the time I had finished my report, answering and reanswering Fizer’s questions, we were at my friend Hervey Yarbrough’s house on Cow Key. A little plank-and-tin shanty at the water’s edge, yard cluttered with old boat hulls and crab traps; the typical household retreat of the native Floridian all caught in the sweep of headlights.

  Slowly I climbed out of the car and looked back in. “Good luck, Norm. I hope you get them all. And if you can, smack that bastard Lenze for me.”

  I expected the familiar chuckle, but it never came. In the soft glow of the car’s dome light, I saw an honest concern in the dark, tough eyes of my friend.

  “And good luck to you, Captain MacMorgan. I hope we can work together again sometime.”

  “We will, Norm. We will.”

  As the car roared away down the dirt-and-shell road, Hervey’s big Chesapeake Bay retriever came charging out at me. I remembered what the caretaker on Cuda Key had said about Chesapeakes and I laughed softly—but not before first calling the dog’s name out to let him know that I was a friend. He trotted up fearlessly, short curl of hair bristling, sniffed me, recognized me, then trotted heavily away, wonderfully arrogant. I might be a friend of the family, but I was no friend of his. He would tolerate my presence, but I should expect no tail-wagging foolishness from him. Strictly a one-family dog, to the death.

  At the Chesapeake’s warning, lights in the Yarbrough residence started blinking on. The front screen door swung open, and I could see Hervey’s bulky silhouette, shotgun in his hand, trying to peer through the darkness.

  “Whoever’s out there better have a dang good excuse!”

  “It’s me, Hervey. Dusky MacMorgan.”

  Hervey took two steps backward, sort of sagged, and dropped the gun. “Great God a’mighty . . . is that really you, Dusky?”

  I walked toward the house. “Yeah, it’s me, Hervey. What in the world is wrong with you?”

  I could see his face by that time. His eyes were wide and round as if he were about to have a heart attack.

  “Hey, Hervey! What’s the matter?”

  He studied me for a moment. “You are alive! You ain’t no ghost!” He backed away and finally plopped down in an old chair. And then he started laughing. Laughing like a maniac; laughing until the tears rolled. Mrs. Yarbrough and their teenage daughter were up by that time. They looked at Hervey, then looked at me, and then they started roaring too.

  “What in the world is going on here?” I demanded. “I just stopped in to ask—”

  “We thought you was dead!” the woman howled, her shoulders and heavy breasts shaking beneath her nightgown. “The ol’ man there thought you was a ghost!”

  I started to ask for an explanation, but before I could, the daughter, shy in her soft blue nightshirt, brought me the front page of a newspaper. It was the Key West Citizen.

  “Charter Captain Missing, Now Presumed Dead.”

  The story which followed quoted unnamed federal authorities, detailed my life in Key West, mentioned the recent deaths of Janet and Ernest and Honor.

  So that was it. A plant. A newspaper plant from one Stormin’ Norman Fizer. He had known what I was going to do all along. His pleas for me to give up the mission, to turn it back over to them, had all been a ruse. He wanted me to make the decision, and he wanted me to make it on my own—but he was obviously planning on me to go ahead with it.

  I too started to chuckle. And then laugh. And then roar, in long sweeping bursts. It felt good to be with that family, in the warm confines of a solid home base, laughing among friends. It was the first time I had laughed in a very long time, and, momentarily, I felt the hatred and the thirst for revenge drain out of me.

  The teenage daughter, April, was the first to recover. She came to me, touched the bandage on my head tenderly. “Daddy, now stop that laughin’, hear me? Cap’n MacMorgan here has been hurt. We got to take care of him.”

  Hervey and his wife sobered momentarily, but the craziness of it all got to them again.

  “A ghost! Hahahahahahahaha. . . . ”

  The two of them sagged back in their chairs helplessly.

  The girl turned to me. “You got to forgive them, cap’n. My momma and daddy is crazy as loons when the spell’s on them. Daddy, quit that laughin’!”

  “A ghost! Hahahahahahahaha. . . . ”

  She smiled at me in embarrassment. “Well, can I get somethin’ for you to eat? We got some beans and fish in the icebox. Won’t take me a minute to heat it.”

  I stood up shakily. “No, I’m not hungry, little one. A little sleepy, maybe. But not hungry.”

  She took me by the elbow and started to steer me toward the bedroom; a short, raven-haired teenager, pretty plain face with heavy thrust of country-girl breasts beneath the blue nightshirt. “You take my bed, cap’n. Sheets are clean. You sleep in my bed tonight.”

  “No, no, little one, just give me a pillow and I’ll take the couch.”

  “You’re a guest in our house, an’ we won’t have no guest sleepin’ on the couch. You can talk to Momma and Daddy in the mornin’. But now you need sleep. Your eyes
tell me as much.”

  “Now listen to me, little one,” I started to protest, but she cut me off.

  “I won’t hear another word about it—an’ quit callin’ me ‘little one.’ It was okay a few years ago, but now I’m a grow’d woman, cap’n. I’m eighteen years old an’ I won’t have it.”

  “Then call me Dusky.”

  “Okay, I’m April, an’ you’re Dusky, and now Dusky is gonna lay back an’ go to sleep in April’s bed.”

  I think I was still fronting shaky arguments when my head hit the pillow and I collapsed into sleep. . . .

  I spent the next few days getting my strength back and eating like a horse. I wanted rare steaks and black beans, Cuban bread, and I even managed a beer or two. I might not be at my best, but I would be strong enough when I made my second visit to Cuda Key.

  The morning after my arrival, I had walked out into the yard with Hervey, his little corner of secluded estate alive with the cackle of scruffy chickens, the lumbering Chesapeake, and August sun.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask of you and your family, Hervey.”

  But he was way ahead of me. He carefully opened a fresh foil packet of Red Man chewing tobacco and stuck a big wad of it in his mouth. “You don’ have to worry, Dusky. My ol’ lady or the girl won’t say nothin’ to nobody ’bout your stayin’ here. Me neither, o’course. You got your reasons, an’ I don’t care what they are. I trust you. An’ tha’s enough.”

  So I stayed. I pressed money on them to buy the groceries I wanted, and they accepted reluctantly. I knew about the Yarbroughs and I knew of their pride. A strange thing about them, and native Floridians like them: they could have sold their corner of waterfront jungle for well over a million dollars; money enough to see them moved through two generations. And they could have sat back in their new Cadillacs or looked on from the confines of their new concrete-and-plastic houses and watched the bigbusiness builders rip the old wooden house down and replace it with a multistory concrete block of condominiums that would have housed three hundred Northerners. But what is a million dollars when it means watching your life and your heritage being ripped out by the roots? Too many Floridians made that dismal error. But not the proud ones, the strong ones; not people like the Yarbroughs. They would rather have their homes and their happy poverty.

  So I stayed. And they finally took my money—after I said I would find another hiding place if they didn’t.

  By Thursday I was feeling good. Really good. Bright multicolored halos no longer surrounded lights, and April had removed the stitches from my wrist with tender concentration. To test myself I jogged a mile up the road to Stock Island, then ran back at about half speed. I timed myself with the Rolex. Nine minutes up, six and a half minutes back. Not bad. On the Yarbroughs’ lawn was a big lazy oak tree, draped with Spanish moss. I picked out a sturdy limb, jumped up and grabbed it, and then did twenty-nine good pull-ups. When I was in shape, really in shape, I could do thirty-eight. But twenty-nine was about twenty-two more than your average American male can do, and I was satisfied. I pushed myself through about fifteen minutes of good stretching exercises, and when I was through huffing and puffing in the hot noonday sun, I turned to see April watching me. She wore short cut-off jeans and a blue man’s shirt, the tails tied beneath her breasts and above her flat stomach. She looked at me with frank disapproval, her long black hair swinging back across her buttocks as she turned away in some sort of strange protest.

  “April! Hey!”

  I hurried to catch up with her. When I caught her, I took her elbow and swung her gently around. “What’s wrong, April? Huh? Why were you looking at me like that?”

  Her pretty face was obviously red from anger, and I realized for the first time that she had amber—almost golden—brown eyes.

  “What’s wrong? Men!” she half-shouted in disgust.

  She started to stalk off again, but I stopped her.

  “Hey! Just give me a hint.” I tried a smile. “Was it something I said?”

  She glowered at me and, somehow, it made her look older. Pretty little girl; I had known her since she was just a barefooted kid, playing in the dirt. The pretty little daughter of a friend, and now I felt odd seeing her as a woman for the first time.

  “You wanna know what’s wrong with me, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan? Well, I’ll tell you. I spent the best part of th’ last four days worryin’ myself sick about whether you’d get well or not. You tol’ Daddy what had happened, an’ maybe you tol’ Momma. I don’ know—figured it wasn’t none o’ my business. Didn’t ask you the first question. Jus’ wanted you ta get well, tha’s all. But then I walk out here to feed the chickens an’ I see you runnin’ around an’ swingin’ from the trees like a big blond ape—like you’re tryin’ to kill yourself for sure, an’ . . . an’ . . . ” Her face flushed even more, close to tears. “An’ it jus’ made me mad! Oh . . . men!” She whirled around and stomped off, oblivious to my stammered explanations.

  So what do you do? What could I do? I went inside the house, showered, fried myself a steak, and opened a beer. I had somehow hurt her feelings by, in her mind, hurting myself. I was touched by her concern. And I wanted to explain to her: explain why I had to push my recovery; explain why people over thirty sometimes fail to notice the inexorable transition to maturity in people they have known only as children. I wanted to talk to her, adult to adult, but she wasn’t back by two p.m. And I had to head up to Boca Chica for a little meeting with D. Harold Westervelt.

  The colonel was swimming his laps when I arrived. He opened the front door of his neat suburban home dripping wet, a towel draped around his neck. He seemed pleased to see me—but not pleased enough to cut short his workout.

  “I must apologize,” he explained as we walked back to the patio, “but I believe that even the smallest concession to one’s discipline inevitably leads to another concession, and then another and another.” He laughed shortly. “I’m afraid my penchant for discipline used to drive my poor late wife crazy. But I’m fixed in my ways, and I can’t afford to let myself change now, captain. I swim half a mile in the morning: six a.m. winter or summer, rain or shine, seven days a week. I work until the early afternoon, lunch on tossed salad, then swim another half a mile and do my calisthenics. So you’ll have to excuse me for another twenty minutes or so.”

  So I sat on a plastic lawn chair with my honey and tea and watched the colonel. His pool was unlike most backyard pools. It was about twenty-five yards long and only, perhaps, ten yards wide—built for exercise, not patio parties. He swam with long, strong strokes. His shaved head cut through the water like the bow of a boat, and his broad shoulder muscles knotted and extended as he went. At fifty-some years of age, Colonel D. Harold Westervelt was an amazing physical specimen. In fact, he was an amazing physical specimen compared to most men at any age.

  When he was finished with his laps, he jumped out of the pool, toweled off briefly, did seventy-five push-ups, rested momentarily, then did a hundred sit-ups, using the towel beneath his hips as a pad. His calisthenics finished, he rinsed off in the pool, dried himself, pulled on black warm-up pants and jersey, then sat beside me on the patio. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “I appreciate your patience, captain. Few people would understand.”

  “A very impressive display, colonel.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be impressive, only functional.” He turned his icy blue eyes toward me. D. Harold Westervelt was one tough cookie. And I was glad I was on his side.

  He stood up. “I’ve read your report. You did well, captain. Very well.” He eyed me for a moment, going over me from head to toe, the way someone might study a car they are considering for purchase. “You’ve lost the excess weight, I see. What are you, about two-oh-five?”

  “I’m not sure now, colonel. But around two-ten when I’m right. Few people guess it as closely as you did. They usually guess a lot heavier.”

  “The shoulders throw them off. If the rest of your body were in proportion to your sho
ulders, you’d weigh . . . what? Fifty or sixty pounds more?”

  I smiled. He didn’t smile back. He was all business, that man. How long had I known him? Well, a long, long time; friends through mutual interests and a military past. And still I was never given even the first indication that he was somehow involved with Norm Fizer’s agency. And I probably would never have known had it not been for . . .

  “I assume you are here because you want to reinvolve yourself with that Cuda Key business?” he said, breaking in on my thoughts.

  “That’s correct.”

  “I suggest you move out this evening.”

  “That was my plan.”

  “And weapons?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’m afraid I lost the dart pistol. And my knife. But I plan to get them back.”

  “Follow me,” D. Harold Westervelt said. And he led me back to his laboratory and armament room and unlocked the steel fire door. Once inside, I took a seat.

  “How are you feeling now, captain?” He looked meaningfully at the head bandage I still wore.

  “Fit. Ready.”

  He nodded. “Good. Never underestimate your abilities, and never overestimate your strengths. They can be fatal errors.” He pulled open the floor safe, reached in, and retrieved another Webber dart pistol. “I think we discussed before the problems of peacetime warfare? Because of that, I will give you only one dart loaded with the scorpionfish toxin. Let us say . . . the third dart—which you can change, of course. The others will contain a powerful knockout drug, similar to that which you used on the dogs.”