The Naked Detective

by Laurence Shames

  And Kenny Lukens' boat, the boat where Andrus the happy Latvian had been murdered just two nights before, was right there in my face, fifty, sixty yards away. It was ringed with yellow tape strung between police stanchions but was otherwise unguarded. How could I leave without sneaking aboard and checking it out?

  I rolled my bike up closer to Dream Chaser. I took a moment to look around. The boatyard was dim and had grown quiet; the few people still at large seemed lost in conversations or millings of their own. I put the bike up on its kickstand and slipped beneath the crime-scene tape, my sneakers crunching on the limestone gravel.

  My heart raced as I stood inside the closed-off circle. Real PI's, of course, commit small illegalities all the time, big illegalities now and then. They do so in the honorable confidence that justice lies beyond the law and ranks a million miles above it. Who could disagree? But I have a horror of doing anything unlawful. Far from being proud of this, I think it shows a want of character. The citizen as chicken, still like a quailing high school student, fearing the indelible black mark that will somehow blot his future. What I have felt is a wimpy obedience that justifies the shirking of anything beyond obedience.

  But now I stood, dry-throated, where the law said I should not have been. I reached out and touched Dream Chaser's flank; it still held some of the heat of the day, had a temperature like a living thing. I moved to the stern. The cops, apparently, had removed the ladder. I frowned and pawed the gravel and measured distances.

  The lip of the transom was level with my eyes. I put my palms flat on it, and jumped, and pushed and pulled and kicked. The process taught me something humbling but useful: Being reasonably fit at forty-seven is only a pale parody of being young and limber. Joints complained at being yanked and then compressed; muscles took offense at all demands beyond the practiced and familiar. But I scrabbled and grunted and clawed, and finally I hauled myself over the transom and fell with a muffled clunk into the vacant cockpit, resting for a moment against the stem that held the wheel.

  Lying there beneath the stars, I felt both brave and very silly. The alcohol was wearing off; physical effort had skimmed away the most urgent layer of libido. By the wan light of reawakening reason, this escapade was fucking stupid. But there I was, on board the forbidden boat. I almost giggled at myself. Then I saw a footprint maybe seven inches from my head. It was dark and smeared, like it was left over from wet clay, but after a moment I realized it was made of blood. The giggle died at the back of my throat. I got up onto my hands and knees and crawled toward the companionway.

  The hatch had been pulled shut but there was no lock on it. I slid it back and removed the top splashboard from its channel. A meaty smell flew up and made me slightly dizzy. It was a smell of nauseating richness, of salt and iron and fat; a smell of the things we're made of. Trying not to gag, I stepped over the remaining boards and down into the cabin.

  By the dim glow that entered through the hatch, I found a light switch, flicked it on, and stared at a scene of random devastation. No, that's not exactly right—it was devastation but there seemed to be a system to it, an appalling kind of thoroughness. Drawers had been pulled out and dumped. Shelves had been swept clean. Floorboards had been lifted so that the bilge could be explored; here and there bulkhead panels had been unscrewed and tossed aside. Presiding over the shambles, like some kind of ghastly, hollow sentry, was the chalked outline of the murdered Latvian. Andrus had come to rest with his body splayed across the navigation table. One arm was raised and it seemed his head had been twisted to expose the jugular. There was a staggering amount of blood. It covered the table, had poured down onto a chair shoved underneath it; it was plentiful enough to pool at low places in the floor. Knots of flies still fed on it; some were stuck where puddles had coagulated around their greedy legs.

  I blinked and swallowed and had to remind myself to breathe. Had to remind myself, as well, that I was there not only to confront the dreadful spectacle but to learn from it. But good Christ, where did I start?

  I squatted down, began hopelessly riffling through tossed mounds of books and papers and clothing and dishes. Finding nothing that made the slightest bit of sense, I shifted my position, was disgusted to feel my bloodied sneakers sticking to the floor. I started in on another pile of meaningless remains.

  That's when I felt the boat move in its cradle.

  There was nothing boat-like or watery in the motion; it was more the quick jerk of an earthquake, and it seemed to come an instant before the thumping and scraping that told me Dream Chaser was being boarded.

  Adrenaline carried panic through my limbs before my mind had quite caught up. I found that I was standing. My eyes darted like those of a cornered rodent, seeking a hole to crawl into, a crevice through which to escape. My breath had become a fast shallow panting; the blood vapors coursed all through me, like I was smelling my own insides. Overhead, footsteps scratched and pounded; the whole cabin seemed to groan with every beat. I shuffled in my sticky shoes, but there was no place to run. I was pinned there, one more victim of the cursed vessel. In desperation, I switched off the light and shrank back in the darkness.

  That ploy accomplished nothing except to make me even blinder when the ruthless searchlight came probing through the open hatch. It raked the mess, then nailed me where I stood. In a gesture of great helplessness and pity, I raised my arms, crossed my wrists in front of my face. All I saw was an exploding brightness, and a gun barrel wagging, obscene and without context, a few feet from my head.

  ———

  Everyone turns really friendly at the lockup on Stock Island.

  They let me keep my belt and shoelaces, just made me wear an orange jumpsuit over my mildewing shorts. The jumpsuit had neatly pressed lapels, said monroe county jail in huge white letters on the back, and would have made a magnificent souvenir. The night sergeant took some information from the uniformed cops who'd brought me in, then passed me on to a guard who walked me to the holding tank.

  The tank was no Ritz-Carlton—just a jumbo cell with nasty lighting and a concrete floor—but I was pretty damn happy to be there. I mean, if it had been the guys in snorkels who joined me on the boat, I would probably be dead. As it was, I had a nice cozy jumpsuit and a cot to sit on; amazingly, the jail had been built on waterfront property, and there was even a faint smell of the Gulf to cleanse my blood-filled nostrils.

  I settled in and looked around. It was still before midnight on a Sunday; business was slow and the place seemed pretty benign—a time-out place for grown-ups needing to restore their grip. A couple of drunks were talking politics. A homeless guy was bragging to no one in particular about how many cans of tuna he could stuff into his pants. A fellow came over to me and started protesting that the whole thing was bullshit, he hadn't exposed himself, he was only peeing. Then he asked what I was in for. I wanted to sound like one of the guys. Casually, I said, "Ya know, criminal trespass, shit like that."

  After about ten minutes the lighting started getting to me, and the novelty of incarceration wore off, and I started wondering just how and when I could get out of there. I didn't have to think about it long. Within the hour a guard came in and told me they were taking me downtown.

  I guess I struck them as a bourgeois cream puff, because they didn't even bother cuffing me. Just bundled me into the backseat of a cruiser; and away we went. It was getting on to one o'clock by now. Traffic on the boulevard was very sparse.

  All that neon flashing at nothing, all those drive-throughs with no one driving through.

  At the rickety old headquarters on Angela Street, my escorts nudged me along the handicap ramp then up a flight of stairs. The stairs were narrow and the whole place smelled of warm copying machines. Pallid light came through door panels of ancient frosted glass. Somewhere, someone was typing; somewhere, someone laughed. The building was a warren of tiny offices and alcoves, and you couldn't tell where sound was coming from.

  We stopped in front of a door whose flaking letters sai
d detective bureau—homicide division.

  Inside, I was handed over to two plainclothes cops who were sitting at scratched metal desks with name plaques on them: lieutenant cruz and lieutenant corallo. The desks took up most of the small space that was not already filled by dented file cabinets and a couple of industrial-size oscillating fans that slowly, mournfully turned their faces side to side. Greasy dust clung to the fans; it looked like Spanish moss.

  Pretending to be busy with other things, the two detectives studied me obliquely for a moment. Then Cruz stared at me dead on and said, "You look familiar."

  He looked familiar to me too. Tall, burly guy with a funny hairline. Looked like his scalp was too small for his skull, and had been stretched into odd configurations like the tongues on a baseball. He had a dimple in his chin that was impossible to shave; short hairs sprouted from it in a whorl. Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen him. Lefty's funeral, a couple of days before. No, wait a second—Lefty's funeral that very morning. Jesus, what a day.

  Hoping to distract him from trying too hard to remember where he knew me from, I said, "You're probably thinking of some other guy who wears an orange jumpsuit."

  The two cops looked at each other and agreed that they were not amused. The second cop, Corallo, was muscle-bound but quite short; if he was at the funeral too I might have looked right over the top of him. In any case, his arms were so thick that they couldn't hang straight down, but stuck out from his sides like wings on a penguin. His shirt buttons pulled across his chest and he had sweat stains in his armpits. He had an abrupt and high-pitched voice that sounded like a clarinet. He said, "We could yank your license in a minute, funny man."

  I may not be tough, but I don't like being threatened, and my first reaction was defiance. "So yank it. I don't drive that much anyway."

  The cops looked at each other again. Cruz said, "Not your driver's license, asshole. Your PI license."

  Oh, that. For a cowardly moment I thought: Great. Terrific. Please yank it. Take my license, take my gun, just let me have my life back.

  Cruz riffled through some computer printouts on his desk. " 'Pete Amsterdam. Southernmost Detection, Inc.,' " he read. "In business two and a half years. Surprised we haven't met before."

  I thought: Where would we have met? The hot tub? The tennis courts? I didn't see why he had to know this was my debut outing. With quiet assurance I said, "I work clean."

  Corallo piped, "Not this time, pal. So why don't you tell us what you were doing on that boat?"

  I knew my rights, sort of. Calmly, professionally, even collegially, I said, "Sorry, guys. You know that's privileged."

  "Privileged, my ass," Corallo said. "You wanna go to jail?"

  "For what?" I said. "A dinky little misdemeanor?"

  Cruz folded his thick hands and got judicial. "Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor," he agreed. "Evidence tampering's a felony. One to five."

  Weakly, I said, "Years?"

  The muscle-bound cop leaned closer and I smelled him. Sweat mixed with deodorant is much worse than sweat alone. "And not in this fucking country club down here," he said. "Upstate." He raised his arm to point. "Where the real criminals go. Rapists. Killers. Lemme ask you something, Amsterdam. You like it up the ass? You fond of sucking big black dicks? Little white wuss like you, you'll be some bad boy's nancy ten minutes after you check in."

  I knew they were just trying to scare me. It was working pretty well. I thought about my accountant and his bright ideas. Benny. Smart guy, with his sharpened pencils. Let him get corn-holed by the chain gang!

  I shuffled my feet. I stalled for time. The big old greasy fans turned slowly, their heads shaking in mock sympathy.

  Finally, feeling defeated, but feeling too the bleak relief that goes with losing, giving up, I said, "Okay. Let's talk about the boat."

  15

  Fearing complications, fearing I'm not sure exactly what, I told them as little as I thought I had to. Problem was, that's not the kind of thing I'm good at gauging. Since leaving the world of bosses and meetings, I'd lost the reflex of dishonesty. I could still bullshit when I had to, but now I really had to concentrate. The malarkey no longer flowed by second nature, as it must for people who have jobs.

  But I didn't see how I could avoid telling them about Kenny Lukens. About his phony suicide and his intention of reclaiming what he'd stolen from Lefty's bar. About his one visit to my "office." About his murder that same night.

  The cops looked at each other. The dimple on Cruz's chin seemed to get deeper; the bristly hairs looked darker. "The stiff from Sunset Key," he said.

  "Exactly," I said. They'd let me sit down by now. I went to cross my legs. The bulk of the orange jumpsuit made it a difficult and somewhat clownish maneuver.

  "And the second killing," said Corallo, in that sudden clarinet voice of his, "they're still looking for what Lukens stole."

  A regular Holmes and Watson act. "Seems that way," I said.

  We all took a moment to think. The sound of obsessive typing still came from some other office. The greasy fans turned slowly side to side.

  Cruz leaned closer to me and said, "So wha'd he steal?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "What Lukens took," put in Corallo. "What the murderers are looking for. What is it?"

  He was leaning toward me too, his heavy arms cantilevered into space. All this leaning changed the geometry of the room in a very unpleasant way. I said, "I have no idea."

  "No idea?" said Cruz. His baseball hairline moved and I could have sworn that the stubble on his chin was growing before my eyes.

  "Lukens didn't even know," I said. "He just thought he'd grabbed an extra shift's worth of cash. Couldn't understand why Lefty cared so much."

  The cops looked at each other and apparently agreed that they were unconvinced. "Then what the hell were you looking for on that boat?" Corallo pressed.

  "I don't know what I was looking for."

  "Don't know what you were looking for," Cruz echoed, giving me a chance, I guess, to hear how dumb or how improbable I sounded. "Just casually snooping around."

  I managed a moment's feistiness. "Just trying to figure out who killed my client."

  "All by yourself," piped Corallo mockingly. The scorn narrowed his eyes and suddenly made his face seem waxy. Steroids probably, all those muscles. "Glory seeker."

  Right, I thought. That's me all over.

  There was a pause. Some drumming of thick fingers on metal desks. Finally Cruz said, "Wait a second. That's why you look familiar. You were at Ortega's funeral."

  I hoped I didn't stiffen when he said that. Prominent among the many things I hadn't told the cops about—my talks with Maggie and with Lydia and with Andrus; the Hibiscus guest house and the matchbook; the men in snorkels and the confrontation on Green Turtle Cay—was my visit with Lefty at the hospital. I sure didn't want to go into it now. "That's right," I said. "I was."

  "How come?" said Corallo.

  "To see if there was anything to learn."

  "Like?" said Cruz.

  I shrugged. "Like—who knows? Just to get a sense of who his friends were, how he operated."

  "And wha'd ya figure out?" Corallo pressed.

  "I figured out about that thingie they use to cram the coffins into the high-up crypts."

  Corallo shot a disgusted look at Cruz. Cruz rubbed his eyes. I yawned. This was not calculated nonchalance, just plain exhaustion. After a moment, Cruz said, "Why the hell didn't you come to us? From the start?"

  "Come on," I said. "What kind of private eye does that?"

  They looked at me with a grudging respect then. No—I just wanted to imagine that they did. What they looked at me with was boredom and annoyance and fatigue.

  Cruz said, "Listen, Amsterdam, no offense, but you're a fuckin' amateur. You want to be a PI in this town, get yourself a long lens and go stake out motel rooms. This is police business. Your client's dead. Your job's finished. Stay the hell out of it and we'll forget about tonight. Okay?"<
br />
  I stared at the floor and made a point of looking like I was carefully weighing the proposition.

  But the weird part is that I was weighing it. I should have been the happiest man alive. Absolved of my first felony, and unequivocally ordered to give up the fumbling crusade that was wrecking my small contentment. It was the perfect out, and yet it didn't set right. I felt like something of value was being wrested from me, even if it was a thing that made me miserable. And I found to my amazement that I wasn't ready to pledge to give it up. As if a promise still mattered in this world, I searched for a way to avoid giving my word. I said, "Will you let me keep the jumpsuit?"

  It was way too late for anyone to see the humor. Cruz frowned so that his hairline moved. Corallo puffed up his barrel chest and said, "Take the fuckin' thing off. And go the hell home."

  16

  I crashed immediately and slept till ten.

  I would have slept still later, except for a loud, insistent hammering on my front door. It went on awhile, stopped, then started in again; it got louder then switched over to a tapping on the window. At length I gave up on going back to sleep, pulled on a robe, and went downstairs.

  I opened the front door and saw Ozzie Kimmel. This was not a great start to the day. He was wearing a tank top that had once been red. Now it had faded to a splotched and hideous orangey pink, with armholes so stretched that they hung down nearly to the waist. He was holding a newspaper; slapping it from time to time, and laughing maniacally. "Awright, Pete!" he yelled between cackles. "Popped your cherry, guy! You're a real local now! A regular Bubba. Right in there with the other deadbeat fall-down perverts! Yes!"

  Beyond Ozzie, the morning was very bright. I narrowed my eyes, and wished I could have narrowed my ears. "What are you talking about?" I wearily asked.

  He brayed in my face and slapped the paper again. "Page two! Police blotter, man! The locals' honor roll! The cavalcade of assholes! You made it! Right up there with the lunatics shooting BB guns at chickens and the crazy lezzies fighting over strap-on dildos. Congratulations, Bubba!"