The Naked Detective

by Laurence Shames

  I thought it over and stared at the sky. A broad band of yellow rolled up from the western horizon like an enormous bolster. At its upper edge it phased into a peculiar acid green that I've never seen anywhere but in the Keys. I stared, and a new misgiving tweaked me. Kenny Lukens had told me that he never even peeked inside the second pouch. But why should I believe that? Wouldn't it be more in line with human nature to check out what one had pilfered?

  And if Kenny had looked in the pouch, and did know what was in it, and just had to tell somebody about it, who would he have told? His only Key West friend. His one true confidante. My supposed ally and almost my lover: Maggie.

  I thought about that and my queasiness returned, but now it wasn't the waves that were giving me a bellyache. Now it was the possibility that Maggie knew exactly what was in that pouch, and wanted it, and, like her pal Kenny before her, was setting me up to run some potentially fatal errand to retrieve it.

  The sky dimmed. So did my mood. By now I was taking something almost like pleasure in my mounting paranoia, and I probed an even creepier idea: How did I know for sure that Maggie had in fact been Kenny Lukens' friend? I had only her account of it. He hadn't mentioned her. It was she who'd prompted me again and again to imagine them as bosom buddies. But what proof did I have? She claimed he called her from the Bahamas; how did I know that was true? She said he'd sent letters; I'd never seen them. True, she had a story that neatly explained the matchbook from Green Turtle Cay—but that story didn't have to come from Kenny. It could just as easily have come from the person in pursuit of Kenny— someone with whom Maggie was in cahoots.

  I shivered. There was moisture underneath my life vest and the air was gradually cooling, but that's not why I got goose bumps. I got goose bumps because I was weirding myself out, big- time. I felt by now that I had come this close to shtupping a murderess, commingling my seed with that of a monster. Then I thought: Pete, for God's sake get a grip. The woman teaches yoga. She drinks herb tea. Who ever heard of a killer teaching yoga? You can't send her to the Chair just because she put her leotard back on.

  I frowned up at the heavens. The acid green had dulled to a lusterless silver. Looking back across my shoulder, I saw that the first stars were just emerging in the east. I took a long slow breath, then started up my Jet Ski. The engine noise was ugly but I was glad to have it drowning out my thoughts.

  The harbor traffic had thinned to almost nothing as I headed in; the chop had all gone flat. Reggae wafted from the wharf-side bars. Lights spilled from the honky-tonks and tiki huts and made the water underneath me look magenta.

  I was more than halfway home when the contraption I was riding took a sudden right-hand turn and carried me out again toward Sunset Key.

  21

  Back when it was still Tank Island, Sunset Key belonged to everyone and no one; it was one of those unofficial public parks that often get more use than designated ones. On the side that faced Key West, rocks and current made it difficult to land, but on the Gulf side there was placid water and tiny crescent beaches where people dragged their boats and laid out picnics and indulged in semipublic nudity. Dogs had adventures in the underbrush and came back with sandy snouts.

  Now the current had been tamed by jetties, and there was a spiffy new dock that only the official launch was allowed to use. The underbrush had been cleaned out; No Trespassing signs had sprouted in its place. A metal fence ringed the island, as near to the high-tide line as the developers could sink their pilings.

  In the gathering dusk, I edged closer to the shore and saw a classic image of half-finished Florida—fancy houses waiting for their grass to grow; others that were mere skeletons of two-by- fours. Promising graciousness, there was a club-house with a striped canopy; ersatz palapas lined a glowing pool. All very cozy.

  But I was looking for a murder site, not a real estate investment—and some not quite reasonable hunch made me confident that I would find it. It would be away from lights and homes. At a spot where palms survived just outside the fence. A small dinghy could scrape ashore there, and there would be a nameless residue of something dreadful having happened.

  I idled, traced out scallops of the coastline, and at length became certain that I'd reached the place. A tongue of sand led to a shadowed scrap of beach. I ran the Jet Ski onto it, thinking: another day, another trespass, another crime scene violated. Yet I felt oddly calm, calmer than when my thoughts had still been stuck on Maggie. I climbed off the Ski and walked the foreshore till it rose up steeply in a kind of terrace. There, squeezed right up against the fence, were a pair of palms bent parallel as dancers.

  Between them, there was a slight depression in the sand. Unreasonably but firmly, I became convinced that this had to be the hole that Kenny Lukens was digging when he died. The depression was very shallow, practically filled in already, and it made me very sad. We all know that everything passes. All human effort gets erased. But on a beach it happens with dizzy and humiliating speed. Wind and tide flatten and sculpt. Crabs and ants launch tiny avalanches of tumbling grains. Past configurations count for nothing; the people who were there yesterday might never have been born.

  I squatted down next to the disappearing hole. I don't know why, but it seemed important to me to touch the sand. I dug my hands in.

  The sand still held late sunshine, was much warmer than the evening air. It was powdery on top, but underneath it caked around palm roots that were as hard as collarbones. I kneaded the sand, sifted it, turned it over. Then my fingers found something that wasn't beach. It was slender and smooth but had at one end a jagged, splintered point. I dug it out, examined it in the dying light. It seemed to be a broken plastic swizzle stick. Of course—there always had to be a matchbook and there always had to be a swizzle stick. This one had two flat squares at the top, overlapping each other on the diagonal.

  I put it in the pocket of my life vest, then like a terrier I flicked some sand back onto the secret place I'd messed with. As I did so, I came abruptly to the end of my fragile and probably phony calm. I ran back to the Jet Ski, pushed it out into the water, and got the hell out of there.

  ———

  "Did ya love it?" asked the goofy kid with the lanyard around his neck.

  I slid off the Jet Ski and onto the dock. "Fabulous," I said. "Terrific."

  I fished the swizzle stick out of my pocket and examined it under the humming lights. It was translucent red, and the flat squares turned out to be dice. A three and a four. Tiny depressions had been stamped in; they still held faint flecks of white paint, the rest having been scoured by the sand. I showed it to the kid. "Any idea where this is from?"

  He studied it like it was an artifact from Troy. At last he said, "Looks like one of ours. Want a discount coupon?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Discount coupon for the gambling boat. The Lucky Duck. I'm not supposed to give a coupon if you already got the sunset special, but what the hell."

  Everybody loves a bargain, right? "Sure," I said. "I'll take a coupon."

  I gave him back the life vest and we went up to the kiosk where he'd done the paperwork. He handed me a fake ten-dollar bill. It took a moment before I realized that in the oval where U. S. Grant should have been, there was a picture of a guy who looked a lot like Nero. Slick curly hair surmounted a broad and loose and sensual face, which rested in turn on a bed of rippling chins. He smiled like a rich cheese was tickling his gums. He looked familiar; and after a moment I remembered him from Lefty's funeral. The man with the Japanese fan.

  "Mickey Veale?" I guessed.

  "You know Mickey?" asked the kid.

  "Only heard of him. What's he like?"

  "He's a pisser. Good boss. First-name kind of guy. Not a suit, ya know?"

  I looked again at the satyr who'd put himself on money. I could see him in a toga way easier than I could see him in a suit. "I heard he came from Vegas."

  "Yup. Vegas got too wholesome for him. 'Least that's what he says. They put in kiddie rides, he was ou
t of there."

  I thought: Gee, if it turns out that he's not a murderer; chances are I could have a few laughs with this guy. "He go out on the boat?"

  "Keeps an office on it," said the kid. "Some nights he goes out, some nights he doesn't."

  "I need a reservation?"

  "Just show up at a quarter of eleven. North Haven Marina. It's over—"

  "Next to Redmond's," I put in. "Toxic Triangle."

  The kid looked at me a little funny. "You're not really from New Jersey, are you?"

  I took it as a compliment but insisted that I was. I said good night and went to fetch my bike.

  22

  And then I actually got to spend a couple hours at home.

  Frankly, this was heaven—a heaven of the simplest things. A hot shower. A plate of scrambled eggs. A glass of young and cedary Côtes-du-Rhône and some music on the stereo. Bill Evans playing live stuff from the fifties, early sixties. Getting amazing precision out of crappy road pianos, with no chance for a second take. No one's ever done it better.

  I made coffee. In years long past I wouldn't have bothered, but it so happened that the boat sailed at what had become my usual bedtime, and it would have been embarrassing to fall asleep amid the revelry and on the job. Around ten- thirty I got back on my bike and headed toward the harbor once again.

  I skirted Redmond's, skirted thoughts of Maggie, and at the far end of a brand-new pier I found The Lucky Duck. It could not have been mistaken for; say, the QE2. It was smallish—a hundred ten, a hundred twenty feet. Its paint was lumpy and its fittings were scratched and tarnished. But it would not be fair to say it was a tub. It was just old, and obsolete, degraded like a pushed-aside executive by a succession of ever-lower uses. It had a nice line to it, and in its heyday—probably the twenties—it had likely been a helluva private yacht. The rails were gullied now but teak; the main cabin was sided with mahogany and the cleats that held the dock lines were solid brass.

  I lined up at the bottom of the gangplank. The boat, I guessed, could take around a hundred fifty people, but this was a Monday toward the end of April, and there weren't more than sixty in the line. Every one of us cheapskates had a discount coupon with Mickey Veale's portrait on it.

  After a while we paid our $19.95 and boarded. I made a quick tour of the ship. In what had once been the wheelhouse, there was a small bar and three poker tables. The room smelled of cigars and whiskey spilled on felt that never quite dried. A sort of breezeway led back to the main saloon, which was a complete casino in miniature. Slot machines lined the port-holed walls; a craps table and a roulette wheel took up two corners. A second bar shared the aft bulkhead with a bleak buffet that looked like something from a chain motel close by to an interstate. Between the cold cuts and the booze was a narrow stairway that led down to the heads and, I imagined, to the boss's shipboard office.

  The engines started, the gangplank was raised, and the crowd fell on the cubes of Swiss cheese and the little tubes of turkey like they were going to the gallows in the morning.

  I stepped outside to watch our progress through the harbor. We passed buoys that, up close, were gigantic, then rounded the jetty at Fort Zack and headed out to sea. A late moon was rising, sluggish, pink and dusty; waves of phosphorescence spread out from our bow. I took a deep breath that smelled of iodine and fish, and realized rather suddenly that I had no plan. What exactly was I doing here? I hated buffets and I didn't like to gamble. Why squander adrenaline that could be saved for less contrived emergencies? I hoped, of course, to study Mickey Veale. But if he wasn't aboard, it would be a long and wasted night.

  Then a subversive little question started pricking me: Wasted as compared with what?

  I kicked that one aside and watched the stars. In another fifteen minutes or so, just inside the reef, we crossed the three-mile limit. I felt the boat slip into neutral, heard the grinding fall of the anchor chain. The hook was set with a slow jolt in reverse, then someone rang a bell and it was time for the gaming to begin.

  I enjoyed a last calm moment and stepped into the casino. After the clean tang of the ocean, the cabin seemed very smoky, and held another smell I dimly remembered from, like, junior high school dances—the soupy smell of nervous desire, of libido twisted up like breath in a trombone. Cards were being shuffled. There was the dry click of chips being stacked, the muted ring of coins. I picked my way over to the bar. There were seven or eight stools, most of which were empty. It seemed a time and place for bourbon. I ordered one and reached for my wallet.

  "It's free," the bartender advised, "if we bring it to you while you're playing."

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll pay for it."

  He looked at me as though I were some grand eccentric, then went on to other business. I drank. I watched. There was a blackjack player with a dreadful tic, a cocktail waitress whose gender was in doubt. Bored, I drank too fast. Then Mickey Veale appeared in the stairway not ten feet from where I sat.

  He was even heavier than his picture made him look, a bloated product of late empire. He wore an enormous mint-green guayabera that hung down far below his middle; even so, you could tell that the waistband of his pants had been exiled to some damp place beneath the epic belly. His swelling arms seemed attached as though by webbing to his flanks; his neck was crinkled like a dryer hose.

  He lumbered up the steps, pushing weightily on the brass banister, eyes raking the tables and gauging the action at the slots. He began to work the room. A handshake here, a backslap there. His smile was wide and flubbery and his eyes squeezed shut when he laughed—by all appearances, your basic gregarious and jolly fat man. Lydia Ortega had said he was a sneak. He didn't look sneaky to me. Unless he was the type who distracted by sheer mass and flamboyance, who used an excess of impressions to hide the real goods underneath.

  He kibitzed roulette awhile, spent some time overlooking blackjack. Finally he worked his way back toward the little bar. At one end was a couple whose life seemed to be falling quietly apart and who clearly wanted to be left alone. At the other end was me. Mickey Veale and I made some cautious eye contact. He gestured vaguely toward the gambling floor and saved me the trouble of trying to start a conversation. "Not running lucky?" he asked.

  "Haven't put it to the test," I said. "Mainly just out for a boat ride."

  He gave me a nod that was full of understanding, like I was one more lonely insomniac of a kind he'd met before.

  I smiled wanly and realized I was out of things to say. I paused for a breath and smelled the big man's aftershave. Clove. Nice, not too sweet. I heard myself continue: "So—I understand you came from Vegas?"

  He seemed neither surprised nor suspicious that I knew this. In fact, it seemed to give him pleasure. He liked it that he was known, talked about, a character. He extended a pillowy hand and told me his name. I told him mine and we shook. Then he went on, "Getting out of Vegas— best goddamn thing I ever did."

  "How come?"

  "Vegas is finished." He looked down at my nearly empty glass. "Buy you a drink?"

  I nodded that he could. He lifted several chins to the bartender. Two jumbos quickly appeared.

  "Cheers," he said. He perched largely on a stool and slurped his drink. "Vegas, the Indians are kicking their ass. On the gaming side, I mean. They're getting murdered. So wha' does Vegas do? They go all soft and family. Disneyland with chips. Floor shows with cartoon characters. From G-strings to G ratings." He leaned a little closer and went on confidentially, "Day care. Fuckin' day care! In Vegas? It's sickening. When the hookers started doing story hour, I knew it was time to get out."

  "So how'd you pick Key West?" I asked him.

  He loudly chewed an ice cube before he answered. "Lemme tell ya somethin'. Key West is the best town in America. The last grown-up, raunchy, sleazy place. God bless it! Ya know when I realized this? When they had that court case about what was naked and what was not. Remember?"

  It so happened that I did remember. It had to do with Fantasy Fest, two, three years
ago. Some killjoys were alleging that it was illegal for people to parade naked and simulate sex acts in front of thousands of onlookers on Duval Street. Several arrests were made.

  "The hearings made the news," Mickey Veale went on. "National. One woman said, 'I wasn't naked, I was wearing body paint.' Another woman said, 'I wasn't naked, I had glitter on.' And I thought, Yes! A town where painted titties count as clothes, where sparkles in the pubic hair count as underpants, this is a town for me! So I closed up shop in Vegas, and here I am." He finished off the rest of his drink in one heroic swallow and gestured for another. "And what brings you here? Vacation?"

  I didn't answer right away. I was still sorting through my first impressions of Mickey Veale. So far he struck me as crude, profane, and in-your-face; which is to say I liked him pretty well. But now that it was my turn to talk, I wasn't sure how to begin. Caginess did not seem suited to the time or place; Veale's at least seeming unguardedness called for a response in kind. So I thought the hell with it and blurted, "I came to Key West because my life kind of sucked, and I came to your boat because of a couple of murders."

  Mickey Veale said, "What?"

  He was looking at me like I was a nut, and I wished that I could start again, could swim upward through the empty air and regain the comfort of the diving board. My throat closing down around the word, I said again, "Murders."

  He squinted at me and said with certainty, "You're not a cop."

  With considerably less certainty, I said, "I'm a detective."

  He looked me up and down. "You don't look like a detective."

  Was this getting personal? A two-bit gambling boat in a two-bit town—what was he expecting, Robert Mitchum? I shrugged and stared at him. His big face had changed and was changing some more. Gone was the shmoozing-with-customers smile. His eyes had turned cautious and he seemed beset. He might have even flinched. But of course there are a lot of different kinds of flinches. Guilty ones; affronted ones; ones that mean nothing and only have to do with gas.