The Black Palmetto

by Paul Carr

  “Sorry, I have to protect my sources. What do you have to say about it?”

  “The chief just brought me in for some more questions. He dragged out a file on the two-month-old murder you mentioned last night. Then he let me go. That's all there was to it.”

  He turned and strode out the door.

  When they got into the car Simone said, “You think somebody killed Spanner and put him under some poured concrete?”

  “If he's dead, the killer might have planned on doing that, but I think he would’ve changed his mind when he saw me talking to Jake Bell.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense. And you just mentioned it to keep the reporter busy for a while.”

  He nodded as he started the car. “The guy couldn't have known whether or not Bell mentioned that to me when he asked about a meeting.”

  “He was probably in the restaurant,” Simone said, “and saw you flash the photograph.”

  Sam pulled out of the parking lot, drove down to the next block, and turned into a gas station. He got out and filled the car in the midday sun. A bead of perspiration ran down the side of his face. While the pump ticked away the gallons, he watched Lora Diamond's car exit Chopin's lot and turn toward the Overseas Highway.

  When he got back in the car Simone said, “She's headed to Marathon. Let's go back and talk to Tattoo Boy.”

  Smiling, Sam said, “We do think alike.”

  ****

  Chief Boozler was about to go across the street for lunch when Officer Dudley Crew came into his office with a sheet of paper.

  “I found the record of Mackenzie’s Florida driver's license. The lieutenant must have missed it. I also got this from a contact with the Department of Defense.” He handed the report to the chief.

  The chief studied the profile, which said only that the man had been a Navy SEAL ten years or so before. There was nothing else. No duty locations, no assignments, nothing but blank space.

  “SEALs are special forces, right?” the chief asked.

  “Correct, sir. It stands for ‘Sea, Air, and Land.’ They're big into underwater demolition.”

  “You mean explosives?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So the absence of information about this guy probably means what he did was classified.”

  “That would be my interpretation. Or illegal.”

  Boozler laid the report down and smiled. Dudley knew his computers.

  “That all you needed?” the officer asked.

  “Yeah, but I want you to do something on another case. How about checking the files for that John Doe murder and see if there are any photographs of the victim.”

  Crew left and returned within a few minutes.

  “The evidence list contained an entry for ten photographs taken of the victim, but they were missing from the box.”

  “What could have happened to them?”

  Crew shrugged. “Somebody probably took them out and forgot to put them back.”

  When Crew had gone, the chief pulled up the e-mail from the parole officer to give him the news in a reply. Within minutes, he got another e-mail from the guy asking to have the body exhumed. He said he'd seen the tattoos on his parolee, so he'd drive down and examine the ones on the body of the John Doe to see if they matched.

  Just what Boozler needed, some state guy coming in asking questions. He forwarded the e-mail to Lonnie, asking him to get an exhumation order from the local judge.

  On his way out, he stopped by his secretary's desk and asked her to set up an appointment with the prosecutor, Dale Edison, at one o'clock. He might as well go over everything with him, too, and make sure they were on the same page about the Jake Bell case. Then he strode out the door, thinking about SEAL operatives and all the ways they probably had to kill a man. He also thought about the grief his office would catch from Morton Bell if they didn't soon come up with a credible solution to his son's murder.

  ****

  Boozler entered Edison’s outer office. The prosecutor’s secretary had stepped away, so he proceeded around her desk to knock on Edison’s closed door. It opened when he reached out, and Edison stood there with a leather-bound bible in his hand. The chief wondered what that was about, pretty sure the guy wasn’t a religious person.

  The prosecutor jerked when he saw the chief and just stood there for an awkward moment. He wore a dark gray suit that matched the color of his tinted glasses.

  “Can I help you, Rich?”

  “We're supposed to have a meeting at one.”

  “Huh. I guess I didn't get the message. Come on in.” He laid the book down on the corner of his desk, and a tiny cloud of fine white powder puffed from its pages. It could have been a number of things, but the first that came to mind was cocaine. Edison had always seemed a little familiar, like someone who had crossed paths with Boozler in the past. He had never thought much about it, but when he saw the powder a little alarm sounded off in Boozler’s head.

  Edison’s face flushed red when he saw Boozler looking at the book. He sat down and said, “This meeting about the Bell murder?”

  The chief averted his eyes to his notes. “Yes, I thought I’d go over what we have so far and make sure we’re all on the same page.”

  With the awkward moment seemingly past, he laid out the facts about the case. He also told Sam Mackenzie's story and what they’d learned since the night before. “I'd bet a week's salary he killed lots of men as a SEAL. He could have killed the guy we found two months ago on the highway, too. I checked out his alibi during that time. The guy he told me to call said he'd been with him all that week working on Mackenzie's boat, but he couldn't vouch for his time after four or so each day. That would've been plenty of time for him to drive down US-1, kill a man, and get back to Miami in time for a few hours’ sleep before morning. I'd like to arrest him, but the only evidence we have is that he spoke with Jake Bell about an hour before the murder.”

  Edison took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and sighed. He stood and walked to his window. The bright afternoon sun traced his six-foot silhouette. “Morton called this morning. He's heard about Mackenzie and doesn’t know why we haven't brought him in. But I'm with you. We don’t have enough on him for an arrest.”

  When he returned to his chair, Boozler studied his eyes. Despite the brightness at the window, his pupils seemed as large as blueberries.

  “Got anybody else that might be connected at all?” Edison asked. “Morton will be gunning for us if we don't do something soon.”

  Boozler shook his head. “Nobody else, but I've got Lonnie and a couple of other officers working on it. We should turn up something soon.”

  Edison chuckled. “Lonnie, huh?”

  “Lonnie's okay. He just runs off at the mouth a little too much.”

  The prosecutor smirked. “We agree on that last part.”

  Boozler stood and left the man sitting there with his arms crossed on his chest. The cocaine-in-the-bible angle might be something he would investigate further on his own. Maybe drop by after hours and get a peek inside the book. Probably had a cutout for a mirror and a snorting straw. Never know when you might need a prosecutor in your back pocket. And he would need to think more about where he might have seen Edison before he’d come to work in Iguana Key. It bothered him when something nagged at him he couldn’t put his finger on.

  He stopped by Lonnie’s desk and asked if he'd gotten the exhumation order signed by the judge. The lieutenant picked up an envelope and tapped its edge on his desktop. “Right here, Chief. You want me to deliver it to the funeral home?”

  “We’ll both go in case Howard Tim gives you a hard time. That guy from Tallahassee is coming down this evening. It'll be better if we have that body out of the ground so he can examine it and be on his way.”

  Chapter Seven

  When Sam and Simone entered the door of Chopin’s, the fat man stood behind the bar straightening liquor bottles on the wall. He wore a T-shirt with Juilliard stenciled across its back. They took seats o
n barstools and Chopin turned around.

  “Didn't you two just leave?”

  “Yeah,” Simone said. “But we wanted to talk to you without the local mouthpiece listening.”

  The corners of his pudgy mouth turned up in a smile. “Sugar, you can talk to me anytime you want. Get you a drink?”

  “Yeah,” Simone said, “give us a beer.”

  The bartender filled two frosted mugs and set them on coasters in front of them. He fixed a stare on Sam, his palms flat on the bar.

  “Way I hear it, you been keeping the fuzz hopping around here.”

  Sam smiled. “You attend Juilliard?” He remembered the man saying something about being a pianist the night before.

  Chopin looked down at the front of his shirt, which bore the same decoration as the back. He grinned. “Yeah. Master of Music. I used to play concerts at the Lincoln Center, but I got tired of that gig and moved south to open this bar.”

  “Just like that, from Juilliard to bartender.”

  Chopin shrugged. “Pretty much. Hard to live up to a name like mine in the music business.”

  “You recognized the guy in the photo we showed you last night,” Simone said. “Why didn't you tell us about him?”

  Smiling, he said to Sam, “I don't blab to pigs.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow. “I told you, we're not with the law.”

  “I know what you said, but you got the look. I can spot you guys a mile away.”

  Simone gave Sam a sidelong glance. He winked, and she took a sip of her beer, set it down on the bar, and slid it to one side.

  She grabbed Chopin by the front of his shirt with both hands and jerked, scrubbing his corpulence against the bar, bringing his face to within inches of her own.

  “Would cops smash your nose on this bar?” she asked.

  The round man just stared at her beautiful face and grinned.

  Reaching his arm between them, Sam said, “Hold on. I think he'll tell us.”

  She released him and he staggered back against the liquor racks behind him, rattling the bottles, still grinning.

  Clearly not the effect she'd hoped for. “Okay, piano boy, tell us what you know about Sean Spanner, or I can get a lot rougher.”

  Chopin said to Sam, “She do this for free, or do I have to pay?”

  Sam shook his head. “Better not provoke her.”

  He must have seen something sinister in her eyes, because the grin leaked away.

  “All right, he was here. He didn't talk to anybody, including me. He just sat at the bar drinking beer. Every now and then he called somebody on his cell phone, but I don’t think he ever got anybody to answer.”

  Sam took a drink of the beer and set it down. “How long did he stay?”

  “I don’t know, maybe an hour. I kind of lost track, we were so busy.”

  “You're sure he didn't talk to anybody else?”

  “I didn't notice it if he did. I can ask the waitress on duty that night. She served him a couple of beers while I was busy.”

  He stepped through a door going to the rear of the building and came back in less than a minute, a blonde woman dressed in jeans trailing behind him.

  “Tell them about the guy,” Chopin said.

  The woman eyed them then turned to her boss. Her expression said, You sure about this?

  “They're not cops,” he said.

  She turned to Sam. “Not much to say. I asked him if he was just visiting town, and he said he was. Said he lived in Miami. He didn’t seem to want to talk, so I left him alone.”

  “He didn't say anything about who he was visiting?” Sam asked.

  The blonde’s eyes narrowed. “No, I told you everything he said. He rob a bank or something?”

  “Not a bank, but he stole something, and we need to get it back.”

  Chopin told her she could go back to work, and when she'd gone Sam asked if he knew about the murder that had happened two months before.

  “Sure, everybody around here knew about it.”

  “You have any theories about who did it?”

  He raised an eyebrow, scanned around the bar, and leaned in closer. “Some guys were in here from Miami a few weeks ago, and after a few drinks I could tell they were connected. You know, mob―”

  “Yeah, I get the picture.”

  “Anyway, I mentioned that body out on the highway to them and told them the word was it was a mob hit. They said no way. Said if it was their kind of business they would know about it. They acted like it insulted them that I would even mention it. I gave them a couple of drinks on the house and they went away happy, but I could tell they were hiding something.”

  The guy seemed like somebody who could be connected himself.

  “So you pegged it as a mob hit?”

  “Yeah. Those guys wouldn't admit something like that to me.”

  “If you're wrong, and it happened to be somebody in town, who would you put your money on?”

  Chopin seemed to study on the question then frowned. “I didn’t know the guy who got whacked, and I never heard anybody else say they knew him, so I don’t have any idea.”

  ****

  The beautiful River Funeral Home sat on a man-made canal fed from the Gulf of Mexico, patiently awaiting the next dearly departed. An imposing structure, it was overshadowed only by its massive billboard that rose a hundred feet in the air.

  The lieutenant parked the cruiser behind the facility, and he and the chief went in through the employee entrance. They passed the open door of the bookkeeper’s office and Boozler tapped on the jamb.

  She turned around. “Can I help you?”

  “We have an exhumation order. Can you get Howard out here?”

  She motioned for them to follow her down the hall and swung open the door to a large room. Two embalming tables stood close to the far wall. Howard Tim leaned over one of them, fiddling with a machine of some kind.

  “Lieutenant Cates and Chief Boozler are here to see you,” she said through the doorway. “You want them in the lobby?”

  The undertaker came over. “This isn't a hotel. The front room is called Heavens Hall.”

  The bookkeeper wrinkled her nose, as if smelling a foul odor. “Well, Heavens Hall, whatever.” She turned and went back toward her office.

  When Tim saw them standing there, he said, “Officer Cates, Chief. Nice of you to stop by.”

  He led them down the hall to the front room, where there were several chairs and a sofa.

  “It’s Lieutenant,” Cates said when they stopped.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “It’s Lieutenant Cates, not Officer.”

  “Oh, sorry.” He turned to the chief as if to dismiss Lonnie. “What can I do for you?”

  The chief held up the court document. “I've got an exhumation order for that John Doe you buried back in April. A parole officer from Tallahassee is coming here today to check it for identification.”

  The undertaker took off his glasses, polished the thick lenses with a handkerchief, and put them back on. “Can you say that again?”

  “The medical examiner reported a tattoo on the Doe's upper arm, and the parole guy thinks he might be his missing parolee. The judge says we can dig him up. We need it done post-haste.”

  The undertaker ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I can't believe this.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Howard Tim frowned. “I received a call from a Lauderdale funeral home asking me to dig up John Doe and bring him up there. The body’s gone.”

  Boozler felt his pulse thumping at his temple, his face heating up. “When did this happen?”

  Howard Tim frowned. “I got the call yesterday afternoon. We disinterred the deceased about 8:00 p.m., and the hearse left here at 10:00 p.m.”

  “You must be out of your mind, Howard. Nobody ever identified that body.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do? The man who called said the Fort Lauderdale Police Department had identified the man as a lo
cal citizen. He said the family was having a belated funeral, and the deceased had to be there by this morning. I told him you would have to approve it, but he assured me he'd already talked to you and everything was arranged.”

  “Nobody talked to me.” The chief sighed, took his notebook from his pocket, and sat down in an imitation leather chair.

  “Did the body get delivered to Lauderdale?”

  “Well there must have been a snag somewhere. I called the funeral home up there twice this morning. My men never arrived with the body. They didn’t return here, either, and neither of them have a cell phone, so I don’t know what happened. I suppose I shouldn't have given them any money up front. They probably got drunk and forgot where they were going.”

  The undertaker stared for a moment and opened his mouth, but closed it again.

  “What is it?” Boozler asked.

  “Well, there was something else. The funeral home manager didn't seem to know what I was talking about.”

  After staring at him for what seemed like a full minute, the chief said, “Do you think it could have been somebody in town who called you?”

  Howard shook his head. “I told you, it was somebody in Lauderdale.”

  “How do you know? Did you see the caller ID?”

  “Well, no, it was late, and I didn’t think about it, but I can go find it right now. The call should still be there.”

  Boozler rolled his eyes. “Lonnie, go with him.”

  They went to the phone in Howard Tim's office and found the number. It had a local area code, which extended from Miami to Key West. Fort Lauderdale had a different code.

  “Okay, Howard, as you can see, the call didn't originate in Lauderdale, so it could have been somebody calling from here in town. Think back. Did it sound like anybody you know?”

  The undertaker’s eyes seemed even larger than usual, like golf balls behind those thick lenses. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his suit coat, and blinked a couple of times.

  “Well, it did sound like somebody I've heard, but I thought it was just my imagination.”

  “Who?”

  The tall man pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. They were like tiny dots after seeing them behind the magnifiers.

  “Gee, I'm sorry, Rich, I just don't know. If I'd thought more about it then―or if I heard him again—I might be able to say who it was.” He replaced the specs. “Wait, my bookkeeper answered the phone. Maybe she recognized the voice.”