Tampa Burn

by Randy Wayne White

  It had been too close. Too ugly.

  I wanted faces of friends to replace his in my memory, before the image seared itself.

  But there wasn’t much chance I’d make it back in time.

  Despite the handcuffs, and out of habit, I tried to check my watch anyway. I flinched to move my arms from behind me and sneak a glance. Impossible. Not sitting alone in the back seat of a Collier County Sheriff’s deputy’s vehicle.

  I’d been placed there by a uniformed deputy with the briefest of explanations—“Relax. We’ll get back to you.”—and so had been waiting and watching a small army of law enforcement people move in busy silence outside my air-conditioned space.

  I was thirsty. I also had to pee.

  They’d treated Hugo, Elmase, Balserio, and me all the same.

  When the first three squad cars came skidding toward us, the officers bailed with weapons drawn and pointed, screaming, “Get down! Show us your hands ! Get down! Get down!”

  So much for my theory that I’d be singled out as an innocent local and given special treatment.

  We were approached cautiously, asked the whereabouts of weaponry, then handcuffed, frisked, I.D.s taken, then separated.

  Because firearms were involved, they explained, and because there was a report of shots fired, everyone had to be constrained until officers figured out who was who and what had happened.

  It took a while.

  Finally, a woman in a starched deputy’s uniform opened the door and asked, “You’re the gentleman who called nine-one-one?”

  Then she asked, “Do you mind answering a few questions?”

  Sitting in the back of the squad car, I repeated my story separately to two different uniformed deputies. They were both articulate, professional.

  After the first interview, I was told I had to remain in the back seat, but the handcuffs were removed, my driver’s license was returned, and I was allowed to take a whiz.

  As I returned to the car, I noted that Elmase, Hugo, and the sadistic General were in separate vehicles, all getting lots of close attention from people both in uniform and out. They were still handcuffed, too, judging from their posture.

  I was pleased.

  After telling my story a second time, I was asked politely if I wouldn’t mind sticking around long enough to tell it again to a couple of officers from the Major Crimes Division who’d soon arrive.

  It sounded like a request, though it wasn’t. I pretended to be magnanimous and cooperative.

  In my account, I doctored the truth in several places. I didn’t mention that Tomlinson and Pilar had been with me, nor that my son had been kidnapped. I told them that while I was being pursued, someone had shot at my car on two different occasions from the Chevy.

  Because I knew it was possible that Balserio had used a fake passport to enter the country, and because I didn’t want to risk being linked to press accounts about a Masaguan politico being arrested, I didn’t volunteer his last name.

  “It was the tall guy,” I said. “The one who fired the shots is the same one who came at me with the knife. I could see him in the rearview mirror, shooting. I’ll swear to it.”

  The knife idiocy was enough to put him in jail, but I had to include the shooting incidents. I’d already told the dispatcher it was happening when I dialed 911.

  Aware that it’s the rare citizen who ever hears a weapon fired with lethal intent, I stammered and rambled to seem sufficiently upset, but managed to tell the officer precisely where Balserio had popped off the rounds: the curve where Ervin Rouse’s house had once stood—easy to describe—and then again on the straight-away.

  I knew they’d go looking, and I knew they’d find the spent brass casings. Three rounds at each place, near the ditch, on the passenger’s side of the road.

  I also knew they’d search the Chevy and find the weapon that had fired those rounds: my Sig Sauer. I’d slid it beneath the car’s passenger seat.

  FINALLY, at ten till eight—when I would have much preferred to be roaming the marina docks of Dinkin’s Bay, cold beer in hand—two plainclothes detectives from the department’s Major Crimes Division tapped on the window, then opened the door and introduced themselves.

  I followed them to their unmarked car and sat in the back.

  They’d been assigned the case, they told me. What they didn’t say was that all the other cops I’d spoken to that day no longer mattered. These were the people I had to convince.

  There was a woman with a name that sounded like Gartone. She was early thirties, maybe Cuban American, with shoulder-length black hair and a stylish pantsuit. It had a tailored look, expensive. Same with the makeup and jewelry. Tasteful. She could have been on her way to a country club function.

  I got the clear impression that her clothing had been selected as carefully as the weapon she carried in a shoulder holster beneath her jacket. Dressing the way she did, she automatically had a psychological advantage over anyone she dealt with. The lowlifes would confide in her, eager for the approval of someone they considered a superior. The upper-class types would connect as equals and cooperate just as eagerly, hoping for unspoken perks from a peer.

  As she slid into the seat beside me, I thought to myself, Watch your step with this one.

  The other detective was an old guy. Retirement age. Or maybe he was one of those senior citizen volunteers you sometimes see riding with cops.

  I was undecided until she introduced him as Detective Merlin T. Starkey.

  He could have been in his late sixties or seventies. Moved slow and creaky, like he’d taken some hard shots in his day. Silver hair, balding. Dressed like a cattle rancher, with Red Wing boots, pearl button shirt, green suspenders, string bowtie, and a Stetson hat. The hat looked like it had spent some real time on real trails.

  “Starkey” is a common name everywhere, but especially in South Florida. Early settlers named Starkey were a tough, fertile, and hearty folk.

  “Call me Merlin, son,” he said in a slow nasal accent that was pure mangrove and sawgrass. He sat in the front seat, without a notebook.

  Merlin, I decided, would not be sympathetic to foreigners riding around the Everglades with illegal weapons, assaulting solid citizens such as myself.

  But it was Detective Gartone’s case. Starkey was just along for company. That seemed obvious.

  She asked all the questions, taping the interview on a digital recorder the size of a cigarette lighter. For more than half an hour, we sat in the back of the car, sharing that small space, talking. That’s the way she made it seem: as if we were having a conversation. She had that easy kind of manner.

  I felt as if we were building rapport. She seemed to believe me. Seemed to be empathetic. I had to keep reminding myself that she was also one very smart cop, and it could be an act.

  When she asked me to describe again, step by step, how I’d disarmed Balserio, she gave me a concerned shake of the head, muttered, “You’re very lucky,” then asked permission to use a digital camera to photograph the scratches on my face and hands.

  A question that she lingered on was the identity of the man who’d fired the shots from the car. I’d told the uniformed deputies that I was willing to swear that it was Balserio. But a little alarm went off in my head, keyed by the way she asked— a subtle change in her tone that seemed to coach me—and I modified my answer.

  I said I thought it was the man I knew as Jorge.

  “You think it was him,” she said.

  “I was scared. Everything happened so fast, it was kind of blurry. But I’m pretty sure.”

  “You’re willing to swear shots were fired, but not who the shooter was.”

  “I guess that’s the most honest way to put it.”

  For some reason, that seemed to raise my stock. Brought her fully on my side.

  In the front seat, Merlin T. Starkey stirred and cleared his throat, as if he’d been dozing.

  Now I noticed something new in Detective Gartone’s manner when she said, “
You also allege that, during the knife attack, the assailant accused you of having an affair with his wife. Were there grounds for the accusation?”

  What I noticed was, she added an extra curtain of professional reserve, as if to further insulate herself from the subject. To me, though, it suggested that she found the topic uncomfortable, which, in turn, suggested a sexual awareness. In that instant, I became conscious of her as a woman—her legs, the intensity of her reserve, eyes boring in, the shape of her. I wondered if, in the same abbreviated space of time, she’d become conscious of me as a man.

  She was not the sort to permit even a subtle sign, despite the fact that she wore no wedding ring. Too professional. And I had more than enough going on in my life now, struggling not to lose Dewey. Still . . . when you meet the rare independent ones, the strong professionals with uncompromised standards, you note their existence and file the details away. On lonely nights, it’s a good thing to go through those files and remember that good women are out there.

  She rephrased the question. “I’m trying to establish a motive here, Dr. Ford. You say that the man accused you of having an affair with his wife.”

  I said, “That’s correct. The taller of the three, Jorge.”

  “Yet, you say you don’t know Jorge’s last name.”

  “I know her last name. I’m not certain they share that name, and I see no reason to risk revealing the identity of an innocent third party.”

  I could see that the detective approved of that.

  “Then you were having an affair with your alleged attacker’s wife.”

  Her eyes continue to bore in as I replied, “The marriage was annulled long ago. It’s my understanding that, in the Catholic religion, an annulment doesn’t end a marriage. It decrees that the marriage never existed. They were never husband and wife, so there’s really no way to respond to your question.”

  She said, “For the first time, I think you’re being evasive.”

  “The lunatic who tried to cut me up with the knife, what did he tell you?”

  Gartone started to reply, caught herself, then closed the notebook in which she’d been jotting shorthand. She held the recorder to her lips, saying, “This concludes the interview with Dr. Marion Ford on the date as stated,” and turned to face me. “All three men deny they attacked you. Not with a knife, not with a gun. They say you made up the entire story.”

  “Really.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  Trying to sound fretful and a little naïve, I said, “No-o-o-o. I guess not. I suppose that’s what criminals do, huh? Lie about breaking the law. But you had to find their guns in the bushes. That should tell you something. People aren’t allowed to carry around guns like that, are they?”

  “We found a fully automatic assault pistol and a shotgun lying in the bushes in the Everglades. Even if they acknowledged ownership—which they didn’t—it’s not a big deal. Tobacco Firearms might get around to it in a month or so.

  “The man you call Jorge had no identification, no passport, and refused to give us his name. The other two, all they had were Nicaraguan driver’s licenses.”

  She shrugged. “Even if all three are in the country illegally, that’s no longer a big deal, either. Our borders are so wide open, the Department of Immigration doesn’t want to hear a peep from us unless we catch a busload.” Sounding stern, she added, “I’m trying to tell you something here, Dr. Ford.”

  “You’re telling me that I shouldn’t be evasive. That you’re trying to help.”

  “We don’t want men with knives who try to . . . mutilate people running around loose. Let’s put it that way.”

  I said, “So, I guess it’s my word against theirs . . . unless . . . well, you find some evidence that supports my story. When they shot at my car—can’t you tell if a gun’s been fired? It’d be missing bullets, right?”

  Detective Gartone’s laughter was like mid-low notes on a piano. “You really are an academic. Yes, we can tell if a weapon’s been fired. That’s why you and I are having what amounts to a private conversation.”

  Talking now as if the old detective in the front seat wasn’t there.

  Then, opening the car door, unfolding long legs as she exited, she added, “The two places on the road you say they fired at you? We found shell casings that match a weapon that was hidden in their vehicle. Backs up your story.”

  I said, “Shell casings? You’re kidding. Jeez, I was beginning to worry you’d think I was hallucinating or something. It was a hell of a scary experience.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I don’t think many men would have handled themselves as well as you. For an amateur, I mean.”

  Maybe the detective lady was giving me a little signal. And maybe, under other circumstances, I would have given her a signal in return.

  Gartone wasn’t pretty in any conventional way, but her face had an interesting complexity in this late, sunset light. It was a face that became more appealing when her mask of formality vanished into a smile.

  She smiled now for just a moment before telling me that we were nearly done. She had to put me under oath, I had to sign some papers. After that, I was free to drive the Ford back to Sanibel, where, she suggested, I put iodine on my scratches, then get some sleep. I could rest easy, she said, because my assailants wouldn’t be released from jail until I was notified.

  Handing me her card, dark eyes showing no emotion, she said, “In fact, I’ll call you personally. It’s my job.”

  THIRTEEN

  I thought that concluded my dealings for the day with the Collier County Sheriff ’s Department until, from inside the car, Detective Merlin Starkey spoke for the first time since the introductions.

  “Miz Tamara? You mind if I walk Dr. Ford back to his vehicle?”

  Tamara. An interesting first name to go with the face.

  “If he’s the Ford boy I’m rememberin’,” he said, “the one lived in Mango for a spell, it’s possible I knowed his uncle pretty good. Maybe some of his other people. Is it O.K.?”

  I thought, Not another one of Tucker Gatrell’s old redneck pals . . .

  But it was worth it because I was rewarded with a second sampling of the woman’s piano laughter. “Oh, Merlin, I thought you’d fallen asleep. Of course you can go with Dr. Ford. I’ve got paperwork to finish. But come straight back to the car, O.K.? You know how I worry about you. In a place like this, I’d almost bet there’re snakes.”

  Talking like a granddaughter would talk to her lovable, bumbling old grandfather.

  “Could be snakes, ma’am,” the old man said. He was using a silver-headed walking stick to leverage himself out of the squad car, putting on his Stetson. Looking at me then with dark, piercing eyes that did not mesh with his soft drawl, he added, “Yes, ma’am, this here’s real snaky-lookin’ country.”

  The old coot had just insulted me. Was it intentional? It seemed too obvious not to be. But Merlin T. Starkey had no reason to offend. Or did he?

  I found out soon enough.

  I walked with him slowly along the gravel road toward the logging trail. He nodded to the few deputies who remained, calling them by their first names, or touching the brim of his Stetson if the officer was a woman, saying, “Howdy-do, miz.”

  Otherwise, he remained silent. Didn’t respond when I remarked upon the lady detective’s professionalism. Continued to walk, using the cane, staring straight ahead. It was as if he couldn’t hear. Seemed to ignore me, doing it intentionally as with the insult. But he was quick to answer when I suggested, “Merlin, I can make it the rest of the way on my own. When I’m not in such a hurry, maybe we can get together and you can tell me about the old days.”

  “You ain’t goin’ any durn place till we have us a private talk, boy,” he snapped. “And never mind what I said back there. My name ain’t Merlin to you. It’s Detective Starkey. Or sir. In my line a work, if I wasn’t protectivelike, I’d be on a first-name basis with every crook, hustler, and con man scum between Marathon
and Cedar Key. So you allow me my propers. Hear?”

  Oh yeah. He’d taken a dislike to me for some reason.

  I replied patiently, “O.K. Whatever you say. But I’m tired. I want to get home to a shower and a few beers. You can understand that.” Said it respectfully, too, thinking, What’s going on here?

  Starkey shot back with a nasty chuckle, “Oh, I’ll make ’er quick, sonny boy. Nearly fifty years carryin’ a badge in the ’Glades, and I was never known to ramble when it come to settin’ a lying fraud straight.”

  He was baiting me, maybe. Even so, I stopped for a moment, irritated, watching him as he continued to limp along, using the walking stick as a third leg. We were several meters into the logging road. The shadow of cypress trees had changed the dominate odor from gravel and dust to moss, and dropped the temperature ten degrees.

  “Hold on a second there, Mister . . . Detective, sir. I don’t know what I did to make you mad. But if you’ve got a problem, why didn’t you get it on the table while we were in the car? Instead, you tell me you were a friend of my uncle to lure me out here—”

  The old man whirled to face me with surprising agility. He had a round, Santa-like face, which somehow seemed to make his expression even more fierce. “I never said I was a friend to Tucker Gatrell. I said I knowed him, and I did. I think your uncle was a lying, conniving, dope-smuggling son-of-a-buck. I’d use stronger language, only I never seen a need to lower myself to that kinda garbage-mouth talk.

  “Oh, I knowed Tucker. If it warn’t for what that swindler did to me, I’da been sheriff of this county long back, and I’d be retired already. Probably be shooting quail with the governor and a couple senators right now. Instead, I’ll never make it past captain. Your uncle double-crossed me. He ruined my life.”

  I was so taken aback by his words and his fury that it was a long, befuddled moment before I responded. “You’re giving me a hard time now because you’re still . . . pissed off at something my uncle did years ago?” After another moment, I added, “You’re serious.”