by Tom Corcoran
“Alex, what happened in the graveyard?” Claire looked sheepish, or vulnerable, as if she’d had second thoughts about sharing her nudity, or buddying up to Abby Womack.
“There’s been vandalism the past few weeks. I’d expected they wanted me to take pictures of more damage. But this was different. A city landscaper found a body in there. A local girl, strangled.”
Claire winced. “Any connection to the murder downtown?”
“I doubt it. The girl’s husband’s a bad actor. They haven’t found him yet.”
Abby picked up her crumpled shirt and used it to towel the perspiration from between her breasts. “I think I scared away one of your girlfriends the other night, Alex. I heard a tapping at the door, so I got up. A young lady saw my face and ran away. Pretty girl.”
“Which direction did she go?”
“Toward the street over there, past the stop sign.”
That ruled out the most logical visitor. Carmen lived two houses away in the opposite direction.
“Why would someone shoot you?” I said.
Abby looked at me, then at Claire, then back at me. “Well, why is Zack missing?”
“Two unanswered questions don’t make a solution. Was it some kind of random drive-by deal, or were you followed when you left here on my bike? Or did an old boyfriend recognize you and start popping off bullets? Should we think about protecting you? Or ourselves?”
Claire looked dumbfounded. Abby stared at the mango tree.
“Do you think someone may have shot Zack?” I said.
Abby didn’t respond. That told me that Claire hadn’t trusted her enough to mention the fax, hadn’t divulged our codebreaking. It also meant that Zack had not sent a message to Abby. “Do you think Zack is killing people?”
Again, no response. “Come on, folks, we need this committee to come up with ideas. I’m all for putting the women and children in lifeboats.”
Neither said a word. A Mexican stand-off. If Abby knew more, she wasn’t letting it go.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic,” I said, “if Zack had stolen two million dollars, had hopped a plane for Tahiti and, at this very moment, was sitting in a grove of tropical palms, drinking a tall, cool coconut-rum concoction, being tended by two beautiful bare-breasted women?”
That got to Claire. She stood, picked up her tank top, and turned her back as she pulled the shirt over her head. “I need to lie down for a while. I’m not used to so much sun.” Adjusting the elastic under her bottom as she walked, she beelined for the rear porch door.
“You hit the nail on the head, big mouth,” said Abby. “For the first time in ten years, she believed that I’d stopped screwing her husband. That part was easy. But she really thinks he stole some money. I don’t agree, and I almost had her convinced that he was clean on that count, too.”
“Do you know?”
“What?”
“Do you know that he’s clean?”
She pursed her lips. She said nothing.
“Do you know that he hasn’t killed anyone, that he wasn’t the person who shot you? Do you know if he’s even alive?”
Abby sat up and leaned toward me, put her face a foot away from mine. I wanted to look downward. I wanted more desperately to read her eyes.
“I don’t know a fucking thing,” she hissed. “For damn sure, I don’t know why I’m still alive.” She looked down at herself. “I take it back. I know one sure fact. I need to borrow your shower again.” Abby lifted her hips, looped her underpants under her bottom, pushed them to her knees, let them fall to her ankles. I caught a whiff of baby oil. “I’m going to rattle some goddamned cages in this town. Maybe you can’t find Zack, or trace where he was or where he’s gone. All I’ve got is one ATM card, one credit card, and a big-city pushy-bitch attitude. But I’m not leaving until I find him.”
Maybe the skin show had turned me into a bad judge of character, but she sounded like an ally. Claire’s jealousy aside, I wanted Abby on the team, too.
Abby leaned down, grabbed her underpants, laid them on her shirt, then stood, almost brushing her precision-trimmed muff against my eyebrows as she turned to walk toward the outdoor shower. “Shit, I almost forgot. Have you got a plastic bag and some tape? I can’t get this bandage wet.”
I started for the house. The sun had dropped behind the neighbor’s tall hedge. I looked back at Abby. She had deflated, cooled her jets for a moment. She looked down at herself and laughed. “Should I attack like this? Or should I wear a bulletproof vest?”
Let ‘em have it with the twin turrets.
“You got a switchblade in your boot?”
She smiled and laughed.
“If you had your ATM card and your credit card, why didn’t the police know your name?”
She looked trapped for an instant. “Did they find it out?”
“I don’t believe they did.”
“I can thank a friend in Milwaukee for that tip. She’s vicepresident of a company that markets health insurance. People who suffer gunshot wounds, later, they have trouble getting insured. There’s some statistical spike in the risk tables, a high likelihood of it happening again. We were talking once, she was kidding, she said, ‘You ever get shot, honey, don’t tell ’em your name.’ To answer your question, when I went out to ride your bike, it looked like rain. I didn’t want to ruin my checkbook and wallet, so I took my cash and hid the other stuff in your kitchen cabinet, where you store saucepans and skillets.”
I took my turn in the shower. The late-day sun had painted the island a syrupy yellow-orange. I surveyed the yard and realized that even a full day’s work—stopped before it started when Zack had called from Sloppy Joe‘s—would not have produced major change. Especially compared to the transformation brought by two lovely near-naked women lounging in croton heaven. There’s something to be said for keeping an attractive yard. There’s more to be said for letting nature take its own course.
I think macro in the shower, the Big Picture, the stories behind the stories, as they say on the tube. For the past few months I’d had a compulsion to buy shampoo. There’s nothing worse than running out of shampoo in an outdoor shower. I lathered up with one of my six different brands, rinsed, then asked myself how I could know so many details without knowing facts.
I had established a solid link between Zack Cahill and Jesse Spence, a probable link between Spence’s bugged phone and the tiny device outside my shot-up window, a possible link between Spence’s bugged phone and the pharmacy fire, and a possible link between the fire and the murder-scene spectator with the burned hand. The women were pinking their lovely titties, Spence had grown wings, and I didn’t want to trust Liska with any more info—Spence’s wrecked home, for instance—until I knew Cahill’s legal position. I was flying solo, baffled, and drag ging anchor.
Zack had sent a codified admonition to “keep quiet.” Zack knew better. He didn’t need to ask for quiet.
While Claire showered, I dug out the point-and-shoot mini-zoom that Sam always had called my “drunk-proof’ camera and snapped several insurance shots of the busted window. What the hell. If they helped win a claim, ninety cents well invested. I delivered the cigars to Hector Ayusa and told him that I’d be out awhile. I asked him to hold his fire if he saw me stumbling home late. Hector insisted that I join him in a shot of Spanish brandy. Despite an admonishing glare from his wife, Cecilia, I honored and humored the man. I knocked down an ounce, then another, of imported rotgut. The ceremony satisfied Hector, settled the turmoil in his Old World mind. I escaped before he sent Cecilia for a new bottle.
Like the Lone Ranger’s horse: Sam Wheeler’s Bronco in front of the house. I found Sam and Carmen Sosa drinking beer on my screened porch, Sam in my favorite rocker, Carmen on the lounge chair. Abby Womack had taken a taxi to her motel, and Claire had gone to my bedroom for a nap. They insisted that I open a beer and join them.
Twist my friggin’ arm.
13
“Like a tourist needs a brain, my boys n
eed advice.”
For the first time in days, Carmen had shed her post office uniform. She wore tan shorts and a thin yellow cotton blouse shaped like a poncho.
Sam wore khaki pants and a T-shirt that read: I’M THE MAN FROM NANTUCKET.
My mood did not dictate beer, nor did I want the guaranteed cranial cell damage in the Mount Gay rum jug. That left one choice. I opened the bottle of wine I’d chilled for Claire and joined Carmen and Sam on the porch.
I pried off my deck shoes with my toes. “I require three things—a decent meal, a yard service, and a bodyguard.” I launched each shoe back through the door, into my main room. Having shot where I’d aimed raised my spirits immediately.
With her clipped Conch accent, Carmen said, “I note that sex is not on Romeo’s list.”
I nodded. “Also, I may revise the list, after I eat. And I might substitute a good night’s sleep for the yard work.”
Sam stared at the top of his beer bottle. “We’ve got identical lists.”
“You need a bodyguard?”
“Marnie’s on the warpath.”
Carmen shook her head. “Sam’s love life is one of those billboards, you read it, then a row of vertical panels swivel, right away it’s a new message. You, on the other hand”—she shifted to a sharper tone—“you’ve got a crowd-control problem. The reason sex is not on your list is, your girlfriends, you could organize a softball team. My mama saw that skinny woman in the tight white shorts ride off in the rain on your red bicycle. She says the female traffic around here is as busy as the Cow Key Bridge.”
“Not to mention the bullet traffic.” White shorts. Cell phone. Abby had stopped at her motel, but which one?
That put resigned dismay on her face. “Hector was so proud,” she said. “They took away his pistol and gave him an evidence receipt. I wouldn’t be surprised if he framed it. He spent all afternoon cleaning his other gun. Of course, my mother thinks your prowler was some woman’s husband, trying to catch you in the saddle. Can you believe my mama said ‘in the saddle’?”
“She grew up with brothers.”
“I grew up with uncles.”
Carmen had been my neighbor, soul mate and, for a short time five years ago, a lover. These days we buoyed each other through ups and downs, kept each other honest, trusted each other implicitly. Her parents, Cecilia and Hector Ayusa, had lived on Dredgers Lane since the early sixties. I’d bought my cottage in ‘77. Carmen had bought her house, two houses down, on my side of the lane, eight years ago—at that point, a single mother with a baby girl.
The evening air had gone still. An insistent bug kept flying, full-tilt, into the screen behind me. Ten more collisions, its head would feel like mine. I turned to Sam: “I’m not in the mood to rebut Carmen’s incorrect assessment of my romantic scenario. So let’s fix the easy ones first. Does Marnie admit to a drinking problem?”
He looked through the screen, beyond the porch. “One day it’s a problem she wants to solve. The next day it’s no big deal, nothing she can’t handle. But two-thirty this afternoon, she saw my new client leaving the dock. She cooled it for about three minutes, then accused me of a bogus booking.”
Carmen raised her eyebrows.
Sam said, “A few captains’ll take tourist women out for nude sunbathing, frisky action in the backcountry. In this case, it isn’t true. Unfortunately, we chased fish.”
“So let her blow off pressure.” Carmen threw up her arms, as if to imitate a cloud of steam. “Tomorrow she’ll apologize.”
“Hell. If I’m going to get crap for it, I might as well do the deed.”
“Not true, Sam.” Carmen leaned toward him, to make her point. “Crap is easier to undo than deed.”
Sam drained his beer. “I hate to see unrequited jealousy.”
“Jealousy’s an awful thing,” I said. “I am reminded of a bitter speech a close friend once made about my using girlfriends to form a softball team.”
Sam finally laughed.
Carmen bit her lower lip, but said, “In your dreams I’m jealous, Alex.”
“What I know of you, even in dreams, you’d be fully clothed.”
A taxi squeaked down the lane. It delivered four take-out dinners from El Siboney, the Cuban restaurant at Margaret and Catherine. Carmen took credit for placing the order. Sam paid the driver. Cuban pork, garlic chicken, grilled grouper, picadillo. Enough fried plantains and yellow rice to feed Matanzas Province. While Carmen attempted to wake Claire, I loaded the CD player—a spiral rotation, with Paul Desmond, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Randy Newman’s Good Old Boys, Lonnie Mack, and an old Joni Mitchell album—and handed out plates from the cupboard. Claire elected to stay in bed, asked us to save her the leftovers. We served ourselves buffet-style from the Styrofoam containers. Sam opened two more beers and refilled my wineglass. For ten minutes no one said a word.
I finally took a break from the food. “This bogus booking thing, Sam. Tell us how close you came to being guilty.”
He looked down and shook his head. Even with a slight grin, he looked saddened.
“You didn’t tell us her name,” said Carmen. “Where’s she from?”
I said: “Sammy.”
That puzzled Carmen. “Like, short for Samantha?”
Sam nodded. “I guess so. From Destin, up on the Panhandle. Her parents are split up, her old man’s a die-hard fisherman. They’ve drifted apart the past few years. She wants to bring him down here and reconnect, surprise him by knowing the gear, and the backcountry.”
“Is she any good?” said Carmen.
“She did fine.”
“She boning up on the boogie trail, too?” I said.
“I doubt it. Six-thiny this morning, she was ripping to go. Brought her own box lunch from Judd’s Grocery. She devoured the whole thing. Clients with hangovers usually chum with their chewed food. Anyway, she doesn’t look the type to run the streets.”
Carmen leaned toward Sam. “I don’t want to burst your bubble, Captain Heart Throb. But they all run the streets.”
I said, “Did Abby mention the name of her motel?”
Sam and Carmen shook their heads.
“I need to run an errand. I don’t want to leave Claire alone. Can you two stick around, another half hour or so?”
Carmen barked: “Not if you’re going looking for that motel.”
“Why would I look? They all come to me.”
She scowled, then let herself laugh. “I’m okay, if Sam’ll stay, too. Maria’s at her cousin’s tonight.”
“I’m sticking with you,” said Sam. “I’m afraid to go to my house.”
Schooner Wharf Bar adjoins the boardwalk that Key West built in 1996, during its alleged beautification of the north harbor. During the mid-nineties, the bar had evolved into a watering hole of the down-and-dirtiest order. It now deserved mention along with other legendary local spots—the Havana Madrid, the Old Anchor Inn, the Chart Room, the Whistle, the Green Parrot, the Full Moon Saloon. I wasn’t a regular at Schooner’s, but once or twice a week I’d drop by for a cold one. Along with its dockside air, its off-center cast of characters, Schooner’s was, by bike, only four minutes from Dredgers Lane. I coasted most of the way to Caroline and zigged a half block farther to the alley behind the bar. I reminded myself: it would be an uphill journey home.
I was too full of Cuban food to drink beer. I called for an Appleton’s and soda, and checked the dark bar and open patio for faces. A few familiar, but not the one I needed. I went to the walkway and leaned against a twelve-inch piling. Smells of fried shrimp and drying varnish floated down the wharf. Post-sunset tourists ambled, marveled at the beauty of the “historic” docks, no doubt believing that the marina had looked that way for a century or longer. Only ten years earlier, hundreds of stained and weathered shrimp boats had dominated the harbor. Before that, smaller lobster boats had lined the docks; sponge merchants had held odorous auctions along the wharf; rancid Central American sailing vessels had unloaded green turtles into cannirig-pl
ant “corrals.” The tourists were ogling repainted history.
A beamy wooden yawl, stern to the seawall, swayed slow-motion in the light ripple. The yacht’s masthead torch illuminated gear scattered on deck: safety harnesses, Igloo coolers, frayed awnings lashed to stays, foul-weather gear, a gimbalmounted solar generator. Her sails were furled haphazardly, bungee-corded to her thick booms. Salt caked her winches and rigging and rails. I sensed that the boat had arrived in port that evening with crew too exhausted to square away her ocean transit paraphernalia. I saw the function-over-formality as an invitation to leap aboard, to follow the sunset forever. I hoped that Zack Cahill had boarded a similar vessel for whatever getaway he’d required. And that he’d taken Jesse Spence along for the cruise.
A guitar chord boomed through the bar’s sound system. Entertainment, about to resume. I turned back toward the action. The man I wanted to find was slouched, barefoot and disheveled, against a four-by-four wood post. He looked at me, nodded, and glanced away as I approached.
“How’s it going, Dubbie?”
He’d fixed his eyes on two young women who stood at the bar’s alley entrance. “Same old same,” he mumbled. “Another day, another penny. The sun keeps spinning around the earth. Next year the ocean will be around our ankles.” Tanner’s T-shirt said, CZECHOSLOVAKIAN DANCE CLUB. His denim shorts were Levi’s cut off to crotch level. He nursed a beer in a thin plastic cup. The two young women walked away.
Tanner drifted off to a private level of recollection. His eyes could project an astonishing loser’s look, a gaze so empty it made visual contact shameful for anyone who deemed him inferior. The gaze forced observers to know in advance the sad downhill road this man’s life would take to its early finish. I was one of a handful who ever saw his other face, the calculating, judgmental side glances of a philosophical ace, a financial whiz, a con artist. I’d never understand his reasons, but I knew his deception.
“Ready for a fresh one?”
“Always.”
The bartender glared at me and tipped the draft lever. He knew only the first version of Dubbie Tanner. He couldn’t believe that I was buying, that I’d turned sucker, too. Tanner and I walked back to the dock. Discarded sailing excursion and divetrip leaflets bobbed with soda-pop containers and sea grass in the basin, pushed around by eddy currents and fluky wind. Tanner didn’t speak until he’d taken the beer down to the one-inch level.
