by Tom Corcoran
“So, you’re buying,” he said. “What do you need?”
“Certain injuries, people go to the hospital, the authorities get called.”
“I’ve been stabbed three times.” He raised his arm to show me two scars, then patted his abdomen. I didn’t want to see.
“And you still love the street life.”
“These were my fault, not the street’s.”
“So where did you go for repairs?”
“Used to be, you went to a shrimper. They had heavy-duty first-aid boxes, sewing needles, pain pills. They usually can’t order helicopter help, they get whacked with a busted winch cable, get their hand squashed by a shrimp door. Or a dude gets raked across the shinbone with a sharp set of fish teeth. Those shrimppers, man, first class. They understood, you didn’t want to get famous. You just wanted to get fixed.”
“The shrimpers are all on Stock Island.”
“Problem for hurt people on foot.”
“So, today, where do you go?”
“Loose lips sink ships.”
Roadblock. The wrong words would mean a dead end.
I changed tack. “Can I ask a personal question?”
“That’s all you do.”
“What do you do for laundry?”
He made a street check past my head and chuckled. “You need scufflin’ lessons, my man.” He paused, then said, “You accumulate T-shirts. Goodwill, trash bins, the screen-printing places where they throw away mistakes. And skivvies are cheap, you go to factory outlet mall, a L’Eggs/Hanes store, buy forty or fifty pair at a time. Socks aren’t a problem. Once every couple months you drive to Marathon, you check into a motel, you bribe the motel maid to wash it all in their industrial unit. One night of HBO, a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, then it’s back to scufflin’ the streets of the Island City. You dig?”
“You write these books, publishers wouldn’t buy them, you didn’t spike the stories with truths and wisdom and guidance. You slide parables in there for the kids, lessons in life.”
“I guess.”
“So you understand, there’s a certain way the world works. That’s where you and I are on the same wavelength.”
Tanner sniffed and moved his eyes to the water’s oily surface. Spiraling tarpon grazed on schools of miniatures in a spotlight’s beam.
“I’ve got something going on. From my side, it’s got nothing to do with the cops. It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. My neighbor shot a man trying to break into my house. I don’t think the bad guy wanted cameras. He wouldn’t have found them anyway. I just don’t know what he was after. It’d help to know who he was.”
“No way that doctor’s going to know any name but Jackson. Twenties, in neat stacks, that’s all he cares.”
“I need to show him a couple photographs.”
Tanner said nothing. Again, I decided to let it rest, not to push too hard.
I stared at the mast-lighted yawl. Maybe Zack hadn’t made a “getaway.” But if he was in town, he’d almost have to have a helper. And he’d go nuts in isolation. He’d have to be in a hotel room with a private balcony overlooking the water. Or a place in the Lower Keys, outside of town, where he wouldn’t be recognized. I wondered if Zack had a buddy with a boat.
“Let’s get us another beer, Dubbie.”
Tanner wasn’t too certain, but he followed me to the bar. With two fresh ones, we returned to his post in the shadows. This time he wasn’t as quick to chug. Maybe he thought I’d finished with my queries, the freebies were over. But I wasn’t quite done.
“Lotta live-aboards this year,” I said. “Many anchored out?”
“Few.”
“Significant newcomers, the last week or two?”
“A thirty-three-foot Hunter sloop, metal sticks, steering vane. Broad scum stripe around her waterline. A gaff-rigged Bahamasstyle sharpie, under forty, overweight and under-rigged. And a new Tayana ketch, a thiny-eight- or forty-foot afr-cockpit cruiser. Small radar antenna up the aft mast. Those are the ones that stuck around.”
“Who’s aboard? Retirees, hippies, yuppies, water vagabonds?”
“I don’t pay attention to that.”
I paused to hide my anxiousness. “Could you?”
Tanner drained his cup, smiled at the harbor, spit his final mouthful of beer into the water, and walked away. A five-toot tarpon hurried to the surface to check out the barley puddle. Not his navor.
14
Marnie Dunwoody’s Jeep had replaced Sam Wheeler’s Bronco. I could hear Marnie talking on the porch with Claire Cahill. I rolled the Cannondale into the backyard, past a sudden quiet, and locked the bike to the mango tree. Inside, Claire picked at a plate of leftover Cuban food. Marnie acted ready to leave. Expressions of false boredom. I had missed a conspiratorial discussion, some kind of secret agreement. All I needed was more intrigue.
I exchanged quick hellos and went to give my bladder the break my brain deserved. I emerged to find Marnie gone and Claire sunburned, drained of spirit, cleaning the kitchen. She’d found the remaining Chardonnay in the refrigerator. She’d put two glasses on the counter. I uncorked and poured. Then I kicked her out of the kitchen and finished the chores myself.
While Claire got ready for bed, I spread my futon in the living room, laid a bottom sheet, then another on top. I had no problem giving Claire the privacy of my bedroom. I would take the spot that Abby Womack had occupied forty-eight hours earlier. Having Claire in my house gave the place a homey aspect, an atmosphere I hadn’t felt since my former roommate had departed months earlier for greener paychecks on the Gold Coast.
Claire emerged from the bathroom in a Tweety Bird nightshirt and knee-length pajama bottoms. She topped off our glasses, put away the bottle, then came back to click her glass against mine.
“Now, the explanation I promised you.” She sat in the living room rocker, on the edge of the cushion. “I know you’re tired, and I’m not exactly wide awake after my nap. So I’ll make it short.”
“You don’t need to …”
“That sunbathing party this afternoon was a necessity. She showed up at the door, surprise, surprise. I played it nice and easy. I had to know where she stood, why she’d come here. Her new name, by the way, is Felony Tease.”
“I could see what was going down.”
“You have to say ‘down’? I’m self-conscious enough.” She hefted her bust with a forearm.
“Oh, give yourself a break. Talking altitude, she’s what, ten years younger? Yours are in Oklahoma City, hers are in central Texas.”
“Alex, how can a sexist bastard like yourself even get a date these days?” She calmly sipped the wine. “I have to admit, though, I was more comfortable after you got here.”
“I was pretty happy about it.”
“You didn’t know where to put your eyes. You looked scared shitless.” A sudden wistful look came to her eyes. “One of Zack’s favorite terms. Anyway, where do we go from here?”
“We focus,” I said. “We tally up a scorecard.”
“Starting with Miss Tease?”
“No, with ourselves. I’m worried about your being a target, or becoming a target myself. It’s making me forget the core of the problem, the money.”
Claire flinched. “Which is, presumably, with Zack.”
“That’s the thing. On one level, it explains why people are chasing around killing each other, snooping, like some old movie where everyone wants the strongbox full of cash. On a more sensible level, I can’t picture Zack calling a meeting in a smokefilled room, sitting down with a bunch of ex-smugglers, divvying up stacks of hundreds.”
Claire went to the kitchen, stared at the notes and small photos stuck to the refrigerator. “Maybe the smugglers think he spent it all. Maybe Zack spent it years ago. Maybe they think we’ve been living high off their retirement fund, and they’re trying to get even.”
“They wouldn’t be creeping around people’s homes if they only wanted to get even. Let’s trace this back. Abby said there was a
meeting in New Orleans, and Zack didn’t show. She thought it had to do with distributing the trust.”
“Would Zack have traveled to New Orleans if he’d stolen their money?”
“He would have dodged the meeting outright. But he went there, then blew off the meeting. Either he saw a potential danger on the way in, or he was warned away by someone, like Abby, who knew it was dangerous. All we know for sure, whatever happened in New Orleans, the danger followed him here. And it’s still around.”
“Didn’t Abby say she was at that meeting?”
“Right,” I said. “So, if she’s okay, then the guy in New Orleans, this Makksy fellow they used to call Tazzy Gucci, he isn’t the problem.”
“Unless he let her go, so he could follow her to Zack.”
“See? We’re starting to fill in the scorecard.”
Claire finished her wine and went to turn down the futon sheet.
“You’re in the bedroom,” I said.
“I’ve had a rule since college, Alex. Stay at friends’ homes, but never make them bunk on the couch. I’ll be fine right here.”
“You hear one single noise outside the house, you scream like a maniac.”
For a while I lay awake, silently asking: Zack, how could you? I awoke at first light, used the bathroom and went back to sleep. I wanted to let Claire sleep in, replenish her energy if not her spirit. It must have been an hour later when I heard the screen door squeak. I stumbled into the living room in time to see Claire and Marnie pulling away in Marnie’s Jeep.
I found a note next to the coffee machine:
The reporter and I have taken assignments. She’s tracking a petty thief and wife killer, and I’m trying to find proof that Zack didn’t kill that man on Monday. I’ll call you from Miami. I can’t stay in town with Ms. Tease here, anyway.
Be safe, Love—CJC.
The phone rang. I knew who it was. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
Harpoon Harry’s smelled of buttered toast. I was reminded of my grandmother’s breakfast table in Struthers, Ohio. Liska dropped the Citizen and shook enough pepper on his fried eggs to shield them from rain. Marnie’s piece about young Chloe Tucker, dead in the cemetery, carried the headline SHERIFF’S KIN MURDERED, FEW CLUES. I would have to wait to read it. J. D. Souther’s plaintive “You’re Only Lonely” came from compact speakers on the paneled walls. A waiter appeared. I pointed at a menu selection and twirled a finger to indicate scrambled. The waiter filled my coffee cup, then split.
Liska began with his mouth full: “We’ve reached a point of occupational truce where I overlook your monkey business. I trust you with my private life details, we talk, we help each other out. I liked to think we cover each other, to a certain extent.”
“I’ll buy that summary.” I noticed that Liska’s campaign had hit high gear. He wore a pale blue oxford cloth button-down long-sleeved shirt. Courthouse camouflage.
He caught me looking, gave me a moment to adjust, silently dared me to comment, then said, “You burn the trust. You screw me with silence. You triple-slap my face, holding out.”
I didn’t know if Liska had wild-guessed, or found out specifics. But he’d nailed it. My actions to protect Cahill had risked undermining a friendship, albeit edgy, and a mutual trust. Of course, if I blabbed, as Jesse Spence called it, Detective Liska would be professionally bound to act upon info provided. And it all led back to Cahill, wherever he was.
“You’re welcome, for that photo I dropped off last night.”
“Right. The ghost of Walt Disney, for all I know. You want me to stand by Boca Chica, look in every car that drives by, try to identify this guy with the fuzzy face? You call that a clue?”
I had overwhelmed myself with my good deed. Without a name attached to it, the three-by-three proof would do Liska no good, unless the burned-hand man got picked up for another crime. Even then, it didn’t prove a thing. It offered a link between Omar’s spectacle and Duffy Lee’s fire. It offered a shot at speculation.
“Okay,” I said.
“This bacon’s crisp as plywood. They cooked it an hour ago.”
Liska was building up steam. I read the newspaper upside-down until he started again.
“So last night I’m at Island Liquors, my monthly ration of Crown Royal, I run into Marshall Hoff, our boy from Publix. I thank him for cooperating, for getting your pictures developed. Marshall says to me, ‘Glad that wasn’t my apartment that got kicked apart.’ I’m not recalling any photos of kicked-apart apartments—you like that phrase?—and I ask a little more about the pictures. Among the wreckage Marshall describes is this ruined piece of framed art, a big photograph of shrimp boats in a nighttime lightning storm. I’m saying to myself, that sounds like the one that hangs in a booth in Pepe’s.”
“I know …”
“So I go to Pepe’s, and this lady named Tony gives me the name of an ex-bartender from Louie’s who’s really a painter who used to be a photographer. Something like that. I call last night and get no answer. Not even a machine. So an hour ago I go see this guy, a man named Martin who’s not, I could tell, an early riser. And this Martin recalls selling a print of that photograph. He gives me a name. You with me so far?”
I nodded.
“Item number two. And you may see a peripheral link here. Chloe Tucker got popped in a methamphetamine buy-sell sting last year. When she gave her occupation, she told them ‘housewife.’ She had to pay a fine, but she wasn’t sure she could put her hands on any money. The court, on the strong urging of her father-in-law, ordered her to get a job. A stipulation of her probation. How we doing?”
“I’m still with you.”
“She worked in the … she was a scullery maid. She did shit work in a local restaurant, in the kitchen.” Liska peered down the counter, trying to catch the waitress’s eye. “I sure hope my whole-wheat toast gets here before lunch. So, anyway, she was employed in a place across the street, catty-corner from Mangoes on Duval. She did a day shift, and she had a rep for chumming up male acquaintances. Told people she never wore her wedding ring because she washed dishes all fuckin’ day long. So, nobody’s secret, she’s once in a while yanking the wazoo with a day-shift bartender from across the street, at Mangoes. An older fellow, ex-con named Jesse Rhodes Spence. You see where this is going.”
“I see where you’re trying to go. Can I save you some—”
“And this Jesse Spence, who did time on a drug fall, whose apartment was trashed according to pictures you got developed at Publix, walked out of his job two days ago. His car’s locked in his driveway, his apattment-you can see it’s still a shambles—is locked. No sign of the boy. So we got a theory …”
“I can save you a lot of effort—”
“ … that Spence was moving some quantity, that Chloe and/ or her low-life street-dealing husband wham-banged Mr. Spence’s pad looking to hijack some product, and Spence evened the score, over there in the cemetery. And the only time and effort you can save me is to tell me how to find Jesse Rhodes Spence before noon or before he kills again, whichever comes first.”
“Whoa, back, now.”
Liska noticed the waitress. “Poke her in the butt, get her attention.”
The waitress turned, acting as if she would pour coffee over Liska’s head, put his plate of toast on the newspaper.
He went on: “I could sit here and tell you that two uniforms are gonna walk in”—he checked his watch—“in eight minutes, and handcuff you and take you to Angela Street for evidence tampering. I could inform you that your career in forensic photography just took a shit, forever, because your ego and your selfish ambition stand to undermine, at minimum, two murder cases and—screw the B and E at your house—an attempted murder and a locally sensitive arson fiasco because the Stannis and Tucker families have been jumping the fence for years. I’m not going to do that. It would be my preference to take you out back, and knowing you got five inches and forty pounds on me, kick your ass from Margaret Street to Rockland Key.”
“Starting right now?”
“ … just to let you know that I’m pissed.” He pulled out his cigarettes and began tapping the pack on the table.
I let the air settle a minute, then said, “You think disco music in your radio ads might draw attention to your campaign?”
“In so many words, you just told me I gotta start acting civilized with Cootie Ortega. Here on out, don’t come near me without up-front goods. The breakfast’s on you.”
Liska stood and walked out the restaurant’s side door.
The futile campaign had begun to chip away at the man.
I scanned Marnie’s article. Nothing new. But, buried on page 2, in the popular and somewhat tongue-in-cheek “Crime Report” section, was the tag LAME BURGLAR ON LAM FROM LANE. I noted two words: “vigilante” and “justified.” At least the report’s author had omitted my name.
My two eggs with sausage and grits hit the table. I’d promised myself at least one breakfast this week, but I’d lost my appetite. Wary of Liska’s threat to have me hauled down to the city, I paid up and split.
15
A consistent pattern, three days running: an actual or attempted murder, plus a destructive burglary or a fire. Chicken Neck had launched day four by logging in a massive piss-off. But his campaign and priorities were not mine. I had no control over Spence’s dilemma, no responsibility for Abby Womack’s safety. Though I wanted to see Duffy Lee Hall compensated, back in business, his fire had not been my fault. At least, not directly.
But I felt like a volunteer who’d dropped the ball.
Etiquette demanded that I protect Claire, my wandering houseguest. Of equal importance, given the break-in and shooting, was the security of my home. In light of Liska’s threat to have me arrested, I also wanted to keep my tail end out of the sling. Why pay the tab for someone else’s parade?
