by Tom Corcoran
“Pleasant for the family. You must have rationalized brilliantly.”
“Half the people on the highway use radar detectors. It’s their chance to beat the system. It’s fifty-five in a fifty zone. No cop’ll stop you for it. Sixty-six in a sixty. You break the law up to ten percent, no big deal. You’re on the edge, but no way you get a ticket. You pass that threshold, go haywire, you’re dog meat, your ass is theirs. In my profession there’s zero tolerance for mistakes. All I wanted, just once, was a ten-percent fudge factor.”
Abby Womack had mentioned a five-percent loneliness factor. She and Zack lived close to the same page. Next thing, he’d talk about a cloud west of the picnic. I said, “Fudge doesn’t work with murder.”
“It doesn’t work anywhere but the highway. Every year it grew on me. I wanted the black cloud away from my family. I decided my reward for ending this would not be monetary. I’d figure a way to remove myself from it, totally. Keep my family insulated. There’d be no evidence. That’s why I wanted Jesse Spence to handle the distribution.”
“People talk.” About clouds.
“Anyone who could identify me would be rewarded by their silence. They wouldn’t dare point a finger.”
“They pointed guns.”
Zack finally deflated. He’d wanted me, of all people, to see his side of it. In less violent circumstances, I might have taken a more charitable view.
“Look,” he said. “The investment solution biz swirled out of my league. I dragged you down to Sloppy’s at the crack of dawn …”
“To begin a celebration.”
“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t want to pull you in, but I needed to hide some papers. I also wanted to toss you a subtle alert. I guess I thought, if something happened to me, you could close out the deal.”
“You couldn’t trust me? Let me know where you were hiding, what was coming down?”
“Trust wasn’t the issue. From the beginning, why make you an accessory? When things got hairy, okay, I needed you. I sent Samantha to your house, to bring you up to speed.”
Abby had said: A young lady saw my face and ran away. Pretty girl.
“She saw Abby Womack.”
“And she knew I didn’t want Abby privy to this stuff. I also didn’t like the fact that Abby had contacted you so quickly.”
“Why’d you give a bartender your Rolex?”
“So you’d believe I’d be right back. Give me a few extra minutes in your house. Did you happen to … ?”
“It’s safe.”
“Thanks. Claire gave me that on our twentieth. Meanwhile, Samantha and Teresa had a back-up plan.”
“And you came directly here.”
“Familiar territory, with allies and hiding places.”
“You instructed Samantha to fish with Sam Wheeler.”
He nodded. “Fortunately, Teresa had already gone to work for the police department.”
“You went into exile on the Blown Aweigh.”
“Where the boat captain isn’t big on clothing.” He stopped before he got in deeper. He understood my siding with Claire. “I wish there was some way I could redeem myself,” he said. “Make it up to everyone.”
“There’ll be time to think about that.”
“Maybe it’ll take me as long as this has lasted. I once read an essay that suggested O. J. Simpson do the honorable thing, like a Magnum to the tonsils. I’d appreciate your not suggesting …” At last, Zack Cahill talking like the old days. “What comes next? Is there anything I need to know?”
“There’s a man out there with a burned hand and a bullet wound. Also, Claire would like to see you.”
“My primary problem is the law. After that it’s Angel Best, Abby Womack, and the jailhouse conspirators. You got any suggestions?”
“I need to make a phone call.”
“What sort?”
“You’re a wealthy man. It’s time to make a campaign contribution to the underdog in the local race for sheriff.”
Teresa walked in from the kitchen. “Are you going to call Detective Liska?”
“Thought I would.”
“You don’t have to, Alex.” She walked to the table next to Zack, lifted the pistol and placed it in a basket, under some magazines. “He’s stepping onto the front porch. With that newspaper lady you like so much.”
26
An hour later, seven people waited at Sam and Marnie’s house for Sheriffs Detective Bobbi Lewis to arrive. Chicken Neck Liska huddled with Teresa Barga on the porch, she pleading for reason, he upset by her having harbored a fugitive. Liska cupped a cigarette—as if that minimized wafting smoke—and studied a Christmas cactus in a hanging planter. He’d removed his tie. Zack and Claire stood away from the house, in the side yard, in quiet, constant discussion. Lucky man, no lanyard around his nuts. Sam sat back in his favorite chair, a wood-slat number with a high back and broad flat arms. Marnie held the telephone to her ear. I lay flat-out on a cotton throw rug, the first comfort I’d found in twenty-four hours.
Sam had gambled. After a cursory viewing of the duplicate VHS tape that Claire had obtained from Hispaniola Star passengers Ed and Barb Chase of Woodstock, Illinois, he’d rung Marnie Dunwoody’s cell phone and asked her to bring Liska to the house. Marnie had received the call in the police station, outside Liska’s office, where she waited for a fax from Miami-Dade that would give her additional ammo for her print indictment of Sheriff Tommy Tucker. Liska had been on his desk phone to the officers who’d found pedicab driver Margarita Bland at Mallory Square. By suggesting a possible loss of employment and short-term loss of freedom, the officers had charmed Ms. Bland into divulging specific information regarding her last drop-off.
Marnie’s sense of justice had prevailed. Also her sense of propriety, since she’d suspected I’d gone to Teresa’s town house for reasons having nothing to do with my search for Cahill. Because of Marnie’s legwork, her revelations about his political opponent, Liska felt bound to honor her request to attack with minimal aggression. After a five-day hunt, his discovery of Zack Cahill in the Barga pad had amounted to little more than cocktail party serendipity.
“Well, gee …” Marnie had said. “Let’s all go to my house for pretzels and beer. Watch a little tube …”
So we waited for Bobbi Lewis. The big room hollow without tunes. Sam possessed eclectic music tastes: jazz combos, Brazilian sambas, Texas swing, old Memphis rockabilly. The stereo rarely got a rest. This was not the time. The quiet amplified our anticipation.
Marnie stepped over me to set the phone in its cradle.
I said, “Good of you to do Liska’s groundwork on the Chloe murder.”
Disgust filled her eyes. “The country’s been dropping cases on that maggot since he was thirteen. No one would buck Tucker, or drop a dime on him. But Little Howie got popped in a sting in Broward this week, trying to buy crank on the street. Had a bunch of antique jewelry on him. Broaches, rings, two watches. I told them about the rings missing from his dead wife’s fingers, but they’d already released him to a bondsman. Who do you least want to see in this video?”
“Zack.”
“Who’s next in importance, you wouldn’t want to see?”
“Jesse Spence.”
“You told Sam he saved your ass.”
I’d surprised myself, saying Jesse’s name. But, in spite of my delivery to the Pensacola airport, he’d blipped my distant warning radar. “Jesse has the prime reason I can think of, to throw a wrench in the machinery. Money.”
“You and he determined that Abby was a question mark.”
“Spence led me into that. He could’ve faked the ruin of his apartment just as easily as I could’ve been a bad guy. I want to trust him, but if he’s anywhere on the tape, he’s our boy.”
The fence-gate bell rang. Marnie said, “Who do you least suspect?”
“You, of course.”
She blew me a kiss and went for the door. I sensed vibes from the porch. Teresa Barga glared through a window.
>
Bobbi Lewis wore a white uniform blouse, dark blue Bermudas, white sneakers. She carried a plastic water bottle, a twoway radio, a phone, and half of a Cuban-mix sandwich. “What’s this message, to leave my BOLO eyes at the door?”
It took me a moment. Be on the lookout.
Liska looked to the side yard, lifted his chin. Bobbi Lewis recognized Zack from her file photos. She said, “Hmm,” and bit into her Cuban. Marnie handed her a paper plate and a napkin, and introduced Sam. Bobbi Lewis finished chewing. “An apprehension hoedown, or what? I should’ve worn my square dance boots?”
“We’re here for home movies,” said Marnie.
Liska growled, “A pot of gold, or a bucket of shit. Let’s roll it.”
Marnie called the Cahills inside, then placed a cushion for me to lean on for a better view. Zack and Claire entered, each wishing to hold the door for the other. I read a partial truce. Teresa Barga introduced herself to Bobbi Lewis. To keep things technically up-and-up, no one introduced the Cahills. Sam started the VCR. Everyone moved closer to the television.
The tape, a duplicate, began with several jump cuts, Barb and Ed’s friends licking ice cream cones, looking at other tourists. The Conch Train’s bell rang sharply in the background; no conversation followed the camera. It panned to capture a threehundred-pound moped rider, a man with a severe crew cut and, under his tank top and huggy-style bathing suit, a bodyload of dragon tattoos. The rider faded from focus, down Front Street. Then a raw close-up of a sixtyish woman trying to dislodge an object from a rear tooth. The camera operator’s chuckles diminished as the woman became pissed, realizing her efforts had been documented. Then, suddenly, another pan, the Conch Train pulling out of the Front-and-Duval station, a jolt—the camera operator must have slipped down a step—then activity at the rear of the train. One or two people stood, then more stood and began yelling for the train to stop. The train traveled another twenty feet, then halted. At first, pedestrians near the train began to back away from a form slumped in the street. Then several moved forward to assist the man in the white shirt and dark slacks. Omar had gone off the side away from the camera.
“Stop it there,” said Liska.
“No!” said Detective Lewis. “Roll it through.”
The phone rang. “Gotta get it,” said Chicken Neck. “I left this number.”
Sam hit “pause,” said, “Hello,” into his walk-around unit, and handed it to Liska.
Liska said yes twice, then: “They can’t stay there.” He asked Sam his house number, repeated it into the phone. “But give me at least ten minutes.” He handed the phone back to Sam and waved at the TV.
“Back it up to the dental work, then run it all the way through,” ordered Bobbi Lewis.
Sam did so. Then did so again. We watched it four times. Each time someone in the room pointed at a movement or a significant action for the others to observe. The repetition allowed each of us to edit the meaningless and sift for a movement or shadow, any clue. On the fourth pass, Sam let the tape roll slightly farther than the previous runs. The camera operator had pressed the “zoom” button.
“Right there!” I said. “The woman on the curb, with her hands to her face. That shiny bracelet.”
Claire sat forward. “Oh, God, I knew it. I knew it. She’s up to her perky tits in it!”
Sam hit “pause.” The image shook, distorted by the VCR, but in the frame that followed, Abby Womack looked upward, peeked through her fingers with horror in her eyes.
Zack leaned forward in his chair, put his elbows on his knees, his forehead in his hands. Just as Abby had done in the video. “Miss Abbott regrets …” he said softly.
“Elizabeth Womack, right?” said Liska. “The lady who got shot in her dial tone?”
Zack nodded.
I said, “Zack, what name did you just say?”
“Elizabeth Womack,” said Zack. “Nicknamed Abby. Maiden name Abbott.”
“That’s the guy Tazzy Gucci asked to tell Angie,” I said. “Richard Abbott.”
Bobbi Lewis and Liska focused on me. Hell, I’d already said it.
“Her brother?” said Zack. “I’d thought they’d thrown away the key on that low-life son of a bitch. Please, run that tape one more time.”
I said to Liska, “You got that three-by-three proof I gave you? The guy who bought jet fuel?”
With no inflection, he said, “It’s in the car. I’ll go get it.”
My mind downshifted for a moment. In my analytic concentration on the videotape, I’d missed the biggest picture of all: the primary players in the “trust agreement,” Zack, Jesse, Scotty, Tazzy, and Buzzy, were alive. Someone had killed Omar and Ray. Someone had wounded Abby. We’d been up against two sets of enemies. They’d been fighting each other.
Liska returned, handed the photo to Bobbi Lewis. She studied it, passed it to Marnie.
“Okay,” said Liska. “Let’s go, one more time. After the picture jumps, like the photographer stepped in dog poop, see who stands first.”
Sam hit the remote “start,” then the slow-motion button. The picture went fuzzy-or pixilated, to use Olivia’s terminology. Sam backed it up and started again, at normal speed. We all saw it at once. The first person to stand, in the second-to-last train car, wore the same dark-colored shirt as the burned-hand man in the photo proof. As he stood, his arm moved away from the shoulders of the person directly behind him, in the caboose car. The head of that person lolled away from the camera, then vanished. Others stood. The train slowed. Several passengers, including the man in the blue shirt, stepped off the far side to assist the person who had tumbled from the caboose. The man in blue stepped back into the crowd of pedestrians, became enveloped by people anxious to look. By the time the camera framed Omar in the gutter, the blue shirt had vanished.
“We find Abby, we find her brother?” I said. “Abby’s looking for Samantha on the Blown Aweigh.”
Liska laid a horizontal hand atop a vertical hand. Time-out.
Everyone looked at me. I felt a premonition of screwing up badly.
Teresa Barga came to my rescue.
Opening with, “Samantha Burch and I were close friends in Gainesville,” Teresa gave a “neutral party” rendition of the week’s craziness, scenes behind the scenes that we’d held back. She worded it to minimize the fact that Zack Cahill had undertaken a criminal enterprise. She looked to me for verification on info that had come to light early in the afternoon, over at Schooner Wharf. Detective Lewis did not flinch as Teresa progressed, but Liska looked more steamed with each revelation, though he kept his eyes from me. He’d accused me of waffling. He’d claimed at Harpoon Harry’s that I had screwed him with silence, triple-slapped his face. He’d only scratched the surface. I’d been an accessory, an obstruction at the least. I’d toasted my good standing with the Key West Police.
The tale circled back to the probability that Abby Womack and probably her murdering brother already had spent half a day searching for the Blown Aweigh. If they found the yacht, they would find and perhaps harm Samantha Burch.
Liska turned toward me, refused to look me in the eye. “What d‘you make of it, Rutledge? You’re a man with insight.” His normal, insinuating tone of voice. The question couldn’t be anything but prelude to put-down, or arrest.
My only shot was to play it straight. “Let’s juggle the seating chart. Ray Best and Omar Boudreau worked, at one time or another, for Tazzy Gucci. They wore identical emerald pinkie rings. Let’s assume they were partners. They thought they were going after some huge bundle of cash, a bundle they learned about from Ray’s wife, Angel. If Abby’s brother killed Omar, maybe Ray Best shot Abby as retribution. If this Richard Abbott is the man with gas burns and a bullet wound, he was the one who torched Stannis Pharmacy, tried to break into my house, and most likely rampaged in Jesse Spence’s apartment. We had two factions at war with each other, two sets of pirates after the gold.”
“Except there’s no gold,” said Zack.
Bobbi
Lewis’s face registered bewilderment, and a gratifying hint of belief.
Liska asked to use the phone, dialed fast, pounded his fist on a stretch of woodwork as he waited. “Montez,” he said. “You sent those guys here? Okay, you and Catherman get on the horn, call every charter air service south of Tavernier. Get me the names of every human being in the air right now. We’re looking for a male and/or a female, last name either Womack or Abbott.” He paused. “Yes, yes, even the seaplanes. Holy shit, especially the seaplanes. Call them first! Get back to me right here.” He hung up. “Jesus Christ,” he barked. “What’s this going to turn into, a fucking Bruce Willis movie?”
Claire looked wiped out. My bones ached. I rolled over, brought myself to the fetal position, a crouch, then stood. Teresa wore the face of an injured young girl; she fixed her eyes on the floor and walked to the porch. I wanted to hold her, tell her Samantha would come out fine. But I didn’t know if that was true.
“My turn for the phone,” said Bobbi Lewis.
The gate bell rang. Marnie started for the door, but stopped. Alarm in her voice: “Sam?”
Wheeler went for the porch. I looked over Liska’s shoulder. Scotty Auguie came first through the gate. Behind him, Fortay, with a man slung over his shoulder, a white man in baggy shorts and no shirt.
Jesse Spence entered the yard last, hurried around the others when he saw Liska. “I’m here to turn myself in.”
Fortay flopped the man onto the ground. The man writhed, his elbows inward, against his ribs. One more member of Fottay’s Flipper Fan Club. His bleached Rasta dreadlocks flipped around in the crabgrass and dirt.
“Tucker’s kid,” said Chicken Neck. “Like home delivery, they brought me the slime bag.” He turned to me, lowered his voice. “No thanks to you.”
I didn’t agree. Under my breath I said, “A respected journalist once wrote that even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”
“Too many people gettin’ aced,” said Spence, nodding at Zack CahilL “We never wanted guns in the first place. It was time to shut down the sideshow. I figured this’d be step one.”
