by Tom Corcoran
Inside the house I put the chicken and all but one beer into the refrigerator, turned on the stereo—Christine McVie’s solo CD from the mid-eighties, a personal favorite—opened windows, and spun my fans. I had twenty minutes to shower before sundown mosquitoes and no-see-ums would turn me into a blood feast.
Praying for an out-of-state job offer, I called my message-retrieval number.
First up was Teresa Barga, the city’s media liaison. We had been lovers for a year, until the grass turned greener and her falsehoods grew legs. I still felt burned by her betrayal, and word had come back that Teresa now referred to me as her “recent unpleasantness.” How do you fight that crap without turning into a sleaze? It’s a gentleman’s task not to talk after a breakup; how do you avoid being branded the bad guy?
In chipper voice Teresa let me know that the city had hired a full-time police photographer. The young man possessed skills, but he was not a prince. “The operative word,” said Teresa, “is butthole. Apparently he’s aware of your reputation. He asked for your phone number, which I told him I lost. I just wanted to warn you, let you know. That’s it from the city.”
Sometimes even I failed to keep the city and county in their separate slots. Key West was in Monroe County. The county encompassed the Florida Keys and a small chunk of the Everglades. The county seat was Key West. So, while each entity had its own government, politics, and law-enforcement units, the overlap of jurisdictions confused even judges and lawyers. When people referred to “the city” or “the county,” they usually meant the official entirety rather than a specific location. Once in a while they brought geography into it.
The next call came from my close friend Sam Wheeler, canceling our lunch date for next Wednesday. Two days ago he had borrowed a fellow fishing guide’s van and helped me move my stuff—including my ’66 Shelby—to Al Manning’s place in one trip. The most important box carried my “read-these-soon” books, new novels by Gautreaux, Rankin, Furst, and Rozan. “Hope you got squared away in Little Torch,” said Sam. “I kept the van for ten days and now it’s next stop Weeks Bay, Alabama. I needed some time in my cabin, and Marnie started her book, so she won’t miss me.”
Sam’s housemate, Marnie Dunwoody, worked for the Key West Citizen. Last year she felt inspired to write a series about island changes from the Depression bust to the current boom days. Six weeks ago a New York editor with a home in Key West called to praise her series. He suggested that Marnie find an agent so he could buy an expanded version of the series as a book. Marnie faced daunting research. Aside from old newspapers, several weak novels, and the fine pictorial books by the Langleys, little had been written about the period.
Her voice came up next. “I assume you were up the Keys. My boss at the Citizen asked me to write for page 1. Please call. I’ll be here at the house. I also need to borrow your copy of A Key West Companion, the Christopher Cox book.”
Next came Sheriff Liska: “I need your written report faxed or e-mailed to me by eight-thirty A.M. Don’t get your jock in a wad. You can whip out two hundred words no problem, something I can show the county prosecutor. Compare the scenes, tell me what those dead men said to you. And ask your darkroom tech to get me some Marathon-scene photos ASAP.”
Liska was followed by a familiar voice from a Naples ad agency. “Hi, Alex, Connie here. We have an open shoot, four days at our inflated rates, plus rental car and one twenty-five per diem. It’s a pinewood furniture catalog for a shop in Blairsville, Georgia. You fly to Atlanta Thursday noon and drive two hours into the mountains. We see a fine weather window for the duration. We like you for this, but we have to know by Monday.”
An out-of-state job offer. If I had known my prayer might work, I would’ve gone for an extended fashion shoot in Tahiti.
The last voice was the city’s new photographer. He identified himself as Bixby, and recited his phone number. “I’ve heard great things about you, and I’d love to buy you a few of whatever you drink and pick your brain. At your convenience, of course. Maybe you can give me tips on dealing with locals and getting behind the scenes. If you ever want to let me know, for instance, that somebody famous is in town, I can make it worth your while. My name is Bixby. Just the one name, like Sting.”
I deleted all six, popped another, stripped my shirt and shorts, and went to shower. I felt skeeters brush against me, but none of them bit. I must have been the wrong temperature.
After two pieces of chicken, I returned Marnie’s call. She was finishing her Citizen piece and wanted info on the two snuffs.
“I don’t need much,” she said. “The sheriff’s press liaison faxed me a short page of details. The Marathon detectives have a man in custody with no charges filed.”
“You going with coincidence?”
“On no proof, Alex?” she said. “My editors would eat me alive.”
“Two in one day and both on davits?” I said. “That’s coincidence over the top.”
“Maybe you saw something else that links the murders. One of your evidence tidbits that the police missed.”
“You may want to stress poverty, which rules out theft.”
“Poverty links a whole lot of Keys residents,” she said. “Anyway, time has taught me that unless cops are abusing them, poor people make shitty headlines.”
“How about researching the last time the county had a nonsuicide hanging?”
“I hate that kind of low-rent story. It’s like covering a bank holdup with no suspects, so you’re forced to write a fat sidebar on the history of bank holdups.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Marnie. I was as close to the dead men as anyone. Beyond timing, poverty, and davits, I didn’t see a thing that linked them. The forensic experts could have a different story. A couple of matching footprints or witness sightings of similar cars.”
“So maybe I should camp out on the medical examiner’s front porch?”
“Heard from Sam?” I said.
“Not yet, but he sometimes forgets how to use machines like telephones. If you hear from him, remind him that I’m alive.”
“Before you go,” I said, “I just thought of a detail you might pursue. The Marathon victim had head wounds. He might have died before he was lifted off the concrete.”
“No similar injuries on the other dude?”
“None that I could see.”
“Has Liska ever put restrictions on you regarding talking to the press?”
“No,” I said. “But if you say in print that I was the only one to view both scenes, I might become the killer’s next target. I might get to do my own air dance.”
“Your what?” she said. “Oh, I get it.”
“You understand my reluctance?”
“Alex, we all have our jobs to do.”
5
I dislike objects that promise to improve my life but end up confusing it, and buying a “plan” is even worse. But my new living arrangement dictated a cell phone. I could remove billing issues by unplugging my house phones for eight weeks and let incomings forward to my mobile. And Johnny Griffin could use his cell to make or take calls while he occupied the cottage. No overlap, no problems. The soundness of the arrangement was crumbling fast. For the second straight night the new buzzing bastard interrupted my dream sleep. Four people had the number, and Sam Wheeler hated cell phones. He swore he would call only to inform me of his own death.
Dumb-ass me answered it. The next time I crossed Cow Key Bridge, I would chuck it seaward. I should have known that the police can get any info they want. To compound the crap, Officer Carlton Tisdell was the last Key West cop I wanted doing me favors.
“Rutledge, you got a brother?”
My clock said 3:08. “Last count I had two.”
“Is one the mongrel here on the curb?”
“Does he have a name?”
“Timothy Rutledge.”
“Ah, shit.”
“I heard that,” he said.
“Is he dead?”
“He�
��s doing his best but he’s not there yet. Come collect him before he dies of being repulsive.”
“Where are you holding him?”
“I’m giving him a break, saving you taxpayers the price of a metal bunk. Call it a credit to my bank of good favors. We’re watching traffic out front of the Bull and Whistle.”
“Thanks, Tisdell. I didn’t know he was in town.”
“Save your chatter for people who treasure your image.”
I called a taxi and asked it not to honk in the lane. I changed my T-shirt and pulled on shorts, deck shoes, and a ball cap. A bartender friend once called a fifty-dollar bill a postmidnight miracle worker, so I dug into my secret stash. The night’s perfect miracle would have my brother evaporate without being harmed.
A pervasive hum of climate control filled Old Town. The air smelled of dense frangipani and what passes for dew in the tropics. A tree-frog chorus croaked a rain warning. An east breeze ruffled palms, and frond shadows danced beneath streetlights. The cab stopped on Fleming as I walked from the lane. I knew the driver, a freelance writer who wrote a weekly column for The Miami Herald. I hated to include him in my wee-hour drama.
“Where to?”
I said, “Caroline and Duval,” which told him I was on a mission, kamikaze or rescue. I thought it best that he think kamikaze. Taxi drivers hate to pick up drunks because they so often barf in the car.
He was no fool. He knew me and pegged it a rescue. “Charming,” he said.
“I guess we’ll find out.” I tried to run a preview through my mind.
Our parents had imposed an alcoholic and myopic outlook on life. Our job was to shut up and be “good.” We couldn’t afford vacations, new sports gear, Indians tickets, Vernor’s ginger ale, or theme-painted lunch boxes. Even Raymond, the oldest of us, wore hand-me-downs from cousins. We were told that finer things were for finer people.
Raymond never left Ohio. He did two years at Kent State, married his pregnant girlfriend, and moved to Toledo, her hometown. He worked his way through the union ranks in a steel-fabrication plant, took six-week vacations each year, and made more money than all of us. He stayed married, and would retire with full health benefits inside of eight years.
I fled Cleveland Heights in the late sixties, to a state college, then the Navy. In the seventies I landed in Key West, an island few in Ohio had seen and fewer understood.
Tim, on the other hand, rode a downhill sled. After high school he tried to escape, but each time he U-turned. When he was twenty-one he married a young heiress to an Akron tire-and-rubber fortune. The morning after their wedding, the newlyweds missed their flight to Hawaii. Her family found them honeymooning in a Canton hotel room with an underaged black hooker, a case of Cuervo 1800, four grams of cocaine, a box of poppers, and a mini-canister of nitrous oxide. Even with his political clout and wads of cash, it took the bride’s father months to squash the paperwork and send the groom packing. Tim’s cash reward for going away was chugged and snorted inside of two months. His life from then on was repeat, recharge, and repent.
I hadn’t seen Tim in seven years, and those few days had been rough. Our father had collapsed and died during a Christmas reunion. My brothers and I had taken down lights and decorations and gone into funeral mode—long faces and enough cocktails to keep Mom subdued. It went down as we had been trained. Booze cures all, even though it killed the old man. We were never sure if our mother was grieving or just relieved and going through the motions. The standard mourning script was, “Mom looks dry. I can get it,” and one of us would pour a Canadian Club and Coke. My four-day trip went to ten. I hit my body’s limit for cold weather and came down with bronchitis. After my recovery, back on Dredgers Lane, I swore to forever stay south of Miami between November and March.
Tim had been the stalwart brother that time. I was full of cold pills, sweating, trying to sleep under a pile of blankets. Raymond had fled, claiming he needed time with his family. Tim stuck it out, dealt with the out-of-towners who’d come to the funeral, attended to our mother, stayed sober, showed—of all things—kindness and a personality I hadn’t seen since grade school.
Eight years before that, I had kicked Tim out of my house. He had pissed off every Key West friend I had, started a fight in Louie’s Backyard, been tossed out of the Full Moon Saloon, eighty-sixed from the Green Parrot—no mean feat—and rolled to my doorstep twice by city cops. I demanded that he not return to Key West, ever. I’d felt like a failure because I’d never found a way into my brother’s skull, a way to save him from himself.
In recent years I had wondered whether the stalwart Tim was permanent or temporary. If I saw him again, would it be the rational Tim from the days following our father’s death or the manic Tim who’d forced me to slam my door? Now I had my answer. He was back on the island, drunk, probably fresh out of cash, with a cop attached. I know the argument: you can’t control things that are out of your control. But at least, for a short time, I’d seen a glimmer of hope for Tim’s future, something to hang on to, to make me feel like less of a failure.
I couldn’t bring him back to my house. Johnny Griffin would begin his occupancy in less than five hours. I had promised to vacate by eight A.M. so Johnny could check out of the Casa Marina and drop off his luggage before starting a day’s fishing in the Northwest Channel. The last thing I wanted to do, on the first day of a lucrative rental, was to confront my tenant with a drooling fool who looked like my twin. Also, I didn’t want to relocate Timothy twice inside of six hours. Best to rent him a room where he could sleep it off, and maybe have a bus ticket delivered to his room before checkout time.
I took one small consolation. The money I would spend could amount to a screaming bargain.
From a block up Caroline Street I spotted Tim flat-assed on the sidewalk, his back against the bar’s outside wall. Officer Tisdell stood close by, bullshitting two young women who didn’t look any more sober than my brother, or old enough to drink. Fitting the hour, Duval was packed with stragglers and stumblers. Thumpa-thumpa cars cruised, filled with sneering boys, a few rock-hard young girls. Music blared from open saloon windows. I asked the driver to stop and wait on the far corner.
He spoke his second one-word paragraph: “Wonderful.” If the cabbie had told me my ride was over, I would’ve countered with at least a twenty. He stuck with me, however, and I stepped to the curb. Tisdell broke away from the young women, glanced at me, shifted his stare to my brother, and said nothing.
Tim heard the cab idling and raised his head. His eyes filled with sullen fear. “Man, you know I didn’t want this,” he said. “You know I wanted this time to be different.”
I said, “Why fuck with tradition? Hop in. You don’t have a ditty bag or anything?”
“Shh.” Tim looked out the corner of his eye at Officer Tisdell. “I told him I hitchhiked down.” He misjudged his curb-to-cab step, but I caught him as he fell. He smelled more of body odor than alcohol. In the backseat he said, “Cop doesn’t need to know about my car.”
“You remember where you left it?”
“On that street near Louie’s Backyard.”
“Why over there?”
“The parking spots aren’t marked ‘Residents Only.’”
“You’re getting smarter in your old age,” I said.
“At least I’ll never be as old as you.”
A clever line that I had heard him say before. I heard it as his prediction that he would die first. My sadness expanded.
He said, “What’s new?” but didn’t look eager for an answer.
“New, old, what are you talking about?” I said. “Nothing changes. You roll in, and I spring for a room.”
“Yeah, well.” He jammed one hand, then the other, into his front pockets. He mumbled something that I chose to ignore.
I knew an all-night clerk at the Blue Marlin who would accept fifty to find a hundred-dollar room. The room might have been used from ten until midnight, then vacated, but why be choosy. I asked the driver to
go left on Whitehead.
“Don’t need no motel, Alex.” He was still wiggling his hand in his pocket. “I met a guy in the bar, big fucker named Tanker. He said he needed a roomie to kill the boredom, and he said, ‘Split the rent, more money for beer.’ It made good damn sense, so I said okay. I had his address right here.”
“Fish it out.”
“I swear I had it. I think the fuzz pulled it out when he searched me for dope.”
“He didn’t find dope?”
“My drug of choice has always been beer.”
The bullshit continues.
“The cop kept the address?” I said.
“It fell in the gutter back there.”
“Are we sure of this, Timmy?”
“Pretty damn sure. The guy in the bar’s name was Tanker Branigan.”
Without a speck of hope, I asked the cabbie to go back to the Bull and Whistle. We cut east on Fleming, hung a left on Duval, and got caught behind a pedicab at the light on Caroline.
Tim sat up, peered through the windshield, and pointed at the far corner curbing. “Fat damn, there it is. Don’t you see it?”
When we were much closer, I saw a yellow speck on the pavement.
I didn’t doubt that his liver was shot, but his eyes were perfect.
The address on Johnson threw me. The street runs east from the Casa Marina, where digits and decimal points define mansion prices (1.2 would be a starter home; 2.5 might be average). I had never traveled beyond White on Johnson, but in the 1800 block prestige was hard to find. Concrete block ruled. We stopped at a two-bedroom side-by-side duplex dump—a “du-du” in real estate parlance. I reminded myself that, in today’s Key West, a clean du-du was .8 and rising.
A bleary-eyed young woman with shoulder-length brown hair opened the door. She was about five-three and wore boxer trunks and nothing else.
