by Tom Corcoran
Tim had fucked up before getting to town. For the moment I was taking the fall.
The two cars rolled northward on U.S. 1. I had no idea how long it would take Liska or Lewis to hear of my arrest, to ride to my rescue. I had blown off Lewis’s urgent request to take pictures at Bay Point. She would be in no hurry to help me. Her closing phrase on the phone had not been an expression of good will. I knew her habits, her dislikes and obsessions. I believed that the sum of her traits made her a fine detective. Difficult to live with, but a fine sleuth. Above all, she was stubborn.
“Millican,” I said, glad to have my voice. “We could stop for a burger at No Name Pub. Talk this thing out.”
“You got dental in your health plan?”
“All this time you’re devoting to my alleged fraud, I guess you solved the Milton Navarre murder.”
“You called it,” he said. “You floated the hot card at one forty-five. Navarre died fifty miles away between three and five. Another dude, twenty-some miles farther, died after four A.M. Connect the dots.”
“That’s fabulous, Detective,” I said. “You should call the media, start prepping your résumé for the networks. I can see you sitting there with a high-profile attorney second-guessing the rich and powerful.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“I’m praising you, Millican. The state loves hot dogs who solve multiple crimes in one afternoon. I can fake a mopey perp walk, to help your case, but the airtime might be better if you chain my ankles. My shuffle would broadcast my guilt.”
“Keep talking, shit-for-brains. You’re about to get so lost in the judicial process, it’ll take every penny you’ve got to buy lawyers just to see daylight some year down the road.”
“And me so squeaky clean,” I said.
“That might save your life. If you had so much as a zoning misdemeanor on your record, we’d have you toes-up on a chemicals table inside of eighteen months.” He turned to face me, his cheeks crimson with anger. “Did you learn to tie a noose in high school, you murdering douchebag?”
“Junior high,” I said.
“I love it when I get sleazy, bigmouthed bumwads like you red-handed.”
“Shit, watch out!”
He didn’t react in time, didn’t make it back to our lane.
I saw horror in oncoming eyes, heard ripping metal and an explosion, felt a spray of glass before I skimmed toward the reef on a red-and-orange sailboard.
“Yo, buddy, you be makin’ it. We got an ambulance on the way.”
It was a deputy, but I couldn’t focus on his face. I was on my back, in the rear seat of the cruiser. I heard voices and squelch sounds from small radios, smelled vomit and burned rubber and engine coolant. My wrists felt broken, but the handcuffs were gone.
“Why an ambulance?” I said.
“You’ve been in an accident. The detective, your friend, is here.”
“Alex?” Bobbi Lewis leaned down. My focus returned. She looked at me like I was a hurt child. “Alex?”
“Fuck you,” I said. “You told him where to find me.”
“He said he wanted pictures from the Marathon scene.”
“What about…” My focus went away.
“No life-threatening injuries in the other car,” she said. “Everybody lived through it.”
“You’ve got a bad boy in the department.”
“How’s your head?”
“Hurts on the inside,” I said.
“Bad?”
“Only when I scream.”
10
Once I shook the shards out of my hair and realized that I wasn’t maimed or disfigured, I promised to sign a clean bill of health and an open-ended pledge to the FOP. I offered to wash and wax fifty off-duty cruisers, anything to keep myself out of that goddamned ambulance. Having just survived a wreck in which I was handcuffed and locked into a backseat with no door handles, I couldn’t imagine any injury worth the fright of being injured, immobile, powerless, and strapped into a speeding ambulance on the Seven Mile Bridge.
The badges prevailed, though I was in no shape to resist. Bobbi rode with me in the meat wagon, and drugs failed to put me to sleep. A rainstorm on the bridge did the trick. I woke up, alert but immobile, in Fishermen’s Hospital in Marathon.
During the second round of pokes and prods, when I felt lucid enough to listen, Bobbi told me that a receipt in my wallet, a meal at Cafe Med on Grinnell, removed me as a credit-card fraud suspect. “No way would you pay a bill with legitimate plastic in Key West at ten twenty-five P.M. on Wednesday, drive to Key Largo, fill your tank on a bogus Visa, and be back in bed when I called you at six-forty.”
“It’s physically possible,” I said.
“I can’t imagine your losing sleep to commit a crime.”
“How am I doing here?” I said.
“You’ve had whiplash and muscle strain. The nurse said your testicles were swollen. Is that because you missed me?”
“Only partly. Did she check for knuckle welts around my belly button?”
Bobbi shook her head. “So Millican made a pig of himself.”
“He made the dean’s list in charm school. How about the other people?”
“He and two adults from the other car were patched and released from the emergency room. The twelve-year-old girl has a broken arm and a concussion, so they’ll keep her overnight.”
“Millican negligent?”
“Oh, sure, but on duty, questionable as it was. When the other car sues, the taxpayers will foot the fee.”
“How did you get to me so quickly?”
“A cop-abuse call from your neighbor, Mr. Glavin. He gave the dispatcher a description of Millican and the tag number of the Key Largo deputy. The dispatcher called me. I tried to get through to Millican, to get your status, but his phone and radio were off. To me, that was weirder than your being arrested. I left for Marathon right away.”
“Thank you.”
“Then I got another call. The Key Largo deputy was an eighth mile behind you on Big Pine when Millican crossed the centerline. The deputy called the dispatcher and saved you from choking on your own vomit.”
“I barfed?”
“You blew lunch and you bled. I washed your shirt and shorts in that sink over there. They’ll have plenty of time to dry before you leave. Do you want me to stop talking?”
“No.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “How about three murders?”
“Is our bet still on?” said Lewis.
“Sure,” I said. “Lucky Haskins died after the morning paper came out. Lucky has kids who want his lifestyle, or ex-wives he hung out to dry. Or his current wife has a beef with her future. It was classic copycat.”
“Each to his own presumptions. We see it as a standard suicide.”
“Standard?” I said. “You mean regular, run-of-the-mill?”
“Garden-variety, yes. In the suicide league it was plain vanilla.”
“How did your pictures turn out at the scene?”
“I hate to admit it,” she said. “Your instructions on the phone—you could earn side money teaching at the college.”
Her phone buzzed. A half-minute later I was listening to Liska.
“I just finished a meeting with Chester Millican,” he said.
“Do you have bruises to show for it?”
“Only my reputation as a judge of character. Thank God it was a sideswipe instead of a head-on. Did Lewis tell you how this all began?”
“Millican said it was a fake credit card,” I said. “I have to wonder why he’s screwing around with an Upper Keys security video in the predawn hours.”
“He took a personal interest. His daughter and her husband own the convenience store in Rock Harbor. He didn’t match the video with your face during the situation in Marathon, but he made what he called a delayed connection. That started it all.”
“Did he explain why he jeopardized his job by rousting me?”
<
br /> “That’s a question for shrinks and lawyers,” said Liska.
“He’ll probably go public with a blubbering confession, and get a book contract and a movie deal.”
“He said you called him a dickweed. How professional is that?”
“I don’t know the term, Sheriff, so I can’t use it. What’s a dickweed?”
“I was going to ask you.”
“Sounds like an agricultural problem, like kudzu. Maybe it’s a genital fungus.”
“You’re a laugh a minute,” said Liska. “Did you mouth off to him in Marathon?”
“I suggested to Bohner that Millican had overlooked possible evidence. Bohner passed Millican my comment, so maybe something got skewed in translation. Where does the detective stand after this stunt?”
“He’s on paid leave pending an investigation of the wreck and an alleged infringement of your civil rights.”
“Who alleged?”
“The duty doctor in emergency.”
“Did you ask Bohner how he happened to turn on Tenth Street instead of Thirteenth?”
“Bohner and Millican are pals,” said Liska. “They get together once in a while for a toddy at some bottom-feeders’ bar in Marathon. Anyway, they talked by cell before you got in Bohner’s car, and Millican told him to turn on Tenth.”
They hadn’t come off as pals on our arrival at the Milton Navarre crime scene.
“Are you okay with that answer?” I said.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“When I arrived in Marathon, Millican thought I might be undercover FDLE. If those two had talked, Bohner might have mentioned my nonofficial status.”
“What the hell do I know about one blessed conversation?” said Liska. “All I know is Millican isn’t bad when he sticks to business. He made a strong point a couple minutes ago. He linked the timing, the fake card in Key Largo, the death in Marathon, and the death on Ramrod Key.”
“He wanted to plug me in to that scenario.”
“We’ll plug somebody in to it because it makes a world of sense. Aside from a public urination in Layton—into the gas tank of a ’54 Packard Patrician—those were the only three crimes in the county that night.”
“Are we slick with my hospital bill?”
He hung up.
Bobbi looked puzzled. “Scenario? What was that about?”
I said, “Theories.”
She looked away. “It’s all we’ve got.”
I disagreed, closed my eyes, and thought about a young woman standing on Dredgers Lane, a silver Zippo engraved with several sets of initials, and the Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre noose knots, similar but different from the one that yanked Haskins. Now a new problem, and Millican had invented a timeline. My thoughts went to Tim. He had failed my newfound trust in a way that was not out of character. Flogging bad plastic was money-motivated, small-time, typical of his old patterns, but davits and murders didn’t fit. No one with half a brain would kill Kansas Jack or Milton Navarre for their cash. And, if I had my days straight, Lucky Haskins died while Tim was zoned on Tanker Branigan’s couch.
The Tim I knew was not a killer.
But…he’d said, “Didn’t that give you a weird sense of power, leaving them there to die?”
Or something to that effect.
How well did I know my brother?
I woke and realized that the action buzz around me had quit. I was alone except for a roommate behind a curtain who wheezed as he slept. The place smelled like rubbing alcohol, the air temperature was down to about fifty, the humming fluorescent lights could have illuminated a stadium. A nurse told me I was in for the night. I asked if my room was a jail, offered to sign anything.
“Your doctor of record is home in bed.”
“If he’s the duty warden,” I said, “what does that make you?”
She shifted to a sultry voice. “I’m the Enema Queen.”
“My sincere apologies.”
An hour later she returned with a deputy and a clipboard. I signed eight release forms and she called for a wheelchair. The deputies refused to let me leave in a taxi. After several calls and my rants about false imprisonment and lawsuits, Liska authorized an ambulance. Because climbing the stairs to Al Manning’s living area risked dizziness or hernia or some spine-related issue, Liska okayed a temporary stay at the Sugarloaf Lodge.
The nurse slipped me an envelope with a clutch of pills in it. She said, “If you piss blood, honey, give us a call.”
At eleven P.M. two rookie deputies, one with vodka on his breath, wheeled my mobile bed from an ambulance to my stuffy canalside hotel room. Resentment shaped their actions. They wanted my ass past the door so their demeaning limo duties could cease. I climbed down to hobble after the wheels caught in gravel and jerked me lengthwise. They left me with two Cokes, a pitcher of tap water, and a bag of Tostitos. In an attempt to cover civic butt, Monroe County would honor my tab, including room service, excluding bar bills, until I felt able to climb the steps to Manning’s living area.
A vacation within a vacation. I congratulated myself on a fine little scam. Except for the tape around my ribs—to protect my back—I was fine. Maybe the pain pills added to my euphoria. I was surprised to find that I didn’t have the strength to open a soft drink, much less pour water.
I fell asleep with MSNBC buzzing through the pillow.
Sunday morning, nine A.M., I was the poster boy for Victims Unanimous. I felt aches and stiffness, like I’d been in a car wreck, but I was mobile and once again lucid. Someone had placed a plastic lounge chair in aqua and salmon, a plastic-mesh-brimmed hat, and a Key West Citizen next to my canal-facing door. I called the bar, ordered a coffee carafe, two large OJs, two Amstel Lights, a quad-cheese omelet with sausage and bacon, and a whole-wheat English muffin with cherry jam. The man taking the order asked if I was Dr. Thompson.
“My name is Rutledge. I checked in late, room 209.”
“Right,” he said. “Two Amstel Lights? Wouldn’t you rather have six?”
“Two would be better.”
“I’ll have your order in four minutes. You need today’s New York Times?”
“Sure,” I said. “News from the outside world.”
Ten minutes later, I sat under an umbrella, read “Arts & Leisure,” and sipped my drinks. Four motorboats full of divers left the small marina. Eight kayakers in sun bonnets and life vests followed their group leader north to the exotic wilds of Bow Channel. The tapes around my back began to itch, so I shifted the chair twice to evade the sun. I finished half the paper, all the drinks, and half the muffin. I felt limp as sea grass, removed from reality. I began to understand why up-north tourists pay so much for their Keys escapes.
“Alex, got a minute?” Tanker Branigan stood there in gross floral jams and a hundred-gallon Chicago Black-hawks jersey. He held a twelve-pack of Michelob and a wad of bar napkins.
“Multiple minutes,” I said. “Find yourself a chair.”
He handed me a beer, walked to the canal bulkhead, sat on the cement. “I took a cab from Duval Street. Tim doesn’t know I’m here.”
“I don’t even know I’m here. Why would you want to make the trip?”
“I got the address of this place from your old flame, Teresa. I guess she got it from the county.”
“Is she, by chance, Tim’s new flame?” I said.
“She gave him her number Friday morning. They’ve stayed in touch. He heard about your accident and the credit-card accusation.”
“He’s remorseful and afraid to face me, right?”
“Worse,” said Tanker. “I took a gun away from him at six A.M.”
He let me soak that up in silence.
“Did he bring the gun with him on vacation?” I said.
“I keep a couple in the house. He found one in the Cheerios box.”
“If it was me with a gun,” I said, “and reversed circumstances, my fault, my brother, I might go after the bad cop. Tim wanted to target himself, yes?”
“You
kicked him out of Key West once.”
I nodded.
“That’s why he didn’t call when he hit town. He wanted to do his thing without fucking up yours. The afternoon we met—that’d be Thursday—ten minutes after we started to gab, he told me that. His opening line was he came to Key West for moontan, poontang, and rum. Then he told me about his last visit. He ended it with your invitation to leave.”
“In five days he pissed off every person I knew on the island.”
“Maybe it wasn’t that bad,” said Tanker. “People understand. Everyone has a relative over-the-top or down in the gutter.”
“Well, he was both in a very short time. I worried for a couple years that he would call again, but he never did. I’d stopped worrying about two weeks ago.”
“Don’t forget—he didn’t call, the cop did. Tim waited until he was jammed to drop your name.” He inhaled, then blew air. The size of his jaw amazed me, his neck the thickness of a light pole.
“You have brothers?” I said.
“Three. Two of them were like yours.”
“Past tense?”
“One split his Pontiac Firebird on a fifty-year oak, sideways on Southern Comfort. That was his junior year in high school. One took his act to Somalia with Uncle. He wanted to be a hero. He wound up just another dead grunt. I could have done a better job keeping them alive. I didn’t start soon enough.”
“You think about them a lot?” I said.
“Every day. I think about how they were losers and I survived. Mind you, I’m not saying a survivor is a winner. I’m saying there’s shit we can do.”
“Like take away their guns?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Thanks for doing that.”
“No problem,” said Branigan. “It wasn’t unselfish. I had a roommate pull the trigger once.”
I refused the image that barged toward my mind. I thought back, instead, to Cleveland Heights. “He was a selfish shit,” I said, “but he treated himself worse than anyone. Growing up with Tim was like living in two separate worlds. The world that happened, that you saw and thought about, was the first third of it. The world you didn’t see, that affected you the most, was the other two thirds.”
