by Tom Corcoran
“We must’ve just missed each other on Thursday morning,” she said. “I arrived just as they brought Milton down.” She looked off in the direction of the davits. “Something about the cable made him spin slowly. He did this macabre pirouette, then he lay on his side as if he’d wanted to be in that position all morning. The dumb-ass who let down the davit forgot to shut off the switch. The metal block hit Milton on the forehead, and his legs kicked up.”
“His last complaint,” I said.
“I hope so. What do you think happened before sunup?”
“I think it was planned in advance. You can’t turn a perfect noose in a hurry in the dark. What do you think?”
“Someone he knew.” Gail pointed at the trailer. “He could’ve been beaten up inside, but the police didn’t look for bloodstains. His face was dog meat before that block hit him, so someone hit him with a hard object.” She reached inside the freezer, pulled out a long piece of ice, mimicked a downstroke. “Then, for whatever sick reason, his killer dragged him to the davit and made a display of the poor man.”
“I think you’re exactly right.”
She flipped the ice into the weeds. “Hello. It doesn’t take a genius to agree with perfect reasoning.”
“No, you’re double right. That’s why there’s no murder weapon.”
“I just said, a hard object.”
“Right. And if it was a chunk of ice, and the killer tossed it aside like you did, then it melted.”
“Not bad. Do you agree it was someone Milton knew?”
“It’s a start,” I said, realizing that our combined words suggested that her father was implicated. If our speculation kept going, I wanted her to take the lead.
“Did you con me into talking a circle?”
“I’m no cop and I hope no con,” I said. “We’re just tossing around ideas, right?”
Gail bit her lip, quit messing with the fridge. “The Rudy and Milton Show. This is not saying much for either of them, but each was the brother the other never had. They were a mutual enabling society.”
I decided to step in shit. “Plenty of best friends have drunk too much, let a nothing argument escalate to violence.”
“I’ve read about those, too. Wait till you see my father. He’s my size, but I outweigh him. He couldn’t have dragged Milton five feet without a helper.”
“A helper fits the planning aspect,” I said.
“But planning blows apart the spontaneous violence.”
“Now you’ve conned me into a figure eight.”
She sprayed 409 on the inside walls of the ancient refrigerator. “It was a mistake, but I’ll take credit.”
“Tell me about Milton.”
“His specialty was splitting water mains,” she said. “Milton could run lines to five or six trailers off one main. His talent became more important after the Aqueduct Authority started that arbitrary ten-dollar-per-month fee. Back here, it doubled everyone’s bills. His customers claimed to be seasonal residents. They had their water turned off eight months a year.”
“How could he make money doing one-shot jobs like that?”
“He got referrals and favors in return. Rudy told me once that Milton lived like a bum but always had a five or a ten in his pocket. I mean, hell, he owned the trailer. I don’t know what’ll happen to it now, or where Rudy will live if he gets loose of this nonsense.”
“You ever meet a man named Jack Mason?” I said. “They called him Kansas Jack.”
Gail shook her head. “The man murdered on Ramrod? I read about him.”
“His murder and this one were similar.”
“All the more reason why Rudy’s innocent. How the hell would he get all the way to Ramrod?”
“Do you know if Milton was ever in the military?”
Gail shook her head. “He talked like some old pirate, but everyone took it as wishful thinking. Somebody once gave him an eye patch as a joke, and he wore it for weeks. Why do you care about this crap? You’re not a cop, you didn’t know these people.”
The question came from a young woman who knew perfectly well that you can’t pick your relatives. I hadn’t wanted to discuss Tim with anyone, even Marnie. This felt different. Perhaps because she was a stranger, I could vent without drawing judgment. Maybe I’d become tired of my own silence, wanted to let go no matter who listened.
“My younger brother has been stepping in shit all his life,” I said. “He hasn’t been in the Keys for years, but he got here a few hours before the crimes. The first thing he did was buy gas with a bad credit card. They know he did that, and the detective who arrested Rudy came up with a harebrained idea. Anyway, when they spring your father, they might want to make Tim their next suspect of choice.”
“You want to prove him innocent?”
“It’s not that simple.”
Her face went to sympathy. “He could be dirty or clean, and you want to know they made a right decision.”
“Kind of like that, yes.”
“It would be great if my shitty old dad was innocent. Not that I’ll miss Milton. I think he had a few secrets of his own.”
“Secrets that could bring about his murder?” I said.
“Somebody down there at the sheriff’s office ought to look into his background. I’m not saying the victim caused his own death, but Rudy once said that Milton bragged on a felony he ducked years ago. Bunch of people in on it. Deals like that sometimes can bring resentment and strife.”
“Especially if someone goes to prison and someone else doesn’t,” I said. “Or if somebody blabbed and others suffered.”
“With Milton and that murder on Ramrod, do the police know which man died first?”
“I haven’t heard them discuss it.”
“Because, what’s Ramrod, Mile Marker twenty-something?”
“Twenty-seven,” I said.
“And this is forty-seven and change, so call it twenty-one miles with the slow zone on Big Pine, a half-hour maximum…”
“Plus the time it takes to kill two men.”
“Okay,” said Gail. “It could be one killer, no stretch. Except for Rudy, of course.”
“And just as easily two.”
“So maybe the dead men were snitches and the murderers did time in jail.”
“Clean logic,” I said.
“Speaking of clean, I need to go shower. I have to sit with a client at four-thirty.”
“Did you already start cleaning the trailer?”
“A little. Those two men never washed their hands. I can’t spend more than ten minutes in there without having to wash mine. I’ve Windexed the doorknobs two or three times. Are you thinking I might be messing up evidence?”
“It’s possible,” I said.
“Nobody told me not to do it. There’s no crime-scene tape. Can I get into trouble?”
“No, but you may want to put it off until we’re sure. Do me one favor, though.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“No matter how grody or disgusting it all might be, please don’t throw away any of Milton’s belongings.”
“I might have to triple-bag it,” she said.
I wrote my cell phone number on a Winn-Dixie receipt and thanked her for her time. “One last thing,” I said. “Do you know the man who owns that bar up on the road?”
“Simply Bud?”
“He seemed okay to me.”
“His charm works every time,” she said. “He’s a known truth-expander with a line of hooey a mile long. He should call himself Mostly Bull.”
“He told me he bought the place with construction wages.”
“You ought to hear his ex-wife’s side of the story. The court ordered him off cocaine, and I guess it’s to his credit that he went straight. But I think drugs scrambled his eggs for the long haul.”
“Not your most reliable witness, then.”
“In this county, he’s a wizard,” said Gail. “Good luck with your brother.”
“And you with your dad.”
She looked away and forced an unamused laugh. “We may be the only two who can hope for it. I’m afraid I’m dealing with a man who’s hard-boiled his luck for good.”
Before leaving Marathon I stopped back at Mac and Joe’s Bar.
Simply Bud was pulling onto the highway in a ten-year-old pickup truck. I waved him back, so he executed a 360 on U.S. 1 and wound up parked next to me. He leaned on his truck door’s windowsill. “What’s up?”
“When I first walked into your bar, you acted like you recognized me.”
“Right, I did. Wasn’t your picture in the paper?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I sure as hell…no, wait.” He focused on my eyes, then pasted an expression of disbelief on his face. “Fuck, man. What are you up to? You were in the bar that night.”
“What night?” I said.
“The night Milton got whacked. You were in there drinking Michelob like water. And here you ask me all these questions like you’d been a million miles away.”
“What was I wearing?”
He shook his head. “No fucking deal, dude. I said I’d be Rudy’s alibi, sure as shit, but I ain’t going to be yours, too.”
Simply Bud popped his clutch, whipped the steering wheel, and shot into the line of northbound traffic.
I drove away fearing that Tim, too, had hard-boiled his luck.
16
The tailgating asshole in the Chrysler van finally passed me. NASCAR numbers on his back window, as if you might ever see a family minibus on the high banks. This moke was a dreamer on all fronts. He had an American flag decal and stickers that said BLESS THE WORLD, and I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, and BLESS AMERICA. Meanwhile he was clocking seventy in a crosswind on the Seven Mile Bridge, two feet off the next guy’s bumper. He didn’t want fellow-citizens slowing his patriotic rush to Key West. He needed to get started on his vacation drinking.
I wasn’t in his hurry.
Twenty minutes later I passed the Little Torch turnoff to Al Manning’s house. I floated the cheap rationalization that my throat felt scratchy from cat spray and mold in Rudy and Milton’s aluminum palace. Cold beer would fix it, and I had my choice of two saloons. Bobbi had said Friday that no one at Boondocks knew Kansas Jack. I parked in gravel in front of the Looe Key Reef Resort’s open-air Tiki Bar.
Seven ceiling fans spun above nine men on tall PVC-web stools, most with sixteen-ounce plastic draft-beer cups in front of them. I sat where I wouldn’t be down-wind of cigarette smoke. Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” came from overhead speakers—Tim’s favorite song when he tuned in to rock and roll, bought his first Camaro. The song was his rally cry, his call to lunacy. He wanted that rock star’s lifestyle, with hash pipes, bimbos, vials, late nights, and limos. With that life he could boogie till eternity, gain the admiration of manic crazies around the globe. Popularity would cease to be a problem.
Years ago I heard that Thin Lizzy’s lead vocalist had died. His opinion on popularity is not currently known.
I wanted to blend, not draw attention to myself by ordering an import. I asked for Bud Light in a bottle, leaned back, listened. Four housepainters under the Marine Corps banner could have been finalists in a Keith Richards look-alike contest. A man on my side of the bar studied the TV section of the Herald, marked with a pencil his hour-by-hour plan for the evening. Two outboard-engine repairmen discussed prop-blade pitch. A woman of forty-five or fifty, her sunglasses perched on top of her head, sat two stools away from me and drank what I hoped was a vodka and cranberry. An insistent man four seats away bragged about turning down a ride home two nights ago. “They were idiots,” he said. “I would’ve had to chug a bottle of Jack to catch up, just to get in the car.”
The crowd kept the server hopping, treated her well. She popped tops, called the men by name, collected from stacks of singles, doled out reserved smiles like stingy approvals. A surly senior with a square of black cloth tied over his skull—perhaps the oldest biker in Florida—tugged his long white beard and fought a grin when she put a fresh draft in front of him. She patted his money stack, took nothing. It was a freebie.
I was soaking up atmosphere galore, getting nowhere. I motioned to the server.
She pivoted, stuck her arm toward a cooler. “Another one, honey?”
“Ask you a question?”
When she came closer, I said, “Did Kansas Jack come in here much?”
Her eyes wandered, caught on the house painters. “Not much on my shift.” She pointed at the woman two stools away.
The woman turned, sized me up. “You talkin’ the dead electrician?”
“I guess I am,” I said. “Horrible way to die.”
I’d found an info-compulsive, and this put her into gear. She shifted sideways, moved her fringed purse, drink, and coaster, sat next to me. “He didn’t live too beautiful, either.” She offered her hand. “I’m Lally Mattox. Eighteen-year resident of the Florida Keys.”
I told her my name, signaled the server for two refills. Lally had a dark tan and thin, long dark hair. She had been attractive in her day. Inflation and deflation had done her no favors. The old “Mother-in-Law” soul singer, Ernie K-Doe, on his WWOZ radio show in New Orleans, used to call such bar women “Naugahyde doves.” This one had perched and was ready to talk. The server slid away.
“I saw him once,” I said, hedging the truth. “Didn’t get to know him.”
“He was your typical fifty-two-year-old playboy. You mind if I smoke?”
I hedged a lie, told her to have at it.
“Jack was handsome as hell but broke,” she said. “He did a good job of covering his lack of cash. He knew people’s names, always laughed. He tried to make up for his shortcomings by being positive.”
I took a chance. “He didn’t live too well? You saw his house?”
“You mean, did I ever shack up with him?”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay. We were teammates. The party troupers versus party-poopers. We hardball hitters stick together. I went home with him twice.”
“Why not a third?”
“You just said you didn’t want to pry.”
“Sorry. Forget that one.”
“It’s okay. I’ve had three husbands and I’ve been divorced four times, if that makes any sense. I’ve never kept my pants on too good, and I’m long past keeping secrets. The second time I went back was to give him a second chance. He literally begged.”
“The first time?”
“He was a diving champ, so I got mine. The man knew how to make a girl happy. I don’t think he reached the same plateau, if you know what I mean. I got blisters, but he never got wood. I expect the years of booze had wilted his Johnson. Plus he was running a double whammy. He was needy and weird. I got rid of one of those two years ago after they found my old man on Big Pine, facedown in Lake Winn-Dixie.”
“I hear they tried to drain that parking lot,” I said.
She laughed. “They tried to elect Al Gore back in 2000, too.”
“Did Kansas Jack ever talk about his past?”
She stared at the ashtray, pulled back into her memory. “He had lots of friends. They were from everywhere. He kept telling stories about his pal from Cleveland with the car dealership, the old friend from Buffalo who went to work for Customs. Another one tight with the mayor in San Diego or San Francisco. But now that I think about it, he never told me about himself. His stories were always about someone else.”
“Like he defined himself by the people he knew?”
“Maybe so. But also like he’d blanked himself out of the past. He was a man without a yesterday. Or one that he wanted to share with me.”
“Can I buy you another drink?” I said.
She looked at her watch, shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ve hit my limit. My party days are winding down. Like now I have to meet a school bus. My grandson goes to day camp, and I got the duty till my daughter gets home from work.”
The serv
er had drifted back into earshot. “Or gets home from here,” she said.
“She shows her sorry face today,” said Lally, “you send her home, tell her I said so.”
Lally left the bar. I heard an engine start out front, looked up to watch a small Japanese pickup go north on the highway.
The server asked, and I declined another beer.
“I was you,” she said, “I wouldn’t ask none of these boys about Kansas Jack. Most of them, over the years, got burned, they dealt with him.”
“But not enough to kill him, right?”
“You make a good point. You’re looking at fifteen attitudes and no motivation. These guys are your workers who swear quitting time is right after lunch. They talk bad all day, but I’d bet my britches they all, every last one of them, sleep with stuffed animals.”
I gave her a look of disbelief.
“On the other hand,” she said, “you’re right. They might all kick the shit out of you.”
“Was Jack in here the night before he died?”
“Not my shift.”
“But, you know, people talk.” I put a five on the bar.
“I heard they ran him and another guy out at closing time.”
“You remember whose shift it was?”
She stared at my five. I took it away and dropped a ten.
“Her name is Shari. Her old man has a white ponytail and a black goatee. Don’t talk to her when he’s in the bar.”
“I appreciate that,” I said.
I walked out to the brightness and grabbed for my shades. Six hours of pain denial were starting to catch up with me. A man climbing out of a rusty Valiant offered me four hundred for my “Stang.”
“I need the car more than the money,” I said.
“You’re a lucky one.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. I waited two minutes for a hole in traffic and fought a mental picture of Kansas Jack and Lally Mattox trying to figure how to do what and with which and to whom. Jack Mason was a broke stay-at-home who died wearing Navy-style shoes. Bobbi Lewis had found Navy flashlights in his house. Lally Mattox knew that he had friends “from everywhere,” as an ex–military man might. Milton Navarre was a pain in the ass for all his swashbuckling bar talk. He made a big deal about not being called sir, a timeworn point of honor among enlisted men. He wanted first-class respect and didn’t want to be second-class. As in first-class versus second-class petty officer?
