by Tom Corcoran
“So we can have another sunrise murder tomorrow?” I said. “You have any relatives or friends in the Keys?”
“I have a workload that would blow your mind,” he said.
“I don’t doubt it. My FBI friend said you get calls from all over. He said you helped the Royal Bahamas Police with a DNA review. You told me you would give me forty minutes. Could you make it ten and see if there’s anything here?”
My flattery failed. Klein looked at the Subway bag, his watch, then pulled out his wallet, extracted a five, and handed it over. “We go by rules in our business for a hundred good reasons. If you had a badge plus proper paperwork, we could approach my supervisor, go for the long shot. Under the circumstances…I got to go.”
“Thanks for your time.”
I had two hours to kill and I wasn’t hungry. I was frustrated, but I wasn’t ready to start drinking at twenty after twelve. The sit-down lunch at Subway had given me a calming hint. Why not sit in the airport’s cool air and read a book?
Who said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions?
I taxied to the airport, went straight to the bar. I looked at the glass after my first sip; it was two-thirds empty. Or, if I wanted to be an optimist, it was one-third full. I hypnotized myself by concentrating on CNN’s bottom-screen rolling banner. My second beer was half consumed when someone tapped my shoulder.
Dave Klein stood there, a neutral look on his face. “I started thinking, your name was familiar…”
I caught on fast. “I was here three months ago.”
“From Monroe County. Okay. We had that situation with a rotten detective.”
“You sure did.”
“It ended in Monroe,” he said. “Did you help bust him?”
“I picked up on his scam. Someone else brought him down.”
“I read that summary. Brought him down with a bullet, right?”
“Two crimes collided, yes.”
Klein thought to himself, winced once or twice. “Look, we hated the stain that man put on our department. I, for one, appreciate what you did. Maybe I can do you a favor. Truth is, I wish I could do fifteen of them. But there’s one catch. So it doesn’t come back to haunt me, I need to send my report to an enforcement agency.”
“My friend at the FBI?”
“You got it.” He held out his hand. “Let me see what I can do. Get me his phone number and address.” He put the candy box in his briefcase. “How’s that slow and easy life in the Florida Keys?”
“This week it’s a big fat lie.”
18
Five other people waited to fly south from Lauderdale. I knew the owner of the Goon and Whale gift shop; Sam’s friend Captain Turk, who had gone to Titusville to order a new skiff; and an attorney wearing a black suit in summer heat. A muralist had painted a shark’s nose, an eye-patched pirate, a parrot, and a reef scene on the Cessna 402 that would wing us home. I loved the idea of commuting in a twin-engine Hawaiian shirt.
After takeoff I again pretended to read and pondered the murder puzzle.
Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre had left the Navy long ago. What, besides their love of saloons and near-simultaneous deaths, had linked them in recent years? For that matter, had they known each other in the past? Who had stood in Dredgers Lane and taken that picture of Pokey Fields? Had Kansas Jack stolen Pokey’s teenage heart, or been the hard-on who came later with verbal abuse? Or had he been a family friend or relative? If he and Navarre were connected, as I believed they were, had Pokey known Navarre under a previous name, too? Was he the lover, friend, or relative?
I thought again about the day she walked nude across my living room to kiss my forehead. Had my gentle rejection of her proposition, my words to bolster self-worth, changed her life as I had hoped they might? Had the books I’d loaned informed her of life’s positive side, its possibilities beyond the path of perennial victim? Had she lifted herself from the lost existence of swapping sex for approval, learned from mistakes, passed lessons to her own children? Or had she undressed without ceremony and paraded across a hundred rooms to kiss a hundred other men?
Perhaps she recalled our friendship as a turning point.
Or maybe it was a short, forgotten phase in a sad life.
And how did Lucky Haskins fit in? Milton and Kansas Jack had lived at subsistence level while Lucky, a younger, married man, lived in plush comfort. No matter how many details I sifted, only Lucky’s davit connected his death to the other two. After discounting my odd theory about Lucky having killed the other two, I had to ask who had been the copycat, Lucky Haskins or his killer?
Finally, one last question begged an answer. With the deaths of two men she might have known, was Pokey now in danger?
The woman across the narrow aisle said, “Enjoying your book?”
I turned my head as little as possible. A red tint to her short brown hair, a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched on her pointed nose.
“I read that one last year,” she said.
I checked the cover to remind myself of the title. “It’s great, so far.”
“I wondered because you haven’t turned a page in six minutes.”
“Has it been exactly that long?” I said.
“I don’t own a stopwatch, sir. It might have been longer.”
“I guess my mind escaped the story on the page.”
A screwy look crossed her face, perhaps a reaction to my breath. “Mine goes away all the time,” she said. “If you want me to stop talking, say so.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Let’s give it a try.”
The offended queen: “Is that like shut up?”
I let my silence answer and thought back to my conversation with Gail Downer in Marathon. According to her father, Milton Navarre had bragged on a felony charge he’d dodged in the past, probably under a previous name. Milton had suggested that others were involved. Had the felony gone down in the Keys? Had Kansas Jack, under another name, been a coconspirator? Had Pokey known of the crime, been a bystander or an innocent common-law spouse? Or had she been a felon?
The pilot announced our approach, banked to avoid a huge thunderhead above Calda Channel. I glanced sideways as the woman next to me closed her notebook and saw the word “Information” at the top of Federal District Court letterhead. An indictment in the making. She shuffled the page before I could search for Millican’s name.
I paused for a last look at Florida Bay, its small mangrove clumps polka-dotting pastel channels. Brilliant, I thought. I had just spent an entire flight, a transit over some of the most beautiful land and water on the North American continent, dreaming up questions that only dead men could answer.
Each time I fly into Key West, I see something new. A radio tower near Southard and Simonton caught my eye. The spindly one had been replaced by a proboscis that looked like the world’s tallest silo. You wonder why Old Island Restoration bothers to dictate historic district standards. If they tried to paint old wood shutters on it, of course, or palm fronds, it would be like dressing R2D2 in a Pilgrim costume. Maybe a barber-pole motif would bring a laugh or two.
Yes, I was carrying a cell phone. We blame electronic progress as we become addicted to it, though we secretly pray for a storm with selective tornados.
Our landing went quickly, with a short run to the gate. At four o’clock in the heat of summer, a fuselage turns into a tubular oven when the engines stop and the air-conditioning goes away. I paid the price for my rearward seat. The lawyer split first, hurried his dark suit to the cool terminal. By the time I filed off, last in a bumbling line, I had sweated out my shirt.
Walking to the car, I turned on the phone and found two messages.
Monty Aghajanian said, “Expensive gossip for you, bubba. Beth Watkins, real first name Elizabeth, middle name Ann, last employed San Rafael Police Department, Marin County, California. Not popular with her coworkers, a hardnose, strict rules follower, but reported only two infractions to internal affairs, both egregious. She was nickna
med “the Finger,” but not for what you might think. She and her partner were facing down a hyper nutcase. The perp surprised her partner, lifted a pistol to the cop’s forehead. Watkins reacted, shot once at the perp. No one fell down, but the perp started shaking his gun like he was trying to unjam it. She couldn’t figure out why her shot hadn’t hit the bad guy, at least in his neck or shoulder. Her partner got his shit together and jumped the perp, and the two of them got him cuffed. She had shot off the crazy’s index finger as he pulled his trigger. Her shot saved her partner’s life. She thought the harassment would ease after that, but it didn’t. Being a hero didn’t change her status. That’s why she went job hunting, and she found the Key West opening. Does that help you? I love leaving messages. When you’re not there, you can’t ask more favors.”
The second voice was Gail Downer. “Alex, I cleaned up the trailer a bit this morning, and I found an old Zippo lighter. It’s silver and engraved with a date, the word Nevada, and four or five sets of initials. I don’t know if this interests you, but I thought it weird that a drunk like Milton would own a keepsake in the first place, and especially one that nice.” She left me her work number.
I called Bobbi and listened to a recording. After the beep I advised her not to close out Millican’s file on Navarre, told her we had a connection stronger than davits, and asked her to call back.
The instant I clicked off, the bastard rang.
“Hey, Alex, Connie in Naples. Touching base with you on that furniture store shoot in Blairsville, Georgia.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m jammed up down here. What’s our time frame?”
“The client wants us early Thursday, which means we both catch flights tomorrow afternoon. I warned him I wasn’t sure I could get reservations.”
“Us meaning I work with an art director?”
“Us meaning we—you and me,” she said. “Objections?”
“Just a massive respect for your husband’s gun collection.”
“He sold it. Now he’s into butterflies.”
“Blairsville nice this time of year?”
“Hot days like Florida,” she said. “Cool nights like everywhere else.”
“Honey, I know what you really want.”
“You’re so right, Alex. I can’t wait to get into a motel room.”
“If can’t do it tomorrow, is there a rain date?”
“The client wasn’t sure about next week.”
“Can I call you in the morning?”
“By nine A.M., please.”
“I promise.”
The woman lived for business trips. For some odd, misguided reason, her husband did not allow television in their home. When we did agency jobs together, she would do the gig and eat meals with me, but that was it. The rest of the time she would hole up in her room with bags of Pepperidge Farm cookies and a TV Guide. I once warned her that she might get blisters from clicking the remote. She’d said, “I live for the day.”
I didn’t want to call Marnie Dunwoody through the Citizen’s switchboard. It took me a minute to locate her number in my phone’s list of received calls. She grabbed the second ring but also checked her caller ID. “We can’t accept flowers over the phone.”
“If I give you a connection between the first two hangings, can I get a favor?”
“You already told me. The solid link is the Navy. And I don’t make deals with chronic holdouts who ask me to fly below imaginary radar. Is there a hint of a story in it for me?”
“Yes,” I said, “but it’s like before.”
“Oh, where you don’t tell me shit?”
“No, I tell all, but you sit on it until the clues make sense.”
“I’m working at home. The gate key’s in its usual hiding place.”
I drove past Smathers Beach where boardsailors, paragliders, and ultralights mocked laws of physics. It wouldn’t surprise me to see some holy fool with Icarus wings coasting above the 1800 Atlantic luxury condos, though not in the heat of late June.
A tall fence and shrubs hid Marnie and Sam’s house at the south end of Elizabeth. I parked in front of the small gatehouse, set the fuel shutoff, and brought my shorts so I could shed the khakis. The key was not in its usual spot behind the fifth slat in the fence.
I used my cell to call her again.
Marnie met me at the gate. Her gray T-shirt read LEAVE ME ALONE. I declined coffee so she offered a beer and led me to her first-floor office, the private turf that I’d never seen before. It housed computer gear on a desk module, a swivel chair, a beat-up rattan chair, an over-flowing bookcase, and four filing cabinets.
She offered me the rattan chair and plopped into her seat. “Speak.”
“Odd, identical objects owned by both Kansas Jack Mason and Milton Navarre.”
“Please describe said objects.”
“Bobbi found a silver Zippo lighter when she searched Mason’s place. It was engraved with a date, several groups of initials, and the word ‘Nevada.’ I drove to Marathon yesterday and met the stepdaughter of Rudy Downer, the accused man and Navarre’s roomie. She was cleaning their trailer, so I asked her to look for anything unusual. She found a Zippo with the same engravings.”
“Souvenirs?”
“Maybe so. They could be from Vegas or Reno.”
“Does Lewis know about Navarre’s lighter?” said Marnie.
“I left a voice mail,” I said. “I told her there was a connection, but not what it was. Once they find out, the deputies will probably ask you not to make it public knowledge.”
“Tell me more about these dead men with no histories.”
“They were handy with tools. Kansas Jack did odd jobs on referral, and Milton Navarre had plumbing skills.”
“Anything else?” she said.
“When I talked to Bobbi I held back something. You have to promise—”
“I’ll tread lightly, okay?”
“She found a photo in Kansas Jack’s stuff. An old picture of a teenage girl standing in front of my house, maybe five years before I bought the house from her father. By then she was living with a Navy man here in town. I spoke with her a few times. Her nickname was Pokey, last name Fields, and Bobbi Lewis knows that.”
Marnie wanted to scold me in advance. “Did you do more than speak with her, Alex?”
“I befriended her for a short time, and it wasn’t what you’re thinking. I don’t know her connection to Kansas Jack. He could have been the man she lived with, or a friend of that man, or an enemy. Whatever the relationship, Pokey might provide some background info, even a real name for Kansas Jack Mason. She would have been a student at Key West High in the early seventies.”
“If Lewis has her name, she’s already ten steps ahead of me. Is that everything?”
I thought again about Gail Downer’s recollection of Milton Navarre’s not-too-secret felony charge from years ago. “Can I ask you to do some newspaper-type research? On company time, of course.”
“The word research,” she said. “I assume you want ancient history.”
“Thirty years ago, give or take. I’m curious to see if any Navy men were arrested by the city or county.”
Marnie sneered. “That’s like asking if high school kids got caught with cigarettes and gin.”
“I don’t mean bar-brawl stuff,” I said. “I mean felony-level theft or conspiracy.”
“So I’m looking for multiple arrests?”
I nodded. “Three or more.”
“Are they connected to that last hanging in Monroe County?” she said. “That dead sailor on Truman Annex?”
“You didn’t tell me he was a sailor.”
“You didn’t ask. But I picked up on it when you mentioned the Navy. He was a petty officer assigned to the submarine tender, hung from a flagpole.”
“The Bushnell?”
“I don’t think so. I think the Bushnell had been relieved.” She shuffled a stack of notes on her desk, found a sheet of yellow paper. “Yes, the Bushnell was gone by then.
It was the USS Howard W. Gilmore.”
“A sub tender would be wall to wall with men who possessed the skills of Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre. Any more details?”
“Let’s see…last name Evans…first thought to be a suicide…despondent…bad love affair. AWOL at time of death. Oh, hell, I didn’t read this far. Several of his fellow crewmen experimented with weights, and proved he couldn’t have hung himself alone. It’s still on the city’s list of unresolved cases.”
“Shit.”
“What?” she said. “You think the flagpole was connected to these old crimes you want me to find?”
“What year was that hanging?”
“Seventy-three, in late January. What date is engraved on those lighters?”
“Seventy-three, early January,” I said. “Who were the investigating officers?”
Marnie flipped another page, ran her finger down lines of print. “Shit’s the word, Alex. Key West Detective Sergeant Chester Millican and Lieutenant Fred Liska.”
19
I stood at Marnie Dunwoody’s office window and absentmindedly watched a lizard patrol the outside sill. “Chicken Neck must have been in his mid-twenties,” I said. “That’s young for a lieutenant.”
“Maybe he was on a fast track to detective,” said Marnie. “Or an old version of that.”
“Which forces me to ask why the great detective would be so flaky on Ramrod and refuse to go to Marathon? That morning you came to my house, he was depressed. Hell, he’s seen his share of death over the years.”
“Hangings are rare,” she said, “and the flagpole death is still labeled a cold case. Some detectives see unsolved cases as black marks on their careers. Maybe Kansas Jack reminded him of his past failure.”
“But it was Millican’s failure, too. Now we have Chicken Neck depressed and Millican defensive at his crime scene, then, two days later, pounding on me and jeopardizing his job. Millican’s hyper while Liska sulks.”
