by Tom Corcoran
“I wasn’t suggesting—”
“Quit while you’re ahead.” She gave me her cell number and hung up.
A few miles later an F-18 landing at Boca Chica flew low enough to scorch my hood paint. The jet’s roar unleashed adrenaline, uncorked my brain, and the point I’d tried to recall from Marnie’s visit came back to me. When I told her that I’d had to evict my tenant, I had flashed on the timing of Johnny Griffin’s Thursday arrival in Key West. If someone wanted to suggest that my brother’s appearance coincided with three murders, why not Griffin’s, too?
Hell, why not consider everyone I’d ever known?
But I decided to take Watkins with me when I went to Dredgers Lane to evict Johnny.
The new police station on North Roosevelt looked like a corporate headquarters. This was my first time inside, and the first person I saw was Marge Sayre, the receptionist who had migrated from the Angela Street station to finish out her last year before retirement.
“Where do I sign up for the guided tour?” I said.
“There’ve been a few of those today,” she said. “All these state and federal people in here, that all-agency meeting they had earlier in the conference room. Meanwhile, you’ve been out in the sun, haven’t you?”
“Scrubbing a boat on Saturday,” I said. “I’m house-sitting on Ramrod.”
“We had a canal house up there years ago, before it got crowded. What street are you on?”
“Keelhaul Lane.”
Marge got a faraway look in her eye. “I remember when Keelhaul had two houses and three more were built one summer. The old-timers thought the place had gone to hell.”
“No vacant lots left now. Is Beth Watkins in?”
“I heard she was looking for you last week,” said Marge. “I think the girl’s husband-hungry, but you don’t need a warning. You’ve dodged that trap.” She called to get Beth’s okay, then gave me a clip-on visitor’s badge and directed me down a sea-foam green hallway. The place was awash in calming pastels, modular work areas, easy-to-clean surfaces.
Beth’s second-floor office with its pale blue walls, three workstations, and a bulletin board fit the uniformity. She was staring at the door, waiting for me to appear. She looked beat and distracted. Mostly beat.
“Marge said there was a big meeting,” I said.
She nodded and scowled. “Turned out I’m too junior for a front-row seat. I got a chair by the wall.”
“Any breakthrough news?” I said.
“Typical all-agency crap. Everybody lays out their hand, then the FBI shuts up and no one complains. I saw it coming five minutes into the sit-down. I didn’t really mind when I got pulled out of the meeting.”
“Pulled out?”
“It was almost over anyway,” she said. “We had a situation here in town. I’ll tell you about it after we have our first drink. Why do you look so antsy?”
I told her about Griffin’s noise problems. I didn’t mention my paranoiac questioning of his arrival time.
“You want to take care of it and come back and get me?”
“Why waste the time to go and come back?” I said. “It shouldn’t take five minutes. I’ll talk to him nicely, maybe ask him to vacate.”
“If I get out of your car, my badge stays behind.”
“It’s hard to picture old Johnny Griffin as the violent type.”
“Half of the bad ones look violent. The rest look like puppy dogs, but they’re just as mean.”
I coasted past a new Ford van in front of my house, a plain-vanilla rental. From outside the place looked quiet and normal. I parked at the end of the lane and led Beth around to Carmen Sosa’s back door. Carmen stood in the kitchen, drinking iced tea, hovering over her daughter’s shoulder.
I introduced Watkins, then said, “What do we know?”
Carmen pointed at a puzzle book. “Maria’s acing a crossword and I don’t know shit.”
“Mom,” said Maria.
Carmen shrugged, groped in her shorts pocket, and dropped a dime in the Bacardi 8 cuss bottle. “He’s been home about ten minutes,” she said. “Thank you for dealing with it.”
Watkins and I walked to my house. I could tell by her breathing that she was readying herself for a confrontation.
Johnny Griffin sat on my porch, a can of beer in one hand, his other hand swathed in cotton bandages. He looked ten years older than five days earlier. His hair and face were grayer and thinner, his eyes fatigued. He pointed to a six-pack with four remaining. “Did your friend see the mess? I assume that’s why you’re here.”
I offered to open a beer for Watkins, but she shook her head. I helped myself, popped its top. “The neighbors are getting uppity about the parties.”
“They’re over.” He lifted his bandaged hand. “I’m officially off hard liquor.”
“Someone attack you?” I said.
“I couldn’t find any scissors in your kitchen drawers. I needed to open one of those new foil packs of tuna fish. I found what I thought was the perfect tool. My new Griffin Kitchen Rule is you don’t open tuna with a box cutter.”
“You were sober at the time?”
Griffin shrugged. “Maybe still drunk from the night before. Now I’ll be off the water for five days, if they can take out my stitches on day four. The one thing I know for sure is my body needs to dry out.”
“No more social functions?”
“None at all,” he said. “I hooked up with a bunch of gigglers the other night. I got my fill of their company.”
“Everything else okay?” I said.
“Peachy. You going to let me stay? Even with the constant heat, I need this vacation.”
I thought about it, then nodded.
“Come by any time next week,” he said. “I’ll slip you another wad of cash.”
As we walked across the street to speak with Hector Ayusa, Watkins said, “Known this Griffin a long time?”
“Since college. We kept in touch, Christmas cards, occasional visits. He and his ex-wife put me up for three or four days when they lived in Knoxville. Why do you ask?”
“How did he make his money?”
“Insurance,” I said.
“That’s a cash business?”
“All these years in the Keys,” I said, “I’ve learned not to question certain things.”
I knocked on Hector’s door and waited. A waft of Spanish brandy preceded Hector to his screen door. He waved his hand at the rocking chairs on his porch, then dropped into his favorite seat like a potato into an Easter basket. “You come to tell me you kick out that noisy boy?”
“I had a talk with him, Hector. He said he was sorry about the racket. It won’t happen again.”
“So why you come by, you miss my face?”
“I need to pick your mind about Weedy Fields.”
Hector peered across the lane, tried to send my house back through the years. “Weedy come here from Michigan, so he talk funny like a Swedish, and he probably say that my Conch tongue is funny, but he was a smart old man. One day in 1957 he flies me to Cuba for lunch. I been married maybe not five years, Alex, and he flies me there, we skim close to fishing boats and land near Havana. We have lunch in some old whorehouse, excuse me, miss, but I got six whores mad at me because I tell them my wife is in Cayo Hueso, I got to go back to her. I think those whores might kill me with a knife. Mr. Weedy Fields, he pay the whores to sing us a song, and they happy again. They earn more American dollars to sing than…you know what. We leave that whorehouse, everyone smiling. How that man know to pay a whore to sing, I don’t know, but he smart as hell.”
“You recall his children?”
Hector pushed himself from his chair, stuck his hand between two square flowerpots, and pulled out a pint of brandy. He unscrewed the cap, offered it to Beth. She smiled and waved her hand to decline. He handed it to me. “That boy go off to college, that young girl—they call her Pokey—she went to hell when his wife died.”
I tilted it back, took a short swig. “She start hanging
out on Duval?”
“Not so much, but she live with that man, he wasn’t from here.” Hector took a more substantial slug, replaced the cap, put the bottle back in its hiding spot. “Maybe they had a wedding, I don’t know, maybe not.”
“You recall his name?”
“Alex. My head don’t work, all these years. I think I only saw him one time. You better off, you ask Carmen.”
“What kind of man was he?” I said.
“He was Navy, I know that. Weedy Fields, he hated that man. One day I watched that one black lieutenant the city had back then, he put the handcuffs on the Navy man in Carlos Market. I believe they caught that man for his work at the city.”
“Hector, you’ve confused me. Pokey’s sailor left the Navy and found a job in town?”
“Never left the Navy, Alex. Now, all your questions, you reminding me. That boy and three or four or five other sailors come out and get jobs.”
“At the city?”
“They forgot to tell anyone downtown they in the Navy,” said Hector. “They forgot to tell the Navy they got all these jobs on the island.”
“What kind of jobs?”
“Work crews, just like me at City Electric. Matter of fact, one Navy man started at City Electric, messed around, I almost lose my job over it. Only time I ever come close to losing my job. They caught him with a box full of new tools, they thought I should have suspected before it happen. A month later, I see him in a city truck. He getting less pay, but he back to having two jobs.”
“So someone finally caught on to these boys?”
“I guess, Alex. They were ripping off stuff, I forget what all. Then that big Navy ship went away and took almost the whole Navy with it. That one man they took to jail, I don’t know about him.”
“After that?”
Hector looked back at my house. “You buy that house, Carmen still at high school, and Weedy Fields goes to Michigan, and we hear he died.” He shook his head. “Never saw that girl again. Or the boy again, never.”
I sat quietly for a minute or so, juggling facts and half-facts.
Hector spoke first. “You been gone a week, Alex, seems like two years. What you miss about Dredgers Lane beside my face?”
“I miss Carmen’s scolding and going out for my morning coffee.”
“Over to 5 Brothers?”
“Or to Eden House, if I’m in a hurry. Mike lets me slide in and pretend I’m a paying guest.”
“I went crazy, they put that hotel there. I thought, the block was ruined by traffic and racket. Hell, all these years, not problem one. After Hurricane Georges…when was that?”
“In ’98.”
“After that storm, that hotel man, Michael, give us ice and food. Before I die, I win the Lotto, I’ll spend a night in that hotel, maybe two, pay him back.”
We stood to leave. Perhaps made brave by the brandy, Hector gave Watkins a fatherly pat on her shoulder. “Young lady, you take care on that hot-rod motorbike, you hear me? You don’t see it coming, that machine can hurt you bad.”
24
Beth Watkins and I found Carmen in her backyard, steadying Maria on a pogo stick.
“Johnny Griffin promises total reform,” I said, “and your father dislodged a few facts from his memory.”
Carmen gave me a forlorn grin. “He pulls details from the past, then forgets to tighten the cap when he hides his brandy.”
“His watered-down brandy?” said Maria.
Carmen raised her hand. “Hush, missy. We do it for Grandpop’s own good.”
“The Fields boy who grew up in my cottage,” I said, “you recall his name?”
“Something simple,” said Carmen, “like Robert. He was the straight-arrow and Pokey was the wild one…Robert, for sure, because he hated the name Bob, and one year—maybe in fifth or sixth grade—we all called him Bob because he was such a goody-boy.”
“Was Pokey older than you?”
“Two years by the clock, but a good five in her social life, even with her skinny little girl’s body. She was a junior when one of my friends saw her back then, smoking dope with longhairs behind Howie’s Lounge. But I guess we all made our mistakes. I made mine so Maria could be perfect.”
Maria flashed us a broad smile and hopped away, showing off.
Carmen pushed her finger into my chest. “You owe me a case of wine, minimum price, twenty a bottle.”
“I had a premonition that your fee would go up.”
“I hope the cost of wine does, too.”
“What ever happened to Pokey?” I said.
“No idea.”
“How about the Navy man she lived with? Did he ship out with the Gilmore?”
Carmen dropped her voice. “I’d forgotten all about him. He died.”
“Did he hang himself on the Navy base?”
She nodded. “That’s what people said. A few said that he might’ve had help.”
Late-day traffic clogged White Street. I could tell that Watkins hadn’t expected to ride in a car without air-conditioning. Waiting for the light at Truman Avenue, she dipped three fingers into her cleavage, scooped out droplets of sweat, and flung them out the window.
“Cocktail hour,” I declared. “Time to meditate on all we’ve learned.”
“How about sushi with our drinks?” said Beth. “In a cool restaurant.”
“Ambrosia’s one minute away and Louie’s Backyard is a good five minutes.”
“I’ll buy the fish,” she said.
I parked a half-block from Ambrosia near the fire station on Grinnell and toggled the Shelby’s fuel shutoff switch. With my mind on Pokey’s dead lover, I walked across the street and tripped over a blue plastic recycling bin on the far curb. Beth caught me to stop my fall. She saw me flinch as my ribs took stress.
Instead of checking my scraped shin, I stared at the bin.
“You’ve got revenge in your eye,” said Beth. “It wasn’t the container’s fault.”
“I’m not blaming. I just got an idea.”
A waiter with a tenor-profundo voice met us at the restaurant door, seated us at a small table near the front window, and took our drink order. I was curious about the “situation” that Watkins had mentioned, the one that had pulled her from the all-agency meeting, but I didn’t want to push too hard. After our beers arrived, I asked about her first weeks on the job, her impression of the Key West Police Department.
“The veterans’ universal goal is to fly under the radar,” she said. “The young ones are a mixed bag. Some are too strict and some are slackers. I’d like to toss them all in a blender and pour out a few normals.”
Our server reappeared. “Are we ordering?”
“May I?” Beth wanted to pick for both of us.
I shrugged a slacker-like okay.
She ordered dancing shrimp, flounder sashimi, a spicy California roll, four white-tuna sushi, four yellowtail sushi, and four smoked-salmon sushi.
When the server left, I said, “Do you see yourself as a strict cop or normal?”
“I lean toward the strict side,” she said. “One thing I’ve learned is that successful cops form teams and find allies. I’m having a tough time with that.”
“Maybe after a few more weeks have passed…”
“You think we’d make a good pair of detectives?”
“Why would you want that?” I said. “I’m a loose cannon with no desire to be a cop.”
“You have a reputation for taking cases to their core.”
“I’m about as official as a plaid shirt.”
“But look what you did with that Cuban man,” she said. “You got him talking, he went on a tangent about Cuban hookers, and he spilled out ancient details of a work scam.”
“I wish, over the last few years, I’d tape-recorded the man’s stories.”
“You think his information fits with that photo Lewis found in Kansas Jack’s home?”
“She told you about that?”
“Yes, she did,” said Watkins. “And
you’re trying to connect dots.”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“You looked shocked to learn that that Navy man killed himself. Did you know him?”
“No, just the girl, Pokey Fields. I guess I didn’t know her very well.”
“Do the old hanging plus the new ones add up to a situation?” she said.
“They add up to a goddam mud bath, but things are starting to link up.”
“It sounds like you’re doing better than the all-agency group.”
“I’m juggling theories,” I said. “Did they say why the FBI is in an uproar?”
“That summit meeting was like a bridge game. Or maybe not, now that I think about it. They weren’t so much holding their cards close as not wanting to reveal that they hadn’t a single idea why the murders went down. One man—I think a fed—said their goal was to make connections. I took that to mean they wanted to tie the first two to Lucky Haskins.”
Typical Feebs, I thought. They hadn’t mentioned the out-of-state hit man.
“That’s it?” I said.
“Pretty much. Who’s your favorite suspect?”
I held out my hands, palms down, to ask for calm. “It’s a thin case, but my first choice is Bixby. I think he’s trying to forge his career on a road of bones.”
She showed the calm I had hoped for. “Are there second- and third-place picks?”
“Not really. You probably don’t know Deputy Billy Bohner. He and Detective Millican are possibles, but I can’t see a motive unless someone hired them to kill those poor men.”
“Motives don’t always jump out at us,” said Beth.
“Pathetic list of choices, isn’t it? Maybe a solution won’t be found. It’s been almost a week since three men died, and Bixby is the only person with a plausible motive. No one else raised that point?”
“Nope,” she said. “But at least you have the balls to speak your mind. What prompted you to bring up the concept of a hit man?”
I didn’t want to betray Monty’s confidence, especially if she hadn’t heard about the pro in her afternoon meeting. “It’s one of a hundred possibilities.”
“Maybe the victims were in Witness Protection,” she said.
