by Tom Corcoran
“You didn’t want the poontang?”
“I wanted to show you there was more to this existence than living with losers.”
“Which brings us around to this time around,” she said.
“I told you yesterday. A murdered man had your picture. You could’ve been in danger.”
“Put the bottle down, Alex. I don’t like it in your hand.”
My back muscles danced with energy and I calculated the odds of survival if I leaped forward, grabbed for the gun. Would I be wounded instead of shot dead? Would I postpone the inevitable or give myself a chance? Would she go upstairs and start shooting the others after she’d taken me down? I forced my face muscles to droop as if a predeath stupor had taken over my mood. Without losing eye contact I reached sideways to put my beer and the bug repellent on the kayak.
She said, “You made me your personal crusade, right?”
The bottle fell to the concrete, broke, and sprayed glass against my ankles.
It didn’t faze Pokey. “Or was it a different kind of crusade,” she said, “like one of those dead men was your relative or something? Why did you have to fucking meddle?”
“The brother factor. I told you that, too. Tim was all set to be designated fall guy.”
“Tanker told me he’d met you. I told him to go easy because you were okay. It saved your skull when he caught you taking beer bottles the other night.”
“If Wendell was a target,” I said, “why didn’t Tanker kill him last Thursday morning?”
“Tanker wasn’t even supposed to kill Eddie Bacon that day—the man you called Milton Navarre. He was supposed to take them out on different days as different forms of suicide, just like they disguised Paul Evans’s murder in 1973. But Tanker was so proud of his davit deal that he did two the same day and brought police attention. We made an adjustment on his fee after that crap. To answer your question, Wendell wasn’t home. When Tanker drove away, he saw him kissing that lady in the muumuu down the street. Wendell must’ve been screwing my old neighbor, and it saved his life.”
“Your old neighbor?”
“You don’t get it, do you? I was married to Wendell all this time. I left him last year after Lucky, when he was drunk one night in the Sugarloaf Lodge, let it slip that they’d hung Paul Evans from the flagpole. I always wondered if they’d done that, but I never knew for sure.”
“Why did you marry Wendell?”
“Meal ticket, Alex. You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been that desperate. I just wish to hell Tanker had killed Wendell first. Lucky Haskins would still be alive.”
It registered. “Wendell killed Lucky?”
“He figured out who told me that Paul wasn’t a suicide.”
“So it’s everyone’s week for revenge. Why are you pointing that thing at me?”
“Survival tactic.”
“There’s no connection to you,” I said. “Who’s going to prove that you hired Tanker?”
“You.”
“I might know you did it, Pokey, but I can’t prove that you did. The FBI was overjoyed to find Branigan, but if you kill me, they’ll have a new murder suspect to hunt down. Where will you hide?”
“Easy, Alex. Everybody who disappears from the Keys goes to a Third World country and drives a taxi. You want to find me, look for a lady cabbie who lives near the ocean.”
“I won’t want to find you.”
“Well, I guess the point’s pointless, anyway.” She waved her pistol toward the canal. “I made you a going-away present.”
From where I stood I could see only one davit. A fresh noose hung from its hook.
“No fucking way,” I said. “I saw how those men died.”
“You get to join the club.”
“I want you to shoot me.”
“Maybe I won’t kill you,” said Pokey. “Maybe I just want to see how you look with that rope around your neck, see how you look with no future, no fucking hope. Maybe I’ll look at you like that and take pity and go away and let you live.”
A voice from the backyard said, “Maybe you got the wrong man, Pokey Fields.”
I turned to see Tim walking toward the noose. He wore khaki shorts, a ball cap, and a loose white T-shirt to mask his bulk. Except for his size, he was my mirror image.
Tim stopped under the davit, lifted the noose, and positioned it on his shoulders. He reached upward to snug it tighter against his chin. “Maybe you got my little brother at the end of that gun. How many people you want to kill today?”
Pokey was a cold soul, but not that cold. She aimed her gun at Tim, then back at me. Her eyes lost just enough focus to tell me she hadn’t anticipated complications. She hadn’t thought that anyone else was in the house. She hadn’t thought that I’d refuse to move. She sure as hell hadn’t guessed that an unarmed man would walk onstage when she held the only bullets.
Her focus returned with the chill and hate inside her. “You boys think you’re too clever for an old hippie girl,” she said. “You put a problem in front of me—which isn’t a problem because what you and me have said the past two minutes, only the real Alex could know about—but I’m going to let you resolve this shit. That way one of you might not die.”
“Come on, Pokey,” said Tim. “You can flip this switch and solve your problem.”
“No,” she said. “I think you’re Tim Rutledge and your brother’s going to flip that switch. I could shoot you both, but if he turns on that davit, he gets to live.”
“Bring it on,” said Tim. “I’m about hungry as hell. Turn it on or I’m going to walk away and get breakfast.”
Pokey aimed the pistol at my head. “Go out there,” she said, “or I’ll shoot you both.”
“Aren’t you worried that Wendell’s going to come back and get his own revenge?”
“He’s history and you know it. I could see from the highway all that activity last night. Tanker gave him the farewell party that I paid for.”
“Then you didn’t read the paper this morning,” I said.
She checked to make sure Tim was standing still. “What I know couldn’t be in the paper, Alex Rutledge.”
“Wendell surprised Tanker and hung him and went away.”
“What do you want to gain with that bullshit?” She glanced toward Wendell’s house, the direction I wanted her to look. “You think if you confuse me, I’ll crumble and cry and hand you this gun?”
“Wendell was on high alert after the other two deaths,” I said. “It was Tanker Branigan they took away in the ambulance. Either way, I guess, it doesn’t change my predicament.”
“Right.” She canted the pistol toward Tim. “Walk.”
I shrugged, took one or two steps toward the backyard, and Marnie made her move. The karate kick from behind caught Pokey at the base of her skull. She and the pistol flew from under the house and landed in the yard. I couldn’t tell if she was out cold or dead.
A moment later Billy Bohner’s cruiser wheeled onto the pea rock. Teresa must have called 911. Thank goodness he’d taken his time.
We took Al Manning’s motorboat to Picnic Island that afternoon. The statements and legal hubbub were behind us, and Bobbi took the afternoon off. Sam wasn’t due back in the Keys until sundown, so Marnie had run to Murray’s on Summerland for a satchel of sandwiches and wonderfully unhealthy chips and a refill of my beer supply.
A few other boats were anchored near us, one playing an Alan Jackson CD, people in lawn chairs in eighteen inches of water. It reminded me of the seventies when the gang I hung with would go to Ballast Key to skinny-dip and play volleyball and not give a damn about the rest of the world.
The authorities had dominated our morning, so we hadn’t had time to talk among ourselves. Teresa was particularly quiet, still in shock over the risk Tim had taken. I couldn’t figure out how to thank him without causing her more alarm.
Bobbi rescued me from my struggle by bringing up the subject. “I still can’t believe Tim put himself into a hostage situation,” she s
aid. “Every guideline I’ve ever seen says it never works.”
Tim responded with a no-big-deal wave, as if swatting a pesky bug. “You hear breaking glass and look outside and see a noose on the boat lift, you gotta do one thing or another.”
“He did more than walk into the yard,” I said. “He put his head in a damned noose. If she’d turned on the davit…”
“The fuse box was on the kitchen wall,” said Tim. “I flipped the breaker before I came downstairs.”
I smiled with pride and relief. “You’ve always been smarter than you looked.”
“Thank God for that,” he said. “I look like you. People might judge me by my sibling.”
“Hear, hear,” said Marnie.
“I forgot to call Gail Downer in Marathon,” I said. “I wanted to tell her she can have her father back.”
Bobbi raised her Mountain Dew for a toast. “That’s been done, Alex, and you’re welcome. Now I’d like to salute two men. Each, in his own way, got his brother back.”
“Hear, hear,” said Marnie.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
AIR DANCE IGUANA
Copyright © 2005 by Tom Corcoran.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005043963
ISBN: 978-0-312-94189-5
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
