Octopus Alibi

by Tom Corcoran

  The question boomed right to me. Why had Naomi died?

  “I want to look into the art museum,” I said.

  Marnie shook her head. “It’s not controversial. It’s nonprofit. Once the Arts Council offers a plan for location and parking, the museum will pass no matter who’s voting. And that old land deal, with the building moratoriums, nobody’s going near land deals, anyway.”

  I knew the answer: “Which leaves?”

  “I say his conscience ruled. He foresaw the Mallory Dome’s perpetual cash flow. Every dollar would leave this island. He was going to veto that dome, sure as hell.”

  “How does that tie in to Naomi Douglas?”

  “For all I know, it doesn’t. But it rings with everything I know about Steve Gomez.”

  She had tossed me good argument.

  I said, “I’ll buy in to your instinct, Ms. Reporter.”

  “You are a wise man.”

  I turned the page to another two-page spread. At upper left were reprints of Gomez’s letters to the paper. They had formed his platform for election, then his straight-talk, informal statements of city policy. I scanned one called Protecting our Mental Environment. He had written, “In 1983, when asked what had changed most on the island since his childhood, Ernest’s oldest son, Jack Hemingway, said that the island was greener, with more plants and trees. But old-timers tell me of another big change—the noise.” His letter had made suggestions for change, for noise laws. He had closed with the lines, “You think it’s loud now? How much louder would it be, if not for all the trees and shrubs that Jack Hemingway noticed?”

  He had written about the homeless. “They may look like poop, but if they don’t have any on them, and don’t smell like urine, I can’t kick them off the sidewalks. We can’t arrest them any more than we can bust someone for wearing black socks with sandals. If they break our laws, that’s different. We will offer them lodging at city expense, after a fair trial, of course. It’s the price we pay for having a warm climate. We draw travelers from all over the world. We are a destination. We are Paradise with an open door. Hobos and street people? They are a cost of doing business.”

  That letter showed his deep regard for both civil rights and private versus public good. It had earned him more flak than any other issue in recent years.

  Gomez had left unfinished business, items that meant a lot to him. One more argument against suicide.

  “Who runs the city now?” I said.

  “The commission has two weeks to appoint a temporary mayor,” she said. “That person serves until they hold a special election. Only voters in the mayor’s district can vote.”

  “So any issue where Gomez was swing vote is…”

  “Up in the air,” said Marnie. “And we can’t see behind the scenes.”

  I checked the photos on the next page. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I said, “What the fuck is this?”

  Marnie looked at the page bottom, the two men with silly expressions. They waved bottles of Key West Lager.

  “Maybe they’re promoting local beer,” she said. “I don’t recognize the guy next to Steve. The one in the background is that Polan dude.”

  I tapped the face of the man next to Gomez. “This is Whit Randolph. He’s Teresa’s new buddy. I think you saw them lunching.”

  “Ah, yes, I did,” she said. “Your interloper.”

  “You use too sweet a word, my friend. He’s a fucknut.”

  “He looks like one. Teresa’s attracted to this?”

  “She claims they’re just old friends.”

  “Can I ask why you like her?”

  “Do you not like her?” I said.

  “I didn’t say that. I just wondered what attracts you.”

  “What am I supposed to say, her eyes?” I said. “She makes love like a madwoman? It’s not something I can spout off on short notice.”

  “You’ve never told yourself why she’s special, why she’s the one who won your heart?”

  “I’ve never needed to justify her to myself. I guess I rolled with it.”

  “So you don’t have a ready list of attributes that turn you on? Like she got twelve check marks out of fifteen?”

  “She excited me when I met her,” I said. “She lives her own life, helps to make my days more enjoyable. The one big fact is, she doesn’t wear me out. She’s not an energy drain. At least not until this week. Why do you ask?”

  “Are you aware of the age difference?”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “In what ways?”

  “Two that I can think of. Women your age don’t like her, and half my record collection died before she was born. Who’s this Polan? I know the face, but…”

  “Nice change of subject. Frank Polan was the guy from Cudjoe with the perfect yard on the bay.” Marnie caught herself, looked at me. “What am I saying? You were there.”

  “That dock where the woman shot her brother last year? I forgot his name, but not his face.”

  “I interviewed Mr. Polan later,” said Marnie. “He told me twenty times how happy he was that nobody had died on his dock. He said it was hard enough to scrub away bird shit, much less scrub blood. He’s a fussy man.”

  “I leaned against his fancy car,” I said. “He was waxing smudges as we left.”

  She looked at her watch. “Speaking of leaving, we need to go.”

  I waved off her hurry. “We’ve got a half hour.”

  “And I’m going to find a place to park? Alex, they’re burying the mayor. We’ll be lucky to find a seat in the church.”

  “We’re walking?”

  “Also, I’ve got a bad tire.”

  17

  MARNIE AND I STUCK to the side of Fleming shaded by silver buttonwood and tall palms. Bougainvillea spilled over fences along the lumpy sidewalk, and yard gardens smelled of wet dirt and evaporating moisture. Except for bike riders and an idiot pack of mopeds, there was no traffic, but that was explained by the jam I saw at William Street, mourners in cars trying to get near the First Congregational. The clouds from earlier had blown away. The day had become one that every Keys resident dreams about. Steve Gomez was missing it.

  “I left my Kleenex in the Jeep,” said Marnie.

  “The Mallory Dome people will be out front selling it,” I said.

  “Thank you. I’ll think about them, stay pissed off, and not cry at all.”

  Scrawny chickens pecked in a yard near Margaret. Two greasy shirtless men wrestled an outboard motor on a trailered boat in a No Parking zone. A heavy man in a threadbare undershirt sat in a four-dollar plastic chair on his porch, drank his morning beer. Shades of old Key West, a creature unhurried, oblivious. I hoped that the late mayor would find the same peace on that sunny archipelago upstairs.

  Aside from reading about him, hearing talk, I never knew much about Gomez. I hadn’t paid attention to the mayors who had preceded him, either. They had generated mild controversies, earned their pay and, in doing so, had bucked tradition. Over the years of my residence, municipal officials had broken more laws than most people knew existed. Corruption had been a way of life, rumors widespread currency. For some reason, the city’s mayors had been different, and rare.

  The infrequent occasions that I’d seen him around town—lunching at B’s Restaurant, shopping in the Waterfront Market, or at a stoplight—Gomez would either say hello or appear not to have recognized me. I doubted he knew my last name, or that I part-timed for the city. He had looked like the people I grew up with in Ohio, European immigrant stock. I recalled pondering his surname, but only once or twice. In Key West, Latin and Anglo families had blended for generations. Mismatches of features and surnames were common. I had become accustomed to dealing with them.

  The man had a private side, too, and it hadn’t been squeaky clean. He had had an affair with a county detective. He had cultivated an undefined relationship with an “older” woman. The man’s wife had cheated on him openly. Perhaps no one knew whose dalliance began first, and which o
f the two might have reacted to the other’s infidelity. But all that was outside the realm of job smarts. Gomez had done a fine job to the moment someone pulled a trigger, not long after he had gone drinking with Whit Randolph.

  Motorcycle cops had blocked off William between Fleming and Southard. VIP vehicles were allowed down the street, but only for drop-offs. Dozens more officers and deputies in dress uniform milled about. I watched Yvonne Gomez and two other women in black dresses negotiate the brick steps, enter the red brick building’s south door. I could tell by the way they slowed that the church was crowded.

  “They weren’t too damn steady in those high heels,” I said. “The wake must have ended at breakfast.”

  “Or it’s still going on,” said Marnie. “I heard someone say yesterday that Yvonne’s life has been years of anger broken by brief moments of manic laughter. They said her glass was always two-thirds empty. I don’t think they were talking about pessimism.”

  A pack of smokers stood on the sidewalk opposite the church, toking their last coffin nail before the funeral. A clutch of homeless men stood at the corner of Southard Street. They knew they wouldn’t be welcome inside, understood their ongoing odor problem. They were, for a change, embarrassed by their state and content to pay their respect from a distance.

  “Stick close,” said Marnie. “I don’t want to sit with people from work.”

  “They don’t share your feelings toward Steve?”

  She blew out a quick puff of air. “Some can barely share a box of Krispy Kremes. Just stay near me.”

  “You want to go right in?”

  “I missed getting a seat at Wright Langley’s service,” she said. “A packed house on a hot August afternoon. The air conditioner couldn’t hack it. I was glad so many came to honor Wright. But standing up wore me out.”

  We worked through slowpokes, approached the church entrance closest to us. Several local men stood in front of the stained-glass windows, chatted grim-faced, favored the shade of three thin trees. I saw Bobbi Lewis at the same time she noticed me. She stood with a group of detectives, and she was the only one not in uniform. She wagged a finger at hip level to catch my eye, then tapped the shoulder of my least favorite deputy, Billy “No Jokes” Bohner, and gestured for him to follow. They met us on the concrete apron near the church steps.

  “Can we talk a minute?” said Lewis. She ignored Marnie.

  I checked my watch, then looked at Bohner. His uniform had been fitted thirty pounds ago, but his presence gave an ominous twist to talking “a minute.” I glanced at Marnie, then back to Bobbi Lewis. “We’re all going inside. It’ll wait, right?”

  She shook her head and waved her hand at the sanctuary door. “Miss Dunwoody can go on ahead.”

  Marnie looked stricken, at the same time pissed. A woman’s grief and a reporter’s gumption. If her lips got a fraction of an inch thinner, her mouth would vanish. She didn’t want to enter church alone, sit next to strangers to say good-bye to Gomez.

  I refused to budge or react, but I couldn’t believe that Bobbi Lewis could be this crass. Maybe she had learned that I had swiped the Kodak Max. But that wouldn’t warrant backup, and it wasn’t her style.

  Lewis set her jaw. “Is this going to be a problem?”

  She had gone again to cop lingo. The placating tone, the implied threat.

  “It already is a problem,” I said. “Are we in a hurry for anything besides a good seat up front?”

  Lewis didn’t move. We were blocking people who wanted to go inside. Bohner slipped into a bad-ass ready stance, pursed his lips, gave me a drill sergeant look that he had worked up in a mirror.

  Someone had to make sense. I began to walk toward Pinder Lane, ten yards distant. “Shall we stand in the shade?” I said. “Make room so people can go to church?”

  Marnie took a notepad and pen from her purse. “I thought I could leave work behind for an hour, but no,” she said. “Alex, how do you spell ‘rinky-dink’ and ‘roust’? Oh, and ‘Bohner,’ too? I want to get that one right.”

  No Jokes didn’t back down. He shuffled around to wedge me, to block my escape. He looked like a cutting horse in a muddy corral, snorting from his nose, cornering a cow. He wore his belly like honorable proof of every meal he’d ever eaten. The extra skin on his face forced him to squint, but his shoulders didn’t jiggle. Fool that he was, I didn’t want to forget he was dangerous. His thick neck was all muscle and bad news. He wanted any excuse to become the loose cannon of the mayor’s memorial service.

  I said, “You want to ease off, big fellow?”

  Marnie didn’t trust the moment. She stepped away but stayed close enough to hear.

  “What’s wrong?” said No Jokes. “You nervous near a Holy Spirit?”

  “That’s not it, Deputy. You don’t sell drugs near schools, and you don’t play politics at funerals. They removed your manners before they taught you procedure, didn’t they? Tell your trainers I admire their work.”

  “You got bigger worries than manners, dipshit.”

  “You think I’m going to run away? Beat you in a sprint to Mallory, leap aboard a cruise ship, sail out of your jurisdiction?”

  He grunted, “Won’t put it past you.”

  “Look,” I said. “We’re making a spectacle here. People are staring. This woman and I are going inside.”

  “You can forget pew time.”

  I couldn’t imagine what had driven Lewis to suffer his presence. I knew we shared a dislike of Bohner. She must have brought him to help pressure me into a slip, an admission of far-fetched guilt, and it wasn’t working. The charade had turned ugly.

  “Reduce your stress, Bohner,” I said. “You’ll live longer.”

  “Now you’re talking my life span?” He palmed his weapon. “I just heard a threat.”

  Lewis finally turned to him. “Billy, I asked you to stand by, not wide. Back off a touch.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He moved three feet.

  “More, Deputy.”

  She waited for him to move two more yards, then turned to me.

  A thought hit my mind. “Is this about last night?”

  She stared at me, steely-eyed. “Some questions came up.”

  “Urgent ones?” I said.

  “We’re talking crimes. Murder and theft, maybe others.”

  “I was the only one who questioned the deaths.”

  She bit her lower lip. She looked unfocused, wounded.

  Twenty-four hours earlier I had said, “It’s hard to lose friends.”

  She had answered, “It makes you relive history, for a few days at least.”

  She had added, “I didn’t think missing him was in the program.”

  She had misjudged her emotions, or lied. She was the definition of grief.

  Unless she had killed him.

  We were surprised by a gas motor and raucous shouts from a nearby construction crew. Someone dispatched a city cop on a Harley to cure the problem. We stood staring at the ground for a minute or so. When the street got quiet, Lewis said, “Did you need the job in Grand Cayman?”

  “It’s a pretty place. The money’ll come in handy.”

  “What was in that mail in your pocket last night?”

  “Naomi’s bills, like I said. I’ll have to write some checks.”

  “You’re on video. You were taped yesterday morning using a stolen debit card at an ATM on Southard.”

  Goddammit, Randolph. “You think I stole Naomi’s bank plastic?”

  “The card wasn’t in her name.”

  “How would a thief know the right PIN?”

  “You tell me. Matter of fact, you can come to the county offices and tell a few other people, too.”

  I looked at Marnie, then said to Lewis, “Who else was in the camera’s frame at the ATM?”

  “A cabbie.”

  “You’ve known me how long? Why would I be that stupid? Why would I draw down bogus plastic right here in Key West?”

  Something close to the church caug
ht Lewis’s eye. I turned, saw Dexter Hayes leaving his wife, Natalie, at the church door and coming our way. He had read Bohner’s body language and wanted in. No one said a word to him.

  Hayes motioned toward people getting out of cars, milling around the broad sidewalk. “Packing ’em in,” he said. “The whole city payroll, a dozen old county commissioners. The stores must have run out of black dresses. I heard it’s the biggest turnout since Blinky Crusoe. They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

  “Like termite dust,” said Bohner. “How that schmuck got elected, I don’t know.”

  Dex Hayes ignored him. He checked our faces, saw nothing, then looked back at his wife. “I better go inside,” he said. He gave me one last look as if to accuse me of once again ratting him out to the county.

  Lewis watched Hayes and his wife walk inside, nod to people we couldn’t see. Someone closed the door, and organ music began. The homeless men walked past us, headed for Caroline Street.

  Lewis went deep in thought, pointed a finger at Bohner, then aimed it at Fleming Street. He got the message. He hitched up his trousers, wiggled his holster, fiddled with his privates, and walked away.

  Why hadn’t Lewis told Dexter Hayes about my being caught by a security camera at the ATM? It wasn’t that she needed an exclusive bust, or that the city should not be informed. It was more like the whole exchange had not been about the ATM or my being in trouble at all.

  The organ stopped. We heard a man’s voice, and a moment later the congregation burst into laughter. Only in Key West.

  I said, “The bank card was handed to me by a man named Whitney Randolph. I was helping him navigate the machine.”

  Lewis looked puzzled, as if Randolph’s name clicked, but not with this case. I watched her relax slightly. Her tension deflated.

  I said, “You talked to the medical examiner?”

  “Larry Riley has misgivings,” she said. “They’re contagious.”