by Tom Corcoran
“We’re worried about the way she died,” I said.
“She died in private, and asleep. Young man, who could ask better? At my age, my worst fear, I’ll fall down and die on Duval Street, in a crowd of strangers. They all in a hurry to get back on that cruise ship, they step over me like a wino lady picked a bad place to sleep.”
Back away, I thought.
“Did you clean her house this week?”
“I didn’t know they’d took her away. Some days, you know, she goes to Home Depot up in Marathon. She buys her plants, gets her some projects. She kept a good toolbox.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Now you do.” When Miss Mary spoke, she cocked her head as if peering around some obstruction between us. The angle said I don’t trust you yet, I’m trying to figure out your angle.
“You went in and cleaned like usual?” I said.
She nodded slowly, and kept nodding. “I go in the house and her bed’s stripped, which is how I always found it on my days.” Her eyes watered up. “I didn’t know they take the bedsheets when they take the dead.”
Change of subject. “How do you travel back and forth, from here to her house?”
She pointed at Hayes. “Free taxi. The same way I go groceries, to Fausto’s or Eckerd’s.”
Dexter rolled his eyes, looked away, focused on something down the street. I couldn’t think of a better form of graft.
Mary Butler said, “Miss Douglas, she use the same taxi man.”
“Was there anything strange about the house?” I said.
“Pretty as ever,” said Miss Mary, again tilting her head. “Not much to do. All the plants were watered.”
“You said there wasn’t much to do. Was that normal?”
“Well … That’s almost right. She kept it neat, but I kept it clean. I guess that was strange, that morning I went in there. It was neat, but clean, too. As if I’d already been there.”
“Did you notice anything changed in her living room?”
Miss Mary’s eyes widened. “Now, there you got one. Those big pictures, those artist pictures of railings and gingerbread? They were not on the wall, which I didn’t worry until I saw them in that trash. I knew she must’ve had a big, big problem with that boy who took those pictures. It would have to be a big problem, throw away those pretty frames. There’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning. Sometimes a thin line between love and hate, you know that?”
I looked at Dexter Hayes. He stared straight at his aunt, wouldn’t look at me.
Change the subject, I thought. “I like your porch, all the green.”
“Those are her plants covering up the chicken shit. When I heard about Miss Douglas, I went back. I couldn’t leave them to dry and die, like the lady who bought them. The first thing we ever agreed was the secret to plants in Key West: Put ’em in the ground green side up and add water.”
“They look good right where they are,” I said. “I like your house.”
She bobbed her head, agreeing. “It’s all right, but for stray chickens and my troublesome neighbors”—she tilted her head at the men drinking next door—“or some fool down the road turning a paper-thin shack into a quaint home. You make it pretty around here, it draws flies. You see this walking stick? I walk as good as you, young man, but I got to fight off those cherry-vanilla real-estate ladies come down here to tell me I got to stop being happy and contented so I can be rich. You know what I say to them? I say, Ladies, Hewlett-Packard and Intel and Citigroup are all up today, so I can afford my collard greens and a box of fried chicken. Oh, they do not know how to take that. And I got Miss Douglas to thank for that, too.”
I wanted to say, “How so?” It was none of my business. I said nothing.
Miss Mary filled the silence. “We help each other in this world, young man. Miss Douglas needed my help with her house, and she give me help with other things.”
“With investments,” said Dex Hayes. “Auntie sold her mother’s home on Green Turtle Key to a wealthy man years ago. Mrs. Douglas kept Auntie in the stock market through the 1990s, then took her to cash before the market went soft.”
I said, “You went to her house for friendship. That’s what I think.”
She cracked a small smile. “Smart old ladies have more fun than you think, young man. We lost husbands. We waved good-bye to our children, if we were lucky. We got nothing left to lose. It depends on approach, don’t it?”
“You lived your whole life in Key West?”
She shook her head. “Two years in a city called West Palm. That place smell like cars. It was way too agitated. We never had to rattle our chains on Key West, excuse the expression. Some of the children went away and came back with ideas. They wanted to get ahead in life by using people, not hard work. They sang in small choirs, and they didn’t see a twinkling dime from white guilt until the last few years. A few of them got to selling dope, smoking that stuff. A few got the cancer from smoking that dope. They in another choir now, no dope allowed.”
“Do you recall a sisal rug that ran down Naomi’s hallway?”
“Miss Douglas decided that rug drew dirt. She said next time I came, we would put that dirty old rug at the curb.”
“It’s not in her house now.”
“Maybe she got her boy to haul it off.”
“Boy?”
“Her stepson, adopted, whatever he was. Foster child, for all I know. That boy, the mayor.”
I looked at Dexter Hayes. His eyes were wide, intense, but he didn’t want to interrupt the flow of conversation.
“Naomi Douglas was the mayor’s mother?”
“I don’t believe she was his natural, but she raised the boy, like I did for this one.” She waved the back of her hand at Dexter but didn’t look at him. “Miss Douglas worried about that boy more than anything in her life.”
“What was to worry about?”
“He treated her different than boys treat their mamas. And I don’t mean like better or worse. I believe that was her only bother, and I hated to see that. Worries are better spent on the future than the past.”
Yes, but the past holds secrets. “You never had other cause for concern about Mrs. Douglas?”
“One thing.” She nodded for about fifteen seconds, then said, “That odd ho-listic bug lady. You cannot meditate bugs away. They too smart. You can’t train them. You got to poison those bugs, plain as can be. That’s when they understand you mean business. She pay that lady more than Orkin. What’d she get? Flies in her flour, ants in the cereal, cocka-roaches under the house. Why she had a ho-listic bug lady, I don’t know.”
Dexter jangled his car keys. Miss Mary got the message just as I did. She said, “You go up in town, you find that man that took those broken pictures in the trash can. Ask him what made her angry. Ask that man why she died of stroke or her heart blew out.”
One of the men from next door approached me as I reached for the car door handle. He adjusted the napkin around his paper cup. Old Conchs wrap napkins so evaporation delays warming. Fifty years ago it was inspired by a shortage of ice. People still did it in the Seventies, half out of tradition, but almost no one did it anymore.
The man beckoned me toward him. “Hey, brother.” It sounded like “Oy ba-rudda.”
I looked at Dexter, hoping for telepathic instructions. He stared back, no help at all, almost grinning, waiting to see how it played out.
I said, “How’s it going?”
“You don’t like me ’cause I’m a poor person. You hate my poverty.”
“Nope, that’s not it, mister.”
“But I was right, right? You don’t like me.” His breath smelled like an empty saloon in the morning. “Is it ’cause I’m a colored man?”
“Nope. You want to know why I don’t like you? I’ll tell you. If you came into my life, you’d be a problem, not a joy. I’ve got enough problems with friends to last me years. I don’t need problems from pushy strangers.”
The man looked
entranced, stupefied by my words. He shrugged, walked away shaking his head.
Dexter popped open the squeaky door on his side of the car. “Well done,” he said.
“Thank God I was in a bad mood. I might have let white guilt take over.”
“I didn’t mean with that man. I meant with my aunt. Ever since I became a cop, she’s shut me out. The only thing I can figure is some loyalty to her criminal brother.”
I’d never before heard Dexter speak of his father.
We drove over to Whitehead, got stuck creeping behind a Conch Train. A tourist family of four in identical tie-dyed tank tops took up the train’s rear-facing backseat. A thirty-year-old German sedan was parked near the Hemingway House. It reminded me of the car that Ortega had parked at my place.
“Can I ask how Cootie came to be driving a vintage Mercedes-Benz?”
“Part of his collectible thing, his fixation.”
“Cars?”
“In this case, Princess Diana.”
“No.”
“You didn’t know?” said Hayes. “He’s the biggest Di groupie in Florida. People at the city call him Di Guy.”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“He’s got two rooms devoted to her. He told me about it once. Pictures on the wall, a book collection, a piece of fabric from her wedding dress in a walnut box with an etched-glass front and fancy seal. He’s got every copy of People, a bunch of ski lift passes, a set of earrings, and the veil from a hat she wore to a ceremony in France. He’s got three tea sets, a pair of her sunglasses, and five or six scarves in a framed box. I got no idea where he gets it all. The Internet, probably getting his ass fleeced by somebody. Willingly, of course.”
Then I remembered. He had asked if I had any Time or Newsweek issues from 1997. The Paris death.
I dreaded the answer. “Where does the Benz come in?”
“He saw some photo years ago in National Enquirer. Princess Di got out of an old Mercedes to fool paparazzi at the rear door of her London athletic club. Cootie saw an identical one for sale by the highway up on Big Pine. He paid peanuts for it, then spent thousands to make it run right and not leak when it rains. I think he put a Cuban mechanic’s kids through college just on that car. Somebody down at the city told me he pays three hundred a month to rent a garage for it out on Laird.”
“Where does he get that kind of money?” I said.
“Man lives out of his freezer and doesn’t drink. He does his own washing and uses coupons at Publix. He’s got the secret to being a millionaire in this town.”
“I’m amazed by the idea that Cootie might put that much thought into any endeavor.”
“For the first time today, I agree with you.”
“Thanks. Can I ask two more things?”
“It’s not in my self-interest to consent,” said Hayes. “You’ll ask anyway, so let me ask my question first.”
I knew what it was. “The photos were my work,” I said. “I didn’t trash them, and I hadn’t argued with her, or pissed her off. I hadn’t seen her in two weeks. I can’t believe she would have dumped them. If foul play’s confirmed, they could be a big clue.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s confirmed. Larry Riley got the toxicology results. He told law enforcement, but not the press. She died of an Oxycodone overdose. It’s a megawatt painkiller. We’re trying to find her personal doctor, ask him if he prescribed it.”
“His name’s Lysak. I already checked. There was no pain medication. At least not recently. It may have been an outdated prescription.”
“Wonderful. Does Dick Tracy need to be put on retainer?”
“Did he say anything about Gomez?”
“He said there wasn’t enough left of his head to fill a size-ten shoe.”
“But, what time did he die?” I said.
Dexter stared at the windshield.
How many times do you drop the ball before you forfeit the big game?
I said, “If your aunt didn’t discover the body and call the city, who did?”
His jaw tightened. “I don’t know,” he said. “That’s the single reason I’m being patient with you and your notions.”
“Have you told Teresa that Randolph’s under surveillance?”
Dexter looked skyward. “When’s your next moment of genius?”
“Why do you ask?” I said. “You need to borrow one?”
“Did I remember that you wanted to find the housekeeper? Did you learn anything in the past half hour?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do I have an obligation to reveal anything to a civilian?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know how much I know or don’t. I could be a slug or a genius.”
“I suppose that’s correct.”
“Did I get this job by being a dunce?” he said.
“Probably not.”
“You’re more productive, Rutledge, when you’re asking good questions and being less of a wise ass.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Naomi Douglas left everything to her brother, Ernest Bramblett.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Why nothing to her foster son?”
20
ALL WE NEEDED WAS the FDLE, the Coast Guard, the ATF, and the DIA. We could have had a quorum on Dredgers Lane. We already had a traffic jam.
I was so inside myself, thinking about Naomi and Gomez, their mother-son relationship, that I’d ignored Dexter Hayes’s route. I had wanted to go to the airport to retrieve my cameras and duffel, but forgot to ask. I zoned out during our eastbound run on Truman and didn’t notice he’d gone north on White. As he swung onto Dredgers Lane, I remembered that my bike was still locked outside the Green Parrot. My belongings were as scattered as my brain.
The sheriff’s SUV that Lewis drove was next to Marnie’s Jeep. The Jeep’s tire had not fixed itself. Chicken Neck Liska had wedged his Lexus against the Ayusas’ hedge. A red Mustang convertible was angled in near Carmen’s house, which meant that Monty Aghajanian, my FBI friend, had hit town. A shindig was being forced on me. I suspected someone was about to hand me my ass. At least I would know where my ass was.
Dexter stopped behind the SUV and shut off his car. “Party time, bubba,” he said. “I just invited myself.”
City and county law officers mix like ditch water and kerosene. “Talk to them about it,” I said.
I had spoken too few times in the past year with Monty Aghajanian. He had been a longtime friend and, not long ago, in my backyard, had shot a man about to shoot me. Any other day I would be happy to see him.
Monty had spent eight weeks of the past year in Quantico, Virginia, surviving the FBI’s basic-training course. The bureau had posted him to New Jersey to track down stolen Harleys and road-building vehicles, but his job description changed monthly. Now he was back, dressed like a tourist in a luau shirt, milk-white Bermudas, and leather sandals. I sensed distance when we shook hands, as if he wanted to stand away from trouble. I wanted to say that I wasn’t trouble, but I felt like a trouble magnet and he was wise to keep a shield in place. Bobbi Lewis was back in her polo-style uniform shirt. Liska, whom I hadn’t seen in church, wore a suit and tie. His new gig at the county must be weighing on him. I had never seen him wear conservative clothing. He chewed a plastic straw, looked pensive, nodded hello, but said nothing.
I introduced Monty to Hayes, explained to each the other’s job. I could tell by Monty’s face that the name threw him off. He knew all about Dexter’s father, Big Dex Hayes, and his unsavory reputation. To Monty’s credit, he took the introduction at face value, without comment.
Bobbi Lewis sipped a can of Mountain Dew. “Your phone’s been ringing.”
Sam, I thought. Certainly not Teresa.
No one said a thing. We stood on the porch and stared at one another. I assumed that Liska and Lewis were trying to make Hayes uncomfortable, silently urge him to leave. My ceiling fan spun slowly. Its blades reflected light muted by the screening. I hadn’t left the fa
n on, and I had locked the house.
Lewis followed my gaze. “The air was stifling,” she said. “The door was open so I took the liberty.”
I shrugged. Teresa had been back, again had left the place unlocked.
“You people want to step inside?” I said. “Cool off?”
“We’re fine out here,” said Lewis.
Aghajanian looked through the screens. “Nice day, great weather. Sure beats Jersey. We don’t see many palm trees up there.”
“Real nice,” said Dexter Hayes Jr.
Liska looked at the lane, chewed his Burger King coffee straw. He had gone cold turkey, told me in February that quitting cigarettes would save him three grand a year. A deputy at work tipped him to plastic stir sticks, so he fiddled with them like cigarettes, chewed nicotine gum between sticks, and ignored stares.
“I’ve been away too long,” said Monty. “I heard Earl Duncan on the radio, trying to sell Tye-otas and a Mitsu-bitchy. I couldn’t understand a word he said, like he had a washrag in his mouth. The man reinvented the Southern accent. Time was, I could decipher it. Hell, I used to work for him.”
“Earl’s ads have been running since World War One,” I said. “He’ll be on the air after we’re all dead.”
“He got me to buy a car,” said Hayes.
“Okay,” said Bobbi Lewis. “Let’s cut the crap.”
“Agreed,” said Liska.
I braced myself for incoming. They were about to play Pin the Shit on the Scapegoat.
Liska continued. “Monty filled us in on your nosy-business, Rutledge. He told us we’d find a prize when we searched the NCIC. Officially, he can’t do it, but he did it anyway, at great risk to his career. So none of this leaves the porch. We all together, here?”
Each of us agreed, but Liska asked again. He looked directly at Dexter Hayes.
“It’s your play,” said Hayes. “I’m in the balcony.”
“All this for Ernest Bramblett?” I said.
“Him too.” Monty brushed off a space on my porcelain-top table, boosted himself up, and sat. In his silence, he took command of the porch. I assumed he had learned that move with the Bureau, their basic lesson in dealing with municipal personnel. Liska stood back from the circle, arms crossed and the stir stick wiggling. I wondered how he felt about Aghajanian, once a subordinate at the city, now a federal agent with leverage, resources, and confidence. Maybe he wasn’t jealous at all. Maybe he was happy that he could peak his career and not have to leave the Keys.
