Octopus Alibi

by Tom Corcoran

  33

  KEY WEST IS PACKED to the seawalls with people dodging their previous lives. It’s an okay place to hide from old lovers and the laws of other states, but the island gets dime-small when local cops are after you. Dexter Hayes would find Teresa quickly.

  I hadn’t offered to join his search. She wasn’t in danger, or she’d have been shot alongside Randolph. She wasn’t in trouble, either. Hayes had made his “accomplice” remark for impact. All I could do was hope that her injuries were minor. A doctor would patch her up and detectives would browbeat her, to a point. The turmoil would be light duty, her solutions post-Rutledge, and they might let her keep her job. Wounds pull sympathy, and to people in law enforcement they signify paid dues.

  There were two speed traps on Boca Chica. Seven maniacs were running fifteen over, tailgating, showing me they were slick, but they stabbed their brakes when they sighted the FHP Camaro. Two hundred yards along they were back to the gas pedals, lane hopping, inside passing. Then, a county cruiser on the shoulder. Another mass whoa, macho-merging for the Rockland Channel Bridge. The sun cooked the roof, forced heat to my Gumbo Limbo ball cap. Shelby Mustangs weren’t built with AC, but I didn’t live in South Florida for chilly winds. East of Shark Key, thin mist kicked off wave tops. An inshore chop darkened the grassy shallows and, to the south, sea and sky blended in cool pale gray.

  I was cruising when I passed Baby’s Coffee at Bay Point. There was no way to drive and be along for the ride at the same time. For once, it was my game. I had a passenger, though. Naomi sat close, urged me to explore, told me that most things I did were right. She began to fade, but gave me a stingy smile and said I was going in the right direction.

  A real estate sign on Sugarloaf yanked me back. I pictured a similar sign, soon to be on Grinnell. I hated the thought that Bramblett would sell, and Naomi’s home would go to strangers. But who was Ernest Bramblett if not a stranger? I wouldn’t be his drinking pal if he stuck around.

  * * *

  Bobbi Lewis had bemoaned the fact that Sam couldn’t take her fishing. On Wednesday she’d said, “Maybe I can find a place up the Keys to veg a few days.” On Thursday, speaking of Frank Polan, with his mesh pith helmet and a cell phone clipped to his bathing suit, I’d said, “It’s a lifestyle we all should hope for.” Lewis had said, “Maybe I could check into his hotel.” Cristina Alcroft, the gift shop owner, had described Lewis’s Friday attire. “Like she intended to spend the rest of the day out boating.”

  Spanish Main is a straight one-mile shot from the Overseas Highway to the Straits of Florida. To the east is Kemp Channel, its constant changing colors. Across the land spit, fat and shallow as a hubcap, is Cudjoe Bay. Polan’s home on stilts faced northwest. His sunset views had to be worth a fortune. Under his house, I found a two-seat paddle pontoon, an electric bicycle, a new F-150 pickup, a Mercedes C-Class coupe, and an outdoor shower. Call it Club Polan: a dozen palm trees, kayaks on the boat ramp, a wooden dock, a jet ski on a floating mini-dock, a catamaran on twin slings.

  No Celica. If Bobbi Lewis was there, she had caught a ride.

  I wedged Sam’s Para-Companion into my belt, covered it with my shirt. On the second-level veranda, I stood ready, knocked on a sliding glass door. No one answered. I opened the door a crack and called inside. No response.

  Out on Cudjoe Bay two sailboards ran crossing patterns. By the suits, one male, one female. By their moves, expert windsurfers. A flat-decked pontoon boat was anchored midbay. One of the boards stopped alongside it, and the woman tilted a beverage. I saw her in a new perspective, a new depth.

  I went back to my car, stashed the pistol under the passenger seat, then snooped the outside shower. A blue mesh carryall hung from a teak post. Cute soaps, pink disposable razors, hair elastics. Bobbi Lewis on vacation.

  Back on the high porch, the hammock looked perfect, but I would shut my eyes and go out like a light. I plopped my butt on a plastic chair, gave my brain a break, watched water sports. After ten minutes I got nosy in an Igloo cooler. Frank would’ve offered the beer, anyway. I could pay him back with a six-pack.

  * * *

  “You found the missing deputy, Rutledge. You win the prize. You get to trade jobs.” She looked great, dripping wet, a blush of sun on her face.

  “I’m leaning more toward basket weaving.” I stood on the dock, watched them off-load the pontoon boat. Polan, as advertised, in his Speedo, rubber Birkenstocks, and pith helmet. Finally Lewis took a breather. She came over to beg a sip from my beer.

  “You’re sharp on the sailboard,” I said.

  “You’ve got nice legs.”

  “Where the hell did that come from?”

  “Many years ago, I was an instructor,” she said. “Off the deck at Louie’s, when the restaurant was closed those couple of years.”

  “I probably have pictures of you.”

  “I’ll buy them all.” She laughed to herself, gazed across the water.

  “Good day off?”

  “Rutledge, I was ready to start my vacation on Tuesday. Way too ready, two days too early. I got drunk at the Turtle Kraals. Someone gave me a ride home, I don’t even know who. I woke up Wednesday at ten, fully clothed, thank goodness, and got a cab to my car. I shouldn’t have waited to call the office.”

  “Still slurring your speech?”

  “I could barely hold down dry toast and Clamato.”

  “Punishment?”

  “You.” She stared, bored holes to the back of my skull. “I got sent to the airport, detailed to follow up your Naomi suspicions.”

  I had thought she’d been pensive. She’d been queasy.

  “You had a broken heart and a hangover?”

  She bit her lip and looked back at the pontoon boat. “You make it sound too majestic. I was too hung over that day to feel any emotion. But yes, the broken heart has eaten up my last seventy-two hours.”

  “I got it from Teresa that the deputies are looking for you. She mentioned Internal Affairs.”

  Lewis shrugged and shook her head. “I’m a good cop, Rutledge. I did my years in a road cruiser, stood up to idiots. No black marks. I got promoted, stayed clean. I write the best scene summaries in the department. My case rate is always top-three. All I’ve ever wanted to do was keep doing what I did. I would do it for free, if I didn’t have a mortgage. Now all this, but it’s out of my control. In the end, they’re going to fuck with me or they’re not.”

  “Someone shot Randolph ninety minutes ago. In his car, on Whitehead.”

  “They’re going to fuck with me less,” she said.

  “First they have to find out that you couldn’t have done it.” I pointed at the magenta skin on her chest. “That sunburn is your best alibi.”

  “You want to see the merchandise, just ask. They’re nipples and boobs, like a hundred million other women in the lower forty-eight. I’ll peel down and we can have it settled.”

  “I would’ve thought you’d be more relaxed, after all that exercise.”

  “I needed this, so I got it while I could. I knew they’d suspect me sooner or later. You didn’t answer my question.”

  “If you’re aching to show off, I won’t look away. Or we could take a rain check, maybe ramp down the tension.”

  “Good idea.” Lewis smiled a moment, then went back to being serious. “Wednesday night, you were leaving Naomi’s?”

  Polan called down from his open porch. “Can I offer you two a nice Pinot Grigio?”

  We said yes, to get rid of him.

  “Stay on those concrete circles,” he said. “Don’t walk on the pea rock.”

  We said okay. He disappeared again.

  I said, “Wednesday night?”

  “I brought in two friends,” said Lewis. “They work for Larry Riley. We found evidence of cleaned-up blood in the hallway.”

  “You kept it a secret?”

  She twisted my arm to read my watch. “I can phone Tampa for results in twenty minutes. My bet says the blood matches Gomez.” />
  “He was killed in her house, and she was killed to eliminate a witness?”

  “Too easy. I have it the other way around. She called him for some kind of help. He was injured when he got there. She died first. He may have died there or somewhere else.”

  “Do you even have to call Tampa?” I said.

  She shook her head. “You think Randolph killed them?”

  “I had him for it until Monty told us about that grifter profile. That bit about their victims always being other con artists.”

  She walked to the shower, peeled down her bikini bottom. She turned, dared me to comment, then unhooked her top and hung it on a hook. She swung the door shut and latched it.

  “Great,” said Polan. He stood next to me, holding two plastic wineglasses. He looked stricken. He knew the show hadn’t been for him. His deal was growing wings. “I wasn’t really attracted to her in the first place.”

  I asked if I could use his phone.

  “You like my bay view?”

  “Pretty as a Hawaiian shirt.”

  “The phone’s upstairs. Don’t walk in my kitchen with wet shoes.”

  I called Sam’s home and dock. No answer, twice.

  I dialed Marnie’s cell phone. She said, “No one’s found Odin Marlow, but they’re looking for a dune buggy stolen from Oceanside. A mate from one of the yachts left his keys on the floor mat.”

  I thanked her and dialed my answering service. Two messages.

  Ernest Bramblett said, “Please call.” He gave me Naomi’s number, one of the few I had memorized. No hurry there.

  Carmen Sosa: “That name, Remigio? My daddy says it rings a bell, and my mother might know. She went to Winn-Dixie for rice pudding and frozen arroz con pollo. Can you believe frozen? She’ll be home soon, so call me back.”

  Bobbi Lewis came upstairs in shorts and a baggy T, toweling her hair.

  “You want to go into town?” I said. “Resume your vacation tomorrow?”

  “What makes you think there’s anything I need to do?”

  “My clues from eight directions at once.”

  She said, “You’re going to explain, right?”

  I strung the tale of Marlow’s history on the Key West police force, his Borroto Brinas security job, his job in Broward, and his false-identity scam. “Sam pegged the scam, and we ran smack into an FDLE sting. Marlow got spooked on Friday, so the sting deflated. But that day’s Herald tipped him to the link between Borroto Brinas and the mayor’s murder. Marlow got a new agenda. Now he’s a fugitive and his boat’s parked at Oceanside.”

  “You lost me on the agenda,” she said.

  “A corporation called Remigio Partners invested dirty money in Borroto Brinas and wound up with forty-four percent of the Key West condo project. If the principals used dirty money, why not dirty tactics, like murder? It’s my guess that Marlow knew about Remigio when he was here in Key West.”

  “Take it farther.”

  “Let’s say someone from Remigio killed Steve Gomez to make sure the condo project would pass.”

  “This is new territory,” said Lewis. “It sounds damn logical so far.”

  “Marlow sees a chance to muscle into Remigio, or his boat wouldn’t be here. Find him, find the profit center. Find Remigio, find Gomez’s killer. We’re not solving shit standing right here. Downtown?”

  “We?”

  “Allow me the honor of delivering you.”

  “To where?”

  “Closer to where you can do your job. Yes or no?”

  “My service pistol is locked up at my place, and I know they’re watching the house.” She turned to Polan. “Frank, you got a weapon I can borrow?”

  Polan loaned her a new .40 caliber Smith & Wesson SW99. “Try not to use it near saltwater,” he said. He took a special cloth from a Ziploc bag, pretended to clean the piece, then handed the gun to Lewis. He’d rubbed off his fingerprints. “And don’t fire it if you don’t have to.”

  * * *

  Southbound traffic was a zoo. It took us two minutes to exit Spanish Main and hook up with the flow.

  “Unique fellow,” I said. “More money than one man needs?”

  Lewis checked out Polan’s pistol, practiced the safety, reloaded the clip. “He’s a generous host, but he guards his privacy. He wanted me to stay in that room under the house.”

  “Makes it hard to get lucky.”

  “He wasn’t really my type.”

  The Pro-Realty office at Sugarloaf bugged me again, property for sale, and Bramblett’s instant decision to take his money and run. He might want to hurry. Blood on the walls hurts resale value. I flashed on a vicious attack in the hallway, and on Lewis’s remark Wednesday night that the place looked “too clean.” Mary Butler had said, “It was … as if I had already been there.”

  The photographs in Naomi’s garbage were calling to me.

  What else?

  We crossed the Saddlebunch Keys. Lewis said, “This’d be a great patrol car if it wasn’t so smelly.” She began to talk louder to be heard above the exhaust roar. “I love the fact that it doesn’t have air-conditioning. Gives it character.”

  “It’s a Shelby GT-350H,” I said. “The ‘H’ stands for Hertz.”

  “As in ‘hurts your ass’? You’re more in touch when you feel each bump?”

  “It’s a racing suspension.”

  “So why the hell do you own it? You ought to—”

  A hot-dogging Navy F-18 swooped above us as we hit the slow-down zone on Big Coppitt. Her words were lost to afterburner roar. How can a pilot describe the feeling of a ninety-degree bank at ten times the speed of a fast car?

  Without slowing I whipped the steering wheel hard left. The Shelby cut the corner without sliding. In two seconds we’d turned from U.S. 1 onto 941, and our forward speed hadn’t dropped five miles per hour. I slowed, pulled to the side of the road.

  The aircraft noise faded. Lewis’s eyes had a look of fear that gave way to glee. I was sure she admired the vehicle more than my stunt. We remained silent. We both knew the problem. We had great intentions, but no destination. Any speck of information would help.

  I drove a quarter mile back to the Circle K on the corner. I fished under my seat and found a film canister full of quarters and dimes. I always keep a stash for phones, newspaper boxes, and parking meters. The pay box next to the entrance stairs was vacant. Any speck of info … I dialed Naomi’s number.

  Ernest Bramblett said, “This place has a certain charm.”

  “I agree with you, sir.”

  “So I was thinking, I’d use my sister’s equipment, walk around town, take a few photos. Maybe even learn a little about my surroundings.”

  “Great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.”

  “Where’s her camera?”

  “I found a cheap point-and-shoot,” I said. “The police have the negs and prints.”

  “I’m referring to the bodies, lenses, and flashes I gave her years ago. By any chance did she loan them to you? I can’t imagine she gave them away.”

  I thought about the prints I’d found in her office, the envelopes full of sharply focused pictures. “Was it thirty-five-millimeter gear, Mr. Bramblett?”

  “All of it, Olympus brand.”

  I cut the connection, dialed Duffy Lee Hall. I heard him answer, then drop the phone. He said, “Fuck, fuck … hold on … hello?”

  “Duffy Lee…”

  “Sorry, I’m in the darkroom. I dropped—”

  “Stop talking, Duff. I’m in a hurry. I need an address, maybe from an old invoice.” I told him what I needed.

  “Shit, Alex. I know I have it, but it’ll take me a couple minutes to close down and open up.”

  “I’ll call you right back.”

  I dialed Carmen’s number.

  “My mama’s spacy these days,” she said, “but she has a perfect memory. Remigio was a gambler, ran bolita for years. His real name wasn’t Remigio. They called him that because that name was on his building, on Whi
tehead. He died years ago, and the building was torn down in the early Nineties. My mother never knew his name.”

  I asked Carmen to look up Mary Butler in the phone book.

  “Alex,” she said, “an FDLE agent was in the lane. I dated him four years ago. He told me you’d been charged with Obstruction of Justice.”

  “Call Sam and warn him, okay?”

  “Got it. Mary Butler on Chapman Lane.” She gave me the number.

  Another call. Patience, I thought, she’s not too spry.

  Eight rings later, Mrs. Butler picked up.

  “This is Alex Rutledge.”

  “Now you want stock tips, and you can’t have any. Or you want to buy my house.”

  “I need to know about a man called Remigio.”

  “That man, yes,” she said. “He was not a bad man, as Conchs went. He gambled like they all did that, but that man was true to his blessed wife.”

  Grab for straws. “Do you recall anything about business associates, or his family?”

  “They adopted a boy, raised him like I raised that Dexter. One morning that man Remigio’s wife didn’t wake up. One day after they bury that poor lady, old Remigio put a gun to his head. That odd one, that boy they raised, he wasn’t a smart boy. Now he works with my cop nephew, Dexter.”

  “In what way?”

  “He takes all them messy pictures.”

  “Thank you.”

  The greedhead got tired of messing with trivia, speculating on NASCAR collectibles. He had inherited the Remigio Partners shares and wanted his big payday. He had asked if I had worthless stock certificates for sale, then sold me Naomi’s photo gear. The stupid shit had tossed my art prints into Naomi’s trash.

  A modus operandi echo: Cootie had snuffed his adoptive parents. Take it one step further. He’d have been in his early twenties when he’d debuted his canalside shotgun routine. He had killed Manuel Reyes Silveria, the Borroto Brinas founder and dreamer. Cootie had been planning this for half his life.