The Mango Opera

by Tom Corcoran

  I passed a hefty security gentleman as I returned to my car. His leather pouch was the perfect size for a weapon. Probably a cellular phone. He would conceal his weapon under the expensive suit coat. People began to walk out of the church. I had missed the grand finale. Julia would understand. She might even appreciate this five-minute reunion of two ex-suitors.

  On the drive up to Miami I had promised myself a culinary treat. I found a shopping area, parked in front of a combo Laundromat and Cuban deli, and ordered two espressos to go. The first to burn my tongue and bring beads of sweat to my forehead. The second to taste like heaven and keep me awake until I’d returned to Dredgers Lane. The middle-aged woman behind the counter wore gold necklaces and bracelets and rings and had the flashing Cuban eyes one reads about in old books, hears sung about in ballads. She bounced back and forth between mile-a-minute Spanish with another lady and taking my order in perfect, unaccented English.

  As she worked the espresso machine, I thought back to my chance meeting with Ray Kemp. Our reunion at the church had started to bug me. Considering the animosities in our past, I couldn’t help feeling that the meeting had been too easygoing. Something had not been genuine. Ray had looked like a doughboy, with the pasty skin of a long-term couch potato. He claimed to have lived a life of manual labor, but his shoulders had grown close together, as if his upper body had atrophied. His hands had not been those of a seagoing man, though I knew Ray was familiar with knots and lines and hawsers. After all these years, he had reappeared. At Julia’s funeral.

  Outside the deli I put one of my coffees on the Mustang’s transmission hump and carried the other to a phone booth near the sidewalk. I swatted gnats and dialed a local number.

  “Thank you for calling East Coast. How may we help?” A pleasant singsong voice. A surprise in Miami.

  “Manny Cline, detective division, Miami-Dade.” I tried to sound as bored and snide as possible. “We got a possible hit-and-run on a tag that DMV-Tallahassee says is one of yours. Let’s see, HV2-74G. Maroon sedan. Can we check that, and get us some rental-record particulars and a vehicle status report?”

  “Hold, please.” I waited about thirty seconds. “Sir, that car’s already been turned in. There’s no damage on this report.”

  “Well, you better look again. What’s the operator’s number?”

  “Um, MI072551-04569.”

  “Jesus, what state is that?”

  “Michigan.”

  This was too easy. “Oh, shit.” A profane word for the cause of authenticity. “What city in Michigan?”

  “Saginaw.”

  “Saginaw, Michigan.” I used my Columbo exasperation. “Okay, what’s the street address?”

  “4901 Stockton Street.”

  “Operator name?”

  “Frank R. Johnson.”

  “What’d he do, Visa, what?”

  “Lemme see … MasterCard. By the way, Detective. Our garageman just inspected the car again. He says there’s no damage anywhere.”

  “You’re lucky. You got less paperwork than me. Thanks for your time.”

  I called Monty, got no answer, and left a voice-mail message asking him to start scouting the names Ray Kemp and Frank R. Johnson. See what the NCIC data bank might tell us about Ray’s past. About that time of day Sam was almost always on the dock. I tried him. Again, no answer. I said, “I found a rat, but it may not be the right woodpile. Home by ten. Call if you’re still awake.”

  It took far too long to leave Miami. Friday rush hour went in every direction. The old shortcut into Florida City, along the western edge of the metro area, had become a horticultural mega-mall. I cursed the Magic City and let my sour mood fester until I hooked up with six or eight Florida weekenders just below Card Sound Road. They towed flat-bottomed speedboats behind new pickups, and ran between seventy and eighty to the top of the Keys. I reached Mile Marker 106 in time for a fifty-dollar sunset.

  Crazed traffic or not, it felt good to be on the road home. The blat of the Mustang’s tailpipes echoed off bridge railings. The sea air fresh from the late-afternoon rain carried pungent barnacles and beached seaweed. I saw running lights on several small fishing boats changing positions on the bay side.

  Even in traffic, the ride down the Overseas Highway, after dark, drags on. You wouldn’t think paradise could lull you to inattention. I didn’t want to drift off as I had earlier that afternoon, when I’d almost daydreamed myself into a bloody wedge between those trucks, so I tuned in an AM station from Cuba for some meringue music and regretted my limited Spanish.

  My mind kept juggling the facts. The knots and their possible link in the murders of Ellen and Julia clamored to offer a giant clue. I also played back in my mind my conversation with Kemp, trying to recall what we had said, every word he’d used to respond to my chatter. It was time to process another thought—one I had kept submerged until after the funeral: Annie Minnette was the common denominator. She had heard me speak of Sally Ann and Shelly. Though she claimed never to have heard of Julia, I recalled having included Julia in several retellings of the Mariel ordeal. The closer I got to Key West, the more I found to consider, the less sure I felt about what I knew.

  * * *

  A stained towel hung over Barracuda’s cabin window to block reflections off the greasy waters of Mariel Bay. Facedown, my nose pressed into a musty life jacket, I recalled smells of boyhood—military-surplus duffel bags, soggy pillows in tents, hand-me-down slickers. Sweat puddled under my stomach and soaked into my three-day-old shorts. A rhumba tune floated across the water. People on a nearby boat discussed Jimmy Carter and the fifty hostages being held in Iran. A wind shift brought the relief of a cooling zephyr, an invitation to drift into a nap where five minutes delivers three hours’ rest.

  But Barracuda began to shudder with the wind. I pushed aside the towel Upwind, beyond the shallow hills to the northwest, the sky had darkened. Other boats began to swing with the stirring air. After nine days as captives of Third World paper pushers, we’d looked for ways to kill the boredom. This would do it.

  I hurried aft. Julia Balbuena snatched clothing from makeshift hooks. The temperature dropped. In nests of boats clumped at center harbor, men hung over railings and fought tangled anchor lines. On the elevation that faced the Gulf of Mexico, patches of casuarina whipped and Australian pines thrashed in the wind. Nearer, I heard ominous whistling in the shore trees, flapping canvas on sailing vessels, the throaty sputtering of diesel engines.

  In the forward compartment, suspended in sleep, the captain embraced a stuffed laundry bag. I did not wish to know its contents.

  “Crank the motor, Captain,” I said. “Time for drastic measures.”

  Ray Kemp’s voice growled from deep slumber: “Look who’s giving orders. You forget I own the boat. You’re just the hired help.”

  “It’s bad weather. We need to move. Get up and drive now, or your boat’ll be trash in ten minutes.”

  He rolled over, listened to the havoc a moment, and grabbed for his keys.

  On the foredeck I laced my Topsiders as gusts kicked paper high in the air and tore shirts and towels from other boats’ clotheslines. The boat hung on sixty feet of anchor line. Trying to haul it in, I strained against what felt like thirty knots. I needed help from our one good engine. Cold pellets of rain stung my arms. The wind pitch dropped. Cuban soldiers, our guards on the hillside a quarter mile north, scattered to escape a menacing wall of water.

  On the flying bridge, Kemp cranked the ignition. The Chevy V-8 coughed, then smoothed out. Ray slipped Barracuda into gear and eased ahead. When the anchor line was straight up and down, I yanked us free and hauled the anchor on deck. With a crescendo of swirling rainwater, all hell broke loose.

  “Full throttle into the wind, Ray! Go toward that shoreline! Jesus Christ! Get us behind those trees!”

  Kemp still looked half-asleep and dazed.

  Visibility dropped. Horizontal rain slammed. A large lobster boat loomed out of the downpour, dragging anchor
, bearing down on Barracuda. A collision would throw me into the water, could sink both boats. A gust spun the lobsterman. Our luck: her anchor line parted. A moment later she slipped within a two feet of our starboard rail, then cleared astern and disappeared into the gray.

  Ray straight-armed the maelstrom to shield his eyes. The boat pounded into the shallow, wind-driven surf. “I can’t see a damn thing! Tell me if we’re getting close!”

  I grabbed an inch-wide gutter above the canted windshield and hunkered down. Julia reached through the opening and pushed a nylon windbreaker into my hand. I fought gusts to jam my arms into the flapping jacket. More than providing warmth, it blocked the stinging rain.

  Off to port a group of water-filled outboards maypoled around knotted anchor lines. Beyond them a shrimper had crashed another nest of small boats. Men in the water fought to stay afloat as volumes of water tumbled through the fierce wind. To either side I heard strained motors and faint yelling boat bells and foghorns. Within my short visibility, scummy whitecaps pitched boat cushions, Styrofoam coolers, plastic chairs, fishing floats, and milk jugs. As we closed on the shoreline, the lee under the treetops began to favor Barracuda. The howling wind dropped its intensity. Even with the continuing heavy downpour it became easier to move around, to hear.

  “Get near the beach,” I yelled. “I’ll throw the anchor.”

  Hunched behind the narrow windscreen, Kemp waved to acknowledge me. Then he stood to call out, “I’ll put her aground. Tie us to a tree.”

  A moment later Barracuda’s bow sliced between two gnarled clumps of mangrove root. Her keel crunched woefully, and I flashed for an instant on the hull’s failing during the trip homeward. Back to real time: I passed the anchor chain under the bowrail, jumped into the shallows, and sank to my knees in black muck. I feared that I would continue downward, slurping into dark, chemical decay until I too dissolved. One sneaker pulled off in the silty goo as I freed my legs and worked to gain a foothold. One rank shoe, I thought, will now sink to China. Someone there will use it. I scrambled five yards, swung the Danforth around the joined trunks of two pines, and looped it around the trailing chain links. For the first time in nine days I knelt on solid ground. In my underpants, one sneaker, and a thin jacket.

  A clicking noise behind me. The other American captains had followed our example. Anchor chains will fly. I needed to separate the chain from the rope so I could secure the bow line to larger trees.

  I also needed to catch my breath.

  Close by, another crisp metallic snap. An AK-47 automatic rifle barrel lay six inches from my forehead. Its black, webbed shoulder strap flipped about in the gusty wind. The young Cuban soldier’s blue-cold hand shivered at the foregrip.

  * * *

  Flashing red and blue lights filled the rear view. No siren. I hadn’t noticed headlights, if he’d used them. An ambush. A goddamned sneak attack. I looked down at the Shelby’s dim speedometer. Seventy-five. Ah, well. Pay the piper.

  As I pulled to the shoulder, the deputy blasted me with a spotlight bright as the sun. He took his time getting out. Calling in location, running the tag against the hot roster. We were somewhere near Grassy Key. My engine made ticking sounds as it cooled. A light sea breeze drifted out of the west. The air had chilled behind the afternoon’s front.

  His flashlight played the backseat and passenger area. I kept my hands on top of the steering wheel. “Moving right along, sir. Twenty over the limit gets costly.” I was relieved to see that he was a sheriff’s deputy, not the FHP.

  “With my mind a million miles away.” A hundred and thirty miles away, and a hundred years ago. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention. Not much traffic tonight,” I added, to help my case and offer a local’s point of view. The deputy was huge, black as the rural Florida night, military-perfect. I’d seen him before, in a courtroom where we both had testified for the prosecution. Another downside to the evidence gig. Having to show up in court and swear to the jury that my pictures were my pictures.

  “Please hand me your driver’s license and registration, and step out of the car.”

  Oh, shit. The whole drill. We walked around to the side of the road, to be clear of traffic. He held the light so he could read the license. The officer’s name tag said SAUNDERS.

  “Six-two, one eighty-five?”

  “Three years ago.” It was time to heed Sam’s beer sermon.

  “Look, Mr. Rutledge, I don’t care for excessive speed on a public roadway, especially in an older vehicle. You’ve got new tires, but you got that equipment factor working against you. Right off, you got a tail lamp lens about to fall out. But that’s not why we’re here.”

  Seventy-five is not why we’re here? “Great. Why are we here?”

  “Before I say anything else, I’ll tell you your friend is okay.”

  “My friend is okay?”

  “Ann Minnette.”

  “You pulled me over to tell me that she’s okay? What’s not okay?”

  “You’ll have to get details from our detectives, Mr. Rutledge. I understand you know several of them. As I have it, her car was stolen this afternoon. The thief went a short distance and a bomb exploded. The kid lost part of his leg. The city police think it was intended to kill Miss Minnette.”

  I was lost for a response. A media murder, then a car bomb. Murders and bombs were out of my league. Like it or not, my league was expanding.

  “She’s with two friends, waiting for you at the Marathon Substation. Can I count on you to obey the speed laws?”

  Fat chance. “Can I get an escort?”

  Saunders got a look in his eye. He knew he was asking for trouble.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And one other favor. Could you call ahead and ask Lester Forsythe to meet me there?”

  “The geeky snapshot man?”

  “That’s the one. It’s kind of important.”

  12

  Saunders led with flashing lights but no siren. The official beige license tag on his black Mustang GT read SEIZED. Following a sheriff’s vehicle down the Middle Keys at eighty should have been a hoot. I just wanted to go faster. My mind worked to fit this new complication into the puzzle. My categories had been ex-girlfriends, knots, and Ray Kemp. Add a new one: explosion.

  At speed, we took twenty-five minutes to reach the Marathon Substation. Saunders whipped a U-turn and headed north. I went left and stopped between two green-and-whites to the left of the building. I glimpsed Sam Wheeler’s Bronco behind a van around back, out of sight from the highway. Hurrying inside, I almost flattened the crew-cut desk clerk departing in civvies, smelling like a magazine cologne insert. He pegged me with a hostile glare and kept going. All trimmed out for Friday night in Marathon.

  Sam stood to one side of the foyer sipping a Coke. “You made good time.”

  “What the hell happened? Why are you here?”

  “She parked her car at your house and walked to the funeral. Everyone in the cemetery heard it blow. One of your neighbors was in the Sunbeam Grocery when it went off, right at the corner of White. Annie didn’t even know her car was missing until the neighbor ran down Fleming and told her. My first impulse was to get her the hell out of town. We got this far. Carmen suggested we flag you down, so you’d know, so you wouldn’t get home to an empty house.”

  “The car thief took the blast?”

  “Some kid, a Filipino, or Hawaiian. Been in town a week. They say he was fortunate. It was a dud pipe bomb, or an amateur job. The doctors are trying to sew his ankle back together.”

  “The bomb was meant for Annie?”

  Sam shrugged. “That’s the cautious way to look at it. Unless you want to figure the kid brought the bomb with him. He told the cops it wasn’t his. He’d never stolen a car before. Monty’s checking the computer. Annie’s in that office over there, talking to her parents long distance. Carmen’s in there, too.”

  “Where do we go from here?”

  “For now, Annie’s taking your crackpot theory to heart. She volu
nteered to go out of town for a few days. They gave her a leave of absence from work. I told her she could stay at my cabin up in Alabama. A couple weeks in Butler Point is good for the soul.”

  “She’d fall in love with Baldwin County and never come back.”

  Sam looked away. “You complaining?”

  A door opened in the hallway. Carmen peered out, mimed an expression of relief, stepped outside and closed the door. “Someone in there to see you.” Then she whispered, “Be calm. Just be calm.”

  “Rutledge?” A voice behind me. Lester Forsythe in a lime-green tank top and a pair of plaid Bermudas that I wouldn’t wear to scrub a Dumpster.

  “Lester. Thanks, partner. I hate to ask this of you, but I need to look at your photos of the Guthery scene. The one on Stock Island.”

  “You got me down here at this hour for that? Kind of uncool.”

  “It’s real important, Lester. Or I wouldn’t have dragged you away from the barbecue. Your pictures could solve the case.”

  “How’d you know where I was at?”

  “Friday night, Lester. I figured it out.” I turned to Carmen and Sam and pointed at the door where Annie waited. “She still on the phone?”

  Carmen nodded yes.

  “One minute, I’ll be back.”

  Tonight the hallway reeked of fast-food grease and darkroom soup. “How did this one die, Lester?”

  Lester shook his head. “Dr. Riley’s still working on the lab results, or else he’s keeping it to himself. I heard two rumors. One was lethal injection. The other was a pinched artery in the neck.”

  Forsythe had done a better job with his automatic flash unit in Sally Ann Guthery’s mobile home. He did not have full-sized prints. But the thumbnail-sized images on the proofs were clear enough to view through a magnifying loupe. The killer had tied Sally Ann to a vinyl recliner, bound her ankles to the chair legs, and stuffed a wad of patterned material into her mouth. She wore what appeared to be a housecoat or a robe. Maybe a flannel nightie, spread open to show black bikini-style panties.