The Mango Opera

by Tom Corcoran

  I had two choices. I could call for the eighteenth time and try to warn her. Or I could ride to West Palm and attempt to find her. Either way I ran the danger of having her blow off my warning. With Choice Two I couldn’t imagine a more perfect situation to set myself up as idiot of the year. What was I going to do, wait in the driveway for Annie and her date to pull up? Hide in the shrubs and pounce out as Annie ushered Anselmo into the house? Park down the street, out of sight, waiting for her to arrive? I didn’t want to be some guy standing in the rain next to a motorcycle. The dog walkers would go haywire. Neighborhood Watch would have gendarmes on my butt in a flash. Or I could go sit with her parents, watch them mix and drink their nonstop gimlets, watch the local car crashes and gun accidents on the eleven-o’clock news, make small talk to fill the long, vicious minutes until the lovebirds waltzed in the door.

  I wasn’t thinking perfectly. It was the fifth day in six that I’d awakened at an uncivilized hour. I had a black eye, wet clothing, a chipped tooth, the leftovers of four rum drinks in my belly. One fact shone through the mist of indecision. Rain is always colder when you’re riding northward. I stopped at a booth and dropped another quarter.

  This time Annie answered. “I got your message,” she said. “I called Carmen. She said that you and Sam had gone to Georgia.”

  “We acted quicker than the long arm of the law. But our lead fizzled out. Kemp is still on the loose. What’s going on in West Palm Beach?”

  “It’s pretty boring. I’m sitting around the house. I’ve gone shopping with my mother a couple times.”

  Horseshit. “Well, at least you’re safe.”

  “Safe but bored. Is Sam still in trouble?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “Where are you? Why are you talking with a lisp?”

  “Rolling down U.S. 1 on the cycle. Thadd and David say hi.”

  “I hope this is over soon. I need to get back down to Key West, too.”

  “Work piling up?”

  “Always, Alex. You know that.”

  I wanted to ask if she missed the balalaika. Or me. My martyrdom was being trampled in the muck of ruined truth. “Look, I don’t know how to tell you this. I don’t own you and I don’t care to boss you around.”

  “You’ve never bossed me around.”

  “I don’t want you to think that I’m trying to interfere with your life.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “There’s a chance that Kemp and Anselmo are linked in this mess.”

  “Michael is not a killer, Alex.”

  “They go back fifteen years, and they may have been in touch in recent months. There’s another angle. Michael and Julia once lived together, after she left Ray.”

  She had to think about that for a moment. “Michael came here today to talk about the future. He said nothing about Ray Kemp, and he left for Key West an hour ago. I assure you I am unharmed.”

  “We don’t know where Kemp is, however.”

  “Are you suggesting that I go back to Thadd and David’s?”

  “I think you should go somewhere. Anywhere. Until this blows over.”

  “Thank you for calling. Thank you for being worried about me. If I decide to go anywhere, I’ll call Carmen.”

  I hung a chevron on my Good Intentions merit badge. The Kawasaki took me down I-95 as if it had gained a hundred horses. Typical of Florida squalls, the rainstorm blew out over the Gulf Stream. The lump on the back of my head was rubbing my helmet liner, and an exposed nerve in my tooth started to scream.

  I had accumulated too much knowledge in too little time. It wasn’t sorting well. My search for clues had been jumbled by my concern for preventing more attacks. A serial killer could be sitting in Albertson, Georgia, laughing about how he’d outsmarted vengeful Cubans, amateur sleuths, especially the FBI. Or he could be in the trunk of a car that would reach Miami about the time I hit Key West. Maybe my visit to Raoul had saved Kemp’s life. Perhaps it was already too late. He could have been removed from the trunk after dark, pitched into a north Florida swamp or taken for a one-way boat ride out of Savannah or Jacksonville.

  I was bothered more than ever by Annie’s blasé attitude, her cryptic admissions, her Swiss-cheese explanations.

  Below Card Sound Road I passed Barefoot Cay Marina and rode between scraggly walls of mangrove. Moonlight reflected off the flats around Mile Marker 112, where three yachts lay at anchor in the open bay to the east. Tension lifted, the spaces between cars widened. The air became warmer and thicker, and a salty film began to paint my exposed skin. It smelled more like home.

  I stopped at the Holiday Inn at the Key Colony turnoff. The lounge was dead. A young female bartender was cutting fruit, prepping for the next day’s business.

  “What can I get ya?” she said. New York accent.

  “Nothing to drink,” I said. “I’m apartment hunting. My girlfriend was in for cocktail hour Tuesday. Said the bartender knew a cheap two-bedroom. I’d like to talk to whoever it was.”

  She shook her head. “I’m new on the job. That bartender skipped to the Yucatán on Friday. Management’d like to talk to him, too.”

  So much for confirming Annie’s story about the night of Ellen’s death.

  I rolled into Key West around midnight, opened my windows to air out the house, then walked far enough down the lane to determine that Carmen had gone to bed. Wafts of frangipani drifted like clouds of intoxicating ground fog. Foliage muffled the sounds of crickets and the hum of air conditioners. A few blocks away a sports car with straight exhausts ran up through two gears and back down again. It repeated the process, stop sign to stop sign, across to the Atlantic side. The island dogs were quiet. One rooster with an off-kilter body clock crowed. A breeze rustled high in the older cabbage and coconut palms.

  A hot shower in the yard darkness put warmth into my bones. I dropped into the lounge chair on the porch and drank a beer to lift the edge off my nerves while I counted muscles in my back as they went off duty. Moments like that, as much as anything, defined Luxury Life, taxes be damned. Except for basics, comfort had little to do with wealth.

  Things could be so simple if they weren’t always so complicated.

  It made sense at the time. About two-thirty I woke up numb in the chair to the sound of haranguing frogs in the yard. I called Chicken Neck Liska’s office, left a message on his machine, then stumbled into the bedroom.

  28

  Eight-twenty, a good porch morning, two sips into my first Cuban coffee, birds singing in the trees, about to sort my mail. Paul Desmond music on the CD.

  The phone rang.

  Chicken Neck Liska: “I had a long meeting with Aghajanian yesterday on my day off, to catch up on things. Now this message says you want to bring me up to date.”

  I hadn’t even had a chance to bring Sam Wheeler up to date. “I’m moving slowly this morning,” I mumbled, “but I got some shit on Anselmo.”

  “Don’t even brush your teeth, bubba. I ain’t gonna kiss you.”

  I wanted to tell him I had one less tooth to brush. I was lacing my deck shoes when the Taurus pulled up in front. He came to the porch in a disgusting lavender leisure suit and a broad-collared purple shirt, flicked his fingernail against my brass doorbell, waltzed in carrying a Dunkin’ Donuts bag, cheerful as Fred Astaire tapping circles around a walking stick. His tan loafers were inset with the gauzy material used to make pot holders. When he sat his jacket fell open. His cellular phone snug in the shoulder holster.

  “Tryouts for the New Village People?”

  He grunted and plopped the bag on the table.

  I went inside to pour him a coffee.

  “This is not every day,” he said. “I once figured if Dunkin’ Donuts went out of business, the whole Key West City Police Department would lose a minimum of twelve hundred pounds in two months. Doctor told me to quit. My physical, a while back, I was afraid he’d take me off booze, tell me to exercise, eat yellow peppers. He said no more Dunkin’ Donuts. I
can live with that. For nostalgia’s sake I give myself one bag of these gut bombs a month. Doctor wants to tell me I’m cutting my life short, I’ll say permission to turn right on red added time to my life. One minute here and there, they add up. Until the seventies, only California allowed right turns on red. It all balances out.”

  He’d arranged six doughnuts on top of the flattened bag. Any one of the six would feel like a bowling ball in my stomach five minutes after eating it. Liska motioned for me to make a selection. I picked the smallest jelly doughnut, then settled into what must have been my fifteenth retelling of the facts as I knew them: Kemp’s house, the Mariel receipt, the bomb, the conversations with Raoul. I mentioned that Anselmo had been with Annie in West Palm, then dropped the bomb about Julia and Anselmo sharing an apartment many years back.

  “I love getting this shit on the assistant federal prosecutor,” he said. “Ever since he screwed Aghajanian, I’ve prayed for a way to clean his clock.”

  “That wheel goes around,” I said. “I’m not into broadcasting philosophy, but sooner or later everybody’s got to pay their own tab.”

  “That’s what keeps me from getting discouraged about my job,” he said. “Year after year. A lot of people can’t help themselves. A lot of other people help themselves to whatever’s not attached. That old theory about the sharks and manatees? Manatees are forever endangered. I’m here to hold back sharks.”

  “Anselmo’s in the latter category?”

  “Anselmo’s hogging the latter category.”

  The cellular phone buzzed. Liska pulled it from inside his coat, bit into a huge sugar-glazed bomber and didn’t try to finish his mouthful. “Yes. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” White sugar sprayed the leisure suit. “Okay. I’ll be right there.” He clicked off the phone and turned to me. “I need help, bubba. You got a piece?”

  “We have to shoot people?”

  “Avery’s locked himself in his garage. He’s been a loose goose the last few days. My ex thinks he’s got a shotgun in there.”

  I stepped inside, went for my camera bag, but thought again. This was not the occasion for news photos. I also decided to leave the Walther in the bookcase. In spite of Bob Bernier’s warning, I hadn’t had a chance to move it. I sure as hell didn’t want to shoot a Monroe County Sheriff’s Department detective.

  Liska already had the car started and turned toward the top of the lane. The right-side door hung open. I fell into the passenger seat. The interior was hot as a furnace. The Taurus lurched onto Fleming.

  Liska hit the siren and fumbled under the seat. He pulled out a fist-sized blue light connected to a long cord. “We haven’t got time to stick this fucker on the roof. Hold it in your hand, high.”

  I groped for the shoulder harness, trying to shield my eyes from the blue strobe. We snaked down White Street, using both sides of the road. Twice Liska sideswiped parked cars. Near Olivia he had to slam the brakes for a bicyclist in a bathing suit whose earphones had kept him from hearing our approach. I don’t know how we made it through the red light at Truman without a multiple-car pileup. The light at United was a snap. Liska raced out Washington, blew the stop sign at Tropical. He shut down the siren.

  “This fucking island,” he said. He turned on one of the streets before the dogleg at George, cut across Flagler, turned east on a side street, then pulled over and parked against traffic in front of a plain stucco-walled house. Two, perhaps three bedrooms. Chain-link fencing. Real shutters on hinges. A short driveway led to a single-car garage. “It used to be mine,” he said. “Smelly old carpeting. Worn-out sunporch. Now it’s Avery Hatch’s. The fucker dies, I get the mortgage back. Along with her.”

  Mrs. Hatch—the ex-Mrs. Liska—stood inside the aluminum-screen front door. Face drawn, hair askew, skin pasty, as if her blood had drained out a hole in her foot. Her hands were balled up into little white rocks. Panic sparked her pale blue eyes. “God help us, Fred…”

  I hadn’t heard Liska’s real first name since a municipal court case long ago.

  Liska peered over her shoulder into the house. “He’s still in the garage?”

  “He started the car. It’s still running.”

  He reached inside the door, took his ex-wife by the upper arm, and tugged her outside. “Gayle, it’s gonna be all right. You go by Mrs. Sweeting’s and stay put. Stay inside.”

  Mrs. Hatch ran across the street, crossing her arms to support her ample breasts. Liska beckoned for me to follow him back to the Taurus.

  “The County’s Intervention Team?” I asked.

  Liska flung open the driver’s-side door and shook his head. “It’d destroy his career. He’d lose his job and he’d be just as dead as pulling the trigger.” He reached into the glove box and snatched a remote garage-door opener. “I meant to drop this off someday.” Then he pulled a pair of portable two-way radios out from under the front seat. “These cheap-ass walkie-talkies do the job when you need ’em.” He flipped them on and keyed each, listening for static in the other. “They’re on Channel Eight,” he said. “Press this button to talk. We get interference, switch to Channel Five. But Eight ought to work okay.”

  I clicked the buttons to make sure I knew how to operate it.

  Liska looked at his watch. “Go behind the house to the circuit-breaker box. In a couple minutes I’ll say the word ‘check.’ You hear me, you cut the master switch. I don’t want dueling door controls. I want that damned garage to stay open. Then come around front. Stay away from the door. You hear his shotgun, I’m a dead man. Get your ass out of here and call 911. Other than that, just wait.”

  I stood in direct sunlight next to a shaded Florida room. Dark green lizards ran the screening, looking for lunch. The central air conditioner came on with a loud electrical thud. The place was identical to all the other cement-block homes that were built north of Atlantic and west of Bertha in the late 1960s. Most had carports and basic trimmed shrubs, though a few had become overgrown. The neighborhood was one of the last strongholds for older Conch families. Security fences and “Bad Dog” signs had gone up in the 1980s.

  The radio crackled. Liska’s voice: “Check, check.”

  I snapped the master circuit breaker. The whole world went quiet as the A/C compressor spun down to a stop. I jogged to the garage side of the house, suddenly wondering if Chicken Neck wanted to calm Hatch or wished to rile him further.

  Liska’s voice on the radio: “I could use some help in here.”

  Was he injured? Would showing my face at the open garage door invite a shotgun blast? I could not hear the car running.

  Liska again on the walkie-talkie, calmly: “Rutledge, come here a minute.”

  I wished for the Walther, stooped low, and stuck my head around the corner. They were on the far side of Hatch’s Buick sedan, Liska standing, Hatch in the car. A pump-action shotgun lay on the garage floor behind the rear wheel. An access hole in the ceiling explained Liska’s entry into the garage. He’d crawled into the attic through a trapdoor in another part of the house.

  “Please put that in the backseat of my car.” Liska pointed at the gun. His voice was mellow, his choice of words easygoing. “Then come on back because Avery needs another friend to talk to. And please bring me my telephone.”

  I felt supremely antisocial ambling through a quiet residential area at 10 A.M. on a Tuesday carrying a loaded shotgun. The only neighbor in view was Mrs. Sweeting. Her front door was cracked an inch, her face in the opening. I placed the weapon on the rear floor of the Taurus, took Liska’s keys from the ignition, grabbed the phone, locked the car, and walked back to the garage.

  Something about the Buick tweaked a vague memory. The lavender leisure-suit jacket lay on the car’s roof. A pistol had replaced Liska’s cellular phone in the exposed holster. I hadn’t seen him make the switch.

  Avery Hatch was in dress trousers, an undershirt, and bedroom slippers. His hair was disheveled. A faded anchor tattoo decorated his upper arm. Liska had wound a garden hose around him to keep his fo
rearms down and his legs together. An impromptu straitjacket, but Hatch didn’t mind. His powerful shoulders slumped in defeat. Sweat poured from him, with a foul odor to match. I had seen men like this in the Navy, men who had been running on adrenaline and whose adrenaline had run out. They’d been men who had welcomed their disorientation, their mental escape, however temporary.

  “So where are we on this, Avery?” said Liska. “How do you see it?”

  “Oh, man. I don’t know. I told him about the Stock Island murder.” Hatch’s voice a monotone, depleted of emotion. His eyes darted toward me and away.

  “You told him. Okay. Who is ‘him’?”

  “Ray Kemp. Whatever his name is now. It’s all my goddamned fault.”

  “What do you mean, told him about it?”

  “I described it, the Sally Guthery murder scene, the knots, the rope. He got all entranced by the details. I guess he copied them … But all he wanted with the lawyer lady was sex.”

  Liska patted Hatch on the knee. “You’re getting ahead of me, Avery.”

  “He wanted to pork the girlfriend, the lawyer.”

  Liska looked behind himself, found two folded yard chairs, and handed them to me to open up. “Why did he want to do that, Avery?”

  “Good clean fun. That’s what he told me. Just to get even.”

  “Even for…?” Chicken Neck sat down.

  “For starters, the man stole his woman. Made a fool of him.”

  Liska looked up at me, then back to Hatch. “So his way to get even was to have sex with Miss Minnette?”

  Hatch nodded.

  “And he believed that Rutledge here stole away Julia Balbuena?”

  Hatch looked up at me. He started to nod, but said, “No … No … Rutledge saved Kemp’s life. That dickhead federal prosecutor’s the one. Anselmo. He took up with Julia up in Miami after she split with Kemp. Somehow she got Anselmo to cut Ray a Witness Protection deal for a quarter million cash. A year later Ray got popped on another Fed beef, under his new name, right in Miami where he wasn’t supposed to be anymore. That time Anselmo sent him to the slammer. No way out of that one. They both had to keep quiet about the other fix.”