Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery

by Michael Haskins

  Gérard asked.

  “On a good day, like the ones we’ve been having, he could cross in an open twenty-footer,” I said.

  Gérard spoke in French, not caring that Norm understood. The others responded and I knew they were leaving when Frenchy used his paper napkin to wipe away the catsup and mustard on his chin and took a long swallow of his Budweiser.

  “We do not necessarily believe you,” Gérard said, his broken nose moving with his lips. “However, he trusts you,” he pointed toward Norm, “and over the years he has not lied to us. We will check Cuba, but be aware that we have others here that will stay in the shadows and watch you.”

  Norm smiled and nodded.

  “If it appears as if you are looking for the diamonds…” Gérard was cut off by Norm.

  “Damn it, Gérard,” Norm said through clenched teeth, “don’t threaten us. You know better. Murphy doesn’t fight any cleaner than you do and neither do I.”

  “Au Revoir, Norm,” he said with a smirk. “Tu peux dire adieu à mon cul!

  Chapter 46

  The commotion in the bar became more noticeable as the retired French spies left—back in the day, they had worked for the DRM, Direction du Renseignement Militaire. Maybe, as Chris Stone had said, there were no ex-agents, just agents waiting for a new assignment.

  Michael McCloud played on stage, singing and verbally jousting with the tourists, telling them his tall tales, while people sitting around us talked loudly, sang with McCloud or shouted a song requests at him. I had blocked out the distractions during our brief luncheon and wondered if the French had also.

  “That went better than with the CIA,” I said and took the last bite of my fish taco.

  “You stuck to the game plan,” Norm said. “They don’t believe you, but they can’t afford not to follow up.”

  “What did Jean-Pierre say before they left?”

  “That you might be telling them the truth about Walsh, but he doesn’t believe we’re not interested in the diamonds,” Norm said with a smile. “Frogs, what are you gonna do? Anyway, they’re checking out Cuba, but, like they said, others are here to keep an eye on you.”

  “Explain to me why no one wants to believe me.” I took the last of the beer and waved to Gretchen, ordering two more, hoping an extra afternoon beer would help me keep from thinking about Tita.

  “There’s twenty-to-forty million dollars in diamonds at stake,” he said, accepting a new beer. “No one believes we’re not interested, so they assume we’re trying to mislead them. That’s the way they’d play it.”

  “Okay, I understand that, but it’s foolish. Think about it, how many people in the French team? Three we know of, maybe another three for twenty-four-seven surveillance,” I said.

  “It’s a lot of money.” Norm smirked and his eyes widened. “Also, some honor is involved. It happened on their watch. They’ve gone from an exciting life to retirement, so maybe they’re bored and looking to recapture the bad old days. The diamonds would make them rich or,” he paused and shook his head, “they bring the diamonds back and they’re heroes. The French love their heroes.”

  It was almost credible, the way Norm explained it, but I still thought it was ridiculous that experienced intelligence agents were misled by something that took a stretch of the imagination to believe in the first place. Greed had to be playing a major role in the decision. There was a lot of evidence that proved Walsh was Walsh, or Doyle Mulligan, and not the Cold War spy that cheated them, but no one seemed to care. They could explain the evidence away, even though the explanations weren’t sound. Or maybe it was greed mixed with boredom, as Norm said. A wild goose chase at least put them back in the game. Was that it?

  The marshals sticking around, now that was a whole other scenario.

  “What about the marshals? They’re not after diamonds.”

  “Assuming they’re honest, they want Walsh or Mulligan, whatever, and you’re the last person to talk to him,” Norm said and pushed his empty plate to the center of the table. “Everything has a beginning and for what they want it begins you.”

  “What if they’re crooked?”

  “Not sure,” he said. “They could want Bulger’s money and Walsh knows where it is. If so, you’re still the first person to question. Like Padre Thomas would say, ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first,’ or some such rubbish.

  “The Brits are on for tonight,” Norm said, moving the topic ahead. “You want to make the reservations?”

  “Can’t tonight, make it a lunch for tomorrow.”

  “La Trat’s open for lunch?”

  “No, I wanna spend the evenings with Tita,” I said. “Her days are for business, but her nights are mine.”

  “You need to get this over with, Mick.” Norm wanted to stick to our game plan.

  “There’s no way, Norm,” I said. “Lunch or they can take a flying fuck. All of them.”

  “Okay,” he said raising his hands in surrender. “But my point is, the longer this takes to settle, the more dangerous it becomes. The Russians aren’t waiting and I don’t know how long I can hold off the Mossad, Germans or Brits. And Langley says the South Africans are on the way.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope, NIS agents,” he said, meaning the National Intelligence Service. “South Africa and diamonds go together like chicken fried steak and grits.”

  “You know how important the next two weeks are to me,” I said. “I need time with Tita and she doesn’t know about any of this.”

  Norm laughed. “She doesn’t know I’m here, does she?”

  “Didn’t come up.”

  “You’d better think hard on this one, Mick,” he said. “This time you’d be better off telling her the truth. If things get complicated…”

  “You’re supposed to see they don’t.”

  “They were complicated before I got here. And I can’t make promises about these other misfits,” he said. “You’d better have something planned to tell her and I’d be real concerned about the Russians, they’re not known for their forgiving ways. And who the hell kidnapped you? Think about it, they’re an entity we know nothing about.”

  I toyed with my beer bottle. “I still think it was the marshals.”

  “I don’t. There’s someone else who wants a piece of Bulger’s pie and that concerns me and should concern you too.”

  It looked like I was on the losing end of a messy rugby game. Tita was going to Boston, I had to deal with that, but if she found out about the shit-pot of trouble I was in—again—it would give support to her belief that I was responsible for the conflicts that found me here in paradise. This time, a killer from Boston sought me out and it had nothing to do with my past. I was gone from Boston before Whitey Bulger was the crime boss and I knew nothing about the Cold War spy. It had all found me because of some damn newspaper story. She wouldn’t believe it. Hell, I had a hard time believing it.

  “Lunch tomorrow with the Brits, Germans or the Mossad, I don’t care,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “The Brits we’ll meet at Smokin’ Tuna,” I said. “If it’s the Israelis, we go to Harpoon Harry’s, as planned and the Germans we’ll go to the Hog Fish on Stock Island. Make ‘em feel at home.”

  “There’s a method to your madness, right?”

  “Ain’t there always?”

  Chapter 47

  Norm went his own way again without asking me along. He’d never been this obvious about keeping me at a distance.

  I left the bar and walked to Tita’s house, checking behind me a few times to see if Pauly’s crew or maybe the French or Russians were following. When I crossed Caroline Street, I walked toward the cemetery alone.

  Midafternoon and Tita wasn’t home. She and Nathan must have been still discussing the clients she wanted him to take on. Or, maybe she talked with other attorneys, like her friend Bob Tischenkel, and needed to meet with them to discuss the cases that Nathan couldn’t take. Then we had a whole week
together. It didn’t seem like a lot of time. Sometimes an hour can drag on forever and other times a week passes quicker than a clock’s second hand.

  No one who knows me would call me a romantic, but once inside the house, I became morose as the rooms and the furnishing reminded me of times with Tita. I took a beer from the fridge and looked at the kitchen table and thought of all the meals we’d shared. I could almost smell arroz con pollo simmering.

  In the living room, I remembered the time the Colombians doused it with gasoline and had it set to ignite when the front door opened—we came in the back. It took a week to clean up and longer for the smell to be gone. It was a week we spent dockside on the Fenian Bastard, loving each other and rocking to sleep nightly by passing boats and changing tides. Time moved much too fast.

  I laughed at myself because of the silliness, mixed with anxiety. I took my beer to the backyard, and lit a cigar while I sat at the picnic table, shaded by a gumbo-limbo tree. The often-used barbecue rested by the porch stairs, under covers, to protect it from the elements. The damn thing cost three-hundred dollars and for that price should’ve cooked the food on its own.

  To change my state of mind, I tried to focus on the marshals and wondered why they were still here. Was Norm right and was it someone else we didn’t know about who grabbed me? It was something I found hard to swallow. The whole kidnapping stunk. Hoods and masks, Tasers and questions about someone I hardly knew. The only thing that made sense to me was that Marshal Dudley Crabtree and his deputies grabbed me to verify what I’d told them at the police station. It was illegal if they were caught, but effective in a time crunch. Norm thought it was someone new in the mix of crazies. Did he know something I didn’t?

  I left the cigar and beer on the table, laid back on the bench and tried to concentrate on my problems.

  Tita startled me as she shook my shoulder and called my name. I had fallen asleep.

  “Okay,” I said and almost falling off the narrow bench as I tried to push her hand away. I sat up. “Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

  She looked worried. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I fell asleep.”

  “You were talking in your sleep again,” she said, worry etched on her face. “Another nightmare?”

  Whenever we spent the night together, she often woke me from my disturbing dream of the car bomb going off in Tijuana, killing Mel and the drug lord. I never explained the cause of my restlessness, just smiled and thanked her.

  “I don’t remember,” I said and it was the truth. “What did I say?” I reached for my beer, but it was warm so I left it there.

  “Something about you’d get them,” she said. “Get who?”

  I stood and stretched. “Leprechauns, probably.” I tried to joke my way out of it.

  “You, of all people, don’t yell at leprechauns.” She turned away and walked into the house.

  I followed her and wasn’t sure what was happening.

  She was making herself a rum and Coke. “You want to talk about it?” She cut a key lime in half and squeezed it into the glass. I said nothing. “Mick, I am living with enough Puerto Rican guilt to fill a convent, please don’t add to it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The one thing you can’t do is lie to me. You seem to be able to say what you want to everyone else and they believe you, but, Mick, I’ve known you too long, I can read you like a phone bill, it’s written out in your voice, your eyes, it’s all there.” She took a long swallow of her drink.

  “Where’s this coming from, Tita?” I said. She had me at a disadvantage. “What’s this guilt? What do you feel guilty about?”

  “You know damn right well what I feel guilty about.”

  I’d never seen her finish a drink so fast.

  “Maybe I’m still sleepy,” I said.

  “Damn it, I have feelings for you and leaving here for Boston is filling me with guilt because I know it hurts you and I don’t want that. All I’ve ever wanted was for us to be together and now…” She didn’t finish but gave me a weak smile.

  I walked closer to her. I wanted to hold her, but had the feeling she’d pull away, so I spoke softly, hoping it reassured her. “You’re chasing your dream. You went to law school so you could help people, because it was what you wanted. Your dream came knocking and you answered?”

  She made herself another drink, gave me a beer but didn’t speak.

  “You think if a magazine called and asked me to sail the Caribbean for a year, visit the islands and write about it for each month’s issue, I wouldn’t be gone faster than the first beer of the day. Damn right I would. I’d grab my chance, I’d open that door if someone was knocking on it.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then you don’t know me like you think you do.” I said. “I’d ask you to come along. I’ve done so in the past, but your practice wouldn’t let you.”

  “And you didn’t go.”

  “No one was willing to pay me.” I smiled. “Look, there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Go to Boston, open the legal clinics and we’ll see what’s what when I come in December. Okay?”

  She leaned against the kitchen table and stared at me. She didn’t believe me, but she wanted to.

  “If you gave this up because of me, stayed here and we went on as we’ve been doing, I’d be the one that was living with guilt. I don’t want to be the reason you don’t follow your dream. Go. I’ll be okay, a little lonely, but maybe that’s a good thing.”

  “You’ll come to Boston for the holidays?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Maybe even early December.”

  “Honest?” A thin smiled brightened her face.

  “Honest Injun.” I raised my hand, palm facing out and tried to smile.

  “I didn’t know the word honesty was in your vocabulary and Injun is probably considered politically incorrect these days.” She hugged me. “Where should we go for dinner?” After planting a kiss on my cheek, she pulled back.

  “Anywhere you like.” I said. “And when have you ever known me to be politically correct?”

  “True but if you are really coming to Boston, you should try practicing political correctness. How about the Half Shell, I won’t taste conch chowder for a while.”

  “See, there are things we agree on,” I said. “I need to change.”

  “Be back by six-thirty,” she said. “I want to clean up too.”

  We hugged and kissed. I went to the boat to get my gun.

  Chapter 48

  Tita and I had a bowl of conch chowder at the Half Shell Raw Bar, but she didn’t want to share my order of steamed clams.

  “I’ve been eating Ipswich clams.” She knew I missed the tasty, fat-bellied morsels. “Steamed, fried, on the half-shell, chowder…”

  “Okay, but don’t eat ‘em all, I’ll want some in December.”

  She laughed and it made me feel good until I realized how I’d miss that laugh in a few days. I tried hard to keep smiling.

  “I’ll save you some.”

  I picked at her mahi dinner, after I’d finished my clams, and when we left, we were full and happy. We held hands like teenagers and walked slowly toward the music at Schooner Wharf.

  A piece of the moon shined above and stars circled it like a heavenly tiara. The black sky was cloudless, full of flickering specks of light, and a mild breeze greeted us with the sharp scent of saltwater and seaweed as it gently slapped small waves against boat hulls. Couples walking idly along, staring at the moon or each other crowded the boardwalk.

  “Do you know who’s playing?” Tita asked as we approached the Schooner Western Union, slipped behind the bar at William Street.

  “It sounds like Howard Livingston and his band.”

  “I’m going to miss so much about Key West,” she said and playfully bumped thighs. “You and Howard Livingston.” She squeezed my hand. “Him for the music.”

  “And me?”

  “For everything else.” She lau
ghed, pulled away and rushed ahead so she entered the bar’s upstairs poolroom before me.

  Padre Thomas stood by one of the French doors, smoking, and talking with Tita, as I entered. It only took seconds for her smiling, cheerful face to turn into a squint-eyed scowl. What could he have said to her in such a short time? She smiled as I approached, but her eyes did anything but sparkle.

  “I told Tita how you’d just missed Norm and his lady friend.” He crushed the cigarette stub in an ashtray. “Who is she?”

  “Yes, who is she?”

  The woman didn’t interest Tita, Norm being here did.

  “And how long have she and Norm been in town?” Her tone could’ve brought snow to the tropics.

  Even Padre Thomas caught the coldness. He looked at me with a lost expression.

  “It’s okay, padre,” I said. “Tita didn’t know Norm was here, we wanted to surprise her, but I guess he got tired of waiting.”

  “I’m surprised,” she said. “Any more surprises lined up?”

  “Did they say where they were going?” I ignored the question.

  “I think to the Smokin’ Tuna.” He lit another cigarette. “He said they’re staying at the Ocean Key, so it’s on their way.”

  “How long ago did they leave?” I moved closer to Tita.

  “Ten minutes, at the most,” he said between long drags on the cigarette. “I’m going to get another beer. What would you like?” He crushed the cigarette out.

  “Nothing,” Tita said and looked at me. “We have to catch up to Norm.”

  Padre Thomas shuffled away and turned once before walking down the steps toward the crowded bar. Tita looked at me with angry eyes and didn’t say a word.

  “I wanted to surprise you.” It sounded phony as I said it. “Norm’s here with a woman friend,” I lied and wondered if it was a relationship breaker.

  “I’m sure.” She leaned against the open French door’s frame. “What’s he here for? He hates the tropics so this wouldn’t be a vacation. Woman friend or not, he would only be here because of you.”