Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Will you represent me?”

  “Man, I told you. I’m not a lawyer anymore. Get yourself a real lawyer. Hell, I’m probably an alcoholic anyway, and if you know anything about the breed, you know we can’t be trusted to stay sober long enough to find the courthouse, let alone take on major litigation.”

  “I checked with the Florida Bar. You are only a year behind on your dues. Two hundred fifty dollars will reinstate you, and you’ll be in good standing. I talked to Vanessa Brice, and she’ll quit her job and go back to work for you with two weeks notice.

  “I don’t know whether you’re an alcoholic or not. I know that I am. My sickness came from the bottle. I got drunk and caused the wreck that killed my wife. Jeff Simmons was my doctor, and after he patched me up physically from the accident, he and Laura pulled me together emotionally. Laura said that you are an idealist who got caught up in the legal business as opposed to the learned profession that you thought you were dedicating your life to. She said that you always wanted to mount your charger and tilt at windmills, but were so caught up in being somebody, the ageless hero perhaps, that you forgot why you had gone into the law. I know a lot about Matt Royal, and I’m betting that he can win this case and feel a lot better about himself in the process.”

  “It’s intriguing, Doctor, but given my present circumstances, not very practical.”

  “I’ll pay all your office expenses plus four thousand dollars per month to you for as long as it takes to finish the case. If you win, I’ll pay you one-third of the gross recovery, less expenses advanced. If you lose, I’ll eat the expenses and you won’t owe me anything. All I ask is that you give me your very best effort.”

  “I need to think it over.”

  “No. I want an irrevocable decision from you now. If you don’t think you can handle it, we’re wasting each other’s time. I think you can do it.”

  I bought the deal.

  I went back to Orlando, rented a two room office and some furniture, and got to work. Vanessa, who had been my secretary the whole time I had been with the firm, came back to work, and we dug into the case. I got off the booze and didn’t even miss it. I started working out at a health club and got the old body back in shape, and worked harder than I ever had in my life. Jason Clarke stopped by from time to time, and became a good friend. He really meant what he had said. He wanted to win because he had been wronged. We worked on that crazy case for over a year, and last summer the defendant company settled with us for twelve million dollars. The surgeon was indicted for fraud, and the state revoked his license to practice medicine. Jason paid me three million dollars, less the money he had advanced, and used the rest of the money to endow an alcoholic treatment center outside Atlanta. I paid Uncle Sam his share of my earnings, gave Vanessa a bonus large enough to ensure that she would not have to work again if she didn’t want to, bought the condo, and invested the rest of the money in stocks that gave me a small but safe return. I would be able to live comfortably for the rest of my life.

  Chapter 8

  My cell phone rang at eight o’clock the next morning. It was Logan. “Did you get the pizza?��� He asked. He sounded weak.

  “Yes. Are you okay? You don’t sound so good.”

  “Just tired, Counselor. I’m fine.”

  “Where are you?’

  “Can’t tell you yet, Matt. You might have to tell the cops at some point.”

  There was a small chance he was right. “Okay, for now, Logan. I met with the prosecutor yesterday. She wants you to give yourself up.”

  “No way. I’ll rot in jail waiting for the trial. The only way I’m going to get out of this is to find out who killed Connie.”

  “I also met with the medical examiner. It may not be as bad as it looks.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He can’t conclusively say Connie was raped, but he can conclusively say the semen was yours.”

  “I told you we had sex that night. When I left you at Moore’s I took my boat back to Bradenton Beach Marina, and Connie was waiting. As soon as I tied up, she jumped in the boat. The place was deserted, and Connie started grabbing at me, telling me she wanted me bad. She didn’t have anything on under her skirt, and she lay back over the engine cover and told me to get on. I tell you Matt, it was erotic. Here this woman is with her skirt up at her waste, no panties, her legs spread, and ordering me to perform. I about lost it right there in my pants. She kept screaming at me to do it.”

  “Logan, Doc Hawkins says there was a lot of bruising around her vagina. How could that happen?”

  “Matt, she was crazy that night. Every time I got near her she would push her body at mine. I know this sounds terrible, but she liked to have broke my dick a couple of times. It hurt like hell. I would get close, and she would lunge. Finally, it went in, and I came immediately. She did too.”

  “Was this unusual behavior, or did you two go at it like this regularly?”

  “It was unusual, Matt. Sometimes she liked it rough, but that never turned me on. She wanted me to slap her once, and I refused. Another time she asked me to squeeze her nipple hard enough to hurt. I did and it seemed to turn her on. I think there was something dark down in her mind; something left over from the husband. But she had never been like this before.”

  “What time did this happen?”

  “As soon as I got to the marina. I left Moore’s about 9:30, and its only a ten minute run up to Bradenton Beach.”

  “Did you stay there long?”

  “No. It was really weird. The whole sex thing didn’t take more than ten minutes, and she left. She was strange that night. I asked her if she wanted to come to my place, and she just laughed. She didn’t say anything else; just left.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I went to Dewey’s.” Dewey’s was a bar on Bridge Street on Anna Maria Island.

  “How long were you there?”

  “About time for one beer. I ran into my Army buddy, and we left and walked down to Frisco’s where it was quieter and we could talk.”

  “The buddy with no name. Why didn’t you tell the cops you had been with Connie that night?”

  “Gotta go, Matt. Call you later.”

  The phone went dead. I sat at my desk, thinking again about trial strategy. If the state couldn’t prove rape, and I didn’t see how they could after what Bert Hawkins had said, all they had was that Logan had hd sex with Connie on the night of her death and that she was found in his condo. That wasn’t much to hang a murder case on, and I figured Elizabeth Ferguson knew that as well as I did. She must have something that I didn’t know about.

  Elizabeth probably didn’t know about the alibi and the nameless army buddy. Given the time of death, I was pretty sure that Logan’s army friend could clear him. If Logan’s times were correct, he would have gotten to the marina about 9:40, had sex and left by 10:00. Dewey’s was only about two blocks from the marina, so he would have been there a few minutes after 10:00. That also fit with Pearl’s memory that Connie showed up at her piano bar a few minutes after 10:00. It would be about a ten minute drive from the marina to Pearl’s bar.

  The ME said that Connie was killed between 11:00 and 1:00 with maybe an hour’s grace on either side. Pearl would testify that Connie could not have been killed before 11:00, because she was sitting at the piano bar. If Logan had been with his friend from shortly after 10:00 until 2:00, he was in the bar when Connie was killed.

  Logan’s alibi would probably take him out of the picture. He said that he’d been with his army buddy for several hours. If we could place him in the bar drinking from about 10:30 until closing at 2:00 a.m., it would have been impossible for Logan to have killed Connie.

  If I could establish the alibi, Logan would be home free. While Elizabeth would have the statement that Pearl gave to Banion, she would not have any way to know about the alibi witness. Elizabeth would know that Connie was alive at 11:00 and dead no later than 2:00. Those were the three critical hours. What did Eliza
beth know that I didn’t? She had to have had more evidence than what I had seen in order to even think about charging Logan with first degree murder. She was too good a lawyer to hang herself out on such a thin reed.

  The other question that kept nagging at me was that if Logan didn’t kill Connie, who did. I would need to work on that theory a little. One of the oldest defense lawyer tricks in the book is to try somebody else for the crime your client is accused of. I thought the alibi would handle things, but a good lawyer always has plan B. I would have to try to develop another murder suspect.

  I knew I wouldn’t know anymore until Logan called again. It was frustrating, and I couldn’t figure out what kind of games Logan was playing. Why not just tell me everything? What was he trying to do by giving me small pieces of the puzzle with each phone call? It didn’t make sense, and I figured it was about time to tell him to defecate or decommode, as they used to say in the Army.

  Since I knew I wasn’t going to solve the problem that day, I called my old friend Denny, known for some long forgotten reason as K-Dawg, and we went fishing. Didn’t catch a thing.

  Chapter 9

  “How’s it going, buddy?” It was eight o’clock and Logan was on the other end of the phone line.

  “Tell me about this army buddy, Logan,” I said.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Look,” I said, getting angry, “I didn’t want this case in the first place, and I promise you I will drop it today if you don’t start leveling with me.”

  “Sorry, Matt. I don’t know what to tell you. I walked into Dewey’s, and this guy sitting in the corner called me by name. I didn’t recognize him, but he told me we were in flight training at Rucker together. He introduced himself to me as Bill Smith. I didn’t remember him, but he knew a bunch of the guys I knew and the places we used to hang out in around Ozark. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him I didn’t remember him, and besides it was fun talking about the old guys. A lot of them didn’t make it back from Nam.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know his name?”

  “After Connie’s death,” Logan said, “I went looking for him. He told me he was staying at the Tiki Beach Resort up on Anna Maria, but they never heard of a Bill Smith there. I called a couple of my old flight school buddies, and neither of them remembered him either. There wasn’t a Bill Smith in school with us that anybody can remember.”

  “Didn’t you find that strange?” I asked.

  “Of course I found it strange. But what could I do?”

  “You could have mentioned it to me.” I said.

  “It didn’t seem important until I was charged with the murder.”

  “You know, Logan,” I said, “This complicates things a lot. The alibi I was counting on to get you out of this mess just disappeared.”

  “I know”, he said. “I’ll get back to you.” He hung up.

  I rooted around in the box into which I throw my occasional snapshot and found one of Logan and K-Dawg standing on the back of my boat during a fishing trip the past summer. I also found one of Connie and three other locals that I had taken by the pool of my condo complex on the July 4th weekend the year before. Connie was smiling. A lump jumped into my throat and left as quickly. I felt a tiny pressure around my eyes, the beginning of wetness. I was surprised at my reaction. I thought I had grieved all I was going to for Connie. Perhaps we never really get over the death of someone we care about. I had never lost anyone close other than friends who died in Viet Nam, but somehow that was expected. My parents were both dead, but they had died in their time. Connie went way too early and without warning, and I guessed that was the reason for my reaction.

  I took the pictures down to Eckerd’s on the Avenue of Flowers, where they have one of those computer developers. You can put your photo in, use the monitor to crop it, and then print as many as you want for about a buck a piece. I made ten of Connie smiling and ten of Logan, cropping out K-Dawg and the others.

  I headed for Dewey’s at 4:00 that afternoon. Summer had settled on the islands, and the heat shimmered on the asphalt of Gulf of Mexico Drive as I headed toward the Longboat Pass Bridge. The span was rising as I approached, and the barricade was down. I came to a stop, the air conditioning compressor in the Explorer going full blast. The water in the pass was green and cool looking, lapping on the pure white sand of Beer Can Island just west of the bridge. A small boat with an outboard was beached there, and a couple and two small children were playing in the water. A large party fishing boat from Cortez was heading in from the Gulf, full of tourists who were coming back after a couple of hours fishing, with a lot of fish and very red skin. Dark clouds were moving in from the mainland, the scouts of the daily thunder storm that was fast approaching. The tourists would probably get wet. Pavarotti was singing “Nessum Dora” on the tape deck, and I was singing along. My Italian left as much to be desired as my voice, but then nobody was listening.

  The boat cleared the bridge, full of laughing people waving at the poor sods in the cars. I drove onto Anna Maria Island, watching the speed limit. It drops as you come onto Anna Maria, and the Bradenton Beach cops made a large part of the city’s revenue each year hanging out behind the shrubs lining the entrance to the parking lot at Coquina Beach. I navigated the traffic circle at Bridge street a quarter turn and headed two blocks east to Dewey’s Five Points Bar.

  The building squated in the sun, hunkered down on a slab of terrazzo, sheltering its customers from the Florida heat. A five pointed star, swathed in neon, hung over the door. No one knew what it meant or why it was there. The bar had changed little in the sixty years that it had stood on the street that once was the approach to the bridge to the mainland. It drew from the working people who could still afford to live on Anna Maria and from the nearby trailer parks housing the poorer retirees. Occasionally, just for kicks, some of the gilded residents of the south end of Longboat would stop by to observe the natives. I often had a beer there with the owner, an ancient lady who had been running the place since it opened.

  Inside it was cool in the air conditioning provided by the ancient Carrier standing in the corner. The customers were mostly men and women who worked hard for their livings and enjoyed their off-hours with a few beers and a little conversation with their friends. A battered pool table covered in chalk stained green felt graced the center of the small room that was the lounge. Along the wall opposite the bar sat a scarred shuffleboard table, awaiting the next game. It wouldn’t be long in coming. A game seemed to be constantly in progress. There was a juke box with mostly country music, or what passes for country these days, a cigarette machine, and a large inflated green frog hanging from the rafters over the pool table. Next to the cash register at the end of the bar hung a large picture frame with a melange of snapshots of various customers having fun in Dewey’s. On the wall behind the bar hung an old cardboard plaque announcing that the four most important things a woman does is look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog. The women at Dewey’s understood that kind of aphorism.

  Dewey was one of those women. In 1930, Dewey Clanton had left the hill country of South Carolina and landed on this island. She had paid $1500 for the property near the bridge and built herself a bar. She had been there ever since, serving up beer and pretzels, pickled pig feet and slim jims. She had never told anyone how she came into the $1500, a large sum in those days. She was eighty-five now, and a little stooped with age. There was nothing stooped about her mind though, and her spirit was as full and winsome as it must have been when she had started behind the bar on that first day so many years ago. She was thin, and her hair was a soft red. Her face was wrinkled, the result, no doubt, of so much laughing. She was a happy lady, quick with a joke and a chuckle.

  If you asked, Miss Dewey, as she was known to her customers, would tell you about the old days, when the road in front of her place was a one lane approach to the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland. She remembered
the problems she had encountered when the county or state or somebody had widened it to two lanes. It was not until the 1950’s that the bridge was torn down, after the new Cortez Bridge had been completed and the approach from Cortez Road was in place.

  I had gotten to know Dewey when I first started coming to the islands some years before. I would sit and drink beer and talk to her through the long summer afternoons, listening to her stories about the old days, when few people lived on these islands. I had brought my friends from Longboat here occasionally, and some, like Logan, had made it a regular stop.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” said Dewey, as I walked into the bar. “Where you been hidin’, boy?”

  “I’ve missed you, Dewey,” I said.

  “Likely story, boy. I bet you been chasing around after them younger women and ain’t even thought about me.” She gave a large whoop of laughter and leaned over the bar to kiss me on the cheek.

  She put a Miller Lite on the bar with a cold glass. I poured it, held it up and said in my best Bogart, “Here’s looking at you, Kid.”

  “You need to work on that some.”

  “I guess you heard about Logan,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t believe it. I used to see him and Connie in here together some. Logan ain’t the type to be killin’ nobody.”

  “That’s what I think. Look, Logan tells me that he was in here the night of the murder. Do you remember seeing him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Dewey said. “And the reason I remember is that I heard the next day about Connie, and I thought then that Logan was in here the night before, his usual self you know, and now he would have to grieve over Connie. I thought maybe that would be his last happy night.”