Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Luckily, when Vivian got to the hospital that night there was a young plastic surgeon on duty who took over her care. Her face was all busted up on one side, and she had some other broken bones. He did a good job on her at the county’s expense.

  “No one ever figured out who the john was, but with Vivian’s testimony Joe was convicted of felony murder because he was involved in the felony of drug sale that resulted in a murder. Vivian pled guilty to prostitution and drug sale and got an eight year sentence reduced to four years incarceration and four of probation.”

  “So,” I said, “You think Joe may have killed Vivian for revenge.”

  “I really don’t know. But, he got out of prison shortly before you say Vivian was murdered. I guess he wasn’t real happy about her testimony at the trial.”

  “Do you know where Joe is now?” I asked.

  “No. I wasn’t his probation officer, but I heard through the grapevine that he never showed up for his first probation conference. I don’t think anybody knows where he is, but I heard he’s back in the drug trade.”

  “Do you know where Vivian was originally from? Did she have any family left?”

  “Let me get her file. I keep the skips right here.”

  He crossed to room to an old brown metal filing cabinet setting in the corner. He pulled out the bottom draw and retrieved a file. Sitting back at the desk, he opened the file and started pawing through all the loose pages. He pulled a piece of note paper from his middle drawer and wrote on it. He stopped and pulled one page from the file, leaned back in his chair and read the paper.

  “This is interesting,” he said. “I had forgotten about this. My notes say that the last time she came in she was concerned that somebody was following her. She had seen the same car parked in front of her apartment house two days in a row, and the morning she came in she saw the same car parked in front of her office. She could never get a good look at the driver, but she could tell he was a white man. That’s all the note says, and that’s the last time I saw her.”

  “How long ago was that?” I asked.

  “A little over four years ago.”

  Interesting. She had first shown up on Longboat during the Spring months four years before, shortly after the tourist season had ended. “What about her family?” I asked.

  He pushed the paper he had written on across the desk. “As far as we know, she only had a father left. Here’s his address.”

  I thanked the man, shook his hand, and left the office, finding my own way out. As I passed the front counter I smiled at the clerk and said, “Hope to see you again soon, Carol.” What the hell, let her have something to worry about for pissing off a senator.

  Chapter 12

  Pahokee, Florida sits on the southeastern shore of Lake Okeechobee, and if I had not known better, I would have thought I was in a third world village. Highway 441, coming up from LaBelle, is a narrow two lane road of crumbling macadam bordered on each side by deep ditches that keep the flow of water from the Everglades from submerging the road. The town perches hard by the levee protecting it from the lake that sits like a large hole in the south central peninsula of Florida. It is a hardscrabble town, peopled by migrant farm workers from Mexico and the Carribean and a few Americans, black and white. The store fronts were unpainted, and many were boarded up. A crowd of sullen young men had gathered in front of the only thriving business, a liquor store. A high hard sun beat down on them as they stood around in the still air. The humidity was already high at mid morning, and the smell of body odor permeated the air. It was the kind of town that you drive through fast, with your windows up and your doors locked. I had come to visit Howard Pickens.

  The address written on the piece of paper handed me by Vivian’s probation officer listed an address in Pahokee. I had flown out of Chicago’s O’Hare Airport shortly after leaving Ledbetter’s office, and I landed at Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport reasonably on time. I found the Hertz counter and rented another Chevrolet. I never have to worry with the baggage area, for the simple reason that I never trust my bags to the airlines. If I can’t carry it on the plane with me I leave it at home. When I get where I’m going, I need clean underwear and my shaving kit. If I were to check it through, chances are that I would never see it again. I had recently read that the flight attendants were lobbying the Federal Aviation Administration to require that most bags be checked. I thought they should have been lobbying their baggage handlers to take better care of people’s luggage. If you could trust the airlines to deliver your checked bags to the proper place at the proper time, there wouldn’t be any need to carry all that stuff on the plane.

  The heat hangs heavy in South Florida in late May. It is filled with moisture, the humidity high. It permeates every cranny; even the shade is hot. Except on the water, there is no breeze to stir the heavy air. People begin to sweat moments after stepping from their air conditioned sanctuaries. The natives have always known this, and remembered the time before air conditioning came to Florida, followed soon after by hordes of Northerners seeking the sun. The natives will tell you that air conditioning ruined the state.

  I boarded the bus that would take me to the rental car company’s off airport lot to pick up my Chevrolet. It was half filled with men in suits, wilting in the afternoon heat. As we left the terminal the sky darkened, and within seconds, we were driving through a hard rain punctuated by lightning flashes and thunder. The regularly scheduled afternoon thunderstorm had arrived. It would only last a few minutes, and it would cool the air for a little while. Before dark came, though, the sun would again heat up the peninsula.

  The jets sat on the runway, hunkered down against the storm, too cautious to take off into the windshears and lightning of the tropical storm. Their engines idled, the turbines turning slowly to keep the air conditioning churning through the cabin to cool the passengers, while the attendants served little bottles of booze to the businessmen headed out to their next meeting somewhere in the country. The young people hustling cars on the rental lot had donned yellow rain slickers, and they ran crab like, dodging puddles and oncoming cars.

  The bus driver dropped me off right behind the car assigned me by the computer and told me to have a good day. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and steam was beginning to rise from the asphalt that surrounded us for miles. The jets began to roar their take-off ditty as they lumbered down the runway, reaching for their natural element, the sky.

  I threw my overnight bag into the trunk and drove out the exit, stopping briefly to show the guard that my rental papers were in order. I eased out of the airport property onto US highway 1, known in Broward County as Dixie Highway. I found and old mom and pop style motel nearby, ate something unremarkable at the Denny’s next door, and went to bed.

  I awoke early, checked out of the motel, ordered a cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin at the McDonald’s down the street, and ate breakfast as I drove out toward the turnpike. I drove west on I 575, and then north on highway 441, up through the Everglades and into Pahokee.

  The lushness of the landscape of the interior southern part of Florida never fails to move me. At first glance the River of Grass seems to be endless and barren, but it is teeming with birds and reptiles, mammals and fish. As I moved north I came into the rich bottom land that is so conducive to growing cane for the sugar industry. On the horizon I could see the smoke flowing upward from a sugar cane processing plant. The fields were full of cane, six or seven feet high, with white flowers topping each bunch. The road was built up, so that I could see over the cane, which gave the impression of a sea of white plumes, undulating quietly in the little breeze that blew across the landscape. The road was filled with large trucks going toward the plant full of cane, or returning empty to the fields.

  The address I had been given for Howard Pickens was four or five years old, and I didn’t know if he still lived there, or was even alive. I tried to call him, but there was no listing in the phone directory. I decided to come anyway, on the
chance of finding him.

  I stopped at a convenience store and asked the clerk for directions. She told me that the address was in a worker’s camp out in the cane fields. I drove about five miles north of town on 441, and found the dirt road shooting off to the east through the cane fields, straight as a ruler, all the way to the horizon. After about three miles on the hard dirt road I came to a cluster of houses built into a clearing on the side of the road. There were about twenty houses sitting in a semi-circle, old and tired looking, squatting on their concrete block pilings. The paint was fading and a few had plywood nailed over windows. There was no grass, and about a dozen black and Hispanic children were playing in the dirt in front of the houses. I stopped and asked a girl of about ten if she knew Mr. Howard Pickens. She didn’t answer, but pointed to a house about mid-way in the semi-circle. I parked my car in front of the house and walked up the wooden steps to the little porch. A screen door separated me from the inside, but there did not seem to be a wooden door at all. A sour smell emanated from the house, and I could hear a radio in the background tuned to a talk show. I knocked on the door and waited. In a moment, a white man appeared in the front room. He was wearing a pair of tattered shorts and a tee shirt that didn’t quite cover his large protruding belly. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and the gray hair surrounding his bald cranium hadn’t been combed in a year. He had a can of Budweiser in his hand. As he got closer to the door, I realized where the sour smell came from. He hadn’t been near a shower in a week.

  “Yeah?” he snarled.

  “Mr. Pickens?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Who’re you?”

  “My name is Royal. I’m a friend of Vivian’s.”

  “Big fuckin’ deal,” he said. “Whadda you want?”

  “Can I come in? I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

  “What the hell. Come on in.”

  The house was small. I was in a living room, and a hall ran back toward what appeared to be the kitchen. There was a door on either side of the hall, and I guessed one went to the bedroom and the other to the bathroom. The living room furniture consisted of an old recliner chair and a brown sofa with the cotton stuffing coming out at odd places. On one wall was a table with old magazines stacked on it. There were no pictures or any other evidence of life in the room. “Sit down,” he said, motioning to the sofa. He took the recliner.

  “What kinda trouble is the girl in now?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. Pickens, but Vivian is dead.”

  A look of momentary pain crossed his face, but was gone so quickly I couldn’t be sure if what I said had registered with him. “Shit! I mighta knowed,” he said. “When the money stopped coming I figured she either died or got arrested again. What happened to her?”

  “She was murdered,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Who killed her?”

  “We don’t know. I’m trying to find out. A friend of mine has been charged with her murder, but I don’t think he did it. We don’t have much to go on. You said she was sending you money?”

  “Yeah, she sent me a money order every other week. Wasn’t much, but it helped me pay the rent and buy a little beer and food.”

  “Did you ever see her or talk to her?” I asked.

  “Nah. She came around here about four years ago and said she was moving back to Florida and had a good job. I had just been shown the door by the sugar company. They said I was too old. I’d been cooking for these migrant workers for thirty years, but suddenly I’m too old. The pension they give me wasn’t enough to live on, and I wasn’t old enough for Social Security yet. They let me live in this house though, even if I do have to pay rent.”

  “You haven’t seen her in four years?” I asked.

  “No, but a few weeks after she left she started sending me the money orders.”

  “Did you ever talk to her after she left?”

  “Nah. She sent me the name of some woman in Sarasota with an address and told me if I really needed her to get in touch that way.”

  “Who was the woman in Sarasota?”

  “Hold on a minute,” he said, and lumbered up from the chair. He went down the hall and through the door on the left. He came back a moment later with a typed letter, dated in the spring, four years before. The letter read,

  “Dad,

  I’m enclosing a money order for $50. I will send you one every two weeks. If you need anything else you can contact me through Ms. Connie Sanborne, P. O. Box 2871, Sarasota, Florida.

  Vivian”

  “Did you ever try to contact her?” I asked.

  “Nah. We weren’t ever close. After her ma took off she pretty much lived with a colored family in town. I didn’t see much of her. Then I heard she went to Chicago and got sent to prison. When she showed up here fours year ago, she was just passing through. She didn’t stay more’n an hour. Other than that letter, and the money orders, I never heard from her again.”

  “Didn’t you want to know why the money orders stopped coming?”

  “No. I figured if she wanted to stop sending them that was her business. I kinda thought she was in trouble again, on account of the time the police came by asking about her.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “When did the money orders stop coming?”

  “I guess I got the last one back in April or so.”

  “When did the police come by asking about her?”

  “That would have been in early March. I remember because it was the same week of my birthday. I turned 62, and could start getting my social security. Since I had that, I didn’t really miss the money orders much.”

  “Were these local police?” I asked.

  “Nope. They was some kinda feds. There was two of them. Came in a big black car, a new one.”

  “What federal agency were they with?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that they said. Just said they was federal agents. I asked what it was about, but they wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Did you tell them where to find Vivian?” I asked.

  “Sure, they was federal agents. I did send Vivian a letter telling her that they was looking for her. I figured she’d know what was going on and could do what she liked about it. I wonder if they ever found her?”

  I thought they probably had, and I didn’t think they were federal agents.

  Chapter 13

  I left that disreputable old man more puzzled than when I had arrived. I couldn’t figure any reason why someone would want to hurt Connie/Vivian. I knew I would have to get used to thinking of her as Vivian. Truth to tell, I was a little hurt by the subterfuge she had pulled on me and all the other island people. It was hard to think of this bumptious redhead as a crack driven prostitute and ex-convict. Do they call them ex-cons now? Perhaps ex-inmate would be more politically correct.

  I drove north along the eastern rim of the lake and then turned west across its northern shore until I reached U. S. Highway 27. Heading north on 27, one slowly moves away from Lake Okeechobee, through cattle country, where the legendary cattle catchers of Florida history once roamed, and into the southern end of the citrus belt. It is a pretty drive, but like all of Florida, it is becoming overcrowded. I read that Florida has a net gain of a thousand people a day. When you think about all the old folks who die on a given day and the numbers of Floridians retiring and moving to North Carolina, the number of new residents each day must reach toward fifteen hundred. It is a staggering amount of people, and it is taking its toll on the Florida I knew and loved. Still, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

  When I got to Wauchula I turned west onto highway 64, and chased the setting sun home to Longboat Key. I always get a lift when I cross the Manatee Avenue bridge to Anna Maria Island. Tampa Bay spreads out majestically to the north, crowned by the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, its golden towers marking the shipping channel. A phosphate carrier was steaming slowly under the bridge, putting out to sea from the Port of Tampa. A tendril of smoke curled lazily upward from
the funnel just aft of ship’s bridge structure. I wondered briefly what exotic port it might be steaming toward, and decided it was probably headed for Baltimore. Anna Maria Sound and Sarasota Bay lie to the South. You can see the Sarasota skyline from the old drawbridge, and I always know I’m home. I drove south on Anna Maria island, crossed the Longboat Pass Bridge and a couple of miles further turned left into my condo complex and pulled into a guest parking spot. I would get someone to follow me down to the Colony Beach Resort the next day and turn in my rental car.

  I stood under the shower, thinking about what I had learned over the past few days. I was at a loss as to what to do about Logan and Vivian. Things were becoming a little clearer, but I could not put the pieces of the puzzle together. Too many pieces were missing, and the picture was still fuzzy.

  The facts of a case come to you just as they are. They don’t always fit your theories, and so you have to alter your strategy to fit those immutable facts. Sometimes the facts are unpleasant, and they begin to change your perceptions. You find that truths you never questioned are not truths at all. Connie was the perfect example. She was not who I thought she was. Yet, she was. She wasn’t the Northwestern graduate with an abusive husband, but she was the perky, sincere person we islanders had come to love. From a personal standpoint Connie’s background was not important, and there would be no reason for me to blow her carefully constructed cover. On the other hand, I was sure I would have to use Connie’s truths in some manner to defend Logan. Both truths.

  I got dressed and headed for O’Sullivan’s for dinner.

  The place was almost empty. It always is at the end of May. The winter crowd is gone and the summer people are waiting for their children to get out of school to come down. The girls were in Ireland visiting family. My old friend Dallas Mahoney was sitting at his usual place at the end of the bar. He was in his mid-seventies, and had owned a successful business before selling out and moving permanently to his vacation condo on the Key. His wife was in a nursing home on the mainland, where a creeping Alzheimer’s disease had finally robbed her of any semblance of sentience. She did not know him any more, and that hurt his heart. But it was a huge heart, and he maintained a quiet good humor. His three grown sons were spread about the country, all successful, and all doted on their dad, visiting him regularly. I admired and respected Dallas, and liked him more than almost anyone I’d ever met. Logan Hamilton was his best friend.