by Tom Corcoran
Sam took a vintage-looking bastard file to a barely misfitted frame joint. “Bug Thorsby. So much more than just a petty thief. The kind of shit that makes you wish Michelin made condoms instead of tires. One less chubby baby. I assume you didn’t notify the police.”
I nodded. Key West folks knew Jemison Thorsby’s history, his expertise in reweaving the legal net, his proclivity for retaliation. “The weird thing is, they didn’t want to rip me off,” I said. “They wanted to mess me up, give me some street scars. Who am I to draw contempt?”
“What’re you gonna do about it?”
“Invest in hearing-aid companies.”
“An earthquake sound system?”
I nodded.
Sam shook his head. “The punks’ll never live long enough to get bad hearing. Whatever you decide, I’m a qualified coconspirator. But don’t tell Marnie.”
“Jemison still fishing commercial?”
“Ever since he got out of Eglin. The captains took a vote. They wouldn’t let him back in the Charterboat Association.”
“What do you need help with?”
Sam wanted to test-fit his shutters and screens to their tracks. One by one, for almost an hour, we placed the heavy pieces, matched predrilled holes with carriage bolts and wing nuts. Not one section failed to fit in its coded location.
Sam beckoned me to follow him inside. He popped two beers and told me how he’d finish the porch. He’d mentally placed his funky nautical artifacts, stuff he’d found floating or washed onto beaches at Ballast Key, Woman Key, or out in the Snipes. Old wood blocks from shrimp boats, colored Styrofoam floats, antique louvered shutters. Two swings would hang on galvanized chain. He’d collected six mismatched wicker chairs, and four antique-green glass Japanese net floats in macramé slings.
“You don’t know how hard it is to find a ceiling fan that turns slowly,” he said. “The ones they sell these days, on the lowest setting, they’ll blow your Wheaties out of the dish. Set ’em on high, your whole dish scoots off the table.” He paused. “What’s up? You’re staring into a beer bottle.”
“I know you’d rather not talk about him, but how did Butler Dunwoody get so far into that project so quickly?”
Sam finished his beer, took a bowl of fish stew from the fridge. “Butler’s been sneaking around town for a couple years. He would fly in, stay at the Ramada, take cabs, order pizzas into his room or hang out in restaurants by the airport. He never called Marnie. Claims he didn’t want to make waves, or compromise her position with the newspaper.”
“But he’s bypassed a lifetime of red tape.”
“I wondered about that, too. He explained it to me last month, one night before his second drink. About a year ago he hired every lawyer in the phone book, each for a different task. He went to every bank on the island to make deposits and apply for loans and open lines of credit. Made friends with bank board members. One by one, he took four of the five city commissioners fishing. He wanted the city to kiss his ass, and every bank to have a vested interest in his success. He wanted all the attorneys to have conflicts of interest, in case someone tried to sue him. In case someone tried to issue a ‘stop work,’ or mess with his permits. He did a lot of groundwork through the lawyers.”
“Pretty astute for an island newcomer.”
“Over the years he’d heard Marnie talk about the old Conchs and their ways. Come to think of it, she said he’s been subscribing to the Citizen and Solares Hill since the mid-nineties. He’s done okay, acquainting himself with the system.”
“Julie Kaiser told me her old man, Holloway, was on Butler’s side, too.”
Sam shrugged. “Why am I not surprised?”
Not many first-timers had been so foresighted. The Conchs had survived a hundred and seventy years by knowing who’d come ashore, who’d arrived in town with a bankroll or a hustle, a load of coal or ice or illegal slaves, a get-rich-quick scheme or a willingness to be plucked. No one could possibly count the people who’d come to the island with loads of money only to be regulated into submission. Wiped out by the town powers. Locals always had understood blue-chip favors, the subtle graft of job opportunities, the delay factor in disguising paybacks, the virtues of dropped criminal proceedings. The victories all had gone to the inspection and taxing authorities, to foreclosures, red tape, and forgotten promises.
For generations a half dozen surnames had shared power. The nineteenth-century roots, the instincts of seamless manipulation, were pure in survival. Unfortunately, since the 1960s, greed had bloomed as the primary motivator. There’d been Hatfield-McCoy range wars, shifts in the power elite. A few newcomers had been allowed to share the booty. Still, few state officials or federal investigators ever penetrated the shady maze.
I said, “Butler confided his battle plan. He must have trusted you.”
“We were best pals in early December. In spite of his building project, Marnie was excited about having him in town. So I played along. I mean, I didn’t know much about their relationship when they were younger. I was nice to the guy, the first week or so, even when he critiqued my cooking. But I found myself insulting him earlier each evening, so he’d leave sooner.”
“It work?”
“Half the time. When it did, Marnie’d look steamed, but she wouldn’t say anything. Of course, the Citizen got on his case, once he broke ground on Caroline Street. Marnie was embarrassed to go downtown. It got worse the more he drank. I mean, how do you socialize with a guy who calls his woman Baby Girl and Sugarbush in mixed company? One time, in front of his own sister, he called her Heidi Baloney. PC crap aside, it’s still a stupid-ass joke. Plus, Mamie’s trying to beat her problem, trying not to drink anything at all. Finally one night after they left, after they’d refused a cab ride, Marnie got on the Internet She bought us two air tickets south.”
“Marnie do okay?”
“Wallowed in it. Maximum water time, in or on, and minimum sunburn. The whole trip, not a drop of wine, a total of two rum concoctions. I let that part be her decision, all the way through. She handled it.”
“I thought you’d sworn off work on Sunday.”
“That’s fishing. Chores are different. I never liked weekenders, anyway. A man can’t take a day off in the middle of the week, he’s not living right. He probably can’t afford to fish with me, either.”
“That’s your modest estimation?”
“If it’s true it ain’t braggin’. Plus, I’m taking a break on boat maintenance. Captain Turk found us a boy to take care of Flats Broke and Fancy Fool. The kid’s perfect and proper, leaves notes, warns us when corrosion’s taking over. Seventeen years old, saving up to buy his own bonefishing skiff.”
“Like that character Fonda played in 92 in the Shade. The Skelton boy.”
“Tell you what, they filmed that thing a year or two before you arrived. You missed one fandango of a party.”
A remote telephone handset buzzed. Sam extracted it from a maze of tin snips and masking tape. By the tone of his voice I assumed Marnie was on the other end. After thirty seconds, without expression, he hung up.
“She’s a basket case. She’s on her way home. I just hope she doesn’t stop at Fausto’s. She’ll want to restock the Napa-Sonoma sauce.”
“I’m out of here. You fishing tomorrow?”
Sam nodded. “Thanks for your help.”
I rode the island diagonal from Wheeler’s to my house via Windsor Lane, the bottle-mirror wall, and Grinnell. No traffic. The path around the cemetery too confusing for three-day visitors. My route had fine architecture, better foliage than the primary streets.
I turned off Fleming, rolled down Dredgers Lane. I coasted into the backyard. I opened the porch’s rear screen door as a black Ford F-150 pickup jerked to a stop in front of the house. Silver lettering on the driver’s door: TNT SECURITY. The door swung wide. Tommy Tucker, the county’s corrupt former sheriff, climbed out and waved to gain my attention.
My day to have the world’s ass in my face.
I intercepted Tommy Tucker in the yard. I didn’t want him on my porch. He swayed toward me, oddly bowlegged, as if holding an invisible beach ball between his knees. His bulk kept his arms from hanging straight down, but he looked more out of shape than obese. An unlighted cigar was clamped in his fat-lipped mouth. With a final step guaranteed to keep the island at sea level, he stopped and stared. Same old charming guy. He wanted me to say the first words.
I had nothing to say.
“You still in freelance, Bubba?” He held the soggy cigar in his teeth while his lips moved to talk. “I got photo work for you.”
I had learned the hard way. Most people believed that the “free” part of “freelance” ruled negotiations.
“How about ‘Rutledge’ instead of ‘Bubba,’ Mr. Tucker?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, I’m bein’ neighborly . . .” His salt-and-pepper hair, swept back with gel, looked unwashed rather than stylish. His pudgy face barely allowed his squinty eyes to function. A wide leather belt supported baggy, olive-toned chinos, with the larger task of containing his belly. Always the cop, Tucker carried a belt-line equipment array: two pagers, a cell phone, a key case, and a snap case for Mace or pepper spray. I sensed that his black oxfords concealed steel toes. The red TNTS logo above his shirt’s left breast pocket defined his revised authority. The American flag shoulder patch was a fine touch for a man who’d missed being a felon only through the charity of an overworked county prosecutor. The FDLE had yet to charge Tucker with his crimes. Talk in town had the prosecutor falling first, for having let the sheriff slide.
“I wasn’t born on the island, sir. Never claimed to be a Conch.”
“I believe that.”
“So we can stick to real names, and not sound like old friends?”
A placating gesture. “Whatever you say.”
Five months ago Monroe County Sheriff Tommy Tucker had been a shoo-in for reelection. His few opponents—all law enforcement veterans—were untested politicians. His campaign posters, TV and radio spots, and newspaper touts had spewed the pompous attitude of a race already won. Graft distributors anted up brown bags of cash. Suck-ups and toadies contributed buttons and bumper stickers. A Big Pine clothing-store owner had printed TT YES ball caps, effectively securing a steady stream of county purchase orders over the next four years. Tucker’s appointees, sensing job security, ordered new skiffs and pickup trucks. A victory was as certain as sunshine.
One week before election day, the sheriff’s druggie son, “Little Howie” Tucker, known statewide as a burglar and thug, murdered his wife and dumped her body in the city cemetery. He stripped Chloe Tucker’s body of eight rings and three bracelets, fled to Broward County, checked into a ritzy resort, and hocked the jewelry for a two-night supply of discotheque pills. Within a day, three “concerned citizens” had interrupted Little Howie’s one-man party and delivered him to the police. An investigation by the print media—that is, by Marnie Dunwoody—and by the sheriff’s own Internal Affairs team confirmed that, as bad as the kid’s record had tallied, it should have been worse. Sheriff Tucker had been covering his son’s ass for years, hushing up busts, “unfounding” and redirecting investigations, squashing cases, and destroying files.
The post-murder publicity had undermined Tommy Tucker’s reelection chances. Chicken Neck Liska, the Key West police detective who’d been my main link at the city, launched a last-minute, low-budget effort. He clobbered the incumbent, pulled sixty-four percent of the vote. Little Howie’s murder trial had lasted less than two weeks in late November. His sentencing would take place in early February. Consensus held that the punk would ride one more chemical high, courtesy of the governor.
Tommy Tucker had evolved into a rent-a-cop. I tried to picture myself employed by a man who’d disgraced himself.
“I’m kind of booked solid, the next couple months, Mr. Tucker. What type of work you got in mind?”
“Buildings, mostly. Storefronts. Few vacant lots. Arcade interiors, rental properties. Pretty much the whole list of Mercer Holloway holdings.”
“This all from a security viewpoint?”
He shook his head. “Investments.”
“Subcontracted?”
“It sure ain’t.”
“Mr. Holloway hired you to deliver a message?”
He scratched his head again. “I never got a chance to say. I always liked your work. Wish you’d have come full-time with the department.”
Tucker had a nervous tic. He’d just told his second lie. For the second time, he’d scratched the back of his neck with his left hand. Each time I got to view the brown stain in his armpit.
He let his alleged praise settle, finally shut his mouth.
An hour ago I’d sworn off crime-scene work with the city. Not that they’d called much lately. I knew that I needed to replace lost income. “This photo work, Tucker, do I deal with Mr. Holloway directly, or through you?”
“I been asked to invite you by his office, tomorrow at three.” He handed me a business card engraved with Mercer’s elaborate monogram. A single fine-print phone number in the lower right corner.
“Message received. I’ll call Mr. Holloway’s secretary in the morning, if I can make it.”
Tucker thought about it a few seconds. “Suit yourself. You might call in the next ten minutes. Mr. Holloway loves the hell out of quick answers.”
“His secretary works Sunday?”
I had asked, by implication, if ex-Sheriff Tucker ran Mercer Holloway’s errands on Sunday.
He gummed the cigar. “Mr. Holloway pays well.”
“I’m happy to hear that.”
He shifted his weight, hitched his belt He pulled the cigar from his mouth. “Wasn’t too many months ago, I signed checks to you. Allowed my detectives to hire your cameras. Now I’m a lowlife?”
He’d been a lowlife for years. I said, “I don’t recall voicing a judgment”
“What I told everybody is this,” he said. “Wait till your boy goes ass-up bad. Then try to make sensible decisions.”
“I’m sure the confusion can wear you down.”
His brain took it as a compliment He said, “Nice to see you again.”
I waited. The hand moved upward. The armpit. The scratching.
Tucker waddled back to his shiny truck, hauled himself in. He held his door ajar so he could twist around, stick his head out put his weight on the poor armrest watch himself back down the lane to Fleming. I went onto my porch, dropped my cycle helmet on the porcelain-top table, and carried my camera to its hidden cabinet I needed a pee, a beer, and a nap, in that order.
My brass doorbell rang lightly. I closed up the equipment stash.
No vehicle had replaced Tucker’s. It could be only one person. She liked to flick the bell with her fingernail.
“Come in, light of my life.”
She’d already opened the screen door. She strolled into the living room wearing what she called her “Sunday sweatpants.” Her T-shirt proclaimed, LIFE IS A CABERNET. “My mama’s scanner said there was a body on Caroline Street Did you have to . . .”
She read my eyes.
Carmen Sosa and I have been friends for almost nine years. It has been an evolving relationship; tennis fans know the meaning of “deuce.” Carmen’s parents, Cecilia and Hector Ayusa, have lived on Dredgers Lane for almost forty years. Carmen grew up in Key West—true Conch, bilingual, bicultural—and twice has been married. Her life’s focus is her young daughter, Maria Rolley. Six years ago, not long after Carmen had bought her own place two doors down the lane, she and I had attempted romance. We’d learned that other aspects of friendship outweighed our sexual attraction. We look to each other for common sense and sympathy, mischief and rejuvenation. We swap the personal harassment only close friends enjoy.
She found a glass in the kitchen, opened the fridge to pour water from the filtered pitcher. “You want to talk about something else?” She waggled a beer at me.
I took the bottle, twisted the cap, spun it into the trash. “I worry about what’s happening to you, woman. You lose any more weight, Just My Size’ll go out of business.”
She couldn’t hide her pleasure in my having noticed. “I’ve been walking after work every day. Maria comes to my mama’s after school. This other girl from the post office, she and I drive out to Smathers and walk from the parasailing to houseboat row and back. First half against the wind, second half with the wind at our backs.”
“This shaping-up have anything to do with lunchtime traffic in the lane?”
“Traffic?”
“I sense denial in your response.” I went into the bathroom, half-closed the door. “You’ve been seen midday lately, with a male friend.”
“You’re accusing me of nooners?”
“And he looks about twenty-five. Muscular arms, the all-weather look. You’re too young for a midlife crisis, my sweetness. You making up for all those times you turned me down?”
“I’m a good girl. I saved it for my first husband. He called me the Extra Virgin. I know, I’ve told you that before.”
I took my beer back to the living room.
Carmen fiddled with the leaves of a fat peace lily. “You’d be proud of me. I met this tourist from central Florida. The guy couldn’t have been nicer. He made two mistakes, or I’d have dated him more than once. After our first date he kissed me and said, ‘It’s been a ton of fun,’ which is the wrong thing to say to a weight-sensitive woman. When he walked away I looked at his ass. I noticed the circular-shaped lump in his back pocket”
“Condoms are the sign of a considerate man. Maybe a bit presumptuous, but you should’ve been relieved.”
“It was a Skoal can. End of story.”
“So who is this alleged nooner?”
“His name’s Nick. He used to work at the post office. Now he works construction. And don’t ask. He showers before we—”
“Where does he work?”
“For Mamie’s brother. At that atrocious mini-mall he’s building. I keep telling him he’s contributing to the downfall—”
