Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  The phone rang. I raised one finger, told Carmen to hold that thought, and picked it up. “Grand Central Station.”

  “Liska here. Your cameras nearby?” I could tell he was using a county-issue cell phone.

  “Just so happens—”

  “Car’ll pick you up in . . . seven minutes. Gotta go.”

  He went I didn’t even hear a click. So much for the nap.

  I’d wanted to ask specifics. I comforted myself with the odds against two murders in one day. Not that it hadn’t happened before. Monroe County had seen more than its share in recent years.

  Seven minutes was like two minutes. Barely time to pull my camera back out of its compartment. Carmen had wandered outside. She called from the yard, “There’s a deputy on Fleming. Probably trying to find Dredgers Lane.”

  I jumped from the porch, then realized I’d forgotten to check with the emergency room. The county green-and-white made a production of backing down the lane. Positioning is everything. A minute squandered to effect a dramatic getaway. I took ten seconds to tell Carmen about my altercation with the boys on Caroline. I asked her to use my phone, to search for a thug with fewer teeth than toes, and to leave me a note. She promised to lock the place when she left.

  The deputy swung a land-yacht left onto Fleming, scared the Coronas out of two moped touristas. He ran the blind corner at White. Probably thought his blue and red strobes would shield us from being T-boned. I scrunched low in my seat, snugged the belt another half inch. The climate control was cranked down to wind-chill level, the fan set high. Deputy Fennerty’s cloying cologne recirculated at maximum velocity.

  Fennerty looked like his own idea of Hollywood’s idea of a cop. He lifted his Ray-Bans to check his computer. I glanced again. A precision hair-by-hair crew cut. His face said handsome, the eyes said dullard. He wasn’t going to be chatty.

  “How far up the Keys?’ I said.

  He pointed at the windshield. “Stock Island.”

  “Oceanside Marina?”

  “Squid Row.”

  Right there on the windshield.

  We hustled out North Roosevelt. The flashing roof bar scared dozens of speeders. The deputy favored the fast lane, managed to clip most of the lane-dividing road turtles with his left tires. Staccato bips, each adding another degree of migraine to the pain bubble growing at the back of my neck.

  A call came over the police band. The deputy understood the gargling. He keyed his mike. “Passing . . . Morrison’s GM dealership. Just passed it”

  The voice, clearer now: “Animal Control’s almost outa here. Light a fire.”

  Fennerty mashed the gas. Just as quickly he hit his brakes. Traffic at the Cow Key Channel Bridge was backed up in both turn lanes. Whooping his siren, the deputy swung to the far-right lane, forced his way back left into the line of vehicles going up U.S. 1. He stuffed it over the bridge, bullied his way through the College Road light He did it again at the next signal, almost swerved into the Chevron Quick Lube, veered onto McDonald, braked, hung a right on Fifth Street, and floored it. Like two-thirds of America’s recently licensed drivers, Deputy Fennerty had learned by watching Sunday NASCAR races. Play it fast and tight walk away from high-speed crashes. If I had eaten a larger lunch, it’d be decorating the dashboard. Liska had better hope the weekly papers didn’t investigate his upkeep budget.

  Fifth Street was a maze of potholes, ruts, dips, solid litter, and slipshod asphalt patches. Concrete-block sheds bore peeling paint and burglar bars. Mobile homes with mildewed, off-kilter doors and windows squatted behind weed-blown Cyclone fences. Gray laundry hung from drooping cords. The deputy manhandled the shift lever, squealed two more cabin-cruiser turns. He finally found Bernstein Park, the million-dollar sports facility that no one used. He goosed the pedal again, missed his turn-off. He spun a one-eighty in the Rusty Anchor parking lot threw gravel on four men lurking around a pole-mounted pay phone. He whipped south toward a long line of bulldozed twenty-foot mounds of rubble. After all these years in Key West my first visit to Shrimp Road.

  We skidded, halted in gravel. A crescent of idling vehicles bore audience to a particular pile of trash. Sheriff Liska’s civilian car, his maroon Lexus sedan, was parked to one side. I swung the cruiser’s door and bolted. I felt like a sailor back on the wharf after a long, brutal storm, thankful for solid land. The breeze tossed the mangrove branches west of the road. Stifling air reigned low. It would help me defrost.

  Liska walked toward me. He twirled keys on his index finger. No cigarette in his hand. His annual New Year’s resolution to cut back gradually usually held until mid-February. He wore blue jeans with white sneakers and a white belt His white satin shirt looked like a piece Elvis might have thrown from the stage late in his career. Through the years I’d known him, Chicken Neck had affected an extensive seventies wardrobe. He’d toned it down since being elected sheriff, had gravitated to a Northern Exposure look. The Lower Keys hosted many eccentricities. Goofy attire was a minor aberration.

  I gave him a “what’s-up” look.

  “Some shrimper lost his head—”

  “Sounds right” I said.

  “Not as funny as it sounds. That roscoe over there, the arm bandages? Says his legal name is Nameless Aimless. He’s our poster boy for twenty-first-century rickets. Aimless found himself sleeping next to a body without a head when he woke up an hour ago. A wild dog woke him, chewing on his wrist Three dogs, total. They’d worked on the corpse, too. I guess the one dog thought Nameless was tastier, rum-flavored and all. We had to call SPCA to remove the animals.”

  A lovely Sunday had become a twofer. “Nameless a suspect?”

  “Claims the last thing he recalls, he took drunk at sunrise on the fantail of Midnight Creeper, a steel-hulled trawler out of Beaufort South Carolina. Captain Smith Jones, or else Jones Smith—we can’t understand his Geechee accent—verified the drunkenness. The captain figured Aimless’d hurt himself and sue the boat owner. He kicked him off around ten A.M. But even piss-drunk shrimpers don’t intentionally bunk down with headless dead men.”

  “So a murderer dropped a body next to a passed-out drunk?”

  “Probably. Not much blood on the sofa, no weapon to be found, no head. Even broad daylight, around here, no risk of witnesses. Our victim was stabbed—or speared, the standard deal around the fleet. My guess, he died before decapitation.” Liska waved at the huge mounds of trash. “The head could be anywhere in a hundred-yard radius; it’d take us a week to find it. It could be in Miami. It could be in the ocean.”

  I wanted Liska to keep jabbering, to postpone my photo gig. As he spoke I gazed at a mound that paralleled the pavement a quarter mile to the south. Someone had built a rubbish barrier to block access to the docks. Beneath tall clusters of yellow chalice-vine flowers lay rotted pallets and cable reels, flattened outboard motors, twisted Dumpsters. I saw two collapsed school buses, an upside-down tractor trailer. A rusted Toyota tailgate with TO and TA painted out, YO outlined by chipped reflector tape. Fuchsia bougainvillea grew from the shell of a Winnebago. Evidence of misery and poverty, of quick departures by workboat or sudden arrest Evidence, too, of vicious storms that had struck the Keys in the late nineties. Mud, marl, tangled fishnets. Lengths of yellow rope dangled from crumbled Styrofoam floats.

  A weird, dull silence hung between the mangroves and the mounds. Only rustling shrub tops and the distant rumble of engines at the shrimp docks. The pervasive odors of dog shit, brine, and diesel intruded. In the middle of it all, the rotten velour sofa. On die sofa, the body of a naked, headless man.

  “Somebody with a twisted mind,” I said.

  “The sick shits beheaded the poor fuck. You expect decency after that?”

  About the best anyone could expect, judging by die surroundings, was not to be hit by a sniper’s rifle, or attacked by more wild dogs.

  “Go over there and work fast.” Liska motioned to the sofa. “This spooky-ass place, I feel like I’m walking on unmarked graves. Shrimp Road’s
the only place in the Keys where I get creeps standing in open sunlight, seventy-five degrees, a Sunday afternoon in January.”

  I walked toward the sofa. A half dozen deputies and investigators stood by, including Sheriff’s Detective Bobbi Lewis. Their expressions, their subdued talk warned me that I faced a gruesome task.

  Afternoon light was fading. Mangrove shadows grew long. I paid close attention to my gear. I rigged for fill-flash on manual setting, synched to use ambient light, but less flash on close-up shots. How unlike a dead person, I thought at the time. More object than human, the body with no face excused speculation on the victim’s personality, or life. Or postponed speculation. Later I would blame that concept on my shock at viewing such a grotesque spectacle. The mental defense mechanism allowed me to remove myself from the ugliness, the horror, the dogs.

  After a roll of “establishing” shots, panoramic, perspective angles to the east, south, west, and north, I loaded another thirty-six exposures and looked around. Beyond the imposing trash barrier, another world, the white superstructures, masts, cranes, the green nets of shrimp boats. Behind me, silent law officers and onlookers who’d strolled over from the shrimp docks, or from the beer bars up the street. Beyond them, thirty feet into a dense hammock, an ocean refugee, a “knight of the road,” in a bough-enshrouded single-man tramp camp. A thatch-roofed lean-to, with a rusty bike and a tiny chest of drawers, salvage from the mounds. The sun-browned, dirt-blacked man must exist on charity, on handouts from former trawler-fleet brethren. A sense of foreboding penetrated to my bones. The opposite of trouble looking for a place to happen, this strip of blacktop and mangroves felt primed for intrigue, tuned to violence. I wondered if some spirit had long ago cursed the peninsula, so the land wished now to avenge itself by hosting evil in any form.

  I moved to work a few close-ups. The victim’s malnourished torso was not tanned except for the arms. Thighs and calves too thin ever to have exercised. A purple, oval-shaped birthmark, or half-birthmark, ran from the top of his right shoulder to the shredded neck skin now curled by drying blood and canine saliva. I went tight to document the half-inch opening in his chest. I shot the stab wound, its proximity to the heart. I got the abdominal scar that told of surgical inexpertise, the jagged lightning tattoo on the inside of his left arm, the odd, deflated scrotum—a testicle removed, perhaps at birth.

  All details of a man who’d been alive yesterday.

  Finally I finished. Four rolls, thirty-six each, the final roll redundant. I packed my camera bag, looked a final time at those waiting to do their own awful tasks. The sheriff had vanished while I worked. He wasn’t the only one spooked by Shrimp Road.

  Fennerty motioned me back to his green-and-white.

  We drove north, slower than before. A funky station wagon turned into the marina. Four open windows, four shrimpers’ arms hung out. The road had been empty. It now looked like downtown. Drunks staggered along the shoulders in white work boots. A new-looking Taurus approached, greaseball at the wheel. I turned to watch it pass and continue south. Two gaunt dudes coasted by on two-wheelers, high handlebars, matching black watch caps. One Fu Manchu, one goatee. We left behind a sea-level landfill, junked cars, cast-off property, debris destroyed by storms, consigned to the hot sun and corrosive sea air, bulldozed aside to let nature do its work.

  Nature would be wise to give up on the place. Civilization had done so.

  I said, “Plenty of bicycle riders out here.”

  Fennerty finally made sense: “Not a valid driver’s license in the fleet.” He pondered the rearview, then added, “Parts of Stock Island, all by themselves, they’re enough to make good officers not want to be cops.” He lowered his voice, inhaled for self-important emphasis. “Present company included.”

  A large, industrial forklift rolled by, its empty forks two feet off the pavement. Its driver a fisherman or marina employee with a work shirt the color of sour-green mud. A white oval above the right pocket, a name embroidered on it. The man waved. For an instant he looked familiar, but his waving hand blocked my clear view of his face. He’d been the first person on Stock Island to show friendliness.

  I thought again about the Taurus that had passed. I knew better than to trust my memory or concentration at that point in the day. But I could’ve sworn there was no license tag on the sedan.

  5

  The house smelled like Antonia’s and La Trattoria combined.

  My tired eyes registered a refreshing, knee-length, pale-peach sundress, white sneakers, and a backward Air Mango ball cap. For two dozen weeks I’d been in a trance. She could light my fire just brushing her teeth.

  Teresa had condiments and bowls and dishes on every flat surface in my kitchen. She stopped her constant motion and looked straight at me. “I don’t know why that detective acted so cuckoo. He was in his own world all afternoon. I didn’t get free for another hour and a half. I would’ve cooked at the condo, but you’ve got these spices . . .”

  She was rambling. I said, “I just had to . . .”

  She put down the spatula. Caught her breath. “I know. Carmen told me Liska called. I talked to the county switchboard . . .”

  “Ugly. Like Stephen King is scripting my life.” “They’re all ugly,” she said. “But two in one day?” “Yep. How long has Dexter Hayes worked for the city? I haven’t seen him in fifteen years.”

  She went back to the stove. “He started the week before Liska went to the county.”

  I inspected more closely. Italian sausage in a skillet, a pot of ratatouille, boiling water, ready for fettuccine. On the counter, olive oil in a tin, a three-foot Cuban bread loaf, a saucer of crumbled goat cheese. Sauvignon Blanc in a pitcher of ice water.

  “I thought I told you about this a couple months ago,” she said. “He was an undercover lieutenant up in Broward or Palm Beach County. He moved back down here. He and his wife bought a place in New Town. He’s got two kids at the Montessori school. His wife, Natalie, stays home. That’s about all I know. He gets along okay at the city. He sure was an asshole today.” She paused again, then said, “I wish we’d gone kayaking.”

  Wiped out as I was, I still had the sense not to respond. I put my camera satchel on a chair, picked it up again, put it on the floor, then sat in the chair. ‘Tell me about Hayes.”

  She put on her business face—facts only, no emotions—while she tended to her cooking project. “My view, he was right about a few things and wrong about others. He said the body had been dressed elsewhere, then placed at Butler’s construction site. He said there were clues to be found, but someone careful enough to outfit the victim like that wouldn’t be leaving fingerprints. He said photographs wouldn’t help much. He said old-fashioned detective work, like Sherlock Holmes, would break this case.”

  “What was he wrong about?”

  “His attitude.”

  “Maybe it’s a nervous thing. Maybe he laughs when he’s frustrated.”

  “We were leaving, on the Caroline sidewalk, a young girl, all hysterical, claimed to be the dead man’s fiancée. Barely college age, probably less. Very Goth. What is it now, retro punk? She looked dead as the man on the floor.”

  “How did Hayes take that?”

  “It got better. She recognized Hayes, asked if he hadn’t been at her house two days ago, questioning Engram, the victim. Something about ripping off a Whitehead Street crack dealer.”

  “Hayes acknowledge?”

  “She said, ‘You told Richie, if I balled you, you’d forget about shit bein’ stolen.’ So Hayes said, ‘For whose benefit is that, ma’am? The people standing here know I don’t work that way.’ He blew off the accusation.”

  “Did he ask her how she knew the victim’s name?”

  Teresa stopped what she was doing, stared at the wall, then shook her head. “No. And one other thing. Someone back inside, one of the coroner’s people, mentioned this murder was a lot like that one a couple of years ago, over on William or Elizabeth. A guy tied up, a dildo on the carpet. Hayes
acted funny after the guy said it.”

  “That one ever get solved?”

  She shook her head. “Drove Liska nuts before he handed down his files.”

  “Anyone from the Citizen show up, to cover for Marnie?”

  “That twerp that looks like Jimmy Olsen with a ring in his eyebrow. He had a pocket digital camera. He actually tried to photograph the body. Hayes almost slapped his head off.”

  “They teach those newshounds to be aggressive.” I took a beer from the refrigerator, then said, “Marnie knew the victim on Caroline. She said she’d dated him a few years ago. I got the impression he’d worked with her brother for quite a while.”

  “She and Sam, what, less than a year?”

  “Almost exactly a year.”

  “It’s rough to lose friends,” said Teresa. She gave my arm a squeeze, just as Marnie had done when she’d said she’d known Engram “real well.”

  A vehicle rolled slowly into the lane. After twenty years I knew my night sounds. This was small, a four-cylinder engine. It stopped not far away, but not precisely in front of my cottage. I leaned back in my chair, caught an angle through the porch screen. Single headlights, close together. I mentally pictured the black cockroach, Bug Thorsby’s low-slung pickup. It had been a Chevy S-10, powered by, as far as I knew, a four-cylinder engine. I’d been targeted, for no known reason. I still could be a target If so, Bug had switched off his reverberating stereo.

  I whispered, “Teresa.”

  She turned her head to face me.

  “Switch off the stove. Take your purse to the bedroom. You hear any shit, call nine-one-one. Say ‘Home invasion. Help me,’ and hang up. Then call Carmen, ‘Memory number two.’ You got your pistol?”

  Teresa moved quickly. She paused at the bedroom door, then nodded.

  “To defend yourself, only. Got it?”

  She stared. No answer. She closed the bedroom door.

  I went to the screen door. No headlights. No sounds. Nothing in the lane. No noise from Fleming Street Not even the rhythmic tick of a cooling engine. I stepped back when I heard soft crunches approach. The closest thing I could use as a weapon was a four-foot length of driftwood. Probably split if I swung it too hard. I could hear my damned heart. I could feel the pulse in my forehead. I looked down. When had I untied my sneaker laces? So battle-ready. How many pairs of footsteps?