Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  “The bank give a reason?”

  “She thinks I can’t do it without Mercer Holloway’s blessing, or without Donovan Cosgrove running interference with the locals. She thinks I’m useless without somebody else’s horsepower.”

  I knew who he meant, but didn’t want to let on. “She . . . ?”

  “Tits on Sticks, the eighth wonder of her own little world.”

  Butler had failed the sensitivity-training course.

  “Reason?” I said.

  Another hit of the sauce. “She said I was ordering her up like a Happy Meal. She wants to cut her losses.”

  “With you or the project?”

  “She begged me to write her into this thing. I could’ve done it without her. Halfway into final structuring, I said no to two banks in Jacksonville. They got offended. They won’t come back on. I let my dick sign a contract. Now it’s about to get chopped off.”

  “Why’s it so easy for her to pull out? Doesn’t she lose big?”

  “She writes a check every week. She stops writing checks and somehow the job gets completed, she gets everything back, a pro-rated chunk of future profits.”

  “Pro-rated on her contribution until she quits writing checks?”

  “Right,” said Butler. “Smart deal, eh?”

  “If it folds up, everything stops forever, what happens?”

  “She loses everything.”

  “So she’s banking on the idea that you’ll bring in another investor?”

  “Like I said, cutting her losses. Who can blame her?” Butler slugged one more mouthful of malt liquor. “She’s playing it safe.”

  “I heard in a movie one time, ‘Playing it safe’s the most dangerous thing a girl can do.’ Something’s screwy.”

  “Righto,” said Dunwoody. “My brain when I agreed to the crap.”

  “When she came over here that day—if you’ll allow me to bring up the subject . . .”

  “No problem. I have fond memories of the event . . .”

  “. . . I got the impression she’d go to the edge for you. She loved you, the money be damned.”

  “She worships money,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. I think she just wants to kick you in the ass.”

  “At this stage I’m supposed to find another investor?”

  “Do the damned thing,” I said. “The way it’s set up now, it might be an unenforceable contract. If you brought in another investor, Heidi could recoup. But you could stipulate that she be shut out of future profits.”

  “Not bad for starters. Now all we need is a deep pocket.”

  “Mercer’s daughter.”

  “My boy Donovan’s in a serious tight. She’ll be spending all her money on lawyers.”

  “The other one,” I said.

  “Married to dipshit? No, thanks.”

  “A lot of investors are married to unpleasant people. Why should it make a difference?”

  “It just does. That fucker gives me the willies.”

  On one hand, with Mercer’s horsepower gone, Heidi’s departure from the deal made sense. On the other hand it was weird timing, taking into account the fact that Donovan drove down Caroline Street last Sunday, past Heidi on her Rollerblades, and me about to be jumped by thugs.

  Had I just implicated Heidi in a convoluted plot?

  The phone rang. I left Dunwoody to his last six ounces of malt liquor. It was Teresa: “Can you meet me at Blue Heaven? I found a guy from Boynton Beach you might want to talk to.”

  The cop, Dexter Hayes’s ex-partner. The owner of the hot Maxima, Bug Thorsby’s last ride.

  “I want to talk,” I said. “But I don’t want to go to Heaven for a few days.”

  She covered the phone mouthpiece. A silent moment.

  She came back on. “How about P.T.’s?”

  I said: “Five minutes.”

  I returned to the porch. Butler Dunwoody had left his empty bottle and a half-inch roach. A few years back I would’ve recycled both objects. I cleaned up, checked my two messages. Tommy Tucker said he’d call back. Sam said: “Pick you up at nine-thirty. Pack a bag. Wear darks. If you want the skeeters to leave you alone, don’t take a shower today or yesterday or the day before. If you want the bad guys to leave you alone, bring your knife collection.”

  28

  Dexter Hayes’s ex-partner owned the stolen Maxima.

  Hayes, with his shifting moods, had told me to take a hike, to quit playing cop. Then his ex-partner, the car owner, had agreed to sit with me, to answer questions. Why the mixed messages?

  One other thing. The Maxima had chased us with a body in its trunk. Then it showed up on a hot sheet. How many vehicles are reported stolen after their use in a crime gone sour? For every time I’d heard the story, the police had heard it a hundred more. The ex-partner knew that. He either thought we were rubes, or he was playing it straight. No middle ground.

  I wasn’t ready to buy his tale, but I wanted to hear the man talk.

  I locked the house, unlocked the bike, rode against traffic to Grinnell and turned north. A light breeze, heavy traffic—tourists en route drive-through culture—and heavy dust. How many times will they dig up the east end of Eaton? Some genius, decades ago, plait-braided the water and sewer systems and laid their rust-prone pipes into salt-permeated coral rock. Job security for future backhoe drivers. Key West is like every other city in the nation in only one way. More supervisors than laborers.

  P.T.’s is near the old shrimp docks, the 600 block of Caroline. It occupies the building where, for years, the Big Fleet saloon had hosted Navy chiefs in working khakis, straight from the Naval Air Station or the submarine tender, petty officers in dark denim trousers and light denim shirts, Caroline Street sweethearts and deployment widows. The place would be packed from nine A.M. until closing time. There was a long-standing truce between the aviation and seagoing ratings. Strangers in civvies might enter but would sense the chill, leave before finishing the first draft beer. Today’s bar was more welcoming. The last time I’d been in P.T.’s was for emergency food after a long night of carousing with a writer friend and a New York book publisher. The publisher had looked too screwed up to win at the pool table. He’d played perfectly until daybreak. He’d enjoyed his food and drink at my expense.

  I chained the Cannondale to a news-vending box. I checked the chalkboard in P.T.’s walkway. Black bean soup, barbecued chicken breasts or pork chops with rice and veggies, ribs and black beans, blackened grouper with pineapple salsa. Blue-plate specials from lunch hour straight through to five or six A.M., depending on customer attitudes. Home for people who’d rather be in a bar than at home. The Thursday Special was roast turkey. If we had time for food, I was good for the grouper.

  Leaving brightness, entering the cavern, all I could make out was the huge aquarium—three noise-resistant butterfly fish—and four TV screens. Baseball on one, hockey replays on the others. “Hearts and Bones” by Paul Simon on the sound system—at a level that allowed conversation without vocal strain. Near the door a dozen old photographs of neighboring streets. Shots from forty and fifty years ago. Most noticeable were vacant lots, true relics of days past. Two basketball jerseys had been framed and mounted on the pine-paneled west wall—Celtics 33, Bulls 23—along with a medium-sized sailfish and a huge bull dolphin.

  I arrived first. I bought a bottle of beer.

  The bartender, a stocky woman in her mid-thirties with a twinkle in her eye, whipped a chrome bottle opener from her rear pocket, popped my beer. She put my change on the bar, then went back to checking ashtrays, facing-out bottle labels, restocking glassware. “You want a show?” She pointed at a television.

  “You pick,” I said.

  She pointed at the clock. “Usually, somebody walks in, three minutes to the hour, it’s for a certain game. Anything you don’t want to watch?”

  “Best of the Great Racing Accidents.”

  “I’m with you there.”

  I claimed the northwest corner table. The bo
oth floor elevated, foot-tall mirrors at shoulder level. A middle-aged couple leaned on the pool table in the adjoining room, mashed faces like teenyboppers to “Slip Slidin’ Away.” I shifted to the opposite bench, faced the kitchen. It worked out fine. Teresa arrived ten minutes later and introduced Jim Farmer. Jim wanted to face the wall. It took me a moment to figure out why. The mirrors offered a surround-view of one room, and he could face the other room. Security for the career law officer.

  Farmer had developed style to counter the rural suggestion of his name. He was about five-ten, solid, with perfect posture. His T-shirt read FINS TO THE LEFT, FINS TO THE RIGHT—Key West had put Farmer in a relaxed mode—but his military bearing declared his belief in the daily workout, the weekly haircut. Some cops are like men I knew in the Navy, so caught up in spiffy uniforms, they lose all taste in street duds. It’s hard for jocks or military trainees in great physical shape to look laid-back. Farmer’s face was blotched from too much first-day sun.

  He said, “Who’s gonna win?”

  I didn’t get it. He pointed at the tube. A Super Bowl Preview Show.

  “I forget who’s going to play.”

  “Been that bad a week, eh?”

  I nodded.

  “Ms. Barga, here, tells me we’re all car-theft victims, except for your near-miss. You almost lost your car to the bums that got mine.”

  “They were more than car thieves. And I got a flaming motorcycle.”

  “I got the whole rundown.”

  “Where’d they take your Maxima?” I said.

  “Shopping center on Congress Avenue in Boynton. Broad daylight. Right under the nose of a security weasel. The idiots wear American flags on their shoulders, patrol in little pickups with wimpy-ass roof lights. They couldn’t catch a buggy thief. Type of guys who go for news coverage when they collar a purse snatcher. Most of them failed the cop qualifiers.”

  A longer answer than I needed. And he knew it

  “What day was that?”

  “Week ago today. Thursday.”

  “You driving the car?”

  “Yep. Usually drive the Xterra, but I took the wife’s car.”

  “Go to the mall straight from home? Or did you come from work?”

  He gazed at the table, pulled a long inhale. “Why you asking?”

  Into the quicksand already. Think fast “Whoever stole your car tried to kill us,” I said. “He carried a body in the trunk. I’m trying to get inside his mind, trying to understand. Figure out if he followed you, targeted your car special, or picked it at random.”

  “Dexter said you were a wannabe detective.”

  “Not true. Certain things I take personally. Others I let go.”

  “Great I’ll take your word for it.”

  I needed to change the subject but keep pushing. “You trust Hayes’s judgment every time?”

  “Every damn time,” he said.

  “How about his decision to come to Key West?”

  “That’s his business.”

  Almost every damn time.

  “They must’ve totaled the car. Don’t they just send you a check?”

  “This is really enjoyable. Can I buy you folks another round?”

  Teresa became peacemaker. “Alex didn’t sleep well last night, Mr. Farmer. But he’s buying this afternoon, and I could use another wine, Alex. I’d rather not wait for a server.”

  My cue to make a bar run. When I returned, Teresa and “Jim” were best pals. They were dishing the dirt about Hayes and his funny mannerisms, his oddball sense of humor. Farmer launched into an anecdote about the time Hayes was imitating Madonna in the squad room, mocking a dance from her then-current video. Dexter tripped over an extension cord, fell against a desk, sprained his wrist. He missed four days of work and claimed the injury on workman’s comp. The day he returned to work he was called to a meeting in the squad room. Every officer present wore a pointy brassiere.

  The ice had broken. The bartender delivered a plate of munchies that I’d ordered at the bar. Farmer loosened up, bought the round he’d facetiously suggested a few minutes earlier. He grinned slyly, pointed out the athletic bag that held his Rollerblades. “You might’ve thought I was carrying a semiautomatic weapon . . .”

  Cops joke about weapons. I laughed to humor him.

  Farmer admitted that his trip to the Keys was a schmooze deal. He’d come down with his insurance broker, a free vacation to “identify” the waterlogged Maxima. He’d inventory the car for personal belongings and agree to the totaling of it. That way, the broker claimed, the company could save the expense of transporting junk back up the Keys.

  “Service with a smile and a tan,” I said.

  “I stop vehicles for traffic infractions, they’ve got out-of-date insurance cards. I turn some biz his way. I don’t jeopardize my job. I don’t invite kickbacks. The motorists appreciate my leniency. But, hell, they’re not criminals. Most of them forgot to clip the card, put it in their glove box. A few failed to renew. So I come here. Helps keep insurance costs low. Yours included.”

  Teresa kicked my ankle. She’d probably spent all morning on the phone with her insurance company. I didn’t offer an opinion of Farmer’s freebie trip. I wanted to get back to my questions. I was in dead-end territory, with Dexter refusing me access and Farmer defensive about my queries. I tried an end run, phrased as a joke: “All the headlines down here lately,” I said, “you might be better off with a weapon than Rollerblades.”

  He smiled, shook his head. “Dex turned down a promotion to come here. You believe that? Crazy man. It’s like his whole career’s on standby.”

  “He told me he wanted the wife and kids off the Gold Coast,” I said. “All the crime and traffic.”

  “Oh, horseshit. He owned a damn mansion in Parkland. Tall wall around the subdivision, you pay dues, every house has the same lawn service. With the promotion, those kids could’ve gone to private school. They could go months without seeing Federal Highway, the riffraff of Delray or Pompano.”

  “I’ve never met his wife.”

  “I think that deal’s around the corner, too. When he married her she was down-to-earth. Natalie grew up wealthy—her dad founded the third-largest black-owned company in the state. They’re metal fabricators. They make mailboxes, toasters, computer cases, garage doors, rack systems, you name it. Natalie didn’t act rich, at first Maybe the kids changed her. She turned into Ms. Yuppie Suburbia. She made Dexter sell a two-year-old Explorer and buy a new Ford Expedition because it was easier to get the kids’ bikes in it. I mean, the new vehicle minus the trade-in whacked him for eighteen thou. If you add up the extra minute or two it might take to deal with bikes, every time she carried them for the life of the car, that trade-up was worth about five thousand bucks an hour.”

  Teresa said, “Next time he offers to buy lunch, I’m accepting.”

  P.T.’s sound system played “Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes.”

  “So he got homesick and came down here?” I said.

  Farmer sneered, gave it a one-shoulder shrug. “How many people our age get homesick?”

  Sam Wheeler was homesick for a town that didn’t exist anymore.

  “Screwed me up, too,” added Farmer. “Good partner. He’d cover my ass in a tight The toad I got now, scores are top of the class, no demerits, no write-ups. The book says he’s a wizard. I wouldn’t trust him to put coins in the meter.”

  I suddenly wondered about his trust in Hayes. My thoughts spun to a wild tangent. Why this sudden outpouring of info about Dexter? Farmer had jumped from a total reluctance to criticize the man to a total indictment of his moving to Key West. I never trust a changing story.

  What else was flaky? Dexter had turned his back on the good life and a promotion. He’d moved to Key West for a tougher job. Had he been drawn by a desire to be close to Julie Kaiser? Was he capable of murder, for revenge or ambition or any other reason? Had Jim Farmer been driving the Maxima? Had Dexter sent him after me, to chase me up the highway at
ninety miles an hour? Were they over-the-top cops with a sick agenda? Or was Jim Farmer piecing off the blame on Dexter? Setting him up for a fall?

  Was I building a new pyramid of paranoia?

  We became more aware of the sharp clatter of colliding pool balls, the constant drone of bar conversation. The bar had filled as mid-afternoon became Happy Hour. Eight or ten construction laborers crowded the bar, let off steam. One wore a T-shirt that said SOUTH FLORIDA VIAGRA TESTING TEAM.

  Teresa said, “Been to Key West before?”

  Farmer nodded. “Used to come down a bunch. Not anymore. College buddy of mine was here, I’d come down, go fishing, party in the bars. I talked him into quitting his job selling cars, following his dream. He became a city cop. One time I was down, I tried to hire on with the county. Had a chat with the sheriff and bagged the idea. What a dipshit”

  “Tommy Tucker?” I said.

  “That’s the one. Any job—hell, private security—any damned thing’d be better than working for that doofus.”

  I asked his cop friend’s name.

  “Officer Monty Aghajanian. Now he’s got himself into the FBI. He moved to New Jersey. This is my first time back since he left.”

  “I know him well.” And I respected Monty’s judgment, trusted him.

  “Give him a call sometime. He’s a lonely boy up there. Understand die wife’s okay with it, but he’s praying for a reassignment”

  I would call Monty within the next thirty minutes. For the moment, my opinion of Jim Farmer had shot upward. I wasn’t sure about the man, but Monty’s words would make up my mind.

  A server offered us another round. I’d had enough beer. Teresa needed to get back to her office before five o’clock. Farmer wanted to skate around Old Town. I thanked him for his time.

  Teresa and I stood outside, watched more afternoon drinkers stream into the restaurant “Your eyes told me,” she said. “Your mind was going a million miles an hour.”

  I said, “Please say you talked him into this.”

  “Dexter had to leave the office in a hurry. He sort of abandoned Farmer in the coffee room. I explained myself, and told him I’d been in the car that his Maxima chased. He was very sympathetic. I asked him if he’d talk to you. Were you thinking that he set this up? As a distraction or something?”