Bone Island Mambo: An Alex Rutledge Mystery

by Tom Corcoran

  Suzanne, an accessory, was as guilty of murder as Kaiser. Perhaps she’d even helped with the slayings. But this was not the time to be judge or jury. I said, “Why is Suzanne less innocent than the motel owners, Kaiser? Or the Vietnam veteran? She didn’t choose her father.”

  After a few seconds Kaiser said, “You’re right again, Rutledge. So I’ll make you folks a deal. You and Dexter Hayes can decide who it’ll be, but I want one of you to walk out the front door right now. If that happens, I won’t hurt her. And no dawdling around. You’ve got thirty seconds to show a face. Dexter, if it’s you, you can even carry your little pistol.”

  “What, High Noon?” said Hayes. He looked me in the eye. “Maybe I will.”

  “Good comparison,” said Kaiser.

  Tucker shook his head. He whispered, “When that front door got shot, I thought about it later.” He wiggled his MP-5, pointed his free hand at the clip. “I heard a burp, not a pop.”

  Someone on Kaiser’s team—or Jemison Thorsby’s—owned a semiautomatic weapon. No reason why Kaiser couldn’t be holding it right now. Dexter and I stared at each other. I felt no compulsion to trade my life for Suzanne Cosgrove’s. I was sure that, deep down, Hayes shared my misgivings.

  Julie whispered, “Oh, God, no!” She stood, pointed out the window.

  None of us had seen Donovan Cosgrove leave the room. He’d already gone out the front door. Through slits in the blinds we watched him stomp across the porch, start down the steps into the yard.

  I checked the Infiniti. The driver’s-side power window descended. Kaiser stuck a pistol out the window.

  Tommy Tucker ripped away the blinds, hip-aimed his automatic rifle. He was too slow. As he triggered a burst, a bullet shattered the upper window. Tucker went flat on his back. I heard Dexter Hayes bolt toward Julie Kaiser, heard him knock her to the floor.

  I watched Cosgrove walk slowly, like a slow-motion movie, toward Philip Kaiser’s gun. Kaiser slowly swung his aim toward his brother-in-law. No hurry, no rush. The slow aim. Donovan would die within seconds. I picked up the MP-5, edged closer to the busted window.

  Suddenly a rear door of the red van swung open. I heard three gun shots. The Infiniti windshield cracked into a dense web, small chunks held together by safety laminate. The Infiniti’s driver’s-side door opened. Philip Kaiser fell out to his knees, bleeding from both shoulders. He looked up. Donovan Cosgrove was gone. He looked at the house, swiveled his wrist, squeezed a shot in my direction. A porch column exploded six feet in front of me. I was a deer in Philip Kaiser’s headlights. I lifted the MP-5, fitted it to my shoulder.

  So much happened in the next five seconds, I didn’t register a fraction of it. The first thing I saw was the long spear that entered Philip Kaiser’s back, pinned him to the inside of the car door. I glimpsed a motorcycle behind the Infiniti, a blur of acceleration, the quicker blur of the van rear door farthest from me as it swung outward. The motorcyclist struck the red door. First with his front wheel, then with his head. No helmet.

  Sam Wheeler, pistol in hand, leaped from the van, hurried to Kaiser, swatted the weapon from his hand. I wondered if it was the gun Kaiser had stolen from Teresa Barga’s apartment. I watched Sam Wheeler tuck his own pistol under his shirt and walk east on Southard Street.

  A moment later Dexter stood next to me. No longer on the floor, shielding Julie.

  “It’s over,” I said. “I think Jemison Thorsby just shot Kaiser and wrecked his motorcycle. That looks like him in the middle of the street.”

  Dexter radioed a quick message, then hurried to ex-Sheriff Tommy Tucker. Tucker was on his back, stunned, eyes open. His Kevlar vest had saved him. He probably had broken ribs. The hired security man had come through, loyal to his deceased friend and employer. I smelled alcohol on his breath.

  I said, “It’s over. How you doing, hero?”

  “Fine.” Tucker tried to reach up, tried to scratch the back of his neck. He winced and lay still. Dexter opened his shirt and vest so he wouldn’t sweat to death before the wagon came with a stretcher and pain pills. Months from now Tommy Tucker would stop hurting. I doubted that he’d ever feel fine.

  Uniforms and city cop cars swarmed Southard Street Someone covered Kaiser’s body with a green sheet A minute later Dexter Hayes determined that Thorsby, indeed, had killed Philip Kaiser with a spear gun. Thorsby had died instantly when his head struck the red van’s rear door.

  Dexter used a master key to free Suzanne Cosgrove from the ankle cuffs that held her to the Infiniti’s front seat track. Near-catatonic, she had aged twenty years. Philip Kaiser’s blood spattered her clothing. A detective in a plain black sedan took her away.

  We waited on the porch for the EMTs. Tourists gathered, were herded by police officers to the far sidewalk, then to the nearest intersection. A silence took over, a surreal stillness in the trees and among the gawkers. A cluster of helium balloons—six of them—lifted above the street floated upward, angled by the shifting wind. An old James Taylor song came from a radio up the block. Damn this traffic jam . . .

  Teresa arrived on her motor scooter, parked it halfway up the block. She checked on us, then went to deal with reporters from the Herald and the TV stations and wire services. She said that Marnie already had the scoop, had picked up the scanner traffic, and had gone to the Citizen offices to file her story. I knew that Marnie had an inside story. I wondered how she’d word it

  The EMTs came and went. The FDLE’s scene investigators showed up with their swagger and jargon. I sat around, watched the detectives seal the crime scene, then begin their work. Finally Dexter told me to go home. I had no argument for him.

  “Your words. The problem’s over,” he said.

  I tried to end it on a lighter moment: “All set for the Super Bowl?”

  He shook his head. “Mercer’s funeral. Scheduled for kick-off time.”

  I walked to the city garage, unlocked my bike. As I rode Simonton and Fleming I mentally reran the start of it all. If Suzanne had driven the Infiniti last Sunday morning, she had seen me with Julie, and seen my camera. I had to assume that she’d told Philip Kaiser and he’d called in the services of Bug Thorsby. They’d needed to remove me as a possible witness to the placement of Engram’s body.

  Thinking that far into the nightmare wore me out. I pledged to learn more in days ahead. Get it straight in my mind as quickly as possible, then spend the rest of my life trying to forget it.

  Back home I locked the bike, communed with the neighbor’s springer. Easy gig. Scratch the quivering nose, watch the eyes return unquestioning love. Somehow I found the strength to walk to the porch. City Electric had left a note on the door. I’d neglected to pay my intermittent power bill. Three days to make good, or they’d discontinue service.

  If they shut off my power, how would I know the difference?

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  Tom Corcoran’s next Alex Rutledge mystery:

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  The air inside the taxi could have fertilized a Glades County cane field. Stale curry and clove gum fought the driver’s body odor. A nicotine haze on the windows gave the sky, trees, and buildings around me a sickly mustard tint. I wished I was back in Key West, packing for my week-long photo job on Grand Cayman Island. I had been hired to shoot stills for a five-star resort’s promo package and web site. My southbound flight was forty-eight hours away, and I’d let too many pre-trip details slide.

  My wish to be elsewhere passed quickly. Sam Wheeler had done me a lifetime of favors in the past few years, favors hard to pay back. This was a chance to chip away at my debt I needed to be right where I was, in a smelly taxi in a stamp-sized parking lot in Lauderdale. Sam, too, was doing what he had to do. In the room where Sam now stood, it was forty-five degrees colder than anywhere else in South Florida just before noon.

  The cabbie acted unnerved by our nearness to the morgue. A GMC van departed, and he chan
ged spots, from open sunlight to the sparse shade of a bottle-brush tree. He shifted into Park and flipped on a small orange radio he had duct-taped to the taxi’s dashboard. The box was tuned to a talk show, a meeting ground for people whose opinions outran their smarts. Someone had glued a religious icon to the dash below the radio. I wanted to invoke its powers to make my day end better than it had begun. I doubted that I was tuned to its wavelength.

  The man tapped his finger on a dashboard gauge. “We lose this cold air, mon, or I got to go.”

  He was wise to worry on a ninety-degree, late-April day. He was idling his motor with the air conditioner cranked to full blast Most cars, it wouldn’t take ten minutes for the engine to boil over. I leaned forward, checked his temp needle. It was dead center normal. Engine heat was not his problem.

  Sam had been inside the sand-colored building for only seven minutes. I had no idea how long he would be in there. I slid the man twenty bucks—a third of it his tip. Better to sweat in the open air than to melt into vinyl seat covers, forced to listen to radio drivel. Sam’s housemate, Marnie Dunwoody, had loaned us her cell phone. We could call another cab when Sam was free.

  A damp heat hit me as I climbed out. The driver backed away, spun his steering, went full throttle. He almost hit a Sheriff’s cruiser at the entrance apron. The deputy sneered, shook his head, and drove calmly to a parking slot as if near-misses happened all the time. He got out and slammed the county car’s door. He was about five-eight, with a crew-cut, huge muscles, a thick neck and broad chest He wore a red polo shirt, a gold badge clipped to his belt a weapon in a hip holster. He ignored me as he strode to the building. A lawman on a mission. I could’ve been dancing on stilts, juggling hand grenades. He would have ignored me.

  Broward County’s a tough beat.

  Sam had shown up on Dredgers Lane at seven-thirty that morning. He knocked on my porch door and whistled through the screen. Teresa didn’t hear him. She was dressing with the bathroom door shut. That was strange in itself because she usually performed a get-dressed tease in front of me.

  I heard Sam’s knock with my head under the pillow. It was too early for a social visit, and Sam never came by without calling first He looked whipped, puzzled. He skipped the salutations. “You got a busy day?”

  I thought about the legal pad list, chores I’d put off, bills I hadn’t paid, quotes I should have mailed days ago. I pictured my last-minute scramble, getting from the house to the airport two days from now. Then I thought about everything Sam had done for me.

  He said, “I mean, if you’re busy, Alex . . .”

  “Nothing I can’t ignore.”

  “I need to be in Lauderdale for a couple hours. I bought two tickets for a turnaround. I’ll buy us a good lunch. We’ll be back on the island by five.”

  With the constant easterlies, the past couple weeks of twenty to twenty-five knot winds starting to abate, I’d have guessed that Sam would want to spend his day fishing, catching up with regular customers. He was dressed for work. He’d become sensitive to sunlight in recent years, and always wore lightweight long-sleeved shirts and long trousers. But I noticed that he wore sneakers instead of his leather boat shoes. I couldn’t imagine a fishing guide and Vietnam veteran needing a traveling companion. I decided to let him explain when he was ready.

  I said, “Is there time to brush my teeth?”

  “Take a shower. The flight’s not till eight-twenty. I’ll make coffee.”

  Sam spoke softly as he drove his old Ford Bronco to the airport “Not really my business, but is Teresa that unpleasant every morning?”

  “She does her major thinking when she wakes up. That brain whips up to speed before the coffee hits. Plus, she worked late last night.”

  He shifted his cup from one hand to the other so he could shift gears. “She doesn’t like dawn distractions?”

  “Especially when she clocks out at midnight. I keep my distance.”

  “The woman in the bubble?”

  I laughed. “With me outside, looking in.”

  “Tell me again that apartment deal.”

  “Her landlord went to monthly rentals, on short notice. He jacked up the rent more than double. It’s gone from being an apartment to a condo, then a residential atrium. They’ll probably advertise it as a two-bedroom, two-bath estate.”

  “So, you got a roomie?”

  “Hell, for eight months we’ve been living together in two places. We’ve had to commute ten blocks back and forth. This should be easier.”

  “So far?”

  “Three days. Too soon to decide.”

  Sam drove another block, then said, “I got a call an hour ago from a deputy medical examiner in Broward. They found a dead woman up there, beat up bad, dumped on a tree lawn in a ritzy community. They say it’s my sister, Lorie. They want me to go through the formalities, sign the positive piece of paper.”

  “The sister you’d lost track of?”

  “Since the mid-eighties.” Sam paused, then said, “The same month the Challenger blew up, Lorie went poof, too. She’d sent me a photograph, she was holding a snook she’d caught in Chokoloskee. I called a few days later, and the phone was disconnected. I never heard from her again. My sisters up north, Flora and Ida, never did either.” Sam went silent a moment, then added, “Lorie had problems back then with abusive boyfriends. Strange, she was still in Lauderdale.”

  “How did they track you down?”

  “An old picture of me in her wallet. I mailed one to each sister from Fort Benning during Jump School. Lorie probably couldn’t read yet Florence was about to start school. Little Ida, come to think of it, I don’t know if she was born. I signed the backs of the photos, ‘Love, Brother Sam,’ with my service number under my name. I was one gung-ho son of a bitch.”

  Sam was quiet on the flight It’s not easy to talk on a droning commuter plane, anyway. This one was full of sunburned Spring Breakers, leaving the party early. We’d bought the Key West Citizen and the Miami Herald before boarding, and swapped sections during the flight. Several articles normally would have drawn comment from Sam. He’d had nothing to say. Not even a wisecrack about toasted college kids. Our friendship had endured because we could survive silence in each other’s company. But this deflated mood was not reflective or pissed-off quiet. In the years I had known Sam, I’d never seen a silence of sadness.

  Sam nudged me, pointed as we descended over the Everglades on final glide into Lauderdale. Months ago he’d described the huge highway cloverleaf below us. The Interstate had wiped out Andytown, the crossroad where Sam had grown up. He still could claim Muncie, Indiana, as his home town. But his sisters at home, all born in Florida, had lost their roots to the road planners, the graders and cement mixers.

  After we touched down, Sam said, “Lorie was so damned stubborn, like my old man. She and the old man were going at it in the car one time, back when 441 was in the Everglades. He was snarling and she was snapping, arguing over nothing. He pulled to the shoulder and told her he wasn’t going to have her damned sass. She could change her tone or walk home. She got out and slammed the door. A mile down the highway I realized he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to let a nine-year-old girl hike ten miles on a rural two-lane. I told him to let me out, too. He did, and drove away. I’d walked maybe two minutes back in Lorie’s direction. The next thing I knew a big Olds-mobile sedan pulled over to pick me up. She’d thumbed herself a ride. We damn near beat the old man home.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  “He never said a thing. She never did, either.”

  “Tough little girl.”

  “I guess not tough enough.”

  The sun stared down at me as if I was on trial. I found shade next to a drainage culvert, stood under a tree hung with flaming crimson blossoms. I checked my watch, then told myself to quit checking my watch. The cabbie was halfway back to the airport hack line. I still smelled of clove gum and curry.

  The Broward Medical Examiner Lab was typical of
Florida single-story bureaucracy. I suspected that a county architect, in a hurry to get to happy hour, had whipped out the plans on a Friday afternoon. A landscaper had saved his ass with shrubs and trees. I found it strange that Broward had set the laboratory in a Dania Beach neighborhood of upscale trailer parks and mid-scale condos. A trump of all flags at half-mast, an empty flagpole, stood near the building’s entrance. Its hoist ropes fluttered in the breeze. Heavy hooks slapped against the hollow pole.

  None of this had diddly to do with my upcoming job on Grand Cayman. But the setting brought to mind the conflict in my career, the fact that I dealt with a weird blend of beautiful and gruesome, of fulfilling assignments and a few that had been draining and dangerous.

  Three years ago I had thought that part-time forensic work would simply boost my finances and fill unproductive time. I had started with the Key West Police Department, jobs that didn’t require science or complex procedures. My name got passed around. Within months, Monroe County’s detectives were calling, when their full-timers were overworked or on vacation. I had been reconsidering my sideline for over a year. The only good thing was having extra bucks to put toward my bills. The bad part was how close I’d come to tragedy, how crime jobs had dragged me into a realm I’d avoided most of my life. I still managed to work regularly, mostly out of town, doing journalism, or ad agency shoots, or magazine features. But those gigs didn’t promise me anything for the future. Within the past few months, two ad clients had been bought out Their assignments had vanished along with their corporate names. Even with the Grand Cayman job, my year could be as hollow as the empty flagpole. Unless I hit a jackpot, I still had seven more years of mortgage payments. My short-notice forensic jobs could make the difference between eating and going hungry.

  Sam once wisecracked, “If you or I ever go broke, we can blame domestic taxes and imported beer.”