Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  “Your phone rang five minutes ago,” she said. “You might have a message.”

  “It can wait,” I said. “You’re first in line. I’d rather plop down right here and share your…”

  “Pinot Grigio. It’s cold.”

  “You bet. I’ll get a…”

  “Your glass is right here behind the bottle.”

  “…and sit here and talk to you.”

  “About…”

  “The death of a co-worker,” I said.

  “Not to mention neighbor.”

  “Whom I never knew and you never mentioned before.” I placed my helmet on my threadbare director’s chair.

  She looked away. “He was the neighbor I denied. I wanted to think ignoring him would make him go away.”

  I almost said, “I guess it worked,” but my self-censor clicked in.

  I went inside to urinate. I had demolished a strict rule about drinking while driving. Sam’s beers plus the one I slammed at Mangrove Mama’s had been three too many for riding the motorcycle, but they hadn’t inspired me to act crazily or head-butt a phone pole. They had combined to dissuade me from stopping at the college to inquire about the late Sally Catherman. From Upper Sugarloaf to Stock Island a tall thunderhead had chased me. I’d also had the Florida Highway Patrol on my tail from the Saddlebunch Keys to Key Haven. Instead of making me wish I had drunk fewer beers, he boosted my thirst for several more. I could’ve given him a run for his money like I did with the Impala on Ramrod. Why should I act intelligently when all those around me are making shit choices?

  Now, at home, it occurred to me that the trooper had been put on my ass by a government agency with initials for a name.

  I pissed for two minutes. During that time I reminded myself that I had to meet Copeland Cormier at Virgilio’s at 5:30. Meet with the man who had urged me to collect Catherman’s money for a useless task, a job for which I had no skills. Sam hadn’t appeared surprised by Cormier’s request nor had he argued for a different approach. Both men had shown lack of respect for the father of a girl presumed to be dead.

  Someone could think they knew Catherman and already had lost respect.

  Hell, I thought. If the trooper had been sent by someone, what about Catherman? Had he come to Dredgers Lane as part of Cormier’s scheme? If so, Carmen’s plans to sell her home and move her parents to Ocala could be skunked from the get-go. I begged myself to return to reality. Sam wouldn’t put up with that style of game playing.

  I returned to the porch, poured some wine, my arms still twitching from road vibrations. I sat facing the door, wishing I could stop for the day and stare at my shrubs. Think about overdue yard work or wonder if I needed to clean more fan blades. The sympathetic buzz from the motorcycle engine stayed with me, helped me into the zone. But I popped out of my reverie when I wondered when Sam would hide his pistol in my garage.

  Carmen sipped from her glass, shook her head. “If Hammond had ever touched Maria, I would not have killed him. I’d have chained him to a cop car and chopped off his balls, kicked them down the street and let his future keepers clean up the mess.”

  “Please don’t repeat that in front of another soul. Why would he touch Maria?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure he would. But there’s always been talk of his taste in young ones. Not cradle robbing, not under the line, but almost. Hell, he spread most of the gossip himself. He made sure his pals knew that the ‘sweet chickadees’ were legal. He made no secret that he liked to taste them. That tidbit trickled through the office about once a year.”

  “You think some father…”

  “That would be my first guess. That’s what I told the detectives.”

  “Julio Alonzo said that Hammond volunteered at the Bahama Village music school.”

  “I’m sure the investigators will run that one down,” she said. “The problem is, every little flute player in town will have to answer to some stranger about whether an old man fiddled with her panties.”

  “Unless they find his killer first,” I said. “One that’s unrelated to his…”

  “Go ahead, I said it first,” said Carmen. “His tastes.”

  Time again to stay silent. I reached over and poured for Carmen until she motioned for me to quit.

  “Marnie came by and interviewed me about twenty minutes ago,” she said. “Everything I told her made me sound like I was a hit man or I’d bought one. She had fewer questions than I thought she might.”

  “She was being considerate,” I said. “She’s the type.”

  “Unlike the cops. I made her promise not to use my name in print.”

  “If you see her again, please tell her that Sam’s in great shape and in control.”

  “That sounds iffy. Between you and me, she seemed a bit off her game.”

  “And it’s a story that will wait until tomorrow,” I said. “Speaking of which, I caught a good one from the boys this morning.”

  “I was going to celebrate. They found jobs and an apartment. All their crap is out of my house. I have to admit, they were fastidious about keeping their dirty laundry in their car and doing their own dishes. Shit, now I wish they were back, just for the sake of security, having two men around the house. With just me and Maria… Okay, change the subject. Have you heard from Bobbi?”

  “Intermittently.”

  “You’ve got that look. Is she fast becoming the future ex-Mrs. Rutledge?”

  “Dinner tonight on her plastic,” I said.

  “Think you’ll get laid?”

  “Too much to ask.” The words came out before I realized that I was echoing Frank Polan.

  “I can tell, you want this to work,” said Carmen.

  “That’s been true from day one. Now I want it to be more like day one.”

  “Dreamer.”

  “You always call me a dreamer,” said Carmen’s daughter, Maria Rolley, through the screen door. “Are you the only one who’s not one?”

  “Where did you come from?” demanded Carmen.

  “The day I was born or the last five minutes?”

  Carmen looked at me. “The boys were here three days, and she turned into a wiseass.”

  “Will you drive me to Elizabeth Street?” said Maria. “Jason promised to loan me his Simpsons Tenth Season DVD when he gets it unpacked. It was buried in his trunk.”

  “It can’t happen today, honey. But I don’t want you to go alone, you hear? In about ten minutes I have to take your grandmother to Publix for rice pudding and Cajun crab boil mix.” Carmen turned to me. “Cajun. All these years I thought my mother was Cuban. Thanks for the glass of wine. I’ll put your bottle back in the fridge.”

  Covering herself from the judgment of the child.

  “Tomorrow, after school?” said Maria.

  “Maybe I’ll take you over there tomorrow,” I said.

  “Cool.” Without changing her expression, she walked away.

  Carmen got up to follow her. “Alex, don’t forget that phone message.”

  “Don’t let this murder affect your decision to stay,” I said, “or to move your parents away. We need to talk and think this through. You may be able to keep both houses and buy them a place in Ocala. Whatever rent you might get for your cottage would pay down an upstate mortgage overnight.”

  She tried to smile in response. It came off as a grimace.

  Bobbi on the voice mail service: “Alex, I got tied up and I’ll be a little late. Let’s meet at the restaurant at seven-fifteen. Make it seven-thirty, and could you change the reservation?”

  Tied up? The photographer’s mind wanders…

  Ah, yes, photography. I needed to turn on my printer and download the digital picture of the Dodge Charger. A little something to hand to Lisa Cormier. It wasn’t any more than a side-on car shot. But it spoke of attempted work, of progress I hadn’t made. I checked the time. Enough to print a five-by-seven and take the nap I should have grabbed after finishing my morning coffee. I inserted the flash chip and a sheet of matte photo p
aper, pressed three buttons and let the machine earn its keep. I called Michaels to bump up our dinner reservation. Then I set the alarm in my cell phone, gave myself a twenty-minute snooze.

  It felt like the bell woke me five minutes later. I spent two minutes of quality time in the shower. I decided to walk to my meeting. If it didn’t kill me, it might wake me up.

  Virgilio’s is an oblong backyard bar behind La Trattoria, a restaurant on Duval. Half of the place is open-air, nicknamed the Rain Forest. The section under the roof is, much of the week, a night jazz club. Rather than barging through the restaurant, I entered by way of Appelrouth Lane. Lisa Cormier was not on the crowded patio. But her husband was inside, the sole customer at the bar. I wasn’t sure whether to approach him, but he waved me over, grabbed and squeezed my upper arm like a proud uncle.

  “Hey pal, what’s up?” he said. “You just happened to drop in for a toddy?”

  Cormier’s breath smelled as if he’d been drinking cleaning fluid. He had gone to a tourist’s outfit, put on plaid Bermuda shorts, dark loafers without socks, and a tan guayabera shirt.

  The bartender and server had that look on their faces. Cormier had done or said something strange enough to embarrass the witnesses.

  Copeland slurred his words. “When I was a kid in college, I was in the Vegas airport on a layover between Los Angeles and Denver. I didn’t have time to go into town, just to switch planes. And they had slot machines all over the terminal, and I didn’t believe in gambling and I was probably too young to gamble. But I thought what the hell. I gave myself permission to risk jail time and one twenty-five-cent piece. I had this feeling, what’s the word, poetic… no, prophetic, that it would either make me a pocketful of money or give me an insightful message about my future. Are you with me so far?”

  I nodded knowing that a disinterested shrug could backfire.

  “It was the soul of that moment, and how do you explain such a thing? So I dropped the quarter and I yanked the lever, can you picture that? And you know what came up, Rutledge? A cherry, a cherry and a lemon, and in my youth I didn’t get it. I didn’t get it for years, for twenty years, however many. I didn’t understand that message until about three months ago.” He quit talking long enough to sip his drink. “You want a drink, Alex? Tell this fine man what you want.”

  “Right now I want to hear your story,” I lied.

  “My first wife, bless her soul, died in a car wreck near Memphis while the first George Bush was president, the father, the ex-CIA boss. My second wife, bless her soul, died on an operating table, not mine, thank God. Let’s not call on vulgar slang, but those two women, when I met them, you get the idea. My third wife, I believe, is the lemon. I’ll spare you the details, but I don’t know how else to put it. What do you think of my story?”

  I shrugged.

  “No, really. I want to know.”

  “I always thought slot machines were manufactured to make us all losers,” I said. “I never held much stock in fortune telling. It sounds like you asked a one-armed bandit to read you a permanent horoscope.”

  “I am guilty as charged,” he said. “Do you judge that to be a mistake?”

  “It’s like asking a tractor to confirm your religion.”

  “Oh, that’s a simile or a metaphor. But that’s not my question. How do you interpret the message?”

  “How do you define lemon? It could be a complement to rum, a car that needs constant repair, a natural curative, a deodorizer…”

  He raised his drink as if saluting a monarch. “Go back to constant repair.” The drink spilled down his arm.

  I suspected that Copeland Cormier had fallen victim to Key West Syndrome. Many first-timers, surrounded by strangers and what appears on the surface to be a free-for-all atmosphere, shed their common sense and inhibitions. They thumb their noses at morals, bouncers, clocks, laws, cleanliness, sunburn, and the fact that other people can detect the booze and drugs. It’s when they thumb their noses at hoteliers, cops, bouncers and spouses that fireworks really start to fly. Cormier hadn’t mixed it up with the badges yet. He sounded as if he had pissed off his wife.

  “You better have a cocktail before I drink all the hooch in this saloon,” said Cormier. “Tell this man here what might be your drinking pleasure.”

  I looked at the bartender. He gave a quick shake of his head then rolled his eyes toward the glass door behind Copeland, the door that led to La Trattoria’s dining room. I slowly moved my head to that direction. The moment Lisa saw me looking, she crooked a finger and vanished back into the restaurant.

  “I don’t want to sound rude,” I said. “I’ve got a dinner date in a half hour.”

  Cormier leaned back to better focus on my face. “You came in here for some damned thing. Near as I can see they’re only selling drinks. Does my gregarious nature put you on edge?”

  Hell yes, I thought. Being around him, the smell of him, wore me out. “I came in to meet someone, to discuss business,” I said. “For some reason she’s not here. I must have missed her, but I can’t wait around.”

  “I can tell you’re a man on the move, sir. More power to you, in this town.”

  “In this town,” I said, “power is a razor-edged boomerang.”

  That one stumped him. Me too, if I’d thought about it.

  I escaped through the door I’d entered, came face to face with the old concrete rectangle that once was Wax, long before that the Bamboo Room and lately Club Zu. I hiked between the buildings, the evening air smelling of nearby rain. Tourists on Duval walked in the late-day haze, searching shop windows for life-affirming products. Mile Zero decals, hookahs, palm tree trivets.

  Lisa Cormier stood on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Elegant among the unwashed but a haunted look on her face. “I was shopping at the other end of this street today,” she said. “I bought one of your fine art photographs.” She pointed at the former Strand Theater. “It’s that place before it became Walgreen’s.”

  The owner of Oops Gallery, an old friend, had asked me to frame two dozen ten-by-seven prints, all island scenes. He sold them often enough to keep me in his shop. I replenished his walls when he asked.

  “Did you take any pictures today?”

  I had forgotten the photo of the Dodge Charger. It was still on the printer tray in my office. I shook my head. “Can we walk away from here?”

  She started toward Fleming. “Whatever you had to deal with, I apologize.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I got there early to meet you and he was already there, drunk as a skunk. He told the bartender I was a whore he’d met at the Casa Marina last night.”

  “What’s he call you in a good mood?”

  We walked around a dreadlocked busker on a folding chair who played a plywood guitar and sang the worst version of “Come Monday” I had ever heard.

  “Whore is his favorite name for me. He knew when we met that I’d already lived with two different men, one for three years and one for six years. Since we got married, I’ve hardly even told a dirty joke. I sure as hell haven’t slept with anyone. Which is not to say,” she added, “that I wasn’t in the mood yesterday at the Afterdeck. But as you know, nothing happened.”

  “Not while I was there,” I said.

  Lisa waved her arm, motioned us up Fleming. “Spoken like a true private eye. Did you have any luck today?”

  “The girl I’m looking for, you know about that?”

  Lisa nodded.

  “She must have been into monkey business. I saw an unmarked car following her father. Aside from that, zilch.”

  “We therefore assume he was into monkey business as well?”

  “Why is your husband acting the opposite of what I saw yesterday?”

  “He’s upset because his charity operation is coming unglued. Did he tell you that we haven’t heard from Sam Wheeler today? He never radioed in.”

  “No, he didn’t say that. He told me about cherries and lemons.”

  Li
sa stopped under an overhang, crossed her arms and stared at a bike rack. “Are you married?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Do you want to walk over there and check into the hotel? You can have me any way you want, do anything to me, with me, whatever. With you I would be a virgin, not a lemon, not a gutter slut.”

  “I have a dinner date in twenty minutes,” I said. “And I’ve had a long day.”

  She got a rain-check look in her eye.

  “Plus,” I added, “I slept with one married woman years ago and regretted it ever since. Someone once said to me, ‘Do a married man a favor and…’”

  “‘…don’t fuck his wife for him. I heard that one too. Could you at least tell me that I’m worth considering?”

  “You’re more than that,” I said. “And you’re better than that, too. Please don’t go gutter-slut just to get even. Especially here on Duval.”

  “Thank you. Please have faith in my husband’s project, despite his behavior. Have a nice dinner. I’m going to lose myself in that bookstore across the street.”

  Marnie Dunwoody was sitting in her Jeep in front of my cottage. She closed her cell phone and quit poking at her laptop keyboard.

  “You live within crawling distance of a major crime,” she said. “Fill me in.”

  “Jerry Hammond of Eaton Street, found cold, I believe, in his dining room. My bonus was a female detective running hot and cold on my porch.”

  “When was the last time you saw Mr. Hammond?”

  “In another life,” I said.

  “Can you give me a date that’s less metaphysical?”

  “Never met my neighbor.”

  “He worked at the post office,” she said. “Everybody knew him.”

  “That’s what I hear. How could I possibly know more than Carmen? You’re here for today’s Sam Report.”

  “Spill.”

  “I saw him on Sugarloaf. He was driving a borrowed car. I don’t know what kind of jam he’s in or how he’s thinking, but the wheels are turning. He knows there’s a problem and he doesn’t want to drag you into it.”