by Tom Corcoran
“So far,” said Beth.
“I install larger hard drives. I purge viruses, do software rehab and save data from crashes. I try to save data from jump drives that went through the laundry. I download updates when people are too busy to do it themselves. I’m learning to write programs. Not many of my clients need that level of work. I stay clear of prospecting and peeping. Truth is, I don’t have time.”
“Gotcha,” said Beth, her tone impatient.
“But there’s one thing,” said Duffy Lee. “I’ve been working my way around to this and I’ll probably be sorry I mentioned it.”
“Will it help solve a murder?” said Beth.
“You knew Billy Blanco, didn’t you, Alex? He worked at Key West State Bank before it became First State, before he retired.”
“Sure,” I said. “He wrote me loans for camera gear.”
“His next-door neighbor owns Reef Pawn in Habana Plaza,” said Duffy Lee. “The old guy’s in ill health and his wife’s in worse shape, so Billy’s been in the shop almost full-time the past couple years. I don’t think he even collects a pay check. I do favors for Billy, except not really favors because he pays me.”
“What kinds of favors?” said Beth.
“He sends me electronics and computer gear to check out and clean before it goes up for sale. The stereo stuff, Billy waits until the owner blows deadline. The computer gear, he wants to make sure it doesn’t have virus infections or bad crap installed. Most of the time the operating system is skunked.” Duffy Lee pointed at Jerry Hammond’s picture. “This dead guy, I went to his house over on Eaton, twice, to get his laptop to synch with his printer.” He pointed to a shelf and tapped his finger on a hefty-looking, black-cased hard drive. “I could swear this Western Digital drive was his. He had the first one in town. The only one I ever dealt with.”
Beth nodded.
“It showed up in the pawnshop yesterday, so Billy sent it over, and I checked it out. It has the oddest damned hidden partition.”
“Hidden?” I said.
“If you didn’t know it was in there, you’d never see it on your desktop. You’d have to access it like something on a network. The only way I noticed it was the drive’s capacity was lower than it should have been. I mean, all the companies lie. They sell a terabyte drive like this that holds 960 instead of 1,000 gigs. But this drive was way less than true capacity. I was afraid it was carrying spyware or a trojan horse archive, so I ran a diagnostic program. It found a large section almost totally hidden. But no dangerous-looking file types.”
“What kind did you find?” said Beth.
“QuickTime movies and photo files, TIFFs and JPEGs.”
“Can you show us?”
“Not without the owner’s permission, the sick old man. Even permission from Billy isn’t enough.”
“You didn’t erase it?” said Beth.
Duffy Lee shook his head. “I kept the data intact. Truth told, I wanted to figure out how he ghosted that partition.”
“I might have to get a search warrant,” said Beth. “Keep it legal for all of us, in case we find crime evidence. We don’t want to taint a future court case.”
“Fine with me,” said Duffy Lee. “It’s not going anywhere and we three are the only ones who know where it is. I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to make a buck on this job.”
“I have to consider it crime evidence,” said Beth. “I have to get a collection bag out of my car, so please don’t touch it.”
“My hands have been all over it,” said Hall. “Are you going to drag me downtown to ink my fingers, or is that digitized too?”
Beth cracked a huge grin. “I haven’t revved up my Perry Mason today,” she said. “Don’t we have you on file as an evidence tech?”
“It’d be news to me,” he said.
“We may have to scrape your tongue for a DNA sample, to establish a positive negative.”
“Oh, that’s perverted,” said Duffy Lee.
Beth smiled. “How about consulting work in the future?”
“That’ll work, if you shitcan the scrape routine.”
Beth went to her car, left me with Duffy Lee. “One other small favor?” I said.
“You’ve gone quota.”
“But you’re more resourceful than I am. Can you do a web search on Copeland Cormier?” I spelled the two names. “His wife’s name is Lisa. Also the names Marv Fixler and Cliff Brock. And let me call you for the info instead of you calling me.”
“What the hell are you into?”
“Quicksand with an ocean view.”
“Treat it like the swamp it is, Alex,” said Duffy Lee.
“How’s that?”
“Swim your ass out.”
14
Speeding from Duffy Lee’s place to Dredgers Lane during the after-work rush hour, Beth Watkins proved again that cops fear no tickets. She drew a bouquet of hitchhike thumbs from a pack of shirtless military men jogging toward us on Palm Avenue. At drunk man’s curve, where Palm bends into Eaton, three bike riders saw her coming and steered for the sidewalk.
“I won’t have time to drop paper on a judge today,” she said. “I can write the warrant request before I go home, have it ready for the crack of dawn.”
“You might make the pawnshop before it closes,” I said. “See if Billy Blanco remembers…”
“He’ll be there tomorrow. He’ll give me a description and the fake name some doofus used. Bang, bang, brick wall. First things first.”
“If anyone can spot a phony photo ID, Billy…”
“You should see the stuff coming out of Thailand,” she said. “They bring the blanks ashore from cruise ships like decks of cards. A couple backroom operations do the rest of the work. A ten-year-old could buy beer in church. How about lunch tomorrow?”
“I have to go to Cudjoe in the morning.”
“On your Triumph?” she said. “I’ll take a long noon hour on my road rocket.”
How could I take her to Polan’s for my cash replenishment? Or to Colding’s to make an appointment with Alyssa?
“We have secrets to discuss,” I said.
“Bay Point and a Dodge Charger?”
“Those are my secrets. What are yours?”
She stopped to let me out on Fleming near the lane, kept her gaze on the street ahead. “Is that a proposition, Alex?”
No, but your question is.
“Am I out of line asking how you rate time off?” I said. “Your two-day-old murder is turning into a cold case.”
“It’s a two-day-old investigation, Alex, but a five-day-old murder. Taking me to Duffy Lee, and your ideas inside Hammond’s house… You’ve given me my best clues to solving it, so I want to hang close. I’ll be here at ten ready to ride, unless I have to call and cancel. Is that early enough?”
“Ten’s fine,” I said, not meaning it. “As is hang close,” I added.
That part I meant.
I walked to the house under the cyan heat lamp. Parched crotons were grateful for the late afternoon shade. I flipped open my cell and punched in Turk’s number.
“We found it,” he said. “High and dry and wrapped in a mildewed Sea Ray boat cover.”
“Marnie feel better?”
“I dropped her off fifteen minutes ago. She thought she could finally take a nap.”
“So what did they find in the water?” I said.
“A piece of crap,” said Turk. “Maybe Sam’s old ninety-horse motor on a junker flats skiff. I just pulled into the Bight lot. Maybe these captains who talked with Wonsetler will have some ideas.”
“If you come up with anything, want to form a search party, count me in.”
In my hustling around, I had forgotten to check the garage that I rent behind Carmen’s home. I had no doubt that Sam could leave me a weapon, hide it inside without being noticed. Skills he had learned long ago served him well today.
I walked toward the lane’s end and pondered my dilemma.
Aside from absol
utes, the deaths of Jerry Hammond and maybe two others on Bay Point, I felt stuck in an awkward charade. I had endured three days of vague threats, hollow fears, hints of violence, and tales of do-gooder crime. I had been offered sex, a huge fee for not taking pictures and a generous price for my home. I had a friend in hiding, an exact copy of his boat sunk in Hawk Channel, his partner baffled and brokenhearted. I sure as hell hadn’t made progress in my dead or alive search for Sally Catherman, even if only to find out how she died. I felt as if I had walked waist-deep against a current for sixty hours, lost ground, and didn’t know why I was there. I had a feeling it would happen but not how soon I’d be over my head.
On my third day as an illegal private eye, I knew little beyond my ten fingers and toes. Surrounded by unknowns, I felt that Sam’s pistol might offer reassurance.
I always leave the combination lock’s dial on 43. No one knows this, not even Sam. If I find it pointing to another number, someone’s been curious. Someone not smart enough to return the pointer to its resting place, though Sam likely would take the precaution.
This time I didn’t like seeing the dial where it was supposed to be. I unlocked the doors, swung them open far enough to let light inside. My antique wooden crate looked untouched. I groped the wad of towels, didn’t find a pistol.
On a whim I opened the Shelby’s driver-side door and felt under the seat. No gun. Just the long, heavy flashlight and the sheathed hunting knife I keep for day or night emergencies. I closed up the garage, reset the lock.
“Am I moving or not?”
Carmen stood on her back porch. She held a half-empty glass of red wine.
“You’re standing still,” I said. “Are you about to fall down?”
“I called the number on the guy’s card. When he answered he sounded like he was down in a well, or at the other end of a long tunnel. He said, ‘It may happen. I gotta go,’ and he hung up on me. I called back twice more. He wouldn’t pick up. Hell, it’s not like I’m calling him to ask for a date.”
I didn’t have a fast answer, but Carmen deserved a warning.
“My mother’s already packing the house, deciding what stays here and what goes to Ocala. Carol Anne faxed me a real estate form. You can buy a place in Ocala for what people on Shark Key pay for a car. That house near her, I can make my offer contingent on selling this property under our feet.”
“Do it,” I said. “What’s to lose? If your mother’s already boxing the dishes, she wants a change. Even if Catherman flakes on his offer, Hector and Cecilia might gain a whole new social life. They’ll see less of Maria, but she’ll be off to college in five years, right?”
“And if my house doesn’t sell?”
“No big. You can figure a way to afford two houses. For starters, put off buying that Ferrari. If they hate Ocala, your folks can always come back to the island. The whole exercise will give them something to do.”
She drained the wine from her glass. “You want a glass if I refill this?”
I shook my head. It might have adjusted my think pattern, for good or ill, but more than wine I needed porch time. A tall glass of Arizona Green Tea, a pad and paper, a mental recap.
“What if one of them gets sick, or both of them?” she said.
“Bring them back down. Good reason to keep both houses right here.”
“You piss me off, Alex. I haven’t slept for two nights. You make it all sound like I’m buying a second tube of toothpaste. Is this Catherman asshole going to flake, as you call it?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Will you sell out?”
“No,” I said. “It’s like when I quit taking flying lessons fifteen years ago. I did dozens of touch-and-goes, my solo flights, my cross-country up to Pompano Beach and over to Naples. I logged in 40 hours. I was supposed to go to Miami and stay in a hotel for a week and eat restaurant meals while I took an expensive cram course and the pilot’s exam. At that point I didn’t have much money. I had no place to go, no relatives to visit and I couldn’t afford a plane. All my friends who didn’t live in the Keys showed up like clockwork every year. I’d have to sit around and invent trips I couldn’t afford to justify a week in Miami I couldn’t afford.”
“I don’t mean to sound like my cynical, sarcastic, lovely daughter, but what’s your point?”
“I already live in paradise,” I said. “Where would I go if I sold?”
“Thank you, Alex.”
By the time I reached my porch, I knew that I needed much more than tea and quiet. Over the years, therapeutic hours behind a lens have paid me fine rewards. My safaris rarely last more than an hour. They begin with the goals of capturing light and color. I follow my nose to places on the island I haven’t visited in a long time and wind up with the flavors of Key West. Once in a while I’m inspired to projects I couldn’t have imagined back on the porch.
I enjoyed the camera I still had in my pocket. It fit in my hand, weighed less than a beer, had plenty of battery power, megapixels and memory. Its image quality was fine for my personal shots. This time I had a place in mind, a narrow street between and parallel to Duval and Simonton.
No one can ignore changes in Key West. In the past twenty years the island has suffered growth, wealth, demolishing, remodeling and idiots. The worst change I’ve noticed is the number of rules. I made it through the first thirty years of my life with very few of them. If you think about it, and I do, the rule about “Do unto others” might be all we need. So I couldn’t help noticing the blizzard of “No Parking” signs on quaint, short Bahama Street. I wasn’t sure what I would do with the photos, but I wanted a picture of every sign.
If I had left the house closer to sunset or walked instead of riding my bike, I wouldn’t have had time to photograph them all. I locked the Cannondale in front of the bank on Southard and began walking, documenting. To call it a wealth of material would be corny and ironic, but damn… Two towing companies had given away colorful “Tow Away Zone” signs, one pale aqua on white, the other medium blue on white. Pure coincidence, each promised an $85 minimum tow though a sign down the block touted a $300 release fee. When I first arrived in Key West, a $300 release fee would have effectively totaled my car. One sign read, “You WILL be TOWED without a displayed permit. Another read, “Permit Parking Only. Cars without parking permit will definitely be towed away at owner’s expense.” Only in the Keys could we have a threat of indefinite tow.
I needed only three or four more to hang a gallery show of nothing but signs. But my project stopped abruptly when someone tried to kill or injure me, or warn me off. Technically, I was jaywalking, crossing Fleming in front of the antique shop. I also was showing a nick too much faith in my fellow man.
We trust vehicles around us. We co-exist on sidewalks, in parking lots, on the shoulders of highways. No damn choice, right? But it’s always a shock to hear that some jerk in a distant city has jumped the curb, struck down people at a bus stop or in a street market. So call it habit when I failed to think that the funky Taurus might hit me, especially with so many witnesses, so much room for both of us on the street. Only at the last moment, when the vehicle faced me, accelerated like an oncoming bull, did I perceive it as a threat.
There wasn’t much to question. It drove toward me, picked up speed. For some reason I noted that its hood paint was sun-faded and its grill resembled the mouth of a bluefish. I could see the driver’s eyes enough to sense his focus. If you asked me two minutes later to describe him, I could have come up with a face anywhere between Gary Busey and Adam Sandler.
It was his focus that got me.
Everything in my mind slipped into slow motion. Not just slow but drawn-out, filled with elaborate reasoning and moves that, in a less-dangerous instance, might take me ten minutes of logic and choreography. As if a clock ticked in my subconscious, I recall taking each moment in order, anticipating events and my reactions.
The first three things I wanted to protect were my camera and my knees. It might take me the rest of my
life to figure out why a point-and-shoot camera took precedence over my arms or my head. Perhaps I had developed an instinct after decades of holding my gear clear of solid objects, wrapping cameras and lenses in plastic when rain or ocean spray was a threat.
My knees, no-brainer. They bend in one direction, break in the other. Broken knees on the island would be worse than a revoked driver’s license in Los Angeles. My only sensible move was to turn away and raise my arm to keep the camera from colliding with the hood and grille. Call it a pirouette, the twist that offered the backs of my calves to the crunch. Mix in the luck of timing, the jump I made, off-balance and more an ankle lift and a push of the toes. In my drawn-out logic the jump made sense because it dropped my chances of being knocked down, wedged under the car, scraped on the pavement as tire treads turned my limbs into waffles.
I probably had cleared the ground by fewer than four inches when the Taurus hit. Its bumper’s impact launched me upward, and I remember bystanders’ tardy yells of warning. I rolled and tried to imagine a Hollywood stunt master playing it for drama, somersaulting backward. None of it was acrobatic or much in my control. I remember thinking that if the car had an antenna on its right front fender, I could be impaled. Then my left shoulder bumped, slid off the windshield, my left ear whacked the right-side mirror. I can’t recall my legs going over the top or the moment I landed cat-like next to the curb. I was crouched like a wrestler ready to rumble, my camera at eye height and pointed at the escaping, swerving Ford Taurus. A spray of sand and gravel hit my hand and shirt. I hoped that my lens would be spared. On impulse I pressed the shutter button, lifted, gave the auto-focus a fighting chance and pressed again. A Good Samaritan on a yellow motorscooter took off up Fleming in chase of the Taurus and blocked my last few photographs.
I was still catching my breath when a city squad car appeared. Only one officer. He hooked his microphone to the dash, got out slowly and motioned for several cars to proceed up Fleming.
“Gimme a sec,” I said. “I’ll give you a license number.”
