by Tom Corcoran
“She got her co-workers to cover shifts a couple times a week while she went boating with Brock. You never questioned her suntan after all those long hours inside Colding’s Grocery?”
Silence.
“Fixler was there one time. He went out on the water with Sally and Cliff and the one from Colding’s that he was screwing. They all took off their suits and got it on.”
“Crock.”
“Hey, I got it directly from that second young girl. Maybe that’s how he was able to approach Cliff and your daughter on the water on another day. He knew he could shoot them with no witnesses. He told his girl a phony name she didn’t believe but she didn’t care. He said it was Constant Johnson.”
Catherman said, “No fucking way.” I heard him cough and sob. Then he said, “That was always your joke, Marvin. Mister Constant Johnson.”
Fixler’s voice came back, distant, argumentative, adamant.
I heard the gunshot through the phone. I also heard it through my other ear. Sam and the sheriff turned to look at Tarpon Belly.
“Strife,” said Sam.
“Catherman shot Fixler,” I said. “That’s my guess.”
“Drops the prosecution budget,” said Liska.
We sat for a moment, pondering what happened. Then a quick burst of gunfire from one weapon echoed across the flat water. Had Catherman shot Stinson, too? Ten seconds later the gunfire came more focused, with no echo, straight at us.
“We’re out of range,” said Sam, cool to the point of boredom.
Liska spoke into his hand-held in a measured, forceful voice. He asked his teams to hold back and wait for daylight. “They’ve got a Fountain, but they’re not moving,” he said. “We don’t need to occupy Tarpon Belly. Post two teams at Kemp Channel bridge and send one north of Sawyer. Watch yourselves. We’re outgunned.”
Through my cell I heard crunching sounds, footsteps on gravel, then thuds like closing doors or objects dropping onto a fiberglass boat deck. Someone, perhaps the last man alive, was carrying Catherman’s phone, trying to hear what we were saying. I tugged Liska’s sleeve, showed him the glow of my still-open phone.
Liska turned off his radio, thought for a moment, leaned closer to my cell. “You’re right, Major,” he said. “We’ll circle the bastards and bring in SWATs and SEALs on the Navy’s helicopters at daybreak. They can lay on the firepower. No sense putting our people at risk.” He paused, then said, “This isn’t a case of needing them alive to explain their scam. That Cormier schmuck is talking like a speed freak in the emergency room.”
He tapped my hand and whispered, “Done.”
I clicked off. One way or another, we’d find out if it worked.
“Thank you, Alex,” he said. “Inducing panic is a wonderful tactic when you’re this far away from it.”
Two minutes later we heard the Fountain’s three 275-horsepower Mercury engines start, one by one. They weren’t particularly loud, but their bass notes rumbled with muscle.
“That second motor put us in a dead heat,” said Sam. “The third gives him twenty-miles-per-hour more than my skiff.”
“Chase him anyway,” said the sheriff. “Maybe you can inspire a navigational error.”
The Fountain came out of the Tarpon Belly canal at idle speed but kicked up to full power immediately, headed directly south.
Sam started his engine, knocked it into gear, flipped on his running lights and brought us quickly to planing speed.
“Turn off your lights,” shouted Liska.
“Open ocean, Sheriff,” Sam shouted back, “and your boat teams are out there somewhere. It’s easier for them to collide with me than for that maniac to connect with a bullet. This way, he knows we’re coming.”
“Good thinking, Captain,” said Liska. “Very good.”
Even in the dogleg channel south of the highway, the Fountain pulled away from us. We were joined, then passed, by boats from the Sheriff’s Office and Border Patrol. As we transited from Hawk Channel into the Florida Straits, Sam pulled back his throttle.
“You’re giving up?” said Liska.
“We won,” said Sam. “We inspired that navigational mistake, so he’s doing the tough work for us. Running wide open, he’ll burn at least eighty gallons per hour, and he’s already been out front for that rendezvous. He’ll be out of gas before he gets to the Cuban coast. They don’t like boats that stop offshore. They want them to come to the beach so they know what they’re up to. The Cubans will deal with him, and he won’t like it. Their ancient Soviet PT boats have modern Chinese guns.”
28
Sam hit the steering wheel, “What’s that word, fear of spiders?”
“Arachnophobia,” I said. “Don’t ask me to spell it.”
“Is there a word like that for people afraid of the speed limit?”
We were rolling behind a long line of slowpokes.
“I believe it’s fleetaphobia. I may be wrong.”
“The Florida Keys thrill me,” he said. “You can be stuck behind a slow-moving, fume-belching old pickup truck on US 1, and get tailgated by a Bentley convertible. I love living with diversity.”
Sheriff Liska stayed on the phone the whole way into Key West. He was mopping up details, delegating follow-up. The unit he had sent to Sawyer Key had gone ashore on Tarpon Belly and found the bodies of Marv Fixler and Bob Catherman.
“Stinson ran out of gas halfway to his safe haven,” said Liska. “They found a ton of money in the Fountain.”
“Two thousand pounds?” I said. “How much is that?”
“Actually four-fifths of a ton. One of my men calculated seventy million in hundreds, but it might be seventy-one.”
Sam laughed. “Surely, that’s not…”
“Yes, it is,” said Liska. “The lunkheads weren’t just smuggling a little money into Florida. They were moving a damn fortune. They would’ve been mega-rich when everyone else was poor.”
I could barely get my voice to work. “Can we go back to Tarpon Belly and see if any green debris blew over the transom?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” said Liska. “I can get you citizen-hero commendations for your input, but you’ll have to wear coats and ties to the ceremony. And regular shoes.”
“We handed the feds a money bust on a silver platter,” said Sam. “Let’s make them come to our ceremony. Flip-flops required.”
“By the way,” said the sheriff. “He shot at us with an HK-416 rifle. That’s Delta Force gear. Those boys had strong resources.”
“I guess we weren’t out of range,” said Sam.
“Lucky me,” I said. “I got hit by a Taurus instead of a Hummer.”
I dragged my ass up the dirt path to Beth’s house, brain-fried and half-starved, too tired to be jubilant. She didn’t answer my knock. More than gunfire, poverty or arrest, I feared dropping the key. I wasn’t sure, if I bent over to retrieve it, that I had the strength to stand up straight again.
A note next to the kitchen sink said, HEAT UP YOUR LEFTOVERS. TRY ONE MINUTE AT HALF POWER.
The microwave was too complicated for my state of mind. I went flat out on her bed quilt, realized I hadn’t closed the blinds, and fell asleep before I could muster the energy to get up and darken the room.
I woke to find Beth Watkins staring down at me with fondness in her expression, as if regarding a precious child in a day bed. I didn’t understand. Even in deep drowsiness I knew that I smelled like a goat. She appeared bedraggled as well, with ringlets of hair stuck to her forehead, her eyes reddened and bleary.
“What are you dreaming?” she said. “You’ve got a rise in your shorts.”
“Oh, Jesus.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my camera. It looked ready to shoot. I pressed a button and the telescoping lens retracted. “I must have rolled over and hit the ‘on’ switch.”
“Well, that’s no fun. I understand you had a busy night.”
“Some of us have to work,” I said.
“I put in a good morning, believe
me,” said Beth. “You forgot to tell me about food for two at Hammond’s house.”
“We’ve been through that.”
“Well, I forgot to tell you something,” she said. “We reviewed the stolen hard drive. It held a half dozen porn clips, amateur but close to slick. They all had two females doing each other, and they were shot on several occasions in Hammond’s home.”
A barrage of possibilities zipped through my mind: Mikey and Sally; Honey Weiss and Alyssa; Mikey and Honey. “There’s your strong motive for stealing that drive,” I said. “Jerry’s murder may have been unplanned.”
“If someone regretted their acting career, exactly,” said Beth. “And one other factor came into it. That was Carmen Sosa on the phone, the call I got as you left to meet Bobbi at Mangia Mangia. Your young friend, Maria Rolley, is quite the sleuth. She was upset that Russ Hernandez was a murder suspect. She liked him because he called her ‘Princess,’ and liked Jason because he loaned her a comedy DVD. She told her mother that, if anyone was a killer, it was probably a girl named Brandi.”
“Jesus, yes,” I said. “Two girls were living with the boys on Elizabeth Street, or else the boys moved into their place. The other was named Cally. Were they budding actresses?”
“Part-time. Cally worked in a pizza kitchen, but quit four days ago. Now both girls are guests of the county. Hernandez is still in trouble, but not for murder. He’ll get off with probation. And Maria is much richer now. I spoke with the man who offered the $25,000 reward. He’s going to open a college pre-pay account in her name. Do you want me to warm your sandwich?”
“A sexy response comes to mind,” I said, “but I doubt I could fulfill my offer. Yes, I would love a sandwich.”
I took my time getting up and was still in the bedroom when the doorbell rang. Beth told the visitor to come in. I plodded my way to the front room to find Beth and Bobbi Lewis staring at me.
“I survived machine gun fire and a hit-and run,” I said. “Now I’m going to die by visual daggers.”
That got a laugh, and I detected mischief in their eyes.
“We’re about to take inter-agency cooperation to new levels,” said Bobbi.
“I didn’t wake up?”
“It’s not a dream,” said Beth. “When I reviewed Hammond’s sex videos this morning, I found a dozen files on the hard drive with odd names. They weren’t numbered like the others. The first one I checked showed Alyssa looking unhappy but stripping down to her panties. It appears Cecil Colding has been secretly photographing his employees, selling videos to Jerry’s gang of horny old men here in town. So… the city has the evidence and the grocery’s in the county. Detective Lewis had to secure the search warrant. We’re going to pay Cecil a social call.”
“Um, look…” I said to Bobbi.
“Don’t even start,” she said. “Marv Fixler will be an easy one to get over, and I brought this on myself. Also, I heard from a headhunter today. I’m in line to become a detective in Pinellas County, up in St. Pete. I’ll find out next Tuesday, but it looks good. You and I would have had to deal with that fact, but… we don’t. I’m glad you two are happy.”
Bobbi turned and walked outside.
Beth gave me a bewildered look and blew me a kiss.
“If it gets weird,” I said, “please don’t go solo. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“At work, I’m a team player.” She touched one index finger to her hip and made the sizzling sound with her mouth. “I’m a hero only with you, dear.”
ALSO BY TOM CORCORAN
The Alex Rutledge Series
The Mango Opera
Gumbo Limbo
Bone Island Mambo
Octopus Alibi
Air Dance Iguana
Jimmy Buffett, The Key West Years
Key West in Black and White
Key West Point of View
(A 400 Photo DVD)
with soundtrack by
John Frinzi and
John Patti
www.tomcorcoran.net
