Key West Connection

by Randy Wayne White

  “Get out of here, Lenze.”

  “What?”

  “Get the hell out of my sight.”

  “MacMorgan, I came here to get a statement, and I’m going to get it. If that means arresting you, I’ll do it.”

  So I gave him a statement, complete with information about the planned cocaine pickup off Middle Sambo Reef. And he wrote and poked at his glasses, looking at me with contempt all the while. And as we talked, I knew that Lisa-lee Johnson and her husband were motoring north, taking any hopes of seeing Benjamin Ellsworth behind bars with them.

  They cleared Ellsworth and released him on Tuesday, on the same day we buried Billy Mack; the same day my world exploded.

  I got the word from a friend of mine at the Key West sheriff’s department; a good man, Rigaberto Herrera. Inspector Rigaberto Herrera. One of the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who came to the United States when Castro and Khrushchev took control of that island paradise ninety miles to the south. One of the many who refused to become a part of the welfare roll; one of the many who were too proud to allow their poverty to reduce them to drinking wine and dancing island dances in a ghetto. He had lost his homeland but, like so many other Cubanos, he hadn’t lost his dignity. He went to work. And he worked hard. He learned the language. He powered his way to a bachelor’s degree in criminology in three highly concentrated years, going to class and studying days, working at a restaurant nights. He not only didn’t seek government aid, he refused it. No bitching about the tough life that was his, no moaning that the soft brown color of his skin made it impossible for him to succeed without financial assistance. He moved up quick in the sheriff’s department. And he was still moving.

  He approached me just before Billy’s funeral, giving me a quick embrace.

  “I’m sorry about your friend, amigo. I know how close you two were.”

  “He would have wanted you to come, Rigaberto. I’m glad to see you.”

  We stood in the icy air conditioning of the funeralhome lobby. The sickly-sweet smell of refrigerated flowers was everywhere. Organ music played in the next room. What an absurd custom, funerals. How I wished, then, that I had had the nerve to steal poor Billy away, wrap him in nice white canvas, weight him down, and roll him over somewhere in the Gulf Stream. He would have liked that. He would have liked it a lot more than the somber pomp of the great American sendoff; expensive platitudes and bullshit coffin niceties that only add more pain to the already painful human condition.

  “I need to speak with you a moment, Dusky. Alone.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Maybe we could take a little walk. We’ve got a few minutes before the services start.”

  I peeked into the next room. Janet, in her darkest dress, and little blond Ernest and Honor sat on the folding chairs before the closed casket, not crying, not looking, just lost and filled with soft horror. I felt so, so sorry for them all.

  “Sure,” I said. “But let’s make it quick.”

  We walked to the corner, turning north on Duval Street. The panhandlers and street freaks were already on the move, filling old Key West and the warm August morning with a strange sense of desperation.

  “So what’s up?”

  Rigaberto hesitated—unusual, for he is one of the toughest, most straightforward people I know.

  He toyed with his black mustache nervously.

  “I’m not sure how to start,” he said. “I’m not even sure what or how much to tell you.”

  “What the hell is it, Rigaberto?”

  He stopped and turned toward me. Behind him there was a wide gray-and-green banyan tree, air shoots hanging down like bars. “There’s something strange going on, Dusky. Something odd about the whole short investigation into that Ellsworth character.”

  “You heard my side of the story?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. And I believe you—and not just because you’re a good friend. My cop sense tells me it’s true. But Lenze and the rest of those federal characters had their investigation over and him out of town so fast that it made my head spin.”

  “So they did release him?”

  “Yeah. It was the same way the CIA boys used to operate when one of their people got messed up in something local. Wham-bang, thank you ma’am. Everything nice and neat, no loose ends.”

  “Do the other people down at your office smell something sour?”

  “Yo lo creo!” He smiled. “Sorry about the Spanish—when I get excited, or really pissed off, my heritage takes over.”

  “So what are you now?”

  “Pissed off. My boss wants to get permission to start an investigation of our own. The trouble there is you don’t know how high you have to go before you know it’s safe to ask. Where does the stink end? With Lenze? I doubt it. There are some big boys behind this one. We don’t go high enough, ask the wrong one, and that’s the end of it. Permission denied.”

  “Lenze said he couldn’t find my eyewitnesses, the Johnsons.”

  Rigaberto chuckled derisively. “It would have taken me—or any other competent cop—probably just a day. It all stinks, Dusky. The whole business stinks.”

  “What about the cocaine pickup Friday? Are you going to have some people out there?”

  “We’ve been told hands off. Strictly a federal project. They say we’re letting too great a percentage of the drugs get past us. And God knows it’s true. But with our limited staff, with the amount of drug running going on—well, maybe we do need help. I don’t know. But not that kind of help.” He shrugged. “I just wanted you to know we weren’t just going to let it drop. You’ve got some supporters. You believe me?”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. Rigaberto Herrera: five-eight, five-nine, maybe; 160 pounds, dripping wet. But as tough and as smart as they come. “I believe you, amigo.” We turned and walked back toward the funeral home. “How’s the wife and kids?”

  “Rigaberto Jr. hit two home runs night before last against Fort Myers. They say he has a shot at the pros.”

  When we got to the funeral home, he took my arm, stopping me. “Look, Dusky, I’m going to tell you something you probably already know. They might be after you, now. You killed two of their boys, and they don’t let that sort of shit go unpunished.”

  “I can take care of myself, inspector.”

  I saw a little flash of anger flare in his dark eyes. “Oh, sure you can. It would take four guys with automatics, and you’d have to be unarmed, and they’d still have to be damn lucky—I know all that crap, MacMorgan. But what about them?” He motioned toward the funeral home. “What about Janet and the kids?”

  “I can take care of them, too.”

  “Bullshit!” His eyes softened. “Listen, we’re friends, Dusky. You helped me when the rest of the gringos looked upon us Cubans as just more darkies asking for the welfare dole. Now I’m trying to help you. Let me. I’m going to assign a man to keep an eye on your house. Nothing obvious. Starting tomorrow, say. Keep him on it for a couple of weeks. No harm in that, is there?”

  I sighed, smiled. “Okay, Rigaberto. You’re right and I’m wrong. Send your man. I appreciate it. I really do, amigo.”

  So we put Billy Mack into the ground; buried him in the old Key West cemetery shoulder to shoulder with three hundred years of oceangoing, boat-building, rum-running, gun-running, gamefishing Key Westers. Not really in the ground. Atop the ground; cemented into a crypt, above the limestone base which is the accumulative skeleton of a million years of sea creatures. Life stacked upon life, death stacked upon death. How we do go around and around.

  When the services were over, Janet had the good sense to leave me alone there in the cemetery. She reached up, hugged me, tears in her blue eyes.

  “Walk home, if you like,” she had said. “Stop down by the docks, take your boat out, have a couple of beers. You’ll feel better, hon.”

  “Thanks, Jan.”

  “You want me to keep dinner hot?”

  “Naw. Be home about dark, probably.”

  Erne
st and Honor clung close to my legs, both already thigh-high, blond hair as fine as spun glass. They seemed sobered by the dark atmosphere of the cemetery.

  Honor, the introspective one, surveyed the rows of tombs like a wizened old philosopher. “We’re all gonna be here someday, aren’t we, Daddy?”

  “Maybe, Honnie, maybe.”

  Ernest reddened, tears starting to stream down his face for the first time all day. “I’m gonna get those guys, Daddy! Those guys that killed Uncle Billy—I’m gonna beat them all up! I’m gonna . . . gonna kick their asses!”

  I swept him up and held him close. “Now, now, Ernie, Uncle Billy wouldn’t like you cussing like that.”

  “Well, I am!”

  Funny, brave little man. Janet and I often kidded that the hospital had somehow gotten their names reversed. Honor would be the observer, the artist; Ernest would be the knightly one, the guy you could knock down and knock down, but who would still keep on battling.

  As Janet and the boys started to leave, I heard myself call her name. She turned around, surprised as I.

  “What, Dusky?”

  “I . . . I . . . guess I just wanted to say that I love you, Janet. Love you more than anything. Always.”

  She looked at me with the fondness only people who really love each other know.

  “And you’re the best thing that ever happened to me, Dusky. Ever.”

  So they left me there with the remains of my best friend.

  “I got them, Billy Mack. I killed two of them. But it didn’t bring you back, goddammit. Nothing will ever bring you back.”

  So what do you do?

  Walk the August streets with hands in pockets, whistle an aimless tune. Smile at the little Key West children, nod politely at the dying elderly, knowing that each and every one of us is being sucked down by the whirl of life, being flushed toward the vacuum. Buy a Herald to see what’s up with the rest of the world.

  Dark thoughts on a bright tropical day.

  Iranians on the rampage, Haitians fleeing, darkskinned people angry at the white-skinned; drunken driver kills four more innocent, no more gas, and the price of gold is going crazy. I watched a big herring gull soar above Old Town, bank toward the sun, and burst into white flame. The little things stick with you, the beautiful little things. Golden gulls and pretty children and polite old people. The screams of the newspapers disappear forever when you wrap the fish and take out the garbage.

  Walk toward the docks, through the little park. Kids on playground equipment, new mothers with fresh faces and fresh hopes. Wink a secret wink at a stray dog and show off for the kids.

  “See how that big man swung on the bar, Mommy? Did you see him swing up and do the double backflip? How’d he do that, Mommy? Huh?”

  Once I got to the Sniper, I cracked a cold Hatuey and drank it with some haste. And then I opened another, sipping at it while I oiled reels, made new leaders, spliced fresh line to old. Sweat began to roll off my nose, the hot sun feeling good. I finished the beer, went below, and changed into a pair of khaki shorts. Few things feel as good on a hot day as changing from funeral suit to shorts. So, for lack of anything else to do, I fired up the twin GMCs, feeling the good muffled rumble move through my body, and headed Sniper out Key West Bight, picked up Marker 29, and ran her full-bore out Man of War Harbor, wind in my face on the fly bridge, green roll of sea beneath.

  Progressively, I felt better. We all die. And life goes on. Always. No matter what.

  Back in Key West, I treated myself to black beans, yellow rice, and the best fried yellowtail on earth at El Cacique. I overtipped the pretty young waitress, Alicia, and she winked a pretty dark eye, knowing that flirting with me was safe, that I had a wife I loved back home. So I walked a Crystal beer down to the docks. It was nearly sunset, and the street freaks and drugheads were there, watching that great orange ball melt into the turquoise distance. Conga drums and the cry of the conch-salad man, smell of open sea and frangipani and jasmine; exotic Key West. I wondered what Papa would have thought about all the changes on the island, and I remembered the last time I had seen him. It was my final winter with the circus, the winter before that August when the only family I had ever known was murdered. He sought me out that last time. He was about to leave for Cuba. It was March. He saw that our circus was in town. He stopped by to say hello, and asked me to arrange a meeting with our lion tamer. I did; he was delighted. He loved the big cats. I walked him to the cages; that big gray-bearded man now looking older and sadder than I could ever remember. He watched a big male tiger we had called Captain; watched him pace his nervous figure eights within the confines of that narrow cage. He watched for a long time, his breath coming soft and shallow, and then he turned to me.

  “Right there, old-timer—that’s how I feel. Trapped.”

  “How trapped, Papa?”

  He smacked himself on the chest. “In here. I’m trapped inside this old carcass of mine. Things starting to go bad. Eyes giving out—and I used to have fine eyes. Almost as fine as my father’s. Legs going, heart going. And I feel trapped in here, too.” He tapped himself on the forehead. “Nothing worse than that sort of trapped.”

  Slowly, Papa stuck his hand inside the cage to the big cat. It struck me that I should have jerked him away—but I could never have done that. Not to him. The indignity would have been worse than losing a hand. The cat stopped, yellow eyes glowing, sniffed the hand, and then moved away, strangely uninterested.

  Papa laughed. “He knows, old-timer. Only people like him and me—and you; you, too—will ever truly appreciate the horror of that kind of trapped.”

  He seemed strange that night; distant. Before we parted, he downed his seventh or eighth beer, looked steadily at me, his eyes seeming to glow as the cat’s eyes had glowed.

  “I want you to do some things for me, old-timer.”

  “Sure!” I was on about my fourth beer and feeling fine. I would have done anything for him.

  “First of all, I want you to stay out of the writing business. Damn rough stuff. Does things to you.”

  “No problem there.”

  “And I want you to think about becoming a fighter. You’d be one of the greatest of this century—and I’ve seen ’em all. You’re like a big cat on that trap—too fast and too strong to be believed. And what are you? Seventeen, eighteen?”

  “Almost twenty,” I lied. I wasn’t quite sixteen yet.

  He chuckled. “Sure, old-timer, sure. And I want you to do one other thing, okay?”

  “Name it.”

  “If you can, come back to Key West. Take care of it. Too many jerks here now since they built that highway. This place is going to need some taking care of.”

  I had looked out across the black water, beyond Kingfish Shoals, toward the Tortugas. “I will, Papa. I mean it. I really will.”

  Two or three years later I read that Papa had finally escaped; left his disintegrating cage in his own private way.

  So that’s what I was thinking about when I heard the explosion. A sharp crack and rumble that made the island vibrate. The dopeheads loved it.

  Far out!

  It’s the Japs, man, the Japs.

  Almost eight-thirty p.m. by my Rolex. There was an odd roaring in my ears. And then I was running; running with a strange alien sob escaping from my lips. Because I knew. I knew without knowing. I ran for my life; the life they had just extinguished.

  Sirens. Pulsing blue lights. I saw the remains of our old Chevy; blue splinters and twisted metal. And then Rigaberto was in front of me, trying to hold me back. He was crying; bawling like a child. And then everyone was trying to hold me back. But I had to save them. Had to help them. I was the invincible one, the unbeatable one, and only I could bring them back.

  I broke through. And then wished I hadn’t.

  “They’re gone, Dusky . . . Janet, the boys, gone . . . ” It was Rigaberto, crying, still trying to turn me away.

  “No . . . ”

  “I had a hunch . . . was going to w
atch myself tonight . . . too late, too goddam late . . . waved goodbye at me before she started the car. . . . ”

  “No. . . . ”

  A flower-scented evening in the tropics, and I stared on as if from above; as if soaring among the cold, cold stars and the dark chaos of mindless universe: my loves lay scattered like broken toys. . . .

  VI

  The cocaine boat lay anchored off Middle Sambo Reef, ghostly in the pale August moonlight. I waited for the pickup vessel to arrive, and watched, too, for any form of law-enforcement surveillance.

  There was none.

  I had left Key West at midnight in the stocky little Boston Whaler: just over thirteen feet of rugged, take-any-sea boat, powered with a fifty-horsepower Johnson. In a pinch, she’d do forty. I had powered five miles across the slow roll of frosted night sea, then broke out the oars and rowed the remaining mile to the lee side of the reef. The cocaine boat arrived about an hour later, noiselessly, showing no running lights. I breathed in the fresh night air; the sweet south wind blowing across from Cuba. Finally, something seemed real. After three blurry, hellish days of gauzy disbelief, nauseating guilt, and, finally, awful, awful realization, this, at least, seemed real.

  I had gone through the funeral like a zombie. I spoke to no one, answered no one, refused to acknowledge condolences.

  Former film star murdered!

  It brought the newspaper ghouls on the run.

  One beefy reporter approached after the funeral. Very demanding, very pushy. He said he’d been one of Janet’s best friends before she “left the business.” I owed him a statement. Some good quotes. Was I mixed up in drug running? How was she involved? Had she been hooked on something?

  He watched me, a perplexed look on his face, when I started to smile. I reached into my pants pockets. It wasn’t there. I finally located the little tin of snuff in my coat. There were a lot of people around. Curiosity seekers. The pretty actress and her two little boys had been blown to bits. My, my, what a shame. Any celebrities around that might give an autograph? What about that big blond guy—hadn’t he starred with her in a film? No, that was the husband; the guy who had ruined her career and, finally, her life. The beefy newspaper reporter watched me slip the Copenhagen into my cheek.