Key Manatee

by Robert Tacoma

  Robert Tacoma

  Key Manatee

  Key Weird #4

  2007, EN

  Welcome to the land at the end of the road: Key West. A tropical island known for Margaritas, warm breezes, singing manatees, and surprises. One surprise awaits Taco Bob and a couple of friends just offshore. It’s quite a grisly discovery, and they soon find themselves getting unwanted attention from some very bad people. People who are not about to let anyone stop them from taking over Key West. Taco Bob and his friends could use some help. But due to government cutbacks and corruption there won’t be much help there. It starts to look like the fate of Key West may depend on a group of renegade enviromentalists led by ‘Shark’ Hunter, a man who fears little…except, maybe, little voodoo dolls.

  Table of contents

  1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24

  ∨ Key Manatee ∧

  One

  Consuelo said later maybe we should have just gotten out of there, left the body for the crabs. There would be times during the next few weeks I would tend to agree. But if we’d just left that day there’s no telling what might have happened to Key West.

  It all started out innocently enough, on yet another bright, beautiful day in the tropics. Close friend and local fishing guide Slip Hanson was at the controls of my refurbished old Wilbur cruiser as we trolled for dolphin fish in the deep blue waters off Key West. I’d just set my laptop down and leaned back in the fighting chair to enjoy the soothing murmur of the boat’s engine while keeping an eye on the trolling lines off the back of the boat. Time for a moment of reflection on just how good things were going for me. Not too long a moment though, since often about the time I figured I had life by the tail, the tail grew teeth.

  I’ve been around enough to get my share of life’s less appealing surprises. Things like locusts, floods, tornados, determined but inept career criminals, and cranky law enforcement personnel. But after a careful inventory of my current circumstances, I decided for sure I had things right this time.

  That’s when I heard a sound not unlike a snore from the control deck, followed immediately by the sound a moving thirty two foot fishing boat makes when coming into contact with something other than water.

  I jumped up for a look off the port side while a now wide-awake Slip checked the starboard. We’d run up on an offshore weedline with a big wad of branches and trash in it – the leftovers from a recent hurricane near-miss. Slip cut the engine and gave me a sheepish look and a shrug.

  “Oops.”

  “This the spot? You said floating weedlines with trash in ‘em tend to attract fish. This one seems to at least attract fishing boats.”

  Slip didn’t really get a chance to answer. The other member of the crew, the painfully attractive Consuelo, stomped out of the galley just then and dumped something over the side. Two angry blue eyes burned from under blond page-boy hair.

  “So much for the soufflé I worked on all morning! Slip, tell me you didn’t fall asleep again!”

  The poor fella was backed up against the bulkhead by a little over five foot of unmitigated fury welding a formidable-looking soufflé pan. Slip gave the ship’s cook a little shrug and a sorrowful look. Things were about to get ugly when line started screaming off one of the trolling reels. I came to Slip’s rescue, yet again.

  “Call for you, Slip! Line one!” Slip tipped his hat to the lady. “Excuse me, miss.”

  He leapt over to the bending rod and reel, and the fight was on. Slip commenced to alternate between grimacing and grinning.

  “I think we got ourselves a big Wahoo here, Taco!”

  Line was coming off the reel so fast it was starting to smoke. I hoped there was enough line on the reel, since we weren’t going to be chasing any fish with the boat stuck. But Slip did everything right while we yelled encouragement to the fish as well as the fisherman. Slip seemed to be making some headway when the line started peeling out again.

  “Stop, you fish!”

  He had his thumb on the smoking reel trying to slow the fish down. Consuelo threw her pan back in the galley and started reeling in the other line to get it clear when something hit that one too.

  “I got something, but it’s not very big!”

  Which is when what turned out to be a nearly thirty pound bull dolphin made his first run and Consuelo changed her mind about what she had.

  “Holy shit! It’s big now!”

  It took a blistered thumb, but Slip got his fish stopped and started working it back to the boat. Our petite cook was making un-ladylike grunting noises in the fighting chair now, working hard against her fish.

  “Look in the water, TB! What are those?”

  I looked over the far side where she was pointing with her elbow, and saw fish in the clear blue water.

  “Dolphin! Schoolies! You two stay busy, I’m on it!”

  I dropped a line over with a live bait, and hooked into the first of several nice school dolphin that would be finding their way into our icebox that day. I had to hand it to Slip. He’d said earlier he would put us on fish, and with us sitting up on the tangle of sea trash, he had, literally.

  The three of us were pretty well occupied working our fish, and it wasn’t until the wind shifted I noticed something smelled bad. I looked over at the man with the funny hat and the seriously bent fishing rod.

  “What is that gawd-awful smell, Slip?”

  “Looks like a dead pelican stuck in the branches over here on my side. That or a manatee.”

  Consuelo made a face.

  “I thought it was Slip that smelled!”

  A minute later, Consuelo gaffed her own fish and flipped it into the icebox. She had the long-handled gaff ready again and was leaning over the side of the boat. This gave her a good shot at Slip’s Wahoo, and us a good look at some shapely butt coming out the bottom of her cut-offs.

  “You guys aren’t looking at my ass are you?”

  She reached back and gave herself a little pat.

  “It’s a toss between looking at your ass or that dead pelican for me.”

  Slip was proud of that one, and Consuelo gave him the finger once quick before snagging his Wahoo and pulling the five-foot fish with the razor-sharp teeth into the boat in one motion. Slip was impressed.

  “Nice work, Consuelo!”

  My two grinning companions high-fived before getting the big fish in the box. I had my schoolie coming to the boat by then and Consuelo leaned over the side next to me with the gaff, ready.

  “Let’s see your fish, Taco! This sure is going to make up for those other trips!”

  No doubt. The other two trips since we’d gotten the old Wilbur cruiser fitted-out had been most notable for their lack of fish.

  “I thought we talked about you wearing a bit more clothes while we’re out here.”

  I was sounding like her father, which I surely wasn’t, but with Consuelo maybe twenty one, I was definitely old enough to be. She gave me a serious look for just a second, like she was reading me, then a wink as she gaffed my fish without taking her eyes from my face. I wish she wouldn’t do things like that.

  “Nice fish, Taco!”

  And it was. We were some happy campers pulling in fish. All the hard work we’d put into the old boat was a distant memory as we landed several more five to ten pound schoolie dolphin. Consuelo bounced around the cockpit in her shorts and bikini top, gaffing fish for us like she’d been doing it all her life. I wish I hadn’t said anything about her clothes, but she’d taken to having a crush on me a few weeks earlier when I’d helped her sisters find a missing friend. Since then she’d taken every opportunity to show me what was available. It was more than a little distracting at times.
>
  It’s not like there isn’t a fine person inside that gorgeous body, there certainly is, but I hadn’t allowed myself to be swayed by her charms for a couple of reasons. Besides the age thing, I was also already romantically involved with a woman named Mary Ann who lived in Orlando.

  “Slip, I think we pretty well got our fill of fish. Should be plenty for the smoker, and I know Consuelo’s sisters would be proud to take some off our hands. Maybe we should be seeing if we can get ourselves unstuck here.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir!”

  Slip gave me a sloppy salute and cranked the engine. I stowed tackle while Consuelo washed down the deck with buckets of seawater.

  “Have a seat mi Capitán. I’ll see if I can find you a cold one.”

  “Thanks Consuelo, that sounds like a mighty fine idea.” I eased on back into the very custom fighting chair. A barber’s chair in its former life, Slip had proudly come up with it one day. He’d traded out some stone crab claws with the fella at the used furniture place in Marathon.

  But before the lady who liked to refer to herself around the marina as my first mate and I could pop our Coronas, there was work to do.

  “Taco, you and Julia Child here need to use those boat poles, see if you can help get us unstuck.”

  We were full speed reverse, and not moving. Some pushing, grunting, and cussing finally got us loose, but it also kicked up the bad smell again.

  “Jesus wept, but that’s bad, Slip. You say it’s a bird or a manatee?”

  He cut the engines back and looked over that way.

  “It looks like a manatee all right, but this one’s wearing shoes.”

  ∨ Key Manatee ∧

  Two

  The dead guy turned out to be Jessy Brown, known to all as JB, and a candidate for mayor of Key West. He was dressed up in a manatee costume. Though I didn’t really know the man, I’d heard of the colorful musician turned politician. Actually, I kind of had him in mind when I came up with the Artie Mann character in my bestseller-in-progress, a coincidence I found a mite disconcerting. Though I’d been working on my book for only a few weeks I already had almost a full page finished. Actually, I wrote that the first day, then got stuck on despair.

  ♦

  The next to last time anyone saw Artie Mann alive, he was drunk, naked, and had just won the Florida Lottery.

  A gay street mime of notorious reputation, Artie was backstage at the annual Key West Queen for a Day Pageant when he found out his weekly ticket was worth 9 million big ones. In a state of shock from his sudden good fortune, he nearly decided to forgo the swimsuit competition, but after downing a celebratory bottle of rum in record time, decided instead to just forgo the swimsuit.

  The very last time anyone saw Artie alive was soon after sunrise the next morning. Actually, it was just Artie’s car that was spotted by a Cuban man netting mullet. The fisherman looked up just in time to see the convertible going off the open span of a drawbridge.

  Flocking from near and far the very next day, Artie’s suddenly numerous and deeply anguished relatives gathered to mourn the loss of Artie. When it was learned that all of Artie’s personal effects were accounted for, all except the winning lottery ticket, the despair

  ♦

  After delving into the depths of despair again, I finally came up with ‘unfathomable despair’ and called it a day. Time for a stretch and some reflecting on the coincidences of life.

  I decided the gay, lottery-winning character of my book didn’t really have much in common with the controversial mayoral candidate other than both owned convertibles, both drank a lot of rum, and both were very much mysteriously disappeared. That is, until were made our grisly discovery offshore.

  ♦

  “Man oh man, Taco, that sure was a grisly discovery we made yesterday.”

  The floor of my living room moved as Slip paced and I relaxed on my worn, yet comfortable yellow couch. I wondered about the movement and took a look out the window. A big cruiser coming into the marina had just come by my old houseboat the Sandy Bottomed Girl a little too close and a little too fast. Slip was acting anxious as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. He kept eyeing the phone on the wall.

  “Mind if I use the phone?”

  “Make it quick in case the police or Coast Guard want to call again with the same questions they spent three hours asking us out on the water yesterday.” I gave the man a look. “And be careful.”

  Slip’s the only person I know can misdial calling pizza delivery and get the governor’s wife’s cell phone instead. But that would be about par for the course for Slip. Man always seemed to have about the worse luck any fella could have with anything mechanical. Much of a good friend as he’s been since we met at the marina, I got to admit, part of being around the man is seeing what life’s going to throw at him next. Not that I was hurting for excitement. Since I’d been in Key West, it seemed like there was always something about to land in my lap when I least expected it.

  It was still early morning, and I’d been up late the night before, so when Slip took the phone up front I must have started nodding. I noticed a weight in my lap that quickly turned into a full-sized girl, complete with purring sounds and soft whispers.

  “Mmmm. Taco, you look so peaceful when you’re asleep.”

  Normally, I’m a bit more aware and harder to sneak up on, and it bothered me Consuelo was able to plant her shapely self on me so easily. It also bothered me I wasn’t getting as upset as I should have.

  “Miss, could you kindly extricate yourself from my personal space here?” This got me a frown. “And anyway, I wasn’t asleep. I was just resting my eyes.”

  “Uh, huh. You know who you remind me of? That movie guy, Clint Eastwood.”

  I tried to give my lap ornament a shove and a quick whack on the rear, but she was on her feet and across the room before I could get in a swing. There was a small book of crossword puzzles in my lap, one I hadn’t seen before.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  I’d been hooked on the sometimes aggravating, but decidedly vocabulary enhancing puzzles since my days of possum ranching in Texas. She looked up from inspecting one of the small statues I had on a top shelf in the lounge and gave a slow wink.

  “I’m a very resourceful person, sir. In case you hadn’t noticed.” She put the idol back on the shelf with the others. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about these. Is this gold? Sure looks like gold.”

  I said someone had told me they were called Chacmools, but before I could launch into that particular story, Slip slipped inside to put the phone back.

  “Hey, Taco, I got a – .” He noticed the idol inspector across the room and gave her a sideways look. “Oh, hey Blondie. How’s tricks?”

  “You got a what, Slip? Some secret you can’t tell the little girly about? Big shipment of penile implants you ordered for yourself on the internet?”

  By the way Slip was bowing up I could tell were this was going.

  “Could you two kindly take your cat fight out on the aft deck? Makes for less mess if I have to use a bucket of water to break it up.” They both stomped towards the door as I went back to my new book.

  “And thanks for the crosswords, Consuelo.” She lost the fire in her eyes long enough to give me a quick wink just as the phone rang. Slip turned at the door, but his feuding partner hopped across the room like a gazelle.

  “Captain Bob residence, First Mate Consuelo speaking!” A couple seconds later Consuelo made a terrible face and held the phone like it had turned into a dead rat.

  “It’s – her.” I caught the tossed phone with Consuelo making gagging sounds on her way out to join Slip.

  Mary Ann, calling from her place in Orlando, was none too happy about Consuelo answering the phone. It took a while to smooth things over before the love of my life got around to breaking the news – she had to help train someone new at work over the weekend. So much for our highly anticipated romantic rendezvous at the Hungry Mullet Bed and Breakf
ast in Key Largo. I tried to hide my disappointment as best I could while we talked about the lack of updates from the authorities on the grisly discovery. After a little more catching up it was decided we’d get together the following weekend come hell or high water.

  After we said our goodbyes, I put the phone back on the wall and got comfortable again on the trusty old yellow couch. I could see my fishing partners out on the deck were still in the name-calling and threatening stage, squared off like they were about to tear into one another. Slip was tall and thin like me and about the same age, but a hard life on the water made him look older. He also looked tough as nails, which he was. His snarling opponent, crouched and circling while dispatching an impressive stream of profanity, looked like your basic fresh-faced college co-ed, which she wasn’t.

  To the handful of tourists watching from a safe distance onshore at the marina, it must have looked like a pretty un-even fight about to go down, and it would be. I don’t doubt Slip would punch-out a girl if he had to, but there were stories about the fighting abilities of this particular young lady, so I couldn’t imagine he’d be foolish enough to let things come to blows. Especially since he was the one told me the stories.

  A good head taller, Slip bobbed and weaved in a classic boxing stance while Consuelo circled low, moving her clawed hands around like she was picking cotton, or disemboweling somebody. Her hands didn’t fit the rest of her. They were calloused and scarred.

  “Come on! Come on, Slip, you know you want to hit me! You know you want to hit the little girly!”

  Those two looked so fierce, I almost didn’t notice the cop car pull up beside my old pickup truck in the parking lot. I peeled myself from the couch for a breath of fresh air on the aft deck.

  The big lawman came up to the gawking tourists who had gathered to watch the fight, stopped, and looked over the situation. He gave his cop belt a quick adjustment then looked at the confused tourists again.

  “What’s going on here? What you people looking at?” He next looked toward my cohorts.