by Carl Hiaasen
“Then where’d he get the money, Madeline?”
She pawed at her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “It’s pretty fucked up,” she said.
“I need to know before I can help.”
“But you’re not even a real cop.”
Yancy gritted it out. “I’m on loan to another department, that’s all. Temporarily assigned. Now tell me the whole story.”
And Madeline was right. It was fucked up.
On the charter docks of South Florida there had evolved among a handful of unscrupulous captains a method of duping inept out-of-towners for extra money. The key prop in the scam was typically an Atlantic sailfish, caught on a previous trip and stored on ice in an aft hatch inaccessible to the paying clientele.
Once the boat was at sea, a mate first baited the outriggers and then the flat lines, which were trolled closer to the boat and often enhanced with a skirted plastic lure. Thus began a sporting day, with high hopes among the unsuspecting anglers. When the time was right, one of the mates would distract them with a clamorous false sighting of jumping porpoises or a cruising hammerhead shark, which the customers always pretended to see as they didn’t wish to be regarded as clueless rubes.
Binoculars were handed out and the anglers were directed to the bow of the ship in order to improve their view. At this juncture the mate would remove the dead sailfish from the cold hatch and covertly hook it to one of the flat lines. Once the jelly-eyed corpse was dropped in the water, the forward motion of the boat carried it back into the frothy wake.
A cry of “Fish on!” would go out, and one of the hapless sports—usually a hungover husband—would come lurching back to the cockpit, snatch the rod from the mate’s grasp and begin reeling like a madman. The boat’s towing of the limp billfish created enough natural drag to test the flabby muscles of most novices. Later they would brag to their pals back home that they’d whipped the sonofabitch in five minutes flat. As further testament to human vanity, no suspicions would be voiced over the odd fact that their trophy sailfish, a species renowned for its acrobatics, never once jumped out of the water.
At boatside, the mate would cap the charade by pretending to wrestle the prize into an unlocked fish box, where the entire party of numskulls could peek at it and snap pictures to their hearts’ content. The coup de grâce would occur back at dockside when the captain persuaded the lucky angler to have his catch mounted, later to be displayed on the paneled wall of his real estate office or perhaps in the family den. A tidy deposit would be forthcoming, divided by the captain and mates, and a few months later the client would receive via UPS an exquisite six-foot sailfish, painted cobalt blending to indigo and airbrushed with lateral dashes of silver and gold. The replica, manufactured by the taxidermist from a standard plaster cast, would be fixed in a lifelike leaping pose, its sharp bill aimed toward the clouds and its tall dorsal fin regally flared.
Of course by then the real sailfish had been recycled profitably and eventually dumped overboard, having decomposed to chum after five or six fake captures. It was a scam to be saved exclusively for the most witless of tourists, but it worked often enough to have been passed along over decades among a certain low-pirate class of sportfishing crews.
Charles Phinney didn’t learn of the trick from Captain Keith Fitzpatrick but, rather, from a stranger who’d approached him one evening at the Garrison Bight Marina while he was hosing down the Misty Momma IV. There was, however, a twist.
“It wasn’t a dead sailfish they wanted him to hook on the line,” Madeline told Yancy. “It was a dude’s cut-off arm!”
“Jesus.”
“I told Charlie it was the grossest thing I ever heard and he’d be crazy to do it. But he was gonna make three thousand cash.”
“Three grand?”
“I’m not shitting you,” said Madeline. “So he said okay.”
“And got paid?”
“Same day, in hundred-dollar bills. He made me swear not to tell anyone. He said they told him it was only a practical joke, no big deal. The arm came off a dead body from some mortician school.”
By now she was lapping a third vodka tonic. Yancy felt like having a stiff one, too, but he wanted to be able to remember every word. He’d write it all down as soon as he got home.
“The night before,” she said, “in Charlie’s apartment? We were so fucking nervous we got stoned out of our heads. I mean baked, okay? He had the … you know … in this big ice cooler, I’ll never forget—”
“Wait, Madeline, who gave Phinney the arm?”
“Someone brought it to the dock that same night, when he was alone on the boat. Anyway, the cooler—Charlie asks do I want to see the you-know-what and I said no freaking way, you asshole. But he takes the thing out, right? And it doesn’t look real but at the same time it’s too gross to be fake. And we both, I don’t know why, we just start laughing. He’s swingin’ the thing around like a baseball bat and I’ve got this half-calico kitty cat, Sheeba, all the fur on her back is stickin’ up. Charlie and I both just fell out, it seemed so damn funny. Sounds pretty fucking twisted, I guess, but it’s not like we put it up on YouTube or nothin’.”
“So it was really good pot,” Yancy said. Bonnie Witt’s reaction to the severed limb had been not so jolly, though, in retrospect, they hadn’t laughed very much as a couple. Again he asked: “Who brought the dead arm to Phinney?”
“Here’s the worst,” said Madeline. “We’re so trashed, Charlie grabs the middle finger on the hand, right? The bird finger? And he bends it up like this, so it looks like the dead dude is flippin’ us off! I ’bout peed my panties. But then he stuck the thing in the freezer and next morning it was all iced up, and he couldn’t bend the finger back ’cause he was afraid it would snap off. So that’s how it stayed when he took it on the Misty.”
“Captain Fitzpatrick didn’t know anything about this, right?”
“You kidding? He would have gaffed Charlie in the nut sack.”
She wanted another cigarette so Yancy followed her outside. He stood upwind and gulped the salty fresh air. The inside of Stoney’s smelled like fried sweat socks.
“Who else did Charlie tell about the arm?”
“Nobody but me,” Madeline said emphatically. “Soon as he sobered up he got semi-paranoid about it. But the money, you know, that was different. The night after he got paid he took me to Louie’s for dinner and bought a round for everyone at the bar, two hundred bucks.” She dragged hard and then flicked the butt into a rain puddle. “Nobody said he was Alvin Einstein.”
Yancy thought it was fortunate that Phinney and Madeline hadn’t pooled their genes. He said: “Who got Charlie to do this thing? Didn’t he mention the guy’s name?”
“Wasn’t a guy,” Madeline said. “It was a chick that brought him the cut-off arm, Charlie said. He didn’t know her name but she’s the one who paid him, too. A white chick in tight white jeans. Is that wild or what? Like she was on her way to the damn mall.”
Yancy patted her hand. “You need to get out of town.”
Nine
They didn’t call ahead, just showed up one evening at the door. Shark-gray suits, flat expressions. They told Simon Cox they needed to speak alone with Caitlin. Simon, who practically got a boner when he saw their federal shields, obediently disappeared into the small bedroom he used as a gym.
The interview only lasted twenty minutes—the agents could plainly see Caitlin wasn’t living like a Kardashian, or even like the daughter of a wealthy dead medical-supply executive. She was creeped out because they knew the humiliating balance of her checking account, down to the penny. They knew Simon’s car was paid off, and hers wasn’t. They knew the amount on her American Express card. They even knew about one of her rehabs.
And now they knew what her house looked like, all fourteen-hundred square feet. Lebron James had closets that were bigger.
“What’re you guys after?” she asked.
“Money,” said one of the agents.
“Dad d
idn’t pay his taxes again? That figures.”
“It’s more complicated than that. Did he ever discuss his business with you?”
“We weren’t speaking for a long time. So no is the answer.”
The other agent said, “Did he give you any instructions, in the event of his death?”
“What did I just say? The two of us weren’t talking. He didn’t even put me in his will is what I heard.”
“Looks like his wife gets everything,” the first agent said, “all twelve thousand dollars.”
Caitlin laughed in disbelief. “Twelve grand?”
The second agent said, “Now you understand our interest.”
“Dad had a shitload of money.”
“That’s our information, as well. However, the only American bank account with his name on it held twelve thousand and change when he passed away—basically enough for the funeral. So, we were hoping you might know what happened to the rest.”
Caitlin glared at the agents. “Eve’s the one you should be talking to about the money. Ask her if she killed my father, while you’re at it. Because she did! Don’t you guys do murders?”
“If you have hard evidence, you should call the police right away.”
“Done deal,” Caitlin declared. “I got a detective in the Keys working the case full-time. Yancy is his name.”
The FBI men showed no reaction, no interest.
One of them said: “We tried to interview Mrs. Stripling about your father’s finances, including his life insurance policy. She asked to be left alone.”
“And that’s what you did?” Caitlin asked incredulously.
“She’s not under subpoena, Mrs. Cox.”
“Good, then leave me alone, too!”
As soon as the agents were gone, Simon came out and asked Caitlin what they’d wanted. She told him it looked like Eve had ripped off her dad’s estate.
“Big surprise, right?” she said. “All Dad’s money is missing—who knows how much.”
“They’ll find it,” said Simon confidently. The feds were absolutely the best.
“He was a fool to marry that greedy whore.” Caitlin was still livid. “I hope they throw her ass in jail for a hundred years.”
“Did they leave a card?” Simon asked, meaning the agents. He was thinking he would ask them out for a beer. Bring along his résumé.
The phone rang and Caitlin picked it up. She looked surprised by the caller. Lowering her voice, she turned her back on Simon, which he didn’t appreciate.
The moment she hung up, he said, “Who was that, sweetheart?”
“You won’t believe it—my former stepmother, all sweet and friendly.”
“Eve?”
“Swear to God.” Caitlin wore an odd smile. “She wants to get together, just her and me. A girls’ day.”
“That’s messed up. What did you say?”
“I said, Are you paying?”
For once Yancy didn’t mind driving to Miami. Dr. Rosa Campesino had agreed to meet for lunch. On the Eighteen-Mile Stretch he got stuck behind a minivan with a CHOOSE LIFE bumper sticker.
“Choose the accelerator! How’s that for starters?” Yancy was shouting, pounding the horn.
He didn’t mind if people advertised their religious views on their cars, but those who did invariably were the slowest, most faint-hearted drivers. It was uncanny, and all road cops knew it to be true. If God was my co-pilot, Yancy once groused to Burton, I’d have the fucking pedal to the metal soon as I left the garage.
Rosa arrived in her morgue scrubs at the restaurant, and she looked fabulous.
“What happened? You’re so skinny,” she said. “I’ll order for both of us.”
They were seated at a café on Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The menu was promising, but the night before Yancy had dreamed about Stoney’s Crab Palace—mouse tracks on a Key lime tart.
“I’ve been fighting a stomach flu,” he said.
Undaunted, Rosa ordered them veal with penne pasta. She wore a fresh touch of lipstick but no other makeup, which Yancy found wildly beguiling. This he recognized as the onset of infatuation.
“Did you get fired? Tell the truth,” she said.
He felt his neck get hot. “It’s more like a probation.”
“No, I’ve been checking up. You’re quite the renegade, Andrew.” She was smiling, thank God. “I’ve heard of Sergeant Johnny Mendez, by the way. Not a good guy.”
“A congenital crook,” Yancy said. “Disgrace to the uniform, et cetera.”
“Still, you could have handled it better. Now, what happened down in the Keys?”
“That I’d rather not discuss.”
“Too bad,” Rosa said. “My life coach told me not to sleep with anybody who harbors a murky past.”
“What about a murky present?”
“I don’t really have a life coach, Andrew. However, I do believe in full disclosure.”
He coughed up the whole story with a facsimile of contrition. His crude assault on Dr. Clifford Witt didn’t seem to shock Rosa, but then again she was a coroner in an urban combat zone.
“Last week I did a post on a man who had a clarinet up his colon,” she reported. “That’s not what killed him, by the way. It was a single gunshot to the head from a jealous lover. She played the oboe.”
“Shakespeare was born too soon.”
“So you lost your detective job and now you’re inspecting restaurants for rat poop and bacteria. Not exactly a lateral career move.”
Yancy said, “I’m righting the ship, even as we speak.”
The pasta and veal arrived. It was delicious, but he backed off after a couple of bites. Rosa asked for an update on the severed arm, and he told her what he’d found out. She was intrigued by the dead-sailfish scam.
“That’s a classic,” she said.
“I’m thinking the wife and her boyfriend killed Stripling, or had him killed.”
“Before or after they sunk the boat?”
“Doesn’t matter. They chop off one arm and take the expensive wristwatch, but they leave the platinum wedding band as part of the act, so that Eve can make a show of identifying it later. Then they put the arm in the shallows off some secluded beach so the bonnet sharks can gnaw on it, purely for appearance.”
“How’d she pick this Phinney character to smuggle that nasty thing onto a boat?” Rosa asked.
“You hang around the docks, it’s not hard to find somebody who’d sell their own mother’s kidney for three thousand bucks. Once that tourist on the Misty reeled in Stripling’s arm, Eve was golden.”
“Until Phinney started blabbing about the money.”
Yancy nodded. “That’s why he got shot. It wasn’t a robbery. Hell, he’d already blown through most of the dough.”
“You said the shooter was on a moped? That’s like Bogotá in the old days.”
“Mopeds are all over Key West. This one was a cash rental on a stolen driver’s license—somebody hired by Eve, I’m betting. Or possibly it was the boyfriend himself who pulled the trigger.”
“Whose name you don’t know.”
“Hey, I’m just getting started.”
Rosa said, “Eat your lunch, Andrew. It’s sinful to waste good food. I thought you said the widow’s love hunk was in the Bahamas.”
“That’s what I was told. It’s a quick flight to Florida.”
“There must be a record of that. He’d have to clear Customs.”
“Only if he’s an upright, law-abiding citizen,” Yancy said. “A seaplane could fly in low and land anyplace. It’s risky, but so is murder.”
Because of the poor condition of Stripling’s arm, determining the precise date and time of his death was impossible. The crime had probably occurred when Immigration records showed Eve to be in Nassau. However, with access to a floatplane and an outlaw pilot, she could have flown straight to the Keys, killed her husband, staged the boat accident and been back in the Bahamas by nightfall.
“Super bold,” Rosa
said.
Yancy ordered a cup of coffee that was so strong it made his eyes water. For dessert Rosa had the tiramisu.
“So, you’re investigating this elaborate homicide in your leisure time? Off the reservation, as they say.” She was giving him an amused, sideways appraisal.
“I want my badge back, Rosa. If I can just nail down this case—”
“Are you kidding? It doesn’t work that way.”
“Maybe not in Miami, but Key West is small-time. I’m tight with the sheriff.”
“Oh, Andrew.”
He didn’t mention that he’d never before worked on an unsolved murder. During his time with the Miami police he’d been assigned to burglaries and the occasional armed robbery. In the Keys he’d been called to a total of three killings; all were domestic scenarios featuring on-scene confessions by impaired roommates.
“Now it’s your turn, Doctor,” Yancy said. “Tell me what led you to the cheery, life-affirming specialty of forensic pathology.”
“It was either that or trauma care. I prefer patients who hold still.”
“Plus you get to play cop, too.”
Rosa laughed. “Some days I do.”
She gave Yancy the short version of her biography: Born and raised in New Jersey; daughter of Cuban immigrants; undergrad at FSU, med school at the University of Miami; divorced, no kids, lived alone with a tank full of tropical fish. In the fall she would turn thirty-nine, and she planned to treat herself to a spa day at the Mandarin.
“Darkest secret?” Yancy asked.
Rosa thought for a moment. “Okay, this is dark. Once I made love on an autopsy table at the morgue.”
Yancy was overjoyed to picture the scene. “How do you top that?” he said.
“Late one night, me and this guy I was dating. Those rooms are really, really cold.”
“Your idea or his?”
“Mine,” Rosa admitted, blushing. “Mark—my friend—he got semi-freaked. I never saw him after that. He just stopped calling.”
“One of these days he’ll be out of therapy.”
“I love my job, but I’m pretty sure it’s screwing with my head.”
