by Matt Lincoln
“What brought you over here, then?” I asked, noting his almost bitter tone. Clearly, he was not a fan of a lot of the people who moved to or frequented his adopted home.
“It’s quieter,” he said with a sigh and a shrug. “I like that much.”
“You can say that again,” Holm said, raising his glass to the guy. “I don’t know about you, but I love it here. Away from the hustle and bustle.”
“Thinking of an early retirement?” the guy asked, arching an eyebrow in his direction. “You’ll need to pay up if you are.”
“Oh, I have no illusions about that,” Holm chuckled, holding out his hand to the man. “I’m Robbie, and this is my buddy, Ethan.”
The bartender stared at his hand for a moment, then seemed to make a decision and begrudgingly took it. He must have decided that we weren’t quite as annoying as most of the people who came through the little bar on a daily basis.
“Nick,” he grunted, releasing Holm’s hand quickly and turning back to his work. “What brings you guys down here? You don’t exactly strike me as spring breakers or retirees on vacation from the nursing home.”
“No, I would guess not,” I chuckled, exchanging a glance with Holm. “We’re here with a couple of co-workers on a company-sponsored vacation. Perk for our team getting the most sales last year.”
“That’s pretty nice,” the bartender, Nick, said, and he seemed to mean it. “I don’t hear about stuff like that all that often.”
“Yeah, well, you could say our line of work is pretty cutthroat,” I laughed. “They have to offer some perks to bulk up the competition. And we thrive on it, anyway.”
I exchanged another look with Holm and could tell that he was on the verge of laughing at this. It wasn’t all that far from the truth, after all. It also just wasn’t entirely true. This wasn’t a vacation, though it was company-sponsored, in a way, if the company was the United States government.
“Sounds nice, but I don’t know how much I would love to take a vacation with a bunch of my coworkers,” Nick said with a low laugh, and both Holm and I laughed at that, as well.
“Well, you could say that we’re a pretty tight bunch,” Holm chuckled. “And from a certain point of view, aren’t you always on vacation with your coworkers, working in a place like this one?”
Holm spread his arms wide to illustrate his point.
“I don’t know about that,” Nick chuckled, his voice coming out low and gravelly. “I think I could use a vacation on top of that vacation now and then.”
“You probably get to know people pretty well in a small place like this,” I said, shifting the conversation closer to where I hoped it would get us somewhere. “We went out on a sailboat tour with a woman the other day who said as much, that she pretty much knows everybody who lives or works on the island.”
“That must’ve been Penny,” Nick said, his face lifting a bit at this. “She’s a good one, been here for about five years, I’d say? Also another former Key Wester like myself.”
“Yes, I think that was her name,” I said with a smile. “Which just goes to prove my point. In a small community like this one, you probably get to know one another pretty well.”
“I can’t say I don’t like that idea,” Holm added with a wink. “I could get used to knowing all my neighbors. A far cry from what you get up at home in Miami.”
“True enough,” Nick chuckled. “Though there are some detriments as well as benefits.”
“How so?” I asked, raising my eyebrows at him. “Get a lot of neighbors you don’t like?”
“You could say that,” he chuckled again. “Like I was saying before, some of these guys who buy these giant houses on the south shore, I don’t even know what to say about them, man.”
“Why don’t you try me?” I laughed, taking a long swig from my drink. “Sounds like you have something to say.”
“Okay, think of it this way,” the bartender said, abandoning the glassware he was working on and propping his elbows up on the bar. “There were a couple of guys who moved in a few months ago, and all of a sudden, no one’s allowed to walk on their beach anymore. That area used to be public property for all of us to enjoy, but these guys buy it up, and we don’t get to use it at all. On top of that, these guys start renting their property out to these idiots who keep trashing the beach, which means that trash blows down to other areas, which is a bad look for everyone. And what do the owners say when someone approaches them about? Tough luck. That’s all they’ve got to say.”
“Sounds frustrating,” I said honestly.
“You could say that again,” Nick said, shaking his head as he turned his attention back to the glassware. “And for whatever reason, the tourists who are always using these properties almost never leave the house! It’s weird. They don’t funnel a lot of money into the local economy. They just shack up there, trash the beach, and give us nothing to show for it when all is said and done.”
“That sounds kind of odd,” I said, piecing this together with some things Penny had told me already. “They don’t sound like traditional tourists, do they?”
“You’d be surprised what some of these spring breakers are like,” Nick said, giving a low, dark laugh. “But at least those kids buy a lot of beer. So no, these guys aren’t what I would call traditional tourists. But now I’m just ranting, which is probably not what you were looking to hear on your hard-earned vacation in this mysterious cut-throat business of yours.”
“Humor me,” Holm said, smiling at the guy and finishing off the last of his drink. “I’m a fan of stories, even if it’s in the form of a rant. So how about a refill and a story?”
“Sure thing, if you insist,” Nick chuckled, taking the glass from Holm and pouring him another. Then, motioning to my own half-empty glass, “Want me to top you off?”
“Sure, though no promises I’ll finish it,” I said, smiling at him as I pushed the glass across the bar. “I’m afraid I don’t slog them down quite as quickly as my friend, here.”
“Sounds like that would be difficult to do,” Nick said, glancing over at Holm.
It was true enough. The drink was small, but we hadn’t been there all that long, anyway. I took it as a sign that internally, my partner was almost as stressed as Muñoz was. He was just showing it differently. For that matter, so was I.
The bartender topped up my drink and then continued.
“So, like I was saying, over the past couple of months, these strange tourists started showing up, mostly going to these two vacation homes that just sold on the south side of the beach,” he said, throwing the bar rag he’d been using to wipe down the glassware over his shoulder and leaning against the bar again after putting away the alcohol. “They walk around town sometimes, but they don’t strike me as the usual tourist types that show up around here.”
“It’s interesting you say that,” I said carefully. “That sailor woman—was her name Penny?—she mentioned something similar, though she didn’t say anything about these vacation homes.”
“Did she really?” Nick asked, raising his eyebrows and scratching his head.
“Does that surprise you?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know, there’s kind of a lazy atmosphere around here,” the bartender said with a shrug, pulling on the end of his scruffy black beard. “I’ve never got the sense that even the locals are the most observant types. I’m a bartender, so I’m kind of trained that way. Then again, I guess Penny was military, so that’s kind of a tool of her trade, too. For different reasons, though.”
“That makes sense,” I said with a nod. “She didn’t say she was ex-military, I don’t think.” Now that I thought of it, I guess bartenders did have to have a certain set of skills, as well. Maybe that was why someone like Mike took to the job so well.
“So, you haven’t talked about your concerns with the other locals at all?” Holm asked casually. “Seems like in a small place like this, the news would travel fast.”
“You would think, would
n’t you?” Nick said, giving a sarcastic laugh. “But no, that lazy atmosphere actually seeps in more than you would think. I know a lot of small towns have a reputation for everybody knowing everybody’s business, but we’re not really like that here. Sure, you notice things if you’re paying attention, but most people aren’t paying attention. They’re too busy drinking mimosas on the beach for that, not that I blame them for it, mind you. I wish I could just do that all day long.”
“No, I don’t suppose you could blame anyone for that,” Holm chuckled.
“So, no one cares about the trash on the beach?” I asked. “Except you, that is?”
“Eh, as you’ve probably noticed, I’m a bit of a curmudgeon,” he said with a shrug. “I’m sure someone else cares—the people who live in the neighboring houses, no doubt—but news travels painfully slowly around here for the size of the island.”
“At least you’re a self-aware curmudgeon, then,” I chuckled, raising my glass to him.
“Sounds like maybe you could retire down here, after all, my friend,” Holm joked, nudging me in the shoulder playfully. “There are other people like you, after all.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back to the bartender, though I smiled in my partner’s direction.
“The sailor woman said these people don’t look like traditional tourists,” I reiterated. “So how do they look to you? I’m interested to hear your perspective.”
“You’re a curious pair, aren’t you?” the bartender asked, arching an eyebrow at me, though he answered anyway. “I’d say that most of the folks who come down here are college kids on spring or winter break, families, and older retired folks. These guys… well, that’s just it. They’re big groups of guys who look to be in their thirties or forties, about our age. Not exactly what you’d expect. And then they shack up in these enormous vacation houses and trash the place, without showing their faces for days afterward.”
“They American?” I asked, and the bartender raised his eyebrows at me again, so I quickly clarified. “The sailor woman said something about them being from neighboring islands.”
“Ah, she is observant, isn’t she?” the guy asked with a half-grin. “Yeah, I’d say a fair number of them seem to be from the Caribbean islands, though a bunch of ‘em are American, too. There was this one guy in here from New Orleans a while back. He was in one of the first groups that caught my notice. He was a weird one, bragging about some old pirate ship when he was drunk off his ass in here one night.”
I blinked at this, though Nick didn’t seem to think much of it, grabbing the rag again and resuming his work on the glassware. I stared, almost open-mouthed, over at Holm.
“Uh, what did you say?” Holm asked, looking like he just might lose his own jaw to the floor, as well. “Something about an old pirate ship?”
Nick, focused on a particularly stubborn smudge on the side of a pint glass, didn’t seem to register our unusual reaction to this.
“Eh, he’s not the first person to go around here boasting about buried treasure,” the bartender said, shrugging again and rolling his eyes before finally giving up on the glass and setting it aside from the others. “Seems like there’s someone around here five times a month on some wild goose chase or other. I’ve seen it my whole life in the Keys; just because we’re islands, we’re ‘exotic,’ and kooks show up with a metal detector expecting to find some long lost gold. This guy was just particularly vocal about it.”
“Interesting,” I said carefully, trying not to take offense to the bartender’s reference to a certain subset of nautical enthusiasts as pie in the sky lunatics. “Did this guy say anything else to you? You said he was from New Orleans?”
“Oh, he didn’t say anything to me,” Nick chuckled, finishing off the last glass and slinging the bar rag over his shoulder again. “He was railing to his buddies about it, saying something about how he was gonna sell the ship to somebody back home who’d been obsessed with it for years. I don’t know, man, I didn’t believe a word of it.”
“No, I don’t suppose I would either,” I said, giving a nervous laugh.
“So, did you ever actually talk to any of these guys?” Holm asked. “You said they came into your bar at least once.”
“Yeah, they’ve come in a couple of times,” Nick sighed, shaking his head. “They do make it into town every once in a while. And one morning, on my run on the beach, I noticed some more trash floating down, and I just kind of lost it. I went up to the house and knocked on the door, ready to raise hell about the whole thing. The guy who answered didn’t seem to speak much English, though. Still managed to scream at him, though, if only to make myself feel better.”
I had to admit, I was getting some strong “get off my lawn” vibes from this bartender, though I didn’t fault him for it for a second.
“Interesting,” I said, nodding slowly. “Did he say anything? Did you get any idea what they were up to over there? It sounds like there’s a story there somewhere, too.”
Nick looked around, as if to make sure that no one else was listening, and then bit his lip and scrunched up his face as if he was trying to decide something. Finally, he leaned in close to Holm and me and muttered the answer to us in a low voice.
“To be honest with you, I got the sense they were involved in something fishy. Like selling drugs,” he said quietly.
“What gave you that impression?” I asked, exchanging another look with Holm and raising my eyebrows at the bartender.
“Well, I looked over his shoulder when he opened the door, and there were those little white lines on the coffee table next to some credit cards, and a couple of piles of cash,” Nick said, still keeping to his hushed tone so the other patrons wouldn’t hear, though his eyes were wide with excitement.
“Did you report this to the police?” Holm asked, a little sternly.
“Of course I did,” Nick said with a scoff and a disinterested shrug. “But what are they gonna do? They checked out the house, but the guys had cleared out by the time they got around to it. As I said, things move slowly down here, especially on a small island like this.”
I glanced back at my partner again. It was kind of odd that Muñoz hadn’t mentioned this, which meant that no one at the police station had likely mentioned it to her. If they had, she would’ve looked into this already.
“When was this?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the brusque man.
“I don’t know. Maybe six weeks ago?” Nick said, scratching the side of his beard as he tried to remember. “Which is just about a lifetime in these parts, mind you. I’d almost forgotten it ‘till you two came in and asked about things.”
“You hadn’t forgotten about these strange men, though,” I said simply.
“Out of sight, out of mind, most of the time,” Nick shrugged. “But when I do run into ‘em, especially that trash on the beach, man does my blood boil.”
“You never thought to pursue this further?” Holm asked, looking a little incredulous at this behavior. I had to admit that I was having a similar reaction, though to be fair, Nick didn’t seem unique in this respect out of the people we’d talked to on the island.
“Like I said,” Nick sighed, giving my partner a small smile. “We do things a bit differently around here. I know something like this probably seems like a reason to raise a fuss to you, and it probably is. But we all move in slow motion on the beach. Eventually, if you had something to do, you just forget all about it. Until someone brings it back up for you, that is. Now that you mention it, I might just head down to the station in the morning and try to talk to them about the problem again. The trash, if anything, is really starting to get out of hand.
“So it just all boils down to a kind of live and let live attitude,” I surmised, nodding slowly. “I guess I can respect that, even if I don’t understand it.”
“A far cry from some of the busybodies I hear about up north,” Holm said, shaking his head.
“Oh, don’t worry, we get ‘em down here,” Nick said,
flashing us each a mischievous half-grin. “They’re just tourists making our lives miserable because there’s a tiny smudge on the corner of their glass or a piece of lint in their rooms. They’re not locals.”
“Tell us how you really feel,” Holm chuckled, finishing off the last of his second drink.
“I don’t spare any details,” Nick said dryly, gathering up each of our glasses and hovering the liquor bottle over them. “One last top off?”
“Nah, we’ll call it a night,” I said, nodding to him in thanks.
“Big day tomorrow?” he asked as he put the glasses away for cleaning.
“You could say that,” I chuckled, pulling out my wallet and paying in cash, leaving a hefty tip. I also grabbed one of my business cards and handed it to the bartender.
“What’s this?” he asked, squinting down at it. “Military Border what’s-it?”
“We weren’t entirely honest,” I said quietly to him. “If you’re still thinking of coming down to the station tomorrow, please do. We’ll be there. And if you think of anything else, or see or hear anything else, just give me a call, okay? Keep this conversation between us and the police, though, if you don’t mind.”
“No-no problem,” the bartender stammered, clearly taken off guard.
Holm and I got up from our seats, pushed in the bar stools, and waved goodbye to the man. He was still staring at my business card when we exited the bar, scratching the side of his beard again.
We rode back up the elevator to our rooms in silence, then faltered before parting ways at our hotel room doors, which were right next to one another.
“That guy from New Orleans he overheard bragging about the old pirate ship,” Holm murmured, scrunching his brow together in deep thought. “You think it was Clifton Beck, don’t you?”
“I have no doubt in my mind,” I said darkly. “Though it’s a shame that he’s not here to tell us, for that reason and that reason alone.”
