Bone Island Mambo (12 page)

“Right you are.”

“A lot of people have gone bust on this island. You should pay attention to everything. Don’t rent to anyone selling socks or long-sleeved shirts or ice scrapers. If you make a fortune, you should think about tearing down your building in ten years. Be the Queen of Altruism. Plant mangroves, or some other protected species.”

“Donate the building to the Audubon Society?”

“Sure. A deduction. Make enough money to retire early, allow somebody else to return the land to its original state. What a concept.”

Matter-of-fact: “Yes, it is. I’ve enjoyed your company, Alex. I should come by more often. My boyfriend is surrounded by smarmy, suck-ass sycophants.”

Who taught her to talk, Spiro Agnew? “I wouldn’t know.”

“Do you want me to come back after I get my hair done?”

A nooner on a silver platter? Fool if I don’t, fool if I do. I said, “I’m sure that’s a bad idea.”

“He’s got a sense of humor, but he’s a wimp?”

I said, “I’ve been dating a fine woman for the past five months. I don’t want that to change.”

“I didn’t think that mattered in this town.”

“Let’s say my mother told me never to eat fish in a strange restaurant on a Monday.”

“That’s actually funny. I like it better than your first answer. Anyway, my proposition was conjecture. You passed the test. You’re not like the other ones. I swear, ten thousand slimeballs in this town.”

“I know.”

She looked me in the eye. “You know what?”

“The proposition, by your word, conjecture. By my word, horseshit.”

“How so?”

“Putting big money into a venture with few guarantees. You did it out of love. No other reason.”

“You’re not so fucking dumb yourself.”

My brass doorbell clanged. I walked to the porch. Anybody but a schoolteacher, a restaurateur, or . . .

Dexter Hayes, Jr., at the screen, wearing Ray-Bans. A phone in one hand, a manila five-by-seven envelope in the other. A yellow button-down shirt, olive trousers, the Reeboks he wore twenty-four hours earlier. And an expression of curiosity.

I said, “You just missed our analysis of your crime scene.”

Hayes’s pager beeped at him. He ignored it. He wasn’t lost for words so much as waiting for someone else to fill silence.

Heidi did it. “Gotta go,” she said. “Nice to see you, Mr. Hayes.” She came around me, hit the door handle, almost knocked the detective off the stoop.

“Have a nice day,” I said, for the second time in two days.

Hayes, still silent, moved backward so the young woman could leave. I stepped outside. Hayes extracted a photo from the envelope, turned, held it up so we could view it as we watched Heidi Norquist slip into her Jaguar.

It was my photograph of Heidi skating away from me on Caroline Street. “Perfect likeness,” said Dexter Hayes.

I said, “Damn near identical.”

Dexter Hayes, Jr., handed me a manila KWPD “Internal Use” packet. My exterior shots of Butler Dunwoody’s construction site.

“You could’ve stuck these in the mail.”

“What now,” he said. “I’m a delivery boy?”

“Okay,” I said. “I ran a stop sign on my bicycle this morning.”

He looked at me like I was fresh bird mess on his windshield.

“Or did you come to apologize and offer me back my job?”

He shook his head, checked out my porch, focused through the screens, eye-jumped plant to plant. “Even Ortega told me I was out of line yesterday. That fuckup’d have trouble noticing if somebody shit in his hat.”

A detective sorry for unprofessional conduct? That would make him unlike any Key West cop I’d ever known. He’d come for a different reason. The photos placed me at a crime scene prior to a body’s discovery. The photo of Heidi, and Hayes’s timely arrival, connected me to Dunwoody’s girlfriend before and after the body’s discovery. I needed to watch my step.

“I accept your apology,” I said. “I’d like an explanation.”

“I can’t get into the specifics of a murder investigation.”

I was being patronized. Or I was a suspect. I said, “Gotcha.”

He stepped back. “That look, Rutledge. I’ve seen contempt before.”

I didn’t doubt that. Racism aside, the man had grown up the son of Big Dex Hayes. Island attitudes—official and otherwise—regarding his father’s business pursuits had, with passing time, swung from amused tolerance to adamant reform. A “community leader” had been sent to jail. His son, Dexter Hayes, Jr., had taken crap I could never imagine.

“Don’t misread me. I’m thinking a cop might not have done his job.”

He bought a few seconds of time, rubbed his lip with his index finger knuckle. “How so?”

“That viewing gallery when I came to take pictures. Butler Dunwoody found the body. That’s no reason for him or his girlfriend to be hanging around for scene analysis. Not to mention the newspaper reporter and the department liaison officer.”

“Your girlfriend.”

“Right,” I said. “Teresa’s a spokesperson. She’s not a scene tech.”

“I expect she studied site analysis at the University of Florida. That’d be a three-hundred-level course.”

“And she probably aced it. I’m talking job description, not expertise.”

“Each of which, in your case, is in question.”

My job description had never been put in writing.

I said, “You got your criminology degree?”

“Same curriculum as Ms. Barga,” said Hayes. “A few years back.”

“And plenty of in-your-face experience on the dangerous streets?”

“That’s right. Up close and personal.”

“And I don’t know shit about what I’m doing. Is that
what you’re saying? Or was that just a bullshit act for the audience?”

Hayes breathed deeply, swelled his chest, began to expel air through his pursed lips. Buying time. ‘Tell me about procedures, Rutledge.”

“The Justice Department’s
National Guidelines for Death Investigation!
I’ve got a copy in my camera bag. I review it every ninety days. Scene entry and evaluation. Body documentation, jurisdiction, written docs—for medical history and scene exit. The recommended equipment list. I’ve checked out Polaroid’s Web site. I’ve read the forensic photo section of the Field Evidence Tech course outline from Cal State, Long Beach. I own way more than the minimum equipment. I maintain it for cleanliness, accuracy, and longevity. I’ve always got a supply of rubber gloves and shoe socks. I’ve also—”

“I don’t act for any damned audience, Rutledge. In your vast experience of judging bullshit, how did you see that tableau at the scene? Or maybe I should ask, How did you sniff out the scene? Smell like shit?”

It hadn’t smelled like that, which confirmed what we already knew—that the death had not happened there. “How did the murderer gain access to the construction site, Hayes? If there wasn’t full-time security, I’d have to guess the perimeter was locked.”

“You bet,” he said. “That’s good thinking. You paid attention both times you were over there.”

“What’s the good answer?”

“The victim’s own keys. He was the foreman.”

Hayes had worked this back around to my presence at the site, my presumed connection to Heidi. “Tell me about these photos.” He pointed at the envelope in my hand. “Do these connect you to a murder, or do we have a coincidence?”

“I’ve been taking pictures for years. Keys people, buildings, cars, signs, boats, bikes. Should I be grateful you’re not holding a Miranda crib card?”

Disbelief with a touch of disgust in Hayes’s eyes. I couldn’t blame him.

“This beeper’ll page backup, if you feel slighted.”

“Don’t ask me why,” I said. “I’ve saved them all. I’ve got shots of old city hall, when they renovated it. I’ve got Dorothy Raymer walking her German shepherd past the cupola when it was sitting in the middle of Ann Street I’ve got one of Love-22 on top of his red-white-and-blue bus at Mallory Square, at sunset, handing out twenty-two-dollar bills. The ones the feds hassled him about. There’s one from the mid-seventies, of Bobby Brown, the day he lost the election. He’s holding a phony newspaper with the headline ‘Wm. Freeman Charged with Impersonating Sheriff.’ I’ve got a portrait of Cigarette Willie, the old bum who used to sleep on the bench at Simonton and Eaton. The bench is gone, too. I’ve even got the Conch Train, on July 4, 1976, decorated for the Bicentennial. One of the first pictures I ever took on the island.”

He scowled, unconvinced.

I said, “Why does somebody climb a mountain? Why do race drivers try to go faster? People gamble. People kill. I press the camera button.”

“Anyway,” he said, “your film came out fine. Ortega’s camera went south on us. All he got were half-frame photos.”

“Not the camera’s fault. Would you like to know why?”

He stared. I began to explain the camera’s inability to synchronize with shutter speeds above one-sixtieth of a second in some models, one-hundred-twenty-fifth in others.

He waved me to a stop. “You didn’t tell me you got painted gang colors.”

How the hell did Hayes know that?

He read my mind. “I narrowed it down to a few arms, and twisted.”

I didn’t believe that either. But no matter how Hayes had found out he was stacking up chips. “Let me ask you, Dexter. If you were a civilian who got accosted by Bug Thorsby, would you bother reporting it?”

Hayes nodded, in thought. “I didn’t know it was Little Bug. You probably did the right thing. I used to know his scummy father. Every high school has a bully, every town its pet felon. The one-man crime wave finally got his.”

“It took twenty years for the system to send Jemison Thorsby away. He got out in less than four. I heard he earned fat money at Union Correctional lecturing inmates on witness intimidation.”

“Hell with that. My father was up there then. Thorsby got turned out and shanked at least twice. He’s got one scar I know from his collarbone to his belly button. I expect he came home with a chip on his shoulder the size of Sand Key.”

We still stood outside the porch, staring at trees as though they held our interest, kicking blades of grass. “Well, Jemison’s handed down the legacy,” I said. “Bug’s a good copycat, or else he found inspiration in his butthole buddies. Why are you back in Key West, Dexter? You trying to clear your family’s name?”

“Shit. Anybody ever gave a damn about my family left town, run away by property taxes.”

“They still know Big Dex Hayes’s reputation.”

“Nobody knows how it went. Hookers and gambling. The town tolerated it. The powers did every damn thing to keep him in business. Made my life hell, especially after the point when other kids and I were old enough to know what was going down. People’d see my old man’s three-inch bankroll, think I was growing up in some fairy tale. Wrong. But that’s the way it goes.”

I knew he was right. A generation ago, a law officer of Dexter’s rank could jeopardize his career by messing with Big Dex. These days basic corruption drew more attention, more attorneys, but less shame.

“Let me ask you this,” said Hayes. “You thinking of settling the score with Bug?”

“You’re leading up to something, Detective. I hope you’re almost there.”

“Go ahead and answer that question.”

“I’m not going to sink to his level, unless I’m forced to, but the old wheel comes around. Let’s say, if my timing is right, maybe I can help Bug win a ticket upstate, get his chance to meet some fraternity brothers in Starke.”

“I’ll bet you get that chance. You’re a hotshot. Word gets around. You’ve done a lot of work for us and the county the last few years, you maybe think you’ve earned your wings . . . made your bones?”

He was working his way back to Heidi. I said, “I’ve been there for the paycheck. Not recognition. If I’d wanted a career, I’d have gone to the academy. That’s not my deal.”

“I agree. I don’t know whether you’re a troublemaker or a lucky son of a bitch. You’re a picture taker. I don’t know if you pay your bills, change your underwear, bullshit your closest friends, or call your mother on holidays. And I don’t care. What concerns me directly is I know you’re not a child molester, you don’t beat up women, and you act like a grown-up during daylight hours. You’ve made your contributions. But you’re not a cop, you aren’t James Bond or
Spenser for Hire.
You’re not a detective. You’re not a sworn officer of the law.”

Hayes’s monologue was clever, designed to boost me up, knock me down, and put me in my place. But I had no designs on his job, no ambitions to be a crime stopper. I wanted the life I had enjoyed for many years to continue for another fifteen or twenty, without ugliness or tragedy. I said, “I’m with you on all the above, no argument.” Then I added, “I’m still guessing you’ve come back to settle some scores of your own. I may not be the only one to think that.”

“Maybe they’ll see it that way. I came here to get my wife and babies off the goddamned Gold Coast. You got fatal accidents once an hour up there. The schools are armed camps. The mobile homes they call classrooms, they look like armed trailer camps. More uniforms at junior high than at the malls. Ironic as hell, isn’t it? I came back to Key West for quality of life.”

“The ironic part is your being worried about safety, the job you do.”

“Look, Rutledge. If it ever comes down to court, testimony for me and the prosecutor to win conviction, I don’t want your so-called knowledge, that cute booklet in your bag, to get shoved down my throat. You want to work for me, you need to take courses. Do it on the Internet, however, but write it down, tell me what you’re taking. Keep me posted on your progress.”

“Fair enough.”

Hayes walked to a tall bush at the edge of my property, fluffed out the branches. “My mama, bless her soul, always used to say, ‘Croton bushes are like Conch kids. They’ll grow up fine, even if you don’t take care of ’em.’ ”

I said, “Didn’t work for Bug Thorsby.”

“He don’t count. That family came here from Alabama. By the way, you’ll be proud to know you made history yesterday. My liaison at the county tells me AFIS kicked back a fingerprints hit, that headless man you photographed. The pisser is, I’ve got to coordinate on a joint investigation. But you made history. You photographed two dead Richard Engrams in one day.”