Bone Island Mambo (26 page)

She looked puzzled, with a touch of disgust on her face.

I said, “You like to read mysteries, right?”

We both knew the answer. She stared at me for part two.

I said, “He’s in cahoots with Butler Dunwoody. Maybe a clue to solving the murders will jump out as you munch your pencil-thin asparagus gratinée.”

She said nothing. She remained standing there.

She was waiting for specific action.

I went to the shower and moved Fecko’s belongings to the locked shed where I stored my lawn mower. I gave her two minutes, then joined her.

Muffled thunder rumbled across the island. A dim flash of lightning woke us. Faint daylight outlined the blinds. The strange silence, one more time. The digital time blinked 00:00.

Another power failure. I hoped the subways weren’t stuck.

Teresa checked the clock, threw off the sheet, hit the floor running. A fine sight. She hadn’t brought office clothes. She’d have to go home before going to work. I boosted myself from bed, trudged barefoot into the living room, opened the door. Humid air wafted from the porch. I went to the kitchen, in dim light began coffee. Yard palms looked blue instead of green. My head felt full of sluggish blood, like a whiskey hangover. Probably from bouncing off the police car’s metal interior grate. Even the birds sang a depressed song. It would be a long, wet morning.

Then I remembered. No power, no coffee.

I’d left myself a note: “Holloway—Blue Heaven.” Mercer would pressure me again to photograph his “opportunities.” A real photo job might remove my mind from other crap. Maybe I could request that he post Tommy Tucker as my personal security guard. I thought back to Butler Dunwoody’s description of his property’s history. A closer
knowledge of Mercer’s holdings might make it easier to accept his offer.

Thunder rolled again, more distant Carmen’s car left the lane. Teresa entered the kitchen dialing my cordless handset I looked at the phone. She looked at it, put it to her ear, hung it up.

I said, “What time does your stepfather get to work?”

“He leaves at seven. He does breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s until seven-forty. If it’s not raining he walks into the zoning office at exactly seven fifty-nine. If it’s raining, he’s one minute late.”

“I need an appointment?”

“Not if you carry a bag of doughnuts and a café con leche.”

I plugged in the old rotary for her. “Can he get me into the tax appraiser’s files?”

“Take a pint of Añejo for Cheap Juan Mendez,” she said.

“Can I take the rum straight to Mendez? Bypass your stepfather?”

“I recommend it.” She checked a stack of papers. “What’s all this?”

“Carmen picked up my mail for me.”

“Look at these postmarks,” she said. “Have you paid bills this month?”

“It’s a question of time.”

She looked at the stack and back at me. “Is it a question of money?”

“Do me one thing?” I said.

She answered with a half-awake quizzical expression.

“Think about the afternoon before we went up the Keys for dinner,” I said. “Try to remember if you told anyone where we were going.”

She called for a cab, then poked her head through the porch door. “Okay. If I talked about it, I can’t recall who or why.”

The rain had let up enough for her to wait on Fleming for the taxi. She kissed me good-bye. “Did the concrete scuff your bottom?”

It took me two beats too long to understand.

“Remember, White Street Pier? The moonlight? A naked lady?”

I saved my ass, caught it on the fly: “The seawall texture was that of a mild loofah sponge. Refreshing to the epidermal, a reminder of reality, yet a small factor of my happiness package.”

“I’m getting strong signals on my detector.”

“I woke up with fifteen things on my mind.”

“If you want,” she said, I’ll call Holloway and accept his kind invitation.” Teresa walked down the lane laughing.

I wanted to catch Wheeler before he left for the dock. I dialed Mamie’s cell phone. When she answered, I said, “Thank you for whatever.”

1 don’t usually make jailhouse calls,” she said. “They told me when I left that you’d walk before midnight Do you want him? He’s opening the door.”

“Yes, but I have one more question for you.”

She snagged Sam, then came back on. “You’re going to ask a favor.”

“Two, now that I think about it. Any scuttlebutt about Dexter Hayes in the skirt-chasing category?”

“He’s married.”

“I know,” I said. “I mean, like hitting on suspects or people he meets on the job?”

“I pay absolutely no attention to that kind of stuff.”

“Could you?”

“For two days, maximum. Then I shut it off. What else?”

“I need details on six unsolved city murders, three of which have been copied this week.”

“Three?”

“Last night.”

“Oh. I didn’t even think . . .” She paused. “Joe Hooks is working up a long piece on them, supposed to run in early February. A follow-up to the police-chief controversy.”

“Any chance of getting copies of everything the
Citizen
ran on scene descriptions, what the police revealed to the press?”

“I like this kind of favor, Alex Rutledge. I promised myself a lazy day. Shoveling newspaper into a copier is the mindless task I need. Here’s the captain.”

Sam, out of breath: “I’m out of here.”

“Client?”

“If he doesn’t wimp out by the weather.”

“Can you ask around, see if Jemison Thorsby’s really catching fish?”

“As opposed to . . .”

“The endless list of South Florida alternatives.”

Sam said, “Do we already know the answer?”

“In general, but not specifics. How’s he paying bills? Who’s he dealing with? Who’s on his team?”

“Have a nice day and be a good American.” He hung up.

Cecilia Ayusa’s broom whisked in the lane. I should buy the Ayusas a cable subscription. She could check the Weather Channel before wasting her cleanup efforts. I walked out slowly. I didn’t want to jolt her out of her dream state. I waited for her to notice me. She carried a paper sack and a dustpan.

“Who these bums in the lane?” she said.

“The police, you mean?”

“No, the bums bums. I kick them away, they say your name, they got to make a delivery. Got a old hot-water bottle, I don’t want to say what else. Got trash bags, I think, all the caca this week, dead bodies in those plastic bags.” She stooped to snag a solo leaf. “Hector, he gone to Budde’s to get his sticky-paper notepads. He think I remember my whole life, he put the notes everyplace in my house. I got notes on a bathroom sink. Notes on my bed.”

Cecilia found a pack of dry berries, leaned to sweep them into the dustpan. Before she’d dropped them into the bag, a gust of wind had replaced them with leaves and litter. I didn’t tell her.

At eight fifty-nine I stopped at the Tropical Package Store on Fleming. Then I rode down Bahama to the tax assessor’s
office on Southard. I chained my bike to a rack in front of the bank.

Johnny “Cheap Juan” Mendez, the county tax appraiser, worked out of a leased storefront. Mendez stood five-six, had the scrappy look of someone who’d had to fight back most of his life. He spoke into the telephone at his secretary’s desk, lifted his chin to greet me. Every time he spoke, he sneered. An aerial photograph of Fort Jefferson at the Dry Tortugas hung on the west wall. The only other objects in the room were the desk, an adjustable-height chair, an armchair, a circular discount-store clock, and a tiny table stacked with outdated copies of
Modern Maturity
and
Time.
Oppressive fluorescent lighting threw a yellow-green tint. A radio played in the next office, boring “beautiful,” music, adjusted for minimum treble. I could smell Mendez’s breath from across the room, a deadly combo of cigarettes and black coffee.

Mendez half-recognized me. We’d seen each other in various offices and departments for years. Never socially. I put the Bacardi Añejo on his desk, made my request.

Mendez led me to a poorly lighted room packed with floor-to-ceiling file racks. A mote fog fought four low-watt incandescent bulbs. Money saved in illumination was being spent to drive a window-mounted air conditioner. It struggled to suck air through a filter that, through the plastic grille, looked like bear fur. It stank as if a cat had sprayed the exterior part of the A/C, and the spray had blown in ripe. The climate control was a fruitless attempt to make up for failures betrayed by odors of damp cardboard, paper, and carpeting soaked by rain leaks or condenser distillate.

Mendez didn’t mind my being in there, but he wanted out. The rum had eliminated any curiosity he might have had regarding my intentions. He left me to what he called my como se llama.

Six rows of shelving, narrow aisles. There had been harassed attempts at uniformity in box sizing and labeling. It took an hour to acquaint myself with the filing system, the seven different plat-book groups: by date, then by lot number.
Nothing was alphabetical. I had to figure out arcane real-estate stuff like easements, foreclosures, and chattels in order to make sense of the deed histories. By eleven o’clock I’d worked halfway through Holloway’s “Group One” list.

Three corporations owned the properties. Chrysalis-Manifest Partners had begun acquiring in 1964 and had made its last purchase in 1983. The Sut-Ho-Dor Corporation made its first buys in 1971. In 1982 Sut-Ho-Dor sold several properties to Chrysalis-Manifest, and several to Holloway Holdings, Inc. One other property acquired by Holloway Holdings was the old El Mirador Hotel, popular from the fifties until the late seventies. The place had been called Key Breeze Suites in years since then. It never had benefited from a knock-down-and-build like the Hibiscus, or from renovations like the Atlantic Shores. Sut-Ho-Dor’s only holding since then had been at 544 Southard. Of the three corporations, only Holloway Holdings, Inc., had bought property after 1983.

After two hours I’d learned nothing but company names. Transactions earlier than the sixties meant nothing to me, and there was no way to tell how the properties had been used. Butler Dunwoody must have done some kick-ass research to come up with his information.

“Howzit go?” Cheap Juan was back. He stood in the doorway. He’d been testing the rum. He wobbled.

I thanked Cheap Juan Mendez for his permission to peruse the files.

It had rained but the sun was back out I stood on the sidewalk, thought a moment. I checked the front of the building. It was S44 Southard. Sut-Ho-Dor Corporation owned the building.

I went back inside. “Mr. Mendez,” I said. “Who collects the rent checks on this building?”

“The city, it pay direct,” he said. “I got a leak, I call that real-estate lady, Mrs. Kaiser. That daughter of that Holloway man who went to Washington.”

“Julie Kaiser?”

“Best on this island, you bet your ass. She send her husband with a tool box, every time. She’s a nice lady.”

I sat in late-morning sunlight on Teresa’s condo porch steps. No breeze at all. Every cubic foot of air stuck in its own space. A fat bumblebee flew figure eights above my head. Ignored me, ignored the flowers, kept flying the figure eights. A vagabond rooster wandered the parking asphalt, pecked at pebbles and buds that had fallen from an acacia, hoping for a corn kernel. He crowed, probably in protest.

I hear you, pal.

Teresa’s car turned into the driveway. She punched the entry keypad, waited for the twelve-foot iron security gate to swing slowly. She cruised in, windows down, her hair fluttering. Barenaked Ladies loud on the stereo. I knew the lyric. Angst beyond my imagination. A loser shaves his girl’s name into his hair, but misspells it. I thought I had it rough.

Teresa parked, rolled her windows, left a gap. She wore tan chinos and a polo shirt, a
Red Sky at Night
ball cap. She kissed my cheekbone, unlocked her condo door. I heard her briefcase drop onto the hall table. I followed her in, waited while she used the bathroom. A paperback book sat on her kitchen counter.
A Cool Breeze on the Underground.
I’d never seen it before.

She rolled her bicycle backward to the porch. “You
could have been in the shade. You were sitting out here sweating.”

“I was airing myself out. Cheap Juan’s storage room started growing on me.”

“Home-grown Astroturf?”

“Don’t step on my green suede shoes.”

She said, “The tax files give you anything you wanted?”

“Not much. I’ll tell you later.”

We rode three short blocks down Thomas. Blue Heaven, at the corner of Petronia, was central to Key West’s black section. In the 1990s the intersection suffered a period of open crack cocaine sales. Expensive white powder from Duval Street had become cheap. The true ground zero was Virginia and Whitehead, where loitering was “proof evident, presumption great” of dope dealing. Naturally, there was a pecking order in the loitering process. I had heard that one regular peddler openly claimed to the cops to be marketing rocks as big as the Ritz. Vigilance and investment, what had become multiracial gentrification, had returned Petronia-Thomas to civility.

Blue Heaven is a four-star throwback to five stages of island history. Its current incarnation—a pink-and-pastel-blue restaurant, bake shop, open-air backyard bar—calls to mind peace signs, flowers woven into hair, the era of alcoholic vegetarians, back-to-the-country doobie takers. The dining patio is filled with almond and Spanish lime trees, surrounded by an unpainted six-foot fence. It’s frequented by neighborhood animals, domestic and fowl. The food and wait staff are first-rate. Everything else is laid-back Caribbean.

We locked our bicycles to a galvanized security rack in front of a fifteen-foot cactus. Half the other bicycles were retrocruisers—modern-day white-walled balloon tires, half-acre seats. Most of the others had high-rise handlebars and rusted frames. One or two were polka-dotted in primary colors atop geometric patterns. Rolling exhibits by vehicle artist Captain Outrageous. We walked around back. Every table was full. Vultures hung at the outside bar, made small
talk with the early drinkers, waited to pounce at the maître d’s faintest beckon. One of the owners, Rick Hatch, saw us, grinned and pointed to the second-floor porch. Our host had arrived early.