It Takes Two (3 page)

I heard Bud ask Mrs. Jenkins to either wait in her office or join the neighbors gathered across the street. He added that he’d consider it a personal favor if she kept the others from getting in the way until the coroner arrived to deal with the bodies.

“
Mon Dieu!
” she screamed. “So zair is not just one. Zat, zat…little officer over zair, he would not say to me.
Merde!
”

“I hadn’t counted noses, yet, ma’am,” Bud replied genially. “But I’ll keep you posted.”

Once Mrs. Jenkins retreated to her office, Bud returned to the Jeep, winked in my direction and unzipped an old briefcase he’d brought with him. The leather bag contained pens, pencils, clipboard, evidence bags, tweezers, magnifying glass, a war-surplus automatic pistol, cartridge magazines and an FBI-style shoulder holster.

“Got me some work to do,” he said in a jaunty, pleased voice. “You sit tight. Don’t look like it’ll take all morning.”

I’d already unfolded the borrowed newspaper. The sports page carried headlines about a long-shot winner in the previous day’s stakes race at Hialeah over in Miami. “Better not,” I murmured, careful not to look at him. “Somebody owes me breakfast.”

By the time I’d read through the racetrack charts and started on the state high school basketball scores, the coroner arrived. Familiarly and maybe inevitably known as “Doc,” Lemuel Shepherd Jr., MD, drove a battered battleship-gray Packard hearse with crimson crosses neatly stenciled on each door. The roof was fitted with a revolving red light and a siren that squealed like a terrified pig. Doc stopped the hearse in front of Mrs. Jenkins’ office and shut off the siren. The rustle of palm fronds and oak leaves in the light morning breeze was suddenly audible. Doc set the noisy parking brake, then opened the cranky left door.

“Mr. E-e-wing!” he called in his honking, blurred baritone. “What a pleasure to see you in the daytime. Hope nobody’s been—ha ha—shooting at e-e-you.”

Doc and his wife were nighttime regulars at the Caloosa Hotel. He played poker a couple of evenings a week in the private club room hidden behind the dining room. The Mrs. held court among the ladies at the adjacent piano bar.

In a way I liked old Doc. But he wasn’t easy to take. His operatic voice veered from ear-splitting sharpness to velvety ground fog. His eyes—parrot blue, with feathery lashes and plucked looking brows—darted like a couple of caged finches. His head was thin, his hairline high, his brow habitually wet, his ears nailed tightly to his skull.

The rest of him was shapeless and jelly-like. He shrouded his 300 pounds in black broadcloth suits fitted with oversize, rubber-lined pockets for implements and specimens. His sweat-stained shirt collars and the strangulated knots of his wrinkled neckties stayed hidden beneath a cascade of jiggling turkey jowls.

Walking toward me, his attention shifted from my face to the Jeep’s empty driver’s seat, then quickly over his shoulder to the motel’s colonnade and back to me.

He reached out to shake hands, his fingers looking as limp as empty gloves. His steely grip was always a surprise. Without releasing my hand, he drew me out of the Jeep, shifted his other hand to my side and turned me toward the rear of the hearse.

“Say hello to my assistants, Mose and Drackett,” he said. “They’ve been serving time with me, off and on—ha ha—for quite a while.” Doc had a nervous cackle he couldn’t always rein in. “Boys,” he called. “Boys—ha ha!”

Clicking open the coffin-sized rear door of the Packard, he stepped aside and cocked his head, a magician drawing rabbits out of a hat. Two black men, county prisoners in zebra uniforms, had been riding in the rear of the hearse, scrunched down out of sight. Now they unfolded, politely shuffled their feet and showed the expected bits of pink lip and brown teeth. Like most Southern men, they knew the parts they were expected to play in public, and had their step-’n’-fetch-it roles down pat.

“Yassah, Doc.”

“Uh hum! As I do say.”

“Boys,” Shepherd said again. “Mr. E-e-wing is from Tampa. And he’s just back from overseas. We got to treat our war heroes right. Smile nice and say hello.”

I waved and bobbed my head in the old-time white-boy manner—as thoroughly embarrassed as the other men must have been. “Hey, fellas.”

“Sah.”

“Sah.”

“Now, boys, we’ll need both those stretchers,” Shepherd continued, not missing a breath. “The Class A and the Class B. You-all can wait till I call you before getting them out. Because first, I’d better go get my hands wet, so to speak.” He threw a wry grin in my direction. “Ha ha.”

Mose and Drackett nodded carefully.

“Sah.”

“Sah.”

Collecting dead bodies can’t have made for easy duty. But the two trusties’ sentences on the blood-and-guts detail—if singularly unappetizing—must have beat the hell out of the hard-time alternatives. Breaking coral rock or chasing water moccasins out of roadside ditches on a chain gang are no pleasure trips either.

Reaching back into the hearse, Shepherd drew out rubber gloves, a physician’s black valise and a Graflex box camera equipped with a flash. Then he turned toward the motel room where his duty, in the form of two corpses, lay.

I’d finished basketball scores and dived into the fishing column—red snapper and yellowfin tuna running nicely out in the Gulf of Mexico, snook closer in—when Bud returned to the Jeep. “Both of ’em shot real bad,” he said, his voice low. “White gentleman in a business suit and a colored boy.”

“The colored boy,” I answered. “He’s not wearing anything? His birthday suit, maybe?”

“Always got a joke ready, don’t you?” Bud rifled through a box of printed Lee County forms stashed under the bucket seat. “Shot through the ear’s no joke. There’s blood and brains all over two walls of the room. Carpet looks like a Jap pillbox after Charlie Platoon got through with it.”

“Which one’s shot through the ear?”

“The colored boy.” Bud selected two forms and replaced the others. “He’s got on khaki pants, an Ike jacket and a T-shirt. So get your mind out of the gutter.”

“How many guns?”

“One, so far.” Bud turned back toward the motel, then paused. “Funny, though. The white guy got hit at least twice. One shot blew his jaw off, and that would finish him. But there’s also what looks like a bullet hole clean through his right wrist. So it’s a real messy situation. But here’s the catch: Walt Hurston found the pistol in his right hand.”

“In the white guy’s hand, you mean?”

“Yessiree, sir. Doc’s taking photos now. Hurston says ain’t nothin’ been touched. So the thing don’t add up.”

“Jesus,” I said. “I may not want breakfast after all.”

“I’m now figuring this could take till 2 o’clock,” Bud replied. “So you might want to try to catch a ride back.”

I was about to say, “Nah, I’m fine,” when the sudden squeal of tires took our minds off dead bodies and breakfast. A hundred feet away, out on Tamiami Trail, a red Ford convertible skidded out of a screeching turn and headed directly toward us. Zigzagging crazily and bouncing across the sidewalk, the soft-top slowed when it hit the soft grass border of the tourist court parking lot, then swerved to avoid the electrified VACANCY sign. The car slid to a shivering stop between Doc Shepherd’s hearse and the black Ford sedan. We all ducked.

“Fucking crazy,” Bud shouted. “Who-ee!” Mose called out.

“Church bus be here,” his sidekick echoed.

A round-faced white woman threw herself out of the car, hit the pavement running and rushed through the open door into the room where the two bodies lay. Her pink canvas jacket and canvas fishing pants seemed to blur as she moved. The image of an angry flamingo crossed with a stampeding dairy cow flashed through my mind.

Bud took off after her, dropping the printed forms and shouting, “Ma’am, Ma’am.”

Claudette Jenkins threw open the door to the manager’s office, stuck her head out, shouted “
merde!
” a second time and pulled the door shut.

I couldn’t decide whether to stay put, follow Bud or dive behind the Jeep. Everything that happened next happened very fast. So I didn’t get a chance to move.

A moment after the Ford-driving woman disappeared into the room, there was a shout—neither a helpless shriek nor a maiden’s cry, but something more like a high-pitched bellow. The same voice quickly added, “Ah, you bastard! You swine!”

Something crashed against something else (box camera meeting stucco wall, I found out later) and Doc Shepherd yelled, “No, no, get back! Don’t!”

Officer Hurston, instinctively more polite, called, “Ma’am, you don’t want to—”

Bud’s voice crossed his, “Ma’am, Ma’am, put that piece—”

Doc began to plead. “Please, ah, please put that down,

Willene. You’re disturbing my…ha ha!”

A shot and an immediate ricochet silenced the men’s excited voices. Two seconds later, staggering wildly, the woman in pink burst back through the motel door, an Army officer’s revolver held away from her body with both hands as if it was a small rabid animal. Eyes lost in wildness and surprise, she glanced down at the gun. She didn’t seem to notice the running figures across the street—nosy neighbors and bystanders forced to seek cover. Instead, she spotted the Jeep and me in it. Her attention focused all too clearly. She raised the pistol and aimed.

Two years battling the Japanese in the Pacific taught me plenty. The first lesson was this: Never look a weapon in the face.

Twisting left and pushing myself down between dashboard and bucket seats, I curled my gut around the gearshift and clenched my ass tight.

As I headed south for safety, a crew-cut blur moved between my would-be assassin and her target.

Ka-thow!
The first shot shattered the driver’s-side windshield just above my head. The next bullet blew out the Packard’s massive front tire. After that, all I heard was the click-click of an empty weapon and the
S-s-s
of escaping air. Baritone yells, the sounds of a struggle and Willene’s rising sobs followed in quick succession.

I reached up tentatively to check my neck and ear for serious damage. I found nothing beyond a few scratches.

Bud nailed the frantic troublemaker to the pavement within seconds. By the time I turned to see what was happening, she was kissing concrete, her hands pinned to her spine by Bud’s right knee. “Cuffs, I need cuffs,” he shouted. Beneath him, Willene tossed and gulped air like a gigged grouper.

Hurston snatched the handcuffs off his own belt, handed them to Bud and quickly stepped back.

“Don’t you see I need help here?” Bud yelled hoarsely. Hurston threw a questioning look at Doc. Doc caught it, moved forward and knelt before the prisoner without touching her. “Willene, Willene,” he said. “Look at me, Willene.”

“Get the bastard off me,” Willene cried. “He’s hurting my breasts. And get that nigger boy away from here.”

“Willene,” Doc repeated. “Look here.”

All of which might have worked if she’d been ready to cool off. But when Bud lessened the knee-pressure on her hands, she sucked in a breath, rolled fast and aimed a leather hunting boot right at his privates.

Bud doubled over, both hands cradling his crotch. I felt my own balls contract in painful sympathy. I started toward him.

“Take hold of her feet,” Doc shouted at Hurston. “But for God’s sake be gentle about it.” The coroner grabbed her shoulders and, using his substantial weight, forced her back down.

Like a rodeo cowboy securing a calf, Bud clicked the cuffs onto her wrists and then stepped away, one hand open, the other still gripping his nuts. Whirling, he hit the yellow wall of the building with the open hand. “Lady, you don’t ever pick up a god-damn gun like that,” he yelled.

“Shut up, you bastards,” Willene screamed, her back arched in angry frustration. But when she dodged and rolled onto her elbow, she cried out in real pain. “It’s too much. I won’t have it,” she sobbed. “I won’t have it.”

Doc was again kneeling beside her. “We’ll get an ambulance and take you home, honey,” he said. “Would you like that, Willene? And who’s your family doctor? I’d like to call him for you.”

Bud tried unsuccessfully to register an objection. “Doc, will you just hold it? What this lady needs is black coffee and a few hours in a holding cell. She’s gotta be tight or doped up on some kind of pills. We need to take her in and book her. Have a matron look her over, draw some blood.”

Doc ignored him. Ten years’ seniority in the local bureaucracy—to Bud’s ten months—counted for plenty. And with dead bodies cooling where they’d presumably hit the rug, the medical officer’s authority at least equaled that of a junior detective.

“Listen to me, Detective Wright,” Doc answered pointedly. “What she needs is some rest.”

By then, I was few feet behind Bud. Turning to face me, he took a step, halted, reached up and plucked a bloody sliver of glass out of my hair. His face, already pale, turned whiter. He shook his head, looked at me squarely, and asked, “The Jeep windshield?”

“And the tire on the hearse,” I answered.

“Good thing it’ll drive with the glass folded down.” He tossed the glass shard away and shoved the heels of his hands together gently, over his crotch. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, looking me up and down. “You could of been hit. And then what?”