SS 18: Shark Skin Suite: A Novel (2 page)

Part
ONE

Chapter
ONE

THE MIDDLE OF THE FLORIDA KEYS

T
he invasion was under way. They hit the beach in overwhelming strength.

Thousands of giant iguanas, Burmese pythons and African land snails.

The iguanas basked along the grassy banks of the roads, for some reason all parallel, facing traffic like they knew something. The snakes wiggled through boat canals and curled up in the engine blocks of surprised car owners. The snails inspired the greatest disbelief, eating anything, including cement, and their baseball-sized shells punctured tires.

It was the attack of irresponsible pet owners who’d become mollified by exotic species that knew no local predators, found an abundant food source and grew to unnatural scale. The pets had either gotten loose or were deliberately released when the owners’ motivation was required for more pressing matters of buying lottery tickets and fireworks.

One of the snails completed a two-day slime odyssey across a parking lot and began nibbling at the corner of a low-slung concrete building that sat quietly beside the Overseas Highway.

Above the automatic front doors was a colorful mosaic of tropical fish that fit together to form one large fish. To the right of the design: F
ISHERMEN’S
H
OSPITAL
.

It was the main community hospital for long stretches of the Keys in both directions. No fishermen were inside.

The medical center resided in the city of Marathon. The city got its name because it was the midpoint in the marathon effort to build the overseas railroad just after the turn of the twentieth century. It was often erroneously called Marathon
Key,
when the city actually sat on the island of Vaca Key. Civic leaders constantly attempted to clarify the name to news organizations that continued dispatching stories datelined “Marathon Key” anytime weirdness happened, like when those barracuda fired themselves out of the water like harpoons, biting people in fishing boats. The injured fishermen were taken to a different hospital.

On the hospital’s first floor, inside a sterile patient room, a thin line of blue light crossed the screen of a heart monitor, beeping each time the line spiked. Normal range. Of more concern on another machine were red blood-pressure numbers that loitered on the downside.

The patient’s massive bandages concealed gender, but it was a woman. One arm in a cast, gauze on both legs, ribs taped and a head so completely wrapped in white that only the hole over the left eye hinted anyone was inside.

The hospital had that universal hospital smell, a bouquet of disinfectant and the funk in an old person’s house. The Florida Keys added a briny tinge, like vinegar potato chips. The wrist of the arm not in a cast was handcuffed to the bed’s railing.

A chart hung from the foot of the bed:
Campanella, Brook.

A uniformed police officer stood outside the door. Three others in suits hovered around the patient.

Another man in a better-fitting suit pointed at the cuffs. “Is that really necessary?” Her lawyer.

Brook had been a well-liked paralegal at a large South Florida firm until disappearing several weeks back under murky details. When word first broke of her arrival at the hospital, the firm immediately flew in one of their best defense attorneys.

On the other side of the bed, detectives glanced at one another. Procedure required handcuffs, but discretion disagreed. And the cops needed cooperation that hadn’t been forthcoming. A tiny key clicked in the lock, and a cuff snapped off her wrist. The detective looked up at the lawyer. “Good faith?”

“Even if we were inclined to talk, it’s far too soon,” said the attorney. “She just regained consciousness after surgery. Can’t this wait?”

“Actually it can’t,” said the detective stowing cuffs. “Every second is critical right now.”

His partner opened a notepad. “Serge is probably still somewhere in the Keys. We’ve rarely gotten this close to him.”

“Your client’s in deep trouble,” said the first. “Participated in a three-hundred-mile crime spree, not to mention obstruction of justice for helping a person of interest in more than twenty homicides evade capture.”

“For God’s sake,” said the attorney. “She was kidnapped.”

“Maybe in the beginning,” said the second detective. “But we’ve got a roomful of witnesses who saw her in public with Serge, free to leave but never trying to escape.”

“He always had a gun on her,” said the lawyer, “which he wasn’t going to wave around for your witnesses. Plus she did try to escape, several times before she finally made it, and you’re looking at the results. I mean, who jumps from a moving vehicle on the Seven Mile Bridge?”

“What about her fingerprints at the various locations?”

“But no gun-toting Patty Hearst photos or anything else connecting her to even one of Serge’s crimes.” The lawyer gestured toward his client. “Trust your own eyes. Does this look like a willing participant?”

The first detective sighed. “If we can just ask her a few preliminary questions, then we’ll go.”

“Questions?” said the lawyer. “She’s got a tube down her throat and the rest of her mouth is bandaged shut.”

“But she can blink,” said the second. “One for yes, two for no.”

“We’ll be as brief as possible,” said the first. “And you approve each question.”

The lawyer exhaled hard. “If it will get you out of here. She needs her rest.”

“Fair enough.” The detective turned toward Brook. “Did Serge do this to you?”

The attorney squeezed her right hand. “You can answer that.”

One blink.

“Did Serge kill those people?”

One blink.

“Do you know where he is?”

Two blinks.

“Where he might be heading?”

Two blinks.

“Did he mention any known associates besides Coleman?”

Two blinks.

“Can you remember—”

The attorney stepped around the bed. “That’s it for today. I have to insist.”

“Okay,” said the first detective. “We’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

The investigators left Brook’s room and stopped to congregate at a water cooler across the hall.

“What do you think?”

“Back when she was still missing, I would have bet my paycheck she was in on the whole thing.”

“Me, too,” said his partner. “I’ve seen this scenario before. No matter how many restaurant and convenience-store sightings of so-called victims smiling with their captors, they always later swear they were too scared to leave.”

The other detective looked back toward the closed hospital room door. “But after seeing her in there, I have no doubt she was utterly terrified the whole time.”

“So how do you want to play it? Tell her lawyer she’s in the clear?”

The other detective shook his head. “We need to bluff a little while longer.”

“What for?”

“I’m a hundred percent on her innocence, but there’s still the Stockholm syndrome.”

“Stockholm? After that beating?”

The detective shrugged. “In some twisted corner of her mind, she may still feel some screwed-up devotion to her tormentor.”

“You think she knows more about Serge’s whereabouts than she’s letting on?”

“There’s always the chance. That’s why we need to keep the pressure on.”

“I don’t feel good about this.” The detective stared at his shoes. “It was creepy enough questioning her just now with that blinking eye.”

“I know it’s a shitty thing to do,” said the second detective. “I got a family just like the next guy. But I also want to protect them from all the psychos out there.”

They both stopped and looked over again at the guarded door of Brook’s room.

“God only knows what that poor kid went through . . .”

They heard a crash and ran outside. A Camaro with a snail-punctured tire had hit a utility pole in front of the emergency room. A stretcher came out.

Back inside Brook’s room, the attorney patted her hand. “Don’t think any more for today. Just go to sleep.”

Brook’s one visible eye slowly closed as she dozed into a deep morphine dream that seemed vividly real. Because it had been . . .

Chapter
TWO

THREE DAYS EARLIER

T
he eye was large and wide and blue, with innocent lashes. Practically pressed against the wood, staring down into a tiny hole.

Brook Campanella stood back up and read the tiny brass plate nailed above the hole. “Who’s Mel Fisher?”

“The famous treasure salvager,” said Serge. “Discovered the wreck of the
Atocha
and about forty tons of gold, silver, emeralds and other goodies. Died 1996.”

Brook pointed at the wood. “He’s in there?”

“Part of him, supposedly.”

Brook looked down the length of the polished bar. Numerous other half-inch holes drilled at precise intervals, each with its own accompanying brass plate. The contents of the holes were a light alabaster, in contrast to the dark, brooding wood, sealed with varnish. In front of each hole sat a stool.

Brook looked puzzled at Serge. “You mean to tell me people come in here and drink with someone’s cremated remains right in front of their beers?”

“Don’t forget the empty holes in between.”

Brook glanced again. “What are they for?”

“The people sitting on the bar stools in front of them—bought burial slots in advance. They’re obviously goal oriented.” Serge smiled big. “There are bars and then there are
bars
. This one’s the ultimate crusty-locals dive, where politicians and assorted characters have been coming for decades.”

“And it’s called?”

“The Chart Room.”

“Why?”

“Nautical charts, like those hanging in that corner where Jimmy Buffett played for tips while still unknown,” said Serge. “He arrived in the early seventies with Jerry Jeff Walker, and the Chart Room is the first place they stopped. The now-famous novelist Tom Corcoran just happened to be bartending at the time, and since Jimmy said he was new to Key West, Tom said the inaugural beer was on him, and then Corcoran went on to write a couple songs with Jimmy, ‘Fins’ and ‘Cuban Crime of Passion,’ and shoot photos for seven of his album covers.”

They stopped to take in the hodgepodge of faded photos and newspaper clips tacked up behind the bar. A sign: T
IP
B
IG!
—above a fake million-dollar bill. Political buttons, business cards from defunct businesses. An actual coconut sat among a shelf of glasses without explanation. Some of the photos were of dogs and people mooning.

“I never expected a place like this when we walked up a few minutes ago,” said Brook. “I just saw a giant luxury resort with everything perfectly manicured and polished.”

“The Pier House,” Serge footnoted. “North end of Duval.”

“But how does the bar still exist?” asked Brook. “It’s everything big corporations detest, as if the people who own this place don’t know it’s here.”

“That’s the reaction I always get when I bring people, voluntarily or against their will, leading them on the winding route through a Hawaiian-pastel landscaping maze with pasty northerners cannonballing in the pool, fiddling with drink umbrellas and feeding pet tarpon off the boardwalk—until we discover this joint tucked out of sight under the back side like it’s janitorial storage. One of the tiniest bars, but pound for pound . . .”

Brook slowly began to nod. “I’m starting to get it. I see why you like the place . . .”

It was the perfect answer. The way to Serge’s heart was through his trivia. And Brook wasn’t like the others. She was pure and possessed historical stamina. Serge had tried vainly to teach previous love interests about his cherished state, but they just wanted to have sex.

“Oh yes! Oh yes! Oh, Serge! Harder! Faster! What are you thinking about?”

“Artifacts from the Seminole wars, agrarian pioneers at Cape Sable, Florida lighthouses in chronological order of construction . . .”

“To delay your orgasm?”

“No, to speed it up . . .”

But Brook was different. When the couple initially arrived in Key West, Serge had guarded expectations. He began his trademark A-tour of the island, a withering multiday quest of brutal attrition. To his surprise, Brook stayed with him stride for stride.

“Key West tip number 362: If you have to go to the bathroom on Duval Street, most of the restrooms are for patrons only, and the ones on the ground floor of the venerable La Concha hotel are locked and require a room key for access, so you just take the elevator to the observation deck, where the bathrooms aren’t militarized.”

Brook exited the ladies’ room on top of the hotel. “That feels better. Where to now? Hey, how about that cemetery you were telling me about? I’ll bet you’d like to take lots of photos . . .”

Serge thought:
Heart be still.

They weren’t just an odd couple but a freak pairing of nature, like those Internet photos of a mouse that thinks a cat’s its mom. Serge was criminally insane, and Brook was Norman Rockwell territory. They’d met during one of Mahoney’s cases. She was his client and in a serious jam, the proverbial damsel in distress. So Serge added more distress. “Get in the fucking car if you want to live!”

She got in.

Only because of the harrowing alternative. And once that danger had passed, the specter of Serge became even more terrifying. But Serge was an old-school criminal: Leave the vulnerable alone, or rescue if need be. To Brook’s astonishment, he was a total gentleman and the ultimate protector. She felt completely safe for the first time since she could remember.

That was three months ago, a schoolgirl crush growing by the day. Brook had never laughed so much in her life.

“What’s so funny?” asked Serge.

“Your new diet,” said Brook. “Replacing the bulb in the refrigerator with a black light so everything looks like toxic waste.”

“I’m totally serious. I could get a book deal.”

And she couldn’t get enough of his encyclopedic brain-evacuation rants. Their dynamic became a subtropical
My Fair Lady,
her Eliza Doolittle to his Henry Higgins by way of Speedy Gonzalez.

For his part, Serge slowly began to notice the sweet little flower by his side. She was the only uncontaminated thing in his life, and he decided to keep it that way. In the beginning, Brook had worried about sexual come-ons. Now she wondered,
What’s he waiting for?

And that’s where it stood as she helped him photographically map every inch of the Chart Room.
Click, click, click.
“Serge, I think I’m getting the hang of this.”
Click, click, click.
“Where to now?”

“How about Havana Docks? It’s another bar behind this place up on piers with a great view of the harbor,” said Serge. “One thing you should know about me: I’m all about drinking holes with views of water over the bottles.”

“Sounds so romantic.” She clutched his arm tighter. “And you were right about putting out of my mind that whole mess back in Fort Lauderdale. I’m definitely in the clear by now.”

Serge stopped to photograph one of the massive tarpon awaiting tourist handouts. “As they say, worry is usually interest paid on a debt that never comes due.”

They made more stops, admiring and snapping pictures of chromatic flowers, wading birds, flats boats and more fish. Brook snuggled into his side and stared up at him radiantly. Passersby would have guessed it was a honeymoon.

The couple finally climbed the wooden planks leading to Havana Docks. Brook made a prompt left after hitting the air-conditioning. “I need to powder my nose.”

“I need to look at water over bottles.”

Moments later, a carefree Brook emerged from the ladies’ room, stowing lipstick in her purse. Something seized her arm from behind and yanked her back into the alcove.

“Oh, it’s you, Serge.” Brook took her hand off her chest. “Nearly gave me a stroke.”

“We have to get the hell out of here! Now!”

“But we just got here,” said Brook. “Why?”

“Because they have a TV.”

“I know you hate network programming—”

He pulled her to the front of the short hall and pointed around the corner at the large-screen TV over the bar. “It’s probably been playing all day.” The volume was up loud enough for them to hear across the empty lounge.

“Hey,” said Brook. “What’s my photo doing on the news?”

“At this hour, authorities are conducting a massive search for this woman in connection with two brutal South Florida murders . . .”

Brook went slack-jawed. Another face filled the screen.

“Law enforcement suspect she is traveling in the company of this man, Serge Storms, wanted for questioning in at least twenty other homicides . . .”

The noise in Brook’s head was an air-raid siren.

“The pair was last believed to be traveling toward Key West . . .”

Her legs began to buckle, and Serge caught her on the way down.