Authors: H. Terrell Griffin
“How’s it going, buddy?” It was eight o’clock and Logan was on the other end of the phone line.
“Tell me about this army buddy, Logan,” I said.
“What do you want to know?”
“Look,” I said, getting angry, “I didn’t want this case in the first place, and I promise you I will drop it today if you don’t start leveling with me.”
“Sorry, Matt. I don’t know what to tell you. I walked into Dewey’s, and this guy sitting in the corner called me by name. I didn’t recognize him, but he told me we were in flight training at Rucker together. He introduced himself to me as Bill Smith. I didn’t remember him, but he knew a bunch of the guys I knew and the places we used to hang out in around Ozark. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by telling him I didn’t remember him, and besides it was fun talking about the old guys. A lot of them didn’t make it back from Nam.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know his name?”
“After Connie’s death,” Logan said, “I went looking for him. He told me he was staying at the Tiki Beach Resort up on Anna Maria, but they never heard of a Bill Smith there. I called a couple of my old flight school buddies, and neither of them remembered him either. There wasn’t a Bill Smith in school with us that anybody can remember.”
“Didn’t you find that strange?” I asked.
“Of course I found it strange. But what could I do?”
“You could have mentioned it to me.” I said.
“It didn’t seem important until I was charged with the murder.”
“You know, Logan,” I said, “This complicates things a lot. The alibi I was counting on to get you out of this mess just disappeared.”
“I know”, he said. “I’ll get back to you.” He hung up.
I rooted around in the box into which I throw my occasional snapshot and found one of Logan and K-Dawg standing on the back of my boat during a fishing trip the past summer. I also found one of Connie and three other locals that I had taken by the pool of my condo complex on the July 4th weekend the year before. Connie was smiling. A lump jumped into my throat and left as quickly. I felt a tiny pressure around my eyes, the beginning of wetness. I was surprised at my reaction. I thought I had grieved all I was going to for Connie. Perhaps we never really get over the death of someone we care about. I had never lost anyone close other than friends who died in Viet Nam, but somehow that was expected. My parents were both dead, but they had died in their time. Connie went way too early and without warning, and I guessed that was the reason for my reaction.
I took the pictures down to Eckerd’s on the Avenue of Flowers, where they have one of those computer developers. You can put your photo in, use the monitor to crop it, and then print as many as you want for about a buck a piece. I made ten of Connie smiling and ten of Logan, cropping out K-Dawg and the others.
I headed for Dewey’s at 4:00 that afternoon. Summer had settled on the islands, and the heat shimmered on the asphalt of Gulf of Mexico Drive as I headed toward the Longboat Pass Bridge. The span was rising as I approached, and the barricade was down. I came to a stop, the air conditioning compressor in the Explorer going full blast. The water in the pass was green and cool looking, lapping on the pure white sand of Beer Can Island just west of the bridge. A small boat with an outboard was beached there, and a couple and two small children were playing in the water. A large party fishing boat from Cortez was heading in from the Gulf, full of tourists who were coming back after a couple of hours fishing, with a lot of fish and very red skin. Dark clouds were moving in from the mainland, the scouts of the daily thunder storm that was fast approaching. The tourists would probably get wet. Pavarotti was singing “Nessum Dora” on the tape deck, and I was singing along. My Italian left as much to be desired as my voice, but then nobody was listening.
The boat cleared the bridge, full of laughing people waving at the poor sods in the cars. I drove onto Anna Maria Island, watching the speed limit. It drops as you come onto Anna Maria, and the Bradenton Beach cops made a large part of the city’s revenue each year hanging out behind the shrubs lining the entrance to the parking lot at Coquina Beach. I navigated the traffic circle at Bridge street a quarter turn and headed two blocks east to Dewey’s Five Points Bar.
The building squated in the sun, hunkered down on a slab of terrazzo, sheltering its customers from the Florida heat. A five pointed star, swathed in neon, hung over the door. No one knew what it meant or why it was there. The bar had changed little in the sixty years that it had stood on the street that once was the approach to the bridge to the mainland. It drew from the working people who could still afford to live on Anna Maria and from the nearby trailer parks housing the poorer retirees. Occasionally, just for kicks, some of the gilded residents of the south end of Longboat would stop by to observe the natives. I often had a beer there with the owner, an ancient lady who had been running the place since it opened.
Inside it was cool in the air conditioning provided by the ancient Carrier standing in the corner. The customers were mostly men and women who worked hard for their livings and enjoyed their off-hours with a few beers and a little conversation with their friends. A battered pool table covered in chalk stained green felt graced the center of the small room that was the lounge. Along the wall opposite the bar sat a scarred shuffleboard table, awaiting the next game. It wouldn’t be long in coming. A game seemed to be constantly in progress. There was a juke box with mostly country music, or what passes for country these days, a cigarette machine, and a large inflated green frog hanging from the rafters over the pool table. Next to the cash register at the end of the bar hung a large picture frame with a melange of snapshots of various customers having fun in Dewey’s. On the wall behind the bar hung an old cardboard plaque announcing that the four most important things a woman does is look like a girl, act like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog. The women at Dewey’s understood that kind of aphorism.
Dewey was one of those women. In 1930, Dewey Clanton had left the hill country of South Carolina and landed on this island. She had paid $1500 for the property near the bridge and built herself a bar. She had been there ever since, serving up beer and pretzels, pickled pig feet and slim jims. She had never told anyone how she came into the $1500, a large sum in those days. She was eighty-five now, and a little stooped with age. There was nothing stooped about her mind though, and her spirit was as full and winsome as it must have been when she had started behind the bar on that first day so many years ago. She was thin, and her hair was a soft red. Her face was wrinkled, the result, no doubt, of so much laughing. She was a happy lady, quick with a joke and a chuckle.
If you asked, Miss Dewey, as she was known to her customers, would tell you about the old days, when the road in front of her place was a one lane approach to the only bridge connecting the island to the mainland. She remembered the problems she had encountered when the county or state or somebody had widened it to two lanes. It was not until the 1950’s that the bridge was torn down, after the new Cortez Bridge had been completed and the approach from Cortez Road was in place.
I had gotten to know Dewey when I first started coming to the islands some years before. I would sit and drink beer and talk to her through the long summer afternoons, listening to her stories about the old days, when few people lived on these islands. I had brought my friends from Longboat here occasionally, and some, like Logan, had made it a regular stop.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Dewey, as I walked into the bar. “Where you been hidin’, boy?”
“I’ve missed you, Dewey,” I said.
“Likely story, boy. I bet you been chasing around after them younger women and ain’t even thought about me.” She gave a large whoop of laughter and leaned over the bar to kiss me on the cheek.
She put a Miller Lite on the bar with a cold glass. I poured it, held it up and said in my best Bogart, “Here’s looking at you, Kid.”
“You need to work on that some.”
“I guess you heard about Logan,” I said.
“Yeah, but I don’t believe it. I used to see him and Connie in here together some. Logan ain’t the type to be killin’ nobody.”
“That’s what I think. Look, Logan tells me that he was in here the night of the murder. Do you remember seeing him?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Dewey said. “And the reason I remember is that I heard the next day about Connie, and I thought then that Logan was in here the night before, his usual self you know, and now he would have to grieve over Connie. I thought maybe that would be his last happy night.”
“Why do you say that, Dewey?”
“Well, it was obvious that they was in love, or at least had something going. They’d sit here alone and hold hands and talk. You know how quiet it gets in here on week nights after everybody’s finished with happy hour.”
“I never guessed they were a pair,” I said. “Logan told me after Connie’s death, but I got the impression they were just two people who met in the night occasionally.”
“I don’t think so, Matt. There seemed to be more to it than that.”
“Was Logan in here alone the night of the murder?”
“Well, Connie wasn’t with him, but there was a man sitting with him for a little while. I don’t think they had but one drink a piece, and then they left.”
“Did you know the man he was with?”
“No, but he’d been in here a few times. I guess he was a tourist. I never saw him again after that night.”
“Do you remember what time they left?”
“It was before closing. You know, if I don’t have entertainment, I have to close at midnight. Some kinda stupid liquor law. And they was gone sometime before I closed. The place was busy that night, and noisy. After Logan left, everybody seemed to head home. I remember a couple of the fishermen from Cortez came in and got into an argument over their first drink. They had been somewhere else first I guess, ‘cause they was flying low when they got here. You know I don’t put up with that kinda crap, so I sent ‘em packing, and closed early. Logan probably left here around eleven.”
“Did Logan and the man come in together?” I asked.
“No, the other guy had been here for a couple of hours, sipping beer. He called Logan by name and they seemed to know each other. They were laughin’ and cuttin’ up, and then they left.”
“Logan may have gone down to Frisco’s after he left here. Do you know anybody over there?” I asked.
“You’ll want to talk to Slim Jim Martin. He owns the place and tends bar. He’s tall and skinny and mean as hell, and nobody messes with him much. He keeps a baseball bat under the bar in case he needs to quiet things down.”
“You’re sure Logan left around eleven?” I asked.
“Pretty sure. What’s this all about Matt?”
“I’m trying to trace Logan’s route that night. I need to find the man he was drinking with, and maybe establish an alibi.”
“I heard you was comin’ out of retirement. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“No. But I don’t seem to have much choice right now. Maybe when things settle down, Logan can get a real lawyer.”
“I wasn’t suggestin’ you weren’t no real lawyer, Matt. I hear things, and I heard you used to have a pretty big reputation.”
“Well, I quit, Dewey. Maybe I won’t have to take this case all the way in. We’ll see. I gotta go. If you happen to see the guy Logan was with that night, give me a call, OK?”
“Bet your ass, boy. I hope you can save Logan’s bacon.”
I had never been to Frisco’s, and did not know anybody there. It was nearing five o’clock, so I decided to walk the block down Bridge Street and see if Slim Jim could be of any help. It had already been a long time since the murder, and I knew that the more time that went by, the dimmer memories would get.
Frisco’s was dark and small. There was a bar along one end of the room, with seven or eight stools taking up the space. A few tables were crowded into the rest of the space. This was a place for drinking. Nothing else. No pool, no music, no ambience.
A man who probably stood six feet five and weighed 150 pounds was behind the bar. Two old guys in tee shirts huddled over glasses filled with dark whiskey at a table in the corner, not talking or reacting to anything. They reminded me of two cats sitting in a yard, side by side, seemingly oblivious to each other. I had always wondered if the cats had some sort of extra sensory perception that allowed them to communicate without words or gestures. I doubted that the old timers in the corner had that faculty.
“Are you Jim?” I asked, as I slid onto a bar stool.
“Yep, what’ll you have.”
“Got a Miller Lite?”
“Yep.”
He put the bottle in front of me, and was turning away, when I said, “Got a minute, Jim?”
“Yep.”
A man of few words, I thought. “I’m Matt Royal. Dewey Clanton told me you might be willing to help me out with a problem.”
“I doubt it, but if you’re a friend of Dewey’s, I’ll do what I can. She just called. Said you were coming in.”
“Do you know Logan Hamilton?
“Nope.”
“I showed him the picture of Logan.”