“From now on,” she said, “the only men in my life are going to be Chuck, Bill, John, Mark, and Bob.”
“Do I know . . .”
“I’m going to chuck my junk mail, pay my bills, go to the john, mark my calendar, and bob for fucking apples.”
I laughed, then offered her a beer from the six-pack. “What year did you graduate from high school?”
She twisted off the botde cap. “Did we stop talking about my love life?”
“Were you in the same class as the Holloway girls?”
“Is that where you took pictures? I saw the street blocked. My mother said someone got shot. She heard it on her scanner. She’s either sweeping the lane or glued to her scanner.”
I told Carmen the basics. “Back to my question.”
“I think Suzanne was a year or two older than me. Julie was in my class.”
“Talk.”
“Oooh-wee. Talk about a defensive little witch. Talk about a girl who was lucky her family had money. That little honey was drawn to trouble.”
“Which little honey?” I said.
“Suzanne Holloway. Suzanne Cosgrove, now. Oh, Alex, stories we could tell.”
“Test me for shockability.”
“Oh, let’s see . . . Should we start with the married man? Her senior-year married man?”
“Start there.”
“You know how, every year, there’s somebody or some couple who’s the new kid in town? Everybody suddenly adores them, invites them over, meets them for drinks. This guy and his wife, supposedly wealthy up-north types, come on vacation a few times, wind up buying a house on Washington Street west of White, massive bucks. She rents a shop on Duval, starts selling knickknacks nobody needs. Called the shop Lollipops and Pralines, which is clue enough. Might as well call it Nobody Needs This Junk. So the husband, he’s traipsing around town, ‘looking for a place to invest.’ Both of them are hanging in the bars, leaving their kid with not one but two Haitian nannies, so the nannies can watch the kid around the clock if they have to. A regular training camp for dysfunctional futures.”
“How does this guy meet a high school girl?”
“Bop Brown’s Jazzy Joint, on Petronia.”
“What’s Suzanne . . . what’s either of them doing in there?”
Carmen shook her head, rolled her eyes. “Anyway, they get hooked up, so to speak, but one Sunday afternoon the guy—I think his last name was Griffiths—supposedly takes his kid to Astro City to play on the slide. A cop busts him with Suzanne performing—isn’t that a great word for it, like it’s a routine with curtain calls?—doing oral sex in the parking lot behind the grocery where Discount Auto Parts is now. Romantic as hell, by the Dumpsters. The kid’s asleep in the backseat. Suzanne’s performing, a cop knocks on the window. Oops. Needless to say, Mercer Holloway put a lid on it. But lids have a way of popping off on this island.”
“Was she underage?”
“I doubt it. Probably too young for the Jazzy Joint, but
not to screw. So, needless to say, the blowee and his wife blew town. Left the nannies behind like abandoned house pets. I heard they wound up heading and grading shrimp in one of Willy Franklin’s plants.”
“How about Julie?”
“How about that jerk cop who stood in your yard the other night and arrested you?”
“Dexter Hayes, Jr.?”
“Oh, that’s the jerk I mean. The very one.”
“He and Julie?”
“The whole bit. Hugs in study hall. Public displays of horny. Pregnancy scares—at least two. Melodrama to beat the Cubanitas. He was a senior and she was a junior. He was a lucky boy. Just to make sure he left town, Mercer Holloway had his company give young Dexter a four-year scholarship to the University of Florida. Gotta keep that community service going strong. Even got him a summer job in Broward County, I think.”
Detective Hayes had been frantic to find clues at Holloway’s home, but lackadaisical at the body-drop scene inside Butler Dunwoody’s construction site.
“He was one of two lucky boys,” continued Carmen.
“Who else?”
“Philip Kaiser. His family had money when he was a kid, but they lost it when he was in high school. Once he married Julie, cash was no problem.”
I twisted the cap off another beer, put the last three in the fridge. I looked out at the high palms swaying, branches tossing in the light breeze. I thought about fortunes that had come and gone on the island. I suddenly felt lucky to have known a constant state of “barely enough” for as long as I’d lived there. In a sense, I was just like Norby. He was transporting and setting up crappers, dumping and steam-cleaning, fending off bad jokes. I ran around, job site to job site, worrying about employment security, praying for checks to come in the mail. I needed to get myself a uniform shirt with my name on a patch, like Norby the potty
supervisor. Like Jemison Thorsby. Like the guy driving the forklift on Stock Island last Sunday.
Oh, shit. Why hadn’t I put that together? Thorsby had been driving the forklift. He’d waved, but not to be friendly. He’d waved to hide his face.
I said, “Carmen, what’s that horrible noise?”
“The people across from me bought new wind chimes. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“We’ll steal them tonight.”
“Sometimes you say things that make me regret not marrying you years ago.”
The phone rang. Sam Wheeler: “What’ll happen next?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s focused on Dunwoody, and nobody’s dropped a skull in his fancy convertible. Nobody’s shot a bullet into his front door. Maybe he’s the bad guy.”
Sam said, “We’ve got all the evidence we need to convict Dunwoody of being an asshole. From an objective juror’s viewpoint, I sure as hell don’t know. But I’ll say this. Mamie’s got a lifetime of evidence and good judgment ninety-nine percent of the time. She brought up the subject two or three days ago. She said that people would start to suspect her brother. She said, in spite of his bluster and his aggressive business ways, in spite of her personal bias, he’s nothing but a puppy dog. Ask me what else is new.”
“What else?”
“Do we need any more?”
“We need to sit on the porch and drink beer,” I said.
“See you in a half hour.”
I hung up, began to walk away. The phone rang.
Teresa, calling from her condo. “Did you borrow my car?”
“I had no intention of borrowing it.”
“It’s not here.” Her voice shook. I heard sniffles. “Someone else borrowed it.”
“Call the Highway Patrol, and call Bobbi Lewis at the county. Also call the Marathon substation, ask for Deputy Saunders. Use my name.”
Shaky: “Okay.” She hung up.
My thoughts echoed Bobbi Lewis’s question. Why would anyone steal cars with only one road to the mainland?
Jemison Thorsby had been driving a forklift. With oversized hatches, the right hoist, cars could be put aboard shrimp boats. How did they keep them from being damaged once they went into the hold?
The phone rang. Teresa’s voice had hardened. “They stole my gun, too.”
The black mood of our early supper at Camille’s spoiled the food flavor and the company of Sam Wheeler and Marnie Dunwoody. We waited for our meals, wedged into a corner table next to the front window. It looked like Freaks and Families Night on Duval. Suburban moms dodged transvestites, chubby bikers took care not to trample the kids. Teresa told us that she’d requested a middle-shift city cop to take her statement on the missing Grand Am and nine-millimeter pistol. Officer Chris Ericson sounded like the polar opposite of our boy Tisdell. He’d pointed out that the typical complaint, week to week, was the naked man in a tree. But this week they’d had more murders than drag pops. He’d assured her that she lived in weird times. Her losses were not her fault. He’d left her feeling two percent better about losing her car, having her home tossed. His words had helped.
Marnie informed us that her boss at the
Citizen
had taken the high road. He’d decided to run the Holloway bullet-damage piece. It would run below the fold because three county commissioners had been seen lunching in a motor home next to a movie shoot. The report suggested that the men had violated the Florida “Sunshine Law,” a thirty-year-old statute requiring all meetings of elected officials to be open and public. Unprinted speculation at the
Citizen
held
that the commissioners’ greater risk lay in the fact that they’d hung around to scope a “partial nudity” scene that required multiple retakes and jogging.
Sam declined for all of us when the server offered coffee and dessert. He handed her a fifty, asked her to keep the change. I promised next time would be my nickel. Sam and Marnie had parked in a metered spot on Simonton, had dropped in eight quarters to be safe. They still worried they’d get a parking award from the tickets-for-profit brigade. We walked east on Angela, found shadows under a tree. Sam slid a Walther pistol from under his shirt, handed it to Teresa. A loaner, for peace of mind. It went into her purse. Sam and Marnie continued east. Teresa and I walked the opposite direction, back to her condo. The evening had turned cool. Even the light breeze kicked up street dust.
Teresa said, “Did you hear someone call your name?”
“Constantly, the past four days. It echoes.”
“Seriously . . .”
With the Duval traffic and sidewalk crowd noise, I was surprised she’d noticed anything. Then I heard the strained, gravelly voice. Wiley Fecko? I turned, didn’t recognize him at first. Mercer Holloway, dazed, disheveled, seated alone on Mangoes’s patio. Not the puffed-up tyrant who, hours earlier, had railed against the press and the police. He looked ten years older than he had at Blue Heaven.
“Join me?” he said. There were two extra chairs at his table. The only vacant chairs on the patio.
I stood where I was. “Thanks, we just ate.”
“A nightcap, then? Help me finish this pizza?”
He looked fried. His hair was uncombed, his shirt wrinkled. He’d bad-mouthed boozers and weirdos in his mid-afternoon tirade. Now he looked as odd as any downtown street dweller. He was inviting us in for a drink.
Mangoes had turned on their exterior radiant heaters. Looked inviting.
Okay, I thought. He can’t murder us in an open-air restaurant. I wanted to view him from a new angle, lightly pick his mind on the subject of Donovan Cosgrove.
I looked at Teresa. I hadn’t turned him down. She must have known that I was curious about something.
“I don’t mind,” she said.
“You don’t have to sit through this. Go home if you want to,” I said. “I’ll be over in a while. Not long.”
She shook her head. “I’m not ready to be there alone.”
The greeter made a big deal about leading us to Mercer’s table, handing us menus, summoning a server with a water pitcher. Teresa wanted only the glass of water. I almost ordered a Corona. I’d been Honest Alex eight hours earlier, given back the man’s twenty-five-hundred-dollar check. I ordered a cognac and a chocolate dessert. Holloway didn’t flinch. The server removed an empty Cabernet bottle. Holloway asked for another.
A ground-hugging compact sedan cruised Duval, its stereo thud strong enough to shake the streetlights. Then two Harleys with straight-pipes, then two more Harleys not so loud. I half-expected to see Bug Thorsby’s black truck roll by. Where was that truck?
Holloway said, “Believe these crowds? A joke in the early seventies said the Chamber of Commerce had a man on the Seven-Mile Bridge who’d call ahead. He’d warn the Duval Street merchants if a southbound tourist was spotted.”
“Key West got discovered,” I said. “But so did every city in America. The highways are jammed, real estate’s up—”
“You can tell the world’s overpopulated.” Holloway was on a roll. He’d be doing the interrupting, not me. “People going for groceries risk their kids’ lives for a fifty-yard advantage in traffic,” he said. “They tempt fate trying to make a yellow light. It’s a universal death wish. The earth exercising its own checks and balances.” He looked at the sidewalk. “The Conch Train used to cost a buck.”
I didn’t go back that far, but I remembered it being two or three dollars. “We used to ride for the fun of it,” I said. “Cheap way to kill an afternoon. Get a little buzz, take a ride—especially when Rex was driving—sit in the last car
and goof on the scenery. We’d learn something new every time. Back when my body would tolerate a flat-back bench seat.”
The server arrived with the wine. He began the ritual of showing the label, cutting the foil, pulling out an antiquated “traditional” corkscrew. Holloway asked Teresa if she wanted a glass, then asked the server to quit the act, just open it and pour. When the man had left, Holloway said, “They make you sit and watch so they can justify a twenty percent tip for ninety seconds of work. It’s like a real-estate broker sending a forty-dollar bouquet after collecting a fifty-thousand-dollar commission. I’ll pay a sawbuck tip, but only if I don’t have to sit through the show.”
He sipped wine, then said, “What did you expect of this town when you first arrived, Alex?”
“I liked it fine the way it was.”
He turned to Teresa. “And you, Ms. Barga?”
“I liked it fine the way it was.”
“Let the record show,” said Holloway, “that these two people did not get to Key West on the same day. Do you mind my asking how many years apart were your first days in town?”
Teresa said, “More than twenty.”
“And you saw change during those twenty years, Alex?”
I nodded.
“Did you expect not to see change?”
“Everything changes. I wanted change to suit my tastes.”
“So, it’s a question of taste instead of inevitability?”
Point well made. I nodded. I also liked the fact that he’d included Teresa in the conversation. Her bum mood had shut her up. But his willingness to ask for her input had put a trace of spark back in her face.
“That historical museum at Mallory Square,” he said. “I went in there—for eight dollars. They’ve got actors playing the parts of pioneer fishermen and wreckers. There was this broad-chested, burly, bearded guy trying hard but talking with a contrived accent and archaic lingo. In all my years I never met an overweight fisherman. They were ninety-nine
percent muscle, and they were all too skinny. Those old coots who used to sit around the Fisherman’s Café, the old salts who’d spent their lives on the ocean looked worse off than the winos that came later. You could fit six of them in a rain barrel.”