I
sensed an observer. I came awake without opening my eyes. Got my bearings, identified my surroundings. The scent of her, a combination of hair conditioner, yesterday’s deodorant, the brief sex of six hours earlier. I felt the bed shift. I moved my arm, the back of my hand found soft hair, decidedly untrimmed. I heard Teresa inhale, felt her lips touch my shoulder.
We’d eaten Cuban food, then, like tourists just off the Overseas Highway, walked into the Eden House, asked for a room. A hundred and fifty feet from my front door, I paid eighty bucks to spend the night. Thank goodness for the off-season. Key West is the only city in the country where the motels offer a “locals’” discount. Fountains, lush plantings, hinged transom above the door, ceiling fan, fluffy pillows. We’d bought a bottle of J. Lohr Cabernet in a store on White Street. We’d forgotten to bring our suits, but swam anyway. Back in the room, we had tried to get fancier than missionary. Fatigue had vetoed our success. Promising ourselves a pancakes pig-out at Camille’s in the morning, we’d drifted to sleep.
Her lips touched me again. I moved my hand. She tried to trap it in the valley, slid closer, giggled, “Good day, sir.”
“The best dawn all week.”
“How do you know yet?” Her head went under the sheet, immediately proved and ensured that fatigue would not encroach
on our opinion of the morning. Soon enough, it came back to the missionaries, in exploring, wide-awake ways. Afterward, Teresa danced into the bathroom, twirling, singing, “Getting to know you, getting to know all about you …”
I called the house. Zack and Claire had arranged for a late-morning flight. Zack had already walked to the 5 Brothers Grocery. He invited me over for his special-recipe café con leche. Teresa called her condo. Samantha and Buzzy Burch asked her to meet them for breakfast at Camille’s.
We stood in the Eden House courtyard before we checked out, listened to three couples argue in French about how to spend their last day in paradise.
“So, I guess this is it,” Teresa said. “I have to go back to Paris, now that my work here is done. It was nice to meet you.”
I caught it on the fly: “They’ll want to send me back to prison, to serve out my life sentence. I’ll remember last night as long as I’m alive.”
She snaked her arms around me, pressed her face against my neck. “If you don’t take me to the movies tonight, I’ll never speak to you again.”
I can’t shave until my suntan fades. I’d look like a two-toned‘55 Dodge.” Zack Cahill rubbed his hand against his silvered beard, and ran his other thumb along an aloe’s stem serrations. He studied the plant.”Shaving’ll be the least of my adjustments.”
Zack and I sat on my side porch. The morning sun lit the screening, put a glow on the thirsty plant collection. From blocks away, church bells rang, in three distinct keys. Someone should effect a treaty, put them all in C major, Surround Sound instead of intramural clash. Claire Cahill trooped in from my yard shower, wrapped in the ankle-length silk robe that Annie, my ex-housemate, had sent months ago as a split-up gift.
“I will be ready for the world in exactly fifteen minutes.” She disappeared into the house.
I said, “Is my house still worth a quarter million more than its appraisal?”
Zack’s pensive face sidestepped into guilt. “We took care of that last night. Look …”
“There’s plenty of time for—”
“No, you need to know. When was it—five, six years ago you went to Costa Rica, to photograph that magazine travel piece?”
“Six years ago June.” Not a great gig. “Heart of the rainy season.”
“I came down and used your house for a couple days.”
“That’s why it’s here.”
“I brought a friend. A carpenter. He installed a fireproof safe under your stove. Even if you’d moved the stove, you wouldn’t have been able to tell.”
I couldn’t decide whether to be pissed or not care. I let it go.
“Anyway,” he said, “last night I emptied the safe. I gave the boys back the original briefcase. It contained the exact amount of cash they gave me when this all began.”
“Their whole reward, their retirement?”
“Years ago, knowing that money was there to back me up, I made a few investments with my own money that I wouldn’t have made otherwise. I took some risks. One went sour, one broke even. The one that made good, I bought a small boat-building operation in Ft. Pierce, Florida. We design and build sailboats based on the Biscayne Bay sharpies that Commodore Ralph Munroe created before Miami was born.”
“Like the
Blown Aweigh …”
“ … which belongs to Buzz Burch. Auguie and Makksy and Jesse Spence all own identical boats. They’re sitting in dry dock, ready to be rigged. As of last night, Auguie, Makksy, and Burch also own the boat-building firm. The deal’s over. I walk away
with guilt and satisfaction. And shame. I’ve waited for this day since the morning after I agreed to play their dream. If repercussions ever come along, I’ll stand up. The end.”
“How did all the shit start?”
“Abby learned that her brother was in the same jail as Tazzy Gucci. She told him to get close to him. Sure as hell, Makksy spilled his guts from what he thought was his deathbed. Richard Abbott recruited Omar Boudreau and Ray Best to help him pull the rip. They both went to work for Makksy’s limo deal. Best even married Muffin de Jour, part of the plan. Then, according to Abby, her brother decided to take it all, whatever it was.”
“So he killed Omar.”
“And Best tried to get even by shooting Abby.”
“Who shot Best?”
“Angel. She’d never told Ray about the ‘fund.’ The only way he could have known was to be in with Abbott and Omar.”
“Why did Sammy go fishing with Sam Wheeler?”
“Her idea. To keep from going stir-crazy. No other reason at all.”
A taxi pulled into the lane, stopped at the house. Not the ponytailed dude with the Greek captain’s hat.
“Ride with us to the airport, Alex?” Claire had reverted to soccer mom. Khaki shorts, an oxford-cloth shirt, little gold earrings.
We rode past Garrison Bight, out First Street. At the Flagler intersection, plastered on the old Tides Inn, Olivia Jones’s new poster for Liska’s campaign. A rectangle with a blended red-topurple broad brush check mark in a pastel-green box. The silhouette of a palm tree. The painting brought to mind the sun setting into the ocean. LISKA in pale orange across the bottom, a modern font that looked as if the type had been wrinkled, then flattened again. Eye-catching, hip, positive. Just in time for the primaries, two days away.
Claire slid to my side of the cab’s backseat. “You once said
that the tree at Fleming and Frances was a big reason you bought in that neighborhood.”
“I miss that tree. It took weeks after the hurricane to clear it away. Its branches tore up three houses. After all this time, one of them still needs work.”
“I miss that tree,” she said.
No one spoke until we hugged and said good-bye at the airport. Before I got back in the cab, I dropped four quarters into a newspaper vending box.
Twin headlines: LOCAL WIFE KILLER CONFESSES, and TUCKER COVER-UP EXPOSED. Both pieces began above the fold, continued to the page base, then on to page 3. A picture of the sheriff on the right, and a pre-Rasta Little Howie to the left. Marnie Dunwoody’s byline on each. The entire page 4 was a testimonial campaign ad from Tucker headed, “I did not commit my son’s crimes!”
Right, bubba. But you “unfounded” and closed ninety percent of them.
The article about Howie Tucker having strangled Chloe to shut her up gave repeated credit to Detective Liska, to his continuing desire to leave no capital crime unsolved. I knew Keys politics. Chicken Neck’s stock had gone through the roof.
My stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten breakfast.
The cabbie waited for me to get out and pull my wallet from my pocket. Carmen Sosa and Maria Rolley strolled down Fleming, coming home from church. “I’ll spring for fish sandwiches,” I said.
“You’re a mind reader,” said Carmen. She and her daughter got into the taxi. I slid in, next to Maria. Carmen asked the driver to take us to the Margaritaville Restaurant. She said to me, “Did you look at the Citizen? Hard to believe, in a matter of weeks, we’ll have Sheriff Liska.”
“He deserves it.”
Carmen said, “Cops who break the law are like deodorants
that smell funny. Don’t ask me to explain that, but how do they get the job in the first place?”
“We vote by reflex instead of thought.”
“Oh. Like your social life.”
I retreated to Maria. “How’s school this year?”
Maria scowled. “Long division.”
Duval Street was almost empty. Two people on bicycles did U-turns without risking their lives. Not a single car ran the red light in front of Fast Buck Freddie’s. The restaurant’s stereo system offered Bob Marley, the Iguanas, and an old Willis Alan Ramsey album. My bowl of conch chowder was perfect. I canceled my sandwich and ordered a second bowl of chowder. I also requested a light beer, strictly for its digestive benefits. And, eventually, a second one.
I finally took a break. “Let’s get back to this talk of long division.”
Maria turned to her mother. Her eyes pleaded: “Do we have to?”
I wanted to sound reasonable, without talking down. Maria had reached the age where patronizing turned her to frost. “I agree, long division’s a drag,” I said. “And they’re going to throw it at you from now until college. But here’s the catch. Long division is one of those rare school subjects that you might actually use in real life. You’re going to have to study a whole lot of subjects, from now until the end of college, that you’ll never use when you’re grown up. But long division, do yourself a favor. Work hard for the next few weeks, learn it better than anyone in your class, and it’ll be like riding a bike. You’ll never have to worry about it again.”
I’d made a reasonable point. I felt successful. I had given good advice, and not made it sound like a sermon.
Maria put the uniquely feminine look on her face that told me I was dumb as a rock. She stood to go to the ladies’ room, and turned to Carmen. “Does he know about calculators?”
When Maria had left, Carmen said, “You recall talking about my personal Catch-22?”
“I do.”
“You’re already part of her life.”
“Then you can’t break up with me.”
“No, it means we can never become lovers.”
“My argument has turned around and bit me on the bottom?”
“Speaking of which, where were you last night?”
Duffy Lee Hall rode his bike past the restaurant’s open window. He saw me and U-turned, stopped on the sidewalk, three feet from the table. He smiled at Carmen. He was all wound up. “You’re not going to believe,” he said. “Little guy, looking like a wino in Italian loafers, talking like Jimmy Cagney with a drawl, comes by the house. I’m inside, working. I built a temporary darkroom. The wife gets me out of the darkroom, the guy says, ‘Heard you had a fire, took a loss.’ I said I’d taken more than that. He handed me a bank envelope, said, ‘Maybe this’ll help you out.’ He went down the walkway, got in a cab and left. This goofy-assed stranger gave me twenty-one grand, in cash.”
“Great.” Tazzy, who had blabbed, had made good.
“What do I do now?”
“Stop talking about it, Duffy Lee.”
The Mango Opera
“Intriguing … an entertaining and enlightening book about a foreign country within our own boundaries—Key West.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“A promising debut that gives a glimpse of Key West that tourists seldom see … THE MANGO OPERA brings a new and imaginative mystery writer with a unique view to the Florida fold. Alex Rudedge should be investigating Key West for years.”
—
Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
“THE MANGO OPERA is about as accurate a description of old Key West as there is around today.”
—Jimmy Buffett
“THE MANGO OPERA is a powerful debut novel full of juicy characters, crackling dialogue and thrill-a-minute action. Not since McGuane’s 92 IN THE SHADE has Key West been rendered so vividly and with such spare poetry. Tom Corcoran is the real thing—a novelist with a mature voice, a powerful vision and a great ear for the rhythms of human speech. This is a small, exciting novel, one not to be missed.”
—James W. Hall, author of
Body Language
and
Rough Draft
“THE MANGO OPERA, with its tropical setting, fruity characters and hard-boiled dialogue, is a delicious treat.”
—
The St. Petersburg Times
“The genius of imagination and the genius of realism don’t often take up housekeeping in one writer’s skull. But Tom Corcoran has combined a viciously creative plot with a perfect description of Key West as it really is, and the result is good to the bone.”
—P.J. O‘Rourke, author of
Holidays in Hell,
Parliament of Whores,
and
Give War a Chance
“Key West is crazy, dangerous, hilarious, and exotic. Tom Corcoran’s THE MANGO OPERA captures all of this with right-on characters and escalating suspense. A true mystery and a great read.”
—Winston Groom, author of
Forrest Gump
“Tom Corcoran knows the foul reaches of Key West and so do I. This (M.O.) is an evil book about an evil place. Don’t read this book if you have a tendency to wonder where your daughter is on long rainy nights.”
—Hunter S. Thompson, author of
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“THE MANGO OPERA is a very engrossing novel. Corcoran deftly evokes the spirit and physicality of the place, the low tide jubilance and enlivening fetor of its pleasures and instinctive criminality, as if the sun and ocean had blasted all the flowers of evil into its very genes.”
—Jim Harrison, author of
Dalva and Legends of the Fall
“Fast-moving and brightly written, this is a first novel that demands a second.”
—
Dallas Morning News
“First time author Tom Corcoran’s MANGO OPERA is a full focus delight … You’re hooked from page one … Corcoran’s debut is a doozy. Intricate plotting, memorable characters and a solid and honest feel for his terrain put the author picture-perfect right out of the starting gate.”
—
Clarion-Ledger
(Jackson, MS)
“Tom Corcoran means business. This new thriller isn’t a laugh-a-minute lightweight to grin at while awaiting your next—but surely not last—rum runner. You won’t think of Key West as quite so laid-back again.”
—
The Miami Herald
“With its sure feel for the Key West that resides beneath the tourist façade and a quirky, hard-edged rhythm pulsing beneath the surface calm, this debut deserves a wide and welcoming audience.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A promising new series … You can feel the salt on your tongue as Rutledge forces himself to sort through the unwashed laundry of a life lived for the substantial pleasures of the moment. Melancholy mixes nicely with nostalgia in this satisfying debut.”
—
Booklist
“Anyone who reads THE MANGO OPERA will realize the quality is what counts and this novel provides that and more. An incredible debut.”
—Harriet Klausner, BookBrowser
“THE MANGO OPERA leapfrogs over many first-time novels and puts Corcoran solidly in the company of the likes of Robert Crais. In both plot and dialogue Corcoran shows a deft hand. His characters are convincing in voice and action; they are frank, spicy, and thoughtful. Readers will shout a resounding”bravo!“at the end of THE MANGO OPERA. Tom Corcoran is off to a very fast start on what is sure to be a long career as a fine mystery novelist.”
—
Bookpage
“Like a tropical chef, Corcoran flavors THE MANGO OPERA with colorful characters, crisp dialogue, island history, and quite a bit of dark but highly appropriate humor. He serves it all up in tasty bites that promise to satisfy almost any mystery lover.”