Isle of Dogs (22 page)

“Por favor.”
He glanced up at both Macovich and Hooter.
“No buena armonía.”

Cruz Morales had a vague understanding of English and was accustomed to tossing out the simplest Spanish phrases that most New Yorkers caught immediately. But there was a sea of incomprehension between him and the cop and the tollbooth lady, and Cruz could not afford further investigation. He was twelve years old with a false ID and had driven to Richmond to pick up a package for his older brothers. Although he hadn’t looked at whatever was inside the tightly wrapped bundle hidden in the tire well, he could tell by the weight of it that he was probably transporting handguns again.

“I think the child say he’s
poor
and needs a
favor,”
Hooter translated for Macovich. “He look too little and young to hurt nobody.” Her maternal instincts wafted out on a cloud of perfume. “Maybe he need a soda or coffee. All them Mexicans start drinking coffee when they’re little babies.”

The tollbooth lady’s gold front tooth seemed the only bright spot in Cruz Morales’s existence this moment. He made eye contact with her and smiled a little, his teeth chattering.

“See,” Hooter nudged Macovich with her elbow, bumping his pistol. “He’s relating now. We getting through to him.”

She glanced up at miles of parked cars in her lane. Why, it was an endless stream of impatient headlights, and it puffed her up to think they were all here to see her. She felt like a movie star for an instant, and was overwhelmed by sympathy
for the little Mexican boy, who clearly was far from home and frightened. He was probably cold, tired, and hungry, too.

Hooter reached into her coat pocket, dug through tubes of lipstick, and produced a napkin that some nice-looking white trooper had given her last year when that man with the paper sack over his head had tried to rob the tollbooth and had run into it instead. Hooter fished out a pen, clicked it open, and wrote down her home phone number on the napkin, which she handed to the Mexican boy.

“Honey, you call me any time you need something,” she magnanimously said. “I know ’zactly what it feels like to be a minority and have folks always thinking the worst when you ain’t done nothing but collect their unsanitarian money or drive somewhere and probably not knowing your ’spection ticket’s espired.”

“Get out of the car!” Macovich ordered the illegal alien. “Get out slowly and let me see your hands!”

Cruz Morales smashed the accelerator to the floor and squealed rubber, flying through the toll lane as lights flashed and alarms screamed because he didn’t have time to toss three quarters into the bin.

“Shit!” Macovich exclaimed, patting around his duty belt, looking for his keys as he ran to his unmarked car and jumped in.

He flipped on his lights and sirens and flew down the interstate, reminding Hooter of a screaming, flashing Christmas tree. She returned to her custom-fabricated aluminum booth with its vandal-resistant stainless-steel coin basket and shut the Extend-A-Door. The endless river of headlights began to move sluggishly toward her and she hoped people wouldn’t be grumpy after the delay.

“What the hell’s going on?” the first driver asked from the high seat of his pickup truck. “If I sat here much longer, I was gonna turn into a skeleton.”

“Then that pretty lady friend I’m sure you got waiting at home for you won’t have as much of you to love,” Hooter teased him with a flash of a smile. “I sure do like that rainbow bumper sticker.” She nodded at his windshield. “You know, I been seeing more and more of ’em lately, like maybe people is looking for the bright side and feeling hope. I might just get
me one of them rainbows and stick it on my tollbooth.”

The driver leaned over and popped open his glove box. “Here.” He handed her a stack of rainbow bumper stickers. “Be my guest, girlfriend.”

“See,” Hooter said to the next driver as the pickup truck with the rainbow sticker sped off, “if you nice to folks, it’s contagious just like germs is, only being nice don’t make you sick.” She reached out a gloved hand and took a dollar bill from Barbie Fogg.

“I know why all these cars are stopped,” Barbie said. “You heard about that man who got blown up over there by the river? It’s all over the radio.”

“Oh my!” Hooter returned a quarter to her and dropped seventy-five cents in the toll bin. “I don’t got a radio in my booth ’cause they ain’t no time for me to listen to it. What happened, baby?”

Cars began to honk, turning the interstate into an endless flock of migrating Canada geese.

“The police wouldn’t say. But it will be in the paper in the morning,” Barbie replied. “Problem is, I don’t get the paper, so I’ll never know what happened.”

“You just drive through my booth tomorrow,” Hooter said with importance. “I always read the paper before I go to work. I tell you all about it. What your name, baby?”

They exchanged names and Hooter handed her a rainbow bumper sticker.

“You put that on your minivan and it will bring smiles and hope to all you pass,” Hooter promised.

“Why thank you!” Barbie was touched and delighted. “I’ll do it the minute I get home.”

 Governor Crimm chalked the tip of his lucky pool cue, cigar smoke hanging in a hazy halo around his head as he tried to make out striped balls on the red felt-covered table that Thomas Jefferson had brought back from France, or so Maude had claimed when she’d discovered it on eBay. Every few minutes, one of the troopers came into the billiards room to give the governor updates. The news was not promising.

Checks of vehicles passing through tollbooths had produced only one car with New York plates, and the driver, clearly Hispanic, had fled. So far, he had not been caught, and the consensus was that he—the heinous serial killer—had left the city, heading north. Other disturbing developments included Trooper Truth’s latest essay, which accused Major Trader of being a dishonest, self-serving pirate who was trying to poison the governor. As if things weren’t grim enough, Regina had planted herself on a Chippendale commode chair, slurping ice cream she had mixed with homemade Toll House cookies she had helped herself to in the kitchen. She was chewing with her mouth open and talking nonstop, distracting the governor as he peered through his magnifying glass at the pool balls he went after.

“Good shot,” Andy said when a red-striped ball bounced off
the table. He quickly caught it and discreetly tucked it into a corner pocket.

“You aren’t letting me win, are you?” the governor said, chalking his stick again.

“Everybody always lets you win,” Regina told her father. “Except me. I refuse to let you win.”

Regina was a gifted pool player and between her father’s terms as governor, when she was at liberty to come and go as she pleased, she was known in area bars for her trick shots and ruthlessness. The only person who had ever beaten her without cheating was that dumbshit, disrespectful Trooper Macovich.

“Here.” Andy offered Regina his pool cue. “I’m not with it tonight. You take over. If you don’t mind my asking,” he said to the governor as Regina racked up balls, “how did Trader come to work for you?”

“A good question,” the governor replied. “It was during my first term as governor, and as I remember it, he was a low man on the totem pole, but I got to know him because he used to stop by the mansion to help out with things, such as supervising the inmates, which is not the most desirable job.”

Regina broke, and four solid balls whizzed into four different pockets. “Shit,” she complained. “I’m having an off night, too.”

Pony had just stepped inside to see if anyone needed a touch more brandy, and he caught what the governor said about inmates. He was hurt. It always wounded him when the First Family implied that just because a person was a convicted felon, he could never be trusted with anything ever again.

“Might I get you another cigar?” Pony asked Governor Crimm in a sullen tone as Regina held the cue behind her back and knocked a ball into two more balls, all three of which spun off at impossible angles and smacked into pockets.

“I must admit, I’m very disappointed to learn that he might have been trying to poison me,” the governor added. “I think we should go back to having tasters. Huh, make that scoundrel one, as a matter of fact.”

“If you can find him,” Andy replied. “My guess is, he’s
going to disappear and probably already has. It’s too bad we don’t have any hard evidence on him yet or we could have arrested him before he left the mansion.”

“Sounds to me like Trooper Truth has plenty of hard evidence,” Crimm commented with an insinuation in his tone. “And that indicates to me this renegade columnist may be Trader’s accomplice. How else would Trooper Truth know about my being poisoned, now tell me that, unless he had something to do with it?”

Andy hadn’t anticipated this turn in the governor’s thoughts, and he got a little worried. If Hammer were subpoenaed and asked under oath if she knew Trooper Truth’s identity, she would have to reply truthfully and Andy could find himself in a world of trouble.

As if Crimm were privy to Andy’s thoughts, he said, “I need to talk to Superintendent Hammer and find out what she knows.”

“I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to you, Governor,” Andy said. “But she’s had a terrible time getting hold of you and never hears from you.”

“Never hears from me?” The governor gave Andy a magnified eye. “I’ve written her a number of notes, not only about her poor little dog, but inviting her to official functions!”

“She’s never gotten them, sir.”

“So that damn Trader was interfering with everything!” He was getting very put out.

“Seems to me he’s been lying to you from the start,” Andy agreed.

“A fresh cigar would be a good idea,” the governor said to Pony, who was still waiting patiently in the doorway.

Crimm stubbed out his half-smoked cigar in Regina’s ice cream dish, which he mistook for an ashtray. He was getting impatient as his unsportsmanlike daughter tapped one ball after another into the pockets.

“That’s why I don’t like to play with you,” he said to her. “I never get to shoot. I may as well not even be in the room. Tell you what I’m going to do, son.” Crimm directed this to Andy. “I’m going to assign you to a special undercover investigation. I want you to find out who Trooper Truth is as quickly as
possible and see just what his involvement with Trader might be. And while you’re at it, let’s get the dentist back and make sure those Tangier people aren’t up to any other mischief.”

“Why don’t you put
both
Andy and me on a special mission, and I’ll help him solve crimes and get bad people off the streets?” Regina suggested as the last solid ball spun across felt, banked several times, and sank out of sight. “Maybe he can teach me to fly, too.”

“Maybe Miss Regina and Mister Andy should help out with that fisherman who just burned up,” Pony said from the doorway. “I hear things aren’t going too well. Some old woman ran over the body, a bicycle, and a tackle box. The troopers are talking about it. They say a mean Hispanic’s on the loose and will probably kill some other poor black person the same way.”

“And what way might that be?” the governor inquired.

“Spontenuous consumption.”

“Well, I ’spect Doctor Sawamatsu will be the judge of that,” was Crimm’s response.

He had appointed the most recently hired medical examiner himself, and he had the utmost confidence in the infallibility of Dr. Sawamatsu, who had originally come to Virginia for the sole purpose of studying gunshot wounds. His intention had been to take his training back to Japan, but the traffic was so bad there and he was so tired of living in a crowded house with people he didn’t know that he lingered in the Commonwealth well beyond the completion of his internship. Then the governor, who was always trying to attract Japanese businesses and tourists to Virginia, called Dr. Sawamatsu one day.

“Doctor Sawamatsu,” the governor said, and the doctor would never forget what followed, “let me get your honest opinion about something. As you know, the chief medical examiner is a woman I’m not especially fond of. All of her staff are Americans, and I’m wondering if I had a Japanese medical examiner in Virginia, would that make a difference?”

“To whom?”

“To these Japanese Fortune 500 companies who keep relocating or never relocate here to begin with—and to Japanese citizens in general who have yet to discover Colonial Williamsburg, Jamestown, our many amusement parks and
plantations and resorts and so on. As long as they speak English, and all of them do.”

Dr. Sawamatsu had to think quickly. He wanted to be a medical examiner in America more than anything else, but he was keenly aware that his patients were not important players in tourism or the business community and rarely had any influence whatsoever, either before they were carried into the morgue or after they left.

“When you have especially sensational cases, it most certainly would make a difference,” was Dr. Sawamatsu’s reply. “Because of the publicity and the message it would send if the medical examiner were Asian. In such a case, I believe my people would reciprocate and locate their companies and tourists here, providing you give them a tax incentive.”

“A tax incentive?”

“A big one.”

“What an unusual idea,” the governor said, and the minute he got off the phone, he told his cabinet that he planned to make all Japanese businesses and individuals exempt from state taxes. The result was stunning. Within a year, tourism flourished. Railways and Greyhound had to double their staffs and buses, and camera stores began popping up on every corner. Dr. Sawamatsu became an assistant chief medical examiner and received a personal thank-you note from Governor Crimm, which the young doctor framed and hung in his living room, next to the display case of souvenirs he had collected from dead patients who no longer had any need of artificial body parts, suicide or threatening notes, or the wreckage of whatever they had died in or the weapons that had killed them.

W
E
need to get this body out of here,” Dr. Sawamatsu was telling the police as he crouched in the dark, pulling on surgical gloves. “Please do not let anyone else run over it.”

“Where’s the chief?” asked Detective Slipper, who did not share the governor’s high opinion of Dr. Sawamatsu. “Why isn’t Doctor Scarpetta here? She almost always responds personally to complicated, sensational crime scenes.”

“She went to court in Halifax and will not be back until
very late,” Dr. Sawamatsu replied rather testily. “Now, we must get this body to the morgue right now.”

“I’m not sure we can retrieve the stretcher out of the river,” Detective Slipper hated to tell him. “We’d have to bring in divers.”

“No time. We wrap him in sheets and carry him to the ambulance,” Dr. Sawamatsu ordered. “I look at him in the morning. I can’t see anything out here.”

“Glad I’m not the only one,” Lamonia grumpily agreed.

She was in handcuffs and standing by her dented Dodge Dart, not sure what she had done to irritate everybody so much. Trader, of course, was not put out with Lamonia in the least. He was watching the activity through his shattered windshield after a fruitless hour of standing on a bridge, shining a powerful flashlight down into the water, trying to find the crabs and the trout. Trader was deeply grateful that Lamonia had virtually destroyed the crime scene. He watched the medical examiner and paramedics cover the dead fisherman with sheets and carry him away, tucking him into the back of the ambulance, which had a crunched-in tailgate. How could Trader’s luck have changed so dramatically, all in one day?

Major Trader’s career and entire life were in shambles and always had been, if he were honest with himself. He looked at himself in the rearview mirror and was faced with a reflection that might as well have been his maternal grandfather, also named Major. All of the men in his mother’s lineage had been called Major since Anne Bonny had had sex with a pirate and given birth to a son she named Major because it was a higher rank than captain, and she’d never met a pirate ranked higher than captain.

All the Major men bore a resemblance to one another. They were a sturdy lot with ruddy faces, big girths, pale, shifty eyes, and thinning hair. As a child, Trader had enjoyed a spree of pyromania and had never been caught. To this day, no one on Tangier Island knew that little Major was the one who torched a shed on stilts that turned out to be a soft-crab plantation. Thousands of crabs in the midst of molting had been killed, the year’s harvest lost, the economy ruined. To make matters worse, the fire could not be contained and spread up several creeks, incinerating scores of bateaus before the blaze
was finally extinguished alarmingly close to Hilda Crockett’s Chesapeake House, known for its long family-style tables, crab cakes, clam fritters, home-baked bread, ham, and more.

Young Major Trader also became adept at sneaking the family flare gun out of the wading boot where his father hid his liquor. By experimenting with lighter fluid, gasoline, and bourbon, Major realized he could torch places from a distance by filling a milk jug with a flammable liquid and, when nobody was looking, fire a flare at the jug and cause a small explosion, much like what he had done to the fisherman.

P
ONY
also had led a lawless life as a young one, but unlike Trader, Pony lived with remorse and an overwhelming sense of shame and regret. Having grown weary of watching Regina play pool while her father stood idly by, tapping cigar ashes wherever he thought he saw an ashtray, Pony and Andy had wandered out into the garden. They sat on a granite bench in the cold and began to talk.