Air Dance Iguana (17 page)

“Expensive playground,” I said.

“They should’ve turned it into an amusement park. Who were they fooling with that mothball ridiculousness? In the end they torpedoed all those ships in sub exercises. Sent them to that big trash can and toilet that poses as a major ocean.”

I started up the stairs. “Sounds like the catch-22 of retirement, eh, Wendell?”

“You bet, Rutledge. You think you’re parked and then you’re sunk. I’m not going to fall for it. I’m a true believer in ‘Use it or lose it.’ You won’t ever see me slow down. My dream is to die in the saddle.”

Or choke to death on clichés.

Tim did me a favor when he rapped on the kitchen door at two in the morning. I had zonked on a sofa with all the lights on, my head jammed at an angle to my spine and my face wedged into a rank throw pillow. By morning I would have been a walking, wheezing hockey stick.

Behind his watery-eyed version of Lost Black Sheep, Tim looked more stoned than drunk. “Gotta put paradise behind me,” he said. “I wanted to say good-bye in person.”

“So the new girl and new job…down the dumper?”

“Maybe someday I’ll come back under brighter clouds.”

“Or no clouds at all?” I said.

“Too much to hope for.”

“You okay for gas cash?”

“I’m set.”

“Anyone expecting to be paid back?”

“Let’s end this on a high note. Tanker said he never wanted to hear about it again, but he’ll get a money order inside a week.”

“Where to next?” I said.

“Ten feet the far side of the Florida state line. From there, the idea of sawing wood and pounding nails appeals to my stress-repellent nature.”

“You want one piece of nonjudgmental brotherly advice?”

“I’ll risk it,” said Tim.

“Top of the Keys, go left on 997. Take it to U.S. 27 and take 27 past Ocala before you get on I-75.”

“There’s got to be a reason…”

I nodded. “Not a single toll booth.”

“I can afford a few—”

“They use cameras these days,” I said. “Not a single picture of your car.”

He started down the stairs. “I never would’ve thought of that.”

There but for a shake of chance went I.

Ahead of the qualifiers I always used to describe him, the anger, his ratshit luck, his hollow self-respect, I loved my brother. If you told me he could kill a man, I might punch you in the nose.

Then I would think about it.

At 6:55 Wednesday
morning a trash-collection truck’s squealing brakes hauled me out of a dream. I tried to rewind it, but saw only sea grass and pinfish without clear blue water or the nude woman. I concentrated on the underwater hum for maybe a minute, then the truck, having U-turned at the dead end, rumbled the length of Keelhaul Lane, rattled the headboard, and that was it.

As I carried my coffee to Al’s porch for a blast of sunlight, I heard a vehicle stop under the house. A car door slammed shut. I pictured a mob of people climbing the stairs, coming to me with bad news, threats, problems, horoscopes for all I knew. Millican with a ball bat and reenergized attitude; Tim with a twelve-pack, a changed mind, and a two-hour apology; even Bobbi Lewis looking for just the right morning man. For the traffic I drew, I could have built a booth near the pavement and peddled lemonade, grubstaked a calming career. Better, I should have built a guardhouse.

With all the possibilities, the last person I expected was my ex-lover, Teresa Barga, but I knew the top of her head before I saw her face. I opened the door and sensed that she was leaning inward for a hug. I didn’t know why she had come, but it sure as hell involved Tim, and a comfort hug wasn’t in me.

The look on her face prompted me to say, “Is he dead or alive?”

“He’s alive and unhurt so far,” she said.

I stepped back to let her in. She had dressed in a hurry, not for work. She wore nylon shorts, tennis shoes, and a gray T-shirt. Her hair was tucked under a Panama Jack visor.

“Did he really stop to say good-bye?” she said.

“Yep.”

“He didn’t make it off the Keys. His car quit running in Tavernier at four
A.M.
A deputy stopped to help and ran his tag.”

“The computer had him for the credit card?” I said.

“It went in yesterday. They called me three times looking for him. Bobbi Lewis didn’t tell you?”

“Must have slipped her mind,” I said. “Tim loved that old Caprice wagon, but he said it would break down when he least needed it to happen. Coffee?”

“It wasn’t because he was your brother.”

“That the deputy ran his tag?”

“You know what I mean.”

“That he passed bad plastic and his car broke down?”

She shook her fists with frustration. “That I slept with him, goddammit. You’re making this harder than it has to be. I liked him for being him and it had nothing to do with you, which is not to say that I ever disliked doing it with you.”

“Draw your brakes, Teresa. Coffee?”

“Whatever,” she said. “I blew our affair, I admit it. And I apologize—if that makes any difference. But being with Tim wasn’t some freaky attempt to substitute him for you.”

“We went through this two days ago.” I filled a cup for her and topped off mine. “Were you his phone call from jail?”

“He didn’t know any lawyers’ names,” she said. “He asked me to pick one and call.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet.”

“Did he want me to post bond?”

“He said not to tell you. Or not to bother asking. Something like that.”

“Did you have a specific reason to look into his past?”

She bit her lip. “I was afraid you’d hear about that.”

“I’m not saying it wasn’t a smart move.”

“He spoke English like a college grad and Spanish like a punk,” she said. “I wondered where he’d picked up his second language.”

“Or else you knew?”

“Or else I knew.”

“Did your feelings change when you learned about his jail time?”

“Even more than before,” she said, “I wanted him to be happy.”

“I wonder if he’s ever felt that.”

She fiddled with her coffee cup, then looked at me intently. “Are
you
happy?”

“How do you define the word?” I said. “It’s like ‘handsome’ or ‘rich.’ At best it’s an estimation. Outside of recent complications, I think I’m content. But isn’t that a question most often asked by unhappy people?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s asked by me right now and I’m pretty damn unhappy. I want him back in my house.”

“You might have to wait a while,” I said. “If he’s on parole, they won’t let him post bond. They’ll nail him for a violation and take him back to Pennsylvania to serve out his sentence. Watkins said that he’d knocked down thirty-one months of a five-year boogie.”

“Which leaves two years and five months,” said Teresa. “For using a bad credit card?”

“No, for the parole violation. It comes before he gets tried in Florida. Come to think of it, I never got a clear idea about that card, whether it was stolen or counterfeit or whatever.”

“Can Liska stop the violation process?”

“I doubt it. If Tim didn’t tell the arresting deputy that he’s on parole, maybe his lawyer can make the credit card disappear before it snowballs.”

“Like get the charges dropped?”

“Something like that. This county’s pretty slick when rules need readjustment. Are you on good terms with the county’s media liaison?”

“We’re both called public-information officers.”

“Perception management has many titles.”

“I know, it’s word spin. The Tiltin’ Hilton is now the Duval Inn.”

“Can you get Detective Millican’s home address?”

“She’ll give it to me in a heartbeat.”

“Heartbeats are good.”

“I saw you noticing,” said Teresa. “I left home so fast, I forgot a bra. Since I’m getting the address, can I come with you?”

I weighed my desire for a witness against the improbability of danger.

“Alex, I’ll drive.”

“Before we leave,” I said. “I’ll loan you an overshirt.”

But for two upended garbage cans near the roadway, and in strong contrast to the late Milton Navarre’s dumpy trailer less than four miles away, Chester Millican’s elevated home on Sombrero Beach Road appeared stylish and luxurious. A silver Chrysler sedan nosed out from under the house. We parked on green pea rock—Teresa called it a Cuban lawn—and followed a brick walkway to concrete stairs on the north side.

His voice boomed down from the landing. “Can I help you, asshole? Oh, sorry, ma’am. I didn’t see you back around the corner.” He waved an open beer at me. “Who’s she, your reporter buddy?”

“Teresa Barga,” I said. “The city’s PIO.”

“Ah, Ms. Barga,” he said. “I heard about you, too. What do you people want?”

Teresa hissed through her teeth. “Fuck this, Alex. Let’s go.”

Millican was shirtless, his broad chest covered by hair the same color but longer than his crew cut. “I bet you’re here for horse trading,” he said. “I heard an hour ago that someone named Timothy’s in county custody.”

“Maybe I can shorten your time in the barrel,” I said.

He wiggled his bottle as if testing for dregs. “And his too, right? I doubt you can do either one. Come on up to the palace.”

His kitchen and living room area smelled of socks and eucalyptus, both failing to mask the foul air of closed-up boredom. Two dead goldfish floated in a three-quart bowl on a shelf near the door. The furniture was designer quality, the TV wide as a coffee table. He had muted the Weather Channel. A stack of DVD boxes looked ready to tumble off a footstool. The only good thing about the room was the AC setting—pleasantly cool, not the one step above hard frost so common to indoor Florida.

Millican became the perfect host: “All I can offer is Coors that I forgot to put on ice before daybreak, but it went in an hour ago. It might be cold now.”

Teresa shook her head.

“Pass,” I said. “I need breakfast first.”

Millican dropped his empty in the sink, took a new beer from the fridge, and pointed at the television. “That man is Jim Cantore, and he has redefined the American baseball cap. His brims are perfect semicircles. He could be standing in Galveston or up in Savannah, broadcasting into the teeth of a hurricane, telling the nation and the world about wave height and Safir-Simpson numbers, and that cap brim, his fine roll, would never flutter, never waver. I admire that even more than his perfect tan. I think the ‘Cantore Roll’ should be the standard against which all cap brims are judged.”

Teresa set her eyes on Millican. “How do you feel about perfect justice?”

He stared at Cantore for about fifteen seconds, then said, “Does the city have an interest in this case, young lady?”

“‘Young lady’?” she said.

“Ma’am?”

“‘Ms. Barga’ was fine two minutes ago.”

“Got it. I acquiesce to the modern woman. Is this a crusade to free up your squeeze?”

“I prefer to call him my gentleman friend.”

Millican chuckled with no trace of humor. “I didn’t answer you, and you didn’t answer me.”

“Can I butt in here?” I said.

“Sure,” said Millican. “The woman and I were just winding down our match. Now you’ll ask me to prevail upon my daughter and her husband to drop charges against your brother. I think they did that after he showed up three days ago and paid them back in cash. Your brother’s problem is with the bank that issued the credit card, Rutledge, but you knew that before you arrived.”

“It might help if your son-in-law claimed it was a mistake from the start.”

Millican smiled like a man getting an award. “What’s in it for me?”

“If there’s a civil rights case, I back off.”

“Which I can’t believe you’d be stupid enough to press. What else have you got?”

I shook my head.

He produced a cynical sneer. “Okay, I’ll start. Your brother and a woman kidnapped me. A modern woman with exemplary wrist action.”

“Tim didn’t do it,” insisted Teresa. “He was with me.”

Millican held up his hand. “At worst that’s half true. But let me finish, please. It’s only a matter of time before they prove he did it. The FDLE can’t wait to find the ski masks the perps wore, because not many people in Florida make frigid-weather fashion statements. Once the feds grab the case, the credit card will get lost in the shuffle. What kind of car does the kid drive?”

“Caprice wagon,” I said. He could find out on his own.

Millican nodded. “Those wagons come from the factory with roof racks installed. He had that gold star tied on top of the car, except he had to stop on the highway and tighten his knots because the whole thing started to flutter and shake when we got up to speed. I was blindfolded, but I could hear fine. This is information I gave that morning. It’ll also match the vehicle they impounded this morning.”

“You said Tim was with a girl,” said Teresa.

“I did,” said Millican.

“You were blindfolded.”

He glanced at Teresa’s forearms, then lifted his eyes to hers. “I could tell by the size of her hands and the way she moved them. How do you think she got my dick into that plastic doll?”

Teresa bounced back: “Did she use spray starch?”

Millican paused with that one, then turned to me. “You take chemistry in school?”

“One year. I forgot it after the final exam.”

He leaned against a kitchen counter. “Doesn’t matter anyway. They hadn’t invented cyanoacrylate adhesive when you were in school.”

“Superglue?”

“And superglue remover. Gamma butyrolactone, isopropyl alcohol, and acetone. Being roped to a star was nothing but bad theater, and haven’t we all wanted to show our ass to morning traffic. After all these years in police work, you get the warm and fuzzies mooning commuters. But the chemicals that the hospital nurse smeared on my dick to get it loose got my attention like she’d rammed a sharp bamboo shoot up the slit. Between you two and me, I feel the pressing need to share this. Some of that chemical stew went up my pipe. I still bleed when I drain the lizard. Is this too graphic for you, ma’am?”

Teresa turned to me. “Alex, did you have bleeding after you got kicked in the balls on Saturday?”

“Still do, Teresa. My attorney asked me the same question.”

Millican knocked back a swig, licked loose beer from his lip. “I shiver with fear. You know your good buddy Liska can’t be sheriff forever, don’t you?”

The wall phone rang. Millican raised his beer to toast the sound of it, and leaned back to grab the receiver. I turned to see Teresa averting her eyes from his full-frontal belly button. Gritting her teeth, she scanned the kitchen, the mess, burns on the countertop.

Millican’s side of the conversation was “Yo” and five or six grunts. He hung up and put a smug look on his face. “They found fiber strands on the roof rack of the Caprice. Matches the rope used to tie me to the star. It’s fun to connect evidence when it works in your favor.”

I wondered why rope samples had made it from the Lower Keys to Tavernier so quickly, and who had worked the microscope. My face betrayed me.

“Gotcha,” he said. “You’re thinking the rope was used for the nooses?”

“Crossed my mind.”

“Negative match, you’ll be glad to hear. It disappoints me sure as shit, because I had him for the snuffs and still do. Of course, the star part kills your reason for making a deal. That’s all out of my hands.”

“Why do you live in Marathon?” I said.

“I love it here. It’s clean. I can’t imagine how you people live on that funky island at the end of the road. Why do you ask?”

“I’d think a man like you, with your professional background, your accomplishments, wouldn’t enjoy anything about this county.”

Millican looked out a window. “The great thing about the Florida Keys, you’re free to design a lifestyle to your own taste.”

“And your ethics?” I said.

He shook his head. “If you didn’t bring them with you, you’re shit out of luck.”

“When we met at the Navarre crime scene you said, ‘You don’t see hangings that often, unless they’re suicides in a locked room.’ Was this your first nonsuicidal hanging?”

“We had a bit of everything up north,” said Millican. “I got up there in time for some racial unrest. Let’s say I might have seen maybe three.”

“How about prior to your time up north?”

“There was no prior.”

“No other hangings?” I said.

“Never.”

“Not in Key West on the Navy base?”

His face froze with his mouth hung open. His thumbnail fiddled with the paper label on the bottle. After he inhaled and exhaled a few times, his eyelids sagged, his gaze went to the floor, his index finger pointed at Teresa. “Did she dig up some dirt?”