Air Dance Iguana (2 page)

Kansas Jack’s character
van was hand-painted a poster tone of royal blue. Faded bumper stickers covered its rear end.
SAVE TIBET, STOP GLOBAL WHINING, SAVE OLD STILTSVILLE,
and
FUCK FEMA. BLOW THE BRIDGE.
All of them wishful thinking. Jack had written
Swizzle Rod
with a red Magic Marker on his gray vinyl spare-tire cover.

Beyond the yellow tape, Sheriff Liska’s personal car was wedged into a patch of palm trimmings, puddles, and toppled garbage cans. Just past the Lexus, my old nemesis, Deputy Billy “No Jokes” Bohner, leaned against his green-and-white’s front fender. A Kevlar vest under his starched white shirt bulked his torso. He mopped his doughy face with a paper towel, turned an eye to me, then looked away.

Liska lowered his passenger-side window. Cool air escaped the leather-scented interior. He said, “You doing okay?”

I leaned down to speak. “What’s with your lady detective?”

“Is she letting her mind run free?”

“That gets it.”

“It’s her first step in solving tough ones. So far it works.” The electric window started upward. “Hop in.”

I opened the door, noticed the light-colored carpet, and checked my shoes for mud. The cold, dry air hit me like I’d opened a freezer.

Liska said, “How do you feel about what you saw?”

“It wasn’t random. Someone hung him for show.”

“You just restated two facts,” he said. “I asked how you felt.”

“I heard you, and it forces me to ask what’s going on. Is touchy-feely the new fad in crime solving? She had me visualizing sci-fi back there.”

“She told me your cute ‘air dance’ remark,” he said. “Answer my question.”

“Start with numb,” I said. “I didn’t know him. He didn’t have style, but he had a right to not be dead. Someone hung him, and not one neighbor is out here bleeding sympathy or demanding justice.”

“Perfect,” he said. “You’re getting better at this. Another year, you might be a good cop. Like I said, I need you up the road.”

“Thanks for the upbeat words, Sheriff. Is it another murder?”

“Does it make a difference? Murder, car wreck, B and E—a picture’s a picture.”

“I’ve seen too many bodies the past few years and one too many today. Why would I want to sign up for more?”

“You’re getting used to it, in spite of yourself. You can stay on the clock.”

“Given my choice, I’d rather sell used cars in Tampa.”

“You could do well,” he said. “It’s a growing town.”

I didn’t answer him. I watched a letter carrier drive box to box.

“Why the attitude?” he said. “You too good for the work?”

“Let’s just say that the work is not my destiny. I take photos, ninety percent of the time not of dead people. Except for these crime gigs, it’s been a rewarding occupation. Fundamentally, I’m into sunshine and smiles. Do you feel a need to transform my life?”

“I want to help you reach your potential.”

“But it’s your version, not mine,” I said. “I have thirty hours to prep my house for a two-month rental, and I’m low on film. I wish to decline.”

“We got people waiting for you up there. Do I need to pull you off the clock, send you there against your wishes, and chalk it up to civic duty? Take it from a veteran civil servant. You’ll find it harder to cash that unsigned check.”

“My only civic duties are jury service, paying taxes, and not committing crimes.”

He turned to face me. “You could’ve stayed home in bed. Why’d you even come to this one?”

“My inner need for fantasy.”

“Follow that thought. If your girlfriend asked you to go to Marathon, you’d do it?”

“Dud question, Sheriff. She’s got a conscience. She knows she burned up today’s favors by dragging me to this one.”

Liska stared out the windshield. He looked tired, whipped, not at all like the eccentric but legendary case-closing cop of a few years ago.

I said, “Why me instead of Lewis, or one of your other detectives? Surely they know how to use a camera.”

“She’s busy with this, and they aren’t
my
detectives. You would be, and I respect your input.”

“It’s getting deep in here.”

“You’re right,” he said. “The truth is, I want you to represent me.”

“You want to deputize me?”

“Call it what you want. You’ll be a consultant.”

“On photographer’s pay?” I said.

“We can negotiate an adjustment. How did you get up here?”

“My motorcycle.”

“The forensic officers aren’t leaving soon. It’ll be safe. I want your opinion and a few pictures. I arranged for a chauffeur.” He pointed. Deputy Bohner, still hanging close to his vehicle, was chatting on a cell phone.

“I ride with your duty bully and take his crap? His venom is his reason to live. For the fourth or fifth time, I don’t want to deal with it.”

“I can’t imagine you’d let that doofus intimidate you. When I was elected to this job, he was my opponent’s campaign manager. I beat him, so you can, too. Give me your film, and I know the argument. You own the negatives and the rights. Like you could ever want keeper photos of low-life death.”

I wanted my silence to convey refusal. I offered no response.

“Remember the last time we saw each other, Rutledge? I came by your house to deliver a fat check and a word of thanks. You were happier about the money than my words of appreciation.”

“Sounds logical to me.”

“You were in your backyard, taking a shower. Was that your version of sense and logic?”

“We’re still on solid ground, Sheriff,” I said. “I guess I wanted to be clean.”

“It was pouring rain in a thunderstorm. Lightning flashed twice while I sat waiting on your porch. One bolt struck out on Fleming Street.”

“Do you live your life thinking the next flash will blow you out of your shoes, the next oncoming car could be a head-on?”

“No,” he said. “It takes too much time to worry about what-ifs. It’s time better spent on what’s next. Or earning a few bucks to pay for what’s next.”

“Why should I buy the future? It’s going to show up anyway.”

“Oh, you
are
an optimist,” he said.

“Comes from photographing more smiles than corpses.”

“Have I done you any favors or cut you slack in the past?”

“I suppose so,” I said, “but I have to believe I’ve got a credit balance.”

“You never know, Rutledge. It can’t hurt to bank another blue chip. And you’ll get paid for doing it.”

“Do I invoice you straight rate for this road trip?” I said.

“Whatever you see, don’t fuck around discussing it with other detectives. Report to me directly and hit me for a full eight hours.”

“I could stand ten.”

Liska grinned widely and slapped his palm on the steering wheel. “You see? Natural-born cop.”

His grin looked fake and his eyes looked sad and wary.

Deputy Bohner opened his cruiser’s right-side door and gestured as if offering a Louis XIV chair. The royal treatment, a couple of weeks before Bastille Day. I set my satchel on the grimy floor mat, then reached to pull the shoulder strap.

“Belt up,” he said.

“What am I doing, raking leaves?”

“We have our rules.”

“Nice carpet.”

He sucked snot up his nose. “Rubber’s what they give us.”

“Must grind your quality of life. You boys haven’t joined the union?”

Bohner hurried to his side of the car, keeping his eye on me, not trusting a civilian near his siren switch and radar rig. He cranked the motor, heavy-handed the shift lever, and fixed his eyes on the dash-mounted computer. Oblivious to our surroundings, he whipped a three-point turn, just missing a mailbox shaped like a grouper. Through the eight blocks from Kansas Jack’s house to U.S. 1, Bohner tapped his keyboard. His eyes never left the monitor. He tore himself away to check traffic before turning toward Big Pine Key, then mashed his pedal as if taxpayers were buying the gas.

“How far do we go?” I said. “Liska didn’t tell me.”

He pointed to the northeast as if to show me our exact destination. “Four miles past the Hump.” He won ten local-lingo points. It had been years since I’d heard the old nickname for the Seven Mile Bridge.

“Could I get a more specific clue?”

“All I got’s an address in Marathon,” he said. “The boss told you it’s another killing, didn’t he?”

“In a roundabout way. Are we late on-scene?”

“I don’t know about you,” he said. “I’m on the overtime clock.”

He’d been on duty during the predawn hours? “I thought rookies drew the all-night shifts.”

“Usually, yes,” he said, “but late hours don’t bother me. Once all the drunks get home, my workload drops big-time. Every so often I get a shot of spice.”

“Like a murder?”

“Or two.”

“Dead people don’t get to you?” I said.

“They kill the boredom. I hate risking my life for seat-belt citations.”

With no traffic ahead, he goosed his Crown Vic up to sixty-five. We sped across Little Torch Key, and I caught an over-the-shoulder glimpse of the house on Keelhaul Lane where I would spend my next eight weeks. A few weeks ago Johnny Griffin, an old college friend, had asked to rent my Key West cottage for July and August. A man’s home is his castle, and I didn’t want the hassle. I tried to squelch his idea by quoting two grand a week, but he didn’t back off his request. I warned him that I still wanted to think about it. Then Al Manning, a watercolorist who had fled Key West for a stilt home on Little Torch, asked me to help him find a house sitter. Someone to water plants and pay utility bills for the summer while he prowled the museums of Europe. His mention of a motorboat and an outdoor shower convinced me to volunteer.

I called Johnny Griffin and we cut a cash deal. By Labor Day I would hold sixteen grand in crisp hundreds. The money would help pay off my house by year’s end. With my money worries defused, I could have my own summer vacation, spend weeks paddling Manning’s kayak through mangrove channels, taking his outboard to Marvin Key, counting clouds above Picnic Island.

On the flip side, being stuck in a cruiser with No Jokes offered nothing but crossfire.

Liska had plugged me straight into it. He knew that Bohner and I had a history of pissing matches. Our spats weren’t so much bad blood as disregard for each other’s view of mankind. The deputy, because of his badge, always assumed an upper hand. He hated what he perceived as my useless calm. My advantage was not giving a shit. I could have told him that most inner peace was outer illusion, but I didn’t want to lose ground.

Except for an oncoming speeder whom Bohner blue-lighted, then elected not to stop in the Key Deer zone, our ride was uneventful. He rolled a steady seventy over Bahia Honda. Then, with oncoming traffic, he fell behind slowpokes on Missouri Key. We paid the price for his being the fuzz. No one in front of us would dare blitz the limit. He regained lost time by kicking up to eighty and passing twelve cars on the Seven Mile Bridge. I sensed that the clear road ahead ticked down his anxiety a notch or two. He let his computer drift into sleep mode.

Rolling across Knights Key into Marathon, Bohner threw me a curve. He shook a slim yellow box. “Gum?”

I suspected only a power washer could get the marching soldiers out of my mouth. “I haven’t had Chiclets since I don’t know when.”

“One or two?” he said.

“Two, if that’s okay.”

No Jokes Bohner civil and generous? Something read hinky.

A quarter-mile farther we slowed quickly, skidded on gravel to go right on 10th Street South. A forest of signs greeted us:
DEAD END, PRIVATE, KEEP OUT, DO NOT ENTER.
The stained posts at the entrance to Florida Straits Estates were decorated with four-foot leaping dolphins in pale aqua. Someone had painted hot-pink lipstick on them. A shirtless big boy stood out front, a fortyish ex-linebacker type, square-jawed with shaved sides and a mullet cut gone ponytail. A tattooed panther crawled his shoulder. I didn’t guess he was the hired greeter, like they have in Wal-Mart. He could have been waiting for a bus or doomsday. He didn’t look like he cared which came first.

We drove thirty yards of two-track concrete before Bohner’s tires crunched on scallop shells and dirty marl. The manufactured homes on Trailer Heaven Lane were presentable with paint schemes more stylish than their shapes. Sea Cloud Terrace was a step down—old trailers and several parked cars sporting primer paint and mini-spares.

Bohner waved at another deputy, slipped past a roadblock at Pearly Gate Court, and parked a few yards from the action. Liska had asked for my opinion and a few pictures. I took one camera, shoved my bag into a shadow on the car floor, and made sure Bohner clicked the locks. Approaching the scene, he took his time, swiveled as he walked, as if his legs were hinged to his shoulders. He was my ticket in. I slowed my pace so I wouldn’t arrive first.

This end of the trailer park looked like a motor court in the style of Florida, 1952. Any form of maintenance had last been done before 1992. It now was a museum of disuse and poverty; the “estates” were Nomad car trailers and weathered Winnebagos parked a lifetime ago. Fenced yards held remnants of long-dead palms. Two Hobie Cats sat on a vacant lot, their faded hulls crusted with mildew. Plastic bags hung from thin shrubs like out-of-season holiday streamers. The stench of a rancid Dumpster fought down the odor of death. Most residents had replaced their broken glass with cardboard flats. The most common window treatment was the black garbage bag. Two sour-faced women in stretched tops and cheap sneakers sat on slat steps in front of their open doorways. I suspected that oxygen reached their lungs only through cigarette filters.

I came around a corner and caught sight of the murder victim. Like Kansas Jack, he was hung from a davit.

Bohner spit out his gum. “Christ,” he said. “They didn’t tell me he was a swinger, too. Couple more of these, we could make wind chimes.”

We approached a
cluster of uniforms, hairy eyeballs from no one I knew. A stocky man who looked like a retired Marine turned to check us out. He wore slacks, an open-neck dress shirt, and a beige sport coat. He approached and reached his hand toward me.

Bohner butted in. “This is Rutledge, Detective. He’s—”

“I can see the camera, Deputy. Sheriff Liska called and said to expect someone special.” He half smiled and studied my face as if he wanted to recognize me. “I’m Detective Chet Millican. Dressed as you are, I take it you’re undercover FDLE.”

Local-level cops always held the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in awe.

“I’m a civilian,” I said.

Millican looked me up and down. “Ex-cop?”

I shook my head, tried not to stare at his military-perfect silver crew cut.

His patronizing smirk went cold. “Tallahassee consultant?”

“No,” I said, “I’m a freelance photographer. Anything but weddings and babies.”

Our discussion began to draw attention from nearby uniforms and forensic personnel. He shook his head and inhaled enough air to double his size. “Take your cameras off my crime scene. Deputy, take him back where he came from.”

“Call the boss,” said Bohner.

Millican sneered and exhaled to show his exasperation. “I still got a hard time calling him boss,” he said. “It was plain Chicken Neck back in the city. If I wanted it bad enough, I might take credit for making up that nickname. Why isn’t our surefire detective right here right now? You don’t see hangings all that often, unless they’re suicides in a locked room. In the old days this would interest the hell out of him.”

Bohner said nothing.

Millican quieted his tone. “I’m starting to think Fred Liska’s reputation exceeded him.”

“That makes him not your boss?” I said.

Millican jerked as if I had slugged him. He stared up an empty flagpole for a moment, then shook his head. “I’ve had a crew on hold for eighty damn minutes. I was waiting for a snotty civilian to fall by and nose around? This is too much bullshit.”

Bohner shrugged, a helpless gesture. “All due respect, sir, but put it in your report. The man told me to bring him here, and I’m betting he told you to grant access.”

“Stay put,” said the detective. He walked away and slapped his cell phone to his ear hard enough to knock himself sideways.

I changed my mind about not wanting to be there. I wanted to force my presence on the belligerent dickhead, wallow in his crime scene. For the moment I wondered about Bohner. He had fired back two good answers and given me words of assurance. That and his offer of gum put him out of character four times inside of ten minutes.

“Don’t mind Millican,” said Bohner. “Man likes to think he’s King Shit.”

“How come I’ve never met him before?” I said.

“Liska hired him about seven weeks ago. A long time ago, probably before you were born, he used to be a Key West cop. The last thirty years he’s been a detective somewhere up in New England. Florida draws these old guys, so I guess it figures he came back to the Keys. Hell, he’s got his retirement bennies plus a county salary. I heard Liska didn’t really want to hire him, but we were shy a qualified man in Marathon.”

Detective Millican walked toward us. He spoke with a scene tech en route, kicked some gravel, stared at me with a quizzical look, then motioned Bohner aside. The men conferred for a minute, then Millican ordered the uniforms to stand back.

“You’re clear to stay,” said Bohner. “Don’t get into their turf, but check it out. Get a feel for the crime.”

“That’s my job description? Get a feel?”

“I got it thirdhand. Have yourself a look-see, a little picnic. Maybe Liska wants insights. Good luck with that.”

“Is a look-see like a listen-hear?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll ask Millican. It might be like a fuck off.”

“What time was he found?”

“Just after sunup.” Bohner aimed his finger at a trailer with warped side walls. “The wine expert who shares his mildew palace came outside to barf off the stoop. He said he thought it was a davit repairman working early and he went back to bed. A woman in his dream told him it was a dead man noosed high. He came back out to look and went flippo, started screaming to the neighbors.”

“Dead man have a name?” I said.

“Milton Navarre.”

“A phony one.”

Bohner looked bored. “What makes you think that?”

“It’s an exit off Interstate 10, near Pensacola.”

“An exit?”

“Milton and Navarre Beach are towns up there.”

“Whatever. I worked in the jail, I had a prisoner named Bobby Detroit. I put him in a cell with a hophead named Gainesville. Everybody got a kick out of the Map Twins. This guy here, I see him like the stiff you photoed back on Ramrod. Another slug who doesn’t have to worry about West Nile virus.”

“You missed the sensitivity-training update?”

“Being this way helps me keep my bearings.” He looked at me like I had lost my mind. “I thought you had a sense of humor.”

“I sold it to you guys.”

“That may be true, but watch yourself. None of it trickled down to Millican.”

I wasn’t sure what the sheriff wanted, but Millican was right. Liska could’ve come to Marathon to get his own facts instead of sending me. Chicken Neck had made his rep as a city detective, then jumped away, won the election, and became sheriff. I had no police knowledge beyond what we all see on TV shows and the few tidbits I’d picked up working local crimes in recent years. I certainly had no methods for working up plausible theories. What weight could Liska give my opinion, anyway?

My task came down to a short agenda. I wondered how the men were connected; I had no doubt they were. Near-identical murders the same morning don’t occur by chance. With that fact given, I wanted to know whether two killers or one had hung the men. Also, had Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre known each other? Had they known their killers, simply answered their doors without suspicion? Or had they been wakened, pistol barrels to their noses, and marched outside to their executions?

The wind had picked up. Navarre swung like a dead-weight pendulum.

I took forty photos in three minutes—of the davit, the dirt under Navarre, his neighbors, his palace, the Dumpster, his distance from the dredged canal, and close-ups of his face and the noose. He wore the plaid pants common to street people and nothing else. He probably had gone five-eight before his air dance, close to six-even with his neck stretched. Kansas Jack had been low-rent, but Navarre, at best, was one step up from a weedsleeper. He had a carbo belly, but unlike Kansas Jack, he wore no duct tape. He may have been handsome once, but his new ruggedness spoke of tobacco, whisky, sunshine, and coffee. Dried blood coated his teeth and lips. Copper splotches covered his chest.

With so many cops and spectators, my shots of the general area would be useless unless the killer had returned to gape and gloat. I fitted a wide-angle lens, shot the crowd without even peering through my viewfinder, then quit and looked for Bohner. I wanted a beer more than a ride. I felt assured that my return trip to Ramrod would come first.

Detective Millican approached. “How would an expert like you describe the corpse?”

“No shirt, no shoes, no problems.”

“That’s the dead man’s point of view. Now he’s my problem.”

“Guess that’s the deal. I get to go home.”

“Tell me again why you came,” he said.

“If you find out, let me know. Are all these nearby trailers occupied?”

“If any was empty,” said Millican, “some liquid-brain would find his way in.”

“Who owns the davits? Do they go with one of the trailers, or does the landlord maintain them?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“How is the electric hooked up?”

Millican shrugged.

“Can anyone operate them, or is there a lock on the switch box?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Call ahead before you come next time.”

“I feel unwanted. It’s a shame because this is how I like to spend my Thursdays.”

“We’ll call you when we need to test another steel cable.”

Bohner left a circle of deputies, joined me at his car. “Navarre was a plumber, part-time if ever,” he said. “No one enjoyed his company. His income was lean and mean, but he had cash for cheap bourbon.”

“The goofball that found him,” I said. “He’s not a suspect?”

“He’s got a passive defense. He was in a bar on the highway at three
A.M.
, too drunk to walk. The saloon owner drove him here, rolled him into the trailer’s front door. That lovely fact, and his knuckles aren’t beat up from tapping the vic’s teeth.”

I pointed to a trash can full of empty bottles. “Is the murder weapon in there, or was it chucked in the canal?”

“The murder weapon was a noose.”

“Then why no duct tape? Why didn’t the victim call out for help? Even if he was passed-out drunk, getting hung would’ve wakened him. He died before he was yanked up the davit.”

“Fuck.” Bohner pivoted on one foot, left me standing there, and strode the best he could back to Millican.

A minute later I watched the result of my logic. A black deputy with a grim face and rubber gloves pushed the dead man’s roommate into his cruiser’s backseat. I heard him promise the dude a shower and a shave. Two deputies began to string yellow crime-scene tape around the trash can. Detective Millican’s body language broadcast a massive grudge.

It wouldn’t spoil the rest of my day.

On the way back to Ramrod, I asked Bohner why Liska had fired the Marathon-based photographer.

“The boy heaved every time he saw blood,” said Bohner.

“How was his photo work?”

“Fuck if I know. You need to be blessed with genius to point and shoot? He was a jerk-off. I just hope you’re not his replacement.”

“I fit the same category?” I said.

“You’re the boss’s buddy. True or not, you’d be seen as a rat.”

“What’s to tattle?” I said. “Does everyone have a side scam? Or is it just laziness?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea, Rutledge. Things are clean these days, you compare it to the eighties. Worse than that, the seventies.”

“That doesn’t mean the Keys haven’t gone downhill.”

“You’re into another subject,” he said. “Like crime changes, the county changes.”

I shut up, listened to the tires on concrete, and didn’t attempt to decipher his analogy.

We came off the Seven Mile Bridge and slowed to pass a trooper who had stopped a Mustang convertible. The three men in the rental car looked half asleep, but we knew they were two-thirds blitzed. If they were lucky, the Florida Highway Patrol wouldn’t call in the drug-sniffing dog. One way or another, their holiday cash would be collected at the hotel with no reservations.

“You napping or thinking?” said Bohner.

“You must be thinking, too, or you wouldn’t have asked.”

“That call you made on there being a murder weapon. It’s the first time I’ve seen why Liska respects you.”

“I don’t know about respect,” I said. “He hires me, I work cheap, and I take good pictures. I shot four rolls on Ramrod. They’ll prove Kansas Jack was hung by his neck and not his ankles. I came up here with you and shot another couple rolls that will prove the same thing for Navarre. Hung by his neck.”

“You’ll collect your hourly rate,” he said. “What’s to complain?”

“When’s the last time you saw a davit hanging?”

“These past eighteen years I’ve seen and heard it all, but never a davit. I mean, in the Keys we got more davits than pelicans, but not hooked to people. Now we get two in one day.”

“That’s my point,” I said. “It’s too weird to be a coincidence. It’s a single crime with two crime scenes.”

“I don’t think anybody would doubt that, Rutledge.”

“Did you look closely at the victim on Ramrod?”

Bohner shook his head. “I was told to stay out on the street.”

“I’m a civilian?”

“Excellent point.”

“Then why am I the only person who’s had a close look at both of them? Why not two or three detectives investigating, comparing notes, all the shit they do? Where’s Sheriff Liska? Why isn’t he here in the car with us?”

Bohner forced a bored look on his face. “Ask me ten more I can’t answer. I do my job, and I do what they tell me.”

“Well, I didn’t beg for this, and I can’t stop thinking it’s going to bite me in the ass real soon.”

“Got me already,” he said.

I was going to let his statement hang, but he’d opened a door. “How so?”

“The last few years I get my kids four weeks every summer. The rest of the time they live with their bitch of a mother up in Raleigh. Last summer I was a dictator worse than the bitch. My twelve-year-old, going on eighteen, told me she never wanted to come back. The boy kept complaining about always being wrong, no matter what he did right. At first I thought tough shit, but it started to eat at me. I bit the bullet, went to the shrink the boss keeps on retainer.”

Hearing an introspective No Jokes Bohner talk about himself was as odd as having to view two davit hangings in a single day.

“The shrink have an opinion?” I said.

“He told me I was addicted to power but didn’t have any, so I overused my resources. In a word, I was pushy.”

Bingo, I thought. If I had to pick from the dictionary,
pushy
would be it. “That was it?” I said.

“He suggested I lose the push, and he sent me to meditation class.”

I couldn’t picture it. “For what?”

“To lower my blood pressure.”

“Did it work?”

“You bet. I can still be myself, but I won’t seize up and die from it.”

“Did they sign up Millican for the same program?”

Bohner sniffed and shook his head. “I expect his deepest thoughts come during TV wrestling. If they had dog fights, he’d watch them, too.”

“Sounds like perfect inner workings for a detective,” I said.

“The reason I brought up fighting dogs, I once heard him compared. He sinks his teeth into something, he doesn’t let go. Back there he got his feeding eye on you.”