Air Dance Iguana (24 page)

Elizabeth Street smelled
of frangipani and recent rain. I hadn’t seen puddles on South Street. In Key West, that’s a 10 percent chance of precipitation. It’s going to rain for sure, but only on 10 percent of the island.

Marnie met me on her wide front porch and handed me a skinny nine-by-twelve book without a dust jacket. Its front cover was elaborately embossed with the title
USS Bushnell, AS-15, Springboard ’68
and a simplistic rendition of a large ship surrounded by destroyers, helicopters, and submarines. I took it inside to a table. Marnie had set up a desk lamp.

“It commemorates a training cruise to the Caribbean.” She handed me a magnifying glass. “Mayra said there’s a bunch of these men who wound up on the
Gilmore.
You feel ready to look at five hundred faces?”

I pulled out my note with the Zippo initials and the packet of Duffy Lee Hall’s photo prints. I told Marnie about “M.J.W.”—Morris J. Wells—the questionable suicide from early April, then shuffled photos to find the least gruesome head shots of Kansas Jack Mason and Milton Navarre. “Here are our current-day murder victims,” I said. “Harvey Paul Evans and Morris J. Wells and three other sailors were running a scam to rip off the city, hence the city’s missing money and need for inventories. Evans was the sailor having an affair with Pokey Fields, aka Sharon Woods, now a real estate broker on Big Pine.”

“Did her father hang Evans?” she said.

“According to Pokey, Evans was the only one arrested. She didn’t say they killed him, but it stands to reason that his scam partners didn’t trust him to stay clammed up.”

I perused the book. Informal shots on every third page or so bore captions with weak attempts at humor. A young boatswain’s mate in a light denim shirt, dark blue jeans, and a sailor cap stood over a spilled bucket of paint. The caption read, “Gee, Chief, you said you wanted a thick coating.”

Studying tiny faces in old photos could take me all night. I began to scan name rosters of the posed groups of shipboard divisions and teams. I found the first set of initials only ten minutes into my search. “Bingo,” I said, but E.J.B. wasn’t named Bixby. I didn’t need the magnifying glass to see that Milton Navarre had once been petty officer third-class Edwin J. Bacon, assigned to the
Bushnell
Supply Division.

With ‘E.J.B.,’ ‘H.P.E.,’ and ‘M.J.W.’ identified, I suspected—hell, I knew—that the last group of initials—“J.P.McW.”—would match a much younger Kansas Jack Mason. I still wanted to confirm it in black and white, but something didn’t add up. If there were five sailors in the scam, I needed to find two more faces but had only one set of initials. I scanned for a last name that began with “McW.”

Marnie brought me coffee. “Can you talk to me while you search the book? This could be my big story, but all the facts are in your brain.”

I spat out my take on Tanker Branigan, and Bobbi’s nonreaction to my news. Then, ten or twelve pages in, I studied a picture of a dozen sailors from the ship’s print shop. The stern, already weathered face of Kansas Jack jumped out at me. I read the caption but found no “McW.” name. I counted heads from the left, then names from the left. Kansas Jack had been Petty Officer Robert Ingersoll.

The “R.I.” on the silver lighter had not stood for Rhode Island.

“Talk to me,” said Marnie.

I tapped the evidence photos I’d shot a week earlier. “I’ve accounted for four men,” I said. “That leaves one more group of initials.”

“Don’t forget Lucky Haskins,” she said.

“But that was his real name. We still need a J.P.McW.”

“Is there a body we haven’t connected to all this?”

“He could’ve died years ago,” I said. “Or he still could be on Tanker’s list, if he’s the killer, except he’s probably north of Orlando by now. Either way, you’ve got your story.”

“You’re not leaving the house until I finish writing it,” she said.

“I’ll keep reading this book while I fill you in.”

I turned a page and found a photo of the eight-man ship’s underwater repair team. My finger stopped on J. P. McWerter. Again I counted names, then faces. It was Wendell Glavin whose broad, much younger smile spooked me. Wendell, the avid diver.

“Marnie, the phone book. Look up Glavin on Little Torch. Call him on your phone.”

I grabbed my cell and punched in Bobbi’s number. For once she answered.

“Branigan’s house is dark,” I said, “so you were right. He’s on the move. His next victim is my neighbor across the street on Little Torch, Wendell Glavin.”

“You’ve got to tell me why you think that, Alex,” said Bobbi. “I can’t dispatch units based on a hunch.”

“I’m looking at an old cruise book that Marnie Dunwoody located. Glavin was on the
Bushnell
and
Gilmore
with Kansas Jack and Milton Navarre. The three were hooked up in an old scam to fleece the city. The sheriff knows the background on it.”

“I’m already dialing Liska.” Bobbi hung up.

“Glavin doesn’t answer on Little Torch,” said Marnie. “It just keeps ringing.”

Marnie insisted on riding with me. She wanted me to talk her through the story while I hurried up the highway. I kept it under forty out Flagler, but once I rolled into county jurisdiction and crossed Stock Island, I hit the pedal hard. By the time I passed Key Haven, I was clocking sixty-five. Clear of Shark Key, when there were no on-comings, I took it over eighty. Anything more on that washboard surface, we’d go airborne.

For six days Wendell had been eagle-eyed, always aware of comings and goings at Al Manning’s house, especially after he learned of my quasi-official connection to the cases. One of the first things he’d talked about was the murder on Ramrod Key, though he’d tried to pass it off as the work of Cuban refugees. If I had wanted to engage him in conversation, I could’ve pointed out that the last thing a refugee would do, after risking his life to reach the beach, is commit a crime. But Wendell had been alerted when he found out who was killed on Ramrod. He must have gone to full panic when he learned that Milton Navarre died the same day. He knew that he fit the potential-victim category. He might even have thought that I was his executioner.

I gave Marnie the gist of my Liska interview, leaving out the free roof on his mother’s home. I ran what I remembered of my conversation with Sharon Woods. The mile markers flew by. I passed only five or six cars and watched my temp needle creep toward the H.

Crossing the tall bridge from Summerland to Ramrod, I saw a mass of flashing blue and red lights in the near distance. I lifted my foot from the accelerator.

“A roadblock for us?” said Marnie.

“I must have passed a deputy in a radar cruiser.”

I didn’t want to confront a highway-patrol roadblock in an overheating car. They might not be impressed by a civilian hurrying to stop a crime. I pulled into the Boondocks lot and shut off my lights. We were two miles from Keelhaul Lane. Walking could take a half hour, and by that time anything could happen.

Two civilian cars and a pickup truck rolled past us heading south.

“Shit,” I said. “A roadblock would stop all traffic, not just the northbound flow. The flashing lights are on Keelhaul.”

Ninety seconds later I turned down Pirates Road. My headlights caught two people next to a car on the shoulder. They waved for help, but tough shit. I couldn’t fix their problem. I floored it, swerved to pass wide, then recognized them. I stopped long enough to get Tim and Teresa into the backseat.

“My car ran out of gas,” said Teresa.

I checked my own gauge. The needle was solid on E. “Why are you here?”

“Marge Sayre called from the city. She heard a crime report come across the county’s radio circuit and got worried. You must’ve told her you were staying on Keelhaul Lane.”

I couldn’t pull my car under Al Manning’s place. Cop cars blocked his driveway. But the action was across the street at Wendell’s house. I parked forty yards away.

“Do you know what the fuck is going down?” said Tim.

“Yes,” I said. “You two need to slide up the side stairs and hang in my kitchen.”

“No argument there,” said Tim. “I’m allergic to this lighting scheme.”

Marnie and I approached Wendell’s driveway. I spotted Bohner and Millican, then Bobbi Lewis.

“I won’t press you to work,” said Lewis. “One of the deputies had a camera with him.”

The silhouette of Wendell’s wet suit was right where he’d always hung it. A rope ran upward from the body inside the suit to an under-house beam.

“We were too late to save Wendell,” I said.

“Our sicko killer hung up two wet suits,” said Bobbi. “That’s the city’s uniformed doll, Matilda, still in the air.”

Tanker Branigan had offered a farewell practical joke. “Where’s Wendell?”

Bobbi flipped her hand toward the ambulance. “We asked a neighbor to look. She’d never seen the victim before. The body in there is not Wendell Glavin.”

I walked past the hard stares of Millican and Bohner. The rear doors of the ambulance stood open. The victim stretched out in the lighted interior was an ashen version of the man I had met and come to know during the past week.

I turned around, found Bobbi right behind me. “Your murderer’s the dead man.”

“Come again?” she said.

“That’s Tanker Branigan.”

“Need help here?” Millican appeared large by Lewis’s side. Bohner stood next to him, his hand positioned close to his weapon.

“You’ve been returned to duty, Millican?” I said. “They didn’t tell your victim that all was forgiven.”

“Nothing’s forgiven,” he said.

“There’s your abductor, laid out in the wagon. Does that make you happy?”

“That’s good, asshole,” he said. “Blame your shit on a corpse.”

“You fucking crook,” I said. “If you had shut down that scam in ’73 instead of taking brown bags stuffed with cash, this whole week wouldn’t have happened. Who was sliding you money, Chief Haskins or the man they hung? Was that why you hurried up north and took another job, Millican?”

“You are fucked beyond belief.”

A new voice said, “No you’re not, Rutledge. You’re exactly right.”

Sheriff Liska and a black-suited crew-cut stranger had joined us. Behind him stood the woman with the short brown hair whom I had offended on the airplane. A new Crown Victoria stopped in the street. Two Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents in matching polo shirts and khaki trousers stepped out. The FDLE’s crime-scene van stopped behind the Crown Vic. The new scene command team had arrived.

The FBI agent with Liska requested palm prints from Branigan’s corpse and insisted that the body be taken to Miami for autopsy. The prosecutor—my plane companion—confronted a distraught Chester Millican. So as not to be snagged in the net, Deputy Bohner hurried to his cruiser and drove away.

I started walking toward my car so I could move it under the house. I felt limp as an eel, like I hadn’t slept in a month. Then Bobbi caught up and we stood next to someone’s mailbox, briefly speculated on Millican’s future.

“Wendell Glavin was waiting for Branigan?” she said.

“If three of my former associates had been murdered, I’d be in the driveway with an AK-47.”

“Three?”

“Lucky Haskins,” I said. “He was just a kid who idolized the scamming sailors. Except all these years he knew that his heroes had killed a man.”

“Can I have all the details tomorrow?”

“You’re not going to look for my murdering neighbor?”

“The FDLE is all over it. I told them that Wendell probably stole Tanker’s collection of fake passports. They notified every airport from Atlanta south, but they’re afraid he flew out of Miami ahead of their alert.”

“You want to spend the night across the street?”

She shook her head. “Three different agencies need my written report by seven
A.M.
”

“You know the weird thing about Branigan?” I said.

“His sense of humor?”

“He came to me last Sunday at the Lodge with a plan to boost Tim’s self-image. He wanted my okay.”

“And you gave him permission?”

“I told him my brother’s life was not my responsibility.”

“You posted bond for Tim’s release this evening,” she said. “How long will you be his enabler?”

“Millican and a few others had declared him guilty before trial. I wanted him out of the system, out of custody.”

“Even if he was a murderer?”

“Didn’t I give you beer bottles with his palm prints?”

Bobbi nodded, looked pensive. “We arrested Bixby in his hospital bed on a warrant from the Missouri State Police. One of the murders he solved was solid, but the second one didn’t add up.”

“He’ll finally get the fame he wanted so badly.”

“I owe you a list of apologies.” She put her arms around me and remembered not to squeeze too tightly.

“I recommend debt consolidation, Bobbi. Roll them all into one boat ride.”

“Clothing optional?”

Just before dawn
I heard a short downpour, could taste the rain, feel its presence like a cooling blanket. The birds woke me for good. I’d given Tim and Teresa the bedroom and Marnie the couch, so I drew the porch hammock. The arrangement was fine with me.

Between ten and midnight, after I’d pulled my Shelby under the house, the four of us had polished off my beer supply while I dictated details for Marnie’s morning article. Tim listened while Teresa curled herself into a rattan loveseat and buried her nose in a Lorian Hemingway book on fishing. Marnie decided to leave Liska and Millican out of the story’s background, at least for the initial report, and we timelined the rest of her piece. She kept herself awake long enough to e-mail it to the
Citizen
’s night desk. I opened a tin of cashews, ate the equivalent of a high-calorie, three-course meal, brushed my teeth, and took a snifter of Mount Gay to the hammock. The cop radios and flashing lights across the street hadn’t kept me from falling into deep sleep. I had no idea what time they closed down their crime scene.

The morning begged for the kayak ride I’d postponed so often. I wanted to give it a try before the day’s heat set in, so I hoped I had sufficiently healed in the six days since the car wreck. Prowling quietly so I wouldn’t wake the others, I found a ball cap, a white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and some bug repellent. I started humming an old Sheryl Crow lyric about a beer buzz in the morning. That inspired me to stop in the kitchen and twist the cap off an Amstel Light. Descending the outside stairs, I caught a déjà vu of Millican’s ambush the previous Saturday, then comforted myself with the knowledge that he wouldn’t be power-tripping any citizens in the months ahead.

In a lapse of come-awake drowsiness, I wondered why Wendell’s wet suits weren’t in their usual spot across the street. I was thankful that I hadn’t been the one to find Tanker Branigan hung from the rafter, and I thought back to our little drama at the recycling bin. I had been a trigger’s pull from death with a professional hit man holding the weapon, and I’d thought at the time I was fortunate not to have peed my pants. Hell, I was lucky not to have joined his strung-out roster of victims.

Distinctive sounds don’t have to compete with other noises at daybreak. As I lifted one end of the kayak from its cradle, a neighbor’s air conditioner switched on with a loud thud. Even with the added noise, I heard feet shuffling behind me.

“Why did you have to stick your damn nose in all this?” said Pokey Fields.

I turned to find her aiming a pistol at me. She stood in a near-perfect ready stance, her feet apart, knees bent slightly. No wheelchair in sight.

“I wasn’t sticking a thing,” I said. “I was a bystander, if anything. I wasn’t more than curious until I saw that picture of you.”

“What was I, unfinished charity?”

“That’s a pretty cold way to describe it,” I said.

“Say it in your words, Alex. I was naked in your living room. You were counting my pubic hairs, watching my nipples like little weights on metronomes while I walked toward you. What was your plan, exactly?”

The pistol was in her left hand. When she had flashed her gun yesterday, it was next to her left thigh. She was the left-handed noose maker, and I’d missed the cue.

“I thought I could shake loose the bitterness in your life,” I said. “You’d reached the point of hating every man who stuck himself inside you, and I didn’t want to join the club.”

“You didn’t want the poontang?”

“I wanted to show you there was more to this existence than living with losers.”

“Which brings us around to this time around,” she said.

“I told you yesterday. A murdered man had your picture. You could’ve been in danger.”

“Put the bottle down, Alex. I don’t like it in your hand.”

My back muscles danced with energy and I calculated the odds of survival if I leaped forward, grabbed for the gun. Would I be wounded instead of shot dead? Would I postpone the inevitable or give myself a chance? Would she go upstairs and start shooting the others after she’d taken me down? I forced my face muscles to droop as if a predeath stupor had taken over my mood. Without losing eye contact I reached sideways to put my beer and the bug repellent on the kayak.

She said, “You made me your personal crusade, right?”

The bottle fell to the concrete, broke, and sprayed glass against my ankles.

It didn’t faze Pokey. “Or was it a different kind of crusade,” she said, “like one of those dead men was your relative or something? Why did you have to fucking meddle?”

“The brother factor. I told you that, too. Tim was all set to be designated fall guy.”

“Tanker told me he’d met you. I told him to go easy because you were okay. It saved your skull when he caught you taking beer bottles the other night.”

“If Wendell was a target,” I said, “why didn’t Tanker kill him last Thursday morning?”

“Tanker wasn’t even supposed to kill Eddie Bacon that day—the man you called Milton Navarre. He was supposed to take them out on different days as different forms of suicide, just like they disguised Paul Evans’s murder in 1973. But Tanker was so proud of his davit deal that he did two the same day and brought police attention. We made an adjustment on his fee after that crap. To answer your question, Wendell wasn’t home. When Tanker drove away, he saw him kissing that lady in the muumuu down the street. Wendell must’ve been screwing my old neighbor, and it saved his life.”

“Your old neighbor?”

“You don’t get it, do you? I was married to Wendell all this time. I left him last year after Lucky, when he was drunk one night in the Sugarloaf Lodge, let it slip that they’d hung Paul Evans from the flagpole. I always wondered if they’d done that, but I never knew for sure.”

“Why did you marry Wendell?”

“Meal ticket, Alex. You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been that desperate. I just wish to hell Tanker had killed Wendell first. Lucky Haskins would still be alive.”

It registered. “Wendell killed Lucky?”

“He figured out who told me that Paul wasn’t a suicide.”

“So it’s everyone’s week for revenge. Why are you pointing that thing at me?”

“Survival tactic.”

“There’s no connection to you,” I said. “Who’s going to prove that you hired Tanker?”

“You.”

“I might know you did it, Pokey, but I can’t prove that you did. The FBI was overjoyed to find Branigan, but if you kill me, they’ll have a new murder suspect to hunt down. Where will you hide?”

“Easy, Alex. Everybody who disappears from the Keys goes to a Third World country and drives a taxi. You want to find me, look for a lady cabbie who lives near the ocean.”

“I won’t want to find you.”

“Well, I guess the point’s pointless, anyway.” She waved her pistol toward the canal. “I made you a going-away present.”

From where I stood I could see only one davit. A fresh noose hung from its hook.

“No fucking way,” I said. “I saw how those men died.”

“You get to join the club.”

“I want you to shoot me.”

“Maybe I won’t kill you,” said Pokey. “Maybe I just want to see how you look with that rope around your neck, see how you look with no future, no fucking hope. Maybe I’ll look at you like that and take pity and go away and let you live.”

A voice from the backyard said, “Maybe you got the wrong man, Pokey Fields.”

I turned to see Tim walking toward the noose. He wore khaki shorts, a ball cap, and a loose white T-shirt to mask his bulk. Except for his size, he was my mirror image.

Tim stopped under the davit, lifted the noose, and positioned it on his shoulders. He reached upward to snug it tighter against his chin. “Maybe you got my little brother at the end of that gun. How many people you want to kill today?”

Pokey was a cold soul, but not that cold. She aimed her gun at Tim, then back at me. Her eyes lost just enough focus to tell me she hadn’t anticipated complications. She hadn’t thought that anyone else was in the house. She hadn’t thought that I’d refuse to move. She sure as hell hadn’t guessed that an unarmed man would walk onstage when she held the only bullets.

Her focus returned with the chill and hate inside her. “You boys think you’re too clever for an old hippie girl,” she said. “You put a problem in front of me—which isn’t a problem because what you and me have said the past two minutes, only the real Alex could know about—but I’m going to let you resolve this shit. That way one of you might not die.”

“Come on, Pokey,” said Tim. “You can flip this switch and solve your problem.”

“No,” she said. “I think you’re Tim Rutledge and your brother’s going to flip that switch. I could shoot you both, but if he turns on that davit, he gets to live.”

“Bring it on,” said Tim. “I’m about hungry as hell. Turn it on or I’m going to walk away and get breakfast.”

Pokey aimed the pistol at my head. “Go out there,” she said, “or I’ll shoot you both.”

“Aren’t you worried that Wendell’s going to come back and get his own revenge?”

“He’s history and you know it. I could see from the highway all that activity last night. Tanker gave him the farewell party that I paid for.”

“Then you didn’t read the paper this morning,” I said.

She checked to make sure Tim was standing still. “What I know couldn’t be in the paper, Alex Rutledge.”

“Wendell surprised Tanker and hung him and went away.”

“What do you want to gain with that bullshit?” She glanced toward Wendell’s house, the direction I wanted her to look. “You think if you confuse me, I’ll crumble and cry and hand you this gun?”

“Wendell was on high alert after the other two deaths,” I said. “It was Tanker Branigan they took away in the ambulance. Either way, I guess, it doesn’t change my predicament.”

“Right.” She canted the pistol toward Tim. “Walk.”

I shrugged, took one or two steps toward the backyard, and Marnie made her move. The karate kick from behind caught Pokey at the base of her skull. She and the pistol flew from under the house and landed in the yard. I couldn’t tell if she was out cold or dead.

A moment later Billy Bohner’s cruiser wheeled onto the pea rock. Teresa must have called 911. Thank goodness he’d taken his time.

We took Al Manning’s motorboat to Picnic Island that afternoon. The statements and legal hubbub were behind us, and Bobbi took the afternoon off. Sam wasn’t due back in the Keys until sundown, so Marnie had run to Murray’s on Summerland for a satchel of sandwiches and wonderfully unhealthy chips and a refill of my beer supply.

A few other boats were anchored near us, one playing an Alan Jackson CD, people in lawn chairs in eighteen inches of water. It reminded me of the seventies when the gang I hung with would go to Ballast Key to skinny-dip and play volleyball and not give a damn about the rest of the world.

The authorities had dominated our morning, so we hadn’t had time to talk among ourselves. Teresa was particularly quiet, still in shock over the risk Tim had taken. I couldn’t figure out how to thank him without causing her more alarm.

Bobbi rescued me from my struggle by bringing up the subject. “I still can’t believe Tim put himself into a hostage situation,” she said. “Every guideline I’ve ever seen says it never works.”

Tim responded with a no-big-deal wave, as if swatting a pesky bug. “You hear breaking glass and look outside and see a noose on the boat lift, you gotta do one thing or another.”

“He did more than walk into the yard,” I said. “He put his head in a damned noose. If she’d turned on the davit…”

“The fuse box was on the kitchen wall,” said Tim. “I flipped the breaker before I came downstairs.”

I smiled with pride and relief. “You’ve always been smarter than you looked.”

“Thank God for that,” he said. “I look like you. People might judge me by my sibling.”

“Hear, hear,” said Marnie.

“I forgot to call Gail Downer in Marathon,” I said. “I wanted to tell her she can have her father back.”

Bobbi raised her Mountain Dew for a toast. “That’s been done, Alex, and you’re welcome. Now I’d like to salute two men. Each, in his own way, got his brother back.”

“Hear, hear,” said Marnie.