Air Dance Iguana (6 page)

I asked him to define his high life.

“New fish and old wine.”

I unscrewed the frame of an air-conditioning vent and stashed all but four hundred of the cash I’d received from Johnny Griffin. Then I wandered room to room, read Al’s other notes, and stacked my books and CDs where I could read their spines and grab at will. I organized the bathroom counter, set out my pit wax, shaving soap, and hair-brush, then took
The Sibley Guide to Birds
to the porch hammock. I tried to identify a few that swooped through the yard and over the canal. Five hundred pages and no binoculars. I read about prairie warblers, then gave up.

My next try was the cell phone, its multilingual booklet. I pledged myself to a half-hour tutorial. I would get the hang of it or fall asleep trying. Within six minutes lightning over the straits stole my attention. Then rain from the east blew through the screens. I took my stuff inside and confronted my dilemma: a half hour into my vacation, my long-awaited escape from the mundane, from hurry and stress, and I was wit’s-end bored.

Then the little bastard buzzed at me. For the second time in two days, Bobbi Lewis’s phone number glowed on the inch-square screen.

“Can you come back to Bay Point with your cameras?”

“Safety in redundancy?” I walked to the fridge.

“The kid’s a klutz. He was standing on the seawall, framing his last shot. He fell in, bag and all. He blamed moss on the seawall.”

“Moss has a bitch of a time on east-facing surfaces in the tropics.”

“His cameras were ruined, but his exposed film was sealed in plastic canisters. I still want a few backup shots, just to be sure. How soon can you be here?”

“Did Watkins leave with him?” I said.

“She came with me.”

“So she offered the services of the city’s new boy?” I said.

“Ten days ago.”

“Did Liska overrule you, and make you hire me for the Kansas Jack job?”

Her silence answered my question.

“What’s he going to say when you disobey his orders and hire me back right now?”

“I can deal with that.”

“Is the body still there?” I said.

“The medical examiner wants it down immediately.”

“It’s pouring here and the squall is blowing your way. There’s no way I can get there before the downpour.”

“Shit,” she said.

I knew the answer before I asked: “Do you have a camera in your cruiser?”

“Don’t do this to me, Alex. Please at least try to beat the weather.”

A huge thunderclap provided my answer.

“Shit,” she said again.

“Listen to me,” I said. “Are you listening?”

“I’m right here.”

“Take pictures of the rope, the noose, and the davit’s on-off switch. Then have someone stand next to Mr. Haskins so you can judge the height of his feet above the ground.”

“The camera’s automatic everything, but I’ll screw it up.”

“Autofocus is fine, but don’t use auto exposure. Make sure it’s 100-ISO print film, not slides, and set it to f-11 at 1/125 of a second while the sun’s out. If clouds cover the sun, drop to f-8 at one-sixtieth.”

“I’ll screw it up,” she said.

“I know you won’t, but if you do, I’ll owe you that boat trip we discussed.”

“If I do, you can take your own naked ass for a ride.”

I was scrubbing
salt film and bird crap off Al’s skiff Saturday morning, dripping sweat onto my sunglasses, thinking about my failure to mention brother Tim to Bobbi or to Liska. I could blame hectic events, but the longer I waited, the more awkward I’d feel, especially with Bobbi. I’d already failed to fully disclose details of my friendship with Pokey Fields.

On her third visit, six weeks after I bought the cottage, Pokey parked that old Camaro half into my yard and asked to come in. She had worn a tight T-shirt, skimpy shorts, custom sandals, and fishing-fly earrings. She could have fit in with the town’s hippies, though few Conchs had mixed with the island’s free-thinking new arrivals. She told me that her mother had been a frail, uneducated woman who interacted only through shared work. She pointed out kitchen shelves that the two of them had installed, spoke of helping her mom paint the bathroom and peel up old linoleum to expose the Dade County pine flooring. In the backyard she showed me code markings her brother had cut into bark high on the mango tree. She recalled a jungle gym by the rear fence, began to weep, then came back inside, stood in the living room, and absorbed memories.

“You wouldn’t have a cold beer, would you?” she asked me.

I didn’t give her age a second thought. If she lived with a sailor, she was old enough to drink beer on a warm afternoon. I opened two and motioned toward the porch, but she sat on my rattan rocker. She sipped the beer, studied the walls, then stared at me. “Do you like what you’re looking at?”

I’d noticed that she wore no bra, but hadn’t thought she’d caught me looking. “What’s not to like?” I said.

“You can have some, if you put some hurry into it. I gotta be home.” She stood, put her bottle on the floor, and drew her T-shirt above her head. Her breasts had a slight droop as if she’d been heavy at puberty, then lost weight during her teen years. She began to unzip her shorts. I could see that she wore no panties.

Now her age came into play. “I don’t want to offend you,” I said.

The zipper stopped. A pleasant tuft of pale pubic hair behind her thumb, the hint of a stretch mark from her weight loss. “I was afraid of that,” she said. “My first boyfriend at least said I was cute and threw a great fuck. My new boyfriend tells me I’m shaped funny and have zits and I’m too ugly to get anyone else to ball me.”

“He’s full of shit,” I said. “He’s wrong and an asshole to say it, especially if he thinks you believe him. You’re a lovely girl and you’ll be a beautiful woman if you stay away from jerks who put you down to elevate themselves.”

Self-conscious, still hurt by my hesitation, she raised her hands to cover her breasts. Her shorts fell to her ankles. She looked at me, almost fearful.

I smiled and looked straight at her eyes. She finally grinned, giggled, and stepped out of the shorts. She raised her beer and chugged it, came across the room. I promised myself never to forget the sway of her breasts as she leaned to kiss my forehead.

“Why me?” I said.

“You’re the first person been nice to me in a year and a half.” She retrieved her clothes and entered the bathroom. When she came out in her shorts and shirt, her eyes still red, she thanked me for letting her revisit her childhood.

I asked about that childhood. My early years hadn’t been great, but as her tale spilled out I felt lucky for what I’d had. Her father had buried himself in work and couldn’t relate to anyone but her older brother. Even then, he was overbearing and belittling. Her mother, a chain-smoker and a chain-boozer after five-fifteen “when the working day was done,” had explained that she was too exhausted from raising the boy and figured Pokey was smart enough to raise herself. After that, Pokey went anywhere for friendship, among the junior high troublemakers, the island’s psychedelic newcomers, the tough sailors in the Boat Bar and the Big Fleet. She was disciplined for small infractions, and called lazy for reading books. If she stayed away from home for days at a time, it was no problem because she was less trouble out of sight.

When she finished talking, I felt an enormous urge to make the world right for her. An impossible task, of course, but I wanted her to know that she could shoot high as well as low in her pursuit of friends and a satisfying existence. My first step was to open a box of books still waiting for bookcases to be installed in my new home. I pulled out a random handful, gave her at least six or seven. The ones I recall were an old paperback of
The Sun Also Rises
, an early Kesey novel, McGuane’s
The Sporting Club
, and a copy of
The Last Picture Show.

As weeks went by, she dropped by the house maybe four more times, gave me back some of the books (but not all), and waited for me to offer more. She rarely spoke of her boyfriend, but when she did she compared him to her first lover, whom she had come to idealize. Whenever I asked specifics about that first one, she deflected my questions. I got the impression that she had moved from Key West to one of the Lower Keys. For a while I wondered if my nosiness had driven her away, because the visits stopped without warning. After that year, my first in the house, I never saw her again.

Why, all these years later, would a murdered deadbeat on Ramrod have her picture? Had Kansas Jack been one of the Navy men who used her for sex, then treated her like dirt? Or had he been the one that she idealized?

I heard throaty glass-pack mufflers out on Keelhaul Lane. A low-slung Caprice station wagon with a bent Ohio front tag bounced into the yard and coughed to silence. Last winter’s crusted slush outlined its dark teal fenders, and mismatched hubcaps rode the side I could see. Key West has a tradition of funky Conch cruisers, disused, painted and sculpted. This beast rode in its own category.

Three doors swung open. Tim and his new roommates had come to call, each with a breakfast brew in a coolie. Not to risk running short, Tim also carried a twelve-pack. In Levi’s and loafers, he was James Dean with a one-day sunburn. His T-shirt sleeves were rolled close to the shoulder seam, and he looked broad through his shoulders and biceps. I wondered where he’d found time to work out. His hair was slicked to a pompadour, and his belt buckle rode his right hip.

The young woman wore a ball cap, a gauze-thin tube top, pube-hugger shorts, and sunglasses. A tiny cell phone was clipped to her elastic waistband. She approached me with her hand extended. “We didn’t get around to formalities the other night. I’m Francie.” Her grip was firm and confident, and when she lifted her shades, her sleepy brown eyes glistened with mischief. “We put our informalities behind us, didn’t we?”

“I rarely open my eyes that time of night,” I said.

“Shit,” she said. “They were snowballs in a bowl of ink.”

Tanker Branigan reached over her shoulder to shake hands. His forearm was as big around as my calf. His hand felt like a warm towel. “You know my name and it’s Irish,” he said. “Now we can close that topic. How you doing today?”

I pointed to the blue sky. “How could I not be perfect?”

“Right you are,” said Tanker. “Bird songs are crisp and the air is sweet. The barometer is spinning cartwheels.”

Odd words from a man who looked as dense as his body. He carried the bulk of a pro wrestler, a barrel chest, and a beach-ball gut. All of it wrapped in a Sloppy Joe’s T-shirt, a half-acre unbuttoned Hawaiian overshirt, and black Bermuda shorts. His face showed no emotion, no judgment, but his eyes scanned beyond me as if danger lurked in the yard palmettos. I suspected that an agile man occupied the large torso.

Tim hung back, raised his Michelob as a toast. “Hey, brother.”

“Welcome to daylight,” I said. “How did you know where to find me?”

“We ate breakfast at Dennis Pharmacy. I sat next to a lady who asked if I was related to you. We got to talking.”

“Her name Carmen?”

He shook his head. “This charmer was Teresa, and she was as tasty as the scrambled eggs.”

“I didn’t know she had my new address,” I said.

“She called somebody on her cell phone to get it. You didn’t mention the other night you were moving.”

“Would you have heard me?”

“I reckon not,” he said.

Francie turned to me. “Me and Tanker are going to Big Pine, just the two of us. You got custody of your brother for the next two hours. I’ve never been to that giant flea market. I collect tacky tourist thimbles, and Tanker collects antique postcards.”

“From the Keys?” I said.

Branigan shook his head. “Pre-Castro Cuba. Spanish architecture and Art Deco hotels, and old Havana restaurants.”

“Don’t get him started,” said Francie. “He won’t stop talking until you’re an expert, too.”

A minute later the station wagon departed, lopsided with Tanker at the wheel and Francie shotgun, handing him a fresh beer. Tim had plastered rock-radio stickers on his Caprice’s back end. In the bottom corner of the rear window he had stuck a decal with
PEACE
in a circle, a line angled through it.

He looked around the yard, waggled his bottle at the skiff. “Don’t let me get in the way of your labors. I love to sit on my ass and watch hard work.” He pointed to his twelve-pack. “You at least drink on weekends, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said. “But only with girls in the morning.”

“Very good, brother. Very fast.”

Tasks were a fine way to pass the time of the surprise visit. I coupled that concept with the knowledge that my brother wouldn’t stop nailing his foot to the floor to accommodate me. I returned to the scrub brush and hose. Tim pulled a lounge chair from under the house and dragged it close to the skiff. He positioned it for sun-bathing and stripped his shirt. The width of his shoulders was no illusion, but his chest was so white it looked pale blue. Except for his hairstyle, his face resembled what I saw each day in the mirror. His premature age lines gave me an idea of how I might appear in ten years.

“Brother,” I said. “You have a beer belly.”

“My waistline goes in and out with the tide. One more black mark on my heap of family dishonor.”

“Hey, I was only razzing.”

“Daddy had a beer belly, too, Alex. I inherited the tail end of the genetic choo-choo.”

“Always the victim.”

He cast his eyes aside. “Always the speech.”

“Haven’t we done enough Dad-loved-you-best routines?”

“We could do it a thousand times,” he said. “It’s not going to fix me.”

“The point I was trying to—”

“It was always you making points. You and Raymond were the boys, and I was an outparcel.”

“Like I said, the victim.”

He let it slide and twisted another top. “Speaking of which, you see the paper this morning? Weird place you live.”

“I don’t get it delivered here,” I said.

“Two men hung from boat davits the day before yesterday, twenty miles apart. Then another yesterday, the same way, back down the road. It doesn’t synch with your Overseas Highway’s lightweight reputation.”

“They were beyond weird. I had to photograph them.”

“Shit, Alex. For the newspaper?”

“The cops. I do part-time to help cover my cost of living.”

He disapproved. “The police payroll?”

“It has side benefits, brother. What do you think kept you out of the gray-bar motel?”

“Did I thank you for that? If I didn’t, I appreciate your help.”

Thirty years he had been spewing morning-after apologies and thanks. As usual he couldn’t talk without leaving me openings. They were easy shots but the process always fatigued me. This time I decided to stay quiet and roll with it.

Tim sipped his beer and studied the canal, gauging the territory. I couldn’t guess how much of it he absorbed.

“How did you get to be a photographer?” he said. “All I remember was a box with a plastic window that looked like a fly’s eye.”

“The light meter?”

“Whatever. I hated when you aimed it at me. I felt like that fly eye was inspecting me from a hundred angles, putting all my secrets, a hundred versions of me, on film. Secrets I didn’t know I had.”

An old mystery solved. My first camera, a Kodak Instamatic, had disappeared from a crate of belongings I had left behind while I was in the Navy.

“It was just a light meter, Tim.”

He waved it off. “So back to your becoming a pro.”

“When I arrived in Key West, I kept seeing things that we never saw in Ohio. Funky houses, shrimp boats, Cuban groceries, tropical plants, the crazy characters who lived here. It was like a foreign country. One night I saw some slides a friend shot with a new Olympus camera, and I couldn’t believe the colors and the sharpness. The next time I had a paycheck, I went and bought one. From that day on I’ve been the ultimate tourist, always a camera in hand.”

“Self-taught?” he said.

“I kept pressing the button, buying film, and throwing away bad ones.”

“Cool,” he said. “Ready for that beer?”

“I think it’s time.” I found another chair, and we sat and stared at the canal.

“I still think about that night in the drive-in, Alex, when I let my mouth get ahead of my ass.”

“You were about to have both handed to you,” I said.

“And you saved the day, driving your date’s car. Or her father’s car, that old Buick Riviera. You pulled into the restaurant parking lot and saw me in trouble, you aimed right for that dude who wanted to rip me apart. He backed off, and you ordered me to jump in.”

“I meant the backseat. You landed on Susan’s lap.”

“Whatever,” said Tim. “I knew what was good for me. But then that guy jumped in his buddy’s GTO, and the chase was on.”

I stupidly thought that my silence would prompt him to drop it.

He didn’t let up. “I probably didn’t tell you back then, but you scared the shit out of me. You outdrove that son of a bitch and you lost them doing figure eights in the city park. Susan loved it. You might’ve heard her breathing, but I was on her lap and I could feel her heart beating. I think it turned her on. Her perspiration smelled like an orgasm.”

“You knew the difference between that and fear?”

“Well…I always had a thing for her, too.”

I had no response to that.