Hawk Channel Chase (23 page)

There wasn’t much to question. It drove toward me, picked up speed. For some reason I noted that its hood paint was sun-faded and its grill resembled the mouth of a bluefish. I could see the driver’s eyes enough to sense his focus. If you asked me two minutes later to describe him, I could have come up with a face anywhere between Gary Busey and Adam Sandler.

It was his focus that got me.

Everything in my mind slipped into slow motion. Not just slow but drawn-out, filled with elaborate reasoning and moves that, in a less-dangerous instance, might take me ten minutes of logic and choreography. As if a clock ticked in my subconscious, I recall taking each moment in order, anticipating events and my reactions.

The first three things I wanted to protect were my camera and my knees. It might take me the rest of my life to figure out why a point-and-shoot camera took precedence over my arms or my head. Perhaps I had developed an instinct after decades of holding my gear clear of solid objects, wrapping cameras and lenses in plastic when rain or ocean spray was a threat.

My knees, no-brainer. They bend in one direction, break in the other. Broken knees on the island would be worse than a revoked driver’s license in Los Angeles. My only sensible move was to turn away and raise my arm to keep the camera from colliding with the hood and grille. Call it a pirouette, the twist that offered the backs of my calves to the crunch. Mix in the luck of timing, the jump I made, off-balance and more an ankle lift and a push of the toes. In my drawn-out logic the jump made sense because it dropped my chances of being knocked down, wedged under the car, scraped on the pavement as tire treads turned my limbs into waffles.

I probably had cleared the ground by fewer than four inches when the Taurus hit. Its bumper’s impact launched me upward, and I remember bystanders’ tardy yells of warning. I rolled and tried to imagine a Hollywood stunt master playing it for drama, somersaulting backward. None of it was acrobatic or much in my control. I remember thinking that if the car had an antenna on its right front fender, I could be impaled. Then my left shoulder bumped, slid off the windshield, my left ear whacked the right-side mirror. I can’t recall my legs going over the top or the moment I landed cat-like next to the curb. I was crouched like a wrestler ready to rumble, my camera at eye height and pointed at the escaping, swerving Ford Taurus. A spray of sand and gravel hit my hand and shirt. I hoped that my lens would be spared. On impulse I pressed the shutter button, lifted, gave the auto-focus a fighting chance and pressed again. A Good Samaritan on a yellow motorscooter took off up Fleming in chase of the Taurus and blocked my last few photographs.

I was still catching my breath when a city squad car appeared. Only one officer. He hooked his microphone to the dash, got out slowly and motioned for several cars to proceed up Fleming.

“Gimme a sec,” I said. “I’ll give you a license number.”

He ambled toward me. “Man called the city, said it was a green Ford Taurus.”

“Taurus, yes,” I said. “Color… Hold on.” I clicked my camera’s review button, clicked back four or five pictures and pressed the zoom. “Yes, green. The tag number starts with L-six-eight.”

“Forget it then,” said the cop. “It was stolen at Searstown twenty minutes ago. It’s been dumped already. You can bet he turned onto a side street up there and jammed it into the first open spot.”

Shit, the motor scooter was the Taurus driver’s escape vehicle.

“Does that mean you’ve downgraded my near death?” I said.

“Lost you there, pal.”

“An assault with a deadly weapon is really just an unsolvable hot car beef?”

“A bit worse than that,” said the cop. “It’s a hit-and-run with no apparent injuries. But you’re asking me to assume that it was intentional. How will you prove that in court? Or how will I?”

I looked around. Astonished onlookers stared from the sidewalks and Fausto’s parking lot. I locked my eyes on the La Concha where a day earlier I could have performed back flips in a top-floor suite with Lisa Cormier. Something compelled me to raise the camera, zoom on the hotel, snap a photo. I kept going on zoom, photographing gawkers across the street, in front of the bookstore, the grocery, back down Bahama Street.

“Could I see some ID?” said the cop.

I threw him a look of disbelief.

“Sorry, it’s the rules.”

“Today’s my day to hate rules,” I said. “Are you going to arrest me for getting hit by a car?”

“I have to fill out a report.”

“And you have no name for the other guy. So bag the rule and call me a hit-and-run victim. I’m going home for a beer.”

He puffed up, stepped closer. “I can arrest you for disobeying a legal order.”

I held out my arms, wrists together in front of my belt buckle. “Please cuff me. I can’t wait to see how your audience reacts.
Key West Citizen
sales will skyrocket. Everyone will know your name.”

The officer thought for a moment. “Tell me yours.”

“Rutledge.”

“You stood up for one of our detectives a couple years back?”

“There was a deputy there, too,” I said. “I gave her a little help.”

“You saved his life. You need a ride somewhere?”

“No thanks,” I said. “But you might call in a BOLO for two guys on a yellow motorscooter.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Now shake my hand and slap me on the shoulder,” I said, “like the handcuffs thing was a big joke.”

I wished I had asked him to slap my right shoulder instead of the one that hit the windshield.

My cell phone chirped while I walked toward Southard to retrieve my bike. A local number I didn’t know. Rolling with the concept that a non-communicator can’t learn shit, I took the call.

A voice I recognized after three words said, “The second-choice location, thirty minutes, no bullshit.” The line went quiet.

Copeland Cormier wanted to meet me at the Pier House Beach.

I called Duffy Lee Hall from a pay phone, a rare item these days.

“Your man Dr. Cormier is quite the humanitarian,” he said. “He’s done stints in three countries and still oversees the surgery section of a hospital in Georgia.”

“Which countries?” I said.

“In the past few years he did three months in Nicaragua, three months in the Dominican Republic, and two Mexico visits for two months each. He traveled under the auspices of a group called Doctors with Deep Wallets.”

“Any visits to the Middle East?” I said.

“He spent five months in Iraq, back in 2004. It looks like he took humanitarian leave from the hospital. But he was employed by KRSW Global, an Alabama-based security contractor. Our best presumption might be that he provided in-country medical services to his fellow employees.”

“What kind of security did they provide?”

“I can’t tell, and the company went out of business last year.”

“How about his wife and those other two names?”

“Haven’t had time, bubba,” said Duffy Lee. “Call me tomorrow afternoon.”

I hung up and wondered if Cormier had scuttled a replica of Sam’s skiff.

15

Riding my bike to the Pier House, I didn’t hug the curb. I fought the idea that my attacker might return for a sneak-from-behind rematch, a faster-paced whack. Assuming that the cop was right, that the Taurus had been quickly dumped, it made no sense to turn my head. I couldn’t guess which vehicle might nail me, and the whole process could drive me batshit. I refused to look backward. On an island known for lunatic action, I chose, for the moment, the comfort of thinking that my up-and-over had been a random, one-time event.

Along with that shot of denial I welcomed the floral air of dusk, my favorite time of day. Cumulus clouds to the north still held the vivid purples and orange wisps of sunset. Minimal action and noise from the Rum Barrel and Two Friends Bar; a slow night in the tourism trade. That would change with Fantasy Fest only six days away, but for now it was a lovely evening—to be targeted in the tropics.

I usually have no interest in motor scooters, but coasting into the hotel lot I noticed at least a dozen. They all sported rental company placards, blocked bike racks and took up car-sized spaces. In the dim light I saw none that were yellow.

Again I begged myself to let it go.

Then, more attentive, I saw a Porsche Cayenne with Florida tags, the same dark metallic gray as Bob Catherman’s. I hate coincidence and wished that I had thought to memorize Catherman’s license number. To find him in the company of Copeland Cormier would put an odd dimension to my three days of intrigue, although Sam’s comments on Sugarloaf appeared to link Sally Catherman to his Cuba trips.

Five cars farther down the line, I saw an identical dark gray Cayenne with a Florida tag. Maybe they were all produced in the same color. I hadn’t seen more than four or five Porsche SUVs in recent years, so I didn’t know. They fit the upscale Pier House demographic, however, so seeing the second Cayenne allowed me to quit worrying about Catherman.

I locked my bike, entered the parking lot hallway, and bemoaned the remodeling that had eliminated the open atrium. A group of people ambled around me, all dressed for dinner, wallowing in a force field of cologne and after-shave. I walked past the Chart Room Bar, the ghosts of 15,000 cocktail hours and twice that many love affairs. The room was busy, as it probably would be until the Pier House came tumbling down to make room for a more posh destination.

Outside again, I followed a curving bricked path through a manicured jungle, a mist of chlorine. I went left, looped the pool and hung back from its mood lighting. A security guard approached, eyed me without smiling. I offered a quick, confident nod to assure him that my presence on the property was more important than his gig. He kept on walking.

Cormier sat facing away from me in the open-air Beach Club. Another man at the table took no notice as I stopped and turned back to circle the pool in the other direction. I wanted to see if anyone was watching Cormier, or if he had other team members around the hotel. For all the Garden Building’s ground-level patios, the beach area’s square footage, there weren’t many hiding places for observers.

I entered the Beach Building and followed an inside hallway to a double door that gave onto the sand five yards from the tideline. From that vantage point I studied the bistro. Two men and two women I recognized as locals sat at the bar. The bartender spoke into a portable phone and a tourist couple three tables from Cormier looked as comfortable in their Bermuda shorts, flowery shirts and sandals as they might in medieval armor. An unskilled acoustic guitar player with a snare drum in his iPod sang an insipid version of the “piña colada” song.

Not five yards away from me a thin boy sat cross-legged on a coral rock toking a joint. Closer to the restaurant, a lesbian couple, arm-in-arm on a raised walkway, stared down at playing tarpon teased to shore by underwater lamps.

Not just a slow night on the island, but a dead night. No one appeared to be shadowing Cormier. Our meeting would be private, except for the other man at the table.

Cormier stood as I approached the Beach Club’s raised decking. He wore his fashionable fishing outfit minus the long-billed cap and smug confidence of our first meeting. “Alex,” he said, “thank you for taking my call, for coming to see us. You’re just in time to meet Ricky Stinson.”

Stinson wore a black, long-sleeved crew-neck T-shirt, camo hiking shorts and what looked like a matte black stainless steel wristwatch. He half-stood, supported his weight on the table and made a token effort to extend his arm. I circled the table to shake his hand and saw he also wore black high-top sneakers. We sized up each other without speaking.

“Ricky’s part of our support team,” said Cormier.

“Why just in time?” I said. “Is he leaving?”

Stinson sneered. “I told Cope I was out of here if you didn’t show in the next ninety seconds. You hit the mark a half minute too early.”

“That’s what my old girlfriend used to say.”

No laughs, no smiles. My sharp dart of levity hit a shield of contempt.

Cormier shoved a chair with his foot. “Please join us.”

An attractive server in her twenties appeared next to the table. Her accent was eastern European, her manner graceful. Cormier asked for a refill of his vodka and tonic. I ordered a Bacardi 8 on the rocks.

Stinson didn’t look up, didn’t speak, but pushed his empty Heineken bottle toward her. She took it away, showed no offense and hurried to fetch our drinks.

Aside from his failed sense of humor, Stinson was hard to peg. My guess would be forty, give or take four years, with a fitness center build. His full head of brown hair started high on his forehead. It looked uniformly dark as if to mask premature gray. His eyes were sunken, unreadable. Except for an inch-long scar below his left ear, his cheeks and jaw were strong and smooth, with smile lines out of the question. A master of the frozen expression.

“What are we here to talk about?” I said. “Sam's not making his voyages.”

Stinson looked to Cormier for the answer. Or silently told him to answer me.