Hawk Channel Chase (33 page)

“Frank, we’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m glad to see that you’re eating healthy food, treating your body well. You’ll live longer.”

Polan shrugged. “I don’t know about that. It’s not like they splice ninety days into your fiftieth year. I want to see proof that the time I add to my life doesn’t come smack at the end. I don’t want four extra hours of twilight on my dying day. I’ll be too feeble to think back between drools and appreciate this broccoli.”

21

Northbound traffic had picked up after the noon hour. We tagged along like freight cars hitched to a long train until we turned into the Boondocks Grille parking lot on Ramrod, taking care to keep our tires vertical through gravel patches. Beth found us a car-width spot next to a pickup that bore the bumper sticker: W
OMEN
W
ANT
M
E
, F
ISH
F
EAR
M
E
.

It must take a hell of a man to sense fear in a fish.

The restaurant is a huge tiki hut with a bricked patio at ground level and an elevated open-air bar and restaurant. To the mellow tones of “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts, we climbed to the dining area, to six flat-screen TVs and that many women in red tank tops with “STAFF” printed on their backs. We approached one of the tall round tables surrounded by bar stools.

“This won’t work,” said Beth. “She won’t feel comfortable perched high on one of these.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve had a witness interrogation course, too.”
 

She looked puzzled then figured out that I was referring to Bobbi. “A couple of years ago, in California. But this is your gig. I was just thinking ahead. You’re doing all the talking today.”

The music segued into “The Weight” by The Band. We walked back down to ground level and chose a square green Formica table with four green plastic yard chairs. Next to us stood a rusted-out four-foot pedestal fan that breathed a dull whoop sound as it twirled. It still did its job. We sat back and ordered iced teas from an on-the-spot, red-shirted server, a woman in her mid-thirties.

We’d arrived four minutes late for our meeting with Alyssa. Not really enough time to piss her off to the point of splitting. Now, apparently, we were early arrivals by ten full minutes. I worried that the young woman might be a no-show.

“Shit,” said Beth “I just remembered that I’m scheduled to go next week to a county class for handling semi-automatics.” She paused. “Which brings me to that remark you made to Colding about a gun at your gut. That wasn’t conjecture?”

“You’re a newcomer, so you probably won’t be apprehended and prosecuted,” I said. “It’s illegal to use words like ‘conjecture’ in the Florida Keys.”

Her eyes bore a message into mine. Wrong time for humor.

I explained, condensed, about taking Turk’s boat to the middle of nowhere and drawing attention from heavies with motors, guns and computers.

“And that was it?” she said. “They held you at gunpoint and ran your names and numbers and went away? They didn’t come aboard the boat, give it a phony safety inspection?”

“I guess we were lucky,” I said.

“You couldn’t even get arrested?” She exhaled, shook her head, worried. “This is something way beyond your friend Sam’s midnight runs to Cuba.”

“You’re serious.”

“Worse. I’m worried.”

What had Sam told Turk? “If it all slams into high gear, it’ll be bigger than we can imagine.”

Our server brought large plastic cups of iced tea and departed. Beth tore two paper towels from the roll at the table’s center and wrapped our cups the way Cubans wrap their beer bottles, like wrapping a towel around your waist and tucking in the final corner to hold it. A simple theory, too seldom used: the wrap absorbs condensate that evaporates and cools the liquid inside.

I said, “Have you hit on any theories on what happened at Jerry Hammond’s house?”

“I forgot to tell you something, but thank you in advance.”

“My expert photography solved the crime?”

“More your judgment,” she said, “but those sock prints in the dust on the bathroom floor? The floor was covered in talcum and plain household dust, but the socks left behind a chalky substance that our scene team also found near Hammond’s body.”

“Laundry detergent?”

“No,” she said. “Pizza cheese and flour.”

“We’ve got scientists in the Keys who can tell the difference?”

“Pizza cheese is a processed cheese that mimics mozzarella. High-end pizzas use real mozzarella with maybe a blending of parmesan and romano. These days most shops use the processed variety that we found. We lucked into a quick confirmation from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. We’re working up a list of every employee in every Lower Keys pizza shop or Italian restaurant.”

“That’ll be a long list.”

“It’s a start,” said Beth. “We got a customer list from a food distributor out of Miami. Anyway, the sum of evidence, or lack of it, suggests that Hammond knew his killer. If we factor in strangulation by a cord from a hair dryer, an object usually stored in the bathroom, his murder may have been spontaneous, unplanned, and the dryer was a weapon of opportunity. If he and his killer knew each other, something changed quickly in the relationship and brought on the violence.”

“Sounds reasonable, except for lack of other evidence.”

“And that could make it the exact opposite, you’re right,” she said. “It could have been well-planned, including the use of the hair dryer cord, and either way the killer had time to remove evidence traces, as well as steal the computer items you noticed.”

My mind went into high gear for crime analysis. “Or a third choice,” I said. “Maybe he arrived home and surprised someone in the house.”

“Roll with that,” said Beth.

“Okay, maybe someone wanted to steal the whole computer but had to kill him and get out of there fast. Took what they could. Or someone knew that he had porn photos on his hard drive…”

“…and the gay element isn’t completely out of the question…”

Someone nearby, our server, said, “Hey, babe.”

Alyssa patted her forearm and said, “Lookin’ good.”

The women gave each other the foxy eye and approached the table. Alyssa went straight to Beth Watkins. “Thanks for checking on us before you left, to make sure we were okay. The sick puppy was majorly steamed. As Honey, our supervisor, says, he went to stew in his cauldron.”

Beth turned her hands palm-up and shrugged. Nothing to it.

Alyssa’s coral-toned top read O
NE
D
AY
I W
ILL
M
AKE
IT
A
LL
U
P
TO
Y
OU
. Her pastel green shorts hung low, almost to Panama. She had to have spilled something from every aisle in the market on her white sneaks. She sat next to me, touched my arm. “I’m not hungry at all,” She held her touch and said, “That’s just my first lie.”

“Then let’s order our food and start talking,” I said. “I want the whole fib symphony.”

Alyssa looked up at the server. “I’ll do Mountain Dew and twenty mild teriyaki wings, please.” She pointed at Beth. “You should get the Tuna Tempura. Just order the appetizer with two cups of honey soy sauce.”

Beth did a repeat of her palm-upward shrug. I ordered a fresh fish sandwich with potato salad. The server gave us an I-like-locals smile, took back the menus and departed.

I finally picked up on the most significant change in Alyssa, the removal of her tongue ornament. Was the stud only a part of her work uniform or had she removed it to speak with us? No matter. Her words came through clear as hell.

From that point on we mined unexpected gold. People-watching as a matter of habit, sipping our drinks, the three of us in the shade occasionally wiping sweat from our brows with paper towels. The constant rushing sound of highway traffic to one side, easy oldies off a satellite from inside the restaurant. The unplugged version of “Layla,” obscure songs by John David Souther and Marshall Chapman, a country-tinged Mac McAnally song. All of it okay except for a syrupy John Denver tune. Beth rolled her eyes at that one, too, a gesture that boded well for our relationship.

Nervous, Alyssa fiddled with the catsup and condiment jars in a table-center plastic bin. “I feel like a ropey donkey today,” she said. “That stupid job can be a ball-buster and this morning was a shit storm.”

Beth and I kept our mouths shut.

“So you don’t want to hear about that,” she said. “You need to know about Sally, and this discussion stays at this table, or at least anonymous, right?”

“Sure,” I said. “Were the two of you friends?”

“She was a twit. I wasn’t down with her bubbly act. You don’t know how bad I wanted to pour Tabasco down her ass crack, light that little twat on fire.”

“Down her coin slot?” I said.

Alyssa looked startled, surprised that I knew the slang. “She was such a tight-ass sometimes,” she said, “I don’t think a coin could slip through.”

“So you two didn’t get along?”

She raised her gaze upward as if beseeching the heavens to relieve her of a sour memory. “We monkeyed around.”

“The two of you?” I said. This was not at all what Mikey had described.

“No fucking way, just the two of us. She invited me on a boat ride, like a double date, two boats, and I had to promise not to blab. It turned out to be a few Jello-shots, skinny dipping, getting it on, watching each other do it. Sunburn, for sure.”

“How long ago?” I said.

“I don’t know, a month?”

“Was she with her boyfriend?”

Alyssa nodded. “That guy she dated from the Mansion, Clifford. My guy was named Constant Johnson. He really couldn’t decide which name he wanted to tell me, but whatever. He paid for the beer and he didn’t try to be a bone-star.”

“Did he work at the Mansion, too?” I said.

“Yep. He was actually a fun jump except he sneaked way too many peeks at Sally on top of Clifford. Like I was having sex, but he was watching TV.”

“Where did all this happen?” I said.

“Some place called Picnic Island except it’s not an island. It’s a shallow spot, I guess by the end of Summerland. I’m not sure.”

“Do you remember what kind of boat it was?” I said. “Did it have a name?”

“I don’t know boat brands or how many feet, but he had the name
Maverick
on the side. I told him that was a cool name for a boat. Not like one of those cutesy names like
Swizzle Stick
or
Wet Spot
.”

“Did they mention the Mansion’s location?” I said. “Is it on the bay side, that fenced-in land opposite Baby’s Coffee?”

“No, it’s on the front side, on that stretch of Sugarloaf that goes to nowhere. You go down the road from the lodge and go right at the dead end, then go a long damn way. But oh, Jesus, they treated it like the biggest secret in the free world. Of course, I already knew where it was. Everybody at that end of Sugarloaf knows, but they all call it the Porcupine because of all those spooky antennas sticking out of it.”

“The Porcupine.”

“Right, it’s a manufactured house on stilts way down by the creek bridge. We all knew it had to be something. I mean, it’s on the ocean and they trimmed all the mangroves down by the water. That’s so illegal. You didn’t read about that in the paper. Nobody got popped, nobody caught a fine.”

“The people who work inside call it the Mansion and their neighbors call it the Porcupine?”

She stuck out her chin and gave a single nod.

Our food arrived. We were all so hungry, no one spoke until two-thirds of it was gone.

“Tell me about your boss,” said Beth. “How sick is he?”

“You really want to know? Today he had his usual look at ‘the girls.’” Alyssa cupped her smallish boobs to cue us to her meaning. “Then he wanted to finger me. How gross is that?”

“How did you react?” I
 
said.

“I told him I was the only one allowed to do that. Plus, I got me a nasty daddy and I’m an ace at becoming the wallpaper.”

I suddenly had more respect for Alyssa’s wisdom and smarts, two different things, both substantial.

“The girls call him Uncle Disgusting,” I said.

Alyssa leaned toward Beth and lowered her voice. “He gives a twenty-dollar bonus each week for a ten-second look at the ‘angel beard.’ He once gave Mikey fifty dollars to grow hers back. It took so long they both gave up on the deal.”

Beth stared ahead, unfocused. Her neutral expression, I could tell, masked a fundamental disgust. We were all finished eating. I gave the server a check-please wave.

“I need to get back to work,” said Alyssa. “Mikey covered for me, so I promised her a one-hour break. Was I any help? I can’t believe I told you about Sally boinking her hot fellow. She does have a cute ass, tight as it is.”