Murder Key (28 page)

             
“On an intellectual level, I know that I’ve only killed bad
people, but somewhere down deep I know that my dead mother wouldn’t approve. That haunts me. She was the gold standard when it came to right and wrong.”

             
I said, “We’re a long way from Seminole High School, Jock. Can we ever get back that sense of equanimity we had then?”

             
Jock frowned, and was silent for a moment. “No,” he said. “Not in this life. We’ve crawled too far through the human sewer. Some of that ugliness rubbed off on us, and when we die, we’ll carry that stain to the grave.”

             
I knew he was right.
             

             
Jock’s phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, looked at the caller ID and said, “It’s Emilio.”

             
They talked for a minute or two, and Jock hung up. “He’s in Veracruz,” he said. “He’s meeting with the local police in the morning. He’ll call when he’s through. You got another woman on the waiting list? Guy’s gotta have a woman, you know.”

             
We were through being serious. Jock wanted to move on to a more enjoyable subject, and what is more enjoyable than pretty women?

Murder Key

FORTY-ONE

             
On Wednesday morning, Chief Bill Lester called. “I think I’m starting to get the run-around from Rufus Harris,” he said. “He’s not telling me anything, and Paul Reich hasn’t returned the calls I made to him yesterday and this morning.”

             
“Did anybody tell you what was being done with the senator’s body?”

             
“No. I asked Rufus what they were going to do about it, and he said he didn’t know. Said he was wait
ing for word from Washing
ton.”

             
“Maybe that’s true.
”

             
“And maybe not.” He hung up.

             
It was close to noon, and I was antsy again. I’d read the paper, drank my two cups of coffee, showered, shaved, and couldn’t think of anything else to do.

             
Jock came in from his run on the beach, wiping his face with a towel. He collapsed into a chair on the balcony, still breathing hard.

             
I handed him a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “Want to go fishing?” I said.

             
“That’s a fine idea.”

             
I drove to The Market for some deli sandwiches while Jock recovered from his run and showered. We took the boat around to Cannon’s for bait and fuel, and then headed out Longboat Pass. We anchored over the Seven-Mile reef, and fished without purpose, eating our lunch. There were no other boats in sight. The water was flat and blue, turning to turquoise closer to shore. The beach shimmered in the distance, kissed lightly by the autumn sun. A small breeze kept us cool enough for light jackets. The only noise was the whirring of the spinning reels as we cast and reeled the line back in.

             
The time passed quietly, both of us caught up in our own thoughts. We’d unloaded on each other the night before, and that was perhaps cathartic for both of us. Macho men did not lightly discuss their feelings, and I think we were both a little embarrassed by the outpouring.

             
The jarring ring of Jock’s cell phone startled me. “Emilio,” he said. He listened for a minute, and then said, “I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

             
He closed his phone and looked at me. “Emilio’s flying in
tonight.
I’ll pick him up in Tampa. We’ve got a meeting at the federal building tomorrow morning, so I’ll grab a hotel room up there.”

             
The sun was hanging low in the western sky when we headed in. I tied the boat to its dock and washed it down. Jock went up to get changed, and left for Tampa.

* * * * *

             
I later learned about Emilio’s trip. When the dust had settled, he told me this:

             
On Tuesday, he flew into Mexico City on a flight from Houston. Emilio carried a passport identifying him as a Mexican national living in the capital. After he cleared
customs, he w
e
nt to the rental car counters
and used a Mexican driver’s license identifying him as a resident of Veracruz
. He
rented a car for a one-way trip.

             
He arrived in Veracruz and turned in the rental. He then went to another rental car company,
and this time using the identi
fication of a Mexican National Police officer from the city of Ensenada on the Pacific coast of Baja California, rented another vehicle. He found a hotel and called it a night.

             
The next morning, Emilio presented himself to the desk officer in the reception area of the Veracruz main police station, showed his ID, and asked to speak to the officer in charge of the case involving the
gringo
jet with the dead man. He was told to take a seat, and in a few minutes a small man wearing a cheap suit and a clip-on tie came down the stairs.

             
The man approached Emilio, and said, “I am the detective in charge of the case you are asking about.”

             
Emilio held out his identification to the detective, and said, “I am Juan Gomez, attached to the police in Ensenada. We have been working a case involving what we think is the same airplane. I was here in Veracruz on vacation, and my superior called and asked me to look into this thing for him.”

             
There really was an officer named J
uan Gomez stationed in Ensenada
and he really was on vacation near Veracruz, visiting relatives. If the detective checked out Emilio’s story, he would find it to be the truth. The person answering the phone at the Ensenada police station would, because of the large amount of money tran
s
ferred that day into his checking account in San Diego, California, confirm the story. If the detective checked further, he would find that there was a Juan Gomez staying at a small hotel on the edge of the city of Veracruz. The agency was nothing, if not resourceful.

             
Emilio was taken to the airfield to inspect the plane. It had been impounded by the police and would not be released until the investigation was completed.

             
The small aircraft’s passenger cabin was configured with four plush seats, two on a side, facing each other and a sofa across the back. One of the chairs had blood smears on its seat and back rest.

             
The detective pointed to the facing seat, and said, “Mr. Foster was sitting in this chair when he was shot through the back of the head. Blood and brain material splattered the facing seat. You can see where the bullet lodged in the seat back. It was a large caliber pistol, a forty-four.”

             
“Where’s the pilot?” asked Emilio.

             
“We don’t know. The aircraft had been parked here for a couple of days before we were notified.”

             
“How did you identify Mr. Foster?”

             
“He had his passport and Florida driver’s license in his pocket. I called the American embassy in Mexico City and notified them of the death. They ran the plane’s registration through their Federal Aviation Administration, and told us it belonged to Mr. Foster.”

             
“Can I see the body?” asked Emilio.

             
“Yes, but I’m not sure why you are so interested in this.”

             
“We’ve had a problem with drug runners in northern Baja. A jet with these tail numbers has been seen twice in the area. When word got to Ensenada, through the National Police, that you’d found this plane, my boss asked me to take a look. That’s all I know.”

             
“Maybe your boss is part of the drug cartel.”

             
“Maybe,” said Emilio, “but he hasn’t offered to cut me in.”

             
At the morgue in Veracruz, Emilio was shown the body of the senator. Unless Foster had a twin, this was his body.

             
“Detective,” Emilio said, “would it be possible to get a DNA sample to take back to our lab in Baja?”

             
“I guess,” said the detective, “but why would you want that?”

             
“I don’t know. The boss asked me to get it. I have a kit in my pocket. All I need is a swab of the inside of his cheek.”

             
“Ah, go ahead. The National Police are nuts. Not you, of course, but the bosses.”

             
“I agree,” said Emilio, pulling the small kit from his coat pocket.

37

Murder Key

FORTY-TWO

             
Thursday dawned cold
on Longboat Key
. The first front of the year was pushing down from Canada, bringing winter with it. I decided to put off my jog on the beach and stay in. I just don’t like cold weather.

             
Jock called at mid-morning to tell me that Emilio had arrived in Tampa and brought the DNA sample with him. They had taken it first thing that morning to a private lab that the agency used on occasion, and he was hoping to have some results by the end of the day. I relayed that information to Bill Lester.

             
I spent the day on the sofa in my living room reading a new book by James Lee Burke, drinking coffee, and later hot chocolate. Winter in Southwest Florida is not truly winter, but we pretend it is. It was in the low 60s outside, and the sky was cloudless, as it always is once a front has moved through.
Only a few
boats
were on the bay. A
large flock of white pelicans was floating at the edge of the channel, uninterrupted by the wakes usually left by passing vessels.

             
As dusk approached, I ordered a pizza from Oma’s on Anna Maria. It was delivered by a long haired teenager driving a new Jaguar. Things really
are
different in Florida.

             
I caught the TV news, watched an old movie on AMC, and crawled between the sheets. The weather forecast for Friday was sunny with temperatures in the high 70s. Winter was over for a while.

* * * * *

             
The phone rousted me out of bed at six on Friday morning. It was Jock.

             
“We got a match on the DNA. We checked the senator’s against our national computer database, and we got a hit. Your hunch was on the money.”

             
“I’ll call Bill Lester. You’ll be in touch?”

             
“Right. See you later.”

             
I rolled out of bed and made myself a pot of coffee. No use in calling Bill at this hour. He’d be in his office by eight. I got the paper and spent the next couple of hours in quiet conte
m
plation of the world’s
peccadilloes
.

Murder Key

FORTY-THREE

             
I was enjoying my late Friday evening, the last day of November, at the Monkey Bar in the Colony Beach & Tennis Resort. Debbie Keeton was at the piano, her voice smooth as she sang “Longboat Blues,” her own composition. Her husband Gary Deary played a s
oftly muted trumpet in accompan
iment. His range was extraordinary.

             
I was s
itting at a table in the corner, sipping bourbon. Debbie is too classy an entertainer for a beer drinker, so on my Friday forays into the Monkey Bar, I always ordered sipping whiskey. Jack Black on the rocks, or if I was feeling particu
larly expansive, Wild Turkey on the rocks.

             
My mind was restless, wanting the whole fiasco to come to an end. I wanted the killing and the fear to go away. I still didn’t know why anybody would want to kill me, but I now had a good idea of who.

             
I felt a presence beside me.
A soft voice said, “Buy a girl a drink, s
oldier?

             
I looked up into the thousand watt smile of Liz Birmingham. I stood, fumbling my ch
air like some
adolescent jerk. Her attire was perfectly appropriate for the Monkey Bar, a pink golf shirt with the logo of the Colony embroidered on the breast pocket, white shorts, white ankle socks and tennis shoes.

             
“Please, sit down,” I said, pulling out a chair. “What in the world brings you to the Monkey Bar?”

             
She settled in, favored me with a smile that made me want to cry out with joy, and said, “Some of my sorority sisters and I get together here once a year for a little tennis and a lot of gab. I got tired of the gab and came looking for a drink.”

             
I signaled to the cocktail waitress
.
Liz ordered bourbon straight up. Some women just know how to drink.

             
She took a sip of the whiskey, held her glass up in appreci
a
tion.
“I saw you sitting here
,
looking like you were about a thousand miles away.”

             
“I was. It’s been a long few weeks.”

             
“I’ve heard about most of it, but I’ve been out of the loop. I don’t know why. Do you?”

             
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know you weren’t part of the whole thing. I just assumed you were.”

             
“I didn’t know anything about the bust here on Longboat until after the fact. I find that curious, since I’ve been the undercover guy on this thing from the begi
n
ning.”

             
“Look, Liz, I don’t know how your department works, but maybe somebody at the top thought there was a leak.”

             
“Matt, you were there. You’re a civilian, and yet you were part of the bust. You know more than you’re telling me. Did someone think I was the leak?”

             
“I don’t think so. I never heard that from anybody. As far as I know, your bosses think you walk on water. I think they were just playing it close, so that if there was a leak, they’d have narrowed down the list of suspects. The bosses were probably trying to protect you.”

             
“That sucks. I don’t need protection.” A hint of toughness was slipping out. It didn’t go well with her cool good looks.

             
“We got the bastards,” I said. “Isn’t that what counts?”

             
“Yeah, some. But we didn’t get the drug guys, and that’s what really counts.”

             
“I guess you knew the senator is dead.”

             
“Yes. Rufus passed that on to me yesterday, after he told me about the senator’s involvement. He brought me up to date on the whole exercise. I think Foster was probably the drug guy, too, regardless of what Byron told you.”

             
“What makes you think that?”

             
“It stands to reason,” she said. “He’d been bringing in aliens for a long time, he had contacts in Mexico, and he was found dead there after he escaped arrest here.”

             
“You could be right. But I think there’s more to it than that. I’d like to find the blonde woman. She might be more than just a driver.”

             
We sat quietly for a moment. Liz took a small drink of her bourbon, started to say something, thought better of it and took another sip. “What makes you think that?” she asked. “She’s probably just some bimbo making a few bucks driving the illegals.”

             
“I don’t think so. She seems to show up a
regularly
and the agent we had with this last batch of illegals said the men showed her a lot of deference. She was also the paymaster. She paid off the go-fast captain in cash and was giving orders to the guys moving the coke.”

             
“I didn’t know you had infi
ltrated an agent among the immi
grants.”

             
I wrinkled my brow in surprise. “You mean nobody ever told you about that?”

             
“No,” she said. “Rufus must have left that part out. Who was he?”

             
“A guy who works for another government agency. A one-shot deal. The Border Patrol or DEA or somebody recruited him for this exercise.”
I wasn’t about to blow Jock’s and Emilio’s cover.

             
“Did you get a description of the blonde woman?” Liz said.
             
“No. I’m the only one who thinks she might be involved more deeply than it appears. Nobody’s interested in my theories. I’m just a beach bum lawyer. And glad of it.”

             
I grinned. I actually liked being a beach bum, and I didn’t want Liz to think I was feeling sorry for myself. That’s not very macho.

             
She changed the subject then, telling me stories of her years in college with her sorority sisters. We talked for an hour, drinking another shot or two, enjoying the music.

             
Late in the evening, she placed her hand lightly on my thigh, down near the knee. “There’s a half moon out tonight. Interes
t
ed in a walk on the beach?”

             
“As long as you don’t have any ulterior motives,” I said.

             
She winked. “Don’t bet on it, s
oldier.”

             
I paid the check, waived at Debbie and Gary, who gave me the thumbs-up sign, and we left. We started toward the beach in front of the restaurant, walking arm-in-arm. She stopped suddenly.

             
“Matt, do you know Beer Can Island?”

             
“Sure, at the north end of the key.”

             
“Why don’t we go down there? It’ll be deserted this time of night.”

             
I drove the Explorer north, almost to the end of Longboat Key, a distance of about eight miles. Liz sat quietly in the passenger seat, deciding, I guessed, how the evening was going to end. Traffic was light on Gulf of Mexico drive, the island settling down for the weekend. I pulled into North Shore Road and parked at the end, near the wooden walkway across the dunes.

             
Beer Can Island is a misnomer in a couple of ways. Its actual name is Greer Island, but almost nobody calls it that. It’s also not an island any more, but rather a spit of land where the key tapers to an end at Longboat Pass. The ever-encroaching sea had filled in the narrow slough that once ran between the end of Longboat Key and the little island.

             
The beach is wide as it wraps aroun
d the end of the island, and it i
s bordered by a stand of Australian Pines. These trees have shallow root systems and thrive in the salty environment. A good wind can blow them over, and the beach at Beer Can is full of fallen trees, their roots sticking up like Medusa’s hair-do.

             
We walked north on the beach, barefoot now, wading in the shallow surf. The water had cooled the last few days, another sign that winter was approaching. A bright half-moon hung high above the horizon, painting the sea with a soft shaft of light. A cloud floated lazily across its face, its shadow reflected briefly on the sw
ath of sea lit by the moonbeam.

             
Liz had her purse with her, a precaution that any sane Longboater takes when leaving his car at a beach access. About the only crime that regularly visits our island is the thieves who break into the cars parked there. I had mentioned this to Liz on the drive north and suggested she conceal her purse. Instead, she brought it with her.

             
She leaned into my arm, holding it with both hands, her purse hanging from a shoulder strap. She looked at me and smiled. We stopped, and she reached up to kiss me. I was tasting that smile, and like in that old Beatles song, it tasted of honey.

             
She broke away, stepped back and smiled at me. “That was nice,” she said.

             
“Yes, it was.”

             
“Matt,” she said, “you know who the blonde woman is, don’t you?”

             
“Yes, I do.
Beth.”

             
I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Beth?”

             
“Little Beth Horvath from Sanford, Florida.”

             
She let out a long sigh. “How did you know?” she said, sadness
tingeing
her voice.

             
“I saw your picture in the
Salmagundi
.”

             
“God, Matt. I don’t look anything like that now.”

             
“That’s for sure. But that smile hasn’t changed, and like you said, a blonde wig just makes a girl.”

             
“What else do you know?”

             
“I know that you’re the senator’s daughter.”

             
“How?” she asked, surprised.

             
“DNA. We got a sample from Foster’s body, and it matched yours from the DEA database.”

             
“What put you onto me?”

             
“The senator sent your mother money for a long time. The forensic accountant found it, and I went to Sanford to find your mom. That led me to you.”

             
“Foster was a son-of-a-bitch. I didn’t know he was my father until just before my mother died.”

             
“That must have been tough, growing up without knowing who your dad was.”

             
“Tough doesn’t get it, Matt. Mom would never talk about him. Then she got stomach cancer, and was dying a pretty rotten death. On the day before she died she told me that she’d called him when she got the diagnosis. She asked him for help so that his daughter, me, could finish college without having to pay for her treatment. He told her to go to hell.

             
“All those years busting her butt in the Colonial Room to keep us fed, and Foster wouldn’t help when we really needed it. He deserved to die.”

             
“What about your grandparents?” I asked. “Couldn’t they help?”

             
“Her parents kicked her out when she was seventeen and pregnant. They were rock-ribbed Baptists who hated the sin, and the sinner, too. They told her never to come back. They said she would burn in hell, and they didn’t want to get singed by the flames. How the hell do you do that to your only child? They died in a car wreck when I was four.”

             
“But Foster was sending your mother a check every month.”

             
“When she was in the hospital, Mom told me she called him when her parents threw her out and asked for help. The great senator told her she couldn’t prove I was his, so he wouldn’t help, except to send a little money every year. She was only thirty-six when she died.” Her voice broke.

             
We were standing, facing each other, the small waves lapping at our feet. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

             
“I’m sorry,” I said.

             
“Mom asked me to bring her an envelope from her unde
r
wear drawer in the chest in her bedroom. It had my birth certificate and some other papers in it. It listed my birth name as Elizabeth Birmingham. She named me for her home town, since she couldn’t give me my father’s name.”