Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery (14 page)

“How’d you find me?” I sipped my Jameson and wondered if he’d continue lying.

“If I can find your sorry ass in the warehouse district of Panama City, why are you surprised I found you on a small island?” He took another swallow of beer. “I mean, come on, how hard is it to find
you
in Key West?”

“That’s what I am asking.”

“You weren’t on the boat, the Jeep was gone,” he said between sips of beer. “John said you’d left the Parrot around seven with Bob and Burt. Gretchen said you ate and left Jack Flat’s, so I continued along Duval, ended at the Hog and there were your friends and they gave you up in a heartbeat.” He laughed.

“And they didn’t come with you?”

“They didn’t offer and I didn’t ask.” He finished his beer. “Another?”

Padre Thomas nodded as he lit the cigarette he’d been holding. Norm found Vickie at the bar and ordered two more beers.

“Did you know he was coming?” I looked at Padre Thomas as he exhaled smoke.

He shook his head. “No idea,” he said and took a fresh beer from Norm.

“So, to what do we owe this honor?” I sipped my drink while Norm and Padre Thomas took long pulls on their beers.

“You don’t buy the casual visit?” Norm sounded offended.

“Too much out of character.” I knew better, Norm didn’t do anything without a reason.

He turned to Padre Thomas and shook his head. “He knows how to hurt a guy, Padre.”

“What do you have to do with Walsh and the marshals?”

“Walsh?” He looked confused, but looks are deceiving—especially his.

“Doyle, maybe?”

“I don’t know who they are.” He didn’t sound interested. “Should I?”

“Why are you here?” I asked, tension woven into my words. It was late, I’d been drinking and was in no mood for more bullshit.

“I’ve been asked to set up a meeting between you and three people I know,” he said as if it was something we always did. “I didn’t think you’d be out this late on a Friday night or I would have waited until tomorrow.”

“This gotta be interesting,” I said. “Three friends of yours want to meet me and it has nothing to do with the marshals or Walsh. Give me a break.”

“You’ve grown very untrusting, hoss, and I didn’t say friends,” he said with a pretend pout. “We get a free lunch if you talk to them.”

“Nothin’ is free.” I reminded him of what he’d often said to me. “So what’s this about?”

“I’m not going to argue with you when you’re so many drinks ahead of me.” He grinned. “We can have breakfast tomorrow and I’ll tell you what’s going on.”

I didn’t say anything. I chewed on a piece of ice from my cup.

“They still let you into Harpoon Harry’s?” Norm asked.

“Yeah, Ron’s insurance made him put in bullet resistant Plexi after your last visit, but he lets me in.”

“Why don’t we meet there? Around eight?”

“I don’t know if he’ll let me in with you. He remembers you.” I grinned.

“Funny, hoss.”

I turned to Padre Thomas. “Do you know what this is about?”

“No,” he said and put his cigarette out. “Not yet.”

“Why didn’t you just call and ask me to meet your friends at a hotel?” He had piqued my curiosity.

“Not those kind of acquaintances and not my
friends
.” His words were flat and his eyes stared hard at me.

“Who are they?” I wouldn’t let it go, and he knew what I was like when I was curious, especially after a few drinks.

“People I wouldn’t want to leave you alone with.”

“People from work?”

“Not from where I work. Let it go until breakfast.”

It was almost one in the morning.

“My Jeep’s parked on Southard, by the Mango Tree Inn,” I said, giving in to being tired.

“I’ll drive you to the marina,” Norm said. “I can take a cab back to the hotel.”

“Why not stay on the boat?”

Norm had sailed the boat from Los Angeles to the Caribbean side of Panama to help me escape my Mexican nightmare. He had helped me find what passes as my sanity today and he’d stayed on the boat when visiting before.

“These people need supervision to keep them in line,” he said with the grin intact.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Padre Thomas said, finished his beer, and lit a cigarette. “I’ll call first.” He shook Norm’s hand, slapped my shoulder, and walked out the back entrance to William Street. He lived a few blocks down by the cemetery.

I finished my Jameson and we left a minute or two behind Padre Thomas.

“You going to tell me?” We walked passed B.O.’s Fish Wagon restaurant and crossed Caroline Street—made famous by the Jimmy Buffett song.

“There’s enough time tomorrow,” he said. “With all the Taser hits you got, maybe drinking isn’t a smart thing. Lose wiring in the head and all.”

I stopped at Eaton Street and turned to him. “You said this wasn’t about the marshals or Walsh.”

“It’s not,” he said. “The Taser treatment didn’t come from the marshals.”

“How do you know?” I couldn’t withhold the anger I felt. He was playing games with answers I wanted.

Norm started walking and I followed along.

“Talk to these people tomorrow and you may learn more than you want to,” he said, as we got closer to Southard and my Jeep.

“It’s not like you, Norm,” I said. “Why are you holding back? It concerns me… I’m tired of strangers scaring me, I don’t need friends doing it too.”

“A smart man takes what scares him and tries to understand it. He looks to see if he should run and be protective or stand and challenge. A fool doesn’t’ care and charges. Which are you?”

I gave him the keys to the Jeep and wondered what he really meant.

“Are you smart or are you a fool?” he asked as he drove me to the marina.

“Charge,” I yelled into the night and Norm laughed.

Chapter 33

I
woke at six with a headache, took an over-the-counter pain medication, and went back to sleep. At eight-thirty, my cell chirped. Most of the headache had gone when I answered to hear Norm berate me for sleeping in.

At nine-fifteen I walked into Harpoon Harry’s, fit as a Cajun fiddler, and sat next to Norm, a guilty look pasted on my face. The restaurant was busy with the Saturday morning breakfast crowd—a mixture of regulars and tourists.

“Ron seen you?”

“Nope,” Norm said between sips of coffee.

I ordered a large
café con leche,
dark for the extra espresso, and we both ordered breakfast.

“You going to explain yourself?” I sipped from the large cup.

“You think your problem is the marshals?” Norm grinned. “Well, they’re only a small problem; you’ve got bigger ones on the way.”

Great, just how I wanted to begin my weekend, with a cryptic message.

“Can you speak English?”

Our breakfast came and we ate without too much talking.

After putting strawberry jam on the last piece of toast, Norm ran it through the egg yolk that remained on his plate, and ate it.

“You started a shit storm when you found that body.” He began without any lead in. He knew I’d only found one body—at least recently—so no explanation was necessary. “Do you know who she was?”

“No idea,” I said and held up my hands to stop him from replying. “Let me tell you right up front, I don’t want to know more than I already do. I don’t know where anyone is, including Walsh or Whitey Bulger’s fortune. If that’s what your friends want…”

“They’re not
friends
,” he said. “They’re CIA, Mick.” He lowered his voice. “They ain’t interested in some outdated Boston gangster, either.”

“CIA?” I couldn’t hide the surprise in my voice. “This about Central America?”

“No, they’re not interested in what you did in Central America.” He laughed softly. “No one is that I know of.”

“What do they want with me then?”

“You wanna take a walk?” He stood up and handed me the bill.

I paid at the counter, not seeing Ron and it wouldn’t have surprised me if he was in the kitchen waiting for someone to try shooting out the new windows—Norm leaves that impression on people.

“Let’s go look at some boats,” he said. We headed toward the waterfront. “Somewhere quiet, without people.”

I led him to the Tiki Bar at the Galleon Resort. Phil and Gilbert were setting up the round bar and said hi, as Norm and I leaned against the railing and watched Key West Harbor boat traffic.

“You remember the late ‘80s, the beginning to the end of the Cold War? Berlin Wall coming down?” He looked toward Palm Tree Island and the derelict boats anchored there and not at me.

“Yeah.” I looked toward the water and wondered where this was going. I was reporting from Central America, Mexico, and Cuba during the late ‘80s, not Europe.

Norm told me about an operative who sold information to all sides during the Cold War—he claimed to be without politics and only desired money. He had many names and spoke several dialects, but after the Cold War was over the agencies unofficially, officially agreed the agent was one man with varying names and appearances—he was a master of disguise and accents. His information was good, eighty-to-ninety-percent accuracy and, Norm said, that was unheard of in the spy game. He sold to the Russians, Germans, English, Israelis, French, anyone who would pay, including the CIA. Everyone wanted him on their side and to know who he was, but no one ever succeeded.

“When the Wall came down in late ‘89, he realized the game was over,” Norm said, still looking at the water. “He told each agency he was prepared to make one last sale. Of course, no one knew he contacted the others, they all thought it was an exclusive. He said he had a list of double agents and collaborators from the Stasi files and was willing to sell the list exclusively to them. The agencies paid but he vanished with the list, if it even existed.”

Norm explained that everyone wanted the list because the rumor was that many of the collaborators were officials of foreign governments, including West Germany.

“From what I hear, fear was widespread in the intelligence community and foreign offices.” Norm turned his back to the harbor. “It was assumed that someone met the selling price and bought the list. Since nothing came out about collaborators or double agents, it had to be the bad guys.”

“All this involves me how?” I turned to him. “You’ve lost me.”

“First, you found the body of Natasha Baron,” he said. “She was part of an old Cold War hit team and the CIA figures she was here working.”

“Natasha, as in Natasha and Boris from the cartoons?”

“You wouldn’t laugh at this Natasha if you knew her history, she’s no cartoon character and neither is her partner,” Norm said.

“I still don’t see a connection to me.” I was concerned because Norm wouldn’t be here on a lark. “All I did was find the body, I didn’t kill her.”

“The second problem you have is that it was a slow news day when you found her.” He sneered, ignoring my comment. “The local press reported how Walsh claimed unknown agents were after him, escaped on a Jet Ski and disappeared into the horizon. Very James Bondish,” he said. “Reuters picked up the story and it ran in most of the European papers and mentioned you, an award-winning journalist, had discovered the body.”

Norm moved to a chair under the bar’s overhang and sat in the shade. “It seems this Dick Walsh’s description fits the Cold War agent and some retirees got to speculating that it might be him. Right height and age.”

“The guy’s a Boston criminal, not a Cold War spy,” I said with a laugh. “And you’re telling me the CIA thinks different?”

“Agencies sat down in the early ‘90s and discovered each had paid in diamonds for the Stasi information. The CIA claims to have paid a million, MI6 admits to a million, also. The French to five million and the West Germans admit to three million. The Russians don’t agree on anything and the Israelis aren’t talking.”

I whistled. “A lot of diamonds.”

“Yeah, except what they admitted to paying and what they really paid is uncertain,” Norm said and stretched out his long legs. I saw he still wore old, worn cowboy boots. “An educated guess would be more than twenty million in diamonds was paid out and it could go as high as forty. Remember, some career diplomats’ names were probably on that list, if it existed. And you’ve got to realize these guys lie for a living and no agency would admit to being bamboozled.”

“I still don’t see a connection.” I pulled up a chair and sat in the shade facing him.

“You’re the last person to have seen Walsh alive,” he said. “So, everyone wants to begin at the beginning and that’s you.”

“Kind of thin, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, very thin, but it could be the missing link that will connect them to the diamonds and even a small split of the twenty to forty million in this economy isn’t to be looked down on,” Norm said. “From what I’ve read, Walsh has been in the witness protection since the ‘90s, the mystery agent disappeared around the same time with the diamonds. I agree with you, it’s unlikely, but everyone’s gonna check it out.”

“Who is everyone and how do you know this?”

“At Langley they call it chatter,” he said and closed his eyes. “The spies, some retired, others still working at embassies or in freelance positions, are on the Internet asking about the missing man in Key West, checking it against old reports and news stories. Most of it’s posted on the Internet these days. Someone joked about the missing agent and diamonds and one joke led to another and then real speculation followed.”

“You’re telling me reports of some psycho criminal on a Jet Ski saying agents were after him is enough to bring intelligence agents here looking for me?”

“They’ve got nothing better to do.” He laughed and kept his eyes closed. “But there is another possibility too.”

“Am I going to like this one any better?”

“No.” Norm sat up and opened his eyes. I didn’t like his troubled expression.

Chapter 34

T
he morning sun cast deep shadows around the Tiki Bar. Boat traffic sped through the harbor, while the sun reflected off the choppy water and penetrated the shade like splashes of light from a mirror.

Norm sat up straight and when his forced smile failed to get one back from me it turned into a frown.