Stairway to the Bottom - a Mick Murphy Key West Mystery (30 page)

“It seems.” She sat on the bed. “You have any number of people waiting to question you. Before I let them, is there anything you need or want?”

“I want to see my two friends first. I don’t care after that.”

“I have to brief
them
on your condition.” She got up, moved a hospital tray with water and a glass next to my bed. “That should take about fifteen minutes. Use it to your advantage.”

She left the room and Norm came in, followed by Padre Thomas. Norm stood by my bed and Padre Thomas sat, his rosary beads clutched in his hands. It seemed no one wanted to begin the saga.

“Who’s responsible?” My voice trembled, maybe out of anger, maybe out of pain or maybe a little of both.

“Alexei,” Norm said. “Pauly’s guys killed some of them.”

“What happened?” I had no idea of how two explosions tore into the
Fenian Bastard
so quickly, sinking the boat.

“What do you remember?” He spoke hesitantly.

“Very little. The first explosion hit the head and bow cabin.” I began to choke up and stopped, took deep breaths. “Killing Tita.” I couldn’t hide the emotion in my voice even though I tried. “The second one followed instantly and hit the aft cabin. I didn’t have time…” I didn’t know how to end the sentence.

Norm never relaxed as he told me what they’d put together. A pickup truck backed onto the sidewalk across from the marina on North Roosevelt, close to midnight. Three Russians came with it. In the bed of the truck, on a tripod, was a South African Denel-Mechem NTW-20mm rifle with a three-round magazine. The shooter got off two shots before Pauly’s sniper at the yacht club killed him. A brief shootout at the site left the three Russians dead, but the others who waited in a black SUV escaped.

F-16 jets fire the 20mm shell and its purpose is to destroy or render inoperable planes, armored vehicles and heavy equipment. The South Africans made a sniper rifle that took the powerful, deadly round.

“They hit you with military rounds,” Norm said. “If the third one had been fired, you wouldn’t be here.”

“What’s that mean?”

“The military shell penetrates and then explodes,” he said. “It was overkill.” He frowned at his choice of words. “If the third round had hit midship it would’ve cut the boat in half.”

“And killed me.”

“Yeah, and killed you.”

“What now?”

“An official shit storm is waiting down the hall,” he said pointing toward the door. “ATF is lead because they recovered the weapon. Richard did, really, and turned it over to them. You’ve got the CIA and DEA and a few other agencies without names that want to talk to you too.”

“Why? I’m a victim.”

“Your reputation precedes you, hoss,” he said. “They think anything this heavy has something more to it than Bulger’s money.”

“Do they know about the diamonds?”

“I didn’t tell ‘em and they didn’t ask.”

Padre Thomas leaned forward and whispered, “How do you know Tita died?”

“I drank her blood,” I said and saw his face crunch up in pain. “When the water began to fill the cabin it turned red…blood red and there were only two of us. My last breath, before I blacked out, sucked some of the water in.”

Padre Thomas fingered another bead and I realized he had been praying for Tita, not me.

“Who got me out?” I looked toward Norm and left the good padre to his prayers.

“Mike,” he said. “The guy in the boat next to you. He went right in.” Norm hesitated. “He said you were the only one in there. When I got there, you were already with the paramedics. My DEA credentials got them to talk to me. They used the defibrillator on you.”

“My heart stopped?” Was that the flash I had of the ambulance?

“You were dead,” Norm said. “When the ambulance pulled out of here they were hitting you for the third time.”

“How long have I been here?”

“Forty-eight hours,” Norm said. “You came in a little before one A.M.”

“What else should I know before the suits get here?” I couldn’t imagine losing two days. I needed more time to think.

“You’re good at being ignorant, stay that way,” he said. “The marshals have met with them, so they know about Walsh. Let it all fall on him.”

“The sheriff, he would tell them about my Stock Island adventure…”

“No one knows what happened or who did it, so don’t speculate. You hear me?’

“No Russians. But they’ll I.D. the bodies.”

“Already have. Like I said, ignorance is bliss. Be blissful.” He stopped and leaned close to me. “
What
are you doing?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to a doctor about anything. Doctor Carpino didn’t ask me how I felt.”

“Don’t shit a shitter,” Norm said. “Tita’s dead and you don’t seem upset. Remember, I was with you in Tijuana…you went crazy.”

I looked at his hard expression and saw his concern, his worry. I didn’t fully understand it myself. Maybe you can only go crazy once. Or maybe I’d never recovered and was still crazy. “I’m gonna get better Norm, then I’m gonna find and kill Alexei.”

“No you’re not,” he said and inched in. “We’re gonna find Alexei.”

Chapter 67

N
orm and Padre Thomas left without a word as the suits followed Doctor Carpino into the room. Other than the doctor, there was one additional woman among them. They all looked serious and I wondered if they learned to do that at suit school. As a journalist, I had to put many faces forward during an interview, pretended to be concerned when I wasn’t, care when I didn’t. I did whatever it took to make the interviewee comfortable and trusting; other times I tossed questions out that would upset the person because I needed a confrontation to get to the truth hidden within the story.

I wondered if the serious looks were because of the location—a hospital—or the situation, which I wasn’t sure I knew anything about. I’d know soon enough.

“Mr. Murphy, this is ATF Special Agent Shane Papaccioli,” Doctor Carpino introduced a man in his late forties in a tailored suit and a government-approved haircut.

He nodded and smiled. I returned both. “What can I do for you?”

He showed me a badge case that indicated he was with the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms division of the Justice Department, aka Homeland Security. I didn’t bother reaching for it. Norm had a similar I.D. that identified him as DEA agent. He wasn’t and I didn’t know if Papaccioli was ATF or not. I didn’t care.

“Do you know what happened to you?” He asked in a serious tone but kept his thin smile.

“I got blown up, my fiancée killed and my boat sank,” I said and winced a little for effect but also because it was the first time I said it aloud. Knowledge might be power but it can also hurt.

“With what, by whom and why?” Came from an older man in the group and it carried a challenge in the way he said it. I never got to know him or what agency he was with. Of course, I didn’t care because I planned to solve the problem before they did.

“I don’t know, I don’t know and I don’t know,” I said, answering his challenge with an attitude of my own. “Anything else?” I looked toward Papaccioli.

It went on that way for almost an hour before Doctor Carpino stopped it. I didn’t learn much from them except that they were at a loss for the “what, whom and why” and looked to me for answers. I got what I expected from them, nothing.

I never learned the name of the other woman or anyone besides Papaccioli, but they all had questions. They focused on Walsh, calling him Doyle Mulligan. Some of the questions had to do with the possibility of drug cartel connections, terrorists—the catchall these days with government agencies in need of budget increases or wanting more authority—Boston gangsters and the FBI. That question left me with the impression there were no FBI agents in this gathering.

There were no questions concerning the foreign agents on the island and that had me believing the CIA didn’t pass that information along. According to Norm, CIA chatter had alerted him to the situation. Of course, that’s if you believed Norm. It seems everyone concerned had thrown out their web of deceit and waited to see what they caught, but so far all they had was me.

It surprised me how tired I was after giving my evasive answers. Doctor Carpino had timed it just right.

“Lunch is on its way,” she said as the room cleared. The suits weren’t happy about leaving. “You look tired.”

“I am,” I said. “I don’t know why.”

“All that lying,” she said shaking her head slowly. “It takes it out of a person.”

“What did I lie about?” I was curious. Who was she and why had
they
flown her to Key West to keep me alive?

She laughed softly. “I’m not with them, so you don’t have to lie to me.” She looked toward the door. “I’m Navy.”

“What’s your job, then?”

“To keep you alive and I’ve done my job.” She took my food tray from the orderly, put it on the table next to my bed and then removed the heat cover. “Baked chicken and potato, peas and carrots. Yummy.” She smiled her wrinkly nose smile. “Hope you’re hungry.”

“Are you being sarcastic?” I peeled back the cover on the small apple juice container and drank it in one long swallow. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was.

“I’m a doctor and I eat a lot of hospital food.” She began cutting up my chicken. “You don’t get used to it and it doesn’t get better.”

“How bad off was I?” I started to pick at the chicken and realized she knew hospital food.

“Your heart stopped,” she said. “That’s about as bad as it can get for the living.”

“Who brought me back, the medic?” There was no taste to the food or maybe my taste buds hadn’t survived.

“Yes. In the ambulance.” She sat on the bed. “The authorities wouldn’t allow you to be flown to Miami, because they had questions for you and thought you’d die in route. The ER doctors did a good job of patching you up, you should be thankful that Doctor Quirk followed up on everything.”

“I’m thankful and Quirk’s a good doctor.” The baked potato needed jalapeños. The peppers would’ve helped the chicken too. “Who could override a doctor and were those the questions I just heard?”

“Homeland Security can pretty much override anyone and yes, it looked like you could’ve died,” she said. “You were brought in around one in the morning, in bad shape and barely alive. They didn’t want to chance your dying before questioning you. I think they have more intense questions after your release, now that your condition has improved.” She stopped and looked hard at me for the first time. “Your injuries were not life threatening, so what killed you, or tried to?”

“I don’t understand?” I stopped picking at my food.

“When I arrived they’d done the X-rays and CAT scan I ordered, cleaned you up, given all the meds I prescribed from the plane. There are no serious internal injuries, no head trauma. You did lose a lot of blood.”

“What stopped my heart then?”

“If you’d bled out the fib wouldn’t have worked,” she said. “My professional opinion is I don’t know. My personal opinion is you wanted to die.”

Hearing what I’d been thinking said out loud scared me. When I saw the water turn red, I knew Tita was dead. How or why I thought that, I can’t say. But I did and something in me quivered to the depths of my soul. As the bloody water seeped over me, and I inhaled a bit, I thought I was going to die too. Now I had accepted her death, I just hadn’t come to deal with it yet.

“Did you?” She asked and her expression turned dark. “Did you give up and want to die?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I thought I was going to die as the water filled the cabin and I couldn’t get up. Finally the water was over my head and I couldn’t breathe. From that point on…”

“Tell me what you remember.”

“I was half asleep on the settee…”

“After that.”

“After that?”

“After the water filled the cabin.”

“I don’t know.” I hesitated because I didn’t know if my experiences really happened or I dreamt it. Had I been on the way to the light or had I read too much about people having near-death experiences?

“Try.” Her voice turned soothing, the hard looks were gone.

“It was dark. No, it was black, blacker than crow’s feathers and I couldn’t see, but I saw. I guess, I mean, in my mind I saw things. A pinpoint of light in all that darkness seemed to offer me comfort.”

“Did you hear anything? Anyone calling you?”

“No,” I lied because I didn’t want to think of the last words I heard from Tita. Maybe I was crazy and Norm was right to be concerned. “Was it my mind playing games?”

“There are studies about near death experiences and what you experienced is similar,” she said and stood up.

“Are you a shrink or a doctor?” I felt like she had put me on a couch and began testing.

“Can’t I be both?” Her nose wrinkled. “Norm and the priest are still waiting. Do you want me to tell them to come back after you had some sleep?”

“No that’s okay. Send them in. If I fall asleep they’ll get the message.”

“I’ll be back tonight,” she said from the doorway. “If you think you need me sooner, Norm has my number.”

Of course he did, I thought, and wondered if he was the
they
she referred to earlier. Did he have that kind of pull when Homeland Security was involved?

Chapter 68

R
ichard walked in with Norm and Padre Thomas and I thought I was in for another round of twenty questions. I was too tired to put up with much but Richard looked worried. Padre Thomas sat and continued to pray the rosary. Richard and Norm stood next to me, moving the lunch tray out of the way.

“Mick, I’m sorry,” Richard said. I thought I saw tears in his eyes. “I liked Tita. She was a good woman and good for you.”

“Thank you.” I didn’t feel the hurt or loss that I had expected to at hearing those words. “She was that.”

“You’ve talked to the Feds,” he said but it wasn’t a question. “We had two cars at the scene within minutes. Your boat was going down and three Russians were dead on the street. Jesus, Mick, the 20mm they used… It’s armor-piercing. They could’ve held us off forever. The damn shell can take down a chopper, stop an armored vehicle.”