The Naked Detective Page 6

  With nothing much in mind, I leaned and swooped through random streets. Not till I'd crossed the ugly clutter of Duval did I realize I was heading to Bahama Village to check out the Hibiscus guest house.

  Bahama Village is about the last part of Key West that could really be called a neighborhood. It still features curbside games of dominoes, and corner groceries that compete on the charm of their owners and the coldness of their beer. Generations of families still live together here. Houses are passed on, patched and propped up with cinder blocks and railroad ties; they lean but they endure. Not that the Village is immune from change. Homesteading whites who can't afford the other parts of town are picking up some bargains—you see earnest young white women in torn jeans and bandannas, scraping paint, raking improbable gardens. Gay pride flags hang from porches here and there. But the pace of change is slow for now, as languorous as the streets themselves, and has a human face. It won't stay that way; and as I rode past the rib joints and the fried-fish stands, I vaguely wondered if the hovering developers would let Bahama Village keep its own true name, or if they'd decide that the suggestion of blackness might keep the millionaires away.

  On Louisa Street between Emma and Thomas, I stumbled onto the Hibiscus. It had a brightly painted wooden sign out front, and frankly, I found it sooner than I wanted to. I'd been enjoying the feeling of having a project, yet without having to do anything but push the pedals and look around. Now I had to talk. Now I had to play a part.

  I locked my bike and went up a set of porch steps that closely resembled my own. All basically alike, these old Conch houses; part of their appeal. This one had been converted so that the small front parlor was now the office. There was a chest-high counter that held a rack filled with the relentless promotional brochures—fishing trips, nightclubs, sunset sails. Potted palms and ficuses brought the outdoors in. A doorway led to the guest rooms that, boardinghouse style, gave onto a common hall. I slapped the little silver bell atop the counter and waited for someone to appear.

  After a moment, a woman came bustling along.

  She was black, had cornrowed hair; and went about two-forty, with an astonishingly confident smile that seemed to go with someone more conventionally attractive, and that carried all before it. In one breath she said an extravagant hello, told me her name was Vanessa, and asked if she could help me.

  "I'm looking for a friend," I said.

  "I hope you find one," said Vanessa. She flashed the smile and gave me a mischievous half-wink.

  "His name's Kenny Lukens."

  She turned her face toward one exorbitantly fleshy shoulder, thought a second. "No one by that name staying here."

  "This would have been three, four days ago."

  She shook her head, a little quickly for my taste.

  I glanced over toward the counter. "Isn't there a register you could check?"

  "Hon," she said, "I only got five rooms."

  "He might have used a different name."

  I thought her face got just a little less friendly then, protective of her clientele. "That makes it tougher, doesn't it?"

  "He's about six-foot, white, has green eyes and hair just longer than a crew cut."

  "Different name," she said, "maybe he wanted to be left alone."

  I ignored that since I had no answer for it. "He might've been in drag."

  "You a cop?"

  "No."

  That wasn't good enough for Vanessa. She fixed me with big dark steady eyes that coaxed forth more information.

  "I . . . I'm . . . I'm a private investigator." There, I'd said it. Aloud and of my own free will. For the first time ever, I believe. I braced myself to be laughed at and unmasked. I waited for disbelief and mockery. It didn't come. "Name's Pete Amsterdam."

  Vanessa said, "Somebody paying you, Pete Amsterdam?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "To make trouble."

  "I'm not trying to make trouble."

  "Then why you looking for him?"

  I licked my lips. PI's had to say hard things sometimes, and they always said them straight. "Because he's dead."

  "Dead?"

  "The body they found on Tank Island a couple nights ago? That was Kenny Lukens. The police don't seem to know that. They won't learn it from me. He almost was my client. They don't have to know that either, okay? Will you help me out?"

  Vanessa took a moment to expel a long slow breath. "Listen, I'm hanging on by a thread here. I can't afford a mess."

  "I understand," I said. "I'm asking you to trust me."

  She looked at me hard. I stared right back. Two small-timers trying to do the right thing and not get hurt for doing it. Frankly, I was touched by the slimness of our respective chances.

  Vanessa said at last, "There was a guy who stayed here that might've been your man. Paid cash. Called himself Josh." She moved behind the counter, flipped a page of the register. "Josh Slocum."

  My mouth curled because it so happened that I recognized that alias. Joshua Slocum, New England sea captain, first man ever to sail alone around the world. Wrote a book about it.

  "That'd be him," I said.

  "Nice person," said Vanessa. "Quiet. Considerate. Nervous though."

  "Anybody with him? Anybody visit?"

  "No," she said. "All by his lonesome. Paid for three nights, stayed for two. Never came back for his things."

  "You still have them?"

  She didn't answer, just squeezed her lips together, paused, then gestured for me to follow her. She led me down the hall and out the back door to a courtyard, where a handful of guests were having breakfast next to a big octagonal hot tub. Beyond the tub was a small outbuilding, totally swathed in raspberry-colored bougainvillea. Vanessa's studio apartment. It had African fabrics and pictures of women embracing on the walls. There was a small neat kitchen with many jars of grains and spices.

  Vanessa reached into a closet and came out with a yellow nylon duffel, the kind that's shaped like a sausage and opens on top. She handed it to me and I didn't quite know what to do with it; I couldn't haul it on my bike. "Mind if I look through it here?" I asked.

  She gave an uneasy shrug, and I dumped the contents onto her bedspread. It made for quite a still life, and I tried not to feel like a ghoul or a voyeur riffling through the stuff. Sweat socks and stockings. Jockstraps and bras. Sandals, pumps; sun-block and eyeliner; panties for every mood and occasion. I told myself I was there not to gape at underwear but to look for clues—which made the process not a jot less weird. Five minutes ago I'd finally fessed up to being a private eye, and here I was, sifting through a corpse's personal effects like I knew what I was doing. The power of the things we call ourselves . . .

  I tossed aside razors and rouge, foundation and foot powder, looking for something of consequence. A journal would have been nice, but Kenny Lukens didn't seem to have kept a journal. There wasn't even an address book—but then, a person whose past could kill him any day wouldn't have much use for one. I pocketed a handheld compass, which I thought to give to Maggie as a keepsake. And I took a matchbook that intrigued me—there always has to be a matchbook, right? This one was from a place called Freddy's Beachside on Green Turtle Cay, in the Bahamas. But what I found of interest was a phone number scrawled inside that started with the digits 294. That's a Key West exchange.

  I raked my fingers one last time through Kenny's things, then turned back toward Vanessa. I thanked her for her time; her eyes asked me once again not to bring down havoc on her little enterprise. We shook hands and I turned to go.

  I was halfway to the door when she said to my back, "Just like a man."

  I looked across my shoulder to see her beginning to attack the mess I'd left behind. Abashed, I made a move to help repack the duffel. She treated me to a last look at that amazing smile and gestured me away. "Hey," she said, "I'm used to sloppy guests."

  10

  Back on the street, the world had moved from morning to full day. Houses seemed to stand up straighten like soldiers at at
tention, as their shadows were sucked in beneath them. The pavements had spent their nighttime coolness; I felt sharp sunshine through my sneakers and reflected up my legs.

  I got back onto my bike and headed home. My mind was cluttered, my routine had been exploded. I needed to retreat.

  I didn't get to. Climbing my porch steps, tennis bag in hand, I heard someone suddenly call my name and I did a little sideways jump.

  It was Maggie. She was sitting in my favorite rocking chair and, purposely or otherwise, hiding out behind the jasmine bush the same way I was fond of doing. Now she rose without effort, moved toward me in a soundless float as in a painting by Chagall, and for some part of a heartbeat fell into my arms. Backing off immediately, she said, "Something terrible has happened."

  "I know," I said. "I tried to visit you at Redmond's."

  "You did?"

  "Didn't have what it takes to get past the police line. You okay?"

  She nodded but her eyes were on the porch planks. I asked her if she'd like some coffee. She said she would, and we went inside.

  Fussing in the kitchen, grinding beans and wetting down a filter, it dawned on me, with ineffable regret, that I'd been too distracted and surprised to really feel the hug that Maggie had given me. However fleetingly, her arms had been around my neck, her breasts had been against my ribs. Was it conceivable that I simply hadn't noticed?

  We took our coffee and went out back. The pool pump was humming; bits of leaf and some windblown oleander petals were slowly spinning on the surface in a lazy gyre that always missed the skimmer. We had to move our chairs very close directly underneath a palm to be in shade. Something about the hug now came scudding back in memory. Maggie's arms had been very cool against my overheated shoulders; the tiny hairs on her forearms had slightly tickled my neck.

  She sipped her java and suddenly said, "The thing about Andrus? He reminded you how lucky you are to be here. He appreciated things. The smell of the air. The fish that hang around the dock. He took none of it for granted."

  A eulogy not to be improved on, I thought. So I kept my mouth shut, drank some coffee, and looked down at the pool. In the brief silence I remembered something else about the phantom hug. It had to do with the texture of Maggie's bosom as it compressed against my chest, and, while it could be described in terms of cushions, bread dough, or certain ripening fruits, I don't think words exist that really nail it. Finally I said, "You know any more about what happened?"

  She lifted her eyes and shrugged. "Supposedly a robbery. That's the word around the yard, at least. Andrus caught them at it and they killed him."

  "They?" I said. "Do we know that there was more than one?"

  "No idea. That's just what people say."

  I pictured a struggle inside the thin shell of the Dream Chaser. "Nobody heard a fight?"

  "Friday night," said Maggie. "There's a loud band at the Raw Bar. Plays till two in the morning. You sleep in earplugs or you don't sleep."

  I drummed fingers on my chair arm. To the sky and the overhanging fronds I said, "Why that boat, of all the boats?"

  Maggie looked away. "I've thought about that too."

  "Seen any guys in snorkels lately?"

  Maggie didn't answer right away. With her accustomed lack of effort or compunction, she lifted up her legs and tucked them underneath her. The motion reminded me that, for one brief instant in the fleeting hug, the fronts of our thighs had brushed together. But had they really? Was I remembering or imagining by now, and how much difference was there anyway?

  Finally she said, "So you think—?"

  "What I think is that either this is one big bastard of a coincidence, or the people who killed Kenny didn't get their precious pouch and came back to search the boat."

  Palms rustled. Water swirled slowly in the pool. I squirmed to where I could reach into my shorts pocket, and pulled out the little flip-top compass. I handed it to Maggie. "Thought you might like to have this. It was Kenny's."

  She took it as gently as if it were a baby bird. She looked at me questioningly.

  "I went down to the Hibiscus," I explained. "Spoke to the owner. Went through Kenny's things."

  "Ah," she said. "Find anything that—?"

  "I wish I knew what the hell to look for. I wish I was better at this. I found a matchbook."

  I passed it over and something awful happened. For just a fraction of an instant, I thought that maybe I saw something less than altogether candid in Maggie's pretty face. If the guardedness was there at all, it was a tiny thing, a flicker at the corner of the eye, a twitch of some nameless discomfort, and it vanished as fast as it had come. Maybe she had a tickle in her throat, a burp in her gullet, a bug in her ear. I hoped it was something like that, because the possibility, however faint, that my one ally, this woman who had hugged me, was not being perfectly straight gave me a feeling I really couldn't stand.

  "Freddy's Beachside," Maggie read. "That's one of the places he worked."

  Was it just the pool pump, or did her voice suddenly sound the slightest bit tinny? "Tell me about it," I said.

  "He tended bar there. I'm not sure how long. Every time he wrote to me it seemed he had a different job."

  "How often did he write?"

  "It varied. Two months. Five months. When he got around to it. Every once in a great while he called. Just to chat. No big deal."

  I hadn't suggested it was a big deal. Maggie was still holding the matchbook. I asked her to open it. "A Key West number;" I said. "Mean anything to you?"

  She pursed her lips, a little theatrically, I thought, then shook her head; my suspicion that she was fibbing only deepened. This depressed me. I went into a sulk. I wish I could say it was a fine detective-like sulk on the details of the case, but it wasn't that at all. I was sulking about the fragility of infatuation, mourning the loss of the first and simplest phase of my happily untested lusting after Maggie. The merest whiff of ambiguity had dulled my fantasy like hot breath dulls a mirror.

  The silence dragged on and went sour. Maggie said at last, "You mad at me or something? You seem unfriendly all of a sudden."

  Jesus, these yoga teachers see right through you. Was it some catch in my breathing, some slight lifting of my shoulders? Trying to feel friendly again, I sought to recall more aspects of the hug. I couldn't remember a single goddamn piece of it now. But nor did I exactly trust my own mistrust. What started it? A twitch? What if I was wrong? I didn't want to be a moody jerk, and how could I dare accuse this woman of anything? I was flummoxed. Desire mixed in with suspicion might just be the bitterest cocktail you can have.

  "Well, I should go," said Maggie, after another pause that I guess was longer than I realized.

  She stood up smoothly. I stood up too and walked her through the house and out again onto the porch. Standing there, concern and even affection welled up again, pressed against my faint distrust like a bone chip on a nerve, and I said, "The boatyard—you'll be okay down there?"

  She nodded that she would and started down the stairs. Her shoulders stayed level and her neck stayed straight the whole time she was descending, and even as she climbed onto her brightly painted bike.

  Back inside, I paced and fretted my way into the music room. I did my riffling-and-deciding thing, then surprised myself by putting on some Monk. Ordinarily, Monk is not someone I would listen to while the sun was in the sky, but this whole day had gotten twisted upside down, and in some cockeyed way I thought that maybe his extraordinary bitterness would cheer me up. I mean, how did you make a melody sarcastic?

  ———

  Some time later, I remembered the matchbook that was still perched on the arm of what had been Maggie's chair by the pool.

  I went out and retrieved it. I carried it around awhile, stalling. I knew I had to call the number scrawled inside, and I knew that calling it would be one more sucker on the octopus, one more tentacle to wrap itself around my life.

  I sat down in the living room. Picked up the phone, put it down again,
got a drink of water. Finally dialed.

  The line was picked up, and before I heard a voice I heard what sounded like an amusement park. Laughing, splashing, brainless little squeals and screams. Finally a rushed but cheery voice said, "Paradise Watersports."

  I said, "Um, do you rent Jet Skis?"

  "Forty bucks an hour. Hundred, half a day."

  I had an inspiration. "Snorkels too?"

  "Twenty dollars. Whole outfit, all day long."

  "Where you located?"

  "Next dock over from the Hyatt. Here till eight. Check out the sunset special. Sixty bucks, two hours."

  Sunset on a Jet Ski? Slamming my kidneys and wrenching my spine, when the same time and money could be spent on a Puligny-Montrachet? I didn't think so. "Another day," I told the dock guy, and hung up.

  And sat there wondering why Kenny Lukens, having fled to the Bahamas and apparently escaped his very messy past, would keep a number for a Key West Jet Ski outfit in his yellow nylon duffel.

  11

  If a bike is mainly how you get around, you find yourself passing through the Key West cemetery nearly every day.

  The cemetery, maybe five blocks square, is about the only open space in Old Town, the only respite from the grid, the closest thing we have to Central Park. It's a shortcut, a picnic ground, a lovers' lane. And, of course, a tourist attraction. Tourists find dead locals quaint. They love the color photos that the Cubans plaster into headstones; the plastic flowers left behind in plastic vases; the wry epitaphs that flip the bird at Death. Uncluttered palms grow taller in the graveyard; cypresses like candle flames flicker in its breezes.

  The only problem with the Key West cemetery is that you can't actually bury anyone there. Beneath a thin layer of dubious topsoil, the ground is solid coral. You need a jackhammer to break it up, and if you do, an ooze of milky, salty water almost instantly seeps through the fissures.

  So corpses are either cemented into toe- stubbing bunkers right at ground level or stacked in family mausoleums resembling vast card catalogs. In my thousands of aimless circuits through the graveyard, I'd casually observed a number of funerals, but I'd never really thought about the logistics of these aboveground rites until the day they "buried" Lefty Ortega.