American Tropic (14 page)

Noah watches the phones for an incoming call. No red lights. He continues to wait. No lights. He puts the microphone to his lips. “Bizango, you scared the shit out of everyone; people are afraid to call.” He grabs his rum bottle.
The bottle is empty. He tosses it aside. “So, my loyal pilgrims, we’ve had a fun day on trusty old
Noah’s Lark
. First there was my near hit-and-run with a
Titanic
, then a weirded-out dude says he’s a dancing skeleton coming to slit our throats. I’m sort of out of words. Not that Truth Dog doesn’t have any bark and bite left in him—far from it—but sometimes only music can express what we feel. As I head back into Key West, I’ll leave you with this music from
Carmina Burana
, a cantata based on the fevered poetry of cloistered thirteenth-century monks. For those of you who don’t understand Latin, I’ll give you the translation as it plays.”

Noah punches out the Bizango CD from the player and pushes in a new disc. “Listen to this, Bizango. Two can play your bloody game. Your kind of evil has been hanging around the school yard of history for a long time.”

From the big wood speakers blasts the surge of a majestic soul-wrenching orchestral rhythm accompanied by the aggressive, monumental chant of a male choir. Noah chants his translation over the choir.

N
oah looks through the window of his pilothouse as he motors his trawler toward the distant island outline of Key West. He hears whirring from above. He looks up through the window. A helicopter darts from the sky and swoops in a broad circle over the trawler. On the side door of the helicopter is painted a blue-and-gold insignia:
KEY WEST POLICE DEPARTMENT
.
Inside the copter, the pilot steers the craft, with Luz seated next to him.

Noah cuts his engine and runs from the pilothouse onto the deck. From the copter, Luz’s voice booms from a bullhorn: “You’re under arrest! Follow me into the harbor!”

Noah waves up to Luz, signaling that he does not understand what is going on. The copter swoops lower, the downward wind of its blades blowing hard against Noah, threatening to sweep him overboard. He sees Luz behind the copter’s bulbous window with a rifle gripped in her hands. He struggles against the wind, making his way back into the pilothouse. He grabs the helm and steers toward the island.

The helicopter follows the trawler into the harbor and hovers directly above as Noah pulls up to the dock. He jumps down from the trawler onto the dock and is surrounded by a wall of policemen with rifles pointed at him. The Police Chief pushes his way through the riflemen. He shouts at Noah above the clatter from the helicopter blades. “You think you’ve been damn clever! I finally got you!” He grabs Noah’s hands and handcuffs him.

Noah stares at the Chief in disbelief. “What the hell is going on? You got me for what?”

“This morning you played a Bizango recording that in fact you made. That recording is identical to the one you left in Pat’s mouth after you murdered her. No one except the police and the killer knew about that recording. Your pirate-radio charade is over!”

Noah tries to break the grip of the handcuffs binding him. The sharp edges of the cuffs cut into his wrists, drawing blood. “I’m not Bizango!”

The Chief turns to his riflemen. “Read Mr. Truth Dog his Mirandas and lock him up!”

Moonlight shines down over the island’s clapboard houses. The modest homes are dwarfed by the immensity of the docked cruise ship,
Titan Reef
. Inside the ship, the sprawling main cocktail lounge is decorated to resemble a big-game African safari camp, its walls crowded with mounted trophy heads of
elephants, lions, gazelles, hippos, and rhinos. The amber glass eyes of the dead animals stare down at the carefree passengers sipping exotic cocktails adorned with pink parasol stir-sticks.

The chattering of the passengers stops as the ship’s captain struts in dressed in a crisp white mock admiral’s uniform with gold-braided epaulettes on the shoulders. He glad-hands the passengers as he works the room with a commanding air. He stops in the center of the room next to an oversized African drum of stretched zebra skin. He bangs on the drum with a carved ebony drumstick. The drum’s reverberating bass focuses everyone’s attention on him. “I must interrupt your after-dinner soirée. Something important is on the television news I want you to see. I know you’ve heard reports about some unfortunate murders in Key West, making you have doubts about enjoying a carefree time. This will put your minds at ease while we are berthed here.” He holds up a TV remote control and clicks on a wide-screen television spanning the length of a wall between two stuffed leopard heads.

On the TV screen, the Police Chief stands at a podium addressing a crowd of jostling reporters, photographers, and cameramen. His voice is flat and factual. “A suspected serial killer was taken into custody today. I am not at liberty to discuss details. Be assured, the streets of Key West are safe. The annual Fantasy Parade will go forward next week as planned. Those coming here for the world’s greatest Halloween party have nothing to fear.”

The captain cuts the sound of the Chief’s voice with the remote and steps in front of the television screen. “Everyone, you just heard it. Key West is safe. Let’s celebrate our good fortune!” The jubilant passengers cheer
and raise their cocktail glasses. The captain puffs up to a heroic stance and salutes the crowd. A loud recording of the optimistic tropical song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” fills the air with its upbeat lyrics.

A female passenger in a sexy cocktail dress sways seductively to the captain. She slips her arm intimately around his waist. The woman’s laughing husband rapidly fires off the flash of his cell phone in a barrage of photographs of the new couple. The captain dances away with the man’s wife.

T
he captain enters his luxurious suite. He tosses his mock admiral’s cap onto a velvet chair and kicks off his shoes. He pulls off his watch and checks its time, 3:30 a.m. He pours himself a Scotch and soda at the elaborate mahogany bar backed by a full-length mirror. As he stirs his drink, he sees reflected in the bar’s mirror something approaching from behind. He swings around.

The figure of a black-and-white-rubber-suited skeleton stands before the captain. Clutched in the skeleton’s rubber-gloved hands is a speargun, its taut spear in firing position.

The captain holds out his glass of Scotch and soda to the skeleton. “Have a drink, you deserve one—sure as hell fooled me in that disguise. Great costume, but Halloween isn’t until next week.”

The skeleton remains silent and doesn’t move.

The captain sips on his drink. “Let me see your face behind that mask. Must be you, my very special Mike. You’re the only one who has a key to my suite.”

The skeleton raises the speargun. Its black rubber finger moves to the aluminum trigger. The steel spear fires with a springing whoosh, rams through the captain’s chest, into his heart, out his back, and shatters the glass mirror behind in a spray of blood.

The captain falls to the floor, his mouth agape, gasping for air, the spasms of his feet kicking soundlessly into the thick carpeting.

The skeleton reaches down and pushes a black micro-recorder between the captain’s lips.

I
n the gray mist of predawn light, Hard Puppy walks along a fishing pier jutting into Key West Harbor. He pulls behind him on a rope a heavy bloodied burlap sack. He stops at the end of the pier and looks around to check if he is being watched. He waits a few minutes, then unties the sack and exposes the dead body of a black pit bull. The dog’s short-haired body is crisscrossed with deep bloody lacerations. Tied to the dog’s back legs is a small iron anchor. Hard dumps the dog and anchor out of the sack. The anchor clanks loudly on the concrete pier’s surface. He glances around to see if anyone heard. He
looks back at the dead pit bull and studies it. He shakes his head and angrily kicks the dog with the pointed tip of his alligator shoe.

The pit bull tumbles off the end of the pier and splashes into the water, sinking under the surface. Its barrel-shaped body bobs back up. Hard’s lips pull back in a sneer. “Sink, you bastard. You lost me fifty grand in two fights. Sink, goddamn you.”

Around the pit bull’s floating body, bubbles appear in the water. The dog slowly sinks again. The iron anchor drags the animal’s dead weight down into the depths.

Hard hears screaming. He whips around to see if someone has seen him sink the dog. He spots people running toward a distant pier, where a colossal cruise ship is docked. He kicks the bloody burlap sack into the water, then walks quickly to the distant pier. He joins a crowd at the pier’s end. The people stare up the steep steel stern of the ship. The rising sun’s light shines on the ship’s name,
Titan Reef
. Over the name is slashed in red paint a giant
X
. Swinging in front of the
X
is the captain, his body hung from a rope tight around his neck, his white admiral’s uniform soaked through with blood.

Hard looks around at the terrified faces staring up. He breaks into a broad smile. His platinum teeth sparkle in the sun. He saunters away from the dock, snapping his fingers in time to a musical tune that he croons in the voice of an old time Dixie minstrel: