It Takes Two (11 page)

“If you want me to give a statement,” I offered.

He waved me off. “Been trying to keep your mug out of this. I’ll let you know if I need anything. I’m just blowing off steam.”

I wanted to hug him and roll him in a blanket and carry him up to my room on the second floor. But I figured we could find time for that later. So I said, “Sounds like you hit a mine field. Hell of a day all around. Sorry if I made it worse yesterday—or last night.”

He pounded the arm of his chair with a fist. “Bad day didn’t stop there.” Suddenly looking up, he said, “I appreciate that, Dan. You didn’t make anything worse. It was that goddamn cunt Willene Norris. Was my mistake carrying you along with me.”

“I wanted us to have the day together,” I answered. “Anyway, close calls, my sore nuts—none of that matters.”

“Right. Yes. Same here. Anyhow, the sheriff released the two bodies back to the families at three o’clock this afternoon, for burial. Doc wasn’t half finished cutting on the colored guy—who he didn’t start slicing into till this morning, and I’m not criticizing him for that, yesterday being Sunday. Was still some tests to run on Norris’s organs, or that’s what he told me later. We both complained down the hall. But it didn’t do no good. Doc was told to wrap ’em up for the undertakers, and do it now. The undertakers was already on the scene, come to find out.”

I remarked that this all sounded pretty irregular.

“Oh, Doc kept samples,” Bud answered. “Don’t know what of yet. He’s doing his own tests. But he told me there’s enough to check out whoever’s scum was in the used rubber and he has blood samples from both men, the carpet and the lady’s jacket.”

I asked Bud if he’d seen the story in the newspaper. When he said no, I dug out the clipping. Bud whistled a couple of times as he read through it.

“She must be tight as ticks on a deer with everybody who’s got strings to be pulled,” he said finally. “From the mayor right on down to the newspaper publisher’s wife.”

“You see what they left out?”

He nodded. “Story this long, must be intentional. Not a word about Willene’s shooting spree or her fucking up any possible prints on the pistol. The reporter on this—name of Ralph Nype, don’t know why it don’t say so here—tracked me down at the office yesterday. I didn’t tell him nothing about any of that, just that we was looking into it. But he was already on to the widow lady getting involved. And he damn well knew the name of that motor lodge.”

Somebody was running a railroad, no doubt about it. And it sounded like Bud might get tied to the tracks if he wasn’t careful. I stood up, crossed around behind the desk, pulled him to his feet and put my arms around him. His hands stayed at his sides, stiffly, until I kissed the scar on his neck. Then he loosened up a little.

“I got sloppy last night,” he admitted. “No excuse for it. You gettin’ in the Norris woman’s line of fire got to me. I’m sorry about, well, about leaving you high and dry when we mixed it up. Don’t remember that part all too clear.”

Patting his sides, I stepped back. “You know the joke about the horny sailor and the pogie marine?”

He cocked his head. “Could that be the one about the eighteen-button salute?”

“No, it’s the one about the lieutenant buying the jarhead sarge some hair of the dog and a sandwich. You up for that?”

“Hot to go,” he answered. “Where you have in mind?”

What I had in mind, pretty much on the spur of the moment, was giving him his first look at the Caloosa Club. On a Monday night the action would be slow. I’d be at his side to handle anything that spooked him. And if he did somehow spring a law-enforcement bone, well, that would answer a lot of questions too and pose a few more.

So I invited him to follow me. We might have used the camouflaged door that opened directly into the club from my office. (It looked like a closet from my side, a dry fountain from the other.) But I wanted to show him the members’ set-up first.

So we detoured through the lobby, crossed the dining room and entered what looked like a waiters’ station, complete with swinging outer doors, utility sink, ice machine, bulletin board, flatware drawers, dirty-linen hamper and shelves loaded with dishes and glassware. Around a corner, a steel desk partly blocked the way to a second set of doors. The desk, two phones and the club room entrance itself were presided over by Brian Rooney, a muscular man of about fifty who doubled as a masseur in the hotel locker room. The club room doors were made of bulletproof steel and fitted with combination locks. Nobody got in uninvited.

Brittle piano music and faint laughter echoed beyond the speakeasy’s entrance. Rooney rose to his feet and I introduced him to Bud. “He’s my personal guest,” I explained. “Local. We’re a little dry and need to wet our whistles.”

Bud flinched at Rooney’s handshake, then grinned and squeezed back. The contest ended in a draw. “One temporary membership coming up,” Rooney said, his South Boston Irish accent softened by a touch of merchant marine. “Little slow tonight. You gents can liven things up.”

“We’re not
that
dry,” I replied, printing Bud’s name on the card Rooney produced. “But you never can tell.”

Having said that, I pushed Bud ahead of me through the unlocked doors. Glancing right, he immediately spotted the six-stool, mirrored cocktail bar, complete with silver cocktail shaker, martini glasses and bartender in a monkey suit.

The club room, formerly a banquet hall, had been expensively redone to match what passed for modernity in after-dark Miami. Besides a white baby grand, the fittings included cobalt rugs with a pattern of silver stars and moons, brushed metal tables and cocktail chairs with silver cushions and a grove of artificial palm trees. A froufrou decorator from New York had painted the trees white, sprinkled them with silver glitter, cut them in half and applied the pieces to the walls as what he called “Greek pee-lasters.”

The mirrored bar, white ceiling, metal doors and base of the central dais were outlined in blue and white neon. A pair of plaster fountains were accented with spotlights.

To our left a light-skinned black man with waved, pomaded hair picked out “Moon Over Miami” on the albino Steinway. His spotlighted piano was raised on a round dais at the far end of the bar.

Looking up from his keys and smiling, Tommy Carpenter nodded in my direction and shifted into a Richard Rogers–style version of “Anchors Aweigh.” After four or five bars of nautical rolling and pitching, he bridged back through “Popeye the Sailor Man” and a reprise of “Moon Over Miami,” ending up in “Laura.”

“And she’s only a dream,” he crooned.

Surprise washed over Bud’s face. “You running a mixed-race club?”

“Not officially,” I answered. “My boss hired the best people he could find. Tommy’s a pretty good saloon singer. He’s worked in New York clubs.”

“Don’t bother me none,” Bud replied to my unvoiced question. “Bunked next to a mulatto guy on the troopship out of ’Frisco. He was from Indiana. We got to be pretty close friends out there.”

“How close?” I said, verbally leering and thus missing the subtle, sad note in Bud’s tone. “You dig any foxholes together?”

Bud looked away. “He made it over one fucking reef at Tarawa. Him and his buddy, another colored kid, they got their foxholes dug for them. With white crosses for decoration.”

As if to emphasize that the dead are always with us, Doc Shepherd looked up from a felt-topped poker table, waved and put down his cards. “Mr. E-e-wing,” he called, his voice honking and his many chins wobbling. “Are we safe here? Last time I saw you two boys together, the shooting had already started.”

Doc and two other men, each seated behind stacks of cardboard chips and half-full glasses, appeared ready for a long night.

Bud stiffened but followed me over to the group.

“I’m buying this hero a lemonade,” I answered, raising my voice a little, “as a thank you for jumping in front of a pistol-packing widow.” Tapping the table next to Shepherd’s glass, I added, “It’d probably be unethical for a public servant such as Detective Wright to accept free beer. But can I offer you and your friends another round of iced tea?”

Doc introduced his pals—a pathologist and an obstetrician from the county hospital—and said they’d have whatever Bud was having, as long as it was bourbon and water.

From experience, I knew that what sounds like unwelcome innuendo is often no more than idle conversation. But when the innuendo has to do with two single men being viewed as a pair, I also knew that defusing the potential bombshell is better than letting it tick.

“Detective Wright and I were in the same convoy during the war,” I fibbed. “Turns out his lieutenant ate in my ward-room from Pearl Harbor to Kolombangara. And my mess chief and Marine Sergeant Spencer ‘Bud’ Wright here got to be pretty close friends in the CPO’s mess over on the USS
Missoula,
which was our sister cruiser. So we’ve had some catching up to do.”

“Hell of a coincidence,” one of the physicians observed.

“Whose deal is it?” the other asked. “You two young whippersnappers want to jump in and lose some money?”

“Take a rain check,” I said. “Three sweet teas, coming up.”

“Was a major, not a lieutenant, led us over there,” Bud whispered, following me to the bar. “And you know I didn’t ride any cruiser to Kolombangara.”

“They don’t know that,” I answered. “Maybe I got it wrong. Could have been a fishing boat I was thinking of.”

Grunting, Bud poked me in the back. “Smart guy, huh?”

Two women sat together at the bar. The older one, a small, sporty type with a white streak in her short dark hair, was Lucille Shepherd—the coroner Doc Shepherd’s wife. The other woman, Wanda Limber, was a Navy flier’s widow who paid her rent by turning tricks for the club’s best customers. The unlikely pair were the female version of drinking buddies.

Both women were very attractive. Lucille Shepherd was a Fort Myers fashion plate. A trim woman who wouldn’t see forty again, she’d gotten herself up in a tailored black-and-white check dress, matching spectator pumps, cherry-red lipstick and over-size eyeglasses. Wanda was a bottle blond with Ann Miller legs, Kathryn Grayson tits and subtle Elizabeth Arden makeup.

We joined them as they put down their drinks. I got in on the last words of the conversation: “holed out with her nine iron.” The two women were discussing golf.

“I was telling Mrs. Shepherd about the 1939 Southern Collegiate Ladies Championships at Pinehurst,” Wanda said, winking at me. (She was about my age and had even fewer illusions.) “Actually, I was telling her about how I didn’t win.”

“She came in three under par,” Lucille said. “So by all rights, Mrs. Limber ought to have been inside the clubhouse polishing up the trophy.”

“Well, I was,” Wanda laughed. “And then somebody waltzed in and told me about Judy Rogers’s chip shot. It was my last big tournament. Butch and I married the next month, the day after he finished advanced flight training. And we were transferred, first to Mayport and then to San Diego. And then the war…”

A bottle of Regal appeared on the counter.

“Same thing,” Bud said, glancing at me. “Unless you got hot coffee.”

“Cream? Sugar?” “Black.”

I wasn’t minding my manners. Lucille stuck her hand out in Bud’s direction. “We met at…?”

“The sheriff ’s Christmas party, ma’am,” Bud answered. “Down at the Legion Hall.”

“Which is where Bud and I first crossed paths,” I explained, adding, “Down at the Legion Hall, I mean. Never met the sheriff.” A decent cover story never hurts anybody. Especially when it’s true.

“But we figure we was probably in the same boat during the Pacific war,” Bud put in, grinning and shaking hands with both women.

Lucille hooted. “All in the same boat for sure, if the Japs were shooting at you.” Then she glanced at Wanda, whispered, “Oh, my,” and covered her mouth. But Wanda just smiled.

The bartender set down Bud’s coffee. “Anything else for the pretty ladies? Or for you two handsome gentlemens? You wish is my
commandante
.”

Cabildo Morales was only filling in as bartender until we found someone suitable. His formal title was Club and Restaurant Manager. “Mother Carmen,” his backstage nickname, derived from Carmen Veranda, a drag character he’d created while touring with the USO. Carmen had spent the war as an Army entertainer, singing and dancing in soldier shows. After discharge, he auditioned for transvestite nightclubs in New York and Miami and got a few bookings. But competition was tough. He had to make a living between engagements. So he started waiting tables at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach. A natural, he moved up to host and then floor manager within a year.

Even wearing a tuxedo, he used mascara, light eye shadow and lip rouge. No more than five feet tall—he was from South Texas, and three quarters Mexican—he wore lifts in his boots to appear taller.

Lucille thought he was cute, up to a point. Wanda was his confidante and partner in practical jokes. I found his sissy voice and girlish vapors a little hard to take.

Bud Wright couldn’t stand him right from the start.

And Carmen must have sensed this. So he gave Bud the full treatment. “The
Legion
Hall,” he whispered, mincing the words slightly. “You must be another one of those brave boys”—and here he cocked his hip and switched his voice back to B-picture cowboy twang—“brave boys in uniform I sang and danced for in the beaches and the trenches and the hills and the sand dunes.”