Mangrove Bayou (3 page)

At eight o'clock Troy walked east past
the boat ramps. The town hall was an L-shaped, brick two-story with standing-seam metal roof on 5th Street between Colorado and Connecticut Avenues and the Sunset Bay boat ramp. Most of the rear half of the block was an asphalt parking lot with a low brick wall around it, and one exit. West of the brick wall was Sunset Bay and the boat ramps. There were civilian cars parked casually around the lot, and two rusting skeletons that had once been police cars sat to one side up on concrete blocks.

One of the department's two working Suburbans was parked beside a metal door upon which someone with a large marker pen had written “POLICE.” The door was locked. Troy walked back and around the town hall to a front door with a frosted glass upper pane with “P LICE DE T
.”
in faded gold lettering. There was a doorbell, and a sign beside the door noted that if no one was in the station and the door locked, to call a patrol officer for assistance. There was a phone number to call.

Opening the door jiggled a bell that tinkled. The lobby had several straight back chairs to his left and a low table with some magazines on it. Beyond those was a connecting door that must lead to the town hall offices. There was a door straight ahead that was open and he could see down a corridor with cells on the left and some doors on the right. That corridor ended in the metal door that Troy had tried from the outside.

To Troy's right as he walked in was a waist-high countertop behind which sat a
stern, thin, older woman with white close-cropped hair. Beside her was another corridor leading to some offices. The woman wore a white blouse with collar points out and neatly folded down over a blue sweater-vest, light gray slacks and large glasses. She had been looking at a computer monitor in front of her but now she looked at him over the top of her glasses
and asked, “Can I help you?” Her tone suggested that she thought it very unlikely.

“Hope so,” Troy said. “You must be June Dundee, the dispatcher. I'm Troy Adam, Adam with no
s
on the end. And I'm your new boss.”

“Oh. Shit!” She jumped up and came around the counter to shake his hand, shouting “Bubba!” at the same time. Troy was a little startled until a uniformed cop came down the hallway. Apparently, he, not Troy, was Bubba. Bubba took one long look at Troy and said, “You got a carry permit for that weapon?” His hand hovered near his holstered Glock.

“He's the new chief, you dumb shit,” June Dundee said.

“You say.” Bubba didn't take his eyes off of Troy. “You got some I.D. fella?”

Troy smiled and turned around, hands out to his sides. “Hip pocket.”

Bubba reached under Troy's shirt and took out the gun first and then Troy's wallet. “Damn nineteen-eleven,” he said, looking at the gun. He backed away and flipped through Troy's wallet, read Troy's concealed weapon permit, checked that against Troy's driver license, and handed the gun and wallet back. “Sorry. I knew you were coming but had to be sure.”

“No problemo. Good police work. Can't believe you made the gun. What's your real name?” Bubba was two inches shorter than Troy's six feet but thicker in all directions with that hard fat that men and women acquire from too much fried food combined with too much hard work in too much sun. Though a white man, Bubba's skin was the color, and probably the texture, of Troy's shoe sole. He was actually darker than Troy.

“Real name is Bubba. Bubba Johns. Spent a lot of my life bouncing in bars. I can smell gun oil at ten feet.”

“I admire your nose, Bubba. What's with the dead cars out back?”

“Chief Redmond insisted we keep them. For parts,” June said.

“I see. Can you or Bubba show me around?”

Bubba gave Troy the tour. The station was what he had expected, and actually pretty good for a small town. One of the corridors from the lobby ran back past four offices to the right. The office sharing a wall with Troy's corner office had been converted into an evidence storage room with a locked door and barred window. To the left were a shower and toilet and also a break room.

The corridor ended at a door with “Fire Exit” and “Director of Pub ic Safety” stenciled on the glass top half of the door. Someone had scraped the
l
off the sign. Troy smiled. His office was a large corner space with, oddly, a red-painted metal fire door in the back wall. There were windows behind the desk that looked out onto the dead end of Connecticut Avenue, with the visitor parking there on one side, and, beside the fire exit, across Sunset Bay to the public boat ramps on the other. In the distance, across Sunset Bay, Troy could see the parking lot and front of the Sea Grape Inn.

“What's with the fire door?” he asked.

“The corridor used to run straight back to the fire exit. Chief Redmond knocked out the wall and expanded his office to include that part of the corridor. But we still had to have the fire exit.” Bubba grinned. “Any fire, you'll be the first out.”

There were two visitor chairs and Bubba sat in one. The desk was a battered wood affair with one short leg broken off and replaced with a stack of old telephone books. Troy hadn't actually seen a telephone book in years. The desktop had a telephone and a charger with a radio in it. There was a lapel mike and an earpiece.

“I was told at my interview that you've been running the department since Bob Redmond left,” Troy said to Bubba. “How do you feel about me taking over?”

“Good. I can do it, but the paperwork, well, I'm no good at paperwork. And the responsibility. Well, I'm glad to see you.”

“Glad to be here.” Troy had run across people in the Army, good people, who were simply terrified at the thought of being responsible for making decisions, and who would turn down promotions. He had never understood it, just knew it existed.

“I'm on the job as of a few minutes ago,” Troy said. “I'd like to go over the roster with you, Bubba. Get your take on each person's strengths and weaknesses, help me come up to speed quicker.”

Bubba stared at Troy. “You want me to rat out my friends and coworkers? I don't think I want to do that. You can come up to speed on your own, fella.”

Troy was seated and brushing some dust off the desktop. Now he looked up at Bubba. “Let's all start off on the right foot here. You can call me Troy in private or you can call me Chief at any time. As for my request, I suppose you could see it that way. The way I see it is you're the last guy to sit in this seat. You don't want to do it any more or the town council would have hired you, not me. We both know that. But I'm here now. I need to know as much as possible and you know what I need to know. Outgoing guy briefs incoming guy. Always. Everywhere. In any job.”

“You gonna fire me if I refuse?”

“Of course not. I'll just stumble along making dumb mistakes I could have avoided had you helped me.”

Bubba thought a moment, staring at the front of Troy's desk. He nodded. “I'll help you…Chief.”

“Good. Thanks.”

Chapter 5

Monday, July 1

June Dundee came in carrying a cell phone, a .40-caliber pistol with two full magazines, a badge and an I.D. card. “These are all for you,” she said, laying them on the desk. She sat in the other visitor chair.

Troy checked the pistol. “Glock 22. Good enough for the FBI,” he said. When he leaned on the desk it wobbled. He made a mental note to add something thin to the stack of phone books.

“You gonna use the gun?” Bubba asked. “There's a holster for it, fits on a duty belt.”

“I like my Colt.”

“Shee-it.”

“Good point.” Troy looked at the I.D. They had taken the photo after his job interview. He looked like someone he would arrest on sight on general principles. Troy put the I.D. into his wallet and the badge into his shirt pocket. As of this morning, he thought, he wouldn't need the permit for the concealed gun. He was an official law enforcement officer once more.

“What's with the cell phone?” Troy asked.

“We got two of them,” June said. “I mean, well, we all got cell phones of our own. These are the same number, department phones. We got landlines, both emergency and business numbers, and radios too, of course. Basically, when the landline rings on my desk, so do both cell phones if they're turned on. This way when I'm not here one of the officers on duty can answer the department cell even if he or she is out driving around.”

Troy nodded. “Makes sense. Saw the sign out by the front door. I keep one of these all the time?”

“Yes. Even the 9-1-1 forwards. They each have all the staff numbers already programmed in. Don't use it for any personal calls or I have to kill you.”

“Wow. You guys are tough down here.”

“Damn right. Now, I work eight to five Tuesdays through Saturdays….”

“It's Monday,” Troy said. “You're here now.”

“I get bored. I mean, I'm retired. Took this job to have something to do.”

“So at the moment you're off the clock. Not being paid to be here.”

“Who gives a shit? Here, I'm somebody. Home, I'm Bob's wife. Bob retired a couple years ago too. Love him to death but he drives me crazy. Anyway, nights and my days off, one of the officers carries the other department cell phone 'case anyone wants to bitch to the Mangrove Bayou po-leece about some fucking disaster.”

“What kind of fucking disasters do we get around here?”

Bubba grinned and nodded toward June. “She handles most of 'em. Between her mouth and her scaring the crap outta folks, we actual officers of the law don't have much to do.”

“It depends on which island we're talking about,” June said. “Snake Key folks—we call 'em “Snakers”—keep to themselves. They're the old Florida folks, crabbers, fishermen, used to be they hunted gators for the skins. Some still poach out of the national park if they can get away with it. 'While back they all got into smuggling marijuana. Them was good times in this town, goddamn. Everyone had a new Cadillac or a jacked-up pick-em-up truck, or a new flats boat with a two-fifty outboard. Don't think they do much of that anymore 'cause the Coast Guard stops it all farther out. Damn shame.”

“I believe we in law enforcement are supposed to be sort of opposed to drug smuggling,” Troy said. “I'm almost certain I've read that somewhere.”

“Shit,” June said. “Anyway, Snakers figure if other people let them get away with whatever it is
they're
getting away with, then the least they can do is return the favor.”

“They're mostly good people,” Bubba said. “I'm related to probably half of 'em. Just don't expect folks there to get all smiley sappy over you when you come cruising by in your shiny chief's car and shiny chief's badge.”

“Actually, I don't
have
a shiny chief's car. Maybe I need a bigger badge.”

Bubba chuckled. “That would do it. Chief Redmond wrecked the last chief's car and the town council never bought another one.”

June went on. “Airfield Key people are mostly rich Yankees. They call us if the trash truck is late, or the postman, like, for God's sake, we have anything to do with mail delivery. Let one raccoon stroll out of the swamp and they act like a fucking Sasquatch is going to eat them.”

“We got a wildlife trapper here in town?” Troy asked. “What do we do with gators and snakes and all that?”

“Bert Frey has the state trapper license here,” Bubba said. “His number's in the phone too. Snakes he kills. Gators he skins and also turns the tails into lunch for the tourists.” Bubba grinned. “Bert also owns Bert's Crab Shack, south end of 7th Street at the water. All other wildlife he takes out Barron Road and dumps someplace in a new home. Or so he claims. Locals don't eat much at Bert's.”

“Breakfast sausage a little…gamey?” Troy asked.

“Kinda depends on the season.”

“Very funny,” June said. “Besides the airport and that Indian mound and museum, the rest of Airfield Key is big houses full of bigger egos. We get half our nuisance calls from them.”

“Don't forget the yacht club,” Bubba said.

“Oh, yeah. There's a yacht club.”

“I know,” Troy said. “Seen it, from the river and from the other side, when I was using the little boat ramp next to the Guide Club on Snake Key.”

“Right. Well, the director of public safety,” June's eye darted to the door and back, “is automatically an honorary member of the Osprey Yacht Club. Wait until they get a load of
you
.”

“Is the yacht club crowd a little…ah…bigoted?”

For once June didn't say anything. Finally Bubba spoke. “You're not…you know…
Jewish
, are you?”

They all laughed. “The main island is this one, Barron Key,” June said. “We got your middle-class people here and some wealthy ones on the north end. They even got their own yuppie shopping mall, across the street from the grocery.”