The Mango Opera (11 page)

I walked to the waterline and stared off beyond Sombrero Reef Light in the direction of Mariel, Cuba. A dozen net markers floated within two hundred yards of the rocky beach. I ached with the thought of what had happened to her.

Here’s to you, sweet Julia Balbuena. You deserved better than this.

I tallied the pieces of the puzzle. The careful truss-and-wrap job made it obvious that the murder did not occur on the beach at night. The killer had not left Julia’s body in a Dumpster or in the trunk of a stolen car, or weighted it and dropped it into the sea from a bridge. It had been deposited out of sight, but not so far that no one would find it. The killer had wanted her body to be found. I would bet that whoever negotiated the hammock in darkness was familiar with the area.

After-the-fact photos wouldn’t help at all. I headed back to my car.

Billy Fernandez was sitting on the Mustang’s rear bumper. I recognized his angle of slouch. He wore new-looking jeans, a white T-shirt, and black plain-toed uniform shoes. A ball cap with a sheriff’s star was pushed back so its visor pointed upward. Billy played a ragged toothpick back and forth, from one side of his mouth to the other, as if tickling the feet of his dead caterpillar. He’d parked his copper Oldsmobile close to the road.

“Looking for anything special, Rutledge?”

“That’s right. Anything special.” I pointed to the bumper. “You mind?”

Fernandez stood and brushed the seat of his Levi’s. “For someone so shook and tuned out the other day, you’re all of a sudden hot for details.”

“I knew the woman, Detective. I have questions that need answers. I’m not trying to crowd your gig, if that worries you.”

“You know this place? You and your girlfriend come up here for picnics and all? Explore the hidden trails? Quiet splash in the surf, moonlight walks with the sand fleas?”

His angle had gone too far south. I didn’t respond.

He shook his head and laughed to himself. “I try to be too much like the movies. That was a bullshit thing to say.” He paused for a second or two. “But you might want to practice answering that kind of question, you find yourself close to another one of these.”

“Every minute you people at the county pay attention to me, you’re getting farther away from someone who kills people.”

He spit out the toothpick and rubbed his mustache with his index finger. “You gonna make the funeral on time? Never seen you in long pants, bubba.”

I took his remark as a good guess. I didn’t ask what he was doing there.

Fifteen miles later I stopped at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Substation in Marathon, a single-story adobe-tinted building with a red-tiled roof and token palm-tree landscaping. I wanted to check out something in Lester Forsythe’s photographs of Julia Balbuena’s body. I slid the Mustang into the last parking slot out front. Inside the glass doors, an officious clerk with a severe crew cut informed me that Lester was at lunch and expected to return in ten minutes. After I’d waited fifteen in the welcome air-conditioning, the clerk offered the fact that Lester always ate lunch across the road at Dinah’s Kitchenette.

I found Lester alone in a booth reading a swimsuit magazine and holding his BLT together with all ten fingers and thumbs. The upscale tourist might not appreciate the place. Six patrons sat in the booths, four sat at tables, and two held down the truncated counter. Four greenish fluorescent overhead units cast a moldlike pallor on the food. The exhaust fan on the far wall had not done much of a job in recent years. The odor and sheen of burned cooking oil had long ago fused into the restaurant’s fixtures.

Forsythe was in his mid-thirties. He had the face of a sixteen-year-old, a hairstyle straight from the bell-bottom era, with long sideburns. His eyes were too close together, his bulky shoulders more flab than muscle. He recognized me and inclined his forehead toward the opposite seat, inviting me to join him. A speed-of-light waitress in cut-off jeans and a black tank top had a paper place mat in front of me before my bottom hit the seat. I nodded “yes” before she asked if I wanted coffee.

“How’s it going up at this end, Lester?”

No way he could stop chewing to answer. The place mat showed an artist’s interpretation of a sportsman’s life. A hook and line extended from the gaping jaw of a huge freshwater bass. The line looped to the bowed pole of an angler in a canoe. A slogan at the bottom: “Try Our Bait Shack and Sushi Bar Out Back.”

Lester cleared his mouth and washed back the chewed food with iced tea. “Same old shit, Rutledge.” Even his voice sounded like a teenager’s.

“Sorry I bagged out on the action the other afternoon.”

“No sweat, Rutledge. Larry told me that you knew the girl. I can dig that you couldn’t deal with it. I can dig that. I don’t know who screwed up and called you anyway. Obviously, I had it handled.”

“You bet, Lester. But I’m curious about some things. I’d like to look at your proof sheets. Whenever you finish up here.”

“The two sets are already checked out. Hatch and the, urn, neighbors…”

“I wondered if the FBI would get involved.”

“… but I just printed a full set of prints. Five-by-sevens. They ought to be dry by the time I finish my Jell-O. Man, all these murder cases…”

Lester worked up a sweat just crossing the five lanes of U.S. 1 in the midday heat. To kill his thirst he purchased a one-dollar Coke from a machine at the substation entrance. Inside, in a small darkroom at the end of a well-lighted linoleum-floored corridor, he pulled the prints from bulldog clips strung on a taut wire above the sink. The contrast and detail stank. He’d had to correct for his bad negatives. Like a rank rookie, he’d failed to back himself up with fill flash. He also had managed to include his own shadow in several of the shots.

“Great stuff, Lester.”

He almost blushed. “I always say, ace output is job security.”

“You are so right on.”

But I found something. Four photographs taken after the examiners had unwrapped the plastic. A thief had not killed Julia. I recognized the small ruby ring that had belonged to her grandmother. During a magnificent twenty-four-hour period of our week together in 1977, the ring was all she had worn. She’d flashed it while joking about the sexiness of partial nudity. This time around, the ring looked cold against her colorless skin. There was one other thing. The knots in the yellow polystyrene rope were perfect bowlines and double half hitches. Not many murderers cared about nautical correctness. This killer knew the knots most useful at sea.

I ran the gauntlet of Marathon’s fast-food strip and continued northward under a mixed sky. Ominous black and violet clouds hung low and pushed to the southeast. Scattered white clouds coasted higher, blowing almost directly west, and pale blue patches offered rare sunshine. A small single-engine tail-dragger wobbled toward a crosswind landing at the municipal airstrip. Colorful snapping pennants flew from trailers that housed instant real estate offices. Above Duck Key, near Mile Marker 75, eight wading fishermen cast into waves on the Atlantic side. The road narrowed to two lanes and I felt fortunate to be heading up the Keys. On Friday afternoon half of South Florida comes the other direction, southward to weekend homes or three-day parties on Duval Street. I knew, of course, that I’d face a long return trip to Key West.

Forsythe’s photos were still on my mind. I probably wasn’t paying proper attention. I sensed something, though, then saw a U-Haul truck, sixty or seventy yards ahead, pull onto the highway to block my northbound progress. The truck lumbered northward, barely increasing speed, hardly moving at all. Even the Shelby’s brakes would not stop me in time. But I saw an escape route: an opening in the oncoming lane. I slowed and pulled left, crossing the double-yellow to clear the U-Haul.

Then, just as suddenly, a quarter mile away, a massive dump truck pulled into the southbound lane and headed right for me. I was hung out on the wrong side of the road, blocked by the U-Haul, looking face-to-face at a head-on. Wasn’t time supposed to slow in moments like this? Why hadn’t I seen this coming?

I’ve always preferred to solve traffic problems with my gas pedal instead of the brakes. I knew my Shelby’s capabilities. But this time I needed more road than the trucks were giving, more acceleration than fourth gear would deliver. I dumped the shifter into second. Too radical. The tach banged to the red line, and the rear tires chirped as the gearing braked the car. I quickly jammed the lever up to third and felt the engine’s torque kick as I came alongside the U-Haul. Its driver, by slowing, would give me room to jump safely back into the northbound lane. But the orange-and-white truck accelerated as if trying to pace me. Why wouldn’t the asshole slow down? Three hundred yards ahead, the dump truck, dark and huge, also increased speed. Didn’t these sons of bitches see me?

Two choices. Somehow clear the U-Haul, yank it to the right and regain the northbound lane. Or aim left for the shoulder and hope to keep control in chuckhole dirt and broken pavement. The Shelby shuddered as its engine strained in third gear. I was doing sixty-five, a nose ahead of the truck, but barely making ground. The whole mess was turning into a squish job. My only option was the shoulder. I warned myself not to brake with my left wheels on dirt and my right wheels on pavement. The mismatched traction could spin the car into the mangroves or else broadside into the dump truck. The thought came to me that I would miss Julia’s funeral if I was dead.

I lifted the accelerator. My left front wheel hit dirt and gravel. But the dump truck jerked right, toward the same piece of turf. If the dump-truck driver went for the shoulder, neither of us could avoid a collision. Surely he could see the danger, too. But the truck slipped into the gravel, blocking both the oncoming lane and my road-shoulder escape route. I was back to my original dilemma. Using the brakes would kill me.

I regained the pavement, pressed the gas, and wondered if my foot might push through the floor of the thirty-year-old car. Still in third, to my relief, I began to gain ground. The U-Haul must have peaked its built-in governor. My rent-a-racer stank of heated grease and boiling antifreeze. The car vibrated with strain. Twenty more seconds at these rpms, and my engine would turn into a grenade. I aimed for the sliver of daylight ahead to my right. The road’s center line passed under my car. I felt my right rear fender scrape along the corner of the U-Haul’s front bumper. With a crunch that sounded like a shattering taillight lens, I cleared the U-Haul and looked upward. The dump truck had swerved back to its left, almost as if its driver wanted to hit me. I needed another two feet. I was running out of pavement. Then, quick as a crash and inches away, the dump truck passed. I was still on the road, accelerating.

I looked down. Eighty-five miles per hour. I lifted, dumped the clutch, and prayed that my engine would not melt down. I tried to exhale but there was nothing there. I tried to inhale and could not remember how. My fingers felt locked to the steering wheel, frozen in place.

Nothing made sense in the rearview mirror. One truck was skidding in dirt, but I was not going to hang around to make a scene about my near demise. Where were the cops when you needed them? I pulled the lever into fourth gear, settled down to sixty, and hoped that the sweat would dry before I entered St. Joseph’s Church.

Finally, I took a deep breath.

*   *   *

I hadn’t been in Coral Gables for years. The city had not changed, except for narrower tree lawns on the widened main roads and even more construction. The wonderful palms and oaks and Spanish moss still thrived. Executives with perfect hair and skinny telephones welded to their ears drove Japanese luxury sedans. Latino wives and girlfriends piloted German cars, full tilt each direction on every street. There was no way to see ahead in traffic with every car’s rear window tinted black. And woe was unto those who dawdled in Dade County’s sphere of anarchy, who hesitated to read a street sign, or who changed lanes at less than full throttle.

Fortunately, the directions I’d received were right on the money. I found the church in a neighborhood of large two-story Spanish-style houses, each with thick burglar bars caging its ground-floor windows, each with a sign in the yard touting the security company that backed the homeowner’s right to privacy. Six neckless two-hundred-pounders in bulging suits patrolled the church parking lot. In Dade County, security exists for show as well as protection. My car was directed to the end of a row of somber older-looking sedans. Sent to the back of the bus. Not allowed to park near the Infinitis and Town Cars. In Miami, even in paying respects to the dead, there is a pecking order.

No big deal. I had arrived alive. I angled the rearview mirror so I could see to run a brush through my hair and knot my necktie. I began a new attack of the sweats, probably brought on by my proximity to a place of worship. I grabbed my suit coat, patted the Shelby on its roof, and walked to the funeral.

11

My background is plain vanilla and white bread. I grew up the second of three boys in a Midwest Protestant family. Cleats, snot rags, dirty laundry, bad sneakers, and illicit fireworks filled the house. We were force-fed primary virtues: honesty, grades, quiet, and frugality. Spiritual matters came under the heading of convenience. Except for Palm Sunday, Easter and Christmas, church attendance hinged on good weather and a parent not too hung over to drive. It’s no wonder that the architecture and drawn-out ceremonies of the Catholic Church have always intimidated me. I associate a higher power with higher ceilings. Authority and mahogany hand in hand.

Then there’s the rump factor. The few Catholic funerals I’d attended had lasted longer than my deceased acquaintances would have tolerated had they not been the subject of the Mass. To me, a lot of up-and-down. Opinion: The reading-and-response never caught the real spirit of good-bye. This service promised to be different. The massive St. Joseph’s chapel, the mystery and ritual and Spanish ceremony would fit my feelings for Julia Balbuena. I was glad that I had come. I’d made it with fifteen minutes to spare.