The Mango Opera (26 page)

Bernier motioned me over to my telephone. The LED window on my answering machine showed four messages.

I punched the “play” button. The first three for Annie: Ellen Albury’s mother, about the bike; Benjamin Pinder: “Please call”; Marnie with questions. The fourth for me: Raoul Balbuena. “Now that I have a moment to myself, I would like to thank you for your professionalism and your honesty. Perhaps we can meet again under happier circumstances.”

Raoul sounded as if the case were settled, the killer found. Bernier raised his eyebrows and looked me in the eye. I thought back to my slip of the tongue regarding Kemp, my mention of Witness Protection. I elected not to share my transgression with Bob.

No word from Annie.

Next to the laptop computer in Bernier’s briefcase was a cellular phone with a keypad as complicated as one of those scientific calculators with cosines, logarithms, and exponential keys. After typing a short memo on the computer, he pressed several buttons on the phone. Screen prompts and windows confirmed that the memo had been encrypted, compressed, autodialed, and sent by burst transmission through a secure cell network. “Next thing you know,” he said, “I’ll think about taking a leak, Miami will E-mail permission.”

“Wait till Washington tells you you’ve already taken it.”

Bernier cracked a reluctant smile. “I’ll retire to Costa Rica.”

“What are we communicating to the outside world?”

“If Laura’s friend Tripper is correct…”

“Tripper knows his pickup trucks,” said Laura.

“… and Kemp’s license tag isn’t phony,” continued Bernier, “we should, in a couple hours, get the name and address of every registered Mitsubishi pickup owner in Jackson County, Georgia. I’m going on the chance that Kemp built the explosive device that crunched the Volkswagen, that he transported the device from Georgia…”

Marnie interrupted. “That makes it a federal violation?”

Bernier leaned forward. “Enough to justify Bureau jurisdiction. Our people in Georgia will do some legwork. When we establish residence, provided we can cough up sufficient corroborating evidence at this end, we’ll get a warrant and make an arrest. By Wednesday or Thursday, Kemp will be explaining himself to us in person, in detail. Which leads me to an important request. We need media quiet for a few days. This joker decides to become a fugitive, we could have more murders. As my boss says when we’re forced back to square one, it’s ‘dog ate dog.’ It’s all in the past tense.”

Marnie nodded. “The runway behind a jet pilot.”

Bernier smiled for the second time in two minutes.

“I’m not a scoop artist,” she said. “I just want an exclusive.”

“Done,” said Bernier.

Sam said, “Rutledge, one thing you mentioned didn’t hit right. What are you talking, Witness Protection?”

I looked at Bernier. He scanned the faces in the room, then said, “Kemp got busted on a federal conspiracy fifteen years ago. Anselmo was the prosecutor. He cut Kemp a testimony deal in exchange for Witness Protection.”

Marnie Dunwoody’s eyes snapped wide, as if she’d been slapped.

“We don’t know much else yet.” said Bernier. “Files that old are still being entered into our database. For some reason, the hard-copy folder was checked out of the U.S. Attorney’s library last night. It’s still in their secure area, but we’ve got to pin it down. We should have it in the morning.”

Grinning, Marnie addressed Monty. “I’ve spent three days scrounging on Anselmo. One funky real estate transaction. My next path was past cases.”

Monty looked doubting. “I don’t think prosecutors have to go public on their finances.”

“Public records. He bought a house in ’79 for ninety-six thousand, and sold it in ’84 for three eighty-five. That’s a hell of a lot of improvements for a man making forty-seven grand a year.” Marnie turned to Bernier. “One other thing. I haven’t heard a whisper of motivation for any of these killings. No thefts that we know of. Sam told me about the peripheral connection to Alex, but what’s the motive, down deep?”

Bernier shrugged. “That’s not my department. We got people in the bureau we call Agatha Christies. But you’d be surprised how seldom we peg a motive. Even serial killers—and the worst claim innocence to the end—rarely reveal, you know, the urges, whatever, that took them over the edge. They’ll blame it on the full moon or make up something spectacular. Something to add to their own headlines. A lot of the media fall for that crock. No offense.”

The briefcase computer issued a faint beep. Bernier shielded the keyboard to enter an access code. “Bad news,” he said. “Georgia’s DMV computer is off-line for system maintenance until midnight.”

A black Chevy Caprice sedan stopped in the middle of Dredgers Lane. Dark tint blacked out its windows; thick black-wall tires and plain wheelcovers gave it away. Here on the island, it stood out like a snowplow.

“You called for a ride?” I asked.

“I pressed an orange button.” Bernier patted the briefcase. “Thank you for your hospitality. Thank you for your assistance.”

“Yeah. Mucho gracias, sweetie.” Laura Tate tipped back her beer.

Bernier started out the door. “One last thing, Rutledge.” He leaned toward Monty and me. “That Walther .380? Your bookcase is a bad hiding spot. I liked the movie
Legends of the Fall.
I noticed your hardcover first edition, autographed, no less. I slid out the book, there it was. B-and-E boys, if they have time, love to riffle through book collections because people hide cash between the pages of classic novels. That gun’d be a goner. The wrong hands for sure.”

As the Caprice backed out of the lane, Sam popped tops and handed out beers. I pulled my tattered road atlas from the shelf under the coffee table. Sam pointed at it. “You thinkin’ tonight or tomorrow?”

“You in?”

“From here on, I don’t hear a thing,” said Monty. “I don’t know anything.”

Marnie peered over my shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Sam put his arm around her. “An extension of a chat Alex and I had several nights ago, talking about frustration, the working out of same. Seems to me that Wednesday or Thursday is a long time from now. The man said the FBI needed ‘corroborating evidence at this end’? So, nothing special. We’ll go somewhere, we’ll look for a pickup truck.”

Monty shook his head but didn’t say a word. Marnie’s face showed concern and a trace of admiration.

“I’m outa here,” said Laura Tate. “Nap time back at the hacienda.”

25

There was no way to get short-notice seats on a Sunday flight to Miami, especially in the evening. Too many three-day tourists heading north to face the new workweek. Sam called a commercial fishing captain named Ellison who owned a Cessna 172. Captain Ellison said he’d take us, but he couldn’t leave until eight. That gave us time to book two seats out of Miami, reserve a rental car in Atlanta, eat Cuban food with Marnie, Carmen, and Maria, pack our ditty bags, and drive to the airport.

Typical of pilots, Ellison had arrived early. He was doing preflight, testing his control surfaces, topping off his tanks. But he’d become grumpy and claimed to have had second thoughts about flying into Miami International after dark. There also was some question about headwinds he’d encounter on his return.

Sam pulled me aside. “Not to worry. Ellison isn’t happy unless he’s pissed off.”

“Oh, I get it. He’s an asshole. Why isn’t he a light-tackle guide?”

“He’s also a great pilot,” said Sam.

We were in the air by 8:05. The lights of U.S. 1 pointed us to Miami. The Gulf Stream had its own traffic corridors of freighters, tramp cargo haulers, and tanker ships. In the bay-side mangrove country northwest of the highway, small boats ran the shallows in darkness, headed for port after a day on the salt. The moon lit cloud tops. Its reflection off the water raced along with us. Strobes on distant microwave towers and mainland airport beacons flashed like teasers on a giant pinball machine. To the east, heat lightning zipped cloud lines where warmed air had drifted offshore, over cooling water. None of us spoke until the pilot quietly asked us to double-check his approach frequencies and runway chart. Lights on a dozen airliners blinked around us. Ellison griped about being a mosquito in an aviary, but his final approach was a well-executed speed run with no flaps. He taxied out of the realm of the 737s and L1011s and stopped next to a private charter terminal. Wheeler handed him a short stack of fifties. We went looking for a taxi to the main terminal.

After we’d checked in and pocketed our tickets, I called West Palm. Annie’s mother, evasive: “She’s gone out for a while. Can I take a message?”

It would last ten minutes, nuances would be lost, details scrambled, intent edited. “I guess not,” I said.

At 1:15
A.M.
we arrived in Atlanta during a violent rainstorm, worse for wear. I’d grabbed an hour’s sleep. I would have been better off without it. Sam woke when the airliner jerked to a halt at the gate. The courtesy van to the rental lot was on its after-midnight schedule. We waited twenty-five minutes in an empty departure lounge. Our growling stomachs echoed off floor-to-ceiling glass walls. After we’d shuffled paperwork with a graveyard-shift snarler at a rental-car counter, we hit the I-285 loop south of town. Unlike Keys rainstorms, this downpour felt like it would hang around until morning or longer.

It had been several years since Sam had rented a car. “People wonder why I never go north of Jewfish Creek,” he muttered. “Pay phones, jukeboxes, Coke machines, pinball machines, drop the coin in the slot, facts of life. The pay toilet went away with dime phone calls. Pay TVs in waiting rooms. Don’t those people ever read a book? Now I pay for extra fucking insurance, I carry my own gas so I don’t get gouged, I buy permission for you to drive if I fall asleep at the wheel. Next thing, we’ll be downtown, they’ll charge us to loiter.”

I patted him on the back. “Okay, Ellison.”

He headed us east on U.S. 78. He drove as far as a one-story cement-block motel near Monroe. Three
A.M.
, we looked like derelicts in the rain. The owner surprised us by admitting to a vacancy. We asked for a six-thirty wake-up call. By my body clock, the call came ten minutes later.

Sam turned into Mr. Military, ready for action, the man with the plan. “Shower, yes, shave, no. That phone book, por favor.”

Ten minutes later we were inbound to Athens. Five minutes after that we pulled into a Mitsubishi dealership.

“A two-pronged attack,” said Sam. “I’ll take the front office. You’ll describe Kemp better than I will, so go around back, bribe a flunky. He’s got to have brought it in for at least one repair. A warranty freebie or something.”

“Mechanics aren’t hired for their memories.”

“What time of the morning does your positive attitude kick in?”

He was right. It didn’t cost me a penny to have a muffler technician sneak into the service manager’s computer. I described the truck that had hit my hunting dog and fled the scene. I wanted to give the veterinarian’s bill to the slimy bastard that owned the truck. Ezell, the mechanic, understood the principle behind justice for a good hunting dog. I mentioned the salt-and-pepper beard.

Ezell snapped his tool chest shut and wiped his hands on his coveralls. “I remember that dude. Sort of a yuppie hippie, talkin’ Yankee like you, but he push hisself around like big money. He’d be the dog-hitting type. I think he just bought that truck a few weeks back. Had a damned Dale Earnhardt sticker on the back window. He come in here to have it checked for a long trip.”

Ezell zipped through the computer, found a service memo, and scribbled an address in Albertson, Georgia. He warned me not to speed in town. “They built a Little League stadium on people doin’ thirty-eight in a thirty-five.” The name above the address was Delray Crane.

I returned to the car and waved Sam outside. He’d been head-to-head with an officious “customer-privacy butthead” in the front office. But he’d caused enough commotion to keep the service manager away from Ezell’s charity.

“Pay dirt?” he said.

I described my ruse.

“Yep, Kemp’d be the dog-hitting type,” said Sam.

Sam drove a mile or so, veered into a convenience store lot, stopped next to a bank of coin telephones. “I’m going to buy some insurance. I’ll leave this name Delray Crane and the address on my answering machine. If the shit hits the fan, at least there’ll be a trail.”

“We could call Bernier.”

“He’d order us to back off. You come this far to back off?”

We took a bypass around Athens, turned north on 441, and drove ten miles before passing the Maple Tree Palace Night Club, then the Albertson city limits sign. We were pleased to learn that the town had produced the State Champion Girls Track Team ten years earlier. As Sam slowed for the Albertson business district, a crow flew over the windshield, a garter snake hanging from its beak.

“Any ideas on who murdered Mary Alice?”

Sam flinched at the name, shook his head. “Couple of cars been parked down there the last few months. Some kind of Lexus or Infiniti—I can’t tell you squat about Japanese stuff—and a late-model GM car, an Olds or a Buick. For a long time I thought she was paranoid about her ex-husband. She didn’t want to go out anywhere, wouldn’t go out to eat. Didn’t want to go out anywhere.”

We needed directions to Rural Route 3. Two old boys in the Shell station knew nothing about postal routes. The Albertson post office wouldn’t be open for another twenty minutes. At town center we found a secondhand clothing store, an outboard-motor repair shop, a restaurant called the Luncheonette. Inside its twin picture windows, bathed in the off-chartreuse cast of vintage overhead lighting, sat a half dozen representatives of the hitch-up overall crowd, a couple of businessmen in short-sleeve shirts and ties, and a lady school-crossing guard wearing a clear plastic rain bonnet. An ideal spot to spend nineteen minutes. We angle-parked next to the building. We had to jog around puddles to the door.

Stares from the regulars. The booths were claimed. The place smelled of bacon grease and overcooked oatmeal. We settled for a table where someone had left a morning paper. A grandmotherly waitress peered over the top of her spectacles, her face a question, her stance an urge to hurry.