Tony had been sober four years and was writing again. He was happy and talked freely of his alcoholism, of waking confused and scared from his blackouts, and how long it had taken him to hit bottom. His journalism career crashed and burned, while mine flourished. Slowly, and sober, Tony had been writing his way back, one day at a time.
I looked inside the cabin and thought again about how neat it was. Tony had been a barfly, a scrapper who knew how to survive, but this time he hadn’t. He knew who killed him, but hadn’t seen it coming.
I sat in a deck chair and felt the morning sun on my face. Clouds moved across the pale sky and the air smelled of salt water, humidity, and seaweed. Tarpon broke the surface; their splashing echoed around the marina. It smelled a lot better than inside. Lines holding boats in place moaned from stress, and birds cried in protest as the first reef-bound catamarans, filled with tourists waiting to sunburn, left for a day of snorkeling.
The sounds of life vibrated from the marina and harbor walk, while the silence of murder sat quietly in the boat’s cabin.
I used my cell phone to call Richard Dowley, the chief of police. Had someone or something from Tony’s alcohol-hazy past found him? Or had a murderer with a pirate fetish surfaced in paradise? Murder was almost unheard of in Key West. We were more than a hundred miles from Miami and a million miles from its violence.
The chief, dressed in creased blue slacks and a blue polo shirt with a police logo on its breast, stood with a Styrofoam cup of café con leche, a mixture of strong Cuban coffee with hot milk and lots of sugar, sunglasses perched on his large nose, looking at Tony’s body.
Sherlock Corcoran, the crime scene investigator, and Detective Luis Morales, both wearing surgical gloves, looked cautiously around the room. They had turned the boat’s air conditioning to high, but the room still held the stench of violent death. Few knew Sherlock’s real first name, but the nickname came with his job.
Their business casual conflicted with my cutoff jeans, sleeveless buttoned-down collared shirt, faded pre-World Series Boston Red Sox baseball cap, and flip-flops. I had three good cigars in my pocket and wanted to light one, to help kill the foul air.
“Who was he?” The chief sipped his con leche. “And how do you know him?”
“Tony Whyte.” I turned away and looked outside. “Whyte with a Y. Years ago we worked on the same paper in San Juan.”
“What’s he doing on Wizard’s boat?”
“He was helping Wizard and his two partners write their memoirs on discovering the Spanish treasure.” It was the truth, but not the whole truth.
When I mentioned the Spanish treasure, Sherlock and Luis stopped and stared at me. The three boat bums — Wizard, Lucky, and Bubba — discovering millions in Spanish treasure in the ’70s was a Key West legend with little if any truth told with the story. When the new multimillionaires were sober they had varying stories about the discovery and they told other versions when they were drunk, which was often. Their only consistency was their inconsistency.
“Wizard do this?” The chief took a long swallow and finished his con leche.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why?” He took a cigar from my pocket, sniffed it, and smiled.
“Wizard’s too frail and this guy is twice his size,” Luis said. “He didn’t do it. Whoever did it had enough strength to push the sword through a man’s ribs.”
The chief looked at me and I nodded. Wizard was in his late seventies and had always been a beanpole. In his prime, he had difficulty with a scuba tank until he was in the water.
“Let’s talk to him anyway,” he said to Luis and handed the cigar back. “Have a car check the bars.” He looked at his watch. “There are only a few open this early.”
Luis went outside to tell the uniformed officers.
“Awfully neat for a murder.” Sherlock opened a cabinet and looked inside. “This the way you found it, Mick?”
“Exactly. I checked Tony for a pulse and then called the chief.”
“You couldn’t tell he was dead?” Sherlock tried to hide a smile. “I’m going below.”
Sherlock walked the narrow steps to the lower section of the trawler.
“You want to tell me anything?” The chief put his empty cup down. “If he’s writing the memoir, what are you doing here?”
“He was supposed to get with Wizard at the Breakfast Club at Schooner Wharf. Tony said they had a few things to discuss and then he wanted to talk to me.” I turned back toward Tony and wondered what he wanted. “We were gonna meet at Schooner and go have breakfast. When he didn’t show up I walked down here and found him like this.”
“Maybe Wizard had help,” the chief thought aloud.
“No fuss, no mess.” I looked around the neat cabin and wished I was outside.
Luis walked in. “A patrol car is looking for him, Chief.”
“Sherlock’s down below,” the chief said and Luis went in search of him.
“What are you going to do now?”
“Go have breakfast at Harpoon Harry’s.”
“This doesn’t bother you?” He seemed surprised.
“Chief, I’ve covered drug wars, gang wars, revolutions, and riots in L.A., and I’ve learned to be grateful it ain’t my blood on the streets, and appreciate that I’m still alive and capable of being hungry.”
“You’ll need to come to the station and give Luis a statement,” the chief said as I headed toward the deck.
“You know the guy hates me.”
“Yeah, but I love you.” He smiled. “Come to the station when he calls.”
“Sure.” I walked outside, took a deep breath, and fought the urge to look at Tony one last time.
Padre Thomas Collins sat at one of Schooner Wharf’s empty thatched-roof patio tables drinking a con leche and eating an egg sandwich on Cuban bread. He wore dark cargo shorts, a faded blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows, with an opened package of Camel cigarettes in the pocket, and sandals. He motioned me over and pointed to a second Styrofoam cup. I picked it up and was surprised to find it warm.
“For me?”
“I thought you might want it.” He looked up and smiled. “What do you think happened?”
Padre Thomas, as he liked to be called, grew up Irish Catholic outside of Boston. He became a missionary priest, had a parish church in Guatemala, and about ten years ago walked away from his rectory. For the past eight years, he has been in Key West. Rumor is he lives on a stipend from the Church, but rumors run rampant around the island and rarely hold any grains of truth. His skin is tanned like leather from riding his bike, his only mode of transportation. He volunteers at a hospice and the Catholic soup kitchen; otherwise his time is his own.
I met Padre Thomas at Schooner Wharf a few months after he first arrived and everyone warned me that he was crazy, because he claimed to see and talk to angels. I believe he sees the angels, but I haven’t made up my mind on whether or not he’s crazy. He still considers himself a priest, but without a church.
“It’s not Wizard.” I sat down and took the lid off the con leche.
“I know.” He bit into his sandwich. “I think they’ll find him having breakfast at Harpoon’s.”
“Wizard?”
“Yes, I saw him outside there as I left.”
“The angels tell you anything about this?” I sipped from the Styrofoam cup.
He looked up with a devilish grin. “Someone is very concerned about the book.”
“Who?”