“Really?”
Bartholomew swept aside, as if he were physically there, as a group carrying fresh margaritas came down the street, laughing.
They could have walked through him.
Bartholomew liked to think that there was substance to him.
“Sea captain,” Bartholomew said. “Decent fellow.”
“Maybe he was one of David’s ancestors,” Katie said. “The family dates back to the early years.”
“That’s what I figure,” Bartholomew said.
She didn’t reply; a woman standing with a beer just outside Sloppy Joe’s was staring at her. It was evident that the woman was wondering if Katie was a crazy person talking to herself, or if she had started drinking too early.
Katie turned down Greene Street. Captain Tony’s had been the original Sloppy Joe’s. Sloppy Joe, however, had been a real Key West character. Angry over a hike in his rent, he had simply moved his establishment in the middle of the night, lock, stock and barrel. Now, Sloppy Joe’s was right on Duval, and the space on Greene Street was Captain Tony’s.
She stepped on into the bar.
A large, open doorway led to a setting with the feel of rustic outdoors, but air-conditioning still coursed through the place. The “hanging tree” was in the center of a sitting area, and it had become vogue for visitors to leave behind their bras, elegant and old-fashioned, whatever someone might be wearing.
Katie took a table near the tree. It was impossible to know, through the years, what was authentic and what was legend about the place. Fact or fiction, the stories behind the bar and the building were true Key West legend.
As she took her seat at the table, she closed her eyes and thought about all of the history behind this very spot.
Sloppy Joe, Joe Russell, had become friends with Hemingway when he had cashed a check for him that the banks wouldn’t. He had been larger than life, just like Hemingway, and the two had been good friends. But, before that, the building had been a telegraph station that had first received the news about the Maine, an icehouse doubling as the city morgue, a cigar factory and a bordello.
The hanging tree in the middle of the room was now covered in undergarments. Throughout many years, it had been the place of execution for Key West and its environs. A woman had died here, accused of killing her husband and child, and she supposedly haunted the ladies’ room.
“What can I get you?”
Katie opened her eyes. A perky and very young waitress smiled as she asked the question.
“A giant iced tea and a menu, please,” Katie told her.
She seemed disappointed that Katie hadn’t come in to drown her sorrows with some form of expensive alcohol, but her smile barely cracked. “Coming right up!” she said.
Bartholomew had seated himself next to Katie, extending a booted leg from one chair to another and doffing his hat. He looked disgusted.
“Is there a reason we’re here?” he asked.
“I like the place.”
“You’re hoping that it’s teeming with ghosts who will give you all the answers you want. Well, don’t count on it. They’re all still whining over the past, and they’re not going to help you with anything in the present,” he said.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “Stella Martin’s ghost helped me tremendously.”
“So, she should have told you who killed her, flat out!” Bartholomew said.
“But she doesn’t know. Still, she led me to a clue.”
“Yeah?”
“A credit card-and it was smudged with ice cream.”
Bartholomew let out a chortle. A few tables up, Katie saw a woman frown and look around. Then she shivered. She had felt that a ghost was near, apparently.
“Behave,” Katie murmured.
“Me? You’re the one who appears to be talking to herself!”
She grimaced and waited for her tea. She thanked the young girl, sipped it and halfway closed her eyes. She tried to open up to anything that might be going on.
“Can you hear the rope swing against the branches?” Bartholomew asked softly. “You can hear it, back and forth, back and forth…swinging with the weight of a man.”
She kept her glass in front of her lips. “You died here.”
“Yes, I died here. I was snatched out of bed and dragged down to the hanging tree-for an act of piracy I did not commit. A bastard pirate named Eli Smith attacked an unarmed American vessel out in the straits, but when he was confronted by the authorities, he swore I was the guilty party, and I was hanged before the truth could be known. I was dead by the time a friend-the original Craig Beckett-came around to decry the act and tell them that I had truly turned merchant when my privateering days were over, and it was Eli Smith who attacked the vessel in the eight-gun sloop Bessie Blue. The true tragedy is that I, of all men, would have never attacked that ship. I was madly in love with Victoria Wyeth, and she died in the attack. Her father became a madman because of her death.”
“Why did they believe Eli Smith and assume you had attacked the ship?” Katie asked.
“Because Victoria had been the love of my life, and we were going to run away together. Her father sent her out ahead, planning to make her live with relatives in Virginia until she forgot about me. I knew that I didn’t have a chance of living with her, happily ever after, if I didn’t convince her family that I was the man she should have, and Craig Beckett was highly respected. I’d been on a simple fishing expedition with him when the attack had taken place, and he had promised that-after dealing with a smuggling problem up the islands-he’d see to it that the old bastard Wyeth learned that I had been a privateer, and that I had never been a cutthroat pirate. All right, in some instance, there might have been little difference. But I had never, ever attacked an American ship. But that night, I was down toward the south of the island, sound asleep, and a lynch mob broke in on me. I managed a bit of a defense-slashed the nose off one hairy, old bastard!-but there were two dozen of them, and me. And so I was hanged from the neck until dead, and when I come in here now, I can still hear the rope scrape against the tree.”
She forgot where they were, forgot that people might be watching, and set her hand over his. “Bartholomew, I am so sorry.”
He nodded. “Well, there were interesting years, and dreary years. I wanted to get to know Hemingway, he was an odd and interesting fellow-and that Carl Tanzler, he was certainly a curiosity. I wondered what I was doing here. My Victoria seemed to be long gone. Then I came across you, and well, if nothing else, Katie-oke is entertaining, and I think I’ve decided that I’m hanging around because you so obviously need help and guidance!”
“Bartholomew, that’s very sweet, but seriously, I’m all right.”
“I’d not be leaving you now, dear girl, for all the tea in China!”
“That’s kind, Bartholomew, but if the time comes when there’s a better place for you, I want you to go,” Katie told him earnestly.
He shook his head. “There’s the strange thing. Maybe I have waited all these years for you.”
“Really?”
“Well, you see, I was avenged,” Bartholomew told her.
“You were?”
“Oh, yes, and that’s probably why I like your boy David-even if I remain skeptical, wary and watchful. You see, his ancestor-Craig Beckett from many, many years ago-came back into town and saw that Eli Smith was hanged for his part in the attack and Victoria’s death. Maybe that’s what I hear!” Bartholomew said with a touch of bitterness. “Smith, eyes bulging, organs giving out, as he swung from the tree!”
As Katie glanced across the room, she saw a woman leaning against the wall near the ladies’ room. Her hair was loose, hanging down her back, and her clothing wasn’t the elegant apparel of a nineteenth-century lady, but more like that of a woman who worked hard in her home throughout the day. Her blouse was white cotton, open at her throat, which bore angry, red marks. She seemed very sad. Katie had seen her before, but the woman never spoke to her.