I said, “Shell casings? You’re kidding. Jeez, I was beginning to worry you’d think I was hallucinating or something. It was a hell of a scary experience.”
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think many men would have handled themselves as well as you. For an amateur, I mean.”
Maybe the detective lady was giving me a little signal. And maybe, under other circumstances, I would have given her a signal in return.
Gartone wasn’t pretty in any conventional way, but her face had an interesting complexity in this late, sunset light. It was a face that became more appealing when her mask of formality vanished into a smile.
She smiled now for just a moment before telling me that we were nearly done. She had to put me under oath, I had to sign some papers. After that, I was free to drive the Ford back to Sanibel, where, she suggested, I put iodine on my scratches, then get some sleep. I could rest easy, she said, because my assailants wouldn’t be released from jail until I was notified.
Handing me her card, dark eyes showing no emotion, she said, “In fact, I’ll call you personally. It’s my job.”
THIRTEEN
I thought that concluded my dealings for the day with the Collier County Sheriff ’s Department until, from inside the car, Detective Merlin Starkey spoke for the first time since the introductions.
“Miz Tamara? You mind if I walk Dr. Ford back to his vehicle?”
Tamara. An interesting first name to go with the face.
“If he’s the Ford boy I’m rememberin’,” he said, “the one lived in Mango for a spell, it’s possible I knowed his uncle pretty good. Maybe some of his other people. Is it O.K.?”
I thought, Not another one of Tucker Gatrell’s old redneck pals. ..
But it was worth it because I was rewarded with a second sampling of the woman’s piano laughter. “Oh, Merlin, I thought you’d fallen asleep. Of course you can go with Dr. Ford. I’ve got paperwork to finish. But come straight back to the car, O.K.? You know how I worry about you. In a place like this, I’d almost bet there’re snakes.”
Talking like a granddaughter would talk to her lovable, bumbling old grandfather.
“Could be snakes, ma’am,” the old man said. He was using a silver-headed walking stick to leverage himself out of the squad car, putting on his Stetson. Looking at me then with dark, piercing eyes that did not mesh with his soft drawl, he added, “Yes, ma’am, this here’s real snaky -lookin’ country.”
The old coot had just insulted me. Was it intentional? It seemed too obvious not to be. But Merlin T. Starkey had no reason to offend. Or did he?
I found out soon enough.
I walked with him slowly along the gravel road toward the logging trail. He nodded to the few deputies who remained, calling them by their first names, or touching the brim of his Stetson if the officer was a woman, saying, “Howdy-do, miz.”
Otherwise, he remained silent. Didn’t respond when I remarked upon the lady detective’s professionalism. Continued to walk, using the cane, staring straight ahead. It was as if he couldn’t hear. Seemed to ignore me, doing it intentionally as with the insult. But he was quick to answer when I suggested, “Merlin, I can make it the rest of the way on my own. When I’m not in such a hurry, maybe we can get together and you can tell me about the old days.”
“You ain’t goin’ any durn place till we have us a private talk, boy,” he snapped. “And never mind what I said back there. My name ain’t Merlin to you. It’s Detective Starkey. Or sir. In my line a work, if I wasn’t protectivelike, I’d be on a first-name basis with every crook, hustler, and con man scum between Marathon and Cedar Key. So you allow me my propers. Hear?”
Oh yeah. He’d taken a dislike to me for some reason.
I replied patiently, “O.K. Whatever you say. But I’m tired. I want to get home to a shower and a few beers. You can understand that.” Said it respectfully, too, thinking, What’s going on here?
Starkey shot back with a nasty chuckle, “Oh, I’ll make ’er quick, sonny boy. Nearly fifty years carryin’ a badge in the ’Glades, and I was never known to ramble when it come to settin’ a lying fraud straight.”
He was baiting me, maybe. Even so, I stopped for a moment, irritated, watching him as he continued to limp along, using the walking stick as a third leg. We were several meters into the logging road. The shadow of cypress trees had changed the dominate odor from gravel and dust to moss, and dropped the temperature ten degrees.
“Hold on a second there, Mister… Detective, sir. I don’t know what I did to make you mad. But if you’ve got a problem, why didn’t you get it on the table while we were in the car? Instead, you tell me you were a friend of my uncle to lure me out here-”
The old man whirled to face me with surprising agility. He had a round, Santa-like face, which somehow seemed to make his expression even more fierce. “I never said I was a friend to Tucker Gatrell. I said I knowed him, and I did. I think your uncle was a lying, conniving, dope-smuggling son-of-a-buck. I’d use stronger language, only I never seen a need to lower myself to that kinda garbage-mouth talk.
“Oh, I knowed Tucker. If it warn’t for what that swindler did to me, I’da been sheriff of this county long back, and I’d be retired already. Probably be shooting quail with the governor and a couple senators right now. Instead, I’ll never make it past captain. Your uncle double-crossed me. He ruined my life.”
I was so taken aback by his words and his fury that it was a long, befuddled moment before I responded. “You’re giving me a hard time now because you’re still… pissed off at something my uncle did years ago?” After another moment, I added, “You’re serious. ”
“Serious as a snake bite.” The old detective pointed his walking stick at me, and jabbed it, saying, “But I think you’re a bad’un for your own sake. You got a full dose of Gatrell snakiness in you, boy. You’re a little too cute and tricky for your own good. Well, sonny, you ain’t got me fooled. So you want to talk, jes’ the two of us? Or you want me to talk public?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I didn’t like the sound of it.
I looked behind me: Tamara Gartone was sitting in her car, hunched over a clipboard, waiting. Balserio, the two Nicaraguans, were gone, presumably on their way to be arraigned and then to jail. The last two squad cars were pulling out.
I looked at my watch. The sky was grape and molten brass through the lace of limbs, but I had to squint to read the numerals here in the swamp gloom: 8:42 P.M.
With luck, I’d be back at Dinkin’s Bay Marina around eleven. Maybe in time to have a beer with Tomlinson before…
But no. Tomlinson, I remembered, was at the Miami Radisson with Pilar. Pilar was maybe getting a break from all the terrible stress. Probably having a few glasses of wine, spending quality time with her new best friend, my randy Zen Buddhist pal who was always eager to offer solace and comfort to distraught ladies-me, the hypocrite, thinking hypocritical thoughts.
I made Merlin Starkey walk with me deeper into the logging trail before I said to him, “Go ahead and talk. But no more comparisons with Gatrell, O.K.? I’m not a fan. I never was.”
He snorted. That nasty chuckle again. “I know about that, too, sonny boy. I know why you hated the man.”
“Oh?”
“Um-huh. It’s ’cause of what you think he done to your parents. They was killed in a boat fire back when you was a kid. I knowed ’em both. Not well, but I’d met ’em. Good folk. You always faulted Gatrell for the fire. You decided he’d installed one a his idiot inventions as a fuel valve. A bad valve coulda caused that boat fire.”
Suddenly I was straining to listen to his every word. “You’re right. How do you know that?”
“’Cause,” Starkey said, “I was one a the deputies who investigated the deaths. Gatrell’d already ruined my career by that time, and I was itchin’ for ways to hang the slippery dog. Involuntary manslaughter at the least. I wanted to get him.