Duma Key: A Novel Read online

  “Ain’t in the same league as those Principe eyes—those are harsh. I get one look at em and want to run the other way while I still can. Which is pretty much what I did.”

  I shook my head and let it go. “So what’s the outlook?”

  “Why don’t you get rolling? This place is starting to give me the willies. I just realized it’s where that freako grabbed the little girl.”

  “I could have told you that when we drove in.”

  “Probably just as well you kept it to yourself.” He yawned. “God, I’m tired.”

  “It’s stress.” I looked both ways, then turned back onto the Tamiami Trail. I still couldn’t believe I was driving, but I was starting to like it.

  “The outlook is not exactly rosy. I’m taking enough Doxepin and Zonegran now to choke a horse—those’re anti-seizure drugs, and they’ve been working pretty well, but I knew I was in trouble that night we had dinner at Zoria’s. I tried to deny it, but you know what they say: denial drowned Pharaoh and Moses led the Children of Israel free.”

  “Uh … I think that was the Red Sea. Are there other drugs you can take? Stronger ones?”

  “Principe certainly waved his prescription pad at me, but he wanted to offer Neurontin, and I won’t even chance that.”

  “Because of your job.”

  “Right.”

  “Wireman, you won’t do Elizabeth any good if you go bat-blind.”

  He didn’t reply for a minute or two. The road, now all but deserted, unrolled in front of my headlights. Then he said, “Blindness will soon be the least of my problems.”

  I risked a sideways glance at him. “You mean this could kill you?”

  “Yes.” He spoke with a lack of drama that was very convincing. “And Edgar?”

  “What?”

  “Before it does, and while I’ve still got one good eye left to see with, I’d like to look at some more of your work. Miss Eastlake wants to see some, too. She asked me to ask. You can use the car to haul em down to El Palacio—you seem to be doing admirably.”

  The turnoff to Duma Key was ahead. I put on my blinker.

  “I’ll tell you what I think sometimes,” he said. “I think that this run of fabulous luck I’ve been having has got to turn and run the other way. There’s absolutely no statistical reason to think such a thing, but it’s something to hold onto. You know?”

  “I do,” I said. “And Wireman?”

  “Still here, muchacho.”

  “You love the Key, but you also think something’s wrong with the Key. What is it about this place?”

  “I don’t know what it is, but it’s got something. Don’t you think so?”

  “Of course I do. You know I do. The day Ilse and I tried to drive down the road, we both got sick. Her worse than me.”

  “And she’s not the only one, according to the stories I’ve heard.”

  “There are stories?”

  “Oh yeah. The beach is okay, but inland …” He shook his head. “I’m thinking it might be some kind of pollution in the water-table. The same something that makes the flora grow like a mad bastard in a climate where you need irrigation just to keep the frigging lawns from dying. I don’t know. But it’s best to stay clear. I think that might be especially true for young ladies who’d like to have children someday. The kind without birth defects.”

  Now there was a nasty idea that hadn’t occurred to me. I didn’t say anything the rest of the way back.

  ix

  This is about memory, and few of mine from that winter are as clear as the one of arriving back at El Palacio that February night. The wings of the iron gate were open. Sitting between them in her wheelchair, just as she had been on the day Ilse and I had set out on our abortive exploration southward, was Elizabeth Eastlake. She didn’t have the harpoon gun, but she was once more in her two-piece sweatsuit (this time with what looked like an old high school jacket thrown over the top), and her big sneakers—looking black instead of blue in the wash of the Malibu’s headlights—were propped on the chrome footrests. Beside her was her walker, and beside her walker stood Jack Cantori with a flashlight in his hand.

  When she saw the car, she began struggling to her feet. Jack moved to restrain her. Then, when he saw she really meant it, he put the flashlight down on the cobbles and helped. By the time I parked next to the gateway, Wireman was opening his door. The Malibu’s headlights illuminated Jack and Elizabeth like actors on a stage. “No, Miss Eastlake!” Wireman called. “No, don’t try to get up! I’ll push you inside!”

  She paid no attention. Jack helped her to her walker—or she led him to it—and she grasped the handles. Then she started thumping it toward the car. By then I was struggling out on the driver’s side, fighting my bad right hip to escape, as I always did. I was standing beside the hood when she set the walker aside and held her arms out to him. The flesh above her elbows hung limp and dead, pale as dough in the headlights, but her feet were planted wide apart and her stance was sure. A breeze full of night perfumes blew back her hair, and I wasn’t a bit surprised to see a scar—a very old one—denting the right side of her head. It could almost have been the twin of my own.

  Wireman came around the open passenger door and just stood there for a second or two. I think he was deciding if he could still take comfort as well as give it. Then he went to her in a kind of bearlike, shambling walk, his head lowered, his long hair hiding his ears and swinging against his cheeks. She put her arms around him and pulled his head down on her considerable bosom. For a moment she swayed and I was alarmed, wide-set stance or no, but then she came straight again and I saw those gnarled, arthritis-twisted hands begin to rub his back, which had begun to heave.

  I walked toward them, a little uncertainly, and her eyes turned toward me. They were perfectly clear. This wasn’t the woman who had asked about when the train was coming, the one who had said she was so fucking confused. All her circuit-breakers were back in the ON positions. At least temporarily.

  “We’ll be fine,” she said. “You can go home, Edgar.”

  “But—”

  “We’ll be fine.” Rubbing his back with her gnarled fingers. Rubbing it with infinite tenderness. “Wireman will push me inside. In just a minute. Won’t you, Wireman?”

  He nodded against her breast without lifting his head or making a sound.

  I thought it over and decided to do what she wanted. “That’s fine, then. Goodnight, Elizabeth. Goodnight, Wireman. Come on, Jack.”

  The walker was the kind equipped with a shelf. Jack put the flashlight on it, glanced at Wireman—still standing with his face hidden against the old woman’s bosom—and then walked to the open passenger door of my car. “Goodnight, ma’am.”

  “Goodnight, young man. You are an impatient Parcheesi player, but you show promise. And Edgar?” She looked calmly back at me over Wireman’s bent head, his heaving back. “The water runs faster now. Soon come the rapids. Do you feel that?”

  “Yes,” I said. I didn’t know what she was talking about. I did know what she was talking about.

  “Stay. Please stay on the Key, no matter what happens. We need you. I need you, and Duma Key needs you. Remember I said that, when I slip away again.”

  “I will.”

  “Look for Nan Melda’s picnic basket. It’s in the attic, I’m quite sure. It’s red. You’ll find it. They’re inside.”

  “What would that be, Elizabeth?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Goodnight, Edward.”

  And as simply as that, I knew the slipping-away had begun once more. But Wireman would get her inside. Wireman would take care of her. But until he was able to, she would take care of them both. I left them standing on the cobbles beneath the gate arch, between the walker and the wheelchair, she with her arms around him, he with his head on her breast. That memory is clear.

  Clear.

  x

  I was exhausted from the stress of driving—I think from spending the day among so many people after being alone for so long,
too—but the thought of lying down, let alone going to sleep, was out of the question. I checked my e-mail and found communiqués from both my daughters. Melinda had come down with strep in Paris and was taking it as she always took illness—personally. Ilse had sent a link to the Asheville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times. I clicked on it and found a terrific review of The Hummingbirds, who had appeared at the First Baptist Church and had had the faithful shouting hallelujah. There was also a picture of Carson Jones and a very good-looking blonde standing in front of the rest of the group, their mouths open in song, their eyes locked. Carson Jones and Bridget Andreisson duet on “How Great Thou Art,” read the caption. Hmmm. My If-So-Girl had written, “I’m not a bit jealous.” Double-hmmmm.

  I made myself a bologna and cheese sandwich (three months on Duma Key and I was still a go for bologna), then went upstairs. Looked at the Girl and Ship paintings that were really Ilse and Ship. Thought of Wireman asking me what I was painting these days. Thought of the long message Elizabeth had left on my answering machine. The anxiety in her voice. She’d said that I must take precautions.

  I came to a sudden decision and went back downstairs, going as fast as I could without falling.

  xi

  Unlike Wireman, I don’t lug my old swollen Lord Buxton around with me; I usually tuck one credit card, my driver’s license, and a little fold of cash into my front pocket and call it good. The wallet was locked in a living room desk drawer. I took it out, thumbed through the business cards, and found the one with SCOTO GALLERY printed on it in raised gold letters. I got the after-hours recording I had expected. When Dario Nannuzzi had finished his little spiel and the beep had beeped, I said: “Hello, Mr. Nannuzzi, this is Edgar Freemantle from Duma Key. I’m the …” I paused briefly, wanting to say guy and knowing that wasn’t what I was to him. “I’m the artist who does the sunsets with the big shells and plants and things sitting on them. You spoke about possibly showing my work. If you’re still interested, would you give me a call?” I recited my telephone number and hung up, feeling a little better. Feeling as if I’d done something, at least.

  I got a beer out of the fridge and turned on the TV, thinking I might find a movie worth watching on HBO before turning in. The shells beneath the house had taken on a pleasant, lulling sound, their conversation tonight civilized and low-pitched.

  They were drowned out by the voice of a man standing in a thicket of microphones. It was Channel 6, and the current star was Candy Brown’s court-appointed lawyer. He must have held this videotaped press conference at approximately the same time Wireman was getting his head examined. The lawyer looked about fifty, and his hair was pulled back into a Barrister Ponytail, but there was nothing going-through-the-motions about him. He looked and sounded invested. He was telling the reporters that his client would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

  He said that Mr. Brown was a drug addict, a porn-addicted sex addict, and a schizophrenic. Nothing about being powerless over ice cream and Now That’s What I Call Music compilations, but of course the jury hadn’t been empanelled yet. In addition to Channel 6’s mike, I saw NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN logos. Tina Garibaldi couldn’t have gotten coverage like this winning a spelling bee or a science fair, not even for saving the family dog from a raging river, but get raped and murdered and you’re nationwide, Swee’pea. Everyone knows your killer had your underpants in his bureau drawer.

  “He comes by his addictions honestly,” the lawyer said. “His mother and both his stepfathers were drug addicts. His childhood was a horror during which he was systematically beaten and sexually abused. He has spent time in institutions for mental illness. His wife is a good-hearted woman, but mentally challenged herself. He never should have been on the streets to begin with.”

  He faced the cameras.

  “This is Sarasota’s crime, not George Brown’s. My heart goes out to the Garibaldis, I weep for the Garibaldis”—he lifted his tearless face to the cameras, as if to somehow prove this—“but taking George Brown’s life up in Starke won’t bring Tina Garibaldi back, and it won’t fix the broken system that put this broken human being on the streets, unsupervised. That’s my statement, thank you for listening, and now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  He started away, ignoring the shouted questions, and things might still have been all right—different, at least—if I’d turned off the TV or changed the channel right then. But I didn’t. I watched the Channel 6 talking head back in the studio say, “Royal Bonnier, a legal crusader who has won half a dozen supposedly unwinnable pro bono cases, said he would make every effort to exclude the following video, shot by a security camera behind Bealls Department Store, from the trial.”

  And that damned thing started again. The kid crosses from right to left with the pack on her back. Brown emerges from the rampway and takes her by the wrist. She looks up at him and appears to ask him a question. And that was when the itch descended on my missing arm like a swarm of bees.

  I cried out—in surprise as well as agony—and fell on the floor, knocking both the remote and my sandwich-plate onto the rug, scratching at what wasn’t there. Or what I couldn’t get at. I heard myself yelling at it to stop, please stop. But of course there was only one way to stop it. I got on my knees and crawled for the stairs, registering the crunch as one knee came down on the remote and broke it, but first changing the station. To CMT: Country Music Television. Alan Jackson was singing about murder on Music Row. Twice going up the stairs I clawed for the banister, that’s how there my right hand was. I could actually feel the sweaty palm squeak on the wood before it passed through like smoke.

  Somehow I got to the top and stumbled to my feet. I flicked all the light-switches up with my forearm and staggered to my easel at a half-assed run. There was a partly finished Girl and Ship on it. I heaved it aside without a look and slammed a fresh blank canvas in its place. I was breathing in hot little moans. Sweat was trickling out of my hair. I grabbed a wipe-off cloth and flapped it over my shoulder the way I’d flapped burp-rags over my shoulder when the girls were small. I stuck a brush in my teeth, put a second one behind my ear, started to grab a third, then picked up a pencil instead. The minute I started sketching, the monstrous itch in my arm began to abate. By midnight the picture was done and the itch was gone. Only it wasn’t just a picture, not this one; this one was The Picture, and it was good, if I do say so myself. And I do. I really was a talented sonofabitch. It showed Candy Brown with his hand locked around Tina Garibaldi’s wrist. It showed Tina looking up at him with those dark eyes, terrible in their innocency. I’d caught her look so perfectly that her parents would have taken one glance at the finished product and wanted to commit suicide. But her parents were never going to see this.

  No, not this one.

  My painting was an almost exact copy of the photograph that had been in every Florida newspaper at least once since February fifteenth, and probably in most papers across the United States. There was only one major difference. I’m sure Dario Nannuzzi would have seen it as a trademark touch—Edgar Freemantle the American Primitive fighting gamely past the cliché, struggling to reinvent Candy and Tina, that match made in hell—but Nannuzzi was never going to see this one, either.

  I dropped my brushes back into their mayo jars. I was paint up to my elbow (and all down the left side of my face), but cleaning up was the last thing on my mind.

  I was too hungry.

  There was hamburger, but it wasn’t thawed. Ditto the pork roast Jack had picked up at Morton’s the previous week. And the rest of my current bologna stash had been supper. There was, however, an unopened box of Special K with Fruit & Yogurt. I started to pour some into a cereal bowl, but in my current state of ravenousness, a cereal bowl looked roughly the size of a thimble. I shoved it aside so hard it bounced off the breadbox, got one of the mixing bowls from the cupboard over the stove instead, and dumped the whole box of cereal into it. I floated it with half a quart of milk, added seven or eight heaping tablespoons of sugar, then dug
in, pausing only once to add more milk. I ate all of it, then sloshed off to bed, stopping at the TV to silence the current urban cowboy. I collapsed crosswise on the counterpane, and found myself eye-to-eye with Reba as the shells beneath Big Pink murmured.

  What did you do? Reba asked. What did you do this time, you nasty man?

  I tried to say Nothing, but I was asleep before the word could come out. And besides—I knew better.

  xii

  The phone woke me. I managed to push the right button on the second try and said something that vaguely resembled hello.

  “Muchacho, wake up and come to breakfast!” Wireman cried. “Steak and eggs! It’s a celebration!” He paused. “At least I’m celebrating. Miss Eastlake’s fogged out again.”

  “What are we cele—” It hit me then, the only thing it possibly could be, and I snapped upright, tumbling Reba onto the floor. “Did your vision come back?”

  “It’s not that good, I’m afraid, but it’s still good. This is something all of Sarasota can celebrate. Candy Brown, amigo. The guards who do the morning count found him dead in his cell.”

  For a moment that itch flashed down my right arm, and it was red.

  “What are they saying?” I heard myself asking. “Suicide?”

  “Don’t know, but either way—suicide or natural causes—he saved the state of Florida a lot of money and the parents the grief of a trial. Come on over and blow a noisemaker with me, what do you say?”

  “Just let me get dressed,” I said. “And wash.” I looked at my left arm. It was splattered with many colors. “I was up late.”

  “Painting?”

  “No, banging Pamela Anderson.”

  “Your fantasy life is sadly deprived, Edgar. I banged the Venus de Milo last night, and she had arms. Don’t be too long. How do you like your huevos?”

  “Oh. Scrambled. I’ll be half an hour.”

  “That’s fine. I must say you don’t sound very thrilled with my news bulletin.”

  “I’m still trying to wake up. On the whole, I’d have to say I’m very glad he’s dead.”