The Deep Blue Alibi

Seven

The sheriff waved and headed their way.

"Let me handle him," Steve said.

Victoria bristled. "There you go again."

"Trust me, Vic. I've known Rask a long time. Hey, Willis, how's the speed-trap business?"

"Hey, Stevie!" Rask shouted back. "Still chasing ambulances?"

If it hadn't been for his uniform, Steve thought, Willis Rask could be mistaken for another forty-fiveyear-old Conch who spent too much time in the sun with too many chilled beverages. He was overweight and had a brush mustache and long sideburns. He wore his graying hair tied back in a ponytail. His shirttail flopped out of his pants, and his Oakley sunglasses, on a chain of tiny seashells, were surely nonregulation. In one buttoned shirt pocket, the round shape of a metal container was visible under the fabric. Unless he'd switched to Altoids, Rask still indulged in chewing tobacco. His sunburned face was usually fixed in a quizzical half smile. The sheriff did not give the overall impression of a spit-and-polish lawman. Spit, maybe. But not polish.

Steve knew the sheriff's story better than most. As a young man, Rask ran a charter fishing boat, back when the main catch in the Keys was "square grouper," large bales of marijuana. Rask off-loaded from mother ships, and got busted on his third run. His lawyer was that silver-tongued windy-spinner, Herbert T. Solomon, Esq., who provided free counsel on the condition that Rask would go to college and stay straight. Herbert did that a lot in the old days. He taught young Steve that a lawyer owed a debt to all of society, not just to paying clients. Steve followed his father's lead, which might explain why he drove a thirty-year-old car and had an office in a second-rate modeling agency with a window overlooking a Dumpster.

Though he couldn't have been older than ten at the time, Steve could still remember his father's closing argument in Rask's trial. Wearing a seersucker suit with suspenders, Herbert glided around the courtroom like a ballroom dancer, smooth-talking the jury, earnestly declaring that his client had performed a public service, not a criminal act. Young, naive Willis Rask had fished that soggy pot out of the Florida Straits to protect the birds and the boats.

"Those bales of devil weed were a hazard to navigation," Herbert proclaimed with a straight face. "Thankfully, Willis was drawn to the area by a flock of terns that hovered overhead, feasting on the seeds. Willis saved untold boats from being sunk and birds from becoming ill. Without this young hero's quick thinking, there'd have been no tern left unstoned."

That made the jurors smile, and they came back in twenty minutes with a not guilty verdict. Willis danced down the stairs, kissed the kapok tree on the courthouse lawn, then hugged his lawyer. He kept his promise, finishing college at Rollins, upstate in Winter Park, then law school at Stetson over in DeLand.

A dozen years later, Rask came up with a novel platform when he ran for sheriff of what locals called the "Conch Republic." He'd clear drunk drivers off the narrow roads and jail husbands who beat their wives. But he wouldn't arrest anyone for possession of small amounts of marijuana. The limited resources available to law enforcement were too precious to waste on victimless crimes. In the permissive Keys-where Jimmy Buffet's "Why Don't We Get Drunk and Screw" was an unofficial anthem-it was a brilliant tactic. Rask won in a landslide. Some voters lit up a joint on the way out of the voting booth.

"Glad I caught you." Rask met them at the shoreline. "Yo, Bobby."

"Safety's off on your Glock," Bobby said.

Rask pulled the gun from his holster and checked the lever. "Jeez, you're right. How'd you see that?"

"Bobby notices stuff," Steve said.

"And there's no clip in it," Bobby added.

"No wonder it's so light today." Rask hefted the gun, then turned to Victoria. "And you must be Stevie's partner."

"Victoria Lord," she said.

"My deputies told me Stevie had hooked up with a real looker." Rask winked at her. "And they weren't lying."

"Red light, Sheriff," Victoria said. "That's inappropriate."

Her tone reminded Steve of his fourth-grade teacher, a woman who'd slap his knuckles with a ruler whenever he acted up.

"Whoa, sorry," Rask said. "Got your hands full with this one, huh, Stevie?"

"She keeps her safety off, too, Willis."

"They're fighting, Sheriff," Bobby added.

"Quiet," Steve said, then turned to Rask. "Thought I might see you yesterday at the hospital."

"Just got back into town," Rask said. "Jimmy had a concert in Orlando."

"I'm jealous, you old parrothead."

Rask grinned and sang a few lines of "A Pirate Looks at Forty," all about making money smuggling grass but pissing it away just as fast.

Steve laughed. "You are a pirate, Willis, but if you're looking at forty, it's in the rearview mirror."

"Are you here on official business, Sheriff?" Victoria's tone erased both men's smiles and cut off the notion of singing any more tunes.

"You don't like Jimmy Buffett?" Rask made it sound like a crime.

"She likes Freddy Chopin," Bobby said.

The sheriff let out a low whistle. "Can you drink to his stuff?"

"I recommend it," Steve advised.

"Go ahead, Steve. Make fun," she said. "I'm sure you think those slacker songs are better than a piano etude."

"Ooh," the sheriff said, "sounds like somebody needs a 'License to Chill.' "

Steve gave Rask the thumbs-up, extra points for working a parrothead song title into his repartee. "So, Willis, when's the last time you and Jimmy went fishing?"

"Couple weeks. Chased some wild-ass tarpon off Key Largo."

"You know Jimmy Buffett?" Victoria asked. Her skeptical schoolmarm tone again.

Both men chuckled, and Steve said: "That song, 'A Pirate Looks at Forty.' It's all about Willis."

"Really?" She smiled so sweetly, Steve knew she didn't believe a word of it.

"Steve knows Jimmy, too," the sheriff said.

Victoria cocked her head. "Funny he never mentioned it."

"Not a big deal. We fish a little, drink a little. Why? You never met Chopin?"

In the distance, they heard the whine of turboprop engines. Four hundred feet above the water, the flying boat shone silver in the morning sun.

"Sheriff, we have to be going," Victoria said briskly. "So if you have any business. ."

"Couple of questions, is all."

"Careful, Vic," Steve said. "You're dealing with Columbo of the Keys."

"I'll bet," she said.

"One of Solomon's Laws: Beware of a sheriff who forgets to load his gun but remembers the words to 'Margaritaville.' "

"Willis Rask," Bobby said, biting his lip and concentrating while he dug up an anagram. "IS RAW SKILL."

"Got that right, Bobby," the sheriff said. "Stevie, we been looking into that fellow who got stuck with the spear. Ben Stubbs."

"You're doing actual police work?" Steve said. "Tarpon must not be running."

"Stubbs was staying at the Pier House." Rask pulled a battered notebook from a shirt pocket, flipped a page. "He bought three charts-all of the eastern Gulf-at Charlie Simmons' store two days ago.

Stopped at the Oceanographic Institution, used his federal ID to get access, spent some time in their library and computer files. Pulled up some topographic maps of the ocean floor a few miles west of Boca Chica. Two nights in a row, he ate dinner at Cienfuegos. Snapper with a mango salsa." Rask looked up from his notebook. "You two know any of this?"

"No," Victoria said.

"All of it," Steve said. "Except the mango salsa."

"Uncle Steve's lying," Bobby said.

"I know," Rask said. "Your uncle lies, even when the truth's a better story." He flipped another page in his notebook. "After dinner, Stubbs had two beers at the Hog's Breath, then spent a couple hours at Fat Mary's over on Whitehead."

"Fat Mary's?" Victoria said.

"Strip joint," Steve said. He added hastily, "Or so I'm told."

Rask returned the notebook to his pocket. "That reminds me, Stevie. Fat Mary says howdy. Anyway, I was just wondering what Stubbs was doing on your client's boat."

"Fishing," Steve said.

"Research," Victoria said.

"They don't know," Bobby said.

"I see," Rask said. "Will Mr. Griffin give us a statement?"

"No," Victoria said.

"Yes," Steve said. "Later."

"How 'bout a polygraph?" Rask asked.

"Under the right conditions," Steve said.

"Under no condition," Victoria said.

Rask scratched at a sideburn. "You two do this on purpose to throw off honest constables such as my

own self?"

"Yes," Steve said.

"No," Victoria said.

The whine of the Grumman's props grew louder. The plane was about to splash down offshore, its nose pointed toward the beach.

"Anything else, Sheriff?" Victoria asked.

Rask made a show of removing his Oakleys, breathing on the lenses, and wiping them on his shirttail. "Now that you mention it, I did forget something."

"I knew it," Steve said.

They waited a moment as Rask slipped the sunglasses back on. Offshore, the seaplane hit the water with a splat and continued toward the beach. On the fuselage was a blue logo of cascading waves and the name "Oceania."

"Stubbs left his luggage in his room at the Pier House. Had a briefcase with the usual. Laptop, government papers, antacid pills. Plus forty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Now, what do you suppose a civil servant was doing with all that money?"

"Tipping big at Fat Mary's?" Steve suggested.

The seaplane rolled onto the beach, the pilot waving at them through an open side window of the cockpit.

"We gotta go, Willis," Steve said, above the noise.

"Ah, almost forgot. One more thing. My dang memory. ."

"C'mon, Willis," Steve said. "Give it up."

Rask shook his head, sadly, milking the moment. "That Stubbs fellow died this morning."

"Oh, shit."

"Yeah, Stevie. I figured you'd be broken up about it. And your guy Griffin? He's facing a murder charge."