Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries) Read online

  Murder on Tiki Island: A Noir Paranormal Mystery In The Florida Keys (Detective Bill Riggins Mysteries)

  Pinto, Christopher

  StarDust Mysteries (2011)

  * * *

  A Noir Paranormal Mystery

  In The Florida Keys

  by Christopher Pinto,

  Author of Murder Behind the Closet Door

  First Kindle Printing, April, 2011

  StarDust Mysteries Publishing

  Fort Lauderdale, Florida

  www.StarDustMysteries.com

  www.KeyWestMurderMystery.com

  © 2011 Christopher Pinto - All Rights Reserved

  All the characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any likeness to any real person or event is coincidental. All information contained herein (including photography) is property of the author and is protected under copyright law, and may not be reproduced, displayed, or represented in any manner without the written consent of the author. Anyone wishing to republish parts of this work for informational purposes can contact the author’s agent at [email protected]

  This book is a work of noir-style fiction. If I did it right, you should feel like you’re digging a tome from somewhere in the late 1940s to late ’50s. The tone, style and feel of the story and writing should swing you back in time to the days before home computers and iPhones, back when Chevy sold more cars than anyone on the planet and everything was shaped like a jet plane, spaceship, flying saucer or boomerang. When dames were dames and a quarter could get you a ham sandwich and a coffee from a guy who knew your name, and Tiki Bars were the place to go to get away from it all. So here’s a few suggestions to help get you in that retro, kool, jazzy mid-century mood...

  Music to read by:

  Here’s a list of era-appropriate, Tiki Bar-approved albums to play on the hi-fi while digging this volume of lore:

  Martin Denny – Exotica, Quiet Village

  Arthur Lyman – Taboo, The Legend of Pele

  Les Baxter – Space Escapade, Ritual of the Savage

  Frank Sinatra – In the Wee Small Hours, Come Fly With Me

  Henry Mancini – The Peter Gunn Soundtrack

  Elvis Presley – Blue Hawaii Soundtrack

  Miles Davis – Birth of the Cool...

  And pretty much anything else by these swingin’ cats, as long as the tracks were laid down before December 31, 1959. Dig? Groovy. Hit it.

  Cocktails to sip:

  Recipes for these traditional South Florida/Original Tiki Bar drinks can be found at www.TikiLoungeTalk.com...just click on the Tiki Drinks page.

  The (original) Mai Tai (no pineapple juice, dammit!)

  Zombie

  Cuba Libre

  Mojito

  Navy Grog

  Molakai Mike

  Banana Banshee

  Melinda Lindy

  Suffering Bastard

  Singapore Sling

  Dolce de Leche

  Tahitian Rum Punch

  Scorpion Bowl

  Bitter brine upon our tongues, the brackish water fills our lungs.

  With darkened woes our life-lines slip, our bodies bare, our organs rip.

  And while we die, the others live. Our fate to those we soon shall give.

  Wrought with the storm, your last night’s breath,

  We carry you now to your wretched death.

  Forward

  One of the worst storms to ever make landfall on the eastern seaboard of the United States smashed into the upper Florida Keys on Monday, September 2nd, 1935. Dubbed “The Labor Day” Hurricane, this category-five beast bored down on the marshy islands with two hundred mile-per-hour winds and a fury unmatched in modern history. At noon, when it was evident the storm would cause deadly destruction, a call for an evacuation train was dispatched from Miami. But due to the poor weather, poor communications and poor planning by city officials, the train didn’t make it to Islamorada until well after 8:00 p.m. – at the absolute height of the storm.

  When the evacuation train backed into Islamorada, the hurricane was in full force. Winds blew cars off the roads and were strong enough to spear signposts through the trunks of palm trees. Immense waves crashed against the islands, flooding the causeway, crushing houses and stripping trees. Giant stretches of land were ripped away in minutes. At 8:30 p.m., while the rescue train attempted to save hundreds of WPA workers trapped on Matecumbe Key, a storm surge – a black, deadly wall of water over twenty feet high - raced across the causeway with the force of millions of tons of deadly pressure and toppled the rescue train, drowning the helpless victims trapped inside the railcars or carrying them out into the open sea. When the skies cleared and the waves subsided, no less than four hundred souls were dead or lost. By most accounts, over eight hundred people lost their lives in what was soon to be called “The Storm of the Century.”

  In the days following the tragedy, bloated corpses washed up on beaches by the dozen; islands and sandbars as far north as Florida City and as far south as Key West were littered with bodies and debris. In the intense sub-tropical heat of the late Florida summer bodies became completely unrecognizable, bloating with gases and bursting in the hot sun. The horrible sight of decay and abominable stench became so unbearable the government ordered the corpses cremated immediately before proper identification could be made.

  Racing against the intense Florida heat, volunteers worked hard to collect the corpses, inter them in pine boxes, and cremate them for mass burial. Within a few days over three hundred bodies had been burned and the ashes buried in a mass grave on Islamorada; others were buried on the beaches or islands where they were found. Countless more simply washed out to sea, consumed by sharks and crabs, never to be seen again.

  The destruction caused by the Storm of the Century included almost every building from Key Largo to Bahia Honda. The sea wall washed out entire sections of train tracks and bridgework of the Florida East Coast Overseas Railway, the main link from the mainland to Key West. FEC, which was already in financial distress due to the Great Depression, agreed to sell the crippled railway to the United States Government, and through Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration the Overseas Railway was rebuilt as the Overseas Highway, a two-lane modern roadway for automobile traffic built on the trestles of the existing railroad bridges and paved over the rail bed’s causeways. It opened in 1938, and with it came a new kind of tourism. – Motoring. Along with it motor inns, gas stations, roadside diners and juice stands grew prosperous, born from the wreckage of the storm. By the 1950s the Keys had become a favorite spot for tourists traveling down the east coast from New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

  Driving down US 1 all the way from Manhattan, a guy with a fast car and enough clams for gas and grub could make it down to the southern-most point of the 48 States in about three days. Once there, fresh air and sunshine could do wonders for a city boy sick of the grime, sick of the crime, sick of the politics and junkies and all the trash in between. Take a few days, they told me; take two weeks if you need it, kid. And you do need it. That last job I pulled really put the heat on me, even though the Captain was the one who told me to do it. Sure, he told me, under wraps of course with plenty of plausible deniability. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to rat him out to the top brass, so a little two-week paid vacation in the land of palm trees and sunshine was all right by me. Little did I know that Florida sunshine would make me a chump, twice. First, with a crime. Second, with a dame, of course. Two dames, actu
ally. Looking back, I wish I’d never laid eyes on either of those dames, or Key West, or that crazy little Island my buddy (ex-bud, that is, but that’s another story) turned me on to, back in late October of 1956.

  Chapter One

  Late October, 1956

  Damned dreary. Typical for this time of year, I guess. These were my thoughts as I stepped out into the cold October morning, the gray clouds bunched up tight over my head, keeping the sun from making its half-baked attempt at burning through. It was damp too, that kind of bone-chilling dampness that you don’t expect until late November but sneaks up on you like a snake before the kiddies have a chance to pick out a Halloween costume. It seemed like just yesterday it was a nice, crisp Jersey fall, with rainless skies and a temperate breeze that made you feel alive. But that was gone now, too soon; Old Man Winter came home from vacation early this year and blew his icy breath across the City before the trees had a chance to finish changing colors.

  It was days like this I wished I’d stayed at my apartment in the city, where I could catch a cab out my front door and spend a limited amount of time outside. But sometimes sentimentality got the best of me, and I just felt like I needed to spend some time in the house I grew up in. With my parents both gone I hardly stayed there anymore. I guess this week things were worse than usual, and I just needed to get out of the city for a night.

  I walked fast down the two blocks to the ferry, my trench coat’s collar flipped up, my gray fedora pulled down tight, my hands stuffed in my pockets. Always cautious, I made sure my right hand slipped through the custom-sewn hole in my coat pocket and rested on the butt of my snub-nosed .38, the Detective Special I kept on my belt. I got caught with my pants down once before. Never again.

  I made it down to the docks in plenty of time to catch the boat. As I walked up to the gate, the wind whipped up off the Hudson and froze me further than it already had.

  “Mornin’ Officer Riggins,” said the kid taking tokens. He was way too happy for a day like this.

  “Hello Darrin.”

  “Beautiful day, ya?” he said with annoying cheer. I swear I would have belted him, if he didn’t tower over me like a building.

  “You’re crazy, kid. It’s cold enough to freeze the balls of a brass monkey.” Wacky kid wasn’t even wearing an overcoat, just his uniform.

  “Ah, well for me this is just right. I was born and raised over in Norway, ya know. This is like summer for me.”

  “That’s nice Darrin,” I said glumly, and flipped him the token. “You can have it. In fact, you can take my share of the cold too.”

  Darrin smiled and gave a little laugh. “You betcha, sure Officer. Have a happy day, ok?”

  “Ya,” I said and got on the boat.

  Inside the cabin the temperature was a good thirty degrees warmer than outside. At first it hit me like a furnace, but once I got a cup of hot joe and newspaper from the vendor, I realized it was just right to keep my coat and hat on. I sat on a bench between a laborer and an old woman, and started to read the rag.

  Fires. Murders. A suicide, two armed robberies and a mugging. Two car accidents on Broadway. Politicians battling it out for next month’s election. Our Mayor, who was doing a decent job, had run his two terms and was on his way out. He endorsed the democrat, a young guy named Tolaski who was American born of Polish immigrants. He was determined to clean up the slums, get people back to work. His plan was to broaden social programs and create more government jobs, getting some money into the hands of the poor. His opponent, a 53-year-old die-hard republican named Burke was on the warpath to eliminate crime from the city by giving the police more power and money, and by helping small and large businesses to grow, thus creating jobs and cleaning up the slums. They were both full of malarkey and I knew it as fact. Tolaski had a back-end agenda: He hated the cops, distrusted them. His plan was to expose abusive techniques used to fight crime – basically giving the criminals more rights, and taking away our power to protect. Sure, we went a little far sometimes, but the days of rubber hoses and beatings with chains were gone with Prohibition. That was the stuff my old man did on the force. These days we used more...subtle...techniques.

  Burke, on the other hand, while big on supporting the cops, was as corrupt a man as they come. My old man knew; he knew him personally when he had to deal with him ten years back. At the age of seventeen, Burke’s son came home from the Big War minus an arm, and used his other arm to get shot up with opium to escape the realities of his screwed up life. My old man nabbed him, and tried to get him to come clean on who his supplier was. He threw him in the clink, and not an hour later he got a visit from Burke.

  “Lay off my son,” he said, “Or I can make things very difficult for you. I have a lot of pull in high places, cop.”

  “I can’t do that, I don’t care who you are. Your kid is a junkie.”

  “I can have your badge in fifteen minutes, you hard-headed moron. Don’t believe me, try me.”

  My old man had his morals but he was no fool. He had a family to feed, and the only thing he knew was how to be was a cop. It made him sick, but he had to play along.

  “I don’t have to do a damned thing you say, Burke. But I can’t disobey a direct order from a superior. Talk to your people in high places. The order will come down to me and I’ll have to lay off. No problems. But I’ll tell you this: If I don’t help your kid, you better, or he’ll be dead from that garbage in a year.”

  Burke nodded to my old man, a gesture of superiority and thanks rolled up in one, and left. An hour later he got the call; he was off the case and was to leave the Burke kid alone. That was the end of it for him. Six months later Burke’s kid came out of a rehabilitation hospital clean, and took up a job as vice president in Daddy’s construction company. At least one good thing came out of it, my old man always said.

  Now Burke was making a bid for Mayor. That meant only one thing. He had a scheme, and I didn’t like the idea of that, not one bit.

  At eight-thirty a.m. the ferry left the Weehawken dock and started making its way across the water to the Big Apple. And here I was, my mind wandering all over the place from the weather to politics to my old man. Where the hell was my concentration? I had more important things to turn over in my head than events long over. Then I realized I hadn’t had a cigarette yet. That’s what I needed, a stick to help me get my thoughts organized, to focus on what I needed to get done today. I slipped the deck of Camels out of my pocket and shook one out. The guy next to me took a quick look over, the lady on the other side stared straight ahead. I offered a smoke to the guy. He accepted. To the lady I said, “Would you like a cigarette, m’am?”

  “Oh, my no, I don’t smoke.”

  “Mind if I do?” She looked at me sort of surprised, sort of like I was crazy.

  “No young man, not at all. Thank you for asking.” She went back to staring. I guess politeness was getting so rare these days people were shocked when they saw it.

  I shook a butt out of the pack and lit it with my Zippo. The first drag went down smooth, and already I could feel my cold, cloudy head clearing up. Between the coffee and the cigarette, I was awake and alert. In fifteen minutes I’d be in Manhattan, sitting in the back of a Checker with a cabbie named Fast Freddie. In a half hour, I’d be sitting at my desk in the Vice Squad office of Precinct #10.

  +++

  I stepped off the boat and onto the cement dock. The wind gave me a left hook that nearly took my fedora with it, but I managed to grab it just in time. At the end of the block sat the row of cabs, some old enough to have shuttled around Hoover, a few new and sparkling yellow. At the end sat a brand new custom job, a ’56 Checker Marathon painted jet black with red wheels, white checks and a black oilcloth interior. Hand painted on the back fender was a red-headed pinup sitting on a tire, with the lettering “Fast Freddie” in pink underneath. The engine came to life as I climbed in the back seat.

  “Nice weather we’re having, huh Riggins?” Fast Freddie said from the drivers sea
t.

  “When did you become a comedian?”

  “When the wind blew my brassier off.” She turned around and looked at me with her baby blues, her hair redder than that of the pin-up painting. “Usual place?”

  “Where else?”

  She gave me a wink and pulled out into traffic.

  “What’s the word on the street, Freddie?” I said, lighting up another Camel.

  “Nothing going down since dark. Couple’a cats on the East side tried to get a date with me, but I turned them down.”

  “Whatdya’ do that for?”

  “I told ’em I was waitin’ for you,” she laughed.

  I laughed too. “Keep waiting doll, you’re too nice a chick to get mixed up with a mug like me. Anything new from the boys in blue?”

  “Yeah, one bit…they got a lead on that pusher you’ve been tailing. Might be able to pick him up today. You ready for a long one?”

  I sighed, heavy. “I guess I’d better be.” I wasn’t.

  Fast Freddie pulled the cab up in front of the station at four minutes to nine. I gave her a wink and a smile and jumped out. No need to pay or tip; I paid her a flat fee once a week and she took me wherever I needed to go. No point in driving a car in the city was my motto; it would take me an extra forty-five minutes to drive in every day, and the gas, tolls and parking came out to a ten spot a month more than I was paying Freddie. No thanks, kids.

  The precinct looked down harshly on me as I began jumping the steps. In the gray morning the gray building looked even grayer than usual, almost ghostly. The wind gusted and I shuddered. I felt it in my bones…this was going to be a bad day.

  Once at my desk my spirits were lifted, at least a little. Four of the guys had already gotten in and were either typing away on the Smith-Coronas or jabbering on the horn. Coffee was already made, and someone brought in a box of sweet rolls. I settled into my desk, one of those sturdy hardwood types with a nice new ink blotter and a green metal lamp, courtesy of the taxpayers. It was situated about halfway back in a room of twelve desks, all vice detectives. At the far end behind frosted glass sat the Captain’s office, nicotine-stained blinds drawn. Hats and overcoats hung from the coat trees at each end of the room. All the office needed was a fresh coat of paint to hide the years of nicotine and grime and it wouldn’t be half bad, I thought. Funny that I should be so cheerful all of a sudden, knowing damned well the minute they brought in the pusher it was going to be all down hill on a handcart.