Carl Hiassen - Basket Case

Through the window I see the indigo rip of the Gulf Stream behind us. The waters ahead are turning clear and brilliant, a silky dapple of gemstone blues. Janet leans closer. "I love it here. I used to visit Jimmy all the time till he hooked up with Cleo."

"She keeping the place in Exuma?" I practically shout.

"Who knows." Janet shrugs. She slips into the same cheap shades that she wore last night as Rita the Meter Maid. "Hey, Jack," she says, "did my brother leave a will?"

"You're asking me?"

"Hey, you're the one writin' the story."

The plane splashes down gaily and skims the wake of a cruise liner in Nassau harbor. We clear Customs without incident and I hail a cab. Police headquarters is downtown, across the big toll bridge. I've phoned ahead to make sure Sergeant Weems is on duty today, hut that doesn't mean he'll hang around to welcome us to the commonwealth. I warn Janet that we might be in for a wait but she seems determined and calm. The only sign of jitters is the prodigious wad of chewing gum she's been chomping.

"It's either that or Camels," she says.

Incredibly, Police Sergeant Cartwright Weems is at his desk when we arrive. He is young and upright and courteous. His desk is exceptionally tidy. I introduce myself first, and then Janet as "the sister of the deceased."

Weems says he's sorry about her brother's death. Janet says, "Jack, tell him why we're here."

"Certainly. It's about the autopsy."

Weems folds his arms, giving the appearance of polite interest.

"Actually," I say, "we have reason to think there wasn't an autopsy."

"Why do you say that?" the sergeant asks.

"Because there were no stitches in the body."

"Ah." Weems sits forward and turns open the file folder on his desk. Inside is the official police report about the drowning of James Bradley Stomarti.

"When you say autopsy," Weems says, scanning the file papers, "of course you're thinking of how things are done in the States. Forensically speaking." He smiles, then looks up at us. "Here in the Bahamas we don't have the resources or the manpower to conduct what you might call a textbook postmortem on every accident victim. Unfortunately."

His accent is more British than that of most Bahamians, and I'm guessing he was educated in London.

"May I ask—do you use pathologists?"

"Whenever possible, Mr. Tagger," Weems says. "But as you know, we have seven hundred islands in the commonwealth, spread over a very large area. Sometimes we're able to get a trained pathologist on scene in a timely fashion, and other times we're not."

He turns to Janet and drops his voice. "Because of the hot climate here, we often have problems—and I don't mean to be graphic, Ms. Thrush—but we often have difficulties preserving the remains in tragic cases like this. Air-conditioning is, well, a luxury on some of the out-islands. Supplies of ice are very limited—again, I don't wish to belabor the point but on more than one occasion we've resorted to using fish freezers for body storage."

My notebook remains pocketed because Sergeant Weems would clam up if I started jotting down what he said. Cops are the same everywhere.

"What about my brother?" Janet asks through the bulge of the chewing gum. "Holy shit, don't tell me you stuck him in a fishbox." She has removed the shades and the hat but the cutoffs are difficult to ignore, though Weems is trying. His eyes shoot back to the file on his desk.

"In Mr. Stomarti's case, we were able to retrieve his body fairly quickly and transport it here, to Nassau. But my point," says Weems, "is that we are stretched thin. On the day of your brother's diving accident there was a bad crash in Freeport. A waterbike ran into a conch boat—two tourists were killed. We flew our top pathologist over there immediately."

"So who did the work on my brother?" Janet asks.

"Dr. Sawyer. Winston Sawyer. He is a very capable fellow."

"May we speak with him?" I say.

"Certainly. If he chooses." The sergeant's tone is meant to remind me that foreign journalists have no juice whatsoever in a place like Nassau. Dr. Sawyer is perfectly entitled to tell me to fuck off.

Then Janet pipes up: "Can I get a copy of the police report?" She remembered, God bless her.

For the first time, Sergeant Weems is unsettled. He twists his butt in the chair, as if he's got an unscratchable itch.

"Well, let me—"

"It's my brother, after all," Janet cuts in. "The people at the embassy said I'm entitled."

Excellent—exactly as we rehearsed. Of course we haven't spoken to a soul at the U.S. Embassy.

"Certainly, certainly." Weems is re-reading the report with renewed urgency, in the event it requires expurgating on the stroll to the copy machine. Rising slowly (and still reading), he says, "I'll be right back, Ms. Thrush. Give me a moment, please."

As soon as he departs, I signal Janet with a congratulatory wink. Upon the young sergeant's return, she accepts the Xeroxed police report and reads through it. Weems and I share the uneasy silence.

When Janet finishes, she folds the document and slips it into her handbag. Tearfully she stands and excuses herself. This is no act.

I wait a few moments before saying to Weems: "She's having a tough time accepting this."

"Yes, I can understand."

"You're confident it was an accident?"

He nods with grave assuredness. "We took statements from both witnesses, Mrs. Stomarti and a Mr. Burns, I believe it was. The details matched up," Weems says. "I'm afraid her brother got disoriented underwater and couldn't make it back to the boat. This sort of thing happens too often, believe me—with experienced divers, as well. You'd be surprised."

"Do you find it odd that Mr. Stomarti didn't ditch his tank and try to swim to the surface?"

Weems leans back in the chair. Stiffly he says, "Not really, Mr. Tagger. Some people wait too long. Others panic. These tragedies seldom reflect a clarity of thought." The sergeant's suddenly chilly monotone signals he is done with me.

Standing, I thank him for his courtesy. "By the way, who interviewed Mrs. Stomarti?"

"I did, sir."

"On the boat?"

"Yes, but later. After they docked at Chub."

"She happen to say anything about a premonition she had that morning? Did she mention begging her husband not to dive on the plane wreck?"

Weems shakes his head skeptically. "No, she didn't. I'm quite sure I would have remembered."

"She said nothing about Mr. Stomarti being sick?"

Weems looks intrigued. "Sick how?"

"Food poisoning," I say. "Fish chowder."

Chuckling, Weems rises. "No, sir. Where did you hear that?"

"What's so funny?"

"That's what Mrs. Stomarti was having for dinner while I interviewed her on the boat," he says. "Fish chowder. She even offered me a bowl."

We've got two hours to kill until Dr. Winston Sawyer will see us, so Janet and I order rum drinks and grouper sandwiches at an outdoor joint a block off Bay Street. Somehow we end up talking about death, a subject on which we hold vastly different philosophies. Janet says she believes in reincarnation, which is how she's held herself together after Jimmy's death. In a nutshell, she believes her brother will come back as a dolphin, or possibly a Labrador retriever.

I, on the other hand, believe death is the end of the ride. Death travels on the caboose.

"What about an afterlife?" Janet inquires.

"Don't hold your breath," I say. "On second thought, do."

"You believe in heaven?"

"From all I've read, it sounds pretty tedious. Frankly, your reincarnation program seems more intriguing—except with my luck I'd come back as Shirley MacLaine."

"Don't make fun."

"Or a mullet."

"What's that?" Janet asks.

"A fish whose only purpose in life is to be devoured by bigger, hungrier fishes."