Carl Hiassen - Basket Case

"Oh, there's a load off." Tarkington scowls.

I try dusting off an old standby from my hard-news days. "What if you were to say the state attorney is 'investigating a possible link' between the deaths of Jimmy Stoma and Jay Burns, and the coldblooded shooting of a third member of the band. You don't have to mention Cleo or the song. Just say you want to find out if somebody's bumping off the Slut Puppies. It's a helluva headline, you've got to admit."

"Except we're not investigating a damn thing."

"Yes, but you would investigate—wouldn't you, Rick?—if more evidence turned up. Startling new evidence, as we say."

"Be sure and call me when that happens. Then you'll get your precious quote."

My predicament, which I'd rather not explain to Tarkington, is that I'll need more than a string of baroque incidents to sell the Jimmy Stoma story to our managing editor. Abkazion might be a Slut Puppies fan, but he's also a hardass when it comes to the front page. He'll want to see a quote from somebody in law enforcement saying they smell a rat. Tarkington would be ideal. Unfortunately, he's a hardass, too.

"Are you telling me," I plod on, "it's all coincidence, everything that's happened since Jimmy died?"

"Hell, I don't believe much in coincidence," he replies matter-of-factly. "I think you're probably onto something."

"And the blood's not enough to make you pick up the phone? His own sister's blood?"

Tarkington glares as if I've just spit up on his boots. "What blood, you fucking bonehead? The sample you stole when you broke into the lady's house? Jesus W. Christ."

"Rick, I needed to know for sure. That's why I did it."

"And I need a warrant, old buddy. You find me some PC and I'll find a judge and then we'll go cut us a piece of that rug, nice and legal." He stands up, stretches his arms. Throws in a yawn, in case I'm not taking the hint. "Jack, don't get bummed. You've got quite a story here ... "

"But what?"

"A helluva story, as you say. But you're not done yet. It's still missing the pretty ribbon and the bow." Tarkington nods toward his stack of files. "Now you'll excuse me, I've got a couple widows of my own to interview. They aren't nearly as chipper as yours."

"Okay, but first give me your impression—in a word, Rick—of everything you've heard so far."

"Intriguing," he says.

That's good, but it's not what I'm looking for. Abkazion will demand something stronger.

"How about 'suspicious'?" I venture.

"Yeah, all right. It's suspicious."

"Highly suspicious, would you say?"

"I would say goodbye now, Mr. Tagger. And if my name appears in the paper this week under your byline, it'd better be because I've croaked in some newsworthy way."

That's what I mean about Rick. I couldn't even joke about something like that. As soon as the office door closes, I take out my notebook and jot the following:

Asst. State Atty. R. Tarkington says he's preparing to investigate circumstances of J. Stoma death and disappearance of Stoma's sister. "Highly suspicious," says the veteran prosecutor.

Forgive me, Woodward, for I have sinned.

The pier at Silver Beach is not a big draw at high noon on a hot August day. I arrive half an hour early and, from the safety of my car, I scope the place thoroughly with binoculars. Team Cleo has had two days to run the phone number I wrote on the compact disc, an easy job for any private investigator.

But I don't see any egregious lurkers, anyone who looks as if they don't belong. There are a couple of shirtless teenagers drinking beer and snagging pilchards; a row of retirees in folding chairs, dozing under hats the size of garbage-can lids; a smoochy young Hispanic couple sharing a single fishing rod, taking turns reeling in baby snappers; a trio of weekday regulars, leathery and windblown, laden with bait buckets and bristling with heavy tackle.

After yanking off my necktie and loosening my shirt at the collar, I set off at a breezy amble for the phone booth at the end of the pier.

Each step puts me that much farther from a clean escape, but it's not as if I haven't got a backup plan—should one-eyed Jerry burst out of a trash bin and start shooting, I'll simply dive over the rail and swim away like a dolphin.

Pretty darn clever. Always be halfway prepared, that's my motto.

And naturally some old guy is tying up the damn phone. I check my watch—twelve minutes until noon. I hope Cleo doesn't give up because the line rings busy once or twice.

Assuming she tries to call.

I sit down on a worn wooden bench and notice too late that it doubles as a bait table, leaving the seat of my pants covered with lady-fish scales and gummy snippets of rotting shrimp. I am one smooth operator.

The man at the phone booth hangs up and waves to me. "It's all yours, son."

A cheery little fellow topping out at maybe five-two, he's got small wet eyes and fluffy gray hair and a pink pointy face with sparse white whiskers. He looks like a 120-pound opossum.

"Thanks, I'm waiting for a call," I tell him. "Shouldn't be long."

He says his name is Ike and he was talking to his bookie in North Miami. "Don't ever bet on a horse named after a blonde," he advises ruefully.

Ike is fishing three spinning rods. He reels in one and rebaits with a dead pilchard plucked from a five-gallon bucket. "I caught a twenty-three-pound red drum standing at this very spot," he says, "on August 14, 1979. That's my personal best. What's your name, son?"

"Jack."

"Strange place to take a phone call, this pier."

"It's going to be a strange phone call."

"You look familiar. Then again, everybody looks familiar when you reach ninety-two." He laughs, flashing a mouthful of shiny dentures. "Either that, or nobody looks familiar."

I whistle. "Ninety-two. That's fabulous."

"When I get to ninety-three," he says, "I'll have lived longer than Deng Xiaoping."

"That's right."

"And Miss Claudette Colbert, too." Ike's button-sized eyes are twinkling.

"And Greer Garson!" I exclaim.

"And Alger Hiss!"

"Hey, you're good."

"Well, I been at it a long damn time," the opossum man says.

This is too much. I can't help but laugh.

"Just look at you!" I say.

"It's this healthy salt air. And the fishing, too." Ike rears back and casts the silvery minnow over the rail. "But that's not all," he says. "What I did, son, early on I made up my mind not to die of anything but old age. Stopped smoking because I was afraid of the cancer. Swore off booze because I was scared of driving my car into a tree. Gave up hunting because I was scared of blowing my own head off. Quit chasing trim because I was afraid of being murdered by a jealous husband. Shaved the odds, is what I set out to do. Missed out on a ton of fun, but that's all right. All my friends are planted in the ground and here I am!"

"Where'd you start out?" I ask him.

"At The Oregonian. After that, three years at the Post-Intelligencer in Seattle." He pauses to put on a faded long-billed boat cap with a cotton flap in the back. After nearly a century under the ozone, Ike's still worrying about sun damage. "Then the Beacon-Journal in Akron, briefly at the Trib in Chicago, and a bunch of rags that aren't around anymore."

Phenomenal. He's probably the world's oldest living ex-obituary writer. I ask him what else he covered.

"You name it. Cops, courts, politics." Ike shrugs. "But obits is what stayed with me. Funny, isn't it, how it gets a grip? That was the first beat I had out of college and the last beat I had before retiring. Twenty-seven years ago that was ... "

The opossum man has noticed a subtle twitch at the tip of one of his rods. He reels up the slack and sets the hook so zestfully that he nearly loses his balance. With bony kneecaps braced against the rail, he hauls in a husky mutton snapper, quickly thrown on ice.