Paul Levine - To speak for the dead

Another laugh and Roger Salisbury was back on the line. "Jake, I'm so damn happy. Just like the old days. And I'll be forever grateful to you. You're a real friend."

"Sure Roger. Sure."

A little giggling, two sweethearts pressed up to the phone, ear to ear. Roger breathed a long whoosh into the phone and said, "Melanie, that can wait, whoa! Hey Jake, I got a hard-on that could plant the flag on I wo Jima."

"Semper Fi," I said, thinking these two are made for each other. She accuses him of murder; he wants to stick her with a needle. One day, he's punching her out; next day, she's running it up his flagpole.

I wished him well, hung up, and tried to sort it out. Now I believed more than ever in Roger's innocence.. If Roger was in it with Melanie Corrigan, he wouldn't let me know she was there. The two of them would go through the ruse of hating each other, particularly if they sensed an investigation would start up after the body disappeared. Unless it was a double twist, the old trick from "The Purloined Letter," making the fruit of the crime so obvious that it's hard to see. Too complicated. I rejoined Susan and fell asleep thinking about it, hearing a woman's laughter-mocking me-in my dreams.

At mid-morning Susan and I drove back to her cabana to look around in the light of day. I heard a motor cranking up as we walked around the house, and we caught sight of a Boston Whaler Temptation, a twenty-two-foot outboard, pulling away from the dock. Handling the wheel was a chunk of muscle who looked familiar and stretched out on a cooler in front of the console was the bikini-clad body of Melanie Corrigan. The widow had covered a lot of territory in the last twenty-four hours.

We ducked behind a poinciana tree and watched them slowly cross the lagoon into open water.

"Gone fishin'," I said.

"Doubt it," Susan said. "I don't think that woman's ever been on the Whaler. It's really a tender for the yacht. The man is Sergio Machado-Alvarez."

"We've met. Where do you suppose they're going?"

Susan shaded her eyes against the sun and shrugged. The Whaler headed into the bay between the channel markers, lazing at low speed. Still within sight, it dropped anchor.

"Great. We may have enough time if they stay put," I said.

The ancient Olds resisted, but I peeled rubber like a teenage punk and we slid around curves on the winding road to the marina at Matheson Hammock barely two miles away. The dockmaster there was an old client, but not exactly blue chip.

Bluegill Ovelman was shirtless and barefoot. He had a belly like a rain barrel and hands like grappling hooks. He was an old salt, an ex-commercial fisherman who earned his ex the third time he was arrested by the Marine Patrol. I kept him out of jail each time the patrol found a mess of undersize Florida lobsters in his cooler. The last time I persuaded the jury that Bluegill measured his catch in centimeters instead of inches, and being a mite poor at algebra, got confused on the conversion tables. Tired of using his drinking money to post bond, he retired and now tended rich men's yachts at the marina.

"Ey Counselor!" Bluegill Ovelman grinned. His cheeks were redder than a broiled lobster, and the lines under his eyes could map the trails to the Jack Daniel's distillery. "Wanna take the little lady fishing?" He eyed Susan Corrigan, who gave him a smile that he wasn't likely to see on his best day.

"I hate fishing and you know it," I lied. "I like my seafood caught, cleaned, and cooked by someone else."

This was a necessary routine, a dance we'd done before. He called me a leather-shoed, high-rise, pickpocket shyster and I called him a no-count, whiskey-riddled, lobster-poaching bottom feeder. Then he gave me a hug and asked what I wanted. I wanted a boat and a sailboard and he gave me both, an old Chris Craft inboard he used as a tow boat and a banged-up Mistral windsurfing rig he tossed onto the deck. I borrowed an old pair of his swim trunks that had to be a size forty-four and kept hitching them up as we motored into the bay.

"I wouldn't do any swimming today," Bluegill Ovelman shouted as I leaned on the throttle. "Water's full of men-of-war. Big ones, too. Enough poison for a week's room and board at Jackson Memorial."

In fifteen minutes we were half a mile from the Whaler, trying to be inconspicuous. I dropped anchor and peered through binoculars. Melanie Corrigan was still soaking up rays. Sergio was bent over the starboard side, away from us. He had a gaff or a fishing rod or a net in his hand. Too far to be sure.

There was only one way to get closer without attracting attention. It was awkward, but I rigged a six-square-meter sail onto a sixteen-foot mast, nearly falling over the rub rail. I dropped the board over the side, jumped in, and jammed the mast into the universal joint while treading water. The water was warm and clear. Susan stayed in the boat and looked at me skeptically. "Do you know what you're do-ing?"

"Trust me. I've sailed from Key Biscayne to Bimini on one of these."

I uphauled the sail in a measly ten knots of wind, and tugging at my oversize drawers, I sailed closer to the Whaler. Out of my customary charcoal gray suit, standing in the shadow of the sail, I figured they wouldn't recognize me. Just another bozo sailing standing up.

I sailed cautiously, eyeing dozens of floating purple-blue sacs with poison-packed tails trailing underneath. Our waters are filled with biters, shockers, and stingers. Sharks, of course, are biters. You see them sometimes near Virginia

Key on Key Biscayne, feeding a mile or so offshore. They seldom bother anyone. There are Atlantic rays, some weighing as much as a good-sized running back, and their tails pack over two hundred volts of electricity. They can explode out of the water and scare the bejesus out of sailors and windsurfers alike. Then, each winter, we get the Portuguese men-of-war, prehistoric animals of unearthly beauty with their iridescent bluish-purple sacs and crests of orangish red. For those lured to the luminous sac, there is only betrayal. Underneath the water, hidden from view, are dozens of tentacles, undulating with the currents, straining to inject their poison into those seduced by the beauty.

I tipped the mast forward to head downwind and sailed off the stern of the Whaler. Sergio was still bent over the side, a net now visible in his hand. I saw a fishing rod jammed into a rod holder. Okay, maybe after some grouper. I wanted to get closer, so I jibed and came back the other way. About a hundred yards away, I trimmed the sail and tried to pick up a little speed. I wanted to pass by without taking too long to do it, not give them a good look at me. It would have worked, too, if I hadn't dropped my drawers. Trying not to draw attention to yourself is hard to do when your bare ass is staring at the people you would just as soon avoid.

Not wanting to make a further spectacle of myself, I headed back to our boat where Susan Corrigan was shaking her head. "Showing off for the widow?" she asked as I climbed aboard.

"Just distracting her," I replied. "A diversion from my adorable face."

"Maybe she recognizes both ends of you," Susan said without the hint of a smile.

"If that's a question, the answer is no."

She measured that one, believed me, and we took the Chris Craft back to the marina. Mission bungled. I still had no idea why Melanie was at Roger's house last night or on the bay with Sergio today. But I was starting to get the idea that the lady had a plan for everything and everybody. Inviting me to her house had to be part of the plan. I wished I knew what part.

Susan and I headed to Coconut Grove, the Olds 442 purring in third gear. I pulled into the shade of a gumbo-limbo tree in front of my house, and she turned to me.

"Jake, we have to talk."

"Uh-huh."