Ted Bell - Spy

“All right, June, now listen. Here’s what you do. Eat your supper. Then I want you to go back to town. Go to the FedEx machine and overnight me that cassette. Got a pencil? Send it to the Green Pelican Hotel, 11 Duval Street, Key West. 33040. For a guaranteed ten-thirty a.m. delivery tomorrow morning. You’ll need a FedEx envelope. You still keep some at home?”

“Yessir, I do. I got the address. Wrote it down.”

“Good. And don’t tell anybody word one about anything until you hear from me. Understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. Go do it now. I’ll call you soon as I get that envelope in the morning.”

“This is pretty important, isn’t it?”

“It could be. I appreciate your vigilance and courage. Good-bye, June.”

HE HUNG UP the phone and stared at the floor. Things were happening pretty fast now. He felt like he was at the eye of one of those famous Key West hurricanes. Evidence of a military incursion by uniformed Mexican Army troops, if that’s what was on the tape, would turn this conference upside down. Turn everybody upside down. His presentation was right after lunch tomorrow. Hell, he could skip his damn jibber-jabber. He’d just show June’s home movies of invading Mexican troops. Couldn’t beat pictures like that with a thousand words.

He sat back down and realized he was about starving. Lunch had been some fancy little finger food and some really bad shrimp quesadillas. He wanted a hamburger, rare, and some French fries. Not to mention a cold beer. Maybe two.

He stood up and pulled his brown oilskin duster off the coat rack. He shouldered into it and then he put on his hat, trying to remember where he’d hidden his wallet. He checked under his shirts in the bottom drawer of the dresser and then remembered putting it under his pillow while he was talking to Daisy lying on the bed. She told him you couldn’t be too careful of your money in a place like Key West. Of course, she’d never been here, only been out of Texas once in her whole life, but she was probably right. She usually was. He stuck his billfold in the back left pocket of his jeans, locked his door, and headed downstairs to the street.

There was a man sitting in the lobby he thought he recognized from the conference. At least he recognized the suit, a very wrinkled white suit and very shiny black shoes. You couldn’t see his face because he had it buried in the local newspaper. On his left hand was a big gold nugget of a ring with a large diamond. The paper he was reading was the Key West Gazette, a paper Franklin had read, cover to cover. It featured mostly Help Wanted ads and real estate. Which was strange, he thought. The stranger didn’t seem the type to be buying himself a house or hiring any short order cooks.

“Howdy,” Franklin said on his way out, since he was polite, but the man didn’t even have the courtesy to look up when he walked by.

He got a funny feeling walking out the front door. He felt like he was in one of those old black and white spy movies during the war. High Noon in Havana, something like that.

Life was funny what it threw at you sometimes. He’d never pictured himself setting foot in a peculiar place like Key West, Florida. Back home, even around folks he didn’t know well, he could at least identify with them to one extent or another. They all pretty much wore the same clothing. Talked about the same things. They were all related somehow, either by blood or by marriage.

Well, what could you do? That was America for you.

Times were strange. People were stranger. Especially the strangers you saw around here.

But, like Daisy always said, strangers were people too.

Who was he to argue with that?

45

M argaritaville was chock full of interesting characters. Just walking up Duval, you came across more unique people in one block than you’d stumble across in Prairie in a whole lifetime.

When Dixon arrived at the bustling café at the southeast corner of Duval and Greene streets, there were a couple of Harleys parked out front and he could hear some pretty good music coming from inside. Looked like a place where a man could duck out of the rain and get a decent cheeseburger.

He liked the name, Sloppy Joe’s, and he quickly stepped inside. He looked for someplace to hang his wet oilskin but didn’t see one. Dusters didn’t seem to have caught on down here. Of course, the only horses he’d seen in town were busted-down mares pulling a bright pink surrey with yellow fringe on the top.

It was still pretty early by Key West standards and luckily there was an empty table right over in the corner. It was way in the back so he figured it would be nice and quiet. He caught a pretty waitress’s eye and she nodded “okay”, so he went on over there and sat down. There was a fella on stage dressed pretty much the same way he was, jeans and boots. He was singing a Jerry Jeff Walker song. The busty red-headed waitress came right over and handed him the menu.

“What’ll it be, stranger?” she said, with a cute smile.

Her name tag announced she was Savannah. He ordered something called the Ernie Burger, rare. “Who’s Ernie?” he asked Savannah, “The owner?” And she’d looked at him like he was kidding, which of course he wasn’t. She suggested something called Conch Fritters as a go-along and he said, sure, that sounded good too. And a cold Corona with a chilled glass would be nice. Savannah winked at him, told him she liked his hat, and disappeared into the crowd.

So there he was, minding his own business, sipping his beer and listening to Jerry Jeff’s Hill Country Rain, when the stranger in the rumpled white suit from the hotel lobby came over and asked could he sit down.

“Don’t see why not,” he said, and the man sat.

“Sheriff Franklin W.Dixon?”

“Yep.”

“Eduardo Zamora,” he said, and stuck his hand across the table, thin gold bracelets dangling from his thin wrist. A big pair of black sunglasses stuck out of his breast pocket and a black tie was tied loosely around his neck. His teeth were very white under his black moustache. His smile was big but not very believable. Franklin looked down at his shoes. Black and shiny, all right.

He shook his hand and said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Zamora?”

“Here is my card, senor. I am a stringer for a chain of Mexican newspapers as you can see. Los Reformos. I’ve got my press pass, too if you’d like to see it. My credentials.”

“Like to know what you want,” Franklin said, turning the card over in his hand, reading it. He somersaulted it through his fingers before he slid it back across the table. He’d noticed a phone number written in pencil on the back. He’d heard of the Mexican newspaper chain. A big one and not particularly partial to American interests. Backed the Communist candidate for president in the last election. Supported Chávez, too.

“What do you want, Mr. Zamora?”

“A story, of course, I’m a reporter. We’ll be hearing from you tomorrow, Sheriff? I saw you listed as one of the Texas Border Sheriffs’ Coalition members who will speak, I believe?”

“I’ll speak my piece if they have time for me.”

Zamora got out a thin spiral notebook and held a stubby pencil poised above the page. “What our readers would like to know is, what do you intend to say to attendees at Secretary de los Reyes’s Latin American conference?”

“You’ve got your press pass, Mr. Zamora. You’ll find out tomorrow afternoon.”

“I’d like to get a scoop, señor.”

“You’re at the Green Pelican Hotel, aren’t you? Saw you in the lobby a while back.”

“You have me confused with someone else. I was here when you walked in, Sheriff, remember?”

Franklin decided to let it go.