Bone Island Mambo Read Online Free PDF

shot a third of what I knew they needed.
    Hayes continued: “Ortega can wrap it up for you. Give him those rolls you just shot. You can head on out”
    I’d observed Ortega’s screw-ups for years. As if on cue, Cootie went right to work. I could tell by the sound of his camera that his flash wasn’t synchronizing with his shutter. His photos would be worthless. For some reason, Dexter Hayes was running this investigation into the toilet. I couldn’t bear to look at Teresa, who must realize the folly in play, or at Butler Dunwoody and Heidi, who probably didn’t. I extracted the Kodacolor, handed it to Cootie, slowly packed my camera and flash into their satchel pockets.
    Having to give film for developing to Ortega, after Marnie’s distress and the detective’s atrocious handling of the scene, amounted to strike three. I immediately wrote off future work for the Key West Police. I picked up my motorcycle helmet and started for the lumber walkway.
    Hayes said, “Better bone up on your skills, Rutledge.”
    “How so, Detective?”
    “Procedures. We’ll talk about it some other time.”
    “No hurry? Maybe after the Super Bowl?”
    “Get the fuck out of here.”

3
    I escaped the construction site’s chain-link enclosure. Six onlookers watched from Caroline’s south curb—three couples in flowery shirts, woven-frond hats, beads and name tags on necklace strings, tall drink cups in hand. Puzzled party hounds confronted by violence in paradise. I felt the same gravity. I’d avoided ugliness for most of my time in Key West It had intersected my life too often in the past year. Too often in the past two hours.
    I wasn’t sure what Dexter Hayes and his forensic team would learn from the scene. I’d found new evidence that crime photography was not my dream vocation. I’d begun moonlighting with it several years back. A few side jobs, helpful income, few hassles. This gig had proved to be a sick game for an unprofessional investigator.
    Violence wasn’t new to Key West Sixteenth-century Spanish explorers called the atoll Cayo Hueso—Bone Island. They’d found human skeletons strewn about evidence of native strife. The first permanent settlement had formed in the 1820s. Since then the island’s condition had rolled from tough to impoverished to romantic to lunatic to wealthy. Strife had remained.
    A ten-knot north wind had picked up. I rode the Kawasaki toward Sam Wheeler’s house at the south end of Elizabedi. Ten days into January, air in the shade cool, butthe direct sun hot as April or October. Traffic a zoo, wandering, in slow motion. The main blast of the winter tourist season. Hotels charging more per night than my monthly mortgage payment
    Ironic, I thought, that Dexter Hayes, Jr., had become a detective. His upbringing probably gave him the best possible preparation, but no one would have guessed this outcome. The story I’d heard was that his father had been a juvenile thug in the 1950s, when Bahama Village still was called Jungletown. A stint in a central Florida reform school had cooled Big Dex’s jets. He’d returned to Monroe County trained in off-street life skills. He was ready to represent larger brokers as a purveyor of victimless crime. To ensure his position, he also became a one-man neighborhood watch. He launched a career in basic urban fiddles: hookers, numbers, light-duty dope, and two dimly lighted after-hours joints. Equally important was delivering votes and suppressing tourist and sailor muggings. His career’s ups and downs had tied into political and economic changes on the island. When his bosses were slick, Big Dex was golden. When the big boys were short, arrest and harassment became occupational hazards.
    I hadn’t seen Big Dex since a night at the Hukilau in the mid-1990s. The place wasn’t crowded—it must’ve been a weeknight Coffee Butler had seven Conch housewives at his piano bar, a birthday party whooping it up to “Who Put the Pepper in the Vaseline?” Big Dex