Air Dance Iguana Read online

  GET A CLUE!

  Be the first to hear the latest mystery book news…

  With the St. Martin’s Minotaur monthly newsletter, you’ll learn about the hottest new Minotaur books, receive advance excerpts from newly published works, read exclusive original material from featured mystery writers, and be able to enter to win free books!

  Sign up on the Minotaur Web site at: www.minotaurbooks.com

  PRAISE FOR TOM CORCORAN AND HIS NOVELS

  AIR DANCE IGUANA

  “Vividly portraying the Key West scene, Tom Corcoran has created a wild cast of characters who are a welcome addition to the Alex Rutledge series.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “A fast-paced read with a complex but well-told plot, Corcoran’s latest will take you to Margaritaville without wasting away your time.”

  —Richmond Times-Dispatch

  OCTOPUS ALIBI

  “Treat yourself to an exotic setting, laughs, and suspense.”

  —Janet Evanovich, author of Twelve Sharp

  “Tom Corcoran knows the human heart, sure as hell knows how to write a good book, and knows Key West—a setting so real you’ll get a sunburn.”

  —Steve Hamilton, author of The Hunting Wind

  “Captures the soul of Key West, all its eccentricities and secrets…expertly plotted.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Tom Corcoran’s Octopus Alibi is a true marvel of a mystery, a deeply engrossing guidebook to the mango opera that is life in Key West.”

  —Jim Harrison, author of Off to the Side, Dalva, and Legends of the Fall

  “A nifty little ragtop of a tale.”

  —The News Observer (Titusville, FL)

  “Corcoran is a superb writer.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “Alex Rutledge should be investigating Key West for years.”

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  BONE ISLAND MAMBO

  “Corcoran’s insider knowledge makes him a terrific tour guide, and he spins a complex but extremely enjoyable yarn that includes murder, family squabbles, a stolen-car ring and a warm, folksy sense of community.”

  —Miami Herald

  “Bone Island Mambo starts fast, never lets up. Key West’s crazies are a hoot, and Tom Corcoran’s plot and range of characters add to a series that won’t quit. Treat yourself to an exotic setting, laughs, and suspense.”

  —Janet Evanovich, author of Twelve Sharp

  “Vividly written and filled with hilariously eccentric Key West denizens, the novel is as twisty as a mangrove root and as fast moving as the local characters are laissez-faire.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Bone Island Mambo gives an atmospheric view of Key West, from a creepy deserted alley to the rush of Caroline Street…melding history with the present, Corcoran preserves Key West for tourists and residents alike.”

  —Philadelphia Daily News

  “Bone Island Mambo is Rutledge’s third appearance in an excellent series by Tom Corcoran, who moves deep into Carl Hiaasen territory with a story about murder mixed with the continuing development of old Key West.”

  —Minneapolis StarTribune

  “Exciting…[A] fast-paced adventure…Rutledge leads a fine tour of the area, from the Green Parrot bar to fishing flats in the mangrove forests. The best aspect of this novel is summed up in the line, ‘Key West used to be a drinking village with a fishing problem.’ Corcoran captures this local atmosphere extremely well.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Corcoran writes in a concise and breezy style, and Alex Rutledge should be attracting more fans to his laid-back lifestyle, which always includes a murder or two.”

  —Otto Penzler, Penzler Pick May 2001

  “Corcoran has a real feel for the laissez-faire Key West style, and he knows how to meld island history into his stories…. The mellow mood guarantees a good time.”

  —Booklist

  GUMBO LIMBO

  “No one—either genre or mainstream author—has crafted more evocative or resonant Key West scenes. In Corcoran’s hands, the island city becomes almost another character with its own heartbeat, personality, and rum-softened voice.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  “Corcoran lubricates his tangled plot with lashings of rum and beer and keeps it moving across shrewdly observed landscape that reeks with authenticity. The gumbo is spicy, the limbo swift in this hot pepper of a novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Gumbo Limbo…is often amusing. Key West, as well, continues to be a terrifically atmospheric setting for intrigue, and Corcoran’s wacko cast of characters is colorful. It’s nice to be back in the tropics.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Corcoran does for Key West what James Lee Burke does for the Louisiana Bayou country.”

  —Charleston Post and Courier

  “In Gumbo Limbo, Tom Corcoran delivers a well-plotted, atmospheric mystery that even surpasses his superior effort, The Mango Opera. The author brings a vivid imagination and a unique view to the Florida mystery fold. Let’s hope Alex Rutledge never runs out of film.”

  —South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  “Gumbo Limbo positively throbs with Key West’s conch crowd…Corcoran certainly knows his territory, and his characters.”

  —The Florida Times-Union

  “Tough, atmospheric noir.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  THE MANGO OPERA

  “[Corcoran] has put his ‘time on the water’ to great use and produced a book that reconnects my heart and brain to the Key West I knew.”

  —Jimmy Buffett

  “The Mango Opera is a powerful debut novel full of juicy characters, crackling dialogue, and thrill-a-minute action. Not since McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade has Key West been rendered so vividly and with such spare poetry. Tom Corcoran is the real thing—a novelist with a mature voice, a powerful vision, and a great ear for the rhythms of human speech. This is a smart, exciting novel, one not to be missed.”

  —James W. Hall, author of Body Language

  “It has its own quirky charm, a hard-driving pace, and a vividly colorful setting for its more-than-slightly eccentric citizens. Fast-moving and brightly written, this is a first novel that demands a second.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  “Intricate plotting, memorable characters and honest feel for his terrain put the author picture-perfect out of the gate.”

  —The Clarion Ledger

  “The Mango Opera, with its tropical setting, fruity characters, and hard-boiled dialogue, is a delicious treat.”

  —St. Petersburg Times

  Also by Tom Corcoran

  The Mango Opera

  Gumbo Limbo

  Bone Island Mambo

  Octopus Alibi

  Available from

  St. Martin’s/Minotaur Paperbacks

  AIR DANCE IGUANA

  TOM CORCORAN

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  This one’s for Larry Gray,

  whose grand life

  inspired so many others.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I offer special thanks to Marty Corcoran, Carolyn Inglis, Bob Dattila, Jerry and Elsie Metcalf, Charles Wood, Carolyn Ferguson, Sandie Herron, Marshall Smith, Teresa Murphy Clark, Lee Gurga, Sofia Karma Cello, Pat Boyer, Sonny Brewer, and Dinah George. Also to Janice Legow, who urged a youth to write and gave him a typewriter. Here’s what happened.

  Grief works its own perversions and betrayals: the shape of what we have lost is as subject to corruption as the mortal body.

  —Barry Unsworth

  Sacred Hunger

  “Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural.”

&nbs
p; —Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair

  by William Makepeace Thackeray

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  1

  A cockatoo’s screech pierced the dead man’s silence.

  I scanned the home across the canal, its second-story porch, then checked the morning sky. A high-coasting turkey vulture had spooked the caged bird. Moments later a yachtsman eighty yards to windward began dock-testing his unmuffled outboards. An oily blue cloud drifted down to shroud the suspended corpse. I knew that the body deserved more respect, that Ramrod Key should go quiet until the medical examiner lowered it from the boat-lift davit. On a deeper level, I hoped that people would treat my death with brief dignity if they learned that I had died, even if I’d been strung to a winch before dawn and hung like fresh-caught fish in a waterside market.

  The cockatoo screeched again.

  I switched lenses and went back to photographing the victim. In contrast to the late-June warmth, he looked trapped in midwinter with his blue, frostbitten hands.

  Bobbi Lewis raised her voice to beat the outboards. “What the hell happened to his left shoe?”

  “He wore out the toe fighting for altitude,” I said. “The killer dangled him just high enough to offer hope.”

  “But no chance to survive.” She sipped from a lidded Styrofoam cup. “Are you done here? Someone on the forensic squad said you might be dawdling.”

  “You should fire me,” I said.

  “Talk to Sheriff Liska. He might create a part-timers’ retirement program. Meanwhile, I like the way you work.”

  “My long career of evidence jobs?”

  “Don’t belittle yourself. You’ve got a mind for this game. But I really meant two mornings ago with sunlight sneaking between the miniblinds.”

  Once in a while she softened her hard-cop demeanor.

  “This early sun is screwing me up right now,” I said. “I need to take some insurance shots with fill flash.”

  “You’re right, Alex. This is not the place for romantic chatter.”

  “We have our jobs to do.”

  “Darling, that’s wonderful and insightful. The scene techs want to do theirs today.”

  When my phone rang at 6:40 that morning, I knew that one of the overlapping jurisdictions—either Monroe County or the City of Key West—needed help. The rude wake-up was my own damned fault. Several years back, after fifteen years of freelance ad agency and magazine work, I had started accepting crime-scene gigs for extra cash. But I kept stepping into crap that I couldn’t scrape off my shoes, and I had come to dread the sight of my own camera. I’d never wanted to be a cop, yet every time I saw a victim up close, I wanted justice.

  That’s not exactly true. My job wasn’t justice. I wanted revenge in the spirit of decency, contradictory or not. I had invented a few versions and barely survived. Revenge almost always claims two victims.

  Dawn calls were never a good sign. I let it ring through to the answering machine.

  One minute after the ringing stopped, my cell phone buzzed. I was awake enough to be curious, so I reached for the nightstand. No surprise: the window identified Detective Lewis of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, my lover for the past four months. Somehow, on our amorous roller-coaster ride, we had managed not to mix our personal lives and our jobs. Now she had broken a rule, had dialed my unlisted cell number to hire me for work she knew I wanted to avoid. In spite of a long list of reasons to ignore it, I took the call.

  It summoned me to a hanging next to a canal. I found it tough to decline, especially since Lewis’s persuasive manner didn’t invoke whining.

  I consoled myself with ten minutes in my outdoor shower before I left the house.

  Lewis moved to shade under the victim’s elevated house. She wore crisp khaki slacks, clean sneaks, a star-logo-emblazoned white polo shirt, and, clipped to her belt, the Monroe County badge. At five-eight, with the shoulders of a competitive swimmer, she looked capable but not powerful. I wished I had a dollar for every man—criminal or not, and including other deputies—who had made the mistake of thinking he could bully or belittle her.

  She studied the dead man, glanced over, and caught me staring. “What?” she said.

  “Are you zoned-out?” I said.

  She shook her head. “You know what I see?”

  There would be no correct answer. “What do you see?”

  “A prehistoric praying mantis that spit out a one-string marionette.”

  “Very creative,” I said.

  “Can you top that?”

  I looked at the stanchion, the swing arm, and the crane-like davit’s on-off switch, well out of the victim’s reach. I considered the noose and restraints and, as if part of the man’s punishment, the spectacle. “To me, it’s a professional hit,” I said. “Thought out, drawn out for cruelty, and foolproof.”

  “Good start,” said Lewis. “Go farther.”

  On what scale of analysis? I took a stab at animal simile. “I see an iguana with a hemp necklace.”

  “Where’s your action verb?”

  “An iguana dancing on air for his breakfast.”

  “That’s what you see?” she said. “An air dance iguana?”

  “It beats an upchucked marionette.”

  “Now you’ve twisted my creativity.”

  The neighbor up the canal revved and shut down his twin outboards. A last thick cloud of fumes drifted toward us.

  “Have you put a name to this guy?” I said.

  “Plumb Bob.”

  “What did you smoke this morning?”

  Lewis lowered her voice. “His name was Jack Mason. People called him Kansas Jack. With your new escape from downtown, Alex, you’d have been his neighbor. You could have bonded with him, shared a few beers.”

  “That’s the third time you’ve called it an escape, Bobbi. You make it sound like I’m running away from you, and I’m not. I’ll be one island up, a mile from here. What does that do, put our homes eighteen minutes apart instead of fifteen?”

  She shrugged. The phone on her belt buzzed. She unclipped it, suppressed a grin, and strode away.

  The cockatoo screeched again.

  We ought not reveal this weapon to the Third World.

  Morning sunlight sparkled on the canal’s surface. Cool yellows enveloped Kansas Jack Mason’s drooping body. His eyes bulged—hence my iguana impulse. He wore shorts and black socks. His shoes were utility specials, the black oxfords I had sworn off on leaving the military. His lean face and muscular arms suggested a man who might have shoveled coal in his youth, or snow, or manure. His belly bulk supported Bobbi’s assumption that he was a drinker. He’d probably done little labor of late beyond bending his elbow.

  The breeze finally offered me a favor, turned the corpse so that my camera caught reflections in the duct tape over his mouth. I tapped the shutter button six times, at different angles, then zoomed and focused on the rope around his neck. In my childhood I’d seen a diagram of the correct way to structure the knot. A person today would be investigated, hounded out of town and state for showing a youth how to tie a noose. As if the skill might lead one to a hellish career. My knowledge hadn’t inspired me to hang anyone.

  Tomorrow I would
start nine weeks of house-sitting on Little Torch Key. After almost thirty years in Key West, I would learn about life twenty-seven miles from the big island, among fish and birds and people who had elected to live closer to open water. Kansas Jack had existed at the bottom end of Lower Keys style. In contrast to nearby homes with their clean pea rock, proper trees, shaped shrubs, and slick watercraft, his place was a dump. He had arranged empty buckets under a homemade lean-to with a weedy thatched roof. Each five-gallon plastic bucket had its own category: plumber’s trash, wood scraps, parched aloe clusters, boat-motor parts. A row of pineapples along his home’s east wall had sprouted and wilted, been wasted. A veteran center-console Mako named Swizzle Rod rested sun-bleached and engine-free on a boat trailer with two flat tires. Its blue Bimini top had frayed to pale pennants, and its name had faded to a pink swirl on the transom. If the man’s demise hadn’t been so evil, his hands hadn’t been bound by monofilament fishing line, I could have suspected murder-suicide. Kansas Jack had killed his environment, then took himself out. But this scene spoke only of murder, at the ugly end of a sad spectrum.

  I heard a distant helicopter, then a go-fast boat out in Newfound Harbor Channel. With the exhaust fumes dissipated, the smell of sour plankton captured my nose. I framed a shot of the yard, the expanse between the davit and the house.

  “Take your time, Rutledge.”

  I knew the voice.

  “Gaze about and soak up paradise,” he said. “We got all fucking week.”

  I had known Sheriff Fred “Chicken Neck” Liska since the early nineties. Before his recent Monroe County campaign and election, during his tenure as a city police detective, he had prided himself on his disco-era outfits. For the past year or so, I’d been surprised each time I’d seen him in khakis and the badge-embroidered polo shirt. I asked one time if he missed his old image, the Nik-Nik shirts, and he shrugged and mumbled something about “protective coloration.”