Clownfish Blues Read online

  Knocking on the glass. “Open the blinds.”

  “So you’re going to force me to keep working with them?” said Reevis.

  “I’ve got kids—”

  “I know, college,” said Reevis. “Okay, if it’s only temporary, I’ll play ball. You gave me my big break at this station, so it’s only right that I return the favor.”

  “I’m glad to hear you feel that way,” said the editor. “Then you’ll completely understand . . .”

  The assignment editor got up and opened the door to his office. Nigel and Günter stormed in and stuck the camera in the young reporter’s face.

  “Reevis!” yelled his editor. “You’re fired!”

  “What?”

  “I’m shocked and saddened!” said Shug. “Of all people, I never thought you would falsify material to sensationalize a story!”

  “You’re actually firing me?”

  “It’s only temporary. We’ll rehire you right after they film the security guys ejecting you from the building. Nigel already has your new employment application.”

  Nigel waved the document. “Viewers love a comeback story.”

  The guards came in and grabbed Reevis.

  “But we have to hurry,” said Nigel. “Your next assignment is a long drive up north.”

  Chapter 15

  Last Case of the Day

  The flags of the United States and the state of Florida stood against the wall. A clock ticked. A bailiff stood and tried not to yawn. The court stenographer sat with fingers at the ready.

  Between the flags, a man in a black robe set some papers down and looked out over his reading glasses. “Let me see if I have this straight, counsel. You are asking me to return seized property to a client you refuse to identify?”

  “That’s correct,” said Brook.

  Another attorney jumped to his feet. “Your Honor, I move that you immediately dismiss this specious appeal against the upstanding municipality of Coral Cove!”

  “Calm down,” said the judge. “You’re already winning, so can we just wrap this up and get to dinner?”

  “Of course, Your Honor.”

  “Now then,” said the judge. “Unlike regular criminal cases, seizure appeals require a certain burden of proof upon the person seeking to retrieve their property.” He turned to Brook. “If your clients won’t come forward to testify, I find it insurmountably problematic for your case.”

  “Your Honor,” said Brook. “The fact that I won’t identify my client is our case.”

  The judge took off his glasses and searched for words. Finally, “What?”

  “Why don’t you ask opposing counsel?”

  The other attorney just gave a clueless shrug.

  The judge sat back and gazed at the plaintiff’s table. “Why don’t you simply come out and say what’s on your mind in plain terms.”

  “Your Honor,” said Brook. “It’s so hugely obvious that everyone is missing it. The city of Coral Cove is claiming that the appeal should be denied because my client won’t come forward.”

  The other lawyer was back on his feet. “That’s right, Your Honor. This was a justified drug-trafficking forfeiture designed to undercut the scourge of narcotics, exactly as the legislature intended.” He swelled with cockiness and gave Brook an accusing glare. “If her clients won’t present themselves, I think we all have a pretty good idea why.”

  The judge raised his eyebrows in her direction.

  “If I may continue,” said Brook. “The city is making an issue of me not identifying my clients. But it was their police department that made the traffic stop and took property. Why don’t they have the ID?”

  The judge’s head swung. “Is that true?”

  The municipal attorney nervously flipped through papers in his briefcase. “I’m sure it’s in here somewhere.”

  “That’s not even close to good enough,” said the judge. “But we’ll get back to that. What was your basis to seize the money?”

  “Our canine alerted to drugs.”

  “Did you find any?”

  “No, but there was a large, unexplained amount of currency, and our experience has found that such cash often has trace amounts of drugs that our dogs detect.”

  Brook held up a newspaper. “According to an investigation by the Miami Herald, most twenty-dollar bills in the Metro-Dade area have at least some drug residue. The newspaper collected sample money to be tested from prominent businesspeople, politicians, even clergy. This article has been accepted as evidence in other jurisdictions.”

  “I object,” said her adversary. “Unless she’s prepared to swear in these reporters—”

  “Won’t be necessary,” said Brook. “My main point is they never intended to charge my client with any offense. In fact, they didn’t even issue a ticket for the ostensible traffic offense, and neither of the vehicle’s occupants had a valid driver’s license between them. Yet they were still let go.”

  The judge looked the other way for an answer. The city attorney brimmed with a smile. “Your Honor, she just made my argument. Smugglers often use undocumented aliens as couriers. That’s the real reason her clients didn’t have a driver’s license and aren’t present today. They’re here illegally!”

  “What do you have to say?” asked the judge.

  “He’s absolutely right,” said Brook. “They are here illegally.”

  “Wait, you’re admitting this in open court?”

  “If I could call a witness.”

  The judge shook his head to clear the legal haze. “Go ahead.”

  A police officer put one hand on the Bible and raised the other. Brook approached.

  “Officer Malloy,” said Brook. “You handle the police canine named Nixon?”

  “He’s more like a partner.”

  “How does he rate as a drug sniffer?”

  “In a controlled test, he correctly identified all twenty-three sources.”

  “Is he obedient and easily trained?”

  “Completely.”

  “Could you make him bark at will?”

  “I guess I could.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Brook. “Does he bark for any other reason?”

  “Well . . .” Malloy broke into a grin. “For some reason, squirrels.”

  “And do you detain these squirrels?”

  The bailiff snickered and quickly covered his mouth.

  “Counsel!” said the judge. “I will not indulge such sarcasm, especially in disrespect for a law enforcement officer.”

  “My apologies. That was out of line,” said Brook. “And I can’t do this anymore. I’m just going to tell you how I feel. Yes, I represent illegal aliens, and what they’re doing is wrong. But there’s a bigger wrong. On a personal level, I come from a family tree full of officers, and have nothing but respect for the vast majority of police in our state who don’t pull these shenanigans, and don’t deserve to have their integrity tainted. Forfeiture started out well intentioned enough, except there’s so much temptation that it’s gotten completely out of hand. There’s a sheriff on the west coast driving a confiscated Hummer, for heaven’s sake—”

  The judge held up a hand for her to stop. “And everyone knows that migrant workers don’t have bank accounts . . . I’m way ahead of you. My dad and both brothers were on the force.” He turned and glared at the city attorney. “Appeal is granted.”

  The lawyer sighed. “I understand, Your Honor.” He began putting files back in his briefcase.

  “Go get it.”

  The attorney looked up quickly. “Get what?”

  “The money.”

  “Now?”

  “You don’t want to test my patience because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in this courtroom. I’m requesting that the state attorney convene a grand jury to investigate your seizure practices . . .” Then toward Brook: “Hope you have calendar space for a few more clients.”

  Cassadaga

  The silver Corvette rolled through the t
iny paranormal community, passing a number of pastel wooden cottages that composed psychic row.

  “Look,” said Coleman. “The first regular sign. ‘Warning: Neighborhood Watch.’”

  “Perhaps the most ominous of all,” said Serge. “What idiot would pull a burglary in this town? You’re definitely going to get caught, possibly even before you enter the property.”

  “There’s Madam Bovary’s,” said Coleman. “That last pink house with all the painted boards nailed to a post by the door: ‘Palm Reading,’ ‘Numerology,’ ‘Past-Life Regression,’ ‘The Psychic Is In.’”

  Serge walked up the porch steps and glanced at a cheerful silk flag of flowers and rainbows and three words: Laugh, Live, Love.

  Knock, knock, knock.

  The door opened. “Please come in.”

  A thirty-something woman with a wreath of daisies in her hair led them into the parlor, lit only by the orange flame of a kerosene lamp. They all took seats around a circular oak table usually used for séances. A crystal ball sat in the middle.

  Serge brought out his own ball. He set it next to the glass one.

  Madam Bovary looked up in confusion. “You brought a toy?”

  “The Eight Ball is my quality-control element,” said Serge. “Like a double-blind test. I want to believe all this mumbo jumbo, but questions have arisen. For instance, since Cassadaga calls itself ‘The Psychic Capital of the World,’ then it should also be ‘The Lottery-Winning Capital.’ But where are all the mansions?”

  A theatrical smile. “Skepticism is healthy.”

  Serge checked the message window in his Eight Ball. “So far so good.”

  “Let me have your hands . . .” She took them in hers. “Now close your eyes . . .”

  “They’re closed,” said Serge. “But this better not be a ruse to silence the Eight Ball.”

  “Shhhh, relax . . . Focus on a point in the center of your mind . . . Do you see anything? . . .”

  “It’s just dark with barely visible little blobs floating around, except when I try to look at one, it just floats off to the side. What is that fuckery?”

  “You’re still too tense,” said Bovary. “Take a deep breath. Let go and float . . .”

  “I’m floating . . .”

  A loud thud.

  “Holy Jesus!” Serge jumped up. “What was that? Some dead relative trying to contact me? If they’ve been able to watch me all these years, I’m going to be sooooooo embarrassed . . . Who was it? My grandfather?”

  The woman sighed and pointed at the floor.

  Coleman lay sprawled on a Tibetan rug. “Time for my nap.”

  Serge checked the Eight Ball. “He’s right . . . Proceed.”

  “Uh . . .” Bovary looked dubiously at the unconscious guest beginning to snore. “. . . This is highly unusual.”

  “You’re the one with the weird town.”

  This time it was the psychic who needed a deep breath. “Now then, you mentioned when you called from the spiritual center that you had an interest in past-life regression?”

  “That’s right. I’m all about history,” said Serge. “If I’ve had any past lives, I’d like to know of any pivotal roles I might have played, like inventing the cotton gin. Did anyone actually see Eli Whitney tighten that last screw? We need to tease out the bullshit.”

  Serge’s eyesight had finished adjusting in the dim light. He reassessed the woman across from him. Not too hard on the eyes. And the daisies in her raven hair brought out a certain wild-child allure.

  Likewise, she was noticing him. The eyes, smile, confidence. “. . . Oh, sorry, I lost my place there for a second.”

  “It happens . . . Past lives?”

  “Clear your consciousness and tell me if anything comes to you.”

  Serge began to nod. “A pirate.”

  “Pirate?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why, but just now I got the odd sensation that I used to be a buccaneer. Think it means anything?”

  “A buccaneer?”

  Serge noticed her voice had become throatier. She slowly ran a hand across her stomach, the top finger furtively tracing the underside of her breasts.

  Serge winked. “You like pirates?”

  A gulp. “Keep talking . . .”

  He looked around. “You think this is the best place?”

  “I know a better one.”

  She took him by the hand, and they had torn off each other’s clothes before they got to the back room. Serge picked her up and tossed her onto a plush Elizabethan bed.

  She sat up. “Wait, where are you going?”

  “To get my Eight Ball. Just be a sec.”

  He quickly returned and dove on top of her.

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! . . . You’re a pirate! . . . Faster, faster . . . Close your eyes and keep regressing! . . . But whatever you do, don’t stop! . . .”

  “I believe I can speak for the Eight Ball that you have nothing to worry about.”

  Serge closed his eyes and the darkness with drifting blotches soon gave way to a sparkling light . . .

  A skull and crossbones flapped over the schooner as it crashed through waves in the Gulf of Mexico.

  The water was a deep cerulean blue, dotted with enormous loggerhead turtles. A peg-legged sailor in the crow’s nest sighted something in his telescope.

  “Land ahoy!”

  The creaking ship tacked starboard on a new course roughly seventy nautical miles west of Key West.

  The land took shape in the telescope. Eight small islands scattered across the top of an atoll that rose abruptly from the fathoms.

  The Dry Tortugas.

  The ship’s crew knew the islands well, as did most sailors who charted these waters. The land was low with sparse vegetation and generally of little value in restocking provisions. With a single exception.

  Bird Key.

  It isn’t there anymore, washed away by the No-Name hurricane of 1935, but this was still 1788, and any seasoned mariner in the gulf knew that during the summer months, thousands of sooty and noddy terns migrated down from the Carolinas and converted the island into a rookery.

  The schooner got as close to the key as its draft allowed and dropped anchor. The rowboats were lowered and two dozen swashbucklers made their way ashore. What they did next would seem baffling today, even mean-spirited, but there was a method. They began stomping every last one of the eggs the birds had laid in the low brush. Then they went back to the ship and slept fitfully on empty stomachs.

  The next afternoon, the rowboats returned. Somehow, the crews had learned that destroying the eggs triggered a procreation instinct in the birds, and they immediately laid fresh ones that were suitable for human consumption. This time the pirates were more careful as they harvested.

  They didn’t call them the Dry Tortugas for nothing, because there was no fresh water to be had. The eggs were about all the islands were good for. That’s why they were also perfect for a trademark seafaring practice of the eighteenth century.

  Marooning.

  The word conjures all kinds of romantic images of a shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe, or Tom Hanks going down in a FedEx plane.

  In actual practice, marooning wasn’t intended to strand someone to live out their years in isolation wearing palm-frond pants. It was a highly sadistic ritual involving the selection of an island with nothing to offer, not even protection from the sun. A sandbar worked perfectly, and death was excruciating, from dehydration, exposure and wholesale organ failure. If the crew was Catholic, as many were, then there was a final, ultimate cruelty.

  The condemned man was rowed ashore and given a flintlock pistol with a single lead ball and enough powder for one shot. The end was so horrible that the temptation to take one’s own life would become overwhelming. But under Catholic doctrine, suicide would damn the soul for eternity. And there you were: death with a dilemma garnish.

  This particular crew had grown frighteningly low on their stocks. Fruit and meat were long gone, leaving stale, insect-r
idden bread that was even less appetizing than hardtack during the Civil War. Bird Key just changed all that, and now it was time to crack the casks. Rum and eggs for everyone!

  It carried on late into the starry night. Orion, Taurus, Ursa Major. The captain—a full-bearded man with a fuller frame—became surly with drink. His eyes locked on one of his more popular crew members, “Calico Kid” Serge. There had been a woman a fortnight ago in Trinidad. One of the captain’s regular wenches. As the rum fermented his brain, the captain lavishly entertained the suspicion that back in port, Serge had left him sloppy seconds. Because he had.

  And now here was Serge, the center of the crew’s merry attention again, spazzing out with hyperactivity, walking around the deck on his hands, spinning yarns and floating grandiose concepts that wouldn’t find traction for years. “No, really, I call it the cotton gin . . .”

  It was already in the captain’s eyes. A decision had been made.

  They pulled anchor at first light. Then the captain summarily ordered it dropped again before they had fully cleared the atoll.

  Bird Key behind the ship—even with its unsustainably low covering of plants—was too good for Serge. The captain had his mind set on another of the islands, the one now called Hospital Key. It got the name because an epidemic of yellow fever hit Fort Jefferson on nearby Garden Key, and that’s where they quarantined the stricken soldiers. But the fort and the disease hadn’t arrived yet, and the island was still nameless. It was just called a sandbar.

  The rowboats reached the shallows and Serge was tossed over the side. He stumbled ashore as the captain roared his amusement. Serge fell to his knees weeping as the captain hurled insults in an archaic construct that today would roughly translate: “Who’s the big man now?”

  Just before shoving off, the first officer tossed Serge the suicide weapon, which he quickly loaded, and shot the captain.

  Splash.

  “What a beautiful day!” said Serge. “Let’s go have some fun!”

  They helped him back into the small boat and returned to the ship . . .

  Chapter 16

  Central Florida