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A Mad Mick Murphy
Mystery CHAPTER FOUR I rode my bike to Sandy’s Café on White Street to meet Bob for café con leches, on Monday. Sandy’s, a small window-service stand, serves hot con leches along with a mixture of breakfast sandwiches and lunches. The con leche is a mixture of strong Cuban espresso, heaped with sugar and a lot of hot milk, a favorite drink in Key West’s Cuban neighborhoods. The January weather had improved and white clouds sailed across the blue sky and made me want to be out on the water. The sun brightened the street and promised to warm the winter day. We took our con leches to the newspaper vending racks and Bob tossed down a small manila envelope. I opened it and took out computer-generated photos of Lu and two Latin men. “Those are two of the guys,” Bob said. In the photos, the men smiling, their hands around Lu’s thin waist. “How’d she do this? Where’s the third guy?” “I don’t know about the third guy, but she got the shots for Rick’s wall-of-shame. She asked them if they wanted to be on it, told them all the regulars were.” “Yeah, but those are all Polaroid’s.” “She had the bar back snap quick shots with her digital. The girl has imagination.” Lu keeps her digital camera close because, she said, one day someone famous would come into Rick’s and she was going to get that person’s photo. I stared at the photos. They looked like the same shot, and I didn’t recognize the two men. Lu had cropped them close and printed two sets on five-by-seven-inch paper. “Do you recognize them?” “No.” “Me either,” I said. “Do we take them to Richard?” Bob hunched his shoulders and drank coffee. “Maybe we can find out who they really are?” He swirled his Styrofoam cup, to mix the coffee and sugar. “Lu found out their boat’s in Conch Harbor and they said it’s big and fast.” “Smugglers.” I finished my con leche. “Could they be smugglers and somehow Tom got mixed up with them?” “I don’t know what Tom would have to do with smugglers, but my guess is that’s what they are.” I called Richard and offered to buy him a con leche and cheese toast for breakfast and he said he’d be right over. I put one set of the photos back in the envelope and placed it in my bike’s basket. I ordered more café con leches for us, along with Cuban cheese toast, and waited for Richard. He walked down Virginia Street. He was in uniform and nodded to people he passed outside Fausto’s market, sometimes stopping to shake hands. Cars sped along White Street and some honked, and he waved at them, as he crossed against the light. “Thank you.” Richard sipped his con leche as he unwrapped a cheese toast sandwich. “And what’s this going to cost me?” The morning air was already warming, promising sunshine and humidity. It was a chamber of commerce day, and cold blanketed the northeast, making Key West a winter destination of choice. The westerly wind pattern blew warm air from Southern Mexico across Cuba to Key West. I lay the three photos on top of the wrapped cheese breads. Richard looked at them and then at me. “I recognize the bartender,” he said between sips and bites. “What else am I looking at?” “The two guys who have been bragging about beating up Tom.” I took a cheese toast, unwrapped it, and dunked it in the con leche. “They have a boat at Conch Harbor.” “Who are they bragging to?” “Lu overhead them last weekend and again when this photo was taken.” I took a bite of the toast. “The bartender?” “Yeah, the girl in the photo.” “Ah, Lu the bartender. And, you expect me to do what? Arrest them on this information?” “Roust ‘em,” Bob said. “See what you can get from them.” “You guys know it doesn’t work like that.” He chewed on his cheese toast. “Will she come in and talk to Morales? If she does, their attorneys call it bar bragging to impress a cute girl, blame the liquor, and they’ll be out.” “Maybe they have warrants out on them?” Bob sipped his coffee. “That would be a reason to bring them in.” “What names did they give her?” “They’re written on the back.” I took another bite of my cheese toast. Richard turned the photos over. “Jose Lopez and Carlos Gonzales. Do you think they’re real names?” “Don’t know,” I said, “but we can go by the marina and see what names they gave there.” “I don’t see a boat name.” He looked at the back of the photos, again. “Big and fast.” Bob sipped his con leche. “We’ll find it.” “I’ll run the names, but you two stay away from the marina and these two. Deal?” “Deal,” I lied. |