He plopped down in his chair and leaned back, waiting.
“I’m aware of that,” I said. “I know she’s dead.”
“Yeah, I was pretty shocked when I heard about it. The cops stormed in a couple weeks back with their rubber hoses and thumbscrews. I’ll tell you what my buddies told them, nobody here knows shit about what happened to Straw. She was real quiet, a real fine lady. Used to sit right over there.”
He pointed at an empty table not far from where I was standing. “Used to sit there all the time, just minding her own business.”
“Did any of you get to know her?”
“Sure.”
He shrugged. “We all drank a few brews together. She was partial to Coronas and lime. But I wouldn’t say the people here knew her personally. I mean, I’m not sure anybody could even tell you where she was from, except that it was from the land of snowbirds.”
“Richmond, Virginia,” I said.
“You know,” he went on, “a lot of people come and go around here. Key West’s a live-and-let-live place. A lot of starving artists here, too. Straw wasn’t any different from a lot of people I meet–
except most people I meet don’t end up murdered. Damn.”
He scratched his beard and slowly shook his head from side to side. “It’s really hard to imagine.
Kind of blows your mind.”
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
“Yeah, like why the hell do you smoke? I thought doctors are supposed to know better.”
“It’s a filthy, unhealthy habit. And I do know better. And I think you may as well fix me a rum and tonic because I like to drink, too. Barbancourt with a twist, please.”
“Four, eight, what’s your pleasure?” He challenged my repertoire of fine booze.
“Twenty-five, if you’ve got it.”
“Nope. Can only get the twenty-five-year-old stuff in the.islands. So smooth it will make you cry.”
“The best you’ve got, then,” I said.
He shot his finger at a bottle behind him, familiar with its amber glass and five stars on the label.
Barbancourt Rhum, aged in barrels for fifteen years, just like the bottle I had discovered in Beryl’s kitchen cabinet.
“That would be wonderful,” I said.
Grinning and suddenly energized, he got up from his chair, his hands moving with the dexterity of a juggler as he snapped up bottles, measuring a long stream of liquid Haitian gold without benefit of a jigger, which was followed by sparkling splashes of tonic. For the grand finale, he deftly sliced a perfect sliver of a Key lime that looked as if it had just been plucked from the tree, squeezed it into my drink and ran a bruised lemon peel around the rim of the glass. Wiping his hands on the towel he had tucked into the waistband of his faded Levi’s, he slid a paper napkin across the bar and presented me with his art. It was, without question, the best rum and tonic I had ever raised to my lips, and I told him so.
“This one’s on the house,” he said, waving off the ten-dollar bill I extended to him. “Any doctor who smokes and knows her rum’s all right by me.”
Reaching under the bar, he got out his own pack.
“I tell ya,” he went on, shaking out the match, “I get so damn tired of hearing all this self-righteous shit about smoking and all the rest of it. You know what I mean? People make you feel like a damn criminal. Me, I say live and let live. That’s my motto.”
“Yes. I know exactly what you mean,’ I said as we took long, hungry drags.
“Always something they got to judge you for. You know, what you eat, what you drink, who you date.”
“People certainly can be extremely judgmental and unkind,” I answered.
“Amen to that.”
He sat back down in the shade of his bottle-lined shelter while the sun baked the top of my head.
“Okay,” he said, “so you’re Straw’s doctor. What is it you’re trying to find out, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“There are various circumstances that occurred prior to her death that are very confusing,” I said.