“Look around here—where else would they be going? What else is there to see?”
“In other words, you would like us to remove the deceased as quickly as possible.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Charles Chelsea.
“Because it’s competition.”
The publicity man’s eyes narrowed. Frostily he said, “That’s not at all what I meant.” Giving up on the black policeman, he appealed to the coroner’s sense of propriety: “All the young children hanging around—they shouldn’t be witness to something like this. Vacations are for fun and fantasy, not for looking at dead bodies.”
Jim Tile said, “They seem to be enjoying it.”
“We didn’t ask for an audience,” the coroner added. He was accustomed to gawkers in Miami. Shopping malls were the worst; drug dealers were always leaving murdered rivals in the trunks of luxury automobiles at shopping malls. The crowds were unbelievable, pushing and shoving, everybody wanting a peek at the stiff.
The coroner told Charles Chelsea: “This always happens. It’s just a sick fact of human nature.”
“Well, can’t you hurry up and get him—it—down? The longer it stays up there, the more people will stop.” Chelsea paused to survey the size of the crowd. “This is horrible,” he said, “right in the middle of Summerfest. It’s giving all these folks the wrong idea.”
Jim Tile couldn’t wait to hear more. “The wrong idea about what?”
“About Florida,” said Charles Chelsea. The indignation in his tone was authentic. “This is not the image we’re trying to promote. Surely you can understand.”
Grimly he turned and disappeared into the gallery of onlookers.
The coroner once again fixed his attention on what was hanging from the Card Sound Bridge. He asked Jim Tile, “So what do you think about getting him down from there?”
“Easy,” said the trooper. “I’ll go up and cut the line.”
“You really think that’s safe?”
Jim Tile looked at him curiously.
“With all these people milling around,” said the coroner. “What if he hits somebody? Look at all these damn boats.” He frowned and shook his head. “I think we’ve got a serious liability risk here. Somebody could be injured or killed.”
“By a falling corpse,” said Jim Tile thoughtfully.
“You betcha. Look at all these damn tourists.”
Jim Tile took out a bullhorn and ordered the boats to weigh anchor. He also instructed the bystanders to get off the jetty under threat of arrest. Then he went to the top of the bridge and quickly found what he was looking for: a nest of heavy monofilament fishing line tangled around the base of a concrete column. One end of the monofilament was attached to the type of flat plastic spool used by Cuban handline fishermen. The other end of the line led over the side of the bridge, and was attached to the dead man’s neck.
The trooper got a 35-millimeter camera out of the patrol car and took pictures of the column and the knot. Then he got down on his belly and extended his head over the side of the bridge and snapped several aerial-type photographs of the hanging corpse.
After Jim Tile put the camera away, he waved twice at the coroner, still standing on the rocks below. Then, when the coroner gave the signal, the trooper unfolded his pocketknife and cut through the monofilament fishing line.
He heard the crowd go ooooohhhh before he heard the splash. A marine patrol boat idled up to the dead man and fished him out of the water with a short-handled gaff.
They were loading the body into the van when the coroner told his theory to Jim Tile. “I don’t think it’s a suicide,” he said.
“What, somebody was using him for bait?”
“No, this is what I think happened,” said the coroner, demonstrating with his arms. “You know how these Cuban guys twirl the fishlines over their heads real fast to make a long cast? It looks to me like he messed up and wrapped the damn thing tight around his neck, like a bolo. That’s what I think.” He picked up a clipboard and began to write. “What was the color of his eyes? Brown, I think.”
“I didn’t look,” said Jim Tile. He wasn’t crazy about dead bodies.