Chapter 11 of the novel, The Talking Mime

Chapter 11

The Woman's Touch

     Wilma Krebs settled her bulk onto the comfortable couch behind our teak table and ran her fingers through her hair with the same exasperated motion that most men do with shot haircuts.

“There are advantages to having women detectives at crime scenes,” she said. “My men opened that container in the bathroom that said ‘shit paper’ written on it and when they saw it was full of toilet paper that’s as far as they got. Their mother’s probably did all the dirty work when they were kids. Christ, most of deputies wives probably pick up their husband’s dirty socks off the floor.”
      I wondered immediately if Wilma was married and what kind of relationship she might have with her husband. But I decided not to dwell on that thought for long and kept my eyes focused on the nearly brewed coffee.

It turned out that Nym had seen the toilet paper receptacle in the forward head, noting from the dirt on the floor that it had been moved. On most boats — particularly where the captain is worried about stopping up the rubber hoses that transfer the waste water (and anything else) from the toilet to either a holding tank or overboard — there’s a cute container for soiled paper and strict instructions not to flush paper.
       Rocinante has the same rule, particularly because I have spent many hours freeing up stopped up toilet hoses.

“The nails were wrapped up tight in a piece of off-white tissue, like kleenex,” Nym said. “That’s why I noticed. The tissue was a slightly different color than the toilet paper.” I marveled at the female immune system. I was sure if I stuck my hand in a poop-paper container without gloves, I would come down with a nearly instant case of Black Water Fever.

We all stared at the five finger nails, now secure in a clear plastic evidence bag in front of Wilma on the table. I shuddered, thinking how they probably were removed from the hand. But I couldn’t see them closely enough to note any tool marks or breaks from being forcibly pulled out.

“My instincts tell me that these are from the hand that landed on your deck. And we’ve got a pretty good idea whose hand it might be,” Wilma said, sighing. “Forensics will tell us for sure, but the nails go with hand. Christ, I hope the sheriff gets back early from his vacation.”
      I remembered looking at the hand on the desk in the harbormaster's office and couldn't remember if there were still fingernails attached.

Jacob and Jerrod couldn’t contain themselves any longer and started firing questions at Wilma, doing a passable imitation of the White House press corps. I jumped in and shouted “Enough!” I could tell Wilma was going to tell us something, but only if we gave her enough room to let a few words out of her mouth.

      Wilma nodded toward the coffee mugs on the counter and while I found one that was relatively clean. She sighed again and started filling in some gaps while I played boat steward.

“A month ago that boat pulled in full of party people, bunch of rich-looking people, pretty common this time of the year. About a half-dozen men and about as many women. You could tell they didn’t get out on the water much. All generally pale skins, except where they got sunburned sitting out on the decks of the bars in town. They threw a lot of money around for a couple of days, then a limo showed up one afternoon and took most of them up to San Jose and the airport.

I set a coffee mug down in front of Wilma while she paused. She chewed on her lip, as if she was trying to decide whether to tell us anymore or just thank us.
      Maybe it was Nym's coffee, but she took a breath and let go again.

“We talked with the limo driver who took the people,” she said after a moment. “And of them we think was Johnny Rojas, even though he used the name Franklin Parker when he was in town. At least he used some credit cards named Franklin Parker.”

Nym’s right eyebrow shot up slightly, but I wasn’t sure whether it was at the name Johnny Rojas or if it was Franklin Parker. One name sounded like a gangster to me, the other someone who gave a lot to charity, played polo on the weekends and probably sat on the boards of corporations.

Nym shot me a look that clearly said, ‘don’t ask’ anything right now. So I picked up the coffee pot and waved it at Wilma, who shook her head and studied the outside of the mug for a moment. Then Nym spoke up for the first time since Wilma had started sipping the coffee.

“I heard Rojas was killed in a boating accident more than a year ago,” Nym said. “It was in Florida, wasn’t it? Somebody supposedly ran over him with a big ski boat and he was hit with the propeller. They said they only found parts of him.”
      I envisioned a seagull flying the thousands of miles from Florida to California, all with an intact hand its mouth. I almost laughed.
       Nym caught my eye and gave me another sharp look. She knows how my mind works and most of the time would have laughed, too. But she was in full investigator mode and jokes were mostly off limits.

Wilma waived her coffee mug at me, changing her mind about pumping more caffeine. “I had never heard of him until we got an anonymous call at the Sheriff’s Department that he was in town using the name Franklin Parker,” Wilma said. “We’re still not sure it was Rojas. We didn’t get any pictures of the guy, but a couple of the people who saw him here have I.D.ed a mug shot of Rojas. But it's not a sure thing.”

The boys were beginning to get restless, conditioned by years of television in which most mysteries are solved in a half an hour. I was getting a little impatient, too, and decided to go ahead and push a little.

“I don’t mean to sound too ignorant, but I don’t think either the boys or I know who this Rojas is, or what the connection is to the fingernail collection you have on my table,” I said.

 Wilma actually smiled. “Fingernail collection. Ha! You’ve got a cop’s sick sense of humor,” she said.

     While I decided it was ok to beam just a little, Wilma opened the evidence bag and peered in. “I don’t know whose fingernails these are, but I do know that Johnny Rojas, aka Franklin Parker, aka William Patterson, aka Simon Sayes, was — hmm... maybe is — an honest-to-god hit man, according to what I've read. He was arrested several times in the late 1990s in New Jersey. Then he testified in one of the Gambino-family trials and disappeared. Maybe into the Witness Protection Program, I don’t know."

I couldn’t resist.

“Simon Sayes? You're kidding. Simon says? Was he a comedian, too.”

Wilma laughed again, but quickly zipped up the evidence bag as if she was afraid the fingernails would leap out. “The FBI won’t tell us if they think he's still alive. So I think it might have been Rojas in town.”

It was an impatient Nym who asked the obvious question. “Did we find Johnny Rojas’ hand on our deck?"

Wilma slugged some coffee and then said a tentative no. “The hand was in pretty bad shape, but the thumb print was good enough to lift a print. doesn't match what’s on file for Rojas. But that diamond ring was seen on the hand of one of the other men from the boat. The whole bunch paid for everything in cash, so we didn’t get anything on the other people except for some physical descriptions. The waiters and waitresses were a lot more interested in how big the tips were than what these people looked like.”

I grabbed the coffee pot and leaned over to top off the coffee cup for her while she and Nym had a side conversation about the general lack of cooperation between the federal government and local authorities. I couldn’t understand much of it, except it sounded more like people complaining more about their HMO health coverage than some big crime scenario.
      "So, why did you search the boat in the first place?" I asked. "Were you looking for some clue where Rojas might have gone?"
       Wilma waved her coffee mug at me again and got her refill before answering.
      "Yes and no. You finding the hand with the diamond ring and the I.D. of Rojas made that boat a pretty hot ticket to take a look at," she said. "So you could say we were kind of fishing, at first."
       I winced at Wilma's bad joke, as Nym jumped in.
     "Whoever tried to sink the boat wasn't worried about these fingernails," Nym said. "There's something else on that boat they don't want anyone to find, I bet."

       Wilma grinned and nodded her head and sighed, a big, I'm-tired sigh.
      "Absolutely," she said. "And thanks to all of you, we have some time to check out just what that is."
      We were just finishing up the pot of coffee - the boys beaming - when Wilma's police radio crackled to life with the voice of one of the deputies stationed on The Talking Mime.
       "Sheriff Wilma, dispatch just radioed and said they heard Monterey Harbor Patrol talking about someone spotting floater near Breakwater Cove a few minutes ago."
      I looked at Nym and mouthed the word "floater."
     "It's could be a human body, Professor Cameron," Wilma answered without being asked. "But it could also be a dead dolphin or something else."
      Jacob and Jerrod looked at each other and I knew a new term was now burned into their memories and would be popping up for the rest of the trip. And I also suspected that my crew would now suddenly be much more interested in leaving Capitola and heading south across the bay to the city of Monterey - perhaps to find a berth at Breakwater Cove Marina.

Chapter 12

Not just a great brandy