nobody county. Even on their days off. It’s a secret sanctuary, with eats. A midday mental oasis.”
“Pressure so soon? You’ve been in office how many weeks?”
“My first pledge, when I took the office, was to check out county units named with an acronym. In my experience, acronyms are money sponges. Politicians love to fund acronyms. They never react when you tell them all that cash went to FAST or CATCH or STOMP or FUNK . They say, ‘What’s FAST ?’ and you say Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team. End of question. Ka-ching with the money, lots of zeros. Now I’m boss. I know. Automatic funding means automatic loafing. It so happens, the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team is a good operation, underfunded. But FUNK ?
The Friendly Urban Neighborhood Kops? Tell me why they gave away a thousand dollars’ worth of Jamaican-flag-colored balloons. Make friends with black kids? I mean, where’s ‘urban’ in the Keys? And, no shit, they had a Special Homicide Investigative Team. Figure out that one.”
Liska’s story reminded me of Sam Wheeler’s story about a Psy-Ops office in Saigon. Someone had had the idea of handing out red-white-and-blue rubber balls to Vietnamese kids, an effort to build loyalty to the invading forces. The kids didn’t want them. Psychological Operations Headquarters was awash in cardboard boxes full of rubber balls. The desk jockeys invented a game. They painted numbers on wastebaskets, put them around their desks. They took turns throwing the balls into the slow-moving ceiling fans, having them ricochet into the cans. Different cans were worth different points. They worked on timing, and velocity,and angles. They wagered huge amounts of money. They did it for months on end, then returned to the States wearing combat theater service ribbons.
I looked at five empty plates on the table. Chicken Neck Liska had the metabolism of a high-torque blender.
I said: “You don’t eat at your desk twice a week.”
“You’re right I get to Bobalu’s fairly often.”
“Do I dare ask about the cigarette packs taped together?”
“My New Year’s resolution. I start each day with a fixed number, which, this week, means fifty-one. This is my daily ration, this kit. I reduce the count in the packs by one cigarette per week. By July it’ll be one pack, a year from now I’ll be clean. Next year I can resolve to stop chewing on my steering wheel.”
“Something else is bothering you.”
“You bet,” said Liska. “First we got Caroline Street, like my case from a year ago.”
“Okay.”
“Yesterday afternoon,” he said, “a headless body. Ring a bell?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“Two years ago we found that head behind Searstown. The body turned up in Dade. Ice-cold case, closed-casket funeral. Damn fucking strange, two in one day like two I never solved.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“We’ll know for sure if a body wrapped in plastic shows up at Bahia Honda.”
I shuddered. Nine months earlier the body of a friend of mine, an ex-lover, was dumped in a beachside hammock up the Keys. Fortunately, that case had been solved. Liska knew my connection to the dead woman. I couldn’t believe he’d zap me with the memory.
“Now we’re even for the wife remark,” he said.
I gave him that point. “Ever bust Bug Thorsby?”
“Barracuda shit in the ocean?”
“Do me a favor? Or yourself, depending on how it works out. Run his prints back through AFIS? But don’t includehis vital data. Put them through as unknowns.”
“You used to be undetectable on the radar screen. You lived a damn calm life until when, about a year ago? You’ve been in the barrel since then. Now you’re a blip the size of a fucking Humvee. You’re asking law enforcement favors when you should be minimizing your echo.”
“None of it’s been my doing or my choice.”
He stared at me. “Anything else you need to tell me?”
“Yep. You’ve got a stolen-car ring moving vehicles
“Pressure so soon? You’ve been in office how many weeks?”
“My first pledge, when I took the office, was to check out county units named with an acronym. In my experience, acronyms are money sponges. Politicians love to fund acronyms. They never react when you tell them all that cash went to FAST or CATCH or STOMP or FUNK . They say, ‘What’s FAST ?’ and you say Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team. End of question. Ka-ching with the money, lots of zeros. Now I’m boss. I know. Automatic funding means automatic loafing. It so happens, the Fugitive Apprehension Strike Team is a good operation, underfunded. But FUNK ?
The Friendly Urban Neighborhood Kops? Tell me why they gave away a thousand dollars’ worth of Jamaican-flag-colored balloons. Make friends with black kids? I mean, where’s ‘urban’ in the Keys? And, no shit, they had a Special Homicide Investigative Team. Figure out that one.”
Liska’s story reminded me of Sam Wheeler’s story about a Psy-Ops office in Saigon. Someone had had the idea of handing out red-white-and-blue rubber balls to Vietnamese kids, an effort to build loyalty to the invading forces. The kids didn’t want them. Psychological Operations Headquarters was awash in cardboard boxes full of rubber balls. The desk jockeys invented a game. They painted numbers on wastebaskets, put them around their desks. They took turns throwing the balls into the slow-moving ceiling fans, having them ricochet into the cans. Different cans were worth different points. They worked on timing, and velocity,and angles. They wagered huge amounts of money. They did it for months on end, then returned to the States wearing combat theater service ribbons.
I looked at five empty plates on the table. Chicken Neck Liska had the metabolism of a high-torque blender.
I said: “You don’t eat at your desk twice a week.”
“You’re right I get to Bobalu’s fairly often.”
“Do I dare ask about the cigarette packs taped together?”
“My New Year’s resolution. I start each day with a fixed number, which, this week, means fifty-one. This is my daily ration, this kit. I reduce the count in the packs by one cigarette per week. By July it’ll be one pack, a year from now I’ll be clean. Next year I can resolve to stop chewing on my steering wheel.”
“Something else is bothering you.”
“You bet,” said Liska. “First we got Caroline Street, like my case from a year ago.”
“Okay.”
“Yesterday afternoon,” he said, “a headless body. Ring a bell?”
“Now that you mention it.”
“Two years ago we found that head behind Searstown. The body turned up in Dade. Ice-cold case, closed-casket funeral. Damn fucking strange, two in one day like two I never solved.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“We’ll know for sure if a body wrapped in plastic shows up at Bahia Honda.”
I shuddered. Nine months earlier the body of a friend of mine, an ex-lover, was dumped in a beachside hammock up the Keys. Fortunately, that case had been solved. Liska knew my connection to the dead woman. I couldn’t believe he’d zap me with the memory.
“Now we’re even for the wife remark,” he said.
I gave him that point. “Ever bust Bug Thorsby?”
“Barracuda shit in the ocean?”
“Do me a favor? Or yourself, depending on how it works out. Run his prints back through AFIS? But don’t includehis vital data. Put them through as unknowns.”
“You used to be undetectable on the radar screen. You lived a damn calm life until when, about a year ago? You’ve been in the barrel since then. Now you’re a blip the size of a fucking Humvee. You’re asking law enforcement favors when you should be minimizing your echo.”
“None of it’s been my doing or my choice.”
He stared at me. “Anything else you need to tell me?”
“Yep. You’ve got a stolen-car ring moving vehicles
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