On The Whispering Wind

CHAPTER ONE

On the night of July the eleventh, a taxi driver named Cassidy Andrews found a dead man in Unit 307 of the Seville Building. The Seville is the middle building at Casa del Boca Ciega Towers on Sunset Beach, at the south end of Treasure Island. The dead man had been thin, good-looking, and blonde. He was young enough to be one of Cassidy's children.

She said, "Hey, mister, are you okay?" but she knew that he wasn't. She knelt beside him, and she touched with her fingertips the youth's bare chest and the side of his neck. She felt and heard nothing. She leaned close to his face, and no breath came from his nostrils. With her finger, Cassidy checked that the young man's mouth and throat were clear. She tilted his head and administered CPR. It was futile. After two full minutes, she walked out the front door and down the stairs.

Cassidy's my ex-girlfriend. When she broke in on our two-way taxi radios, my buddy Virgil, the island's ancient curmudgeon, was with me in my own taxi, the '99 Caprice we call Catch-22. He rode shotgun and bellyached about the terrorists, informing me how he'd fix the world if he were the president. I was driving Virgil to our old hangout, Nora's Beach Bar on Sunset, when the radio crackled.

Cassidy said, "Dispatch, this is Unit 16.

"Dispatch is Skip McNamara, the night-shift dispatcher at Island Hoppers Taxi. He's also three-hundred pounds of rheumatoid arthritis and acid reflux disease. He answered, "16?

"I've got a void.

"Why's it a void, Cassidy?

"Skip, this boy's dead.

"Your fare's dead?

"He didn't come out, so I honked the horn, then I went up to the door. It was wide open, and this poor boy's sprawled out in there dead. Looks to me like somebody ripped the whole place apart, too.

Plenty of fares have kicked off on Skip, who's dispatched the night shift for twenty-three years. In South Pasadena, the little retirement strip wedged between St. Petersburg and St. Pete Beach, we lose two or three geezers a year, right in the hack.

Cassidy Andrews is no stranger to The Reaper either. After twelve years of marriage and two daughters, her husband dropped dead in their kitchen one morning in 1997. He said, "Honey, I'm in trouble here, call 9-1-1, and he was gone when paramedics came through the door five-and-a-half minutes later.

"So I need to call the PD? Skip asked.

Cassidy, with plenty of faraway sadness in her voice, said, "Yeah, you do.

Virgil elbowed me and barked, "Where the hell's Cassidy?

"She's down at Casa del Boca.

"Well, let's go there, ya damn fool!

"Whatever you say, Virgil. The meter's running.

"Screw the meter! What the hell'd you ever let go of her for anyway?

"I don't know, Virgil, I swear to God, I don't know, I said, wishing he wouldn't bring it up again.

"That girl's a keeper, and you're a stupid sonofabitch, is what you are. You're not right, kid.

Virgil fumbled in the pocket of his lime-green guayabera and slipped out a Smirnoff miniature.

"Dammit, kid, you're making me have to take my medicine. The doctor says I have to drink twelve or fifteen of these a day, to stay healthy.

Virgil twisted the cap and swigged his Smirnoff. We passed the Thunderbird and the Bilmar Resorts on our right, rolling south on Gulf Boulevard to Sunset Beach. Tourists meandered across the boulevard or loitered in the middle of it, chattering on cell phones, oblivious to traffic and traffic signals. It wasn't raining but I ran the wipers anyway, I had to, because humidity here is so thick in July that sheets of water condense on the windshields at night.

I picked up the mike in my right hand and keyed it.

"Unit 22.

"22, go ahead.

"Skipper, Virgil wants to run down to the Seville, see if we can lend Cassidy a hand.

"That's a roger, Jake.

Only a moment later, Officer Chester Purdy blew by us in the left lane at seventy or so miles per hour, his lights flashing and siren screaming.

Most police calls on Treasure Island are alcohol-related ' bar fights, domestics, DUIs ' and that's fine with Chester Purdy, who thinks nothing in the world's funnier than a drunk white man. Chester's six-four, two-seventy, with biceps like cannonballs. He resembles George Foreman, bald and smiling, and he talks with O.J. Simpson's casual baritone. He's a practitioner of the Barney Miller School of Policing, gifted at settling bar brawls and loud lovers' quarrels.

"Whaddya think, Virgil? I can't remember a murder on Sunset Beach.

"Oh Christ, shut up with the murder talk, ya dumb punk.

Virgil's our besotted Hemingway-in-a-hurricane lookalike and Congressional Medal of Honor winner. He single-handedly won the war in the Pacific, then completed twenty years in the Corps. He spent his next two decades teaching at the local military academy and another seven years operating a charter fishing boat. Virgil's eighty-six now, a big mother with a bad leg, and hauling him around in the hack when he's wasted can really blow.

Now as to who the stiff was, only Cassidy Andrews might have a clue¦