Loitering with Intent

THE INSIDE OF Charley Boggs’s houseboat looked like he hadn’t lived there for very long. There was a sofa, a big flat-screen TV and an expensive-looking audio system and a lot of CDs.

“Let’s look at upstairs,” Stone said. “I predict a bed and another TV.”

“They must love Charley at the furniture store,” Tommy opined. He opened a drawer in the bedside table and pointed. Inside was a new-looking semiautomatic pistol.

“SigArms P229,” Stone said. “Charley lived simply, but he liked the best of everything—at least, the best of everything he owned: TVs, stereos and weapons.”

Tommy pulled on a pair of latex gloves, popped the magazine from the gun and racked the slide, spitting a round onto the bed. He sniffed the barrel.

“Gun oil,” Tommy replied. “The deed didn’t get done with Charley’s own gun.” He put the round back into the magazine and bagged the works.

Tommy checked the closet, which contained some jeans and Hawaiian shirts. “He’d blend right in in Key West with that wardrobe,” he said.

They checked the bathroom medicine cabinet, which contained a toothbrush and a razor, and the toilet tank, which contained water.

They went downstairs and checked the kitchen. There were two cases of Bud in the fridge, along with a jar of peanut butter and some left-over Chinese in cartons. In a drawer they found some utensils, and in a cabinet a few glasses.

“That’s it,” Tommy said. “Do you believe it? I mean, everybody collects a little of life’s detritus, but not Charley.”

“There was a motorcycle chained to the electrical post on the dock,” Tommy said. “I reckon that’s his.”

Stone walked up the dock and found the motorcycle, a light Honda. “Do you have the keys?” he called back to Tommy.

Tommy produced a plastic bag containing some items and found some keys. He tossed them to Stone. “These were in his pocket.”

Stone found the right key and unlocked a little storage compartment on the cycle. “Hey, hey!” he yelled and held up a ziplock bag with two fingers. “That’s half a key, I reckon.”

Tommy walked down the dock, took the bag, opened it and tasted a sample. “Cocaine,” he said, “and my guess is it’s uncut.”

“That’s a lot of product to be walking around with,” Stone said, “and there were no smaller bags, so I guess he wasn’t hawking it on the street.”

“I guess the killer asked Charley for it, and when he didn’t give, the guy got pissed off.”

“It wouldn’t have taken long to search the houseboat,” Stone said, “but he didn’t search the motorcycle.”

Dino had joined them. “Let’s take another look at the boathouse,” Dino said.

Dino stood in the little wheelhouse, holding a floorboard in his hand. “Take a look at this,” he said to Tommy.

Tommy looked and found an empty compartment with a trace of white powder at the bottom. “Maybe the shooter didn’t go away empty-handed after all.”

“Yeah, and that’s more than enough to get shot for. Anybody know what a key goes for these days?”

“I don’t know,” Dino said, “maybe twenty-five, thirty thou? I guess it would depend on availability.”

“There’s no way he could sell five or six kilos of uncut cocaine in Key West,” Tommy said. “If that much was in there, it was bound for somewhere else, like Miami.”

“Tommy, if you had half a dozen kilos of pure coke and you wanted to get them to Miami, how would you do it?”

“Well, I wouldn’t drive it,” Tommy said. “There’s only one road, and if you get stopped for a broken taillight and get searched, well . . .” He looked thoughtful. “Boat or light aircraft,” he said. “And there’s a lot more boats around here than light aircraft.”

“Well, in something that could do twenty-five, thirty knots, one long day. Any faster than that might attract the attention of the Coast Guard.”

“We got two questions to answer here,” Tommy said. “Where did he get it, and how was he going to move it?”

“He got it from South America or Mexico, like everybody else,” Stone said. “And there’s no shortage of means to move it.”

“Evan Keating has a new boat,” Dino said, “and he was chummy with Charley Boggs, at least for a while.”

“And his boat was parked all night out at the reef,” Tommy pointed out. “Another boat could have handed something off.”

“Or an airplane could have dropped it,” Stone said. “As I recall, it isn’t very deep out at the reef.”

“Not deep at all,” Tommy agreed. “You could pick something off the bottom with a snorkel; you wouldn’t even need scuba gear.”

“Well,” Dino said, “I guess we’ve solved this crime. Except for the part about who killed Charley and where the cocaine is now.”

“Okay, let’s say that Evan bought Chuck Chandler’s boat for the purpose of picking up packages at the reef and delivering them to Miami. Was Chuck’s old boat good for that, Tommy?”

“Yeah, I know the boat, and it was pretty fast. It also doesn’t look like something a drug dealer would use, it being an old classic and all.”

“But why would Evan hide the coke on Charley Boggs’s houseboat? Why wouldn’t he pick it up at the reef and just keep going until he got to Miami? Why trust Charley with a hundred and fifty grand worth of powder? Charley didn’t look all that trustworthy to me. And if Evan and Charley were in business together, why would Evan have to kill him to get the product?”