part0010

THE NEXT MORNING Evan flew into the sun and warmth of Miami International, leaving behind for a couple of days the unanswered questions surrounding Todd Strange and his sister. He rented a Ford Mustang Cabrio to make the most of the weather, put the roof down, then headed south. He took the Ronald Reagan turnpike, then picked up US-1 just before it turned into the Overseas Highway at Key Largo.

He was on his own of course. He hadn’t spoken to Guillory since she walked out of the diner the day before. At least it gave him time to think and reflect, with the sun warm on his face, the wind in his hair. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t have preferred to feel the weight of her head on his shoulder, her hair flicking in his face, tickling his nose.

But time alone with your own mind isn’t always a good thing. Because the drive without her brought to mind another car journey, one made with her. One without sun and the sea and a sporty convertible car to enjoy it in. The two of them in the back of a government-issue sedan. Driven in silence by stony-faced men in cheap gray suits to a state psychiatric hospital. Then walking with her to his wife’s grave. A solemn procession on legs made from rubber hose, the wind in their faces, cold this time, whipping her hair into his eyes as she pressed closely into his body, the strength of her arms the only thing keeping him upright.

And his reaction, standing at the desolate graveside. Jabbing his finger at the unkept ground at his feet like he was trying to poke it through to the body buried below.

Then later in the Jerusalem with Guillory. Seeing the same doubts in the denim blue of her eyes, clouding them. Pressing her until she gave in.

So what? he’d asked her.

Exactly, she’d replied. Nothing. Like I said.

That should have been that. Except you don’t get to decide what your mind serves you up when you close your eyes at night. Small doubts and minor misgivings, the sort of vague anxiety that comes calling at four in the morning before the gray dawn light seeps through the gap in the curtains, bathing the room in a creeping pale radiance, leaving you unable to say what was real and what was a dream. A slight inconsistency here, an incompatible detail there.

In the cold clear light of day they were nothing at all, didn’t give him a moment’s pause.

Until time weighed heavily on his hands.

The sudden blare of a horn as he drifted into the path of a passing car snapped him out of it, jerked him back to the sun and warmth of the present, sent the demons scuttling back into their hidey holes to bide their time. Not that they minded, they knew they’d be seeing him again soon enough.

He turned on the radio, didn’t care what station. Cranked up the volume and sang along to keep them at bay. He took it easy, a steady sixty as the big trucks blew past him. And not just because the new Mustang didn’t drive like the Boss 302 he’d owned some years ago, a long pause when he put his foot to the floor while the engine woke up, stretched, and scratched itself before eventually getting around to accelerating. So he went with the flow, passing through Key Largo and Tavernier and Plantation Key. After a couple of hours he started looking for a place to eat, pulled off the road into a roadside bar and grill sandwiched between the highway and the ocean just before Islamorada.

He sat at a table on the upper deck, the black thoughts of earlier left far behind. Leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head, he looked out over a small marina and then the endless flat turquoise water beyond. All the way to The Bahamas and Cuba somewhere over the horizon. He ordered a club sandwich with grilled Wahoo and crispy bacon served on Texas toast with a slice of Key Lime Pie to follow, washed it all down with a couple of ice-cold beers.

It beat working any day.

Then he got back on the highway for another thirty easy miles to Marathon. At the end of town, right before the start of Seven Mile Bridge, he turned left onto 11th Street Ocean. He passed a trailer park, continued on down towards the Marathon Marina and Boatyard. He parked in a lot on the left which for some reason had a boat with a blue and white hull sitting on boat stands on the far side. Then he continued on foot to look for Crow’s friend Winter’s boat, the Dead or Alive .

He couldn’t remember when he’d had such a relaxing easy day. It was good that he’d made the most of it. Because it wasn’t going to last for much longer.

Strolling past a small, unmanned wooden security office, he felt as if he belonged. He hoped he looked like it too, ostentatiously swinging Winter’s spare set of keys on his finger. He found the Dead or Alive almost at the end, a seventy-eight-foot sport fishing motor yacht complete with fighting chair on the stern deck and tuna tower up top. It was a beautiful boat. He could think of worse ways to while away the twilight years of your life, despite what Crow thought.

He stood on the edge of the dock a moment looking for any signs of life on board. There weren’t any. Just standing there he could tell it was unoccupied. The same couldn’t be said of the boat on the other side of the shared jetty. The sliding glass doors to the cabin—what purists call the salon—were open, music playing softly inside.

Then a middle-aged man in shorts, T-shirt and boat shoes came through the door, noticed Evan standing there. In one hand he held a glass filled to the brim with white wine, a pair of sunglasses in the other. Some of the wine slopped onto his hand in his surprise at seeing Evan standing there. They stared at each other for a couple of beats, the contented smile on the guy’s sun and wind beaten face hardening to a look of wary suspicion.

‘Can I help you?’

Evan did the translation from alcohol-slurred nautical to English.

Evan racked his brains, tried to remember Winter’s first name. It was right there on the periphery of his memory, wouldn’t come. The guy transferred his sunglasses to the top of his head, the now empty hand settling on his hip in a mildly aggressive stance. He looked like the sort of guy whose hands spent a lot of time there. Again, the gesture was easy to interpret.

‘George!’ Evan said, the name exploding from his mouth.

‘I said George asked me to check his boat. Make sure everything’s okay.’

The guy’s face suggested he might have had a drink or two but did Evan think he was born yesterday?

Evan showed him the keys, stepped onto the jetty. It seemed he didn’t show them clearly enough. All the guy saw was a raised hand and a man he already thought was up to no good taking a step towards him. He took a step backwards with a quick glance into the salon.

Evan held the ring of keys up by his finger and thumb, jangled them, almost dropped them in the water.

‘I’m not breaking in. George gave me a set of keys.’

The guy nodded, unconvinced. Half a million dollars’ worth of sport fishing boat was as good a reason as any for mugging an old man in an alley, stealing his keys. Evan walked further down the jetty.

‘Call George if you don’t believe me. I assume you’ve got his number, seeing as you live next door to him. Or next boat or mast or whatever you nautical types say.’

He pulled out his phone, found the number Crow had given him. He’d already tried it after he’d finished his lunch. It had gone straight to voicemail. He held the phone towards the guy.

‘You want it or not?’

The guy shook his head, worked a nervous smile onto his face.

‘No, that’s okay. You go ahead, do what you have to do.’

Then he ducked quickly back into the salon behind him, slid the glass doors closed. With the light reflecting off the smoked glass, Evan couldn’t see what he was doing in there.

Not that he needed to. He was thankful that they were all the way down the end of the dock. Even so, it wouldn’t take long for security to get there. He stepped onto the stern deck, unlocked the door to the salon, slid it all the way open.

Standing looking in, two things immediately hit him. First, George wasn’t at home. Or, at boat. Or whatever. From the lack of any odor apart from a faint mustiness from the lack of fresh air, he knew he wasn’t going to find poor old George lying on the bed in the stateroom with his head caved in. Or even having passed away peacefully in his sleep. At least he’d be able to put Crow’s mind at rest on that front.

The second thing made his heart sink. More so because he could almost hear the urgent, whispered phone call the suspicious neighbor was making to security, hear the fast, excited footsteps as they rushed to investigate something more interesting than a drunken sailor driving into somebody else’s boat. Looking around the salon, he reckoned there must have been a million places to hide something. Boat interior design is necessarily a lesson in efficient use of limited space, carefully designed and concealed storage everywhere. The number of hiding places that resulted from the design was bad enough, let alone all the secret places a paranoid owner could devise.

Unless George had left his laptop or his phone lying around in plain sight—which was unlikely—there was no way he was going to find anything before security got there. He hadn’t got further than down the stairs and into the master stateroom when the boat dipped slightly.

Security had arrived.

Then a shout from outside.

‘Come out with your hands where I can see them.’

Evan retraced his footsteps, stepped out onto the stern deck with his hands at shoulder height, palms forward, the glare of the sun blinding him momentarily. The security guard stared at him from behind mirrored sunglasses, his hand resting loosely on the holstered gun on his hip. The name badge sewn onto his shirt said Rodriguez. Behind him, the neighbor watched smugly from the safety of his own boat, his glass now almost empty. Evan dropped his hands, gave a flick of his head towards him.

‘I already told him George asked me to check on his boat. I’ve got a set of keys.’

Rodriguez looked as unconvinced as the other guy who had now moved out of the safety of the salon to get a better look.

‘Really? What’s to say you didn’t mug him, steal his keys? And his wallet which gave you his name?’

‘What? Then made a really good guess about which one of the thousand boats was his?’

‘You could’ve been watching him. There’s not a thousand anyway.’

‘Uh-huh. And he could’ve given me the keys and asked me to check his boat.’

Rodriguez nodded, it’s possible. Evan felt like flicking his sunglasses off so he could see his eyes.

‘Except he didn’t say anything to me about going away. He always lets me know if he’s going to be away for any length of time.’ He jabbed his breastbone with his thumb. ‘So I can keep an eye on his boat. Because that’s my job.’

They weren’t getting anywhere. Going around in circles. Evan got the impression Rodriguez was happy to do exactly that, was just filling in time.

‘Yeah? Well I’ve got a job to do as well.’

He turned his back on him, headed towards the salon. Then the reason for Rodriguez’s dawdling became clear.

A police cruiser screeched to a halt on the dock above them. It skidded on the loose gravel, made Evan think that the white concrete bollards evenly spaced along the edge of the dock weren’t just for show. The doors swung open. Two police officers climbed lazily out in marked contrast to their excited arrival. They hitched up their belts in unison as if it was a routine they practiced regularly when things were slow.

‘How’s it going, Luis?’ the driver called down from the edge of the dock. ‘Looks like you’ve caught yourself a boat thief, eh?’

His partner parked his butt on one of the concrete bollards, arms crossed to show off his well-muscled arms. Everybody was wearing mirrored sunglasses except Evan and the owner of the neighboring boat whose designer shades were still perched, jerk-style, on the top of his head. He was now sitting comfortably on a padded couch watching the proceedings. Evan promised himself if he got the chance, he’d throw him into the water.

‘Hey, Ricky. Mr Segal here caught this guy snooping around. He says the owner asked him to check on the boat.’

Ricky was a caricature of a small-town cop. A cocky extrovert who wore his holstered thirty-eight special like a loincloth and divided his time almost equally between polishing the squad car and drinking free beer in the various waterfront bars. He looked over at Segal who raised his glass in greeting and nodded, that’s right officer, happy to do my duty.

Ricky waved an acknowledgement, turned his attention to Evan. Gave him a long sunglassed stare.

‘You’ve got keys?’

‘I thought maybe he’d stolen them,’ Rodriguez called up to Ricky, his self-esteem slipping away like fish guts hosed off the wooden deck.

‘Nothing’s been called in.’

‘Wouldn’t be if the owner’s lying unconscious or worse in some alley.’

Ricky jumped down onto the jetty between the two boats. He pulled off his shades to get a better look at Evan. From the look of boredom on his face and the way both the cops seemed to be just going through the motions, Evan reckoned he viewed all rent-a-cops like Rodriguez as a waste of space. Wannabees who liked to spice up their boring jobs by wasting the real cops’ time, making a mountain out of a molehill over every little thing. Even Segal was yawning, looking bored seeing as nobody had wrestled Evan to the ground yet, didn’t even look as if they were about to.

‘Haven’t heard anything about that either. Unless you think they dumped him in the sea.’

Rodriguez’s jaw tightened, not happy that they weren’t taking him seriously.

‘You check his ID?’ Ricky said.

He climbed into the boat, made a give-it-here gesture with his hand towards Evan without waiting for Rodriguez’s mumbled no . Evan pulled out his wallet, held out his ID. Ricky took his time carefully folding his sunglasses and slipping them into his top pocket before he took it. Then he nodded to himself as he read it, like his day had just taken a turn for the worse.

‘Private investigator, huh?’

Evan didn’t bother to confirm it. Ricky’s tone of voice implied that he was having trouble getting the correct ranking in his mind about the jobs of rent-a-cop and private investigator. That it didn’t much matter anyway. One was right at the bottom of the pile, the other one immediately above it. And if he had his way the pair of them would be looking for a new job.

‘That’s what Winter used to do before he moved here,’ Rodriguez chipped in.

Ricky carried on nodding with as much interest as if Rodriguez had told him that, once again, the sky was blue and the sun was shining down here in sunny Florida.

‘That how come you know him?’ Ricky said to Evan.

‘Through a mutual colleague, yeah,’ Evan said, the words feeling ridiculous in his mouth.

Seemed Ricky thought so too.

‘A mutual colleague .’ He looked up at his partner still sitting on the concrete bollard, got a sorry headshake back. ‘What? He used to call you up when he needed somebody to go undercover in the public toilets?’

They all snickered. Including Rodriguez, who was pleased to have the ridicule aimed at Evan instead of himself for a change. Evan pulled out one of Guillory’s business cards, held it towards Ricky.

‘Call her. She’ll vouch for me.’

Ricky took the card, climbed back up onto the dock. He shooed a gull off the next bollard along from his partner and perched on it himself. Then pulled out his phone and made the call. At one point, he looked directly at Evan, eyes narrowed. Presumably as Guillory described him. Then, just before they ended the call, his face split into a wide grin. His day had suddenly improved unexpectedly. Evan let out a weary breath, didn’t need to ask what that was about. Ricky was busting a gut to let him know anyway. He jumped back down onto the jetty.

‘Up on the gunwale.’

He patted the upper edge of the side of the boat in case Evan didn’t know what the gunwale was.

‘You don’t have to do everything she says.’

Ricky grinned wider.

‘She’s a police detective. That makes her my superior. She tells me to push you in the water, I gotta push you in the water.’

He shrugged like it was a rotten job but somebody’s gotta do it. His partner had stopped picking at his nails, looked a lot more interested now. So did Rodriguez and the interfering neighbor for that matter. Evan didn’t move, crossed his arms, feet planted. They all stayed like that for what felt like a very long time. Then Ricky got bored, the grin fading.

He held Guillory’s card out towards Evan. He had his shades back on now. Evan couldn’t see his eyes. He took the card, not expecting him to grab his arm but ready for it if he did.

‘She says to tell you that you should’ve brought her down here with you. It would’ve avoided all this trouble. And she said she could do with a break.’

Evan worked a big smile onto his face, wondered what the hell Guillory was playing at. Even though he didn’t think Ricky would be calling her back, he had a little fun of his own just in case.

‘Yeah, well, she needs to get in line like everybody else.’

Ricky raised an eyebrow, then climbed out of the boat when it became obvious Evan wasn’t going to say anything more. He gave Rodriguez a consolatory slap on the shoulder, maybe next time, and called his thanks to Segal sitting disappointed in his own boat. Then they were gone in another screech of gravel and dust, back to their free beers and real police work.