CHAPTER SIX

Everyone knows that hindsight has the eyes of an eagle. For an investigator—a private eye—who didn’t see trouble coming, hindsight is particularly acute.

Later on, I remembered incidents that occurred over the next few days. I told myself that if I had asked more questions then and not just accepted what I was told, maybe I could have headed off the chaos that came later.

Maybe. But who knows? It had all been set in motion long before I set foot on the Key.

The fact is I’d never before been a full-time bodyguard. During my days in the Miami Police Department, I had at times protected visiting dignitaries, but that was usually at formal occasions as part of a large security detail.

Tagging along with relatively normal people hour after hour and day after day was a different matter entirely. The truth is it got just a bit absurd.

Over the next several days, I trailed José and Catalina everywhere they went, except to the bathroom and the bedroom. The pharmacy, the bank, the beauty parlor, the video store. You name it.

One thing I got very good at was opening car doors. I did a lot of that. In fact, I could have been mistaken for an underemployed parking valet instead of a burly bodyguard.

The other thing I became good at was not interfering with their intimacy. They ate a lot of their meals in restaurants by themselves and were often in intense conversations, keeping their voices low. They frequently held hands across the table, and they kissed more than most people. Whatever Doña Carmen’s doubts, they certainly seemed into each other.

Wherever we went, I tried to remain inconspicuous but close enough to guard against trouble. My duty was to identify and deter potential kidnappers. So I studied anyone who got close to José and Catalina. Of course, the effect of that is that you can end up scrutinizing teenage restaurant waitresses, gum-popping hairdressers and grocery store bag boys as if they are members of the Baader Meinhof gang.

For example, two mornings after I was hired, I accompanied José to the golf course. First he went to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls, and I stood nearby, next to his golf bag, feeling like his caddie.

A handful of other players were there to practice, mostly men in pastel-colored pants. It’s difficult to think of a man in pastel pants as a dangerous assassin or kidnapper. At least it was for me. The only real danger was that one of those other duffers would badly shank a shot and hit José—or me—in the head. That didn’t happen.

We went from there to the first tee. The course was fairly empty, and José played by himself. My job was just to drive the cart. Nothing more.

José was an efficient player, and we made good time working our way around the tropical course, scaring a few iguanas. The seventh hole skirted the causeway, and José hit his drive to that side. He was studying what club to use for his second shot while I waited in the cart.

Suddenly, a man emerged from the vegetation at the edge of the course and walked directly toward him. As he did, his hand was coming out of his pocket.

I had spent the last three days running around a lot but doing little real guarding of anything or anybody. Subsequently, it took me several moments to snap to it and realize that this individual heading for José wasn’t just anybody. He was a young, dark, rail-thin man wearing a flowered shirt, with long black hair and a livid scar along his left cheek. He matched the description of the “dangerous- looking man” Doña Carmen had seen at the gate of the mansion a couple of days before, the one I had dismissed as a magazine salesman. Well, this was a strange place to peddle Popular Mechanics, and if he was dangerous to Doña Carmen, he was dangerous to me. She was, after all, footing my bill.

He was about fifty feet from José when I leapt into action. I jumped out, grabbed José by the shirt collar and yanked him toward me so he was behind the cart.

With my other hand, I pulled my handgun from my shoulder holster and pointed at the man’s sternum. That made him stop just as suddenly as he had appeared.

A fairway bunker was between us, and I walked across it toward him. Beyond him, I could see a foursome on an adjacent tee. They had all frozen and were watching us in disbelief. The “iron” I was holding was not one usually used on a golf course.

“Down on your knees!” I screamed. “And drop it.”

What he had pulled from his pocket was yellow in color. I had never seen a yellow gun, or a yellow knife, for that matter, but I wasn’t taking any chances. He was too scared to respond quickly and just stood staring at me. By this time José had run up and was pulling me by the shoulder.

“Cuesta, put that gun down! I know this man. I know him!”

He took his hand and forcibly lowered my arm so that the gun was pointed at the ground. Then he went to the other man.

I watched as the two of them engaged in a brief conversation. The man handed José a yellow piece of paper he had grasped in his hand, shot me a last wary glance as if I were crazy, ducked back into the vegetation and disappeared as fast as he could. José then headed my way.

“Who was that?” I asked, putting away my gun.

José was annoyed that I would ask. “He’s a landscaper, Cuesta. He’s out of work and offered to do some jobs around the house. In other words, he’s only dangerous to the dandelions.”

He stalked away, climbed back into the cart and told me do the same, but only after I raked the bunker.

I was a caddie after all.