BY THE TIME I left the hippy house it was late afternoon. I went straight to happy hour at Caragiulos on Palm Avenue in downtown. I was starving. And I wanted to celebrate my progress and plan my next move. Caragiulos had been in Sarasota long before all the chichi places moved in. It wasn’t one hundred percent my thing, but the narrow bar with the brick wall and the nice spread they set out for happy hour always hit the spot.
I took a seat at the far end of the bar—way in the back. I had decided to approach finding Maya the way I approached working on a story: notes. I opened a new document in my laptop, titled it Maya, and put it all down—everything about Nick, everything about the hippies, my theories. Everything I saw and heard. I put it all down.
I had some fried calamari, a pressed panini, a few cold Birra Moretti. Pretty soon I found myself in a decent little groove. My brain was churning like a steamroller. I made a few searches for Maya. Then I tried variations on Mike Boseman.
Google gave me the skinny on Boseman pretty damn quick. He was all over the web. His fifteen minutes of fame came a few years ago when he promised to bring Hollywood to Sarasota. He suckered the city and county governments to dish big bucks for his movie venture. You’d think he was Steven Spielberg.
Boseman had made a small fortune when he invented a gizmo that helped advance rearview cameras in cars. He sold the patent and came to Sarasota to open a big movie studio. He made all kinds of promises: everyone in California would follow him to our pretty little town if Sarasota was willing to lend a hand. Our starstruck city council was giddy with the prospect of Hollywood celebrities hanging in our outdoor cafés. They threw money at him, two million to be exact. He was going to open a soundstage and bring people in the biz to town and start filming right away. But no one bothered to check his record. The man knew nobody in Hollywood. The closest he’d ever been to a movie was Netflix. He was just another greedy businessman with the gift of gab. He had no company and no title. The Sarasota Herald did a number of stories on him—all of them shiny profiles saying how he was going to put our little slice of paradise on the map. He managed to produce a pilot that never sold. Then the company closed shop. At the center of the fiasco was Mr. Michael Boseman.
The city sued him. He counter-sued. And guess what? He won. Motherfucker got a million-dollar claim and got into real estate. Pumped all his money into condos. When the mortgage crisis hit, it all came tumbling down.
I didn’t even know he was still in town. I’d imagine he’d run for the border, left the country, disappeared just like Maya Zavala. But here he was living the life on Siesta Key. I couldn’t wait to find out what his game was.
I was pretty drunk and was just getting ready to stumble home, when I noticed Holly Lovett sitting at a table near the front of the bar with a couple of friends.
Holly Holly Holly. Of all the gin joints … Holly was pretty without being beautiful, smart without being pompous, liberal without being overbearing. And she was a lawyer without being an asshole.
I hadn’t seen her in three years.
I’d met Holly when she worked with an advocacy group for migrant workers in downtown Bradenton, north of Sarasota. I was working on that story about the Mexican migrant who’d been shot by Sarasota PD. We hit it off right away. We were perfect together. We were almost identical: ambitious, driven, idealistic. We laughed and argued politics and had great sex without too much attachment. The energy between us was tremendous. Then I went to Mexico to find the family of the victim. I was gone for three weeks. Three fucking weeks. When I came back, she had hooked up with this douchebag accident lawyer. Joaquin del Pino. His commercials were all over TV. “Joaquin del Pino, Justice for All. Se habla Español.” Total ass.
Now she was sitting half a dozen stools from me and looking as beautiful as ever. She wore a tight business suit; her blond hair was combed back in a perfect bun. And like always, her pretty lips were painted bright red. She looked great. She always did.
I can be tough in an interview. I can help out some old guy who’s getting the crap beat out of him. I can travel to strange lands where I don’t speak the language. I can look a cop in the face and accuse him of lying to a grand jury. But I couldn’t face Holly. Not now. I was a laid-off, has-been reporter. My self-esteem was in the gutter. And I was drunk.
I felt like I was back in middle school. I wanted out of the bar. I wanted to go home and sleep it off. I didn’t want Holly to see me like this—drunk and down and miserable.
But to leave the bar I had to squeeze right past her. It was the only way out. I closed my laptop, paid my bill, and stood. On the one hand, I was hoping she wouldn’t notice me, but on the other, I was hoping she would, that she’d say she’d dropped her Justice for All attorney, that she missed me, that we should get together sometime. Maybe that she wanted to come home with me.
I shoved my laptop in my bag and focused on the exit—walked the walk.
“Dexter?” Her voice hadn’t changed. It still had that magic timbre like the song of a siren. She turned her body and leaned back on her chair as I passed. “Is that you?”
“Holly,” I said full of fake surprise. “Long time no see.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward her and gave me a hug. She still smelled like heaven. Then she kissed me on the cheek and squeezed my arm like she was more than a friend.
“What have you been up to?” Before I could answer, she introduced me to her friends—two women lawyers. They were out celebrating because one of them had just opened her own practice. I registered none of that, but I latched on to Holly’s pretty green eyes and the red smile that reminded me of sitting with her on the porch of my house, holding hands, and talking of how the two us were going to turn this shitty tourist trap of a town into a place where everyone could live a decent life.
“Grab a chair,” she said and wiped the lipstick mark from my cheek with her thumb. “Please join us.”
I pulled a stool and sat as close to her as I could—my leg touching hers, my arm around the back of her stool. I wanted to breathe her in, take in the smell I’d been missing for three years. I set my bag down by my feet and ordered a tequila. The best shit they had was Don Julio. Good enough. At this point even Cuervo would have worked for me.
“I’ve missed you,” she said and held my hand like we were lovers. “After I read about the layoffs, I was afraid you’d moved out of town.”
I shook my head. “They can’t run me out of paradise.”
“Did you find another job?”
“Kind of.” I didn’t want to tell her what I was up to. Not because I was embarrassed, but because I didn’t know. Or maybe I was embarrassed. She was Holly Lovett for fuck’s sake. I wanted to present a perfect picture. I wanted another chance with her. “I’m working on a couple of freelance pieces. I have a few irons in the fire.”
She rubbed my back. “I’m so glad to hear that, babe.”
Babe? Really?
“What’s new with you?” I said trying to sound as casual and as sober as I could. “Last I heard you were engaged or something.”
She laughed, but it was obviously forced.
“Joaquin and I broke up,” she said. “I guess we were just not meant to be.”
“That’s too bad.” I could hardly contain my glee.
“It wasn’t easy,” she said. “But it’s all in the past now.”
“We should get together.” It came out of me like a pro, full of confidence. Bravado. “Let me take you out to dinner.”
“That would be nice, Dex.”
I smiled. I had her. My day—my night—couldn’t have gotten any better. But I was drunk and I had all that Maya Zavala shit reeling in my mind.
“I have to go,” I said. “I have some work I have to finish up.”
“Sure, babe.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I said. “We’ll go to Michael’s on East. Remember?”
She smiled big—teeth, squinty eyes, the works. “My God, you remember. We always talked about going there.” She stood and took my face in her soft hands and kissed me full on the lips with just the slightest hint of tongue.
I walked out while I still could. I left my car where it was parked and walked, my legs wobbling all the way home.
It was hard to believe. In three years I had never bumped into her in this little town. And now there she was. And she had broken up with the Justice for All lawyer. I couldn’t wait to hear how it had gone down.
But I had to focus. I had to think of Maya and Boseman. I had to look him up. Find Boseman, find Maya. By all accounts Boseman was a sleaze. What if he did something to her?
No. I was getting ahead of myself. I had to erase the prejudice, clear the slate. I knew nothing. What Boseman had done before had no relation to Maya. No matter how I felt about him, this wasn’t about busting Boseman. This was about finding Maya.