“That’s evidence,” Barnett howled through his bullhorn. “Evidence in a crime. It must be handed over to the police. So don’t move, anybody!”
THE AMBULANCE barreled along Truman Avenue with lights flashing, but no siren. Ricky had agreed that a siren would be overdoing it. Through a Demerol fog, he watched his father at the wheel, weaving through the morning traffic with a sleepy, serene look on his face.
“How’s the arm?”
“Feels like a bus backed over it.”
Albury reached across and squeezed Ricky’s good hand. “We’re almost there.”
Teal had tied the skiff at the old Navy docks. He was sitting on a creosote stump, reading the morning Citizen, when the ambulance pulled up. Albury gingerly led Ricky to the bonefish skiff. Together he and Teal extricated the boy from his hospital gown and redressed him in a pair of jeans and a modified, one-armed rain jacket.
The skiff nosed into the northwest channel. Albury sat aft with an arm around his son.
As they passed Mallory Docks, Teal saw people leaping from the seawall into the channel. Others hovered above them, pointing, and one shirtless fellow slapped clumsily at the water with a long-handled shrimp net. The harbor was full of bobbing heads.
“Look at the fruitcakes,” Teal said.
Albury paid close attention to the chaos. He saw three city police cars, two wreckers, and the corpulent profile of Huge Barnett at the forefront of the gathering. Somewhere on the bottom of the roiling channel was the nicest Winnebago in town.
“Let’s go,” Albury said.
Teal’s keen eyes fanned the water. “God, Breeze, it’s money! That’s what they’re swimming after.” He pointed in the current, and Albury watched a soggy wad of hundreds float by.
“Use the landing net,” Ricky urged giddily.
“No, son.”
“It’s fuckin’ everywhere, Breeze. Must be thousands in here,” Teal said. “No wonder the crazies are jumping in.” He leaned over the side and scooped two fifty-dollar bills from a clump of kelp. “Look at this!”
“Let’s stop, dad. See what we can get.”
“No! Teal, we got work to do.”
At Mallory Docks, Huge Barnett decreed a search of all people leaving the water. A few were frisked, and two men—a gay couple from Los Angeles—were actually arrested as an example to other scavengers, most of whom simply trod water until Barnett’s deputies were occupied elsewhere. Then the swimmers thrashed to the seawall and handed fistfuls of money to accomplices on shore. It took all morning to restore order.
Huge Barnett carried to lunch with him seven thousand sodden dollars and a feeling of dread. He had recognized the submerged camper instantly. A pasty-faced coroner later had shown him the bullet holes in the corpse of Drake Boone, Esquire. Of Winnebago Tom Cruz there was no sign.
AFTER A THIRD NIGHT on the Mud Keys, Jimmy Cantrell had reached his limit of insects, isolation, and body stench. He proposed to take the Diamond Cutter inshore and find out what had happened to Albury.
“No way,” Augie replied. “Breeze said we head north, up the Keys.”
“And just leave him down here? Forget about him?” “Settle down, chico. They got telephones in Marathon, too. We’ll find out what happened.” Augie rocked on the gunwale, dangling his brown feet in the milt-colored water of the creek. A pair of translucent needlefish crisscrossed the creek, their gemstone eyes searching for minnows.
Behind him, Augie heard Jimmy climb to the pilothouse. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to call my wife on the radio.”
“The hell you are!”
Jimmy poised the microphone in his hand. “This is the vessel Black Star calling the marine operator in Key West.”
“Go ahead, Black Star, this is Key West.”
“I need a land line, number seven-four-two, six-one-three-six. Same area code.”
“We copy, Black Star; what are your call numbers, please?”
Jimmy hesitated, and before he could invent a number, Augie snatched the microphone and silenced the radio.
“Do you want every asshole in Key West to hear your phone call?”
“Augie, for Chrissakes, she’s pregnant.” Jimmy’s voice cracked. “She’s probably worried to death.”
Augie nodded grimly. “Get the anchor up.” The vessel Black Star, he thought sourly, what next? He peeled off his T-shirt and surrendered to the noon sun, raw in a cloudless sky.
Jimmy was right about one thing: another miserable day in the mangroves would be unendurable. Augie punched the ignition and the Diamond Cutter’s diesel coughed to life. The young Cuban deftly backed the crawfish boat from its berth in the swamp, wheeled her 180 degrees in the current, and aimed the prow toward open water, the Gulf of Mexico.
“What about the dope boat?” Jimmy yelled from the bow. Augie shrugged. It felt good to be moving, to be free of the whining colonies of mosquitoes and horseflies.
After stowing the anchor, Jimmy joined Augie in the wheelhouse and offered him a warm Pepsi. The Diamond Cutter had been out of ice for a day and a half.
“I’m sorry about all that,” Jimmy said. “But I really need to talk to Kathy. I was s’posed to take her up to Miami this weekend.”
“Sure, we’ll get you to a phone. There’s a fish camp up on Ramrod Key. I’ve known the guy all my life, and he won’t say shit to anybody. A quiet man. The best kind.”
Satisfied, Jimmy retired to the stern and stretched out to watch the Mud Keys melt on the horizon.
It was then that he saw the charcoal column of smoke, rising from the mangroves in fierce billows and smeared by the wind across the pastel sky. Jimmy knew where the fire came from. Augie had spotted it, too. He stood in the pilothouse, his back to the wheel, transfixed by the incineration of five tons of marijuana. He flinched at the explosion that wooshed across the Gulf when the flames engulfed the gas tanks of the pirated crawfish boat.
“Jesus,” Augie murmured and opened the Diamond Cutter to full throttle.
“Let’s go,” Jimmy cried, pointing to the distant speck of a speedboat racing from the Mud Keys. The saboteurs were now dead on a course for the Diamond Cutter. The profile of the big lobster boat rode high on the calm seas. There could be no hiding this time, Augie knew.
Jimmy bounded to the wheelhouse, panting, the Remington on his shoulder; a shirtless, fuzz-faced Johnny Reb. “You see what they did to the other boat?” he said. “Looked like a fucking atom bomb. Augie, don’t slow down now.”
The Cuban was smiling, his arms folded. His coffee-brown eyes were fixed on the chase boat, drawing closer, its V-shaped hull slicing the afternoon chop.
Jimmy had added binoculars to his uniform. “Looks like three of them,” he said, peering, “and two of us.”
Augie smiled broadly and killed the engine. “Looks like a bonefish boat to me.”
THE MAYHEM ALONG Mallory Docks had prompted one of Huge Barnett’s epic fits of perspiration. Every pore had been a geyser. He smelled like a goat and knew it.
As he changed clothes, even the apparition of Laurie Ravenel bouncing on top of him failed to brighten or elevate him. It had been a catastrophic day for law enforcement in Key West: Tom Cruz was missing, the water was full of freaks, and the island’s most renowned lawyer had been murdered. Murdered—shit, Barnett fumed, his police department had no homicide experts. Murder didn’t happen that often. When it did, it was usually a domestic quarrel or a bar fight among the shrimpers on Caroline Street. A knife in the gut, a bullet in the heart, an act of contrition later. Witnesses galore. Made a policeman’s job downright easy.
Barnett elbowed his way into a crisply pressed Western shirt, Arizona cactus plants on each shoulder. He stepped into his trousers and belted them high, above his navel.
Drake Boone certainly had ruined the day. This was one that they’d want solved. There would be newspaper reporters all the way from Miami, and inquiries of an official nature. No medals from the Governor on this one, damnit.
r /> Barnett wedged his pale, sockless feet into a new pair of Tony Llama boots. He arranged the Stetson and walked out to the Chrysler, grunting with each step.
He could hear Freed, the buttfucker, harping away at the next city council meeting. Any suspects, chief? Suspects? Boone had more enemies than a barracuda has fangs. When word of his murder got out, a cheer had gone up in the cell blocks at the county stockade—half the guys in there had been screwed by Boone’s courtroom incompetence. Suspects?
Still, it was one nasty little murder that would not go away. Barnett knew that he would soon have to announce a suspect. A prime suspect. Breeze Albury would do, he reckoned, as long as he stayed gone.
Barnett double-parked in front of the Cowrie and honked three times. When Laurie got in, the chief broke into a wide, brown-toothed grin.
“You look a sight,” he said. “And you wore them jeans.”
“Let’s go,” she said in a worried tone. “As it is, everybody in the restaurant’s gonna talk.”
“You know faggots, they got to gossip.”
Barnett took Truman Avenue to U.S. 1, up the island past Stock Island. As soon as they were out of Key West, Laurie scooted over next to him.
“Well, well.”
Her perfume was arousing. A sideways glance told the police chief that his radiant date was not wearing a bra.
“I write a little poetry,” Laurie said, placing a casual hand on Barnett’s right leg. “Don’t you think the names of these islands would make wonderful poetry? Boca Chica. Big Coppitt. Little Torch Key.”
“Hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Ramrod. Sugarloaf. The Saddlebunch.”
“Yeah. Ramrod, Sugarloaf. Those are good ones.” Barnett winked. “I like those.”
“Oh, stop it. Watch the road.” Laurie patted his leg.
“You haven’t told me where you want to go. There’s a place up on Summerland we can stop for a drink—”
“No, it’s too risky. Breeze knows everybody down here. Someone would tell him as soon as he got back. I know it.” Laurie softened her voice. “I couldn’t hurt him like that. You understand, don’t you?”
“So where do you want to go?”
“Ever heard of the Tarpon Inn?”
Barnett shifted behind the wheel. “Darlin’, that’s a long goddamn drive.”
“I know, chief, but it’s got a sweet little bar. And the rooms are nice.” Laurie manufactured her cutest giggle. “King-sized beds.”
Huge Barnett roared his approval with a laugh that issued tremors through his belly. “The Tarpon Inn it is,” he declared, gunning the Chrysler around a poky school bus pell-mell down the wrong side of the most dangerous highway in America.
Laurie Ravenel shut her eyes tightly and prayed that it soon would be over.
The gas station man parked his pickup on a bleached spit of dredged-up rock that formed a jetty into Spanish Harbor. He rolled down the windows, punched a Jackson Browne cassette into the tape deck, and tried to relax.
The message from the post office had been brief, almost too brief. When the gas station man had asked for more details, he had been curtly directed to “follow instructions.”
Crystal was in his usual cautious mood.
The gas station man had waited in the truck only seven minutes before the skiff appeared, boring straight for the jetty across two miles of grassy shallows. When it was fifty yards away, the driver cut back and let the skiff glide to the rocks. He was of medium height, dressed in the khaki short-sleeved uniform of charter boat captains; his bare arms and legs were like polished walnut. He picked up the package and heaved it from the boat to the jetty.
“You know what to do, right?”
The gas station man struggled with the package. “Christ, this is heavy.”
“Fifty-five pounds,” said Teal. He turned the ignition key, and the big outboard came to life. “Your place is how far?”
The gas station man half-threw, half-pushed the package into the flatbed. “Just up the road, maybe a half-mile at the most.”
“Good. The radio says they’re right on schedule.”
“God, I hope so,” the gas station man said.
“Good luck.” Teal gave a wave as the bonefish skiff planed off, skimming across the flats for deep water and the straight, oceangoing run back to Key West.
“SHOULD I CALL YOU chief, or what?”
“Anything you want, darlin’.” Huge Barnett was steering left-handed. His right hand, crablike, was exploring Laurie’s blouse. She pushed it away, but not too firmly.
“Can I call you Clare?”
Barnett reddened. “No,” he snapped. “What is it, your faggot boss went snooping around the city personnel records? That how you found out?”
“Oh, stop, it’s not so bad.” Laurie moved Barnett’s hand to her thigh. “Where I come from, that’s a perfectly fine name. Clare Barnett.”
“Well, down here it’s a pussy name, so just call me chief.”
“Don’t pout,” Laurie said crossly.
“I’m not, damnit. It’s this goddamn traffic.”
A semitractor rig had lurched into the road ahead of them on Summerland Key. Barnett had been trying to pass it for five miles. Every time he swung the Chrysler into the left lane, the semi had sped up. Barnett had become so enraged that he had lost his erection.
“It’ll be morning before we get to fucking Marathon,” he howled. “I’m going to try one more time.”
The truck weaved into the left lane, then cut erratically back to the right.
“God,” Laurie whispered.
Back and forth, the truck snaked down the Overseas Highway, gaining speed as it seemed to lose control.
“Do something!” Laurie said.
“Fucker’s drunk,” Barnett grumbled. He mashed a switch on the dashboard panel, and the blue light on top of the Chrysler began to flash. Still, the big truck did not yield. Next, Barnett tried the siren.
“He’s going to kill somebody,” Laurie cried. “What are you doing now?”
“I’m backin’ off, darlin’, because you’re right. He is going to kill somebody, and that somebody isn’t going to be me.” Barnett reached for his police radio. “Think I’ll call ahead for a state trooper.”
At that moment, the brake lights of the semitractor winked twice. Ahead, the truck was slowing, lumbering off the highway into a roadside gas stop. A flaking billboard announced it as the Big Pine Exxon.
In a cloud of dust and gravel, the semitractor gasped to a stop. Barnett parked the Chrysler off to the side, near the gas pumps.
“This won’t take long,” he told Laurie.
“I’m going in the grocery store for a beer,” she said.
Barnett snatched his Stetson from the backseat and lurched out of the squad car. Clumsily, he tried to hoist himself to the running board of the truck; failing that, he stood below the cab, shouting obscenities up at the driver.
The man was lean and smooth-faced. He wore a red Budweiser cap. “I’m very sorry, officer,” he said weakly.
“Get your ass down here,” Barnett shouted.
“In a second, please.” The driver held up a small brown pharmacy bottle for Barnett to see. “I’m waiting for my pills to work.”
“Get down here!”
“It’s angina,” the driver said through gritted teeth. “These are heart pills. I was having an attack back there on the highway—”
“Gimme your license,” Barnett said. A conspiracy, that’s what it was; a man can’t even get laid anymore. Murders, riots, pansy lunatic truck drivers. A conspiracy.
The truck driver handed down his driver’s license.
“Your name is Calvin Mo … Mo-something here.”
“Moriel.”
“Whatever,” Barnett said impatiently. “Calvin, I’m not going to give you a ticket, but I’m ordering you to stay off the fucking highway with your bad heart. You’re gonna kill some taxpayer, the way you drive.”
“I had an a
ttack. I’m sorry, officer, really. I’m feeling better now.” Calvin inhaled deeply, as if testing his chest for pain. “I’ll call the company and have them send another driver down from Miami.”
“Excellent,” muttered Huge Barnett, stomping back toward the squad car.
“Chief! Come here.” It was Laurie, calling from the doorway of a small convenience store that adjoined the service station.
“It’s gettin’ late, darlin’.”
“Just for a second, come here,” Laurie implored.
The Exxon attendant stopped Barnett on his way across the parking lot. “Want me to fill it up, chief?”
“Just give me ten bucks of high test and check the radiator. Make it fast, too.”
Barnett found Laurie in the aisle where the cosmetics were displayed. She pulled him close and pointed to a small lavender bottle. “I’m going to buy this,” she said mischievously. “For us.”
“What is it?”
Laurie removed the cap and held the bottle to his nose. Barnett winced.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s cranberry oil.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s a lotion.”
“What kind of lotion?”
Laurie smiled shyly. “You know …”
Barnett suddenly realized that the back of his Western shirt was drenched. He shivered in the air conditioning.
“You use that stuff? Really?”
“It tastes wonderful. Very sensual,” she said. “You can spread it all over.” She felt his ham-sized hand drop heavily from her waist to her buttocks.
“Well, then,” Barnett said. “All right.”
Outside, the gas station man worked swiftly. He lifted the hood of the police car and pulled the radiator cap. Then he crouched down, out of view of the grocery store, and crabbed to the driver’s side of the car. In a matter of seconds, the keys were out of the ignition and the trunk was open.
Inside the grocery, Huge Barnett pulled a Michelob from the six-pack under his arm and cracked it open.
“Three bottles of Venetian Cranberry Oil,” remarked the cashier, a red-haired girl of high school age. “I don’t think we’ve ever had anybody buy three bottles.”
“A little’s got to go a long way,” Barnett said with a leer. “Now, how much do we owe you?”