Florida Heatwave (33 page)

She finished the till, took the paperwork and the lock box, slung her bag over her shoulder and headed upstairs. At the landing, she knocked on the door and it drifted ajar. She knocked again. “Bill?”

When she pushed the door open, the scene revealed itself to her in snapshots. There was a spray of blood on the wall behind Bill’s desk. His fleshy form tilted to the side, his head lolling back, eyes bulging in a paper white landscape of skin, a wide red gash across his throat. The office was trashed, file cabinet overturned, papers littering the floor. The safe was wide open, emptied of all its contents, whatever that had been. A cheap beige sofa, patterned with palm trees, was slashed, its cushions tossed every which way.

She started to back away, a scream delayed in her throat. A voice in her head, whispering,
Don’t make a sound. Get out. Get out. Get out.
She started backing away, for a second unable to avert her eyes. Then she turned to run, but as she did, he was there — the man from the bar, just a dark form in the dark stairway.

“Let me ask you something,” he said. He began moving slowly toward her. His voice had a gravelly quality she hadn’t noticed in the din of the bar. Every nerve ending in her body tingled.

“I have a little girl,” she said. She could feel the dry suck of fear at the back of her throat, but she managed to keep her tone level. She had only one goal, to get back to Emma. She didn’t give a shit about Bill, or who might have killed him.

“I didn’t see anything,” she said, hearing only the sound of blood rushing in her ears. “I don’t remember your face or your name.”

“That’s good,” he said. He gave her a quick, pragmatic nod. “You’re smart. But you didn’t let me ask my question.”

She stood very still as he reached the top of the stairs. He was still holding his jacket and his canvas bag. He had no blood on him anywhere that she could see. He didn’t really look like
that
bad a guy; there was no menace to him, nothing nasty or mean about the eyes or the mouth. Then again, she’d never been the best judge of character. She found herself thinking that her only advantages were the heavy metal box in her hands and the fact that his back was to the staircase. She would hit him in the head with the box as hard as she could, and then push with all her strength. He’d fall and she’d scream her head off, run for her car. Except she didn’t. With her heart a thrumming engine in her chest, her breathing ragged in her throat, she stood paralyzed.

“What’s your question?” she said.

“What would a hundred grand mean to you?”

Downstairs the phone started ringing. She wondered if it was her mother, calling to see when she’d be home.

“A hundred thousand dollars?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

She issued a nervous laugh, deciding to play along and buy herself some time. “I don’t know. It depends what I had to do for it.”

He dropped his duffle to the floor, keeping his eyes on her, and pulled open the zipper. It was full of cash—a huge stash of hundred dollar bills.

“All you’d have to do is what you’ve already done. Forget what you’ve seen and forget my face.”

But no, that wasn’t all, of course. She could see it in the half smile on his lips.

“And?”

“And—run a quick errand with me. Not even an hour of your time. Risk-free. And then you go home to your girl, and none of this ever happened. Except, for once in your life, you have money in the bank. Pay off those credit cards.”

As if he knew her. As if he knew anything about her. But there
was
debt, of course—a credit card with eight thousand and change. How had it ever gotten so high? A trip to Disney, clothes for Emma. The washing machine broke.
What would a hundred grand mean to you?
She could pay off that stupid card, work part time at the flower shop, finish her degree. Was she really thinking that? With a man dead, murdered—someone she knew—just a few feet away?

As adrenaline deserted her, it was replaced with a kind of numbness. Maybe it was shock, or just fear. She found in that moment that she only cared about how to save herself for her daughter. What did she need to be to do that? Whatever it was, that’s what she’d be.

She opened her mouth to speak, but he raised his hand.

“Before you answer me, I’m going to tell you two things. First, I didn’t kill Bill. I didn’t
like
him.” He lifted his palms. “Come on. No one did. But I didn’t kill him. That’s one. And two, I can’t let you leave unless you help me.”

So what was he saying? He didn’t kill Bill but he’d kill her if she didn’t do what he wanted? She decided not to ask for clarification. She listed a little to the side, her shoulder touching the wall.

“What kind of an errand?” She was just buying time, of course. Thinking of a way out. But did she feel a little jolt, a little shock of excitement beneath her fear? No. She wasn’t that.

“Okay,” he said. “Good.”

Just by moving closer to her, he pushed her back into the office. He closed the door behind them. She didn’t dare turn around and look at Bill. If she did, she knew she’d vomit or become hysterical. She couldn’t even watch someone throw up without throwing up herself. She sank onto the slashed-up sofa and stared at her feet.

“What do you want me to do?” she said, looking up at him.

He had those eyes trained on her; and that’s when she saw the hard glint to him. The edge. She also saw the gun tucked into his waist and her heart started hammering again. This was real.

She remembered how afraid she’d been when she realized that she was pregnant, that stone cold drop in her belly, the denial, the well of tears. But then there was Emma, the little peanut. Now, Maura couldn’t imagine herself without her daughter. Everything she was before seemed so silly, so frivolous. So maybe something good would come from this, too. Maybe there was redemption in this ugly, horrifyingly real moment.

Jake’s eyes drifted behind her to Bill, and she was surprised to see Jake lift a hand to his temples and rub hard with thumb and middle finger.

“You’re looking at a dead man,” he said.

He wasn’t whiny about it, just matter of fact, easy with it. She watched him. He had a tattoo on his arm, playing cards, the faces faded and blurry with age. She could only make out the joker. She still had that box clutched in her hand, thought again about rushing him, smashing the sharp metal corner into the temple he was rubbing now.

“Two,” he corrected himself. “Two dead men.”

He gave a little laugh. Maybe he was trying to put her at ease, being funny in this sick way. She found herself getting angry.

“Are you going to tell me what I have to do, or what?” This time her voice betrayed her with a quaver, and then the tears welled up from some deep, terrified place. She couldn’t stop them. “Just tell me what I need to do to get back to my little girl.”

She thought she saw a flash of empathy, something real and sincere. Then it iced over and he looked away from her.

“The men who did this to Bill were looking for something. I was supposed to deliver it to him yesterday. I’m late. So Bill’s dead. If they don’t get it soon, I’ll be dead, too.”

“So give it to them.”

He gave her that look he’d given her when she’d slipped him the cheap tequila.

“Oh, okay,” she said.

An errand. He wanted her to help him deliver whatever it was.

“Fine,” she said. She stood quickly, and saw him jump a little. “Let’s just get this over with.”

The moon was a wide, high platter, opalescent and strange, painting the black sky silvery gray. The water slapped against the floating dock and they walked down a long row of boats—yachts, skiffs, bow riders, fishing boats, pontoons —at a marina not far from the bar.

He wasn’t easy with it; didn’t have his sea legs, walking like a drunk as the dock shifted, raised, and dropped with the water movement. There was a fairly strong wind from the north; it was dancing palm fronds on the shore across the Intracoastal. There was a sizeable chop to the water.

“That’s it over there,” he said from behind her. She didn’t see where he pointed. Up ahead was a Boston Whaler, small and light. On a night like this, something bigger would have been better.

“The Whaler?”
Hey, Maura, want a ride on my whaler?
Bill used to say behind the bar, thrusting his hips forward and laughing like a fool. God, she had really hated him.

“Whatever,” he said, getting edgy. “The white one.”

“They’re all white.”
You idiot.

“The Wild Card. That’s what it’s called.”

“Like your tattoo.”

“Yeah,” he said, annoyed. “I had my tattoo first. Bill didn’t have an original thought in his head.”

Something about the way he said it reminded Maura of her mother.
If he had half a brain, he’d be dangerous.
She hoped her mother wasn’t waiting up. She’d be worried. Or judging, maybe thinking Maura had hooked up or was staying late with some of the servers drinking—even though she hadn’t done anything like that since Emma was born. Lizzie would be all attitude in the morning.

Jake—if that was even his name—moved in front of her and tossed the duffle and leather jacket on the boat.

“It’s the money, isn’t it?” she said. She squared her shoulders and looked at him. On the ride over here, she’d been thinking. You have the thing, whatever it is—the drugs, guns, stolen goods—or you have the money. He had a duffle full of cash, and little else.

He turned to study her, seemed to size her up. Whatever he saw caused him to put his hand to the gun at his waist.

“I mean,” she went on anyway, “there’s no hundred grand, right? You’re going to turn this money over.” She nodded over to the duffle. “You owe it to someone, or you’re buying something illegal. But that money is going away.”

“Just get on the boat, Maura.”

Did she tell him her name? She must have, but she didn’t remember.

“You don’t really need me,” she said. She said it easily; they could have been talking about anything. “And I don’t care about your money. I swear to god I’ll never say a word to anyone about you or about what I’ve seen tonight.”

He didn’t answer her, kept those dark eyes on her.

“Tomorrow, someone’s going to find Bill’s body. It’s not going to be hard for them to figure out that I was the last one in the restaurant. When they find me and start asking questions, I’m just going to tell them that I went right home, never saw Bill all night, never saw you. They’ll believe me. There’s no reason not to.”

He was staring at her. She couldn’t read his expression.

“Let me go home.”

For a second, a blissful split second, she thought he was going to do it. But then he rolled his eyes and released an exasperated sigh.

“Get in the boat, please.”

Back at the bar, he’d taken the box from her before they left and removed the till money, stuffing it into his jacket. It seemed like the actions of a petty thief, not someone who had a hundred grand lying around to pay out. When he’d taken the box from her hand, she thought:
I should have pushed him down the stairs and run, called the police.
As he’d put his hand on her arm and they walked out through the deserted parking lot to her car, she’d felt a flash flood of regret. Another terrible mistake in a long line of mistakes—sleeping with the wrong man, getting pregnant, dropping out of school and never going back. All of that had led her to
this
place.

Now, he took the gun from his waist when she didn’t answer and didn’t obey; she took a step back from him.

“You have no reason to trust me,” he said. “But I’m going to ask you to do that. If you just do what I say, you’ll be home with your girl in an hour. I promise.”

He was lying; she could feel the lie in her bones. He had a gun. She couldn’t outrun him. He’d kill her before she reached the end of the dock.

Slowly, she climbed on the boat to buy herself a little more time, panic constricting her throat, causing her whole body to quiver.

As she sat on the captain’s bench where he pointed for her to go, her fate was crystal clear. She was here because she’d seen Bill’s body, because she’d seen Jake. Why he hadn’t just killed her in Bill’s office, or even here on the dock, she didn’t know. Maybe he thought it would be too loud, make too much of a mess. Maybe he’d been afraid he wouldn’t be able to make his exit from the restaurant. She thought that he must have been waiting for her to leave for the night, maybe to get the money from the till. But she hadn’t left right away. She’d gone up to ask Bill for next Thursday off. If she’d just left the box and the paperwork by the register and gone home for the night, she wouldn’t be here right now.

He untied the lines, started the boat and pulled slowly from the dock. He flipped on the GPS and fish finder equipment, and the screens glowed an eerie green. She sat paralyzed, her mind racing through scenarios and options. One thing was obvious: When he was done with whatever he was going to do, or maybe before, he’d kill her and dump her body in the Gulf. Her breath started to come more ragged.

The worst part about it was that she’d actually been
attracted
to him. If he’d been nice to her at the bar, asked for her number, she’d have given it to him—even though she hadn’t given out her number in years. She’d been that drawn to him. What did that say about her? That she had no instincts for survival; she didn’t know enough to step out of the way of an oncoming train. Maybe Emma would be better off without her. The thought gave her a physical pain in her chest.

They made their way through the no wake zone and once they’d passed the causeway, he sped up the boat and they headed for the dark expanse of the open water. The low homes and tall condo buildings glittered on the shoreline, growing smaller and smaller as the little boat headed into the black. When the shoreline was just a glimmering strand of Christmas lights in the distance, Jake killed the engine, and they floated in the chop.

What if she jumped and swam right now? Could she make it to shore? If he shot into the water, how likely would it be that he’d hit her? Would he come looking for her later?

“I know you’re scared,” he said after a minute. “But this is going to be over soon.”