Hawk Channel Chase (24 page)

“As I assured you two days ago,” said Cormier, “you're helping an admirable cause and helping your friend as well. We put our campaign on pause. We're not in the business of instant results, so we took a breather to let some heat dissipate.”

I thought about Sam’s description of the ugly boat with four motors.

“I guess you’d call a high-seas boat chase an example of heat.”

Cormier nodded.

“You and Sam,” said Ricky Stinson, “you’ve been friends how long?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said.

He stared at the table. “The boss here says you stepped up to help the man. No hesitation. What did he do, once or twice save your life?”

I said nothing. Tried to figure out his up-north accent.

“You two old pals from jump school? Swamp training? Same tank in Kuwait?”

The server returned and smiled at Cormier and me as she placed our drinks on the table. She dropped the smile and handed Stinson his fresh beer. Something about her got my attention. Only after she walked away did I get it. She had Beth Watkins’s eyes. She also had Bobbi Lewis’s rear view, but those eyes…

“Back to business,” said Cormier. “I spoke with Sam. I have been castigated for underestimating you. He asked that I apologize on his behalf for making the same mistake. I asked you to help us with the long-term payoff of self-satisfaction. But I failed to emphasize risk. By withholding information, by trying to protect you, Sam and I could have put you into greater danger. If you want to hear more about what we’re doing, I am prepared to tell you everything I know. I will answer all of your questions.”

Stinson shifted his downward gaze to the tabletop in front of Cormier. “You’re talking to this shitbird like he’s one of us.”

Cormier gazed off at the dark harbor, said nothing.

“I know we’re not counting days,” I said to Stinson. “How many hours have you been in the Florida Keys?”

“Long enough,” he said, sliding his eyes to the drink in front of me. “I hear you’re a groupie for the she-cops.”

“Where did you study medicine, Ricky?”

He joined Cormier in staring into the distance.

Cormier said, “That’s not his field, Alex.”

Like a savvy lawyer, I knew that before I asked. I almost said something about Sloppy Joe’s calling their bouncers “emotional control technicians,” but I held my tongue. Stinson was one of those boys born with a “use-by” date.

The alleged entertainer began to moan the Buffett song, “Tin Cup Chalice.” Far too slow, off-key and ill-timed. I wished I could give him a sample of what I now knew to be Stinson’s expertise.

“Copeland,” I said, “I appreciate your willingness to answer my questions. You didn’t have to expend all this effort. But now it worries me that you did. I don’t want to know more than I already know. I wish to hell I didn’t know any of it.”

Cormier kept his eyes on the water.

Stinson’s phone buzzed. He extracted it from a side pocket of his shorts and didn’t check the window before he flipped it open. He grunted, listened for maybe ten seconds, snapped it closed, returned it to his pocket. I knew from shaking his hand that he had laborer’s calluses. I could tell by the way that he handled the phone that he also had the grace of an aristocrat.

Or a martial arts expert.

“So, one more time,” I said, “why are we here? I got turned off by your drunken performance yesterday, so now you want to play me with intimidation?”

Still no response from either man. I dug deeper.

“Okay, play me. When I’m through shivering in my boots, will I be compelled to try harder?
 
Get scared away? Maybe leave town?
 
Did you ask me to this dream resort so we could all go backward?”

“Whoa,” said Ricky Stinson. “With the doctor, here, you might get away with that kind of yammering. But don’t think you can jack me around.”

“I don’t recall talking or referring to you,” I said. “Are you over-compensating for a poor self-image, or just trying to justify your salary?”

“Boys, boys,” said Cormier. “You keep pissing at each other like that, your splashing might soil my drink.”

Stinson let a huge belch. Not too damned aristocratic.

From somewhere in the restaurant, three college-age girls stumbled onto the beach singing along with the last few lines of “Tin Cup Chalice.” They looked to be children of wealth, dressed for dinner and fortified by drink. As the lyric ended they began their own song, a sorority ditty, part foul-mouthed, part cute, about searching for their dream date in Nantucket. Performing for themselves and anyone else who cared to watch, they struck jutting-ass and tits-up poses, tried to look alluring, or helpless when they sang their naughtiest lines. At the end of each verse the women removed an article of clothing. None of them wore bras. If their goal was nudity, it would be a short song.

A crowd of maybe ten or twelve began to assemble, to offer applause and hoots of encouragement. When the ladies were down to their panties, or thongs for two of them, one reached into her stack of duds and pulled out a small camera. She ran around the others, snapped a half dozen topless photos. She put the camera in her shoe as they started the verse that promised full nakedness. On the final line, they paused as if the big moment had arrived. Then they burst into laughter and knelt to pick up their garments. One counted to three, at which point they stood up, faced away, mooned the Beach Club and ran toward the Beach Building annex.

Our eastern European server went onto the sand to collect the plastic cups tossed there by the girls. She lifted a thong by her pinkie finger, gave it a look of disgust then dropped it.

“Assholes,” said Stinson. He reached over and flicked his fingernail against my drink glass. “Did you think we didn’t see you cruise the pool when you got here?”

The phone call. An observer had watched me arrive.

“I trusted you out of the gate,” said Cormier. “I told you everything.”

“And I assured you that I’d keep my mouth shut. I’d do nothing that might put Sam in jeopardy. Now you’re going a step beyond my loyalty to Sam. You’re trying to force me into keeping my mouth shut.”

“Crossed my mind,” said Cormier. “And Ricky’s, too. You don’t think Sam still needs your help?”

Shit, I thought. Good guy, bad guy has gone to bad guy, bad guy.

“It’s not what I think,” I said. “It’s what I don’t know. I thought we were in agreement, neither of us would endanger Sam. Now your mind is envisioning a possible betrayal, and I have to think the same of you, Dr. Cormier. From now on it’s what he tells me, not you.”

Cormier said, “Don't think for a minute that Sam is our only resource. You don’t think that five or six other honest boat owners live in the Keys? We knew from the start that we'd have to be flexible.”

“Starting now,” I said, “I’m out of your loop, deep in the dark and five steps removed. I don’t want intrigue, insider knowledge, fail-safes, plans or tough guys. Thanks for the drink.”

Cormier glanced at my empty glass. “By the way, Rutledge, my wife, for all her upbeat alertness, her good looks and positive take on things, has been an alcoholic since college. I still love her dearly and I would hope that anything you might witness, anything in questionable taste, you might keep to yourself. Grant her the sadness she has never outgrown.”

I nodded.

“Should she take a liking to you, please know you are not the first nor last. I ask only that you do us a favor. Treat the situation with dignity.”

“My shoes will grow wings,” I said.

The remark puzzled Cormier for a moment, then he appeared to accept it as I had meant it. He stood and his expression changed, became hard. “You want out,” he said, “but there is no out.” He began to walk and Stinson stood to follow him.

Stinson leaned toward me so Cormier couldn’t hear him. “You’re easier to read than a stop sign. If I ever see you again and you still got that mouth, you’re going to wish you grew wings.”

“And here I was, about to throw you an attaboy,” I said. “You keep your boss on such a tight leash.”

As if addressing an audience of hundreds, the singer thanked us for listening. He invited us back for tomorrow’s happy hour, told us not to fear the tip jar.

When I was sure that Stinson and Cormier had left, I wandered back into the Beach Building annex. With the crazy laughter and an upbeat Supremes song echoing from the second floor, I had no problem finding the three drunk girls. I climbed a stairway, found them running between two rooms, one still in her panties, one buck naked, the other wearing a pair of boxer shorts.

The naked one saw me in the hall, put her hands up to cover her face and said, “Oh, I feel so violated.”

From inside a room one of the others shouted, “I’m next.”

I wanted no part of their party.

I checked their room numbers and split. My banged-up leg muscles forewarned that I would not enjoy getting out of bed in the morning.

16

In the Pier House parking lot, the Cayenne farthest from the door was gone. I wished I had read both license tags and not blown off my initial suspicions. I also wished I could quit thinking like a private eye and go have a quiet beer.

My cell phone rang as I started up Front Street. I pulled it from my pocket to inspect the little window, but I was too close to a loud saloon to hold a conversation. One block up Simonton I returned Beth Watkins’s call.

“The telegraph has you smacked by a car,” she said.

“I’m fine, no problem.”

“See, Alex, a cop thinks differently. It’s more like the victim is lucky but there’s still a problem because hit-and-run is a crime in Key West. It could have been a mistake and the driver panicked. Or it might have been intentional, assault with a deadly weapon, and the schmuck could try again. It sounds like you’re not at home right now, for instance.”

“Okay, you got me. I just turned around to look.”

“Can we meet somewhere for a drink? I need to pick your brain.”

“I feel like hiding in my cave,” I said.

“That’s understandable, given that I just goosed your fear factor.”

“I’ll meet you at my house in ten minutes.”

“Nine?” she said.

“Eleven.”

I detoured to the package store behind the Bull & Whistle, bought a cabernet sauvignon. I was a block from the store when I turned back to buy a second bottle. Call it contingency planning. Wishful thinking.

The island’s highest elevation, Solares Hill, is seventeen feet above sea level. My ride home, going away from the high point, felt uphill every inch of the way. Fleming Street’s bike lane was an obstacle course of drunken moped riders and drunker idiots trying to parallel park. Carrying wine added to my clumsiness, though tropical evening fragrances lightened my load, not including fabric softeners in the block between William and Margaret.

I tried to pre-plan my encounter with Beth Watkins, lovely cop that she was. And to figure out how to answer her first question, one that I should ask myself.

How in the hell did I flip over that car’s hood?

And her probable second question. What the hell’s going on?

I now knew that Copeland Cormier wanted me off the hunt. He had wanted to assure himself and Ricky Stinson of my silence and to ensure it with a hammer-slam threat. The silence was a given. I would never cross Sam Wheeler. But Cormier’s heavy crap had backfired, had ignited the idea that everything he had told me for the past two days was bullshit. Including the short speech about his alcoholic wife. The rare
 
bulb popped on. Her proposition had been planned to rope me in, in some way, for some reason.

With you I would be a virgin.

I had confused them by declining her passionate come-on. Was she more to be pitied than scorned? Had Cormier’s speech about her sadness been a ruse to whitewash their treachery with a tale of affliction? Was she even his wife? Was he more a pimp than humanitarian?

Had he spoken with Sam, or thrown that in as part of his ruse?

I saw Beth Watkins hurrying up Fleming in the glow of the Eden House lobby lights, lightly tapping her hand against each of the six vertical columns out front. I stopped alongside of her, climbed off my bike. She said, “Handy man,” and patted the wine bag, then checked me for damage, squeezed my arm when she saw that I was okay. As we started down Dredgers Lane she bitched about having to park a block away on Grinnell.

“You smell that?” I said. “We’re downwind from a rain squall.”

“They’re talking a tropical storm near Haiti, and I saw a bunch of lightning off Higgs Beach. I hate it when people I know get run down on purpose.”

“Ahh, you get used to it.”

“Don’t even joke,” she said. “We found the Taurus in front of Carmen’s house.”

“Jesus.”

She began to speak but stopped. We both saw the prowler skulking in my yard, peering in a window.

Beth motioned with her hand, palm upward, to ask if I recognized the man. I shook my head, and she placed both hands against my chest, silently told me to stay put. In the next several seconds I learned about the arsenal in her black belly pack. She slowly, quietly peeled open its top Velcro closure. Its face flopped down; even in dim light I saw “POLICE” in reflective letters facing outward. She reached down with both hands, came out with a mean pistol in one hand, a Mini Maglite in the other.