Key West Connection (19 page)

So I stayed. And they finally took my money—after I said I would find another hiding place if they didn't.

By Thursday I was feeling good. Really good. Bright multicolored halos no longer surrounded lights, and April had removed the stitches from my wrist with tender concentration. To test myself I jogged a mile up the road to Stock Island, then ran back at about half speed. I timed myself with the Rolex. Nine minutes up, six and a half minutes back. Not bad. On the Yarbroughs' lawn was a big lazy oak tree, draped with Spanish moss. I picked out a sturdy limb, jumped up and grabbed it, and then did twenty-nine good pull-ups. When I was in shape, really in shape, I could do thirty-eight. But twenty-nine was about twenty-two more than your average American male can do, and I was satisfied. I pushed myself through about fifteen minutes of good stretching exercises, and when I was through huffing and puffing in the hot noonday sun, I turned to see April watching me. She wore short cut-off jeans and a blue man's shirt, the tails tied beneath her breasts and above her flat stomach. She looked at me with frank disapproval, her long black hair swinging back across her buttocks as she turned away in some sort of strange protest.

“April! Hey!”

I hurried to catch up with her. When I caught her, I took her elbow and swung her gently around. “What's wrong, April? Huh? Why were you looking at me like that?”

Her pretty face was obviously red from anger, and I realized for the first time that she had amber—almost golden—brown eyes.

“What's wrong? Men!” she half-shouted in disgust.

She started to stalk off again, but I stopped her.

“Hey! Just give me a hint.” I tried a smile. “Was it something I said?”

She glowered at me and, somehow, it made her look older. Pretty little girl; I had known her since she was just a barefooted kid, playing in the dirt. The pretty little daughter of a friend, and now I felt odd seeing her as a woman for the first time.

“You wanna know what's wrong with me, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan? Well, I'll tell you. I spent the best part of th' last four days worryin' myself sick about whether you'd get well or not. You tol' Daddy what had happened, an' maybe you tol' Momma. I don' know—figured it wasn't none o' my business. Didn't ask you the first question. Jus' wanted you ta get well, tha's all. But then I walk out here to feed the chickens an' I see you runnin' around an' swingin' from the trees like a big blond ape—like you're tryin' to kill yourself for sure, an' . . . an' . . . ” Her face flushed even more, close to tears. “An' it jus' made me mad! Oh . . . men!” She whirled around and stomped off, oblivious to my stammered explanations.

So what do you do? What could I do? I went inside the house, showered, fried myself a steak, and opened a beer. I had somehow hurt her feelings by, in her mind, hurting myself. I was touched by her concern. And I wanted to explain to her: explain why I had to push my recovery; explain why people over thirty sometimes fail to notice the inexorable transition to maturity in people they have known only as children. I wanted to talk to her, adult to adult, but she wasn't back by two p.m. And I had to head up to Boca Chica for a little meeting with D. Harold Westervelt.

The colonel was swimming his laps when I arrived. He opened the front door of his neat suburban home dripping wet, a towel draped around his neck. He seemed pleased to see me—but not pleased enough to cut short his workout.

“I must apologize,” he explained as we walked back to the patio, “but I believe that even the smallest concession to one's discipline inevitably leads to another concession, and then another and another.” He laughed shortly. “I'm afraid my penchant for discipline used to drive my poor late wife crazy. But I'm fixed in my ways, and I can't afford to let myself change now, captain. I swim half a mile in the morning: six a.m. winter or summer, rain or shine, seven days a week. I work until the early afternoon, lunch on tossed salad, then swim another half a mile and do my calisthenics. So you'll have to excuse me for another twenty minutes or so.”

So I sat on a plastic lawn chair with my honey and tea and watched the colonel. His pool was unlike most backyard pools. It was about twenty-five yards long and only, perhaps, ten yards wide—built for exercise, not patio parties. He swam with long, strong strokes. His shaved head cut through the water like the bow of a boat, and his broad shoulder muscles knotted and extended as he went. At fifty-some years of age, Colonel D. Harold Westervelt was an amazing physical specimen. In fact, he was an amazing physical specimen compared to most men at any age.

When he was finished with his laps, he jumped out of the pool, toweled off briefly, did seventy-five push-ups, rested momentarily, then did a hundred sit-ups, using the towel beneath his hips as a pad. His calisthenics finished, he rinsed off in the pool, dried himself, pulled on black warm-up pants and jersey, then sat beside me on the patio. He wasn't even breathing hard.

“I appreciate your patience, captain. Few people would understand.”

“A very impressive display, colonel.”

“It wasn't meant to be impressive, only functional.” He turned his icy blue eyes toward me. D. Harold Westervelt was one tough cookie. And I was glad I was on his side.

He stood up. “I've read your report. You did well, captain. Very well.” He eyed me for a moment, going over me from head to toe, the way someone might study a car they are considering for purchase. “You've lost the excess weight, I see. What are you, about two-oh-five?”

“I'm not sure now, colonel. But around two-ten when I'm right. Few people guess it as closely as you did. They usually guess a lot heavier.”

“The shoulders throw them off. If the rest of your body were in proportion to your shoulders, you'd weigh . . . what? Fifty or sixty pounds more?”

I smiled. He didn't smile back. He was all business, that man. How long had I known him? Well, a long, long time; friends through mutual interests and a military past. And still I was never given even the first indication that he was somehow involved with Norm Fizer's agency. And I probably would never have known had it not been for . . .

“I assume you are here because you want to reinvolve yourself with that Cuda Key business?” he said, breaking in on my thoughts.

“That's correct.”

“I suggest you move out this evening.”

“That was my plan.”

“And weapons?”

“That's why I'm here. I'm afraid I lost the dart pistol. And my knife. But I plan to get them back.”

“Follow me,” D. Harold Westervelt said. And he led me back to his laboratory and armament room and unlocked the steel fire door. Once inside, I took a seat.

“How are you feeling now, captain?” He looked meaningfully at the head bandage I still wore.

“Fit. Ready.”

He nodded. “Good. Never underestimate your abilities, and never overestimate your strengths. They can be fatal errors.” He pulled open the floor safe, reached in, and retrieved another Webber dart pistol. “I think we discussed before the problems of peacetime warfare? Because of that, I will give you only one dart loaded with the scorpionfish toxin. Let us say . . . the third dart—which you can change, of course. The others will contain a powerful knockout drug, similar to that which you used on the dogs.”

“And if I use this drug on the dogs?”

Colonel Westervelt shrugged. “It may kill them, but probably not. It depends on their size. It will knock out a hundred-and-sixty-pound man for two, maybe three hours. If you use it on the dogs, they will give you no problem for some time.”

He closed the floor safe, covered it via the button on the wall, then unlocked one of the many gun cabinets. From a top shelf he produced a small mahogany box. He put the box on the table before me and opened it. Inside, in neat rows, were small metal caps tipped with some kind of hard black rubber.

“I made these myself. They've been well tested, believe me.”

“Tips for the Cobra arrows?”

He nodded. “Actually, they give the expert bowman the two ideal options. Shoot an adversary in the head at a range of up to a hundred yards and you will knock him cold. Hit him on the left side of his chest, or in the throat, and you will kill him. In this box you will also find the regular lead weights which you must add to your shafts for perfect balance. These tips require only one each. Now, if you were to attach, say, a thermite grenade—”

“I have no grenades, colonel.”

“You will, Captain MacMorgan. You will.”

I would spare as many as I could; spare the leaching, drugged-up flunkies that the Senator held under his spell. But the ones who got in my way were dead. Just as Ellsworth was dead. He was a corpse and didn't even know it.

Hervey Yarbrough brought the
Sniper
around for me. It could have been a touchy situation, because when you care for a boat, really care for it, you want no one's hands on the controls but your own. And even though I said nothing about my concern, Hervey understood.

“Dusky, I want you to know you ain't got nothin' to worry about. I'll bring that pretty boat of yours up here jes' careful and sweet as can be. Treat her like she was my own.”

“I know that, Hervey. Does it show that much?”

“Naw, but I know how I feel—the idea of somebody else runnin' my boat jes' kinda makes my stomach roll. As my daddy said: ‘Boy, there's three things in this life you should never loan: your boat, your dog, and your wife.' ”

“In that order, Hervey?”

He grinned a big toothy grin at me. “If it ain't, it's dang close.”

The
Sniper
made the cut into the narrow Cow Key Channel right at sunset. I hadn't seen her in too, too long, and the sight of her, looking black in the golden angle of sunlight, riding high and sleek across the turquoise slick of horizon, put a lump in my throat. I knew then how the knights of old must have felt when their squires brought their energized, armored war horses to them. The
Sniper
was ready. And so was I.

Hervey brought her in with the expertise only a lifetime on the sea affords; an eggshell landing, the engines pulled into reverse without any clatter of gears to stop her sternway. Once we had fixed lines and spring lines and had her properly bumpered, I went over my gear and stowed it all in the watertight knapsack I would carry.

“I did jes' like you said,” Hervey told me as we stood in the new dusk, side by side, at his rickety wooden dock. “I tol' the folks at the marina that the . . . the . . . ”

“The executor of my will?”

“Yeah. I tol' them he had as't me to haul her out and go over her before gettin' an appraisal for your estate.”

“Good.”

“They was all real sad about your death.” He chuckled softly in the darkness. “Almost got a little teary-eyed myself listenin' to 'em talk. To hear them tell it, you was half Boy Scout, half God, an' half fish hawk.”

“All the recent dead are, Hervey. It's too bad we can't appreciate people while they're still alive. Huh?”

“Tha's the dang truth, Dusky. The dang truth. Makes me want to go inside an' give tha' girl of mine an' the ol' woman a big hug. This life does have a way o' slippin' right through our fingers, don't it?”

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

Hervey cleared his throat and, with well-practiced fingers, took a fresh chew of tobacco from the Red Man pouch. “I got a feelin', cap'n, that what you got planned tonight might be a little on the dangerous side.”

“A little.”

He spat calmly into the dark water. “May not look like it, but in my day I was some kinda rough when it come to a fight. Figure I'm still he-coon enough to take care of three or four of them dopeheaded bastards if push come to shove.”

It was an eloquent offer, honestly made. If I wanted help, Hervey Yarbrough was willing and ready. I put my hand on his thick shoulder.

“I appreciate it, Hervey, but I've got to do this alone. I've been trouble enough as it is.”

He spat again. “Ain't been no trouble, far as I can see. Well, you'll be wantin' to get a little shut-eye before you shove off, huh?”

“I think I'd better.”

I went into April's room and shut the door. I hadn't seen her since that afternoon. I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye and thanking all three of them, but—well, any farewell might imply that I might never come back. And I didn't want them saddled with any additional worry. So, at midnight, goodbyes or not, I would just slip away.

I turned on her desk lamp. A small clean room adorned with the things common to the rooms of teenage girls everywhere: high school pennants, Polaroid snapshots, and little bottles of departmentstore perfume. Snoop that I am, I went through the photographs; stop-action capsules of a single human life in gentle flight. The little girl, the tomboy, the new teenager banking toward womanhood. I noticed something odd: no boys in the photographs with her. And she was a pretty girl: breasts and ripe young body built for love. I wondered about the curious absence of the obligatory adoring male. She was no lesbian—the way she shyly flirted told me that. She was all young woman, strong and sure—and maybe that was it. You see it sometimes in the independent ones, the best of the females—they can't find a male strong enough to accept them, to complement them. I put the photographs back the way I had found them, amused with the new puzzle of April Yarbrough, the young woman I had known before only as a little girl.