Rough Draft (33 page)

“Like a sword swallower,” Hal said to the businessman. “Only this bone goes in, but never comes out.”

The man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and after a moment he turned his head to take a look at Hal.

“I think it's time to board,” Hal said.

By 6
A.M
. Central Standard Time Hal was in his rental car going west past the Grand Ole Opry. Using a different credit card than he'd used in Miami. One of the dozen or so he got in the mail every month from South America. Nice new credit cards with nice new names.

Fifteen minutes later he passed Vanderbilt University and kept on heading west till he came to a small road on his right that led up a hill to a neighborhood of large white houses with big columns across their fronts.

He'd been there a few times before. Just parked down the block to watch the house and the comings and goings of Hector Ramirez. The trucker who'd gotten Hal started in the murder business wasn't driving a truck anymore. These days Hector owned a white Cadillac and he lived in a big Nashville house with seven white columns across the front.

Two years earlier the DEA had tried to throw Hector in jail on an interstate transport of narcotics charge, but Hector hired the best lawyer in Nashville and beat the case. That's how Hal found him. Just by chance, seeing Hector's picture in the paper, him and his lawyer standing on the Nashville courthouse steps holding up their hands in a victory celebration.

Hal had forgotten all about the guy until last night, sitting in the parking lot watching the guys who were watching Hannah Keller. That's when he had the idea. Hector Ramirez
was going to be Hal's distraction. His old friend helping him out one last time.

Hal drove up Hector's driveway and parked in front.

He was wearing his Florida tourist clothes. The yellow shirt with speedboats on it and a light blue windbreaker over it. Blue jeans and tennis shoes. Hal walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell.

The man who answered the door was an African-American. He was tall and had wide shoulders and long arms. He was dressed in a black shirt and black pants. He had a gold tooth in his smile.

“I'm here to see Hector,” said Hal.

“Everyone wants to see Hector,” the man said. “But only a few get to.”

“Tell him it's Judy Terrance's boy,” Hal said. “He'll remember.”

The black man slanted his head and peered at Hal for a few seconds. Then he stepped back and shut the door in Hal's face.

Hal waited. He stared at the white paint on the door. It was glossy and looked like it was many layers thick. Someone had spent a lot of time painting the door. Over and over and over until the door was thick with glossy white paint.

Hal could feel someone looking at him through the peephole. Then he heard a voice behind the door and a moment or two later the door swung open and Hector Ramirez was standing there in a white robe and a black cowboy hat. He was wearing shiny gold slippers.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hello, Hector.”

“Tell me right now, no bullshit. Is this a business call? 'Cause if it is, then I can tell you flat out, it isn't going to happen. I got serious protection right inside this door.”

“You mean did they send me to murder you?”

“That's what I mean, yeah.”

“No,” Hal said. “I just wanted to see you again. To say hi.”

“Is that right?”

“Sorry for the inconvenience,” Hal said.

Hector looked at Hal for a long time, then he turned his head and looked to his right and nodded.

Hal saw the big black man step away. He was holding a large automatic weapon. Hal didn't recognize it or know its brand name. He didn't care about weapons or their names or calibers. He had his thumbnail and his hand and that's all he needed.

“You wanted to see me again? What, like to reminisce about the good old days in Judy's roadside trailer?”

“I brought you something. A present.”

“What're you talking about, Hal?”

“I owe you, Hector, for getting me started in this business. It's turned out to be very lucrative.”

“Yeah, I heard they're keeping you busy. I should've taken a referral fee, or a cut on your future earnings, boy.”

“Well, I brought you something. It's something I found in my travels and when I saw it, I thought of you, Hector. I thought of how much I appreciated your help, getting me started.”

“What kind of bullshit is this, Hal?”

Hal turned around and walked back to the rental car. He sat down in the driver's seat and he honked the horn. Then he honked it again and again and then held it down for several seconds. Hal waited there, looking across the street, until he saw a woman in a blue dress and white hair come to her front window, a neighbor concerned about the noise in this expensive neighborhood. Hal continued to tap the horn.

As Hector came down the sidewalk, he screamed at Hal to stop that fucking racket.

Hal continued to honk.

Hector came up to the open door and ducked down and reached out to pull Hal's hand away from the horn.

Hal turned in the seat and with one hand he grabbed Hector by the throat and with the other he reached inside Hector's robe. Hector's cowboy hat tumbled off his head and fell to the asphalt.

Hector tried to push Hal's hand away. He tried to scream for his black valet. None of this succeeded. Hector Ramirez's eyes blinked several times like the Christmas tree lights, like the Santa Claus on the roof of the trailer. They blinked and then they closed.

Then the black man was out on the porch. He was waving his weapon. He was yelling at Hal to step back. But Hal held Hector as a shield between him and the black man until he had entered Hector's body and done the deed.

Then he let Hector fall to the pavement. As he pulled onto the quiet street of that hillside neighborhood, he looked over at the house across the way and saw the woman in the blue dress was still at the window, a telephone pressed to her ear.

By seven-thirty in the morning the temperature in Miami was already in the mid-eighties. Misty Fielding wore denim overalls over a shorty white T-top, showing a little midriff, the curve of her waist. She wore white Keds and a baseball cap with the Miami Heat's logo. In her right pocket was the wolf eye. She could feel it through the material of her overalls rubbing against her thigh. As she got out of her car at Dinner Key Marina, she reached into the pocket and touched the glass eye. A good luck touch.

She was nervous but pumped. Following Hal's plan, the two of them were a team now. Feeling the blood fizz in her veins, the pleasant breathless tingle of nervous energy. This was the day everything came together, all the random story lines of her life intersected into one. Misty and Hal. Misty and Randall. Misty and Hannah. Misty and her father. All the strands braiding.

She carried a straw bag with five derringers in it, and she was wearing her wraparound shades. Trying for a nautical look, though she wasn't sure if she was close or not. She'd never spent much time around marinas or boats or the water, but as she crossed the parking lot and saw the way some of the other people headed toward the docks were dressed, she relaxed. Apparently any scruffy thing would do.

There were several entrances through the high chain-link fence, but Hal had told her which one to take, the one on the far left. She passed an old man with white hair who was sitting on a bench having a breakfast beer. He had a grizzled Ernest Hemingway beard and bleary eyes that he turned on her as she passed.

“Tight lines and good fishing.” He raised his beer can in salute.

Misty marched down the dock past the big white yachts and the long sleek sailboats. She was almost to the end of the dock, starting to think she'd taken the wrong entrance after all, when she saw Randall Keller sitting on a bench in front of an open slip. He was plinking rocks into the water.

She walked up behind him and looked down at the top of his head. His blond hair was thick and uncombed. He was wearing a blue-and-white-checked shirt and blue jeans and black basketball shoes. She caught a hint of his shampoo, something with a strawberry flavor. A cute kid. Cuter up close than he'd seemed at a distance when she'd followed him home from school those times.

He was drawing back his hand to toss another pebble into the harbor when Misty spoke.

“You do your homework, Randall?”

He stopped his toss, then slowly craned around and looked at her.

“You get that photo I sent?”

“Who are you?” he said.

“Think hard. You'll probably be able to figure it out, Rando.”

The boy swallowed. The rock fell from his hand onto the dock.

“Barbie-girl?”

Misty came around the bench and sat down beside him.

He gave her a stiff smile and inched away.

“What're you doing here?”

“I thought it looked like a nice day for a boat ride.”

“You have a boat here?”

“No, but I understood your friend does. The one your
mother dumps you with when she wants to be alone. Dark hair, a little pudgy.”

“You know Gisela?”

“No, but I'd like to. Which boat is hers?”

Randall looked across at a red and yellow houseboat with several purple life preservers hooked along its rail.

“The
Margaritaville,
huh? You think she'd mind if I came aboard?”

Randall swallowed again and said nothing.

“Oh, come on, Randall. Why're you being so shy? You're not shy on the computer.”

“Gisela's getting dressed,” he said, “then we have to go to school. I don't think it's a good time right now.”

“What's wrong, Randall? You don't seem pleased to see me. After all the intimate conversations we've had, you're so cold. Do I scare you?”

The boy frowned and looked down at the water.

Misty said, “I'm really hurt, Randall. I thought we had something nice. Is that the kind of little boy you are? Rude, unkind?”

“What do you want?” His voice was meek. “Why are you here?”

“I told you. I want to go on a boat ride. It's such a pretty day. Don't you think it's a pretty day?”

Randall looked up at the empty blue sky, then turned his gaze back toward the houseboat.

“I have to go,” he said. He rose and started around the bench.

Misty hopped to her feet and followed him. Down the dock Ernest Hemingway was coughing loudly as he popped open another beer.

At the ramp that led to the
Margaritaville,
Misty reached into her straw bag and chose one of the derringers at random. The .38 Mighty Midget. She kept her hand inside the purse, taking a firm grip on the pistol.

She stepped onto the deck of the houseboat, a couple of paces behind Randall. The boy shot a quick look back at her, then headed for the door.

He was in the main cabin only a step ahead of Misty.

She shut the door behind her and turned just as the small dark-haired woman came out of the other cabin. She was running a brush through her hair when she saw Misty.

Randall dropped down on a small couch and hunched his head low like a turtle trying to disappear into its shell.

“Who the hell are you?”

Gisela pointed the hairbrush at her as if it were loaded.

“Hey, I know you,” Misty said. “You're the one from TV, the cop lady who's always in an uproar about some 7-Eleven robbery or something. That's you, isn't it? The TV cop lady?”

“That's right, I'm a police officer. And who are you? And what the hell do you think you're doing in here?”

Gisela took a half step to her right. Closer to the little kitchen with its drawers full of knives. Maybe even a gun hidden in there somewhere.

Misty withdrew the derringer from her purse and showed it to Gisela.

Randall looked up, saw the gun, and sank lower on the couch.

“Okay,” Misty said. “So let's crank this baby up, see what she'll do. The three of us, we're going for a little boat ride.”

At just after eight Hannah swung her Porsche off the Julia Tuttle Causeway onto Star Island. The sky was polished a milky blue, with a strong breeze off the water, traffic inexplicably light.

Almost a century earlier Star Island and several other perfectly oval dollops of land had been scooped from the bay bottom and distributed along the edge of the causeway to Miami Beach so that the moderately rich might have a waterfront way station to enjoy until they amassed sufficient wealth and could afford to move an hour north to the true luxury of Palm Beach.

It took her only a few minutes to locate the correct gold numerals on the stucco column. Behind the heavy brass bars of the front gate, the house was a three-story sprawling Mediterranean mansion that confronted a blue expanse of Biscayne Bay like a fortress of culture and good taste. It was protected from drive-by gawkers by a high pink stucco rampart backed by a fifteen-foot sculptured hedge.

At the head of the driveway Hannah spoke her name into the speaker box, prepared to give a long explanation about the E-mail relationship between her son and the boy who lived behind those walls, but only a second after she'd uttered her name, the heavy gate rolled open.

A slim Japanese woman in a white dress and white leather shoes greeted her at the front door and admitted her into a cool, shadowy foyer. To the right a small waterfall rustled inside a screened atrium. Two garish parrots squawked
and fluttered their wings. On the whitewashed wall to the left hung a small dark painting signed by Marc Chagall.

The slim woman waited serenely for Hannah to take in the surroundings.

When Hannah turned back, the woman's slender hand fluttered up toward the stairway.

“Stevie is expecting you, Ms. Keller. He's in the studio.”

“Are you Stevie's mother?”

“No. Mr. and Mrs. Brockman are in Provence for the week, buying wine. I am Yoshia, Stevie's nurse.”