The Naked Detective (11 page)

But wait—needed to? Why? I barely knew her. And the idea of needing someone was as scary as any of the things I'd fretted about that day. Still, that's how the thought broke over me: I needed to see her. You can't undo a thought; once I'd thought it I was stuck with it.

So I headed from the ocean to the Gulf. It's a short ride; it reminds you how tiny Key West is, how comfortingly insignificant. Except this evening I was having a tough time feeling comforted. The notion was scratching at me that there are things that matter even in places that don't.

I got to the street-side gate of Redmond's and saw that the police barricades were already down; so much for a detailed investigation into the death of a Latvian. I cruised right in. Residents were strolling here and there among the cradled vessels, or listening to music, or sitting on cut-off oil drums and drinking beer. Except for the yellow crime-scene tape around
Dream Chaser
, there was no evidence of recent violence, nearby tragedy. If a pall remained, it was of a kind that festered underneath the surface and didn't so readily show itself, the kind that went with a forever damaged sense of safety.

I rolled up to Maggie's trawler and, not without difficulty, climbed off my bike. The stars were out; the brighter ones were nested in little puffs of mist that looked like dandelions. I cleared my throat and called her name.

A long moment passed and then she finally appeared on deck. Her boat had a steep shear and high gunwales, and I had to crane my neck way back to see her; it was a little bit like crooning up to someone on a balcony—had that same absurdity and romance. I said hello.

She was wearing another of her T-shirt dresses, all smoothness and ease and unrestricted flow. Her curves were framed in stars. She seemed surprised to see me and didn't answer right away.

I asked her to invite me in.

She pointed toward the stern, then unfurled a rope ladder that clattered against the transom as it fell. I started climbing up. Rope ladders are unstable in the best of times, and this was hardly that. I swung; I wobbled; I felt a little seasick as I swung a leg into the cockpit. Maggie watched me climbing in, and the first thing she said was "Your pants are wet."

The yoga teacher stared at me a second, then turned toward the companionway and led me down a short and narrow flight of stairs into the main cabin, which was cozy as a puzzle. Furniture was painted peach and aqua, and everything fit into something else. The galley counter was hinged into a table; the back of the settee became a bookcase. There was about the place the serenity that goes with lack of waste. The lighting was soft and yellow; there was a restful background noise of water lapping gently at caulked planks. . . . Then I remembered that the trawler was on land.

I nodded then sat and took a moment to reflect on what a fiasco I was making of this visit. I don't think I seemed drunk, but I couldn't have appeared too sane or sober either. Not with wet pants and red teeth. Now that I was sitting still, I thought I detected a trace of Lydia's perfume on me too. How could I redeem this mess? Drop to my knees, confess to Maggie that although another woman had gotten me sexed up, it was her I really wanted? If you thought about it, that was quite a compliment. But even I understood that certain compliments were better left unsaid.

Maggie brought the tea. It was herb tea and it smelled like strawberries. She took hers and sat down smoothly on the companionway stairs. "So," she picked up, "you spoke with Lefty's daughter. Seems to've been a successful interview."

I sipped. It burned my lips but I hoped that it would sear away the lipstick. "I learned a couple things."

"I'll bet you did."

She was probably only ribbing me, but there was something in her tone and in the set of her jaw that allowed me to imagine that maybe, just possibly she was jealous. The idea thrilled me but I didn't have the nerve to test it. I stuck to the detective stuff. "Seems she's running Lefty's businesses now."

"Ah."

For a moment I was stumped as to how to continue. Ocean sounds came through hidden speakers and I had a faint and false sensation of the trawler rocking. Then, suddenly, I knew the real reason I'd needed to come here and what I had to say. I was still casting about for a tactful way to bring it up, when I heard myself blurt out, "Look, since yesterday I've had this shitty feeling that you know more than you're telling me."

Maggie rearranged her legs; her foot bumped against a stair. In anyone else this would have seemed a negligible fidget, barely noticeable, but it was such a violation of the yoga teacher's bodily precision that I found it painful to behold. She looked down at the floor, then up at me again. "You're right."

"Still, it was a promise." Her calm gray eyes narrowed just a bit; her voice caught and I thought maybe she would start to cry. "A promise to a friend."

Weirdly, my throat closed down in turn. Not in honor of Kenny Lukens or even in sympathy with Maggie's affection for him. No, what put secret tears behind my eyes was something more selfish and helpless and embarrassing to admit. Hurt feelings, pure and simple. "A friend," I echoed. "Very loyal. Very nice. He was a friend. So what am I? Unpaid help? Someone you use to—"

She cut me off, but very quietly. Her lips seemed infinitely careful as they formed the words, "I don't know what you are, Pete. Or what I want you to be. I've been trying for days to figure it out. Can't you see that?"

Some detective. I hadn't seen it, and my lack of seeing now shut my mouth and pinned me where I sat. I stared at Maggie. The light was soft and she was very tan but still I thought I saw her flush. I imagined the warmth climbing up her neck and throbbing at the tender place behind her ears. We were maybe six feet from each other, and I think there was a moment when I might have wafted up from the settee and taken her in my arms and we might have become lovers then and there. But the moment passed before I quite believed in it.

When Maggie spoke again, it was in a tone that was trying real hard to be businesslike. "What I haven't told you," she said, "is that someone found Kenny on Green Turtle Cay. Someone, maybe, from that water sports place."

I sat still and waited for more.

"Small world down here," she said. "Guys get rock fever. They get tired of drinking in Key West, they jump in a skiff and go drinking in the Bahamas. Same life, different island for a while."

"And one of these guys," I said, "just happened to show up at the bar where Kenny was working?"

"Seems that way. Maybe it was just bad luck. More likely he'd been looking for him. Who knows? But it was someone who'd been a regular at Lefty's. He recognized Kenny before Kenny saw him and could bolt."

"They talked?"

"The guy talked at Kenny. He was very drunk. He kept going back and forth between making threats and trying to cut a deal."

"A deal?"

"He told Kenny that Lefty still wanted to have him killed. But he had no loyalty to Lefty. He hated Lefty. He just wanted what was in the pouch. For himself. Said he'd pay ten thousand dollars for it. Said that was way more than it was worth to Kenny anyway."

"And Kenny said?"

"Kenny said nothing. Kenny wouldn't even admit that he was Kenny. He claimed he didn't know what the guy was talking about. Claimed he'd never been in Key West in his life." She shook her head and gave a sad, small laugh. "You know Kenny."

"Got drunker. Scrawled the Key West number on a matchbook and told Kenny to call and just leave his name when he wanted an easy ten grand. But then he got more threatening, like he'd decided he better take care of Kenny then and there. Kenny was terrified. Went to fetch ice and just kept going. Out the back door, to his dinghy. Sailed off to a different island and never went back."

I sipped some lukewarm tea and realized that I had a headache. It was too soon for a hangover, so I concluded it was just plain overload. Scotch, foreplay, wet underwear ... Two dead guys, a presumptive nympho whom I did not crave, a demure yoga teacher whom I did. And now clues. It was a lot for one evening. "How long ago was this?" I soldiered on. Maggie thought a moment. "Three months or so. It was January."

I rubbed my temples. "Ten grand would have gone a long way toward fixing up his boat."

"If he believed he'd really get it," Maggie said. "The whole thing could've been a setup. Lure him with the money, kill him anyway."

I thought back to my one meeting with Kenny Lukens. He was jumpy, all right. Thought he was being followed. Offered me way too good a deal to fetch a pail and shovel and dig the pouches up for him. Or get strangled in his place. "So he passed the setup on to me."

Maggie bit her lip and looked away. "I knew you'd think that. That's partly why I didn't want to tell you. Or even admit to myself that maybe that's what Kenny did. I mean, he lied, he stole— but I don't think he would've knowingly put someone else in danger."

I thought that over, and managed not to take it personally. On paper, at least, I was a private eye. And that's what private eyes did, right? Stood as surrogates for people getting clobbered, threw themselves in front of the onrushing trains of other people's screwups and calamities. Defended and avenged . . . Me? It would have been unseemly to start simpering about it, but Jesus, what a crappy line of work.

Not without dread, I said, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell me?"

She shook her head and took a breath that didn't come in quite as smoothly as her others. In a soft voice that would have melted tundra, she said, "You still mad at me?"

I didn't answer right away. I couldn't. Not that I had to think very hard about the question. Rather, I had to choke back a reply that was exorbitant, sophomoric, absurd, and dangerous. I had to stop myself from staring into her serene gray eyes and saying that not only was I not angry with her, but that I longed to be her hero. "I'm not mad," I said at last.

I badly wanted to make love to her then, and understood I couldn't. With my preposterous damp shorts and the residue of Lydia still clinging to me, it would have been a desecration. I sighed, and said that I should go.

Maggie didn't beg me to stay. But when I'd risen and was moving, sideways and reluctantly, toward the stairs that were the only exit, she floated up and kissed me quickly on the cheek. I didn't see it coming and I still don't know exactly how she closed the distance between us so smoothly and so silently, and with such precision that nothing touched except her lips brushing light and cool against my face.

I felt their outline as I climbed up to the cockpit then down the rope ladder in the warm and slightly misty night.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I should have gone home. I intended to go home. I was already on my bike and pointing it toward home.

So why didn't I go home?

Near as I can guess, it was some crazy mix of chivalry, testosterone, and simple curiosity. I was wired from lack of food, and sex thwarted by compunction. I wanted Maggie to be proud of me, impressed with my involvement; I wanted to have some accomplishment or at least adventure to lay at her feet.

And Kenny Lukens' boat, the boat where Andrus the happy Latvian had been murdered just two nights before, was right there in my face, fifty, sixty yards away. It was ringed with yellow tape strung between police stanchions but was otherwise unguarded. How could I leave without sneaking aboard and checking it out?

I rolled my bike up closer to
Dream Chaser
. I took a moment to look around. The boatyard was dim and had grown quiet; the few people still at large seemed lost in conversations or millings of their own. I put the bike up on its kickstand and slipped beneath the crime-scene tape, my sneakers crunching on the limestone gravel.

My heart raced as I stood inside the closed-off circle. Real PI's, of course, commit small illegalities all the time, big illegalities now and then. They do so in the honorable confidence that justice lies beyond the law and ranks a million miles above it. Who could disagree? But I have a horror of doing anything unlawful. Far from being proud of this, I think it shows a want of character. The citizen as chicken, still like a quailing high school student, fearing the indelible black mark that will somehow blot his future. What I have felt is a wimpy obedience that justifies the shirking of anything beyond obedience.

But now I stood, dry-throated, where the law said I should not have been. I reached out and touched
Dream Chaser
's flank; it still held some of the heat of the day, had a temperature like a living thing. I moved to the stern. The cops, apparently, had removed the ladder. I frowned and pawed the gravel and measured distances.