Trap Line (3 page)

The first came right to the point, scrawled in big, half-forgotten schoolgirl letters on the back of an envelope: “I took them glass flawers, and that pink ashtray that was mine.”

The second note, written cursively in blue felt-tip, was equally blunt: “She also took my watch and seventy-six dollars of my tips from the dresser. ‘Them weren’t hers.’ Get them back, please.

“And for the
LAST FUCKING TIME, CHANGE THE GODDAMN LOCK!”

Albury groaned, threw the notes away so Ricky wouldn’t see them, and stormed into the tiny bathroom. He jerked three of Laurie’s panties and a pair of support stockings from the shower rod and let the water run cold.

It was too early for Peg to be in the shack she shared with the Conch Train driver, so Albury went looking for her in the crowd of tourists and freaks who gathered nightly at Mallory Docks to watch the sun drip into the sea. Peg wasn’t there, but Albury found her by a strip of beachfront at the island’s tip that was a magnet for tourists.

When Albury had married her, she had been a good-looking woman, a little hefty maybe, but solid; blond and solid. Her family had never been much good, but—well, Albury hadn’t paid much attention then. He parked the Pontiac a half-block away and walked back to where Peg sat on a three-legged campstool, fingers running idly through the coarse sand. Next to her was a canvas bag, a pile of bleached conchs, and some woebegone starfish. “Southernmost Queen Conchs $3,” read the hand-scrawled sign jutting from the sand at her feet.

Time had been cruel to Peg Albury. She was only forty-three or forty-four, but sitting there alone in a shapeless housedress, waiting for a sucker from Michigan or Pennsylvania to buy her shells, she looked twenty years older. Her eyes under the floppy straw hat were dead. Sun and whiskey, a lethal combination, and in Key West an epidemic. Albury felt sorry for her, as though for a stranger.

“Evenin’, Peg,” Albury called softly.

She rose to her feet, wheezing. Sand cascaded from her lap. “Don’t you go beatin’ on me, Breeze Albury. I only took what was mine.”

Albury almost smiled. He had never beat her, even when he should have. It had been almost four years since she’d left. Now she was a sandy and pathetic stranger.

“The watch wasn’t yours, Peg. Neither was the money.”

“How do you know? Is that what she said, your tramp? Who do you believe, your wife or a tramp?”

“The money and the watch, Peg, now.”

“Now, now, now,” she snarled. “Like you were boss.” Her eyes drilled him from under the brim of the hat. “What are you gonna do if I say no? Go to the cops? They’ll believe me, not you, Mr. Convict.”

Albury suppressed a sudden gout of anger.

“I won’t go to the police, Peg. I
will
tell Ricky.”

“Trash,” she hollered. From somewhere in the folds of her dress she extracted Laurie’s Omega and dashed it into the sand. She might have stepped on it, but Albury nudged it aside and stooped quickly to pick it up.

“Tell Ricky? Tell my baby? Why don’t you tell him his daddy’s a convict? Gonna tell him his daddy was in jail when his sister died? Tell him that, Breeze.”

“He already knows, Peg.” Just, Albury reflected, as he certainly knew what his mother had become.

“Now give me back the money.”

“No!” She lurched in the sand, dislodging with one foot a near-empty bottle that had been hidden by the canvas bag. “I need the money, Breeze. Charlie’s sick. Can’t work.”

“Drunk, you mean.”

“He ain’t. You think everybody’s drunk, don’t you? Charlie’s sick. It’s his heart. Doctor says he’s got to go up to the VA in Miami. It’s true, I swear it.”

Albury knew she was probably lying, not that it mattered. To get Laurie’s money he would have to wrestle her. It wasn’t worth it.

“OK, Peg, you keep the money. Just keep it.”

“It’s for Charlie, goddamnit.”

“Yeah. And stay away from the trailer. I’m changing the locks tonight, so your key’s no good anymore.”

Peg’s hand moved tremulously to her neck, where the key hung like a charm from a rusty necklace.

“God, Peg, you’re a mess,” Albury said in a whisper.

She was scrabbling in the sand for her bottle as he turned away.

ALBURY HAD
a couple of stops to make, one at a sporting goods store, the next at the grocery. Then he parked at Key Plaza and hurried, six-pack under arm, across to the ball park. The lights were on already, and Albury was afraid the game had started. He arrived just in time to see Ricky walk to the mound.

It was a game of no particular consequence, and it had attracted only about a hundred people, mostly parents and girl friends. Albury slid into the bleachers behind home plate next to an angular black man in sandals and a white cotton shirt.

“Evenin’, Enos. How about a beer?”

“Thanks, Breeze. You cut it pretty close tonight, uh?”

“Been a poor day.” Albury gave a half-embarrassed wave to Ricky, who rewarded it with a big grin and a doff of his maroon cap.

Ricky didn’t look sharp. Some of his deliveries were higher than they should have been, the ball not moving as well as it might. Still, the first three batters went out weakly, and Albury felt himself beginning to relax. He leaned back, elbows propped on the bleacher behind him, savoring a tentative breeze that had sprung up off the Gulf.

“God, that feels good.”

“Yeah,” Enos said. “You know, that boy of yours is some kind of pitcher.”

“I think he can go all the way.”

“I believe you’re right.”

In the second, Buddy Martin, Enos’s son, stung Ricky with a sharp single off a curve nobody else on the field would have hit. Albury snorted.

“Maybe they could go all the way together. I’d rather have Buddy on the same team than hittin’ against Ricky.”

Enos laughed politely at the compliment.

“As long as he goes, Breeze. I don’t really care if it’s to baseball, to college, or to the Army. As long as he goes.”

“You and your boy fightin’?”

“Hell, no. I just don’t want him to grow up in this town, that’s all. There’s nuthin’ here, Breeze. It’s all the same as when we was kids, only less of it. And there wasn’t nuthin’ then. I don’t know why you came back. You had a good job.”

“Several,” Albury said.

“All places change, don’t they? It ain’t like we were still kids, fishin’ for grunts all day. You could live in this town then, Breeze. That was why I stayed. That was why you came back, too. At least you could live here, then. Now, well…”

“Now we got no excuse, Enos. No fucking excuse.”

They watched the game while they talked. Buddy Martin stole second, but died there as Ricky got the last out on a rifling fastball.

“You’re lucky, Breeze. You go out fishin’ every day. That’s all right. I wouldn’t mind that. But if you want to know what’s really happened to the island, come with me for a day, hauling the U.S. mail. Just one day. You’d see shit you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’m sure.” Albury felt like telling Enos about his traps, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.

They drank another beer in companionable silence as Ricky’s team, the Padres, scratched two runs off the chunky rival pitcher, a lefthander.

“You know the Fletcher place on Frances Street?”

“Near the cemetery.”

“Yeah, right,” Enos said. “Garrett sold it for a hundred and thirty thousand yesterday.”

Albury sat up.

“Cash,” Enos whispered bitterly.

“Shit. It’s full of termites. They couldn’t get seventeen five for it eight years ago.”

“The guy that bought it was twenty-two.”

Albury shook his head. “Say no more.”

“I hate all this, Breeze.”

“Yeah.”

“I want out. If I can’t leave, then my boy will. I swear.”

In the fifth inning, Ricky’s control deserted him briefly. He walked the leadoff batter and lost the second man to a crisp single. Then it was time to face Buddy Martin.

“Low and away,” Albury yelled.

Ricky threw a fastball, letter high on the inside corner. The bat slashed forward, and Albury felt the “crack” in the fillings in his teeth. The ball rocketed into the alley in left center and smacked the Merita Bread sign on the first bounce. Both runners scored, and Buddy Martin cruised into third with a stand-up triple.

Enos beamed. “Way to stroke, Bud,” he called to his son.

Ricky called time, and Albury winced in shame when he saw Ricky and his coach yoking Ricky’s right spike together with a piece of friction tape.

“Damn,” Albury said, “I got a new pair for him in the car. Be right back.”

“I’ll watch the beer,” Enos said.

Albury strode across to Key Plaza, where he had parked the car. He broke into a trot when he saw the figure inside the Pontiac, stretched across the front seat, probing the glove compartment. The man never looked up until he felt the huge hands around his left leg. Albury yanked once and spilled the thief onto the pavement, his shaggy head hitting the asphalt like a brick.

Dazed, the young man foggily surveyed his attacker: sharp, angry green eyes; nut-brown face capped with short salt-and-pepper hair; the mouth a thin, icy slash; the neck thick, veined with rage.

“Easy, grandpa,” said the kid. His long hair was thick, flicked with dirt and leaves. His face was milky and pocked. Albury scowled down at him.

“Where’s the toolbox?” he demanded. “And the bag from the sports shop? Where’d you stash ’em?”

“Man, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Albury placed a booted foot on the man’s neck and shifted his weight slowly until the face turned red and a grimace bared every tooth. “You’re a prick,” Albury said. “And I’ll snap your goddamn neck if you don’t answer my question.”

The thief flailed on the pavement and directed his bulging eyes across the parking lot, to where a battered red VW sat alone. Albury hauled the young man to the car. In the back seat were his toolbox and the bag containing Ricky’s new spikes. He retrieved them and walked back to the Pontiac, the thief in tow.

“You gonna call the cops?”

“Where you from?”

“Atlanta.” The young man began brushing off his jeans and picking the gravel off his shirt. He thought it was over.

“What are you doing down here?” Albury asked evenly.

“Visiting.” The young man used his hands like a comb, straightening his hair and sweeping it out of his face.

“Visiting,” Albury repeated.

The kid nodded. Albury wordlessly slammed him in the stomach with a straight right, then cracked him in the nose with an abbreviated left cross. The kid fell, blubbering, the dark blood shining in the pale lumination of the streelights.

Albury locked the toolbox in the trunk of the Pontiac and hurried back to the ball park with the spikes. The game was already over. The Padres had won, 6-2.

“Nice game, champ,” Albury said to Ricky as he came off the field.

“Yeah. You see the slider I got Buddy with in the seventh?”

“Naw, I missed it.”

“So did Buddy.” It was Enos, laughing. “Breeze, I got worried about you, so I polished off the six-pack.”

“Some dirtbag broke into the car. I caught him before he got away. Here.” Albury handed Ricky the spikes. “I should have brought ’em with me in the first place.”

Ricky opened the box. Buddy Martin looked over Ricky’s shoulder as he inspected the new spikes.

“Dad, these must have cost forty bucks.”

“It’s OK,” Albury said. “Had a good catch today.”

Enos gave him a doubting glance. Albury wondered, could he know about the traps already?

“Get your jacket on, champ. Let’s get going before the whole car gets stolen. Enos, Buddy, we’ll see you.”

It took Albury ten minutes to reach Whitehead Street, after dropping Ricky at the trailer with an injunction to let his arm dangle a long time in the hot shower. Albury was supposed to pick up Laurie in an hour. Time enough.

IF THE GREEN LANTERN
had any distinction at all, it was as the only bar in Key West that never claimed to have fueled Ernest Hemingway. The bar was a chintzy dive of plasterboard and shadows in what was supposed to be a nautical motif.

It seemed like every time Albury went in, there was a different parrot harping in a bamboo cage over the cash register. The regulars would sometimes turn the nightly dart games on the birds, when things got loose.

Albury nursed a beer and looked quietly around. “Have you seen Winnebago Tom?” he finally asked a bartender named Pete.

“He was here. Probably out back.”

“Out back” meant upstairs in a supposedly private room reached by a stairway guarded by a tough, tattooed young Cuban. People said he had once been a commando.

Albury gestured toward the stairs with his head. The guard nodded slightly and let him pass without a word. Upstairs, about ten men formed a smoky circle on the linoleum floor, playing poker.

Winnebago Tom leaned nonchalantly against the wall, watching the action with almost scornful disinterest. Albury knew he was the house. Tom was wiry, slick, one of those savvy Key West Cubans whose family had been around so long they had all but forgotten Spanish. Tom worked for the Machine. A linkman, they said.

“Well, hey, bubba.” Tom prised himself off the wall. He gestured toward the knot of men on the floor around a nucleus of dirty ten-and twenty-dollar bills. “Looking for a game?”

“Can we talk?”

Tom shrugged. “These are my friends.”

Albury lit a cigarette to camouflage his dislike. “It’s business,” he said.

“Business!” Tom exclaimed with artificial brightness. “Why didn’t you say so? Why don’t you go down and wait for me in the camper? Help yourself to a drink. I won’t be long.”

Parked behind the bar, Tom’s Winnebago was the most luxurious in all Monroe County. It was cool and quiet, the air conditioner barely audible. It smelled of wood and real leather. Albury counted eight stereo speakers inset into the walls. He poured himself a stiff scotch from one of two dozen bottles in a long cabinet behind the bar. The glass was crystal, Albury noted. Tom liked to boast that his camper had cost fifty thousand dollars.

After fifteen minutes Tom came in, humming “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” He poured himself three ounces of Chivas, drank off half of it with a smack, and smiled at Albury.