Under Cover of Daylight (23 page)

“I know you paid them.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Can you guess how I know?”

“They came over afterwards, yesterday. To see you.”

“I’m impressed, Ricki. You impress me with your deductive reasoning.” All this without meeting her eyes.

Grayson paced the thick blue carpet, staring at his spotless Top-Siders. Ricki didn’t like how fast they were going, how straight. She kept waiting for Randy to circle back.

“I understand you enlisted their aid again. That you instructed them to subtract another relative of yours from the list of the living.”

“I knew you wouldn’t like it,” she said. “But they’re going to do an accident. Like he was so torn up by Kate’s dying that maybe he lost control of his car, something like that.”

“Hey, babe, you’re missing the point. The point is that you asked these gentlemen to remove a person I want to stay alive for a little longer.”

“Thorn?” Ricki said. “Why?”

“You see?” said Grayson. “You’re acting without the complete picture. You’re sending people off to kill other people without the big view. But worse than that, Ricki, if somebody else from your family gets dead, I don’t care how stupid or lazy the cops down here are, they’re going to get a very big hard-on if something like that happens.”

Ricki said, “It’s my business. You don’t have anything to say about my business. I helped you make out pretty good, and I got left with practically nothing. Twenty-five thousand fucking dollars.”

Grayson opened another of those phony beers. Poured it into a fresh frozen mug. It foamed up like the real thing. Ricki watched him sip it, the head leaving him a momentary mustache. Not that she wanted one, but the jerk hadn’t even offered her anything.

“Unfortunately, your business and my business have become intertwined. If you’re ever in some sheriff’s interrogation room, all of a sudden I’m feeling very uneasy.”

“Come on, Gray, you think I’m going to give the police your name? You think I would put you in any danger?”

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t think you will.”

“Well, good,” she said. But she wasn’t sure if it was good at all, the way he’d said it.

“I want you to see something, Ricki. Meet somebody.”

He held his arm up, beckoning her into the forecabins.

Ricki took a breath, stood up, and let him lead her down the stairs and into the narrow hallway. He stopped at the first cabin door, unlocked the door, and swung it open.

“This. This is what you were dealing with.”

Ricki looked into the cabin and saw Milburn, lying on his back on a tarp in the middle of the floor.

She sucked in a breath and turned away.

When they were back upstairs in the salon, Grayson paced the rug in front of her.

“I don’t like loose ends, Ricki. And you are an appalling loose end.”

“You’re taking me out here to shoot me.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Yes, you are. You’re taking me out here and you’re going to shoot me and throw me to the goddamn sharks. Along with that body. Jesus Christ.”

“Ricki, Ricki.” Like he was offended. “I wouldn’t do something like that. You obviously don’t know me very well.”

“Well, good,” she said, relieved but still wanting to sound peeved.

“That’s not my style.” Grayson leaned against the bar, cocking his mouth into another smile. About as real as that beer. “All that talk about an island. You know, Ricki. It made an impression on me. I have a soft spot for islands, too.”

Ricki stared at him. The bastard was getting off on this.

“I think I’ve found the perfect island for you. Deserted. Tropical. Nobody to disturb your meditations, your pursuit of higher consciousness. No tourist trains or high rises. Great water view. Excellent location to work on your latest mantra.” Grayson was trying awful hard to sell her on that smile.

“There’s only one thing about this island, Ricki. A minor drawback, actually, but it would be dishonest of me not to mention it.” Grayson put his mug down on the butcher-block counter. “It’s only an island about twelve hours a day.”

Now he looked at her, square on, flat and lightless eyes.

Randy cut the engines and came down into the cabin, Ricki caught his eye and gave him a starving, helpless look.

“We’re here,” he told Grayson, his voice hard.

“OK. Take her out on the deck, put her onshore, and cut her.” He was rummaging through a drawer behind the bar.

“Come on, Gray.” Ricki stood and came across to him. Her voice was catching in her throat. “I’m no threat to you. I’ll disappear.”

Grayson held out a thin fillet knife to Randy.

“No way,” said Randy. “This is sick. All of it. You, those guys, all of it.”

“Do it, Randy. Do it now.” Ricki stood back, looked for her cue, watching the knife catch the dim cabin light. She saw the reflection of this stiff little group in the cabin window.

Randy shook his head and turned away from Grayson.

Grayson glared after Randy as he walked out to the cockpit and climbed the chrome ladder back to the upper deck.

“All right,” said Grayson, his eyes still on the path Randy had taken. “Come on.” He gripped Ricki’s upper arm and half carried her out to the aft deck.

It was like a seizure when it hit her, something giving her a strength she didn’t have. Just outside the cabin door she wrenched her arm from Grayson’s hold, thrashed her arms for a second, made a lunge for the knife. But Grayson had danced back from her. She moved quickly to the transom and screamed for Randy to help her.

She could see him up there, moonlight spilling over the tower. Ricki screamed his name, her voice tearing in her throat, but he didn’t turn to look. She called out to him again, bleakly this time, “For godsakes, Randy. Do what’s right.”

She saw Grayson edging closer to her, the knife in his left hand. She bowed her head, tried to recall a prayer from all those years with Kate and Dr. Bill, but only a mealtime grace came to her: “For what we are about to receive, the Lord make us truly thankful.”

When she woke, her jaw was very sore. She managed to sit up on the soft sand. Grayson had stripped her to her underwear. Gentleman to the end. She winced as she drew her throbbing left foot up to her lap like she might try a little midnight yoga. The gash he’d made ran the length of her sole. Maybe it was his idea of a final kindness, letting the blood leak into that rising water, calling the scavenger sharks.

The lights of his Hatteras were about a half mile off to the north now. She could hear voices out there, Grayson and Randy having it out. When the three gunshots came, a surge of energy woke in her, and she craned forward, focusing every nerve, every fiber of hope on those lights.

Five more minutes passed before the yacht’s big diesels came alive. She watched as the Hatteras swung around and headed back in toward her. It must have been making ten knots when it passed fifty yards from her island. Without the strength to call out, Ricki watched it pass. A sob strangling in her throat.

Her island was about ten feet long, five feet wide. Ricki scooted forward across the damp sand and brought her bleeding foot to the edge of the water. The tide was running fast to the north, piling up some foam near her foot.

As the tide rose, Ricki kept herself propped up, stiffened her neck to keep her head from lolling. A gull or some kind of white bird landed on the sand a few yards from her. When Ricki was a kid, Kate had always been after her to learn the differences between birds. But hell, she’d always had more important things to do than learn the goddamn names of birds. The water tickled at her foot as Ricki tried as hard as she could to remember what those things had been.

On Sunday Thorn took his time driving home. He was relaxed. He stayed behind a Buick from Wyoming the whole way, developing a relationship with the two kids in the backseat. Communicating with them with the mouse ears.

He’d spent the afternoon on Saturday walking around Key West behind the two guys in the Scarab. He’d gotten very interested in them because they had drunk down those beers and gone straight away to Grayson’s penthouse.

Thorn saying to himself, well, well, well. After they tried there, they walked back into the neighborhoods, seemed to be lost for a while, and eventually wound up at Ricki’s two-story house. Thorn not saying anything to himself then. His heart sounding in his ears.

They stayed in her house for about an hour, Thorn sitting on the sidewalk down from Dr. Leery. Dr. Leery wasn’t happy about it. At about eleven they came out, smiling, talking loud to each other, and walked down Duval and had lunch. From there to Grayson’s office. Only the short one came out an hour later, and Thorn followed him to the beach at the Pier House, where the guy stared at topless women all afternoon.

At sunset the guy went over to Mallory Square and stood around with about fifty others watching the sun slip behind a mass of black clouds. He chatted up a tall, heavyset woman there who had a flame-swallowing act. After sunset the guy took her back to Captain Tony’s bar, where the two of them drank till about ten-thirty. Thorn followed them back to Sandpiper Bay Club then and watched as the guy had a hell of a time getting through security.

At that point Thorn had gone out on the public pier across the way from Sandpiper Bay’s marina and had watched them as they climbed aboard the Scarab and disappeared into the darkness. He’d gone back to his parking spot then and let the seat back in the southernmost bash-mobile and had a good, dreamless night.

At two on Sunday he was back in Key Largo. Jerome senior was in the office, watching a baseball game on the tube. He handed Thorn the keys to Kate’s VW without taking his eyes off the set, watching the replay of a stolen base.

“Junior said to tell you he wanted to borrow your cruiser this week. Figures he’ll survive I-95 in a Cadillac better than in one of the VW’s.” Jerome glanced over at Thorn for a second while the beer commercial played. “Why the hell you think he’d want to survive a crash in the condition he’s in?”

“Just stalling,” Thorn said. “Any way we can.”

Thorn stopped by the funeral home. He saw Sally Spencer with a family in one of the viewing rooms and went into her office to wait. The cardboard box was on the corner of her desk, a white gummed label on its lid with Kate’s name typed on it. He stood there for a moment looking at it, hearing someone weeping in the next room.

Out the office window Tarpon Basin flashed like a panful of diamonds. Thorn hefted the box, his eyes still on the water outside. He squinted at a passing skiff, a black silhouette against all that brightness.

That afternoon he stayed at his desk, trying to fashion one fly after another. But his hands were numb. Clumsy and uninspired, he kept on, trying to work through it, draw some magic up. But it never came. And all afternoon, as his regular customers showed up for their flies, he sold off more and more from his personal collection.

At sundown he showered and made himself a large glass of bourbon. He put on his one cowboy shirt and a pair of jeans and stood at the bathroom mirror, combing his wet hair, knowing it was time to get out the Colt. Wipe it off, give it a good cleaning, load it. He combed his hair some more. Got every hair where he wanted it, then ran the comb through again.

He walked to the bed and sat on the edge of it. He swallowed some more Maker’s Mark and put the glass on the floor. He took the novel he’d been reading and the hurricane lantern off the footlocker and set them on the floor beside his drink. There was rust on the snaps of the trunk, but they still came open easily. He pulled the lid open and took the oily rag out of the footlocker.

There were a couple of dead roaches in the trunk, a box of magnum shells. The cleaning kit. But the Colt was gone.

Thorn dropped the rag back in the trunk, closed it, and replaced the lantern and the book. He carried his drink back to the bathroom and took another deep swallow. With his comb he made another swipe through his hair, staring into the mirror at his dazed face.

Could he have given the Colt to Sugarman and somehow forgotten? Had it been stolen by one of the people passing through that room in the last twenty years? It had been that long since he had even raised the lid on the trunk. Maybe he had gotten it out in his sleep, walked out across the sparkling water of Lake Surprise, and dropped it in the exact spot where Dallas James had died.

Thorn parked the Fleetwood and sat for a few minutes with the headlights blaring at the side of Kate’s house. Finally, he pushed in the light plunger and sat there, breathing in the darkness. There was a thunderstorm out in the shipping lanes, explosions of lightning muffled inside black cumulus. The wind was beginning to quicken already, blowing the mosquitoes back into the Everglades. And the stand of tall Australian pines was moaning. Clouds sped past the moon.

If Kate’s friends wanted to assemble and eulogize her, it was fine with him. But this part was his. He got out of the car, the wind filling his shirt, and he carried the cardboard box of her remains down to her dock.

He set the box on the fish-cleaning table and checked the lines on the
Heart Pounder.
Two of the clove hitches someone had made were loosened, and the bow had swung around and was grinding against one of the pilings. He hauled the boat back against the dock and snugged the lines.

He stepped aboard and stood for a moment next to the fighting chair, gripping the back of it. The boat was rocking in the rising wind. There was the smell of pine cleaner.

Inside the cabin the smell was stronger. As he looked out through the cabin windows at the dark, choppy flats, he could recall the feel of the
Heart Pounder
as it had ridden in rough seas. It wasn’t a fast boat, but it could level out the heaviest chop.

He gripped the cold rim of the wheel and pulled himself into the captain’s chair, swiveling it to look backward out the cabin door. Trying to imagine Kate’s last night and trying not to.

For a while he was still, listening to the boat creak. His mind as blank as he could make it. Then he reached out and touched the instrument panel, the throttle lever, ran his hand across the teak drawers. Searching for some vibration left behind. He stood and dusted the surfaces of the cabin with his fingertips. Nothing there. Sterile.