Sacred (14 page)

No one we talked to at the Courtyard Marriott recognized Jeff Price or Desiree from the photos we showed them. They were pretty sure about it, too, if only because the Weeble and Mr. Cushing had shown them the same photographs half an hour before we arrived. The Weeble, smarmy little bastard that he was, had even left a note for us with the Marriott concierge requesting our presence in the Harbor Hotel bar at eight.

We tried a few more hotels in the same area, got nothing but blank stares, and returned to Harbor Island.

“This isn’t our town,” Angie said as we rode the elevator down from our rooms to the bar.

“Nope.”

“And it drives me crazy. It’s useless our even being here. We don’t know who to talk to, we don’t have any contacts, we don’t have any friends. All we can do is walk around like idiots showing everyone these stupid photographs. I mean, duh.”

“Duh?” I said.

“Duh,” she repeated.

“Oh,” I said, “
duh.
I get it. For a minute there I thought you were just saying duh.”

“Shut up, Patrick.” She walked off the elevator and I followed her into the bar.

She was right. We were useless here. The lead was useless. To fly fourteen hundred miles simply because Jeff Price’s credit card had been used at a hotel over two weeks ago was moronic.

But the Weeble didn’t agree. We found him in the bar, sitting at a window overlooking the bay, an abnormally blue concoction filling the daiquiri glass in front of him. The pink plastic stirrer in his glass was carved at the top into the shape of a flamingo. The table itself was nestled in between two plastic palm trees. The waitresses wore white shirts tied off just below their breasts and black Lycra biking shorts so tight they left no doubt as to the existence (or lack thereof) of a panty line.

Ah, paradise. All that was missing was Julio Iglesias. And I had a feeling he was on his way.

“It’s not fruitless,” the Weeble said.

“You talking about your drink or this trip?” Angie said.

“Both.” He worked his nose around the flamingo and sipped the drink, wiped at the blue mustache left behind with his napkin. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up and canvass all the hotels and motels in Tampa.”

“And once we run out?”

He reached for the bowl of macadamia nuts in front of him. “We try all the ones in St. Petersburg.”

And so it was.

For three days, we canvassed Tampa, then St. Petersburg. And we discovered that parts of both weren’t as clichéd as Harbor Island had led us to believe or as ugly as our drive down Dale Mabry. The Hyde Park section of Tampa and the Old Northeast section of St. Pete were
actually quite attractive, with cobblestone streets and old southern houses with wraparound porches and gnarled, ancient banyan trees providing canopies of shade. The beaches in St. Pete, too, if you could ignore all the crotchety blue-hairs and sweaty redneck bikers, were gorgeous.

So we found something to like.

But we didn’t find Jeff Price or Desiree or Jay Becker.

And the cost of our paranoia, if that’s what it was, was becoming tiring, too. Each night we parked the Celica in a different spot, and each morning we checked it for tracking devices and found none. We never bothered looking for bugs because the car was a convertible and whatever conversations we had in it would be drowned out by the wind, the radio, or a combination of the two.

Still, it felt odd to be so aware of the watchful eyes and ears of others, almost as if we might be trapped in a movie everyone was watching except us.

The third day, Angie went down by the hotel pool to reread everything in our case file and I took the phone out onto the balcony, checked it for bugs, and called Richie Colgan at the city desk of the
Boston Tribune.

He answered the phone, heard my voice, and put me on hold. Some pal, I swear.

Six stories below, Angie stood by her chaise lounge and stripped off her gray shorts and white T-shirt to reveal the black bikini underneath.

I tried not to watch. I really did. But I’m weak. And a guy.

“What’re you doing?” Richie said.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Watching my partner squirt sunblock on her legs.”

“Bullshit.”

“I wish,” I said.

“She know you’re watching?”

“You kidding?”

At that moment, Angie turned her head and looked up at the balcony.

“I’ve just been busted,” I said.

“You’re dead.”

Even from this distance, though, I could see her smile. Her face stayed tilted toward mine for a moment, then she shook her head gently and turned back to the business at hand and rubbed the oil into her calves.

“Christ,” I said, “it is way too hot in this state.”

“Where are you?”

I told him.

“Well, I got some news,” he said.

“Pray tell.”

“Grief Release, Incorporated, filed suit against the
Trib.
”

I leaned back in my chair. “You published a story already?”

“No,” he said. “That’s the point. My inquiries, such as they’ve been, have been extremely discreet. There’s no way they could’ve known I was onto them.”

“But they do.”

“Yeah. And they aren’t fucking around, either. They’re taking us into federal court for invasion of privacy, interstate theft—”

“Interstate?” I said.

“Sure. A lot of their clients don’t necessarily live in the Bay State. They got files on those discs for clients from across the Northeast and Midwest. Technically, Angie stole
information
that crossed state lines.”

“That’s a fine line,” I said.

“Of course it is. And they still have to prove I have
the discs and a whole lot of other shit, but they must have a judge in their pocket because at ten this morning my publisher got an injunction slapped on him prohibiting the publication of any article on Grief Release which can be directly linked to information found only on those discs.”

“Well, then you got them,” I said.

“How so?”

“They can’t prove what’s on those discs if they don’t have them. And even if they have everything backed up on a hard drive, they can’t prove that what’s on the hard drive is necessarily what’s on those discs. Right?”

“Exactly. But that’s the beauty of the injunction. We can’t prove that what we intend to publish
doesn’t
come from those discs. Unless we’re stupid enough to produce them, of course, in which case they’re useless anyway.”

“Catch-twenty-two.”

“Bingo.”

“Still,” I said, “this sounds like a smokescreen, Rich. If they can’t prove you have the discs or that you even know about them, then sooner or later, some judge is going to say they don’t have a legal leg to stand on.”

“But we have to find that judge,” Richie said. “Which means filing appeals, maybe going to a federal superior court. Which takes time. Meanwhile, I have to run around and independently substantiate everything on those discs by using other sources. They’re eating up a clock on us, Patrick. That’s what they’re doing. And they’re succeeding.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. And I also don’t know how they got onto me so quick. Who’d you tell?”

“No one.”

“Bullshit.”

“Richie,” I said, “I didn’t even tell my client.”

“Who is your client, by the way?”

“Rich,” I said, “come on.”

There was a long dead pause on the line.

When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. “You know what it takes to buy a federal judge?”

“A lot of money.”

“A lot of money,” he said. “And a lot of power, Patrick. I’ve been looking into the alleged head of the Church of Truth and Revelation, guy by the name of P. F. Nicholson Kett—”

“No shit? That’s his full name?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Just, what a dorky name.”

“Yeah, well, P. F. Nicholson Kett is like a god and guru and high priest all rolled into one. And no one has seen him in over twenty years. He transmits messages through underlings, supposedly from his yacht off the coast of Florida. And he—”

“Florida,” I said.

“Right. Look, I think the guy’s bullshit. I think he died a long time ago and he was never much to begin with. He was just the face someone put on the Church.”

“And the face behind the face is?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it ain’t P. F. Nicholson Kett. The guy was a moron. A former advertising copy editor from Madison, Wisconsin, who used to write porno scripts under an assumed name to make ends meet. The guy could barely spell his own name. But I’ve seen films and he had charisma. Plus he had that look in his eyes of all fanatics, part fervent belief, part comatose. So someone took this guy with good looks and charisma and propped his ass up to be a little tin god. And that someone, I’m sure of it, is the guy who’s suing my ass at the moment.”

On his end I heard the sudden eruption of several beeping phone lines.

“Call me later. Gotta run.”

“Bye,” I said, but he was already gone.

As I came out of the hotel onto the walkway that curled through a garden of palm trees and incongruous Australian pines, I saw Angie sitting on the chaise, her hand over her eyes to block the sun, looking up at a young guy in an orange Speedo so small that comparing it to a loincloth would probably be an insult to loincloths.

Another guy in a blue Speedo sat on the other side of the pool watching the two of them, and I could tell by the smile on his face that Orange Speedo was his pal.

Orange Speedo held a half-full bottle of Corona by his shiny hip, a lime floating in the foam, and as I approached, I heard him say, “You can be friendly, can’t you?”

“I can be friendly,” Angie said. “I’m just not in the mood right now.”

“Well, change your mood. You’re in the land of fun ’n’ sun, darlin’.”

Darlin’. Big mistake.

Angie shifted in her chaise, placed the case file on the ground by the chair. “The land of fun ’n’ sun?”

“Yeah!” The guy took a swig of the Corona. “Hey, you should be wearing your sunglasses.”

“Why’s that?”

“Protect those pretty eyes of yours.”

“You like my eyes,” she said in a tone I’d heard before. Run, I wanted to scream to the guy. Run, run, run.

He rested the beer on his hip. “Yeah. They’re feline.”

“Feline?”

“Like a cat’s,” he said and leaned over her.

“You like cats?”

“Love ’em.” He smiled.

“Then you should probably go to a pet store and buy one,” she said. “Because I get the feeling that’s the only pussy you’re going to get tonight.” She picked up the case file and opened it on her lap. “Know what I mean?”

I stepped off the path onto the pool patio as Orange Speedo took a step back and cocked his head and his hand tightened around the Corona bottle neck until his knuckles grew red.

“Hard to come up with a comeback to that one, ain’t it?” I smiled brightly.

“Hey, partner!” Angie said. “You braved the sun to join me. I’m touched. And you’re even wearing
shorts.
”

“Crack the case yet?” I squatted by her chaise.

“Nope. But I’m close. I can feel it.”

“Bullshit.”

“Okay. You’re right.” She stuck her tongue out at me.

“You know…”

I looked up. It was Orange Speedo and he was shaking in rage, pointing his finger at Angie.

“You’re still here?” I said.

“You know,” he repeated.

“Yes?” Angie said.

His pectorals pulsed and rippled and he held the beer bottle up by his shoulder. “If you weren’t a woman, I’d—”

“Be in surgery about now,” I said. “Even as it is, you’re pushing it.”

Angie pushed herself up on the chaise and looked at him.

He breathed heavily through his nostrils and suddenly spun on his heel and walked back to his buddy. They whispered to each other, then took turns glaring at us.

“You get the feeling my temperament just isn’t right for this place?” Angie said.

We drove over to the Crab Shack for lunch. Again.

In three days, it had become our home away from home. Rita, a waitress in her mid-forties who wore a weathered black cowboy hat, fishnet stockings under cutoff jeans, and smoked cheeroots, had become our first pal in the area. Gene, her boss and the chief cook at the Crab Shack, was fast becoming our second. And the egret from the first day—her name was Sandra, and she was well behaved as long as you didn’t serve her beer.

We sat out on the dock and watched another late afternoon sky gradually turn deep orange and smelled the salt off the marsh and the gas too, unfortunately, and a warm breeze fingered its way through our hair and shook the bells on the pilings and threatened to toss our case file folder into the milky water.

At the other end of the dock, four Canadians with pink lemonade skin and ugly floral shirts scarfed platters of fried food and talked loudly about what a dangerous state they’d chosen in which to park their RV.

“First those drugs on the beach. Eh?” one of them said. “Now this poor girl.”

The “drugs on the beach” and the “poor girl” had been all over the local news the last two days.

“Oh, yuh. Oh, yuh,” one of the women in the group clucked. “We might as well be in Miami, and that is the truth, yuh.”

The morning after we arrived, a few members of a Methodist widows’ support group on vacation from Michigan were walking the beach in Dunedin when they noticed several small plastic bags littering the shoreline. The bags were small and thick and, as it turned out, filled with heroin. By noon, several more had washed up on beaches in Clearwater and St. Petersburg, and unconfirmed reports even placed some as far north as Homosassa and as far south as Marco Island. The Coast Guard surmised that a storm that had been battering Mexico, Cuba, and the Bahamas may have sunk a ship carrying the heroin, but as yet they hadn’t been able to sight the wreckage.

The “poor girl” story had been reported yesterday. An unidentified woman had been shot to death in a Clearwater motel room. The murder weapon was believed to have been a shotgun, the blast fired at point-blank range into the woman’s face, making identification difficult. A police spokesman reported that the woman’s body had also been “mutilated” but refused to specify how. The woman’s age was estimated at anywhere between eighteen and thirty, and Clearwater police were trying to identify her through dental records.