Surface Tension (11 page)

“Well, somebody’s got to, Ely. Look there. See, that couple just walked in, and here’s the hostess flapping her jaw with some friend of hers.”

She scooped up a couple of menus from her little podium and strode confidently up to the new arrivals. Her pleated white slacks and high-heeled sandals made even her legs look long, and combined with the required blue-and-white-striped sweater she looked like a shorter version of those models in the classy nautical clothing catalogues. She maneuvered the couple through the inside tables and out on to the deck overlooking the marina. Watching her filled me with a sense of wonder. She had fought her way back from a despair so black I couldn’t imagine it, and she had grown into this stunning, self-assured young woman.

When she returned, she explained she couldn’t talk and work, so she pointed me in the direction of the bar and told me her shift would be over at five, in about twenty minutes. I sat down to wait, deciding against a beer. After looking at Maddy’s beer gut that morning, I knew I’d been doing too much drinking lately.

The couples coming in for the early-bird dinner tended to be older people, but many of them entered arm in arm, smiling. The husbands joked and flirted with Ely. They were tanned from days spent sunning themselves like lizards on the beach. I wondered if it had been any of them standing on the beach yesterday morning watching hopefully as the
Top Ten
nearly went aground. They didn’t have to wonder if someone they once loved was either underwater providing food for the fishes, or a murderer on the run.

Finally Elysia appeared at my shoulder with her purse tucked under her arm. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

Once we were outside on the street, she pointed toward the beach. “Do you mind if we just walk for a while? That’s what I usually do after my shift, before I catch the bus back to Harbor House. I need the fresh air.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

We dodged cars, jaywalking across A1A in front of the
Jungle Queen
tour boat dock at the Bahia Mar Marina, and zigzagging through the parked cars in the city parking lot. When we hit the sand I slipped out of my boat shoes, and Elysia pulled off her white spike-heeled sandals with little red anchors embroidered on them. Now about three inches shorter, she looked younger but more familiar to me. The tall buildings along the Intracoastal cast long shadows across the beach as the sun dropped behind the city. The sand between my toes felt warmer than the evening air. We walked down to the waterline, where small waves broke into golden foam in the last of the day’s sunlight.

“So, how you been doing?”

“Not bad. The money’s adding up. I think I’ll have enough for first and last months’ rent on a furnished studio soon.”

“All right. You’ve come far, you know. I’m proud of you.”

She didn’t say anything at first. Then finally she said, “Seychelle, I know you didn’t come down here just to tell me that. I mean, you tell me how proud you are every time you see me these days.”

I smiled at her. In some ways she was wise way beyond her teenage years. “Something happened yesterday, and I wanted to talk to you about it.”

“I heard about Neal. Some guys at the bar were talking about what happened on this big yacht, and when they said the name of the boat, I knew it had to be Neal.” She ran her fingers through her hair and bit her lower lip. “I didn’t really know how to bring it up when you walked into the restaurant like that. I’m sorry.”

My throat constricted, and I couldn’t say anything for several seconds. A fancy sportfisherman raced toward the inlet, throwing up a huge, creamy bow wave, the hired skipper hunched over the wheel high up on the flybridge while his paying customers drank their liquor in the air-conditioned cabin below.

“You know, Ely, I thought I had been through it all with Neal. I thought I had finally got him out of my system for good. And then this happens, and suddenly he’s thrust back into my life. I can’t believe he’s dead, Ely. In fact, I don’t believe it. And I’ve got my reasons.” I shook my head and stared out to sea. “Life’s so strange sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know. I mean, look at me.” She did a little pirouette in the sand. “Who’d have thought, after all the shit I’ve been through, that I’d end up like some little debutante in a sailor suit?” We both laughed loud and hard. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t all that funny.

“Did you know the girl, Ely? The one who was with him. I found out she used to stay out at Harbor House.”

“What was her name?”

“Patty Krix.” As soon as I said the name, I saw the recognition in her eyes.

“Patty was with Neal?”

“Yeah. I guess they’d been seeing each other for a while. When I found out she’d lived at Harbor House, I thought maybe you could tell me something about her. Did you know her?”

We walked past a surf fisherman wearing hip waders, casting his line into the waves. He had white hair and a fluffy white mustache. He looked a little like Einstein.

She took a while to answer, as though she was choosing her words carefully. It seemed so out of character for this impetuous girl. I watched her face closely to see if she was telling the truth. One of the first skills learned in a life on the streets was the ability to lie without any trace whatsoever of moral conflict. Elysia was an artist.

“Yeah, I knew Patty. Not real well, but I knew of her. I saw her around.”

“What kind of girl was she?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her face seemed to close down, and she turned away from me to stare at the sea.

The last of the sunlight was gone now. The sky inland had gone patchwork with swatches of pink and red and bronze, while the sea had already turned the blue-black color of a bruise.

We walked together for quite a while without talking, enjoying the fresh, moist air as night closed in around us. In the past, I had found it useless to try to force Elysia to talk. So I just waited, watching the stars winking their way into the darkening sky, knowing that, like any seventeen-year-old, she would eventually fill the silence.

“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Ely said at last. “I mean, she’s like the last one I would have expected.”

“Why’s that?”

“Patty’s like, or was like, somebody who was always in charge. If you were going to go somewhere or do something with her, you’d always have to do it her way.”

“Mmm,” I said, convinced that the less I said, the more she would explain.

“I didn’t like her at all when she first came to the House. She’d been there less than a week, and she had everybody doing things for her, trying to be her friend. Even James fell for it.”

“Who’s James?”

“He’s the director at the House. You know him, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t think so. I know that lady, the one who’s always at the front desk. Minerva’s her name, I think.”

“Yeah, she really runs the place. James isn’t really there all that much. You don’t see him around too often, but he is the one who’s well known—he’s in the papers and on TV and stuff, he does all the charity events and fund-raisers, and he handles the money side, and, well, he’s just involved in lots of other things.” She turned away and shut down again. It was too dark now to see her face, but I knew the look by heart.

“What do you mean, ‘James fell for it’?”

She didn’t answer for a long time. I was afraid I had pushed her too far. But then her voice started again, with a higher-pitched, childlike quality to it. It sounded like she was afraid. “Patty was one of those kinds of people who just always thought she was right about everything. And she was wild; she always needed excitement. She wasn’t afraid to try anything ’cuz nothing scared her.” She paused for a moment, looking down at the sand. When she spoke again, I could barely make out the words. “There are things that go on there, Seychelle, things you don’t know anything about.”

Before I could find out what she was talking about, a large hand appeared out of the semidarkness, grabbed my left arm just above the elbow, and jerked me back and sideways. I could tell from the little yelp that Elysia had been grabbed, too. My attacker was a big guy wearing a Florida Marlins baseball cap pulled down low on his forehead. He seemed to tower over me—he must have been at least six feet four, but it was too dark to make out any features on his face.

“We just want to talk to you. Don’t scream.” His voice sounded Anglo, oddly high-pitched and gravelly, but I could barely hear him over the loud rasp of my own rapid breathing.

“Where’s Garrett?”

I stared at him openmouthed, frightened, but still not quite able to comprehend what was going on.

He shook me, and I felt like a rag doll as I flopped around at the end of his arm. “Come on, where’s he at?”

At first, it didn’t even register what he was asking me. I tried to twist around to see what was going on with Elysia. Another guy had her by the arm. He was much shorter, but extremely wide, undoubtedly a bodybuilder, and he wore a cap pulled down low over his face. He was holding his hand over Ely’s mouth.

“Hey, bitch, talk to me. We ain’t gonna hurt ya.” Big Guy squeezed my arm tighter, and my fingers started tingling.

“You’re already hurting me.”

The shorter guy holding on to Elysia laughed at that, an incongruously deep chuckle given his height, which only seemed to make the big guy madder.

“Shut up, man.”

At that, Shorty took his hand from Ely’s face and pointed his index finger at Big Guy. He started to say, “You—” but then Ely screamed. He swung his arm, backhanding her in the face, and the force of the blow caused her head to snap back. Again he started cursing in that weird deep voice, and clamped his hand over her mouth.

Big Guy turned back to me.

“We ain’t gonna buy no bullshit disappearing act. We wanna have a little talk with him.” He tightened his grip, and I winced, my eyes damp from the pain. “Where the fuck is Garrett?” He twisted my arm, nearly lifting me off the ground.

Until then, I’d felt afraid, and I’d been sucking for air as though there weren’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere. But between Ely’s slap and my arm nearly getting twisted off, my gut changed from Jell-O to fire.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. I don’t know anybody named Garrett,” I said as I dug the toes of my right foot deep into the sand.

“I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Ely, I think these guys have mistaken us for someone else. I think we’d better be leaving.”

“You know who I’m talking about.”

“I do?” I tried to look innocent as I loosened a mound of sand on top of my foot.

“Garrett. Your boyfriend. We just want to ask him a few questions.”

All at once I bent forward from the waist, pulling his upper body down with me. At the same time I flipped a footfull of sand right up into his face. I turned my face aside, avoiding getting any grit in my own eyes, but Big Guy let out a bellow, released my arm, and began pawing at his eyes. Straightening up, I glanced over at Ely in time to see her swing those spike-heeled sandals into the crotch of Shorty’s nylon board shorts, hook them, and then yank upward with all her might. He let out a noise that sounded inhuman, more like a cat losing a fight.

We took off running as fast as we could toward the lights and crowds of A1A. Apparently we hadn’t done any permanent damage, as I could soon hear labored panting a distance behind us, mixed with assorted curse words. It seemed to take us forever to get to the highway. I could hear them coming, closer now.

We ran between the rows of parked cars in the beach lot, but the cars soon ran out, and we were exposed.

“Bahia Mar,” I gasped, and we took off running across the traffic, avoiding cars that cruised down the beach doing forty miles an hour. Seconds after we hit the sidewalk on the far side, I heard a horn and the screech of tires as Big Guy and Shorty crossed the street. The back of my throat burned, and I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, but my bare feet kept slapping the pavement. I didn’t know how Ely was keeping up with her short little legs. It probably helped being more than ten years younger than me.

As I ran, I scanned the boats in the north basin through the chain-link fence. I was looking for a classic old Chris Craft, and if I was lucky, B.J. would be working late on his new job. My eyes teared from the wind and the strands of hair that whipped across my face. I blinked and squinted and searched the line of sport- fishermen. Finally I saw the varnished hull, the tarps, and the pile of raw lumber on the afterdeck. It was very clear from the padlock hanging on the companionway door that the boat was closed up for the day.

“Shit!” I wheezed.

I could see the security guard’s booth at the entrance to the Bahia Mar Hotel and Marina. He was really just a glorified parking attendant, and I didn’t even know if the guy carried a gun, but surely if we threw ourselves into his little guard hut, those assholes wouldn’t be able to drag us out of there. I didn’t know where else to turn. I knew I couldn’t keep up this pace any longer and Ely was falling farther and farther behind me.

A vehicle pulled up on the outbound side of the guardhouse. The guard stepped out to the curb and leaned down to talk to the person in the car. Don’t leave, I thought, willing the guard to stay put. I couldn’t make out the whereabouts of the security man anymore, but when the car nosed out to check on the traffic, I saw that it was a black El Camino.

“B.J.!” I yelled. “Hey, B.J.! Hold up!” I leaped the center divider and rolled over the side and into the El Camino’s truck bed. B.J.’s face jerked around in the window, looking fierce, but he arched his eyebrows and shook his head when he saw me. He obviously thought it was all a big joke. I sat up in time to see Big Guy and Shorty no more than a hundred feet behind Ely, who was just crossing the grass divider. Then she jumped at the truck and crooked one leg up over the top.

I banged on the roof of the cab. “Go, go, go. Move it. Go!”

B.J. burned rubber taking off toward the north in front of the oncoming traffic, nearly getting in a wreck in the process. For the first fifty feet he drove on the wrong side of the road. Horns blared. I looked behind us and saw the broad backs and shoulders of Big Guy and Shorty. They both wore tank tops, and under the fluorescent streetlights, their enormous sculptured arms were pressed against their knees as they struggled to catch the only thing left to them: their breaths.