Surface Tension (12 page)

VIII

B.J. turned the El Camino inland at Sunrise Boulevard, and after crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, he pulled into the parking lot at the Galleria Mall. He stopped under a light, far from the boxy building, and parked amid the empty rows of painted white lines. When the engine stopped, he slowly opened his door and climbed out of the truck. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt tucked into navy cargo shorts. He leaned his back against the door and rested his head on the roof staring up at the stars.

“I’ve never driven like that in my life.”

“It showed,” I said.

He lifted his head and looked at me, ready to be angry.

I grinned at him, and he started laughing out loud. Then Elysia started laughing, too.

“You should have seen your face when you turned around and looked through your window,” I said, gasping.

He rested his arms on the top of the vehicle. “What about you? Flopping around in the back of my truck like a boated bass?”

“Seychelle,” Ely said, “did you see the look on that guy’s face when I got him with my shoes?” She rolled onto her back in the truck bed and kicked her feet in the air laughing so hard she got the hiccups. And that set us all off again.

“Whooee,” B.J. said finally, getting himself under control. He pressed his forehead against his bent arms for a few seconds, then looked straight at me. “What was that all about?”

I ignored his question. “I was so glad you hadn’t left yet, B.J. I was looking for the Chris Craft, and when I saw she was all buttoned up, I thought you’d gone.”

“Seychelle, are you ready to explain any of this to me?” he asked.

I stood up, straddled the side of the truck, and sat just behind the cab. “Okay, okay. You know, I’m not sure I understand what happened myself.” At that moment, the full impact of what the two muscle men had been asking finally hit me. It sobered me up fast. “I came by the restaurant to see Elysia, and we went for a walk on the beach. And then when it got dark, these guys came up and grabbed us.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“No. But this wasn’t just random violence, B.J. They started asking me where Neal is.”

He didn’t say anything right away. “Those guys knew who you were?”

“Apparently.”

He rubbed his hand across his chin. “They must have been following you. You didn’t notice anything?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe they don’t know about what happened on the
Top Ten
. Maybe these guys just wanted Neal for something else,” he said.

“I don’t think so. The big guy who had hold of me did most of the talking, and he said something about not believing in disappearing acts. They think he’s alive, B.J., and they seem to think I know where he is.”

We all three crammed ourselves into the truck cab with me in the middle, Elysia by the window. I tucked my shoulder down so B.J. could reach over me to shift.

“Where to?” he asked. His breath smelled like spearmint gum.

“Let’s take Ely home. Harbor House.”

We doubled back along Sunrise Boulevard to A1A and turned north at the beach. B.J. swung left on Bimini Lane, next to the Flamingo Motor Lodge. One block back from the ocean stood Harbor House. Once upon a time it had been a typical dumpy little beach hotel, but when they turned it into a house for runaway girls, they actually made it look better. There was an elegance to the place, with its whitewashed walls and teal trim. The windows were covered with heavy, wood Bahama shutters. The mirrored glass front door and the classy carved wood sign made the place look more like a high-tech firm than a halfway house for runaway teens.

We dropped Elysia off at the curb out front.

“God, I’m exhausted,” she said, opening the truck door. “At least I don’t have to work tomorrow. I’m going to sleep in till noon and then go apartment hunting.”

“Some people have all the luck.” I reached around and gave her a swift hug. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m always fine, you know that.”

“Ely, I know you’re tired, but I need to know anything more you can tell me about Patty.”

She glanced over at the mirrored glass door. “Seychelle, don’t ask too many questions, okay? Take it from a survivor. Know when to leave things alone.”

“Hey, worrying is
my
job. I’ll call you. Take care of yourself. Now”—I pointed to the house—“to bed.”

“Bye,” she called. She waved goodbye, barefoot, swinging her sandals, then she turned and walked into the house. I watched through the back window as B.J. pulled away from the curb. Ely practically bounced up to the door. The buzzer sounded, and she passed inside. I saw her bending over talking to the person behind the counter as the door swung closed.

I settled myself on the seat next to the door.

We drove up Sunrise, past the strip malls and the fast-food joints. Groups of men loitered outside the convenience stores drinking out of paper bags in the glare of the fluorescent lights. Young women in skintight miniskirts stood talking in groups outside a package store. In the very next block, a brilliantly lit showroom displayed dozens of exotic Jaguars, Rolls-Royces, and Maseratis. I’d grown up in South Florida, and most of the time I loved my home, but there was a squalor, a tackiness that lived right next door to the palatial homes of the rich and famous. Just down the street from the oceanfront million-dollar condos we were passing prostitutes, drug dealers, adult bookstores. The neon lights bathed the street-level ugliness with a day-bright glow and lit the overhead tangle of telephone and electrical wires. I imagined for a moment that if alien spaceships ever hovered over this part of South Florida, they might think the earth’s inhabitants were a mutant form of spiders waiting to catch them in their wire webs.

“Where’s your Jeep?”

B.J. startled me with his question.

“It’s still down by Bahia Cabana.”

“Would you rather I take you back to pick up Lightnin’, or straight home?”

I thought about the mess in my cottage, and I groaned. “Damn, I’d almost forgotten.”

“What do you mean?”

“Somebody broke into the cottage last night while I was having dinner with you at the Downtowner. They really trashed the place. It’s still a mess. I didn’t feel like cleaning up, so I slept on the boat last night.”

“Did they take anything?”

“Only my rainy-day fund—about two grand.”

He let out a long, low whistle. “Would you feel more comfortable sleeping on the couch at my place tonight?”

I didn’t want to explain to him that I thought Neal had tossed my place, and that he might have killed that girl, and that both thoughts scared the hell out of me. I needed a good night’s sleep. If Big Guy and Shorty knew who I was, then they could easily find out where I lived and come back at night. The thought of sleeping with B.J. just in the other room sounded mighty appealing.

“I don’t want to put you to any kind of trouble.”

“It’s no problem,” he said in the fake South Pacific accent he sometimes used. In a matter of seconds he could switch from
Masterpiece Theatre
to
Hawaii 5-0
.

“I guess it would be better, then. Maybe you could run me over to pick up Lightnin’ in the morning?”

“Sure, my pleasure.”

B.J.’s apartment was a one-bedroom unit in a motel down near Dania Beach. A short section of the beach was backed with older vacation homes and run-down motels that had long been out of favor with any but the most tight-fisted tourists. Martha’s Restaurant and the Intracoastal Waterway were along one side of A1A, and the aging tourist traps were on the other. The older motels were slowly being bought up a few at a time, and the developers were building high-end townhouses or, more recently, posh beach condo towers. The Sands Motel (B.J. referred to the place as the “Shiftless Sands”) remained tucked back on a narrow street nestled in the shadows of the derricks building the high-rises. The bungalows were arranged around a sand and weed courtyard that harbored a motley collection of broken patio furniture and sun-bleached plastic toys. Several cement sea horses were stuck to the sides of buildings, and round concrete picnic tables were arranged around an old gas grill.

B.J. jingled his keys as we crossed the dark courtyard, and a black cat streaked out from under an ixora bush. It threaded its way between B.J.’s legs, leaning against his ankle and purring loudly.

“Okay, Savai’i, I know you’re hungry. You smell the moo shu pork.”

“I don’t believe it, B.J. You have a cat?” I looked up at him over the top of the white bags in my arms. We had stopped at Chinese Moon for takeout. “You might end up with cat hair on your clothes.” He was always disgustedly picking Abaco’s black hairs off my clothes.

Balancing the aluminum screen door open with his foot, he put the key in the lock. “She adopted me. I had no choice in the matter.”

“Oh, brother, even female
cats
can’t resist you.”

He pushed open the door and stepped into the dark room, but before he turned on the lights, I saw his teeth flash in a grin.

I’d only been inside his apartment once before, but I remembered the decor. It was a strange combination of tacky Florida transient and refined tastes. It had been a furnished apartment when he rented it, but it was now personalized with B.J.’s eclectic collection of personal belongings. On the chipped and dented gray terrazzo floors rested a thin blue-and-white hand-tied Oriental rug. The kitchenette consisted of a single-burner propane camp stove next to the sink on what had once been the suite’s minibar. A huge brown-and-white Samoan tapa cloth adorned one wall, while the remaining walls were covered with books neatly arranged in stacks of wooden orange crates. A small collection of exquisite jade and brass Buddha figurines was arranged atop one of the crates.

When he’d finished eating, B.J. washed up his plate, and I scraped the last of the shrimp fried rice out of the carton onto my fork. I refuse to eat Chinese food on a plate. It just doesn’t taste the same, and besides, it gets cold. I walked to the sink, gave him my fork, and dropped the empty white box into the trash.

He hung the terry dish towel on a cabinet door handle and handed me a cup of strong black tea. He had left the front door open, and through the screen I could hear the pounding surf on the beach half a block away. The air smelled tangy. I didn’t need to see it to know that the high-water mark was piled with dark seaweed, pushed ashore by the north swells.

Padding in his bare feet to the low table in the center of the room, he sat cross-legged on the floor and began to read the newspaper. A small transistor radio tuned to NPR played soft Brazilian jazz. B.J.’s hair, pulled tight against his scalp, shone in the light from the rice paper globe overhead. He looked so completely relaxed. I imagined that he would have done exactly the same things whether or not I was there. It was pretty decent of him to give me plenty of breathing room.

I looked up at the blue-and-green surfboard on a rack high on the wall. I had first met B.J. when I was still with the beach patrol. I knew quite a few surfers then. My brother Pit had been one. Several of the guys told me that B.J. was good enough to compete as a pro but that he would never do it. They said surfing was a spiritual thing to him.

Silently I mouthed the names on some of the books in the crates against the wall: Plato, Ezra Pound, Edmund Spenser, Krishnamurti, Mark Twain, Immanuel Kant. I didn’t know them all, but I knew of enough of them to know that I didn’t want to go up against him in a game of
Jeopardy
. There were both hardcovers and paperbacks, and most of them looked old and well thumbed.

He was still engrossed in his paper. I’d meant it when I said I didn’t want to put him out. I sat down on the tropical-print futon folded up against the wall, nearly spilling my tea in the process. How could he sit so still? Granted, he was extremely limber from practicing aikido most of his life, but even so, I found his state of total relaxation unnerving sometimes. I studied the way he had his legs crossed. He had a lot less hair on his inner thighs. It was amazing that he managed to keep his back so straight. Setting my teacup down on the floor, I tried to pull my left foot up on top of my right thigh. My knee made a loud popping noise, and something along the back of my leg hurt like hell. B.J. didn’t even look up. I guessed he was still giving me that breathing room. But on the other hand, it would be nice to be noticed.

Almost as though he had heard my thoughts, he lifted his head and looked at me. Our eyes locked for several seconds before he spoke. I felt as though he were seeing things in me that even I didn’t know existed. As a child, I was always afraid that other people possessed the ability to read my mind—not really read, exactly, more like listen in on the constant banter in my brain. The idea terrified me. Then they would really know what silly things I thought about, and I wouldn’t be able to fool the world anymore.

For the first time, I noticed there were tiny flecks of gold in B.J.’s brown eyes, and yet I felt I had always known that.

“Have you read today’s paper?” He nodded at the pages spread out before him.

I forced my eyes down to the print. “No.” I could make out the name
Top Ten
in the headline.

“They don’t seem to hold out much hope for Neal.” He turned back to the front page. “Listen to this. ‘The
Top Ten
’s hired skipper, Neal Garrett, was aboard when the vessel left harbor Thursday morning, March eighteenth. According to police reports, he was not aboard at the time the vessel was found adrift. In addition, there were large quantities of blood on deck that could not have come from Krix, the female victim. The officer in charge of the case, Detective Victor Collazo, surmised that a third party was aboard the
Top Ten
and may have killed both members of her crew. Police are searching offshore for any sign of Garrett. They did indicate that chances of his surviving decrease the longer he remains missing.’ ”

B.J. stood up and carried the paper over to the futon. He sat down next to me and spread the newsprint across both our laps.

“And look at this,” he said. “ ‘Although he would not reveal any possible motives, Collazo did say the police have several suspects under investigation.’ ” B.J. grinned. “I guess they’re talking about you, huh?”