The Naked Detective (25 page)

Again I glanced at Maggie but couldn't say a word. She climbed up from the hole and handed me the canvas tote. Without ever lifting the pouches out into the daylight, I slipped them into the bag. Then, on legs that quivered with a mix of edginess and plain fatigue, I scrabbled up from the hole as well.

Quick and silent, we replaced the piled sand. We tamped it down; we raked it. Soon, light breezes and burrowing crabs and bugs would ripple through and make the place look as natural as it ever would. No one would know this sand had been disturbed.

It was getting close to sunset now. Tatters of cloud hung near to the horizon and made the red rays intermittent. Music wafted across the water from the downtown bars. Reggae. Probably it had been playing for a while, but only now did it register. Other people were having a pleasant afternoon, normal for Key West if not for other places, lazy, aimless, sensual. Music and a mar-garita as the sun dived into the Gulf. God, I missed my life.

We mopped our faces and our necks, and gathered up our tools, and strolled back to get the launch.

"Were you followed?" I asked Ozzie.

We were somewhat late and he'd been sitting in the parking lot awhile. We found him leaning up against his cab, arms crossed, staring at the water and the streaky sky.

"Yeah," he said.

I chewed my lip.

"I was followed to the Pier House, where I picked up a fare; followed to the airport; followed to the Casa, where I dropped off the next asshole. By then I think they realized I was just some jerk trying to make a living. After that I wasn't followed." He lifted his chin toward Sunset Key. "How'd it go out there?"

"Went okay," I said. "Followed by one car or two?"

"Hard to tell," he said. "The glare, the traffic. But anyway, I lost 'em."

I tried to feel reassured by this. I couldn't quite manage it. We were on a tiny island, after all, a place where it was no great trick to find someone again. But there was nothing to be done about it now. We put the tools back in the trunk and got into the taxi.

My nervousness made everything annoying. Our hot wet shirts had cooled and gotten clammy. My back itched. My bare legs stuck to the seat.

We entered the maze of tiny downtown lanes and crawled. Rental cars, pink mopeds, crazy bicycles—a tidal wave of vehicles streamed against us as they swarmed toward the Sunset Celebration, blocking our path, keeping us trapped. Drunks weaved. Kids swaggered. The bag that held the pouches was on the floor between my ankles. I hated having it there. I felt like I was handcuffed to a bomb.

Beyond Duval the traffic finally relented. In fact, with a macabre abruptness, the streets seemed all at once deserted. No cars moved now; nobody was walking. The lemmings had all massed at the water's edge; the land side was lifeless and bereft.

If the traffic had been frustrating, this sudden abandonment felt sinister and jarring. It was as if the town had been evacuated in a panic, emptied by a tragedy. Here among the unpeopled houses and the clustered trees it was already dusk. Light refused to come down from the sky; shadow spread and conquered. Quiet reigned, but it was not a peaceful quiet. It was the hissing silence of conspiracy, the silence that went with an absence of witnesses.

Uncannily, we went eight blocks, ten, without seeing a single person. Then Ozzie pulled up to my house.

My haven and my retreat. I just stared at it through the taxi window for a moment—at my bicycle chained to its accustomed tree; at my shady porch, where I could rock and peek out through the lacy foliage. Everything seemed as it should be—it was all right there in front of me— yet I looked at it nostalgically, as if it had already long been lost or ruined. I'd made this house exactly what I wanted it to be; it was the perfect container for the life I'd chosen. I'd always felt safe here. Now this house seemed less safe than the open streets. It was where my enemies could find me. It was where I had the most to lose.

I nodded that I was, but I was lying. I was terrified in a way that seemed to be making me slow and stupid. My joints felt stiff, my arms and legs were heavy. My field of vision shrank and glared a sickly yellow at the edges. But I climbed out of the taxi, reached back in to grab the canvas bag. Maggie got out from the other side, and together we went up the porch steps to the house.

——

I opened the door, expecting ... what? A knife at my throat? A sap to the base of my skull?

I pressed myself against the door frame then sprang in like I knew karate. Nothing happened, and I felt ridiculous. A ceiling fan murmured. The refrigerator hummed.

I made sure the curtains were snugly drawn before I switched on a light. I dropped the tote bag on the sofa. Then I said to Maggie, "I need a drink. Some grappa?"

Grappa was the first thing we'd ever drunk together; but I wasn't being sentimental; I wanted the strongest liquor I could think of.

"Love some," she said.

I went to the freezer to fetch the bottle. A puff of frost reminded me I couldn't bear my clammy shirt for one more minute. I poured drinks then ran upstairs and grabbed a couple sweatshirts. Bashful away from her own place, Maggie slipped into the bathroom to put hers on.

During her brief absence I sipped my drink and wandered back into the living room. Pacing slowly, my eyes drawn irresistibly to the bag that held the pouches, I was suddenly seized by an appalling thought: I needed to get out my gun. This did not seem like a choice, but rather a compulsion, an imperative. Did I believe that, in a crisis, the gun would save me, that I'd somehow instantly take on the nerve and skill to use it? No, I don't think I believed that for a second. What I was feeling was unreasonable, primitive. Galled at my own fragility, I was reaching blindly for strong magic.

I lifted the watercolor of the mangrove islet from its hook; I started fiddling with the lock on the wall safe.

Maggie came into the room.

The gun was in my hand, and shoulder high by the time I turned to face her. She saw it and flinched; she suddenly stopped moving and let out a tiny gasp. She looked at me as though I'd been monstrously transformed, as though, suddenly, it was me she was afraid of. Mortified at having frightened her, I let the hand that held the pistol fall limply to my side. But for some fraction of a second, a question nagged at me: How could she imagine I would hurt her? There was nothing that could make me turn against her—was there?

There was a moment of supreme awkwardness. I struggled to produce a reassuring smile. It didn't work; I could feel in my cheeks that the smile came out grotesque.

Maggie's hand was at her throat. A little breathlessly, she said, "I've never been so close to a gun before."

Maybe there was nothing more to it than that. Guns were unsettling, after all. I nodded, sipped some grappa. My voice pinched, unnatural, I said, "Shall we see what's in the pouches?"

Stiffly, we sat down on the edge of the settee. The canvas tote was between us, a ghoulish chaperone. I put the pistol on the coffee table and reached into the bag. I grabbed the swollen pouch, the one that seemed to hold money. I offered Maggie the chance to open it. She declined with a shake of her head. So I opened it myself. It wasn't so easy. The zipper was plastic but fouled with sand. The slide hit roadblocks with every tug. I tried to finesse it for a bit, then quickly lost my patience and tore the rotting fabric where it was seamed into the vinyl.

I dumped the contents onto the coffee table. No surprises—it was cash. Tens and twenties mostly, with bent corners, the bills gone grayish and greasy with mold. We didn't bother counting it, though I guessed it was five, six hundred dollars. Not a bad take for a weeknight late shift at a bar; then again, a pretty paltry sum to die for.

I guess that's what Maggie was thinking too. She looked at the money and bit her lip. I thought she might start to cry. I guess she and Kenny had been pretty good friends.

I reached into the bag and seized the other pouch. With her eyes alone, Maggie made it clear that she didn't want to touch it. So once again I tried the zipper; then, with clumsy and unsteady fingers, tore the wretched thing open. Tiny sand grains bounced onto my legs. A dank smell wafted up. Probing past the sundered closure, I felt something hard but flimsy, damp but not porous, sharp-edged yet nearly weightless.

I pulled out a videocassette. There was no label on it. It had a superficial crack in the black plastic of its casing, though it seemed like it would play.

I held it up and stared at Maggie. She took my free hand and placed it on her chest. Her heart was jumping. We both knew there was something on that tape it would be better not to see. We both knew we had to finish. We got up from the sofa. I took my pistol and my drink and we went toward the music room to watch the video.

I switched on the dimmered lights but kept them low. The heavy insulated door swung closed behind us, blocking out the deepening dusk and the memory of the weirdly empty streets. I put my gun and grappa on the small table between the room's two cushy chairs, then crouched before the VCR and slipped in the cassette. I sat down next to Maggie and picked up the remote. Squeezing it way harder than I had to, I turned on the TV and started the tape.

The screen stayed black a moment, then brightened to an image that was only gravel. I found myself both hoping and fearing that perhaps the long-buried cassette had been spoiled, its secrets leached into the sand of Sunset Key.

Abruptly, though, the gravel resolved into a picture. It was a picture of a room that looked familiar, but which I couldn't place at first. Heavy lamps stood in thick carpeting. Another decade's furniture was arrayed around a space with many mirrors. I realized it was Lydia Ortega's condo. The camera shakily panned ... and there was Lydia herself, sitting on her sectional. Her eyes were much too wide and much too black, and even I could tell that she was wigged on coke. She was wearing a bizarre half-bra that pushed her breasts up but stopped short of covering her nipples, and a G-string that drew the eye to the cleft of her sex.

For an instant, plain embarrassment overwhelmed fear and curiosity. I said to Maggie, "We don't have to watch this."

She didn't answer. The tape ran. Lydia massaged herself, did lewd things with her tongue. There was a wine bottle on the coffee table in front of her. She slid her hips down toward it.

My head swam. Arousal and bewilderment. Lefty had said his daughter had a problem. That a woman had put the pouch into the safe. Lydia had claimed that she was being blackmailed. Had hinted that the blackmailer was Mickey Veale ...

On the TV screen, she writhed, she cooed, she pulled away the G-string with her red-nailed fingers. My eyes went where her fingers did.

Then something happened in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, something all but unimaginable. An electronic stamp suddenly flashed on. It hung there for a second, maybe two, and then switched off again. The stamp read
kwpd.

That was as far as I got. Because that was when the heavy door of my silent room slammed open, came crashing in as though the hot and urgent breath of the entire outside world had been aimed at it. Barreling behind the crash were Officer Cruz and Officer Corallo. Their guns were drawn and they held them the way real shooters do, with a hand braced on the wrist.

Time froze as thoughts trampled one another. Affront kicked in even quicker than terror—how dare these bastards violate my haven? I glanced at my pistol on the little table, useless, unready, as I always knew it would be. I saw Maggie out of the corner of my eye, pasted back into her chair; sinews stood out in her neck.

Cruz bulled into the middle of the room. Corallo held his ground and blocked the doorway. Cruz's crazy hairline crawled as he gestured toward the filthy video. "So," he said, "the amateur gets lucky."

I didn't feel that lucky. I said nothing. The tape ran. Lydia Ortega had gotten down onto her knees. The electronic stamp flashed once again. This seemed to embarrass Cruz—not too bright, after all, to use the department video-cam—and so he shot the television. Vaporized colors seemed to waft from the obliterated screen, a wisp of pink, a fog of sickly yellow. The sound of the gun went on and on; first the explosion, and then a shattering, and then an echoing whine.

The noise was so persistent that we barely heard the second shot—the one that entered Corallo's thickly muscled back and tore through his heart and sent him sprawling facedown dead on the floor behind our chairs.

An instant's complete incomprehension then erupted into mayhem.

Cruz wheeled and fired toward the doorway. His bullet lodged in heavy lumber and bundled insulation.

A slender arm poked into the room. Red fingernails wrapped around a trigger. Another shot rang out. It missed Cruz and knocked my amplifier off its shelf. By reflex, Maggie and I slithered from our chairs and hunkered on the floor, our bodies close and quaking. Embarrassingly but not surprisingly, I'd blown the chance to grab my own weapon and enter the fray.