The Way You Look Tonight (22 page)

‘
Ahem
,’ Jeb interrupted her. He waved the white envelope above his head. ‘Your attention, please, everyone. I believe I hold in my hand something almost as glamorous
as that photograph. Stella, see what the mailman’s brought you. A letter from Washington.’

She frowned at him. ‘But I don’t know anyone in Washington.’

‘You most certainly do,’ he said. ‘A person who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to be precise.’

Stella was mystified. ‘I’ve never heard of that address in my life,’ she told him.

Sylvia and Dorothy were now both sitting bolt upright.

Thoroughly enjoying himself, Jeb shook his head in mock regret. ‘
Tsk, tsk
,’ he clicked, ‘such ignorance even in one so young, and despite the so-called special
relationship, too. Still, I suppose I—’

‘Jeb! Stop teasing the child,’ Dorothy chided him. She turned to Stella.

‘1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the address of the White House, dear,’ she informed her. ‘If my ridiculous husband’s histrionics mean what I think they do, you’ve got
a letter from the President.’

Stella gasped and Jeb laughed.

‘Sorry, Stella,’ he said. ‘I’m annoyingly playful at this time of day; I have no idea why. I know it’s intensely irritating. Yes, this is from the White House all
right. Look.’ He held the front of the envelope towards her; the Presidential crest and stamped lettering: ‘
From the Office of the President of the United States of
America’
were prominent.

She gulped. ‘Would you open it for me, Jeb, please?’ she asked him. ‘I’m a bit overwhelmed here.’

‘Sure, honey.’ He picked up a knife from the table and slit the envelope open. ‘I’m probably committing a federal offence by interfering with a Presidential missive to a
third party, but what the hell . . .’ He extracted the single folded sheet of paper inside. ‘OK. Here we go . . .’

After a moment, Jeb gave a low whistle.

‘I don’t even have to turn it over to see the signature – I’d recognise this handwriting on anything.’ He glanced up at Stella. ‘JFK’s written this
himself, Stella. I’m seriously impressed. I had a coupla letters from him during the last election campaign but they were mostly typed, dictated, with just a few scribbled notes from him in
the margins.’ He looked appreciatively at the piece of paper he was holding. ‘You’re gonna want to have this framed. This’ll be in pride of place on your study wall when
you’re an old lady.’

Sylvia smacked the table with the flat of her hand. Everyone jumped.

‘Stop
waffling,
Dad, and let her read the damn thing! We’re all dying to know what it says and all you can do is
talk
!’

Jeb looked abashed, as he always did when Sylvia told him off.

‘Sorry, Sylvie, you’re quite right . . . Stella?’ He handed the note out to her.

She shook her head. ‘No, you read it out loud, Jeb. I’m not the only one here dying to know what it says.’

‘You can say that again,’ Diana sighed. ‘For heaven’s sake, get
on
with it, Jeb.’

Jeb needed no further encouragement. ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘OK . . . there’s a kinda formal stamp here at the top that says:
“From the desk of the President” – I guess that means he actually wrote this in the Oval Office itself – and then his handwriting begins underneath that. He uses a fountain
pen, by the way. Well, here we go, folks . . .’

Lee Foster was far from the confident FBI agent who’d just told his girlfriend he was close to cracking the case.

The truth of the matter was he was baffled, frustrated, and increasingly at a loss over what to do next.

Logic dictated that John Woods
had
to be somewhere here in Key West.

The island was dominated by the huge Naval Air Station on neighbouring Boca Cheeca Key, four miles east of downtown Key West. Warplanes busily took off and landed every few minutes, like
suspicious wasps patrolling their nest. The town that lay just to the west was relatively small by comparison – a colourful, motley, cosy grid of a few streets of mostly wood-framed buildings
that straggled down to Southernmost Point – not only the most southerly place in Florida, but in the entire United States. Next stop Cuba, which squatted just below the horizon on the other
side of the Tropic of Cancer. Any of the fighter jets that continually roared into the air from Key West’s military runway could, if their pilots chose, be streaking over Fidel Castro’s
communist stronghold in minutes. The wooden sign marking Southernmost Point informed tourists that Cuba was exactly ninety miles away.

Lee stared gloomily out of the window of the boarding house he’d commandeered for himself and his men. He was looking down along Duval Street and its motley collection of bars, restaurants
and shops. It was quiet at this time of the morning but by lunchtime the place would be thronged with tourists, hustlers, prostitutes and drifters. As he watched, a squad of leather-clad bikers
cruised slowly down the sun-drenched avenue, heads wrapped in red and blue bandanas, the backs of their jackets studded with the insignia
Hell’s Angels – Tallahassee Chapter.
Duval had a seedy charm all its own, any time of day or night, an atmosphere now enhanced by the wanted posters Lee’s team had nailed to every telephone pole, tree and any available flat
surface from here at the northern end of Duval, all the way down to Southernmost Point.

The face of John Henry Woods stared blankly out at passers-by, beneath two words, printed in red letters:
MOST WANTED.

Under the photo was the terse caption:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? JOHN HENRY WOODS, BELIEVED TO BE IN KEY WEST. $10,000 REWARD FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO ARREST.

Apart from a couple of chancers and attention-seekers, there had been no response. Extra officers had been drafted in from the upper Keys and as far as southern Florida. They had knocked on just
about every door in Key West, trawled every bar, visited every hotel and bed-and-breakfast, and examined every boat docked in the harbour.

Lee had personally taken part in the shake-down and his hopes had been briefly raised when the owner of one of the larger conch houses being run as a small hotel had said a youngish man had
checked in several evenings earlier and had yet to leave his room, asking for all his meals to be left on a tray outside his bedroom door. The owner had just taken the man his lunch and called
through the door to tell him it was there. He had heard a muffled response so the guy was definitely inside. He hadn’t really looked at him that closely the evening he arrived, but he was
certainly about the same age as Woods, early thirties.

Lee had instantly summoned back-up and a few minutes later had men stationed on all sides of the wooden veranda that, in typical conch house style, ran around the entire building. Others stood
guard outside the white-painted picket fence that surrounded the property which, with all its pink louvred shutters demi-closed against the fierce afternoon sun, appeared to be taking a siesta.

‘Jeez,’ one of the cops had muttered to the man nearest to him. ‘Looks like we’re gonna bust the Gingerbread Man’s house.’

Minutes later Lee was crashing into the mysterious guest’s room, gun drawn and three burly armed officers at his back.

It turned out the recluse was a thriller writer, behind deadline with his next novel and determined to finish it free from any distractions or interruptions from the young family he had
temporarily deserted back in Tampa. Once he recovered from the shock of having his sanctuary stormed by gun-toting state and federal law-enforcers, he’d been almost grateful for the
incursion, telling them enthusiastically he could ‘really use this’ in a subsequent chapter.

The plain fact was that Woods was nowhere to be found and not a soul had seen him anywhere in Key West. The previous evening, Lee and his men had mingled with the crowds that
by tradition gathered every day to watch the sunset from Mallory Pier. All the officers carried Woods’s photograph, but the picture merely provoked shrugs and shakes of the head.

Lee’s conviction that Woods was somewhere close had been bolstered by the discovery of the tattered remnants of the stolen yacht’s missing dinghy. A sharp-eyed refuse truck driver
had spotted it poking out of the dumpster where Woods had jettisoned it two days earlier. The man had read in the
Lower Keys Shopper
that morning that the ‘Keys Killer’ had
probably rowed ashore in a now-missing inflatable. He made a shrewd guess at what the rubber ribbons dangling from the dumpster were, and called the police.

‘He
has
to be here,’ Lee muttered aloud to himself for the second time that morning.

But for the life of him he couldn’t think of a new way to flush out his quarry. Also, he had no way of knowing if Woods was in deep cover or hiding in plain sight, camouflaged in some
ingenious way against Key West’s multi-coloured, kaleidoscopic backdrop.

Whichever it was, he decided, at some point his man would have to break cover; that was inevitable.

The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was – when?

Down here they’d been calling Key West ‘the Gulf of Illinois’ since 1961, when the mid-west state became the first in America to repeal incredibly
repressive laws outlawing homosexuality.

In fact, the bar he’d been working in since the evening after he rowed ashore had recently and proudly re-named itself ‘The Springfield Tavern’ in honour of the Illinois
state capital.

Local police tolerated what they called ‘twinkie bars’ well enough. For some reason Key West had become a refuge for men who preferred each other’s company, along with
parts of New York and San Francisco.

What was more, down here the so-called pink dollar talked. The authorities increasingly turned a blind eye to the types of bars and their attendant micro-communities that in other parts of
the Deep South would have sparked vicious mob attacks, violent arrests and aggressive prosecutions.

He’d known all that, of course. It was why he’d chosen this identity, and it had served him well thus far. Very well indeed.

The barman in the Hog’s Breath had grinned at him when he’d emerged from the restroom, propped himself elegantly on a high stool the other side of the counter and asked for a
glass of Chardonnay.

‘Sure, man, comin’ right up. I’m thinking you’re new in town.’

‘Yes, I am, as it happens . . . how can you tell?’

The other man laughed as he scrutinised the blond customer’s ultra-fashionable, flamboyant clothes and yellow-tinted spectacles. He gave a friendly nod as he pushed the drink across
the polished bar top.

‘Cos you’re in here dressed like that, is why. Plus what you’re drinking there. There’s a coupla bars a little further down the street, towards Mallory, that I reckon
you’d probably prefer. More your style, if you follow me.’

He had affected haughtiness.

‘I don’t know what you mean. More my style? What are you sayin’, that I’m a friggin’—’

The barman had laughed, not unkindly.

‘Hey, it’s cool, man. You’re in Key West, remember? All I’m sayin’ is you might feel a little more comfortable somewhere like the Springfield Tavern, more at home,
and all. I’m just tryin’ to be helpful, OK?’

‘Well, if it’s like that . . . OK. Sure. Thank you. Anyway, what do I owe you?’

‘Zip. First drink before nine is on the house. Welcome to Paradise, my friend.’

The Springfield Tavern had turned out to be pretty well damned perfect for what he needed. To begin with, they were looking for an extra bartender as the coming season
approached and he’d fluked straight into the job. It helped that in between coming back from Korea and starting work as a mechanic he’d taken a part-timer at the Blue Flamingo in Key
Largo for a few weeks. He at least knew how to mix a drink.

What’s more, the job came with a small but decent room upstairs.