Under Cover of Daylight (15 page)

Thorn’s hangover was in full bloom. He was behind his darkest fishing glasses, his eyes tender and keeping time with his heart. He was wearing a pair of cutoff blue jeans, tan boat shoes, and an orange T-shirt that said
KEY WEST, THE LAST RESORT
.

Sugarman had been silent since opening the door on Thorn and Sarah, tangled in the sheets asleep, the sun well up.

“So tell me,” said Thorn. He took another sip from the can of Coke, tried to keep his head upright as he did it. “What do you have?”

“You tell me first, Thorn.”

“What?”

Sugarman said, “You’re not going to be one of those. Going around knocking on doors late at night. Reading nobody their rights. Lone-wolf justice.”

Thorn lifted his eyes, looked at him.

“That how I strike you?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“I’m a pacifist, man,” Thorn said.

“It’s how you got those split knuckles,” Sugarman said, “being extremely peaceful with some guy.”

Thorn said all right, all right.

“OK, here’s how it is. The DEA guys are in it now. They spent yesterday doing the boat, digging chum out of the deck, sniffing it with computers to see which ocean it’s from. Fine-tooth stuff. They had the slugs in and out of the lab already. Punched it all into the National Crime Information computer, and bang, it says, ‘Sorry, boys, start over. This amounts to zero.’ ”

“This is the information that’s supposed to keep me from kicking doors in?”

“Hold on a minute,” Sugarman said. “We know it was two guys. They chartered her for the night; they take it out to the reef, scuffle with Kate; the chum flies; then the guns go off; then the marijuana gets sprinkled. It’s archaeology. Layers. All of it right there in layers.

“Ned McLean was on Pickles Reef, pulling up hog snappers, around eleven Monday night. He heard the shooting, but he stayed put ’cause he thought it was a drug deal falling apart. His radio was on the blink, so he didn’t tell anybody about this till yesterday. Stayed out there all night he was so scared, didn’t want to start the engine.

“Then Larry Mayfield at Tremble’s Marina called up and placed Kate at his docks fueling up at five o’clock. She told him she had two Cuban gentlemen for the evening. Bought six bags of chum.

“And we got us a big fellow and a little fellow. From the footprints. We got two pairs of new shoes. Some black thread that got snagged on the cabin door. And we got a fishing rod with a bloody tip.”

Thorn was silent, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Looks to us like Kate got in a lick or two. The rod’s in the lab up in Miami.”

Thorn shook his head, looking at Sugarman, trying to fend off the scene that was forming in his mind.

“The DEA is following the drug angle. It’s what makes their world spin. It doesn’t matter what I say about Kate, she’s running pot as far as they’re concerned. She’s dead ’cause she didn’t have her union card. They say the dope was scattered as a signature. Let this be a lesson to you others. Simple. File the whole case under ‘Clumsy Amateurs.’ ”

He heard something wrong with Sugarman’s voice. The way he got when somebody’d whispered “nigger” in the same room with him.

Sugarman said, “But it’s not drugs. It could be backlash from her environmental stuff, or it’s something we don’t know anything about yet. But you’re sure and I’m sure it’s not drugs.”

Thorn met Sugarman’s eyes, and he could see how heavy they’d become. Clouded and yellow.

Sugarman said, “I had the boat pulled. Larry Mayfield’s cleaning it up, patching a couple of places. He’ll take it around to Kate’s. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

“There’s something else, though, isn’t there?”

“Not about Kate.” Sugarman glanced at the French doors. The toilet flushed inside.

“Sarah?”

“No, it’s Jeannie again.” Sugarman took a breath. “I don’t want to go into it.”

Thorn said nothing. He tried to slide a breath past the throb in his throat. It wasn’t the hangover anymore. It was Kate taking a stab with that rod. Gutsy, resourceful. Dead.

“I know it’s not the time, man, but I got to tell you.” Sugarman glanced at the French doors. He said, “She spent last night with the preacher. The dude I told you about. Robert Redford with a Bible. She’s standing in the door on her way out with her suitcase, telling me I’m not sexual enough for her. She’s got to have this honkie.”

Sugarman turned his face to Blackwater Sound.

“She says she wants to stay there some nights, stay at home some nights. Says she loves us both, but in different ways. I don’t know, Thorn. I think I’m sexual. I think I’m damned passionate.”

Thorn nodded.

“I don’t know what the hell to say to her. I actually thought of calling that TV lady last night, the one with the accent. That’s how bad it got.” Sugarman laughed wearily. Thorn made a smile. Looked away at the horizon.

When the door opened and Sarah stepped outside in white shorts and a white blouse, Thorn turned and thought he heard faint music. His hangover playing dumb tricks. He tried to tone down his smile. Knowing he wasn’t doing it, not keeping anything secret from anyone.

Sugarman stood up, nodded hello to her, and Thorn introduced them. Sugarman put out his hand, and she shook it like a man.

“So, am I still a drug runner today?” she asked. “Should I start looking for a bail bondsman?”

Sugarman said, “Thorn, you turkey.”

“So I told her, yeah. Why shouldn’t I? You don’t believe it anyway. She look like a cannabis cutie to you?”

Sugarman was shaking his head sadly, making a quiet groan. Sloppy procedure, counting too heavily on the likes of Thorn.

“I’ll be happy to answer your questions,” she said.

They passed a glance around the table.

“What can I say, Sugar?” said Thorn as he reached out and touched Sarah’s arm. “I get warts when I lie to people. Big, ugly warts. Size of bottle caps.”

Sugarman stayed around five more minutes, listening to Thorn explain to Sarah what the police had at the moment. Sugarman sneaking looks at her.

When he’d gone, Sarah stood up, said, “I need to take you somewhere. You need to see something.”

“This
does
have something to do with you.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope not. I sure hope not.”

They took her Trans Am south, almost to Plantation Key. Thorn watched her hands on the small wheel, watched her shift cleanly, keeping it at the speed limit but weaving around Winnebagos, the slower local traffic, never getting hung up anywhere. She drove as if she were used to driving much faster, no wasted motion, all four hundred horses knowing who had the whip.

He told her she was a good driver.

She didn’t answer.

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“It’s just a sensitive subject.”

Thorn was quiet, looking at her profile, the air conditioner stirring her hair.

She said, “Driving is important to me.”

Thorn wondering how he’d strayed into such a minefield.

Sarah watched the road, said, “My father died from bad driving.”

“You never said anything.”

“It was a long time ago.”

Thorn rested his hand on her shoulder. “Doesn’t matter how long ago it was. Those things last. I know.”

“Yeah, I believe you do,” she said.

She turned into a gravel drive on the bayside, just beyond mile marker ninety-two. There had once been a small fishing camp back there, on maybe fifteen acres. He knew the fishing cottages were gone, but he hadn’t paid any attention to the property.

Sarah got out and walked ahead to a rusty chain drooping across the road. She found the key on a large ring of keys in her purse and opened the padlock. Dropped the chain off in the weeds.

They drove down the shaded road around a tight bend, bushes brushing the car. Thorn recalled now. It had been a condo development, or had been planned as one.

“Sunny Hammocks,” he said.

Sarah looked across at him. “That’s right,” she said.

There were five two-story buildings in the shade of giant banyans, unfinished concrete-block buildings. Only one had a roof. The others with three-quarters walls. Vines ran the walls; weeds grew five feet high at their bases. A small rubber tree grew out of the gutter of the one with a roof. Broken windows. A pile of boards covered by a purple blooming vine.

Sarah wound through the narrow road, down a sloping asphalt section that was deeply pitted, weeds breaking through. There was a tennis court and a swimming pool thirty yards or so from the beach. The beach was covered with plastic bottles, scraps of rope, buoys. She parked alongside the pool, and they got out.

The pool was brimming with a green soup. Frogs and lizards fled as Thorn and Sarah crossed the wooden decking around the pool. Fallen branches, coconuts, and giant seedpods from the palms. Huge fronds scattered everywhere, black and rotting. The Jacuzzi was clotted with the porridge. As they approached the beach, a great blue heron squawked at them and untangled into flight.

“Do you remember Kate giving you a key a year or so ago?”

Thorn fumbled around in his head.

“She gave you a key and told you it was important, not to lose it.”

He said, “Yeah, I remember. I got it.” In his fly-tying desk. The tool drawer. He pictured it, a gold flat key beside the needle-nose pliers, clippers, razor knives.

“Good.” She led him down the lawn toward the beach to two chairs, green Adirondack chairs of thirty years ago. They sat. Thorn looked out at Tarpon Basin through those dark glasses. It looked almost cool out there, the trick of Polaroids. Sarah watched him.

“That key,” she said. “It was my idea. Kate wanted to give you something, and I showed her how.”

He relaxed in the chair, had a fast memory of trout fishing with popping corks out in the basin. Out there drifting across grassy beds. Back when there’d still been trout out there, when there’d been grassy beds. Before it all turned sterile and bare from too much silt stirred up, dredging up new land for new islanders.

“That key is what’s known as a tender of gift. It means a gift was given, an act completed. That’s very important, or it could be, if Ricki gets it in her mind to fight this. She won’t win, but she might try.”

Thorn stared at her.

“Won’t win what?”

“This place,” she said. “Sunny Hammocks, and half a dozen others like it up and down the Keys.”

“This ghost town? Kate owned this?”

“She owned it. You own it now. She wrote you in on all the mortgages. With right of survivorship. It’s a gift to you. Not an inheritance. Technically she made you a gift of this place the day she gave you that key to her safe-deposit box. There was no reason to explain it all to you then.”

“She bought this place and let it get like this?”

Sarah frowned.

“She bought it in
order
to let it get like this,” said Sarah. “This is her legacy and gift. It’s a natural hammock, and there are mahogany trees back there the developers were planning to cut for more building. And I know it makes everybody laugh, but there are wood rats back here, too.”

“I’m not laughing,” he said.

“She put every cent she could into places like this. From her savings, the insurance from Dr. Bill, his annuity, all the cash flow from Vacation Island, rents mainly and long-term leases. All that money to keep these developments from being built any farther.

“One of these places would get in trouble, miss a couple of payments. Or the Sierra Club, Audubon Society would get the investors so bogged down in suits and court cases the owners would get tired or nervous waiting, making the payments, till building can get going again, and Kate would step up, make them an offer, either buy it outright or buy into it and keep increasing her share until she had it. All sub rosa, of course. She’s fighting these places publicly with the wildlife groups, and undercover she’s trying to buy them out. Soon as she owned a place, the hammers stopped.”

Thorn was leaning forward, looking at her. His headache rekindling.

“My job was hiding Kate from view. We used blind endorsements, parent corporations, anonymous trusteeships, mock subscribers, anything I could come up with to keep it legal and keep Kate’s involvement concealed. It took a while sometimes, but eventually any of these places she set her sights on, she’d find a way to get the other owners so impatient or pissed or worn down that they sold to her.

“But it all still requires cash flow. All of them have property taxes; some of them still have mortgages. And it’s Vacation Island that’s the money pump. It has to work at absolute efficiency to keep these places ghost towns.”

Thorn cleared his throat, looked down at his lap. He said, “You caught this one a little late. Land’s been cleared, buildings built. I mean, it doesn’t seem like this qualifies as
saving
a place.”

Sarah watched him for a moment and said, “I didn’t know, but I didn’t expect this reaction. I thought you living like you do, close to nature, you’d just see this automatically. I thought you’d see it.”

“I’m looking.” Thorn feeling heavy in his chair. “I’m trying to see it.” Taking his time, looking back at the buildings, the vines. “It just looks like a sore. Healing over wrong.”

“Well, it’s your sore now. You want to start up with these places again, sell time shares, get half of Minnesota flushing their toilets into the bay, you can do it. There’ll be lots of people happy to help you.

“And Vacation Island. That’s yours, too. So you could just yank the plug on the money machine and this whole thing would be up for grabs.”

“What’s Ricki get? She’s blood kin. I’m just this orphan they took in.”

“I updated the will just this spring, so I can say with some certainty that Kate considered you more than some orphan. Ricki’s getting exactly twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“But there’s something else, isn’t there? There’s more to all this.”

It took her a moment, but she nodded that there was.

“Well?”

“I’m thinking.” She took a deep breath and laid her head against the chair back as if to catch these late-morning rays, put a little color in the cheeks. Thorn took her in, her throat, the twin points of her collarbone, the rise of her breath, the lace of her bra through her gauzy shirt.