Lifeguard

tanned. And we were sipping those martinis. Don’t know who was making them. Let’s throw in a skipper and a crew. But we were somewhere in the Caribbean. And they tasted soooo good.

That’s when Dee ’s voice crackled on the walkie-talkie. “Ned, where are you? Neddie!”

Just hearing her voice made me nervous all over again. I wasn’t supposed to hear from her until we met back at the house in Lake Worth at 9:30. She sounded scared. I think I knew right then that the scene on the sailboat was never going to happen.

“Ned, something’s gone wrong!” Dee shouted. “Get back here, right now!”

I picked up the receiver and pressed the TALK button. “ Dee, what do you mean, ‘gone wrong’?”

“The job’s busted,” she said. “It’s goddamn over, Ned.”

I had known Dee since we were kids. She was always cool. But disappointment and anger were exploding through her voice.

“What do you mean ‘busted’?” I said. “Bobby and Mickey, are they all right?”

“Just get back here,” she said. “Mickey’s contact… Gachet. The bastard set us up!”

Chapter 13

My heart almost came to a full stop at that moment. What did Dee mean, ‘set us up’?

My head dropped to rest on the steering wheel. All I knew was a name – Gachet. Mickey never told us any more. But it was clear, the job was gone. My million dollars, too. Then I realized it could get worse. Much worse. Mickey, Bobby, and Barney could get nabbed.

I put the car in gear but I wasn’t sure where I should go. Back to the safe house? Or to my room at Sollie’s, and just stay clear? I suddenly realized that everything was in jeopardy. My job, my place at Sollie’s. My whole life. I ?ashed to Tess… Everything!

I started to drive. I made a right onto Royal Palm Way, heading toward the middle bridge over to West Palm.

Suddenly sirens blared all around me. I froze. I looked behind and there were cops cars gaining on me. My heart got a jolt as if I had touched a live wire. I was caught! I slowed, waiting for them to pull me over.

But, incredibly, they raced right by. Two black-andwhites. They weren’t looking for me, or even headed in the direction of Ocean House, or of any of the places I’d set off alarms. Weird.

Suddenly they turned down Cocoanut Row, the last major street before the bridge. They made a sharp left into traf?c, sirens blaring, lights ?ashing. Didn’t make sense at all.

Where could they be headed with all the shit going on all over town? I followed, at least for a couple of blocks. The black-and-whites turned onto Australian Avenue. I saw them come to a stop halfway down the block.

More cops cars. A morgue van, too.

They were pulled up in front of the Brazilian Court. I started to get nervous. That was where Tess lived. What was going on?

I parked the Bonneville at the end of the block and wandered up closer to the hotel. There was a crowd across the street from the entrance. I’d never seen so many cop cars in Palm Beach. This was crazy. We were the ones they ought to be after. I knew I’d better get back to Lake Worth. But Dee ’s words echoed in my head. The bastard set us up. Set up, how?

A ring of onlookers had crowded around front of the hotel entrance. I eased my way in. I went up to a woman in a white sweater over her sundress holding the hand of a young boy. “What’s going on?”

“There’s been a murder,” she answered anxiously. “That’s what all those sirens were about.”

“Oh,” I mumbled.

Now I was really starting to get scared. Tess lives here. I pushed out of the crowd, not even thinking about myself. Hotel staff in black uniforms were being ushered outside. I latched onto a desk clerk, a blond woman I recognized from earlier in the day. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Someone’s been killed.” She shook her head, dazed. “A woman. In the hotel.”

“A woman.” I held her eyes. Now I was starting to freak. “You mean a guest?”

“Yes.” Then she looked at me funny. I couldn’t tell if she remembered me or not. “Room 121,” she said.

My world started to spin. I stood there, numb, feeling my lips quiver. I tried to say something, but nothing came out.

Room 121 was the Bogart Suite.

Tess is dead, isn’t she?

Chapter 14

I WATCHED just long enough to see the stretcher loaded into the ?ashing morgue van. That’s when I saw Tess’s hand, dangling through the body tarp, those three gold bracelets hanging from her wrist.

I backed away from the crowd, feeling as if my chest were going to explode. All I could think was that I had just left her, a few hours before…

I had to get out of there. The Palm Beach police were all around. I was afraid they’d be looking for me, too.

I made it back to my car just as the shakes took over my body. Then this awful knot hurtled up in my throat. I threw up on somebody’s manicured lawn.

Tess was dead.

How could that be? I had just left her. I had just spent the most wonderful afternoon of my life with her. The hotel maid said murdered. How? Why? Who would kill Tess?

In a daze, I started to fast-forward through the days since we met. How we agreed to see each other again; how the Ocean House job had been set up.

Everything was separate. It was just a coincidence. A horrible one. I felt myself ?ghting back tears.

Then, unable to hold it back any longer, the dam burst.

I hung my head and just stayed there, my face smeared with tears. At some point I realized I had to leave. Someone could have recognized me from that afternoon. That blond desk clerk! I couldn’t exactly go to the police and clear myself, not with what had happened tonight. I pulled out from the curb. I didn’t know where the hell I was going. Just away.

Chapter 15

I MADE A LEFT, then another, found myself back on Royal Palm. My mind was a mess. My clothes were soaked in sweat. I drove the whole way down to Lake Worth in a daze. Everything had just changed. Everything in my life. It had happened once before – in Boston. But this time I wasn’t going to be able to put it back together.

I turned off 95 onto Sixth Avenue, the awful image of Tess’s dangling wrist and the sound of Dee’s freaked-out warning alternating in my head.

Mickey’s place wasn’t far from the highway. No Breakers on this street. No Bices or Mar-a-Lagos. Just shabby streets of boxy homes and trailers where people drank beer on lawn chairs, with ?atbeds and Harleys in their open garages.

A cop car streaked past me, and again I tensed. Then another cruiser. I wondered if somebody knew my car. Maybe I’d been spotted in Palm Beach?

I wound the Bonneville down onto West Road, a couple of blocks from the yellow house Mickey and Bobby had rented.