would have sent an artist to an LSD pill in an effort to duplicate it. A thousand variations of blues and greens tinted the waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf on either side of the scimitar-shaped line of tiny islands extending down to the tip of the Keys.
The majority of the key islands seen from the air were covered with a dense growth of pine trees and fringed at the water’s edge with a brief skirt of white sand. Many keys appeared uninhabited, but occasionally a glimpse of a white house amid the pines or a boat at a dock could be seen. The overall impression was one of silent isolation.
“Take me into the center of town,” I told the cabbie, a yachting-capped native with a Spanish cast to his features. I didn’t want to make my first appearance at The Castaways in a cab. The air coming through the cab windows was warm, damp air. There was no hint of a breeze. The landscape was flat as a pool table. Trees grew in profusion in backyards and in parklike areas. I saw Australian pine, date palm, banyan, jacaranda, and tamarind.
The driver took me to the La Concha Motor Inn on Duval Street. The lobby had a deserted, off-season look. My footsteps echoed hollowly on tile as I approached the front desk. As I registered, I had the feeling I could have any room in the house. “Sorry our restaurant is closed, sir,” the clerk apologized. “The Mermaid Tavern adjoining is open, though.”
A boy took my bag aboard the elevator. He stopped at the second floor and we picked our way around a welter of beams and braces extending into the corridor. A second elevator shaft was being sunk beside the first. The boy turned on the air-conditioner in my room. The resulting blast of frigid air all but stiffened my wilted collar. I fiddled with the adjustment after the boy accepted my tip and left the room, then stretched out on the bed and breathed lightly until I stopped dripping.
I didn’t intend to, but I fell asleep. I’d lost an extra day in San Francisco while I waited for the electronics warehouse to chase down some obscure part on Erikson’s list. I hadn’t spent the time with my hands folded, and I’d flown out too soon afterward for my system to have a chance to recover.
When I awoke, it was almost dark. I showered, but even after a cold rinse my skin felt clammy. I had only long-sleeved white shirts in my bag. I rolled the sleeves, dispensed with tie and jacket, checked the set of my wig in the mirror, and walked down the single flight of stairs to the lobby.
No one was in sight, not even the clerk or the bellman. I went to the front entrance, opened the glass door, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The first breath was like being hit in the face with a steamy dishrag. The humidity must have been at least ninety. I could feel my skin prickling as moisture built up subcutaneously.
I walked west on Duval Street, toward the docks. While studying a map of Key West I had been surprised to find how compact it was. Within the business district everything was within walking distance. Flowering trees overhung the sidewalk. I recognized cereus and frangipani. They would have been bushes or shrubs anywhere except in this tropical atmosphere. Foliage was junglelike in its density and in the riot of color given off by outsized blossoms.
I had dinner at the New England Restaurant, which was on the waterfront with a view of the Key West Bight. When I left the restaurant, I had my course charted. I backtracked a block on Front Street, turned left on Ann, crossed Green, and turned left on Caroline. I passed Peacock Lane and William Street before coming to Margaret. From the intersection I could see the glitter of neon announcing THE CASTAWAYS.
I walked the half block and turned into its entrance which I was amazed to see had no door. The humid night air drifted inside to mingle with the air conditioning. Hazel was behind the bar. She had on her usual sleeveless buckskin vest. I couldn’t see the rest of her, but I was sure she would be wearing her working uniform of Levis and silver-conched cowboy boots.
She looked up at my entrance but gave no sign of recognition. There were fewer than a dozen customers in the room, from their looks commercial fishermen. A flight of stairs led up to a second floor, and at its foot a battered table held an open journal that evidently functioned as a guest registry.
“Jim Beam,” I said to Hazel as I sat down on a bar stool. She served it to me on the rocks, at the same time cutting her eyes toward the end of the bar. After a sip of my drink I looked down that way. A wiry-looking man in khakis was sitting on the end stool with his back to the wall so he could watch the entire room.
His skin was dark, whether naturally or from the sun I couldn’t tell. He had black hair, shiny with oil. He was handsome in the pretty-boy style that can still look dangerous. There is a type in the Keys, native to the area, known as a conch. Part-Spanish, part-Indian, part-everything-else, they’re great watermen, raised on the channels and inlets. This man looked the part. He had a half-filled glass with a liquid dark enough to be rum, but his eyes were doing the drinking. He was focused on nothing except Hazel’s movements behind the bar.
The conversations in the room were so quiet I could hear the drone of the air conditioning. On the walls I could see the fresh paint that Hazel had ordered. She stooped swiftly beneath a hinged flap on the bar top, which permitted her to reach the main floor area near the stairway. She ran upstairs lightly and disappeared around a corner that concealed the second floor landing.
I slid from the bar stool, crossed the room, and climbed the stairs. Hazel was waiting at the top. I patted her back as she hugged me. “What about the piratical-looking type at the end of the bar?” I asked her.
“He’s one of ours.” She kept her voice low.
I glanced at the closed doors of the rooms leading off the second floor corridor. “Anyone up here?”
“No. Sound carries downstairs.”
“How do you know he’s one of ours?”
“Erikson told me.”
“Erikson is here already?” I hadn’t intended that Erikson would beat me to The Castaways. I had a mental image of Karl Erikson sizing up Hazel behind the bar. “Did he give you a hard time?”
“Not at all. The one downstairs is Chico Wilson. He’s the boat owner. He’s drinking a hundred-fifty-four-proof Demarara rum. Straight.” Hazel smiled. “Drinking and trying to make me.” She was looking down the stairwell behind me. “Here he comes.” Her voice rose. “Watch it! He has—”
She placed a palm in my chest and shoved. I staggered backward until my shoulders hit the wall behind me. I could see the Latin-looking type from the bar moving noiselessly up the last few stairs. In his right hand was a curved fishing knife.
“Take care thish one f’ you, doll,” he assured Hazel. I thought it was funny until I saw his eyes. They were glazed.
“Now, listen, Chico—” Hazel tried to bar his progress. He moved right through her as if she weren’t there. Considering her size, it was quite a trick.
“Teach ‘m not horn in ‘f not invited,” he muttered, confronting me in the narrow space.
“Does the name Erikson mean anything to you?” I said.
It slowed him, but it didn’t stop him. His thinking processes were submerged under a quart of rum. He continued to herd me into a corner, where I couldn’t escape his knife. I wasn’t wearing my gun, since with only a shirt on it would have been impossible to conceal the outline of the holster. I was lining up a spot on his anatomy to plant my heel when Hazel came up behind him and rabbit-punched him. She really let him have a bunch of knuckles at the end of a full-armed swing.
It would have floored an ordinary man. All it did to him was spin him around in her direction. “Th’ hell you doin', doll?” he growled at her. The hand with the knife in it massaged the back of his neck.
“That’s my fella you’re fixing on carving,” Hazel informed him. “He’s one of us.”
He blinked at her several times. I couldn’t tell if it was from the rabbit punch or the news. He turned full around to examine me for a deliberate moment. Plainly he wasn’t impressed by what he saw. He turned back to Hazel again. “Your fella o’ny because you haven’t known me long,” he told her. The knife disappeared in some sleight-of-hand too rapid for me to follow. I couldn’t even tell if it went into his shirt or his pants. “Shorry. Buy drink for ‘s all, okay?”
“Okay,” Hazel agreed. She shepherded him toward the stairs. “Come on, Earl,” she said to me.
“Pleased t’ meetcha, Earl,” Wilson said over his shoulder from the middle of the stairs.
“We shouldn’t be seen in the bar together,” I reminded Hazel.
Wilson turned around and started back up the stairs. “You refusin’ to drink with me?” he demanded belligerently.
“I’ll bring the drinks upstairs,” Hazel said hastily. “Go into the first room there.” She motioned to the door on the left.
