Saturation news coverage. His picture on TV and in newspapers coast to coast.
Mile marker 92 appeared in his headlights. Ten miles to Islamorada.
Jack breathed in the damp salt air and tightened his grip on the wheel.
Gates were lowered across the entrance to the marina, their orange tiger stripes lit by harsh floodlights. Inside the guardhouse the dim figure of a man was visible, silhouetted against the bluish flicker of a black-and-white TV.
Jack steered the Sunbird past the driveway and parked thirty yards down the road, on the gravel shoulder. He killed his headlights and engine, then got out. Two quick steps brought him up short against a ten-foot hurricane fence, overgrown with virgin’s bower and buttercup.
From the trunk he removed the three bulging paper bags of groceries and his knapsack. He rummaged in the bags till he found the things he needed; wire cutters, batteries, flashlight, towels, gloves.
Six Duracells went into the flash, which then went into Jack’s pocket. All the other items except the wire cutters found a temporary home on the Sunbird’s passenger seat.
Then he set to work. The fence was a challenge, the eighteen-gauge galvanized steel strands tough to defeat. Even so, within five minutes he’d cut a breach big enough to slip through. He deposited the grocery bags and knapsack on the other side, concealing them in a thicket of columbine, and returned to the car.
Half a mile away, there was a failed restaurant, the windows boarded up, the cinder-block walls webbed with graffiti. Jack drove around to the rear and parked out of sight of the road.
Wearing the rubber gloves, he tore paper towels off the roll and thoroughly wiped any surfaces he might have touched-steering wheel, dashboard, door handles, trunk lid, license-plate frames. Next he unscrewed the license plate. It belonged to the other Sunbird, the one in Florida City; if the law had tracked his movements as far as the supermarket, someone might make the connection.
The vehicle identification number came off next. He nearly broke the jackknife’s screwdriver while levering the plaque free of the dash. He scraped off the two labels that also recorded the VIN. Then he cleaned out the glove compartment, taking the registration slip and other paperwork that could have established the vehicle’s ownership.
Hefting a rock, he shattered the Sunbird’s windshield. Slashed the tires. Jimmied loose the hubcaps and discarded them in the weeds. Peeled the molding off the passenger-side doors. Poured handfuls of dirt over the car till it was a brown-streaked horror.
An abandoned wreck behind a condemned building. Not the sort of thing likely to be noticed or attended to by anyone in authority anytime soon.
Walking back to the marina, he dropped the license plate, VIN plaque, gloves, towels, and assorted wastepaper into a trash bin.
He struggled through the gap in the fence again, retrieved his groceries and pack, and made his way down onto the dock, wary of a security patrol. None was evident. There might be people living aboard some of the vessels, but even if they glimpsed him through a porthole, all they would see was a man lugging groceries to his boat.
From somewhere out on the water, laughter and a murmur of voices rose over a rippling undercurrent of salsa. Somebody was throwing a party.
He headed in the opposite direction, toward silence and solitude, scanning the dock slips as he walked.
In a berth at the north end of the marina, he found what he needed. A rigid-hulled inflatable tender, eight feet long, equipped with a Yamaha outboard. The little boat floated on the water, shrouded in canvas, tied to the stern of a cabin cruiser. It reminded him, with an unaccustomed nostalgic pang, of the motorboats he and Steve had rented here, so many years ago.
Jack reached out and pulled the tender close to the dock, then worked the canvas free. The boat was a nice one-Hypalon skin, wooden hull, aluminum oars. The outboard had been tilted forward to raise the propeller out of the water; the blades looked clean.
Quickly he loaded his supplies on board, stepped in, and cut the mooring line, slicing it close to the cruiser’s gunwale and tossing the short end on deck, out of sight. He coiled the longer end at the stern of the runabout, then rowed out of the slip, through the narrow basin, into the main channel.
The night was warm, the air stroked by a gentle breeze out of the south that raised a light chop on the water. Jack let the boat drift for a few minutes, until he was sure no other vessels were approaching, then pulled the starter rope. The engine came alive on the first try. Steering with the throttle arm, he motored at less than five knots down the right side of the channel, keeping the centerline buoys to port.
Ahead was the harbor entrance. He opened the throttle slightly, accelerating to eight knots, and passed between the starboard and port buoys.
Then he was out of the harbor, riding the shallow bay. He turned south and throttled forward, increasing his speed to fifteen knots. Visualizing a chart of the area, he mentally plotted a course for Pelican Key.
Though there was no moon, the sky was clear, the stars shining with the hard brilliance of gems. Jack could distinguish the dark shape of Shell Key as he motored past. Ahead, the bridge over Tea Table Key Channel arched its long back like the mounted skeleton of a dinosaur. He nosed into the channel, leaving the bay for swifter waters.
As he guided the dinghy east, he reviewed and expanded on his plans. As far as he knew, Pelican Key was still uninhabited. He could stay there for weeks-months, if necessary-motoring to Upper or Lower Matecumbe Key occasionally to replenish his supplies.
There was a chance, of course, that old Donald Larson or his family actually had taken up residence on the island after all these years. In that case Jack would have to move on. The Keys covered a lot of territory. He could find someplace else to hide.
A more immediate worry was that Steve Gardner or some other friend from his high-school years would mention Pelican Key to the authorities. He found it unlikely that the police would pay much attention; roughing it overnight in the wild as a teenager was one thing, but surviving alone on a tropical island at the age of thirty-five, not for hours but for weeks, was something else.
Even so, some local cops might be sent over to nose around. Jack was confident that he knew Pelican Key well enough to stay out of their sight for however long they lingered there. The island offered many places of concealment. They would depart empty-handed and report a dead end.
When he finally left Pelican Key, perhaps in late September, the government heat would have died down somewhat, and he would have had time to cultivate a tan and a beard, grow his hair long, and bulk up his muscles with rigorous workouts. The alterations in his appearance should keep him safe from recognition.
In Islamorada he would board a bus to Miami. From there it was only a short hop to the Bahamas. Plenty of banking, finance, and investment activity in Nassau, much of it occupying the gray areas at the edges of the law. Many opportunities for scams.
A good life in other respects also, from what he’d heard. Casinos, powerboating, sportfishing, tennis in the tropical sun. Conch fritters and boiled grouper spiced with red-hot peppers and washed down with dark rum at a tiki-bar. Lithe brown girls who could be had for less than Sheila’s extravagant tastes had cost him-girls who were safe to flirt and consort with, because they were not at all his type.
And when he needed one of his type again, when the feelings became too strong to ignore…
Well, there were plenty of American, Canadian, and British women in the Bahamas, both tourists and residents, many of them fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and blond. They would be no more difficult to pick up on a Friday night than Ronni Tyler had been.
And the Bahamas-think of it-a chain of seven hundred islands, the majority uninhabited. There was no need for the bodies ever to be found.
Yes, a good life. And all he needed to make it happen was a permanent change of identity. That particular detail would be arranged in the coming month.
Jack opened the throttle another notch. The engine burred like a lawn mower. Spray measled his face, moistened his hair. He thought about Teddy Lunt.
Teddy Lunt was a chirpy little bald guy he had met in prison-another hustler like himself, only Lunt’s game was phony ID, a growth industry in California, with its proliferation of illegal immigrants. Not all of the illegals were impoverished campesinos; some had money, enough to pay for specialized services of the sort Teddy
