Crime

— I’m not saying I’ve lived like a monk, but I try to keep in shape. You realise in your later years that you get the pay-off, he smiles, putting down the menu and scanning the board for the specials. — I think I’m going to have the dolphin.

Lennox winces at him, disgusted at the idea of eating dolphin. Those poor cunts have sonar power. They’re not thickos like sheep or cows. It’s worse than eating a dog. The Septics are crossing the line here.

Chet senses his disquiet. — Don’t worry, Lennox, not the mammal dolphin. It’s an old name for a large green fish, commonly called mahi-mahi but we refer to it as dolphin here. That was the Spanish term before the English-speaking settlers came by and gave the intelligent mammal the same name. It causes no end of confusion with British visitors. Not that we get that many on this side of the state. So tell me, how is the insurance game?

— It’s a job.

Chet’s baleful half-smile indicates acceptance of that gallows camaraderie that implicitly bonds those who work for bosses. — Is it as lucrative in the UK as it is here?

Before Lennox can answer, his host has, in an instant, launched into a spiel about hurricane damage, and the ineptitude, venality and avarice of the Federal and State governments. Both Bush brothers, particularly Jeb, are being slated. —… the corruption; the greed of their profiteering associates. Is it the same in Britain, Lennox? Is it?

Lennox gives a non-committal shrug. His job has made him averse to discussing politics with strangers as his own were generally out of sync with those expressed by everyone else. But then a single, simple motion from Chet ices his blood. He touches Tianna. Only smoothing out a tangle in her long brown hair, but it makes him sit in upright rigidity on his chair. Because he catches the sting of tension creasing her face and the brief glimpse of appeal towards him before the laminate rises to conceal her.

Both reactions have escaped Chet, a prisoner of his own concerns. — I fear for the children. I really do, he continues. — What a legacy we’re leaving them, Lennox. People like you are still young enough to change the world for the better, but I’m an old fella now. I just want to sail my boat, do some fishing, and at the end of the day put my feet up with a good book and a nice glass of red wine. Not so wrong, is it?

Lennox concedes that it isn’t, but this doesn’t seem to satisfy Chet. — What can we do, Lennox? he asks sadly.

The food has arrived but Lennox, while ravenous, has taken heed that Tianna is barely touching hers. Her fork distractedly jostles a leg of chicken around her plate. — Wish I knew, he says, passing off the question with another shoulder feint, reassessing the situation by the second. Adjusting and fine-tuning; correcting, with the regularity of Chet’s satellite navigation system. He can’t figure it out. His Scottish polisman’s reductive and misanthropic view of the world seems an inadequate lifebelt. The old certainties he’s entertained: the morally bankrupt, malevolent rich; the ignorant, feckless poor; the fearful, petty, repressed bourgeoisie – even aggregated they don’t appear impressive enough in their cretinism to fuck up the world to the extent it now seems to be. And he is too tired to even think about God. What was Robbo’s world view? Fifty per cent of people are honest. You could forget all about them. They might commit minor misdemeanours, but they basically lived their lives toeing the line. The other 50 per cent were divided between the evil, around 10 per cent, and the weak and stupid, the other 40. Again, the evil weren’t that important in the calculation; they were just there to be hunted down. The key group was the weak and stupid. They were the main perpetuators and victims of crime.

The older he gets, the more inclined he is to cling to such banal paradigms, as someone drowning might with a piece of soggy driftwood. It depresses him and he’s aware that he wants a line of coke again. For a heartbeat or three it’s all he wants.

— Can I get some more Coke? Tianna asks the waitress as ‘Home Lovin Man’ plays in ringtone, signalling a call coming up on Chet’s mobile, reminding Lennox again that he needs to phone Trudi.

— Excuse me, Chet rises quickly, heading outside. His haste gives Lennox and Tianna the impression that the call is an important one; they track him through the windows of the restaurant as he wanders by the quay, past the aluminium boat shelters, phone talk underscored with feral gesticulation.

Lennox notes her face reflected alongside his in the glass. He becomes aware that she is mirroring him, copying his actions. He feels both troubled and honoured to be a mentor. Is he any better than Robbo had been to him? Because it has to stop now: this suspicion of Chet. Like the guy in the car hire, or Four Rivers on the boat; they cannae all be nonces. Everybody in the world with a cock – or with a minge, cause there was Starry – they cannae all be beasts. The poor kids in the garage! Trudi was right. He is tired. Jaded. Not himself. Scared even. Seeing things that aren’t there. The ghost of Britney. His hands shake. He needs his antidepressants. He’d been a fool to discard them. He’s ill, clinically depressed, and no amount of winter sun can fix that. Chet is kosher. Surely. He turns to Tianna. — He seems a nice guy. I just had to be certain, given the company we were in the other night. You understand?

— Thanks for looking after me, she says to him, but in a voice so small, her face a younger child’s now – a surfeit of emotion over calculation – that he feels his essence vaporising. Something isn’t right; hasn’t been since she went below deck.

— Aye. Lennox swallows some saliva down. A terrible, poignant vision of taking her to Scotland floods his mind. She should be at a good school, with proper mates, having a laugh at Murrayfield Ice Rink or the Commie Pool, gearing up for Standard grades, doing family things. Not with him and Trudi. Not his Scotland; that would be out of the frying pan and into the fire for her. Lennox is realistic enough about his own circumstances, but he enjoys the Uncle Ray tag. Jackie and Angus have the two boys. He likes them, had taken them to Tynecastle, but they weren’t that interested. Once she’d told him, before Angus got the snip, that she’d really wanted a girl. He doesn’t have the stuff for the twenty-four/seven, but he could be a positive influence; the fun uncle, taking the kid on the odd outing. They could be pals.

He jerks himself out of his storybook fantasies. The best Tianna could hope for was a good set of foster- parents here in Florida. Even then, she has a lot of work to do if she isn’t going to turn out a miserable wreck like her mother.

Chet returns, with a sombre nod to Lennox. He counts out some quarters and hands them to Tianna. — Put something good on the jukebox, honey, before the place fills up with crazy ol Crackers and their mad country songs. Maybe some Beatles or Stones.

Tianna silently takes the money and goes to the big Wurlitzer by the restrooms.

— That was Robyn, Chet now grim, but wild-eyed. — She got herself in a whole heap of trouble and ended up being detained. But I got my lawyer on the case, and she gets out tomorrow morning. So I’ll take care of Tianna tonight and get her to Robyn tomorrow.

Lennox feels a trickle of unease from breastbone to belly. Cop instinct or drug-fiend paranoia, he doesn’t know or care. He’s just less than convinced by what Chet has said. — Robyn… I want to speak to her.

Chet’s face adjusts to civil-servant archetype. — I’m afraid that’s not possible.

— Why? Why can’t she speak to me or Tianna?

Chet’s expression is now etched with impatience. — Because she’s in police custody back in Miami, Lennox. She got one phone call. But I got right on to my lawyer in Fort Myers; his buddy’s on the case, a Coconut Grove smartie. She’ll be out on bail tomorrow. He blows hard in exasperation. — Such a stupid woman. It was a damned cocaine bust. If the community care find out about this, she could lose that child.

Wasps crawl and buzz in the honeycomb of Lennox’s brain. He knows next to nothing about the American criminal justice system. But common sense dictates that it isn’t adding up. Detention would surely mean one night in the drunk tank, sleeping it off without being charged. It couldn’t mean spending around thirty-six hours in a cell. And Lance Dearing had supposedly taken her there. What was his role in all of this? And if it had been a cocaine bust, she’d have been formally charged.

Then Chet’s hand is on his shoulder, and in it, the submerged force of the powerlifter. That and the tone dropping an octave are enough to put jitters into Lennox’s frame. — You done a good job, son. Not a lot of fellas would have gone and put themselves out of their way like that, not for a stranger. But I can take over now. Chet withdraws his grip, the breeziness back in his voice. — You have enough to do, with a fiancee to look after and a wedding to plan!

And it made sense. Lennox had intervened enough. You had to let go, to know when to let go. He’d kept