Crime

Tianna away from Johnnie and Lance, which was his objective. He’d delivered her to the safety of Chet’s boat, which had been her mother’s wish. He’d saved Tianna, but only Robyn could rescue herself, by developing the sense to keep out of bad situations and the skills to look after her daughter. — I’ll go over and say goodbye, he says, wandering across to the jukebox.

He pulls out Trudi’s notebook, freeing the pen from its spine, scribbling two phone numbers and terrestrial and email addresses. Rips out the page and hands it to her. — This is where I am, if you ever need me. You got email, right?

— Momma has, Tianna says in doleful affirmation, taking the paper, looking at it and turning back to him, just as the sun comes in through the window and frames her in a golden stream of light. — I’m gonna miss you, Ray Lennox.

He can see the timeless humanity in her. She could be any age and is genderless. It feels like a religious experience. — Ah’m gonnae miss you.

She has the baseball cards. The one on the top he hasn’t seen before. He looks at it. Hank Aaron. Tianna glances at the card, her finger slowly tracing round its edge. Her voice is small and lisping again, making his blood heat drop degrees. — I thought I wanted to go on the boat with Chet, she says in a whisper he can barely hear, — but I don’t like that boat no more. I wish I could stay with you.

A voice tells Lennox: you can’t leave her. But another says: let go. You’re doing this for you, not the kid. The words of his fiancee resonate: you’re a self-indulgent prick. She’s not Britney Hamil. But then he’s looking back at the smiling Chet who’s heading over and he’s saying to her, — You can come with me if you like. Stay at my friend Ginger’s in Fort Lauderdale, meet his wife and Trudi, then we’ll go and get your mum tomorrow morning.

Tianna nods in grim relief.

Chet is now standing by them, and he has heard the proposal. — I think she’s fine here, he says forcibly. — You’ve been more than helpful, Lennox, and we really couldn’t impose any further.

Ray Lennox looks him in the eye. — I can assure you, it’s no imposition at all, he replies, his voice level, cop-like again.

— I guess I wanna go with Ray, Tianna says in appeasing tones, and now Lennox notices that she isn’t making eye contact with Chet Lewis. Something happened on the boat. He couldn’t have touched her; he was with him. She’d seen something downstairs. Found something. The other baseball card.

Then Lennox catches the abrupt change in Chet’s expression; he’s seen it before, in countless other people. Features pushed outwards, a reflex smile; all mouth, the eyes remaining dulled and calculating. — Sure. If that’s what you want.

— We seem to have a consensus, Lennox provocatively declares. He hasn’t yet sniffed the beast in Chet, but if it’s there, he’ll flush it out. He breezily insists on picking up the tab, before they go back on to the boat. He helps Chet untie the vessel and cast off. They chug wearily out of the harbour, but on clearing its jaws, Chet hits the throttle to transform Ocean Dawn into the machine that rips across the bumpy green water.

Tianna is sitting back in the lower deck, staring out to space, her tense jaw vibrating in concert with the boat’s chopping motion over the rippling surface of the Gulf. Hank’s back, she thinks, then in the glare of the sun and with the engines roaring, her fingers skim the slick, moulded hull of the boat and her stomach feels six inches higher. She’s sick, not seasick, but sick like Momma; stupid and feverish and not knowing where in hell’s name she is.

On the bridge Chet has taken note of the doubtful furrow on Lennox’s brow as he scrutinises the instruments. — We’ve gone a different way as I’ve another creel to check. It won’t take a second, he explains as he cuts the motor and drops the anchor.

The creel has catch. Lennox feels for the lobster, operating innocently in its own environment, only to be kidnapped, boiled alive and devoured by aliens.

Tianna goes down into the cabin, pursued by Chet. Concerned, Lennox is about to follow, but notices Chet’s cellphone sitting in an indent on the console. He picks it up and investigates the calls list. There it was; he hadn’t even needed to check the digits against the ones he’d scribbled down in Trudi’s notebook. The caller ID announced: LANCE D.

Lennox slips the phone back into the holder. There was no lawyer, probably no arrest. Robyn’s cottoned on to something and Dearing and his cohorts are keeping her hostage until they’ve decided what to do with her. And he is probably on his way to the Grove Marina right now.

Outside the stateroom Tianna quivers as she looks in and gapes at the big bed. Closes the door and sits at the table, staring at the grinning bride on the magazine’s cover, as Chet’s flannelled ass comes down the steps. He turns to her with a tired smile. — I spoke to Amy on the phone last week. His croaky voice is heavy with loss. — She was asking after you. She’s thinking of coming down soon. Don’t you think you might be better here, on the boat?… I mean, Lennox seems nice, but your mother did say to bring you here so I really can’t let you go with him.

— I wanna go with him!

— Put yourself in my position, darling, Chet begins, bushy white brows arching, — your mother—

— I don’t wanna stay here!

— But you always liked—

— Can we get going, Chet? Like now? My fiancee, as you say, will be waiting, Lennox shouts as he half descends the steps.

— Yes, of course. Forgive me. Chet turns to him. — You are in a hurry, and he looks vainly back at Tianna before following Ray Lennox up the steps to the deck.

They reach the helm, and a supplicating Chet starts the boat. — But are you sure you don’t want to leave Tianna here?

— I don’t think she wants that. Do you? Lennox looks at the older man’s stern profile. Sees that the knuckles of his big hands are white on the wheel.

— As you wish.

The outward journey had been a clear line across the bay from one harbour to the next. But now Chet is taking his time. — Can we go straight to the marina, instead of hugging the coastline?

— The tides have changed. We need to avoid the shallows or we could run aground, Chet points at the navigation system and the sonic depth meter. — It’s only a foot deep in some places and this is a very heavy boat.

Lennox turns back to the screen. There was a route straight through where the water level was at its highest. — That way, he says, grabbing Chet’s hand in his strong left and bending two fingers back. A searing pain lights up the skipper’s face like the jukebox. Chet forces a smile at Tianna who is now on the deck at the back of the boat as the harsh, clipped tones of the Scottish polisman rasp in his ear. — Don’t fuck me about, you cunt. You don’t know what you’re messing with here. Do I make myself clear?

— Crystal, Chet gasps, as Lennox relinquishes his grip. He resets the course and they are back within twenty-five minutes.

Ray Lennox knows that he hasn’t broken Chet’s fingers. But something in him has splintered as he sits miserably, painfully waving them off from the boat at Grove Marina.

Lennox and Tianna climb into the car and drive away. He’d spurned the temptation to use Chet’s cellphone to call Trudi; it would mean the number of the hotel would come up, and he didn’t want her anywhere near this. Now he isn’t messing around with the Tamiami Trail. He has worked out exactly how to get on to Interstate 75: Everglades Parkway, or Alligator Alley.

16 Alligator Alley

THE TRAFFIC IS sparse and sinister as they drive down roads lined with narrow homes and green signs that herald street numbers and the names of distant cities. This, in turn, becomes another strip mall of bad- intention businesses. The Red Sox hat lies on the dashboard. He’s given up on it, two depressions still visible on