'Hell yes, he was paying us. Lot more than I'd make at Wendy's.'
I asked him, 'Does that make any sense to you? To pay so much for a carving?'
'A rich man doesn't have to make sense. He just has to be rich. Know what you might try, dude? When my old man figures out where you're hiding and comes to beat your ass, you might try offering him that carving in trade. Get yourself off the hook.'
Before I turned him loose, I told Tony his old man wouldn't have to look hard. I'd be on Key Largo.
We were nearly to the long bar off Lostman's River before Nora spoke. We'd ridden all that way in silence, past Panther Key and Jack Daniels and Pavilion Key; the Ten Thousand Islands off to our left, mangroves so dense that they absorbed sunlight; they seemed to create a dark dome beneath the bright blue October sky. I saw only two other skiffs the whole way, plus a sailboat on the far horizon probably outward bound from Key West or the Dry Tortugas. The two of us sat side by side but alone, as silent and remote, it seemed, as the dark islands touched one after another by my skiff's trailing wake.
Violence releases a potent chemical cocktail into the muscles and the brain. The aftereffects can be a little like a hangover. It produced a gloom in us both. I had drifted so deeply into my own thoughts that I actually jumped a little when she spoke.
'Ford? You really would have done it. Why's it so hard for me to believe that?'
It took me a moment to understand the question. 'The rings, you mean.'
'Yes. You'd have torn them out to make him talk. You really would've.'
I thought about lying, then decided to hell with it. 'Probably. A couple of them, at least, just to let him know I was serious. Until he convinced me that he wasn't the one who dug up Dorothy, it seemed like the thing to do.'
'It was so… brutal.'
'He wasn't all that nice to me, if you think about it.'
She touched her fingers to my arm, a signal of some type. 'I wasn't criticizing you. It was an observation. I've never seen anything like that. The whole scene keeps going through my mind over and over. Wasn't that girl awful?'
I nodded.
She touched my arm again and looked at me. 'Some puppy dog. Delia called you that. You're no puppy dog.'
We cut in close to the beach at Cape Sable where mangroves grow a hundred feet high, then ran Tin Can Channel past Flamingo. Had I been alone, I might have stopped and placed a wild flower on a little marker that commemorates the passing of someone who was once very near and dear. Instead, I accelerated over a shoaling bottom, feeling the skiff gather buoyancy as the bottom pressure created lift.
Doing an easy fifty, we flew through the narrow cut at Dump Keys, then past Samphire Key where the water changed from gray to iridescent green over a coral bottom that showed a blur of sea fans and sponges. To the east was Key Largo. The big micro tower there punctured a cumulous cloud that was feeding on exhaust fumes and asphalt thermals.
The water continued to clear until it had the density of bright air. The eye told the brain that to fall from the skiff meant a drop of ten or twenty feet. I waited until I found a perfect basin of clear water, then backed the throttle and switched off the key.
'Why are you stopping?'
'Water like this, I've got to swim. The starboard locker, beneath all the ice, you'll find botdes of beer. There are a couple of Cuban sandwiches, too. Help yourself. All I've got is underwear, so turn the other way if you want.'
'My God! Look at your side.'
I had my shirt off. I looked where she was pointing and saw a tubular bruise where Derrick had hit me. A very serious hematoma that appeared as if it might still be bleeding. The bruise was black in the middle, green and red at the edges.
'If he'd hit you in the head, he'd have killed you.'
I said, 'I don't doubt it,' and dived in, feeling the cleanness of water cover me. I swam out another twenty yards, letting my muscles stretch, my hands feeling the weight of water, and then I dived to the bottom once again. I surfaced to see Nora standing on the casting deck, ready to dive. She'd stripped down to bra and panties; a tall, flat-chested woman with ribs showing beneath dark skin. Bony hips and very long, smooth legs with a firm muscularity.
It was a nice image: dark, lean woman, lucent water, green horizon. Seeing her brought some light back into me and brightened my thoughts.
She did a pretty good dive, had a very nice, long-distance stroke.
Back in the boat, her black hair dripping, unselfconscious about her body showing through wet bra and bikini panties, she said to me, 'I know what you mean. Water like this, you've got to get in.'
Sixteen
Speaking from inside the little tiki bar at Mandalay Marina, Delia hung up the phone as she said, 'That was him. That was Teddy. He'll be here around sunset and answer all your questions. You just wait. He's a sweetheart.'
Tomlinson and I were standing outside on the tile floor beneath ceiling fans and a blue-and-white waterproof canopy that provided shade for a half-dozen picnic tables. Behind us was the marina basin: a row of docks and sun-bleached fiberglass hulls, No Mas, moored bow-out at the last slip, twenty or more sailboats afloat in the anchorage a few hundred yards off the rock jetty.
My pretty yellow Maverick was tied in the charter slip next to the bar.
On the other side of the basin, on white coral rock, were a few palm trees and a row of trailers. Delia lived in the beige Holiday Rambler with the screened porch, the tiki torches, the shrimp net curtains and the Conch Republic sticker on the front door. She'd made it a homey place with aloe plants on the porch and candles in the windows., Mandalay was really a fish camp and bar. All the regulars had nicknames: Conch Jerry, Queenie, Little John, Donald Duck, Lucky John. Twenty or thirty people called the place home or used it as a second home. They'd work on their boats barefooted on the coral, or sit at the bar drinking beer in their Mandalite T-shirts.
Everyone there called themselves Mandalites, as if they were a separate tribe. It reminded me a little bit of Dinkin's Bay, only the architecture was Tropical Transitory, had a more Keysy feel.
Keysy is a word you hear a lot down there.
It was Sunday afternoon. Nora Chung had been very busy on the phone. Sunday or not, she'd tracked down the director of her museum and several of the museum's most powerful board members. She'd told them it was imperative that they get together on a conference call and decide whether or not they should issue a formal complaint to Ivan Bauerstock and his son, the candidate. The result was a telegram which read: We insist that you immediately cease the illegal destruction of burial sites on Cayo de Marco and we intend to hold a press conference on this matter if you refuse.
To Nora, I'd said, 'They still have telegrams?'
'Yep, and this one will stop the bastards in their tracks. If we hold a press conference, tell reporters about the big man's hobby, his son can say goodbye to the state senate. He's aware of that, which means he'll be ready to jump through hoops. You know the only thing I'm uncomfortable about? I like Ted Bauerstock. Just from the little bit I talked with him. I hate to drag him into this because of something his dad's doing.'
Nora was now upstairs in the Mandalay's two-bedroom rental apartment making more phone calls. I had a few calls to make myself. I wanted to speak with Detective Parrish, see if he'd found out anything new or if maybe he'd received a complaint from a couple of punk rockers about a big man with glasses attacking them. I also wanted to speak to the funeral rep, Caldwell.
But Sunday wasn't the day to do it. I'd actually forgotten what day it was until I walked downstairs to the outdoor tiki bar to find locals already gathering there, popping beers while a man in a dark suit preached a sermon. The Church of Hawk's Channel, the outdoor service was called, with a congregation composed of live-aboards and
