AFTER AGREEING that neither one of us could physically set foot on another airplane until morning, Charlie and I decided on dinner instead.
“I’ll behave, too. I’ll drink only light rum,” Charlie said as our taxi let us out on crowded Duval Street.
We sat in a booth at Jack Flats. The place had an awesome, long, beat-up wooden bar and old black-and- white photographs of cigar factory workers who had populated the island in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Outside the open stall-like doors, Duval was the same as ever. Think a drunken Greenwich Village block party in New York, with flip-flops. Only it was even crazier now that the Independence Celebration was in full swing.
I stared, amazed, at the Yanks-Rays game playing above the crowded bar beside a neon Dolphins helmet. I’d been so busy in the last few crazy days, I’d almost forgotten that there was a sport called baseball. I needed to call Emma as well. I decided I’d text her once I got back to my hotel.
“Don’t tell me. You’re a Yankees fan, too,” Charlie said as I clapped at a Posada double. “Could you try just a tiny bit more not to make me hate you even more?”
“Not a chance,” I said before finishing my beer and standing. “Watch my seat, and I counted my wings, by the way, Harvard boy.”
The first thing I noticed as I headed back to our table a few minutes later was that there was a police car at the curb in front of the open doors. The second was that there was somebody in my seat.
When I realized
Chapter 85
I STOOD THERE. The people at the bar and the multiple ball games on the TVs above them suddenly seemed out of rhythm, somehow both too slow and too fast. The sound from the bar’s speakers, which had been playing the classic rock song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” alternately blasted and dipped, as if a child were playing with the volume knob. The cigar factory workers now sent me malignant stares from the vintage photographs. So did a stocky waitress, jostling past me, as I stood in the middle of the crowded room, my lungs and heart seizing.
Peter sat in the booth with Charlie less than ten feet away on my right. He was wearing his dark blue police uniform, his thick, chiseled arms as deeply tanned as I remembered them. It was as if he hadn’t aged at all.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the butt of his gun on his Sam Browne belt. In a moment, he would turn and see me, I thought. In a moment, he would stand and draw and fire his gun into my face. People or no people, the fact that almost two decades had passed meant nothing. Killing was what Peter did.
I was suddenly extremely aware of my heartbeat. I could feel the systole and diastole of my heart clenching and releasing as I waited for Peter to catch me out of the corner of his eye.
But after one second and then two, miraculously he didn’t turn. After a third moment, my paralysis lessened, and I was suddenly able to move. I mustered up the last iota of my will to live. I backpedaled, turned, and squeezed into a place along the crowded bar.
“So you’re still trying to pull some tricks up in Boca,” Peter said to Charlie at my back, as I eavesdropped. “I mean, you seem like a decent lush, Baylor. Why represent a piece of garbage like Harris? Controversial client like that is bound to stir up people’s emotions. I’d hate to see you become a victim of a violent crime.”
“Is that a threat?” Charlie said.
“Just some friendly advice,” Peter said. “Your own personal public service announcement from Key West’s chief of police.”
“Don’t you have any drunks to beat up?” Charlie said.
“Fresh out,” Peter said. “But if you’re free, we could head outside.”
“Be happy to,” Charlie said. “You keep the badge, I get the gun.”
“You’re real funny, Counselor, but what’s not funny is that you’re trying to protect the man who killed my wife from his just reward.”
I swallowed. Peter was referring to me, I realized.
“It doesn’t matter,” Peter said. “No matter what you do, Friday night, your precious client is walking into that chamber, and they’re going to carry him out in a bag.”
“We’ll see about that, won’t we?” Charlie said calmly.
“Yes, we certainly will,” Peter said.
I heard Peter stand. Would he come to the bar and order a drink? Was he behind me? Before I could muster up the courage to turn around, I felt a hand at my back.
“There you are,” Charlie said.
I couldn’t have been more relieved.
“Who was that cop?” I managed to spit out.
“Chief of Police Peter Fournier. Must have heard it through the grapevine that we were looking at Tara Foster’s file.”
I blinked down at the floor, trying to absorb that.
“Some people say he’s dirty, but whenever any complaints arise, he always ends up smelling like a rose. You have to see him, with his perfect Barbie doll wife and two perfect little Stepford kids, like he’s Mr. All-American Dad. Then he comes in here just now with that high-wattage Tom Cruise smile of his and threatens me. Sick puppy.”
Peter had a wife and kids now?! I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I’d be sure to go over it when my heart started beating again.
“You want another beer?” Charlie said.
“Yes,” I said. “And a shot of whiskey.”
“There you go, Nina. Get into that Key West vibe. I didn’t know you had it in you,” Charlie said with a wink. “But then I call us a taxi. We need to rest up for tomorrow. We have only another three days. I have a feeling this one is going to be a race to the finish line, don’t you?”
Chapter 86
I IMMEDIATELY HIT THE SHOWER when I got back to my hotel room. With my hands flat against the glass tile wall, I stood directly under the spray in the suite’s spa-like bathroom for almost an hour, my eyes closed as the hot needles pinged off my face and skin.
I was hoping the heat and the rush of the water might clear my mind, deliver some much-needed calm, but as the minutes passed, I knew it was fruitless.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how dangerously close I’d come to Peter, but after a while, I realized there actually were some positives. One, Peter was back in Key West, away from Emma. Two, if Peter didn’t ask Charlie about me that meant Peter didn’t seem to know that I wasn’t in New York. And three, he didn’t know that I was helping Charlie.
But I had to keep things that way. Going out for dinner and drinks on Duval Street was about as reckless a move as I could have made. All Peter had to do was turn, give the slightest of glances over his shoulder, and he would have seen me again.
Freeing Justin was my priority, but I had to be smarter. I also needed to wrap this up as soon as possible. Every moment I stayed down here, I was playing with my life.
Finally, reluctantly, I squeaked off the faucet and squeezed out my hair. After I dried and wrapped myself in
