cell phone. He'd be okay, I thought, if he didn't get careless.
When you travel by airplane, you have to show identification. Not when you go by bus. I also thought that if anyone saw me arrive at Key West Airport, I would have company sooner than I wanted.
The bus was another matter. I didn't need an ID to board one, and if anybody was looking for me, they wouldn't expect a preppy lawyer to travel by Greyhound.
I had a. 38-caliber snub-nosed pistol in my backpack. I'd checked it through in Tampa so as not to upset the security people and get myself arrested. Bus drivers didn't make you go through a metal detector before you boarded. I'd have the gun with me.
I had a Florida State ID card identifying me as Ben Joyce, a friend who lived on Anna Maria Island. He'd lost his driver's license as the result of a DUI conviction, and had gotten the card for identification. He'd gotten his license back after a year, and he didn't need the ID card anymore.
Ben and I didn't look that much alike, but we had the same coloring and hairline. It was good enough to fool anybody who didn't look too closely. I also had a credit card in Ben's name. I'd promised I would repay him for any charges.
I bought the bus ticket with the credit card. If anyone was curious, or anything showed up on somebody's computer, it would show that Ben had bought a one-way ticket to Key West, and paid for it with his credit card. That would dovetail with any use I had to make of the card while in the Keys. I was probably being too cautious, but, as the old saying goes, even paranoiacs have enemies.
I kept the credit card, ID, and two thousand dollars in twenties and hundreds in a money belt under my shirt. I'd get by on cash in Key West, but I had the credit card if I got into a pinch. My backpack also held toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes.
My bus was called, and I grabbed a seat toward the rear. There were only a few other passengers, and we started the five-hour trek south. We picked up several people at Homestead, mostly Hispanics who daily commuted to work in the Keys. At Florida City, the last stop on the mainland, more passengers crowded onto the bus. There were not enough seats and some stood in the aisle.
The Keys had become the playground of the wealthy. The people who cleaned the hotels and mansions and worked on the roads could no longer afford to live there. They'd found affordable housing in Florida City and Homestead, and would make the daily trip by Greyhound to their jobs in the Keys. Now, even those mainland towns were in danger of being overrun by the middle class who had been displaced from the Keys. Soon, there would be no place for the workers to live. There were no solutions in the works. One day the rich people would wake up and figure out that they either had to do the work themselves or move back to wherever they came from. Most would leave, and maybe the Keys would get back to what they used to be; funky islands peopled by oddballs who appreciated the paradise they'd been bequeathed.
U.S. 1 is known as the Overseas Highway as it makes its way from island to island. It was built over the bed of the railroad that was washed away in the great hurricane of 1935. Some of the ancient bridges still supported the road, but much of it was now bottomed on new structures spanning the water between the keys.
I watched the ever-changing colors in the seas surrounding us. It went from turquoise over sand bottoms to brown coral heads to blue in the deeper holes. It was magnificent, but like much of the world's greatest scenery, it finally becomes boring. Perhaps we can only drink in so much beauty before it all pales into mediocrity. The human condition. Even great beauty finally bores us.
A few of the domestic workers got off at each stop, and by the time we arrived in Marathon, about halfway to Key West, the bus was virtually empty. We took a rest break, and I went inside the tiny terminal to use the bathroom. When I came out, there was a large group of senior citizens milling about in the parking lot, waiting to board the bus.
I retook my seat, and the driver told the new passengers to board. A wizened old gentleman sat next to me, stuck out his hand, and said, 'I'm Austin Dwyer.'
I took his hand. 'Ben Joyce,' I said.
'Headed for Key West?'
'Yes.'
'Vacation?'
'Looking for work.'
'I'm on vacation,' said Dwyer. 'A whole bunch of us from Connecticut are seeing Florida. Our tour bus broke down, and they put us on this one to Key West. We'll have another bus waiting for us down there.'
'Hope it works out,' I said, thinking that I had to end this conversation.
'Where're you staying down there?
'Don't know. I'll get a room somewhere.'
'What kind of work do you do?'
'I work the fishing boats.'
'Well, good luck,' he said and turned to talk to the lady sitting across the aisle from him.
I lay my head on a pillow against the window and pretended to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Key West is a big coral rock that hosts a small city. The place is a state of mind as much as a geographical location, and it's undergoing drastic change. The old stores along Duval Street have given way to T-shirt shops that are now being replaced by major chain stores usually found in shopping malls. The town is schizoid, the residents resenting the tourists, but unable to survive without them. Stasis is never attained, balance never found. Change is constant, turmoil a part of daily life.
Cruise ships dock daily, disgorging midwestern tourists in guyabara shirts and Bermuda shorts. They fill the bars, especially the ones made famous by Ernest Hemingway, and leave before dark to take their ship to the next island destination. Then the locals and the tourists who fill the hotels and bed and breakfast establishments come out to take their places at the bars. Key West never sleeps.
It's a small island, about a mile wide and four miles or so long. It covers a little over eight thousand acres and houses twenty-five thousand locals, who like to call themselves Conchs.
Its history is full of robber barons, pirates, thieves, wreckers, sailors, and whores. Bad people doing bad things made fortunes in every decade. In the eighties it was the drug runners based here at the end of the country, and many of the bad guys who were lured here stayed.
The Greyhound station in Key West is on the south side of the island near the airport, about as far away from the downtown section as you can get. It was going to be a long hike. I couldn't afford to be seen in a cab. A guy looking for work on the fishing boats wouldn't have the cab fare.
The elderly crowd exited the bus and began to fill up vans with the Hyatt Hotel logo on the doors. I'd started my walk toward town when one of the vans pulled up beside me. Austin Dwyer stuck his head out of the window and said, 'Ben, you going downtown?'
I nodded my head.
'Get in. We're going to the Hyatt.'
It beat walking. I got in. The conversation was mostly about what they were going to do over the next few days in Key West. When we pulled into the Hyatt, I thanked the driver and Austin, hiked my backpack onto my shoulders and started up Duval Street.
I went several blocks and turned onto a side street near the Garrison Bight. I entered a neighborhood that hadn't yet seen urban renewal. The houses were old and dilapidated, and they wouldn't last long. The guys with the money would tear them down and build monuments to themselves and their successes. They'd spend a few weeks each winter in their new acquisitions and have the maids take care of it the rest of the year.
I found the house I was looking for. One of Cracker's fisherman friends from Cortez told him about this rooming house where nobody got too nosey. It was bigger than the others in the block, but just as unprepossessing. It had once been painted white, but most of that had peeled off, leaving bare clapboard. There was a large porch running along the front of the house, with a few rocking chairs placed haphazardly. They were all empty.
