A screen door with rusty hinges guarded the entrance. I opened it and went in. In what had been the entrance hall in better days, there was a desk piled high with newspapers. A bulletin board took up space along one wall. It had newspaper clippings pinned to it, that I realized were help wanted ads from the local mullet wrapper. Nobody was in evidence, but a little round bell with a plunger on top sat on the desk. I hit the plunger, and in a minute a stooped elderly woman came out of the back, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
'Help you?' she said.
'I need a room.'
'How long?'
'I don't know. Can I get it from day to day?'
'Yeah, but you got to let me know by ten every morning if you're planning to stay another day.'
'That's fair. How much?'
'Thirty a day. Share a bathroom.'
'Okay.' I pulled two twenties from my pocket and set them on the desk.
'Got to register,' she said. 'City ordinance.' She handed me a registration card and ten wrinkled one-dollar bills in change.
I filled it out with Ben Joyce's name. 'I don't have an address,' I said, putting the pen down.
'Where did you come from?'
'Tampa.'
'Put your last address in there. That'll do.'
I made up a street address and wrote it on the card.
The old woman gave me a key. 'Up the stairs, second door on your right, room eight.'
I went to the room and called Logan to tell him where I was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Sharkstooth Bar was without atmosphere. It was a dim and dirty place where hard men came to drink themselves into oblivion. They came here early, chased by the demons that infested their lives, bringing body odor and a monumental thirst. They sat quietly, drinking their poison of choice, occasionally acknowledging each other with a joke or an observation. This was the bar from which the call to Jeff had originated the day before.
The place was small. A chipped and scarred bar of some indeterminate wood took up one side of the room. A few tables were scattered about a concrete floor. A single pool table sat across from the bar. Two men were playing a desultory game, drinking from green bottles of beer, not talking. A forlorn neon sign advertising a brand of beer I'd never heard of sputtered over the lone window, its dirty panes diffusing the light from outside. A few dim light fixtures hanging from the ceiling created a brownish glow in the room. The smell of dead fish wafted in from the nearby commercial docks.
I saw the pay phone in the corner, under a sign advertising the unisex restroom. I reached into the pocket of my cargo shorts and fingered the cell phone button that I had programmed to ring with the number on Jeff's caller ID. The pay phone rang once, and I fingered the off button. A couple of heads turned expectantly toward the phone, but returned to their drinks when it didn't ring again. Right phone, right bar.
In addition to my cargo shorts, I was wearing an old T-shirt with the faded logo of the Tampa Bay Bucs on the front. Reeboks, no socks. I sat at the bar and ordered a Miller Lite from the ancient bartender. He had a shaggy head of gray hair, bloodshot eyes, and a face so wrinkled it was hard to make out its features. He didn't say a word.
I sat quietly, nursing my beer. The customers ignored me, no one acknowledging my presence, not even the bartender. When my beer was gone, I held up the bottle and wagged it at him. He bent to the cooler and brought me another one.
'Barkeep,' I said. 'I'm looking for a woman who was here yesterday.'
'Can't help you.' he said.
I put the pictures of Peggy and Laura on the bar next to a twenty dollar bill. 'Just take a look,' I said.
He bent over the photos. His gnarled hand, quick as a snake, grabbed the twenty and transferred it to his pocket.
'Nope,' he said. 'Never saw either one of them.'
I put another twenty on the bar. 'Would you be kind enough to show the pictures to your customers?'
The gnarled hand made another quick swipe and the bill disappeared. He nodded his head and picked up the photos. I watched him walk the length of the bar, showing the pictures. Heads shook in the negative.
The bartender shuffled over to the pool table and held out the pictures to die two men. One of them, a big man about thirty years old, with blond hair, craggy face, and skin ruined by the sun looked over at me, locked eyes, and then looked away, shaking his head.
The bartender brought the pictures back to me. 'Nobody saw them. I ain't surprised.'
'Why aren't you surprised?'
'Mister, this is the kind of place where everybody takes care of his own business and don't pay no attention to anybody else's troubles. If a woman had been here, either somebody would have noticed and remembered or just not give a shit, if you know what I mean.'
'What about you?'
'What about me?'
'Do you remember or just not give a shit?' I put another twenty on the bar.
The old man stared at the bill for a moment, as if making up his mind about something important. He wanted the money, but he wasn't sure what or how much he should tell me.
Finally he said, 'Who are they?'
'They're my wife and daughter.' The lie slid easily from my mouth.
'I used to have a wife and a daughter,' he said. Something passed over his face, maybe an emotion, maybe sadness. 'They left me twenty years ago. Never heard from them again.'
'I'm sorry. That's tough.'
'The young one was here yesterday,' he said, pointing to Peggy's picture, still lying on the bar. 'She came in here late in the morning, started to make a phone call, and ran out the back door when some guys came in the front door. They went after her.'
'Did you know the men who came after her?'
'No. Never saw them before.'
'I appreciate the help.'
He took the twenty and moved to the other end of the bar.
I finished my beer, thinking about what little I had found out. Peggy had been here, and that meant she was in Key West. But, who was after her, and why? Not much to go on, but it was more than I had when I got here.
I had to assume that the men chasing her had caught her. I didn't know what that meant. Was she okay? No. Not if grown men were chasing her through a grungy bar. Maybe she'd escaped from whomever was after her, and had come to the nearest place with a phone. Tried to call her dad, but the men showed up before she could complete the connection. I'd have to try some other places in the area, see if she had been seen by anyone else.
I left money on the bar for the beer and started for the front door. One of the pool players was blocking my way. It was the big man who'd locked eyes with me before. His feet were planted firmly on the floor, spread slightly in the stance a man often assumes when he's about to knock the crap out of you. He had about four inches and fifty pounds on me. This wasn't shaping up as one of my better days.
I walked toward him, thinking he might move out of my way. He didn't. I stopped about a foot in front of him, and said, 'Excuse me.'
He looked mildly surprised. 'Who the fuck are you?' His voice was a deep rumble tinged with the accents of the Everglades, southern, but not quite.
'Just a guy looking for his family,' I said.
