big grin.
“Back,” said Dave. “I’m thinking of selling out. Or maybe I’ll hire Dawn full-time and semi-retire. I’m beginning to think I don’t like many grown-up people. You are an exception. Don’t ask me why. Can I ask a question?”
“Sure,” I said, taking a slow drink of beer.
“Who was the litterer across the street?”
“My guardian angel,” I said.
“Angels come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors these days,” he said. “Some can fit on the head of a pin. Others can tuck the universe in their ears, though why they would want to do it I don’t know. Old Testament is filled with angels, warrior angels.”
“I’ve got to find a guy,” I said.
“We talking about a bad guy?”
“Very bad. Name’s John Pirannes. Ever hear of him?”
“I have,” said Dave.
“Know where he might be found or know anybody who knows where he might be found?”
“I understand he has a place at the Beach Tides on Longboat.”
“I have it on good authority that he has vacated the premises, at least for now.”
A thin black guy in a threadbare sports jacket sat down next to me. He nodded in greeting. His name, the only one I knew, was Snickers. Snickers had a sweet tooth and connections. Snickers was reasonably adept at breaking and entering.
“He has a boat docked at the Sunnyside Condos across Gulf of Mexico Drive and almost at the north tip of the Key,” said Dave. “I’ve seen him there. Big boat, can’t miss it. Sleeps who knows how many. Called the Fair Maiden.”
“Keep it to yourself,” I said.
“Lewis, it’s no big secret except from the cops,” he said. “Oh, I read that John Marshall article. I think I’ll pick up a biography of Marshall. I’ve got to go now. Customers.”
“Thanks, Dave.”
“Captain Pirannes is a good man to avoid,” he said. “Take care.”
He hung up and so did I.
“Snickers,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. Hell, not so fine. You want to buy me a beer or three?”
“Sure.”
Snickers was bobbing up and down to some inner music. He looked up at the television screen.
“Sosa’s the man,” he said.
I motioned to Ed to set up a beer for Snickers, who, considering the candy he consumed, must have been blessed with perfect genes. His teeth were even and white.
“He’s the man,” I said.
“Hey, that’s right. You’re from Chicago. So, what’s been going with you?”
“Well,” I said, getting halfway through my beer, “a tow-truck driver beat me up, a client was murdered in my office, I rescued a kid who had been sold to a pimp by her father, and I discovered a dead guy with a bullet in his head in an apartment on Longboat.”
Ed placed the beer in front of Snickers, who looked at me to see why I thought this was funny. But I was paying, so he smiled and shook his head.
“You know a pimp named Tilly?” I asked.
Snickers put down his beer and nodded knowingly.
After talking to Snickers and watching McGwire pop another home run, I dropped a five on the bar and left. Hell, it was going on Carl Sebastian’s bill.
I considered flipping a coin or playing a game to determine which of the two not-very-bright moves I was going to make. I didn’t consider taking Ames with me. Ames looked a little like Jefferson on Rushmore, but there was a determination behind that face of stone that shouldn’t be there in a man who had access to guns and had killed another man.
No, I was on my own. It was either that or forget the whole thing and go to the police. Detective Etienne Vivaise, otherwise known as Ed, seemed not the greater of two evils but the one unlikely to get me anywhere except in trouble.
If the next five plates I saw were from Florida, I would head for Longboat and the Fair Maiden. If I spotted an out-of-state, I’d go to the address I had for Dwight Handford.
Ann Horowitz asked me every other session or so if I was having feelings of self-destruction. I always told her I wasn’t and she answered,
“Not consciously.”
At the moment, I wanted to face Pirannes and Handford for what they had done to Adele and probably to Beryl. I wanted to know why creatures like this walked the earth. I wanted to argue with God and say, “I don’t know why you do what you do, but you’ll get no praise from me till you accept the guilt you should feel for what you’ve done.”
I was finally feeling angry about something. I was feeling grimly determined about a whole lot of somethings.
I counted license plates and found out where I was going-at least where I was going right now.
11
Sunnyside Condominiums was on Gulf of Mexico Drive on the bay side of the key about five minutes north of the Beach Tides Resort, where Ames and I had rescued Adele and left a corpse.
There was no gate and there were no guards. The Sunnyside apartments were protected only, by a tall, tight hedge of flowering bushes. The parking lot was crushed shell and just a few steps to the right past the bushes. There were about a dozen cars parked on the lot. There was room for two dozen more.
From Gulf of Mexico Drive, it was impossible to tell how big the Sunnyside was. Once I was inside and walking along the narrow concrete path that curled around the two-story buildings and past a trio of tennis courts, I realized that there were at least a dozen buildings.
I had no trouble finding the docked boats. I just veered toward the bay. I had no trouble finding the Fair Maiden. I just looked for the largest boat. I know nothing of boats. They were a passion of Dave’s. He turned boats into vessels of philosophical speculation as he mixed Blizzards and served burgers and fries. He told tales of the open sea that he felt brought him near a sense of a supreme power.
When I was on a boat, I thought only of how soon the voyage, even an hour into Lake Michigan or on the bay, would be over. I longed for the land. I couldn’t live on a key. The possibility of being trapped on an island when a hurricane went wild filled me with dread. That didn’t, however, stop me from admiring the isolation that a boat promised.
I thought of this as I moved out on the narrow wooden dock toward the Fair Maiden. It was a deep thought. The thought on the surface was images, images of the frightened runaway, images of Beryl Tree. There was right and wrong, and sometimes they were clear.
I stopped at the end of the dock and looked at the clean broad deck in front of me. There was a tower with a steering wheel on my left. The tower was surrounded by glass or see-through plastic and a blue metal roof. There was also a closed door at the base of the tower on the deck. I guessed the length of the power boat at about fifty feet. My second guess was that it could probably take John Pirannes very far away very quickly.
There was a table on the deck with two places set for lunch. A bottle of wine chilled in a silver cooler on the white-clothed table. Another bottle of Perrier water sat ready next to two thin-stemmed glasses.
I stood, waited. Someone was below the deck. I could hear voices.
I closed my eyes. A breeze.
