The Deep Blue Alibi

Robinson smiled. 'Exactly, all of them. More than a hundred years ago, there were Robinsons in Key West with their own salvage sloops. Licensed by the federal government. A cargo ship gets torn up on the reef, the salvors would race out there. The Robinsons had the fastest sloops, so they'd beat their competitors to the reef. Once you staked your claim, you got forty percent of what you salvaged.'

'Just like contingency fee lawyers,' Victoria said.

'With even worse morals. Some salvors set false lights, actually lured ships onto the reefs.'

'The Robinsons do that sort of thing?'

He smiled and got up from his desk. 'Let me show you something, Ms. Lord.'

He put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and led her to a framed document on the wall. Handwritten in fancy script was a salvor's license signed by a federal judge and dated October 1889.

She read the stilted legal language aloud: 'Know all men by these presents that Walter J. Robinson, owner and master, is hereby licensed to employ his Sloop Satisfaction in the business of wrecking and salving along the coast of Florida.'

'My great-great-grandfather. Do you know why he named his ship Satisfaction? That was Sir Henry Morgan's warship. The one that rescued the first Robinson and led to generations of black pirates, leading straight to Walter J. Robinson. So you ask whether my great-great-granddaddy was a tough customer? Let's just say he kept up with the competition. People said he'd save bales of cotton and let stranded sailors drown. A cutthroat business, it was.'

'A cutthroat era.'

'Aren't they all?'

Victoria wished Steve were here. He would have insights into Robinson she lacked. The man seemed disarmingly open with her. She knew he was trying to create an impression. Friendly and transparent. Was it an act? One of Steve's lessons involved witnesses too eager to talk:

'If they're filling all that dead air, it's because they want to control the conversation.'

Robinson went on for a while, tracing his family history. Walter Robinson ran the town's cockfights and owned a brothel and a saloon that catered to both blacks and whites. He also built the grandest house in Key West. There it was, the oil painting on the wall. In the Queen Anne style, with a double veranda, balustraded railings, and a widow's walk, the pink house had been an extravagant showplace overlooking the ocean. There were conflicting stories of how the house was destroyed, Robinson said. His father told him it was demolished in a hurricane. But he'd later heard that his grandfather, Walter's grandson, having lost the family businesses, torched the property for the insurance. After that, it was downhill for the Robinsons. Leicester's father crewed on a shrimp boat and scraped up enough money to buy a leaky tugboat.

Leicester went off to college in New England, intending to teach history, but returned home to rescue the business when his father died.

The powerful gravitational pull of family.

Her own. Steve's. Maybe Junior Griffin feared the loss of the family fortune, and maybe Leicester Robinson was obsessed with restoring his. But even if that was true, she still had no idea who murdered Ben Stubbs. And as for Leicester Robinson, no idea if he was a poet or a pirate.

Thirty-six

MAXIMUM HERB

Steve lay in wait like an assassin. . if assassins surveilled their prey from the front seat of the ultramini Smart car.

He scanned the grassy terrain through binoculars. There was his target, in houndstooth slacks, a black polo shirt, and black leather gloves. Steve could pick him off easily with a scoped M-16. Or pop him in the head with a nine iron. Or just call him on his pager. Reginald Jones was driving a golf cart. Next to him, riding shotgun, some fat-assed business type. The fat guy looked familiar, but Steve couldn't quite place him.

Earlier that morning, while spooning papaya pulp into the blender with yogurt to make Bobby's smoothie, Steve had scanned the Herald's sports section. The Marlins had been rained out, a seventh-grade soccer coach was caught selling steroids, and there was a charity golf tournament at Doral. Athletes, semi-celebrities, and local politicos would be teeing up. Including Reginald Jones, Chief Clerk of the Circuit Court.

Before setting out for the Doral, Steve's phone rang, Willis Rask calling. The sheriff had run the name 'Conchy Conklin' through the computer.

'Full name's Chester Lee Conklin,' Rask said. 'Got the nickname because he's dumb as a conch shell. And that's his friends talking. Guy's got a record. Couple B-and-E's. Couple DUI's. On probation for an ag assault in a bar. Settled an argument with a broken beer bottle.'

'If he's on probation, you gotta know where he is,' Steve said.

'We would, except he missed his last two appointments. Probation officer went out to the trailer he was renting in Tavernier. No sign of him. Neighbors say they haven't seen him or his Harley in a month.'

Rask said he'd start the paperwork for the probation violation, see if they could find Conklin, bring him in.

Now, with the midday sun high in the sky, the air was muggy with fat, puffy clouds building over the Everglades. Steve was slick with sweat, partly from the humidity, partly from the tension. His car was tucked into a strand of sabal palms along the narrow fairway of the eighteenth hole of the Doral Gold Course. While stalking Jones, he'd cruised past other foursomes, waving as if he were the head groundskeeper in a vehicle only slightly larger than their own carts.

Jones and his partner both put their tee shots in the middle of the narrow fairway. The eighteenth hole was just a shade under four hundred yards and straight, but with an island green totally surrounded by water. Jones' second shot was a beauty, hitting twenty feet from the pin and dying there, like a quail felled by a hunter. The son- of-a-gun must have been sneaking out of the courthouse early to practice. His chunky partner plopped three shots into the drink and cursed loud enough for Steve to hear every syllable from his camouflaged position.

The two golfers climbed back in their cart and headed for the green. Steve tore out of the palms after them. The men were nearing the bridge to the green when Steve beeped the horn and overtook them.

'What the hell!' Jones jerked the golf cart to the right and skidded off the path, heading straight for the water hazard.

An image came to Steve, his beloved Caddy crashing through the guardrail and plunging nose-down to the bottom of Spanish Harbor Channel. The golf cart slid sideways in the moist grass and splashed to a stop in the shallow water.

'The fuck! The fuck!' Jones stepped out of the cart and sank up to his knees in mud. Not looking quite as dapper as he did in the framed photos in his office.

'I'm sorry, Mr. Jones,' Steve told him. 'But it's the only way I could get to see you.'

Jones waded to the shore, his shoes sucking at the mud. His passenger, the heavyset man, waddled toward Steve, brandishing a sand wedge. 'You crazy bastard. I'm gonna scramble your brains-'

'Hold on, Jack.' Jones held up a calming hand then turned to Steve. 'You're Herb Solomon's son, aren't you?'

'Guilty as charged.'

'I know you!' The heavyset man wagged the sand wedge in Steve's face. 'You're that ambulance-chasing shyster.'

'Before you call anyone a shyster, I'd like to see your scorecard,' Steve shot back.

'What are you implying?'

'If you put in for any of the prizes, I'm calling the cops.'

'Mr. Solomon,' Jones interrupted, 'say hello to Police Chief Jack McAllister.'

All things considered, Steve thought the chief clerk and the police chief were downright hospitable, as soon