A moment later a female officer came into the conference room and fingerprinted Charley, while the others watched silently. She finished, and Charley went into an adjoining bathroom to wash his hands.
“We have an earlier set of prints on Evan Keating,” Tommy said to the woman. “Bring them to me, please.”
She left, and Charley returned and sat down.
“Tell me how you got to be Charley and the other guy got to be Evan,” Tommy said.
“Evan and I traded places nearly a year ago. I knew my father would try to find me at some stage, and I didn’t want that to happen, and Evan didn’t want to hear from his father, either. We did it to confuse anybody who might be looking for us.”
Tommy seemed to run out of questions, then the woman returned with the two fingerprint cards. Tommy examined them both with a loupe. “These two sets of prints are identical,” Tommy said to Charley. “You’re Evan Keating.”
“No, I’m Charley Boggs; the card just has Evan’s name on it instead of mine. We did that when your people picked us up a couple of weeks ago.”
Tommy looked at the female officer. “Get me the prints of Charley Boggs we took from his corpse.”
She went away.
“Stone,” Tommy said, “do you have anything to say about this?”
“Not a thing,” Stone said. “This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Evan—sorry, Charley—refused to tell me anything he was going to say when we were on the way here, except that he was going to clear up the Charley Boggs homicide, and I guess he’s done that.”
The woman came back. “We didn’t take prints from the Boggs corpse,” she said. “The body was identified by two people.”
“Who?”
“The woman who lived on the houseboat next to Boggs’s.”
“And the other one?”
“That would be you.”
“Thanks, that’ll be all,” Tommy said. “Wait a minute, go pull the Florida driver’s license photos of Charley Boggs and Evan Keating.”
She left again.
“Lieutenant Sculley,” Charley said, “I think I should tell you that Evan and I strongly resembled each other, before he grew the beard. In school, most people thought we were brothers. Once, we even attended each other’s classes for a day, and nobody noticed.”
The woman came back with the two photos, and Tommy and Rawlings looked at them.
“May I see them?” Stone asked, and Tommy pushed them across the table. Stone looked at the two photos. “Damned if he isn’t right; I might be able to tell them apart if they were sitting next to each other, but not if I saw them in different places.”
Rawlings was shaking his head. “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said.
“Gentlemen,” Stone said, “it appears that no crime has been committed here, so will there be anything else?”
Tommy and Rawlings looked at each other, and Rawlings shook his head.
“I guess not,” Tommy said.
“Well, then,” Stone said, “if you’ll excuse us.” He stood up, and so did the new Charley Boggs. “Please send the completed immunity agreement to me at the Marquesa today.” Rawlings nodded. Stone half expected to be stopped, but he and Charley walked out of the building unmolested and got into Stone’s car.
“Well,” Stone said, “that was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my law practice.”
“I guess it was kind of strange,” Charley said. “Thanks for negotiating the immunity agreement. It’s a load off my mind, and it will be for Gigi, too.”
“I’m going to assume you told them the truth,” Stone said, “and if you didn’t, I don’t want to know.”
“Of course not,” Charley said, “you’re a lawyer.”
“Where to?”
“The Marquesa; I took your advice.”
Stone drove there and parked the car in the guest garage.
“Oh,” Charley said, “I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“Will you get word to Warren Keating that Evan is dead? I’d like his man to stop shooting at me.”
37
STONE WALKED BACK to his cottage and watched Charley Boggs walk to his own, directly opposite. Gigi was waiting for him on the front porch, and she stood up to kiss him, laughing when he apparently told her the news.
Dino was sitting on their porch, rocking. “What’s going on?”
Stone got out his cell phone. “I may as well tell you and Eggers at the same time,” he said, pressing the speed-dial number and the speaker button.
Eggers answered, and Stone gave him a blow-by-blow account of the meeting. Eggers was silent.
“Bill?” Stone said.
“I’m still here. At least, I think I’m still here. I’m feeling a little disoriented.”
“I know the feeling,” Stone said. “Are you in touch with Warren Keating at all?”
“I’ve spoken to his attorney a couple of times. There was a lot of shouting.”
“I think you’d better give the attorney the news, so that he can transmit it to his client. Charley Boggs wants Warren to stop trying to kill him.”
“I can understand that,” Eggers said.
“Sooner, rather than later, please.”
“I’ll call him now.”
“Thanks, Bill.”
“You coming back to New York now?”
“In a couple of days, maybe. I want to see what it’s like in Key West when I don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Bye, then.” Eggers hung up.
Stone turned to Dino. “Any questions?”
“Seems like all my questions have been answered,” Dino said.
“All that I can think of at the moment, anyway.”
Stone got a soda out of his refrigerator and sat on the porch, sipping it. “I feel kind of let down,” he said.
“Not me,” Dino said. “I feel just great.”
A young man came down the path and stopped at their porch.
“Is one of you Mr. Stone Barrington?”
“I’m Barrington,” Stone said.
“I have a letter for you from the county attorney’s offi ce,” the man said, holding out an envelope.
Stone pointed at the cottage across the way. “See that cottage?”
“Yessir.”
“Knock on the door and give the letter to Mr. Boggs; he’s expecting it.”
“Okay.” The young man did as he was told, and Charley Boggs received the letter. He opened it, read it, waved at Stone and went back inside.
