He handed Stone a card.
“If I get a moment free,” Stone said.
Tommy, Dino and Stone wandered back toward the yacht club, and as they reached the door, Stone saw Annika Swenson getting into a Mercedes convertible. She waved as she drove by.
“Not bad,” Tommy said.
“Yes,” Stone replied, “and I like the way she waved.”
9
THE THREE MEN ordered drinks and were given menus.
“Everything’s good,” Tommy said. “I especially like the beef.”
They ordered.
“Do you have a boat here, Tommy?”
“Yeah, a thirty-foot fiberglass bathtub, just big enough for my wife and me.”
“How is Rosie?” Dino asked.
“Unchanged,” Tommy replied. “Ornery as ever.”
“Tommy,” Stone said, “how are we going to find this Keating guy?”
“Well, I can’t put an APB out on him,” Tommy said. “It’s not like he’s committed a crime.”
“Did you print him while you had him?”
“We didn’t get that far. I ran his name, though, and he has no record.”
“Keating has checked out of his hotel, and the desk clerk said he thought he was living on a boat.”
“Any description of the boat?”
“No.”
“Good luck on finding it, then.”
“Yeah, we spent most of the day looking in Key West Bight,” Dino said.
“Well, that’s the most likely place for a visiting boat to be, but not the only place. They could be anchored almost anywhere, and there’s also Stock Island, of course.”
“Where’s Stock Island?” Stone asked.
“It’s the next key up,” Tommy explained. “Stock Island is sort of a suburb of Key West. It has all the stuff they can’t shoehorn onto this island—hospital, jail, trash dump, lower-cost housing and trailer parks, golf course— and a couple of marinas. It’s worth a shot; Peninsula is the big marina.”
“I think we’re wasting our time without the name of the boat,” Dino said. “It’s like looking for a visitor to New York without an address.”
“You got a point,” Tommy agreed.
“Also, Keating is shy,” Dino said. “He doesn’t
“Yeah,” Stone said, “a skip tracer found him in Miami, and he left town. He’s likelier to get shyer after his encounter with me.”
“Sounds like he’s on the lam,” Tommy said.
“From his father,” Stone replied. “Bad blood there.”
“Well,” Tommy said, “at least you know what he looks like. His girlfriend, too.”
“Not really,” Stone said. “I didn’t take a good look at her, and I’m not sure I’d recognize her on the street.”
“You can always sit down with the phone book and start calling hotels,” Tommy pointed out.
“That won’t help us if he’s living on a boat,” Stone said. “The desk clerk at his hotel said that a lot of boaters check in for a couple of nights to get a decent shower and have their laundry done.”
“We talked to Charley Boggs,” Dino said. “He denied all knowledge of Keating, said he’d never seen him until they were all busted.”
“How bad an actor is Boggs?” Stone asked.
“He’s got a couple of drug busts, but nothing ever came of them.”
“And why would a clean-cut rich boy with a trust fund be hanging out with a drug dealer?”
“Thrills, maybe,” Tommy offered. “Do you know how big a trust fund?”
“The old man described it as ‘a nice little trust fund,’ but who knows what that means.”
“Maybe our boy Evan has dreams of bigger, easier money,” Dino said. “He wouldn’t be the first rich kid to go down for dealing.”
“Trouble his,” Stone said, “we don’t know anything about this kid—who his friends are, how he earned a living in the past.”
“His old man couldn’t help with that?” Tommy asked. Stone shook his head. “Apparently, they haven’t spoken since the guy was in college, and that was some years ago.”
Tommy sighed. “Dealing with criminals is a lot easier,” he said.
“They have accomplices and parole offi cers, people you can talk to when you’re looking for them. Rich kids just have drug dealers and maitre d’s.” Tommy’s face brightened. “Wait a minute. Your boy had a table booked at Antonia’s, an Italian restaurant on Duval, the night we arrested him.”
“So?” Dino asked.
Tommy was already pushing buttons on his cell phone. “Hi, it’s Lieutenant Tommy Sculley, Key West PD. The night before last you had a reservation for an Evan Keating; did you get a phone number for him?” Tommy scribbled something in his notebook. “Thanks,” he said, then he hung up. He ripped the sheet from his notebook and handed it to Stone. “Your boy has a cell phone number, 917 area code.”
“Can your computers track cell phone numbers?” Stone asked.
“They can.”
“Do me a favor, Tommy. Ask your office to wait until late tonight and see if you can locate the phone. That might tell us where Evan Keating is laying his curly head at night.”
Tommy made the call.
10
STONE AND DINO were breakfasting on their front porch when Stone’s cell phone vibrated. He flipped it open. “Hello?”
“It’s Tommy.”
“Good morning.”
“And to you. We got an overnight hit on Evan Keating’s cell phone.”
“Hallelujah! Where’s he staying?”
“Well, you were right, he’s on a boat.”
“Which marina?”
“No marina; he’s anchored out at the reef.”
“Let me put you on speaker, so Dino can hear this.” Stone pressed the button. “Go.”
“Key West has the only coral reef left in the continental United States. Everybody goes out there to snorkel and scuba, so a lot of moorings have been put down, to keep people from tearing up the coral with anchors. That’s where we picked up Keating’s cell phone, around two A.M.”
“Great, I’ll go out there and visit him.”
“Hang on. We’re not getting his phone now, not at the reef or anywhere else.”
“Maybe he’s charging the thing. He could still be there.”
“So are a lot of other people. How are we going to know which boat?”
