“Somebody’s got to do it.”
“Might as well be us, right?”
“Is Paris a city? Is my companion a woman of almost supernatural beauty and brilliance?”
“Almost?”
She rolled over to her side, propped her head in the palm of her hand and kissed his salty lips. He placed his hand firmly on the hill of her breast and kissed her back, hard, and somehow the sun set on the little cove without either of them seeing it. Later, they walked barefoot up the beach to the little house in the indigo dusk and he wrapped her in his arms before they stepped inside.
“No fishing tomorrow, dear girl. I’ve got a mission.”
“Can I come?”
“Nope, secret.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing too dangerous. I’ll be home for supper.”
“You be careful out there, sailor.”
He awoke during the night to the sound of a brief, hard rain on the tin roof. Conch moved her cool naked hip against him and he made love to her, slowly, with great affection, in the way of old lovers. He rose at dawn the next morning. To keep Sniper quiet while he showered and shaved, he tossed a handful of Cheezbits into her cage out on the screened porch. Then he slipped into his grey Bud ’n Mary’s Marina T-shirt, a pair of faded khaki shorts, and his flip-flops, and left the house, easing the screen door shut behind him. Conch had been dead asleep, snoring lightly when he’d left the bed, and he’d broken his promise to wake her. She could use a few more hours, and so could he, he thought staring at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Damned demon rum. Aptly named stuff, he felt like hell.
He cranked up the Jeep and nosed through the thick sea grape bushes into the deeply rutted sandy drive. It was going to be a scorcher and for once he wished Conch’s old heap had a top. Pausing at the main highway, he flashed his headlights twice. Two DSS guys who were eating donuts in the black Suburban parked across from the hidden drive smiled at him. Conch’s security details loved it down here, too, most of them fishing for bone or tarpon whenever they got a few hours free. The guy behind the wheel was Gidwitz. Hawke had made sure Ron landed this plum assignment as part of his recuperation. He deserved it after all he’d done up on the mountain. The Iceman.
He turned left and headed north on U.S. 1. The famous Overseas Highway was only two lanes all the way up the chain of Keys to the Turnpike and Miami. The locals still called it the Old Road. With traffic, it took him a little over two hours to reach the Miami airport. But he was standing at the security checkpoint when Stokely, wearing an XXXL white guayabera and a broad-brimmed straw hat, appeared in the midst of a gaggle of passengers. He wasn’t hard to spot.
“Yeah, there he is,” Stoke said, striding toward him with a huge white smile. “There is the man! Come here, boy, give old Stoke a hug.” The two men embraced with great affection. Though they had spoken often on the telephone, it had been weeks since they’d seen one another. Hawke was still deeply moved by what his old friend had done for him down here in Florida, very nearly losing his life in the doing. He’d tried to express his feelings about it on the phone many times and failed miserably.
“Hey, Stoke, damn it’s good to see you,” Hawke said, grabbing his carry-on and slinging it over his shoulder. “Thanks for coming, man. I appreciate it.”
“Oh, hold up. I see. You think I came all the way down here to see you! Check out your skinny little white ass? You know I love you, brother, but, man, I got me a fine woman down here, now. Told you ’bout her.”
“Fancha, right?”
“Fancha, that’s right. Bona fide contender for the title! She’s got her a nice little place out on Key Biscayne. Oh, yeah. It’s all deluxe! Where’s your car at? Sooner I’m done with you, sooner I go see her.”
“You have any more luggage?”
“More than this? Who you think I am? You?”
“Right. Let’s go.”
“Look at you wearing them funky little flip-floppy sandals. Man, I thought you’d be in a tie at least, show some respect.”
It took them an hour in the jeep to reach the Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo. Hawke had hired a boat, a twenty-four-foot Captiva with twin Mercruiser 250s. The name, Hurry-Cane, was painted over the faded red “Key Largo” on her transom. The charter captain assured him she’d do forty knots with ease.
Hawke had stopped in Florida City on the way back down and bought them a bag of ice, cold beer, and Cuban sandwiches at the bait shop where he also gassed up.
Stoke climbed aboard the Captiva and cranked the engines. Hawke handed the food, beer and ice down to him, then a five to the kid for helping with the lines. Then he stepped down onto the boat himself and they shoved off, sliding through the shadows of the big yachts on their way out to the channel. Since Stoke knew where they were going, he did the driving.
The bay was flat calm. They rode mostly in silence, Stoke leaving him alone with his thoughts.
After a considerable time, as if reading his thoughts, Stoke said to him, “Listen, I don’t want you to go giving me all the credit for this. Ross, either. We couldn’t have gotten nowhere with finding this cat and running his ass down hadn’t been for my man Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard.”
Hawke smiled at this mention of his old friend. Congreve had taken a little farm in Tuscany for a few months and was blissfully happy there. “Yeah, Stoke. Ambrose Congreve. He’s got himself a new dog and he’s learning Italian.”
“Italian? Man can’t even speak English plain enough so most normal folks can understand him.”
“He says the same about you, Stoke,” Hawke grinned.
“You got to love him,” Stoke laughed, and the two men lapsed once more into silence.
“Okay, this is it,” Stoke said, easing the throttles after about another half an hour of running wide open across the mirrored bay. The boat came off plane and settled. They’d sped across Card Sound and up into lower Biscayne Bay. The sun was hot and Alex had taken off his sweat-drenched shirt. They’d passed an endless series of small mangrove cays to starboard, all of them looking exactly alike to him.
“Does it have a name?” he asked, staring at the small island.
“Yeah. Call it No Name Key. Really, that’s the name.”
Alex moved aft to stand beside Stoke at the console.
“Right here?” he said, trying to see it all in his head.
“Yeah. Right in here. He went in there first, in the Cigarette, and me and Ross followed him.”
“Let’s go.”
On both sides of the water here, the bushes and shrubs were still blackened and twisted. The muddy banks were charcoal grey. Stoke stopped the boat. This had to be where the ammo explosion had blown Ross out of the water. Stoke looked at him. “You sure you still want to go ashore? Skeets eat you alive back in there.”
“Yeah. C’mon, let’s go.”
“Awright, but like I say, it ain’t much to see.”
They found the little clearing.
“See that big tree over there? That’s the one I told you about. Called a Gumbo Limbo. That’s where he was waiting, up at the top there.”
Alex started forward, but Stoke put a hand on his arm. “Let’s go round behind it. You got to watch out. That’s all quicksand all around here.”
They approached the peeling reddish tree from behind. Hawke could see the whole thing now. Stoke up to his waist in the quicksand near the base of the tree, two bullets in him, thinking he was going to die all alone. Believing Ross was dead. His friend Hawke half a world away. And the man who’d murdered Vicky sitting right here, on the spot where Hawke was standing now, waiting for it to happen. Enjoying it—watching his friend here suffer and—
“Hey. You want me to wait in the boat, boss?” Stoke said, studying him carefully.
“If you don’t mind, Stoke. Thanks. I’ll only be a minute.”
