Blackwater Sound (21 page)

“You think I could have some water?” Lawton said. “All this talking, I've worked up a thirst. And some ice if you've got it.” He looked down at his hands. They were swollen and turning purple. He flexed his jaw. It was starting to ache, too. He looked back up at them, these people he couldn't quite place. His hosts. “A squeeze of lime would be nice, too. But don't go to any trouble.”

Alex ordered a bottle of Kalik and Thorn told Julius, the bartender, to make it two. When she turned her head away, Julius gave her a quick inspection and shot Thorn an approving wink. Thorn shrugged. Yeah, she was better than he deserved, but sometimes a guy got lucky.

“Lawton showed up around sunset,” Thorn said.

She swung around and gave him her complete attention.

“He's here? You're sure?”

“Still wearing the same blue T-shirt and yellow shorts. I asked around, you know, very quietly, and found a couple of people who'd seen him. A maid and a yard guy. Dressed like that, he stood out around a place like this.”

“He's on that boat. The Braswells have him.”

“Probably, but we don't know that for sure.”

“The kid, Johnny Braswell, I followed him here from Treasure Cay. He was there to search Arnold Peretti's boat. There's something on it they wanted. Dad came here to confront the Braswells. That's how they must have known where the boat was. He told them.”

“And what do they want?”

“You know what, Thorn. Arnold had the HERF at Neon Leon's. He was about to show it to Charlie Harrison, with the
Miami Weekly
. He was going to expose the Braswells, but something happened. They had to make a run for it. But someone was hiding aboard Arnold's boat with a knife. The same guy I confronted tonight. This man cut off Arnold's finger and he stabbed Dad in the back. Dad and Arnold tried to fight him off. Dad apparently was at the wheel. Arnold got thrown overboard, the other guy, too. Dad wound up with the HERF. And the Braswells know that and they have him on board their boat.”

“Maybe,” Thorn said. “Or maybe he's curled up in the shrubs, catching a nap.”

She slid off the stool, started away, but Thorn grabbed her shoulder and she halted.

“What're you going to do, throw a choke hold on Maurice, storm the ship?”

She swung around, snapped her right arm up, and broke his grip with a stunning whack.

Thorn rocked backwards, almost went off his stool. His right hand numb. Several drinkers at the bar turned to watch.

“Jesus,” he said. “What the hell was that?”

“Don't put your hands on me again.”

He showed her his palms.

“Was that karate?”

“Rudimentary,” she said. “First lesson, first night.”

“I assume you went to more than one class.”

“Thorn,” she said. “I could break every bone in your wrist. Then work my way up your arm.”

“Pleasant thought.”

“A thought you should consider before you try strong-arming me again.”

“Well, I'll know who to call when I need a bone broken.”

“You're not funny, Thorn. Whoever gave you that impression misinformed you.”

“Hey, look,” he said. “We want the same thing. It's a question of strategy. You go running down the dock right now, sure, it's how you feel, you're going to do whatever's necessary to get your dad back, but the impulse is wrong. Think about it. If he
is
onboard and those people get wind somebody's onto them, they'll throw off their lines, be gone in a minute. Where'll we be then?”

“There is no we,” she said.

“Jesus, go ahead, then. Be a goddamn idiot, get it out of your system. But if you go rushing down there right now, believe me, you're not ever going to see that old man alive again.”

The veins rose in her throat.

“You're a prick, you know that?”

“You're not the first to notice.”

Julius was back with the beers. He set them on the counter, polished it with his rag, gave Thorn a commiserating smile. This one was a handful.

“Take a second, Alex. Cool off, think about it.”

Another vein had surfaced in her temple.

“All right, goddamn it,” she said. “I'll give it a second. I'll think about it.”

She took her stool again and Julius raised his eyebrows. Just confirmed the bartender wisdom he'd volunteered earlier in the evening. You never knew what a woman was going to do. They were complicated biological creatures, driven by more mysterious forces than men. So you made allowances.

Alex had a sip of her beer, then another.

Thorn looked at her left arm, the dusting of black hair against that white flesh. He looked at her knobby wrist bone, at the web of veins
crossing the back of her hand. She didn't wear nail polish. Her fingers were long and slender. Long enough to palm a soccer ball. Remarkably large. A feature he'd always liked in women. Don't ask him why, probably some terrible repressed disorder, a hand fixation.

Alexandra set the beer down and picked it back up immediately and had another sip. He liked that, too. That was a good way to drink beer. One sip and then another one right after. He was warming to her. Warming to her moves, to her arms and hands. Maybe if her hostility quotient dropped into the single digits, he could warm to the rest of her.

“I could call Romano, try to finagle a warrant,” Alex said. “But that could take days, all the bureaucracy.”

“I'm working on something,” Thorn said. “A plan I hatched tonight.”

She swung around, studied him a moment.

“What the hell are you anyway? Some kind of amateur vigilante?”

Thorn looked her in her eyes. They were powder blue, edged with a darker shade, and all that blueness stood out vividly against the white skin and black eyebrows. There was nothing to read into any of that. People exercised no volition in the choice of their eye color or the shade of their skin. It revealed nothing about who they were, what values they held, their tendency toward altruism or greed. The best you could say about such a combination of shade and tone was that it was pleasant to look at. In this case, exceedingly pleasant. Beyond that, Thorn was still reserving judgment.

“You drop everything and come over to the islands, hatching plans. I'm asking you a question, Thorn. What are you?”

“I'm an interested party.”

“You have one brief encounter with my dad and you drop everything and come running to his aid.”

“Yeah, I know, it seems a little reckless. But your dad is a compelling fellow. And then there's the airplane crash. I was out there when it came down. I was the first person on the scene. I pulled some
people out of the water and took them over to a little beach and then went back and got some others. If you're asking why I'm here, it's because of those people who died in that crash. And because of your dad. Is that enough for you?”

She moved her eyes over his face.

“That was you on the news? The man in the skiff?”

He looked back at her and said nothing.

“You know, I looked you up, Thorn. I brought you up on the computer.”

He smiled, dropped his eyes to his beer.

“I'm flattered.”

“We have pretty fair resources, the police department. But you seem to have done a good job staying off the radar.”

“I'm a retiring kind of guy.”

“Bullshit. Just because you haven't got a driver's license or a social security card or ever paid income tax, that doesn't make you retiring.”

“Well, I try,” he said. “But things happen.”

“Looks like a lot of things happen to you. Last few years you and your buddy Sugarman have been front-row-center at the scene of the crime quite a few times. Like you specialize in these things.”

“We're usually on the right side.”

“Point is, you're not a retiring guy at all. This is a way of life for you.”

“I keep getting dragged into things. People show up, they need help.”

“Like my father.”

“Like him, yeah.”

“You don't go looking for this stuff? Stick your nose in things. Like some kind of hobby.”

“Look, I tie my bonefish flies. I fish for my supper. I try to watch the sun set every night it's not raining. I read library books before I fall asleep. It's a simple life. I'm not looking for trouble.”

“I don't know what to make of you, Thorn.”

“You're not alone.”

She was definitely a hard-ass. But he was starting to get glimpses of another side, not soft exactly, but sensitive, aware, thoughtful. Something a little less brittle than what her voice suggested.

“You grab my arm, keep me from running off and acting impulsively, but from what I can tell, that's just what you've done on several occasions. You've acted impulsive as hell. Gotten yourself into some ugly situations.”

“I'm trying to do better. Learn from my mistakes.”

They each had a sip of beer. He watched a couple across the bar who were wearing matching flowered shirts and were necking openly. Both were blond and both were burned a bright crimson. Newlyweds, probably. The moon was full. It was having its effect on them, just as it was stimulating the fish that lived fathoms below the surface of the sea. Making everyone a little edgy.

On the stool next to the honeymooners, Jelly Boissont's son, Farley, was chatting with a tanned man in a baseball cap. There was a blue marlin on the breast of his shirt and under it was stitched the name of his boat. Another couple of guys were leaning over Farley's broad shoulders to listen in. Blue marlins were embroidered on their caps. Farley must've felt Thorn's gaze, because he looked up, glanced across the bar, nodded ever so slightly and got back to work. Spreading the word. Dropping little specks of meat and blood and gristle into the water. Chumming it up.

“I don't trust you, Thorn.”

He nodded. “That's understandable. You barely know me.”

She touched the lip of her beer bottle with a fingertip. Her long, slender fingers. Her wrists, that sprinkle of black hair.

“I'm trying to find something about you to like.”

He looked at her eyes again.

“Some people find my boyish grin appealing,” he said. “And of course, there's my snappy repartee.”

She pressed her lips together as if stifling a smile. Then she lifted
her beer, had a long pull, set it down, and pushed the empty bottle forward onto the bar. Julius was there in a second with another.

“Well, if you discover anything appealing,” Thorn said, “let me know. I could use a boost.”

A tiny smile made its way to her lips. Not much, but enough to turn the tingle he'd been feeling into a full-blown quiver.

“Let's hear this plan,” she said. “I'm not saying I'm going along with anything, but I'm prepared to listen. That's all.”

“You see that guy across the bar, one in the pink hibiscus shirt? Muscles everywhere? Don't worry about staring, everybody does.”

Alex tipped to her right and peered through the crowd.

“Dreadlocks? Sad eyes?”

“That's the one.”

“So?”

But before he could tell her about Farley Boissont and their scheme, two Bahamian police officers appeared across the bar. They were scanning the faces of the drinkers, moving down the bar methodically. Behind them, by the lighted swimming pool, four more officers worked their way around the deck, asking questions, taking careful looks at each of the guests.

Alexandra slid off her stool.

Thorn glanced at her, then looked back at the cops circling the bar, coming closer. The bar patrons pulling out their wallets, showing IDs.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit, shit.”

“Is there something I should know?”

Her eyes were skimming the grounds, looking for a way out.

“Where are you staying?” she said.

“On my boat.”

“Room for me?”

“Two bunks, yeah. It's no yacht, but it's comfortable.”

“Don't get any ideas, Thorn.”

He showed her his palms again.

“I like the bones in my wrist just like they are.”

“Let's go,” she said. “But keep it casual.”

He got down off the stool and they eased through the crowd, moving nonchalantly, taking the long way back to his boat, walking shoulder-to-shoulder through the shadows and across the well-tended lawn.

Sugarman found a parking spot on Ocean Drive just south of Fifth and walked the two blocks to the Palm Air Towers. The condo had no tower and only one scrawny palm, but there
was
a little air coming in off the Atlantic. The building was a pale pink three-story with blue and green neon swirls around the name and a couple of other halfhearted Art Deco flourishes. Not the kind of place Sugar would've pictured. A guy who spent his life as a Miami Beach bookie should've had a penthouse in one of the thirty-story monstrosities up near Fortieth. A place he could walk across the street to the Bal Harbor shops and buy a fifty-thousand-dollar tie pin.

Saturday night, getting close to midnight, and the South Beach cruisers were out in force, a solid line of stalled traffic from Penrod's to the north end of the strip, a lot of woofers and tweeters shaking the air, muscle cars and rental convertibles and some hundred-
thousand-dollar jobs, midlife-crisis mobiles from the Gables and the Grove, stockbrokers and realtors showing off their new hair transplants and anorexic wives.

It was a two-birds-with-one-stone trip to Miami. Sugarman had to make the trip anyway for a case he was working. His only job at the moment, if you could call it a job, was tracking down a deadbeat father whose ex-wife and four kids lived a couple of doors down from Sugarman in Key Largo. The ex-wife worked three jobs and the two oldest kids worked as well, but it wasn't enough to pay the bills for the youngest, who had cerebral palsy and needed a full-time nurse. The father was an optometrist. For years he'd examined Sugarman's eyes. Nice enough guy, Chamber of Commerce, Rotary, upstanding. But when he divorced his wife and moved up to Miami with his Cuban sweetheart, all communication ceased. His ex-wife knew he was up there, but didn't know exactly where or how to force him to pay the court-ordered child support. For a few weeks Sugarman tried the regular channels. But nobody in child welfare had enough time to drive out and serve the guy papers. So Sugar went up to Miami and located the eye doctor's garden apartment on a lake near the community college. Just after suppertime, his Hispanic girlfriend answered the door in a see-through nightie with fluff around the collar. At Sugarman's ankles a little white dog flew into a frenzy, yipping and snapping at the air. The eye doctor came out of the bedroom, stumbling, all smiles, until he got close enough to see who it was. Then his eyes went cold. He was reeking of booze and marijuana. Across the room a giant aquarium covered the wall. It was swarming with a colorful array of exotics. Sugarman stood for a moment staring at the collection. There were enough high-priced creatures in that giant tank to pay for a full-time nurse for a couple of years.

Sugar slid past the girlfriend, put a hand on the eye doctor's chest, and backed him into a corner, knocked over a table lamp doing it, while his girlfriend pounded on Sugar's back every step. He got into the doctor's face and told him what he was going to do. Nothing
tonight. But next time, he was bringing a baseball bat and sharp stick and one of them was going into the doctor's eye and the other was going up his rear. Unless, of course, the doctor did the right thing and started sending the checks. The guy was all bark at first, threatening, going to call the police. Go ahead, call them, Sugar told him, getting his voice very low. Then he moved a little closer to the doctor, and lifted his hand and ran his pointing finger lightly over the eye doctor's cheeks, then drew a line across his throat. The doctor became very compliant. Eyes getting soft and wet. The girl stopped hitting Sugarman and even the dog shut up. It was amazing what a discreet little threat could do. Sugarman had seen it in a movie somewhere. Some Mafia thing cooked up by a Hollywood nitwit. But it worked. The fingertip across the throat. Man, he'd have to keep that in the repertoire.

Sugarman probably wasn't going to get paid for the eye doctor case, which was fine, and he sure as hell wasn't getting paid for this one. Just doing it to help out his buddy. Thorn off on another pilgrimage. So it fell to Sugar to work the trenches, the boring stuff he was so good at. It worried him sometimes. Thorn, the action hero. Sugarman, the plodder. Not exactly the role he would've chosen. Though the fact was, he got into police work in the first place not to rev his heart, but to make a difference in the world. Help his fellow man. Dumb but true. Which, come to think of it, was a pretty good motto for Sugarman, an all-purpose rough-and-ready description of his character, the trajectory of his life. Dumb but true.

The manager of the Palm Air Towers was a twenty-something guy with purple hair the texture of straw. There were enough baubles hanging from the kid's right ear to start his own pawn shop. On his flat chest somebody had tattooed a butterfly that looked like it was only half finished. For good measure his right nipple was lanced by half a dozen silver studs. The guy wore black running shorts and quilted silver booties. Cold feet on an eighty-five-degree tropical night—some kind of health warning there.

Across the room the TV was tuned to a professional wrestling match, and when the kid came to the apartment door to speak to Sugarman, his eyes never left the action.

“Peretti died. He drowned or something. It was in the paper.”

“I know that,” Sugarman said. “I just wanted to see if he had any friends around here, people I might be able to ask a few questions.”

“Friends?”

It sounded like an alien concept to the kid.

The boy fingered one of his nipple studs while he stared at the TV. A blond muscleman bounced around the ring ranting at the audience and pounding on his chest like a chimp.

Sugarman considered trying the finger-across-the-throat thing to get the kid's attention, but he doubted it would achieve the right reaction. One good threat and this boy looked like he might swoon right into Sugarman's arms.

“Did Peretti hang out with anyone around here? You got any names?”

“Not around here, no.”

The blond wrestler was flanked by six bikini girls. Rough-looking ladies, the kind who grind up biker chicks and sprinkle them on their breakfast cereal.

“Hey, kid. You think you could give this your undivided for about ten seconds,” Sugar said. “It might be important.”

A big, dark-haired man climbed into the ring and snuck up behind the blond guy and whacked him over the head with a folding chair. The apartment manager chuckled.

“His daughter lives in Palm Beach. Some rich bitch.”

“Peretti's daughter?”

“That's who we were talking about, right? Arnold Peretti, the dead guy.”

“That's right.”

“She came and took away all his stuff.”

“You have her address?”

The boy chuckled again as more men wielding folding chairs piled into the ring.

Sugarman reached out and put a finger on the boy's chin and steered his face around.

“You got the daughter's address?”

The boy looked at Sugar as if he'd just raised a folding chair over his head.

“Yeah, yeah,” the kid said. “It's around here somewhere.”

 

Sugarman called Angela Peretti from a booth on Collins Avenue, apologized for bothering her so late, and asked if she'd talk to him. She didn't mind. He could come on. She didn't sleep that much, not at night anyway. There was something weird about her voice, something a little drifty and unfocused, like maybe she was absorbed in the same wrestling match as the kid.

It took him an hour and a half to get to her place, a two-story French provincial house a block from the ocean. The street was lit by dozens of security lights. Two in the morning and hardly a shadow to be seen.

She met him at the front door in her pajamas. V-neck top with red-and-green flower print, shorty bottoms that matched. She didn't seem particularly shy, standing barefoot out on the porch. She was in her early- to mid-forties, with straight brown hair and gray eyes and a little ski jump nose. A tricky way of looking at you, quick, darty glances, then looking away at the trees or shrubs or dark sky. Like a plane strafing a target, zooming in, shooting a look, then gone.

“I'm sorry to bother you at such a late hour. Thanks for seeing me.”

“You're a shamus?”

“Not many people call me that, but yeah, I guess I am.”

She strafed him with another look, then fixed her eyes on the trunk of the oak in her front yard. The pleasant smell of the ocean was
stronger up there than on Miami Beach. A lush, doughy aroma that, together with the untamable rumble of the surf, must have been a constant reminder of how precarious their perch on the edge of the continent was.

Angela stood beneath a set of halogen security lights and stared out at her broad front lawn. She had freckles on her face and arms and more freckles in the V of her pajamas. Sugar was fairly certain freckles covered the entire surface of Angela Peretti. Not that he particularly wanted to find out. It was just idle speculation, something to do during the long pauses in their conversation.

“I'm sorry about your father's death.”

“He was an old man,” she said. “Old men die. He was also a career criminal. In the kind of business he was in, he was lucky to have lived so long.”

“Still…”

“Are you working for the Braswells?”

She skimmed her eyes across his face, saw his surprise.

“I didn't think so. You don't look like the kind of people they hire.”

“And what do they look like?”

“Seedy,” she said. “Lower life forms.”

She looked across the street at her neighbor, who had come out to stand on the front porch of his three-story Tudor mansion. The portly, white-haired man was staring openly at Sugarman. Probably the first time he'd ever seen an African American in his part of town. In Palm Beach the guys they brought in to polish their brass and pressure-clean the mildew off their imported tile had graduate degrees and all their shots and all their boosters and at least three ancestors from the
Mayflower
. Around there even the ivy got a background check before it was allowed to twine.

“You okay, Angela?” he called.

“Just fine, Vincent,” she called back.

“I heard voices,” he said. “My bedroom, it's right here in front.”

“We'll try to keep it down,” Sugarman called to him.

He gave Sugarman a hard look, then about-faced and marched back inside, probably to call the riot squad.

“So you're a private dick, huh?”

Sugarman made himself breathe.

“I am.”

“You don't act like one. You act like a regular guy.”

“I'm one of those, too.”

She squinted at him, blinked, then looked back at her expensive landscaping.

“So who
are
you working for?”

“Good question. I guess I'm working for an old guy named Lawton Collins.”

“I know Lawton. You're a friend of his?”

“I met him once,” Sugarman said. “But he makes a strong impression.”

“He has a debilitating memory impairment,” Angela said. “Second stage, it could last for five, six more years just like that, or he could take a quick dive tomorrow, not be able to tie his shoes or feed himself.”

Sugarman nodded.

“He seemed fairly lucid to me. Half the time anyway.”

“Lawton and my dad were friends. My dad liked to spend time with Lawton. He said it was inspiring.”

“Well, he's run off somewhere,” Sugarman said. “He's trying to track down Arnold's killer.”

“And you're trying to track him down.”

“That's right.”

“Is someone paying your fee?”

“This one's off the books,” Sugarman said.

“The police think Dad's death was accidental. But I don't buy that.”

“Lawton's convinced it was a murder. And he was there, an eyewitness.”

“What's your rate?”

Sugarman told her.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll triple that, and I'll pay you a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus if you see to it that the entire Braswell family winds up in jail.”

Sugarman smiled.

“I'm afraid I couldn't do that.”

“My father provided very well for me. I've got a bundle.” She was speaking to the eastern quadrant of the sky.

“I'm sure you do, but I can't take your money.”

“Well, then I won't tell you anything. I'll just shut the door and leave you standing out here. See how long you last in the wilds of Palm Beach.”

Sugarman smiled. The woman had her chin in the air, showing the freckles on her throat, eyes on the sky like she was consulting the Big Dipper.

“You drive a hard bargain.”

“So are you in my employ now? You'll find out who killed my father?”

“Okay,” he said. “Sure, why not? I'll try. But I can't promise who'll go to jail.”

“Okay, then. I guess the first order of business is to grill me.”

“I don't usually grill my clients. I reserve that for my suspects.”

“Don't you want to ask me anything?”

“All right,” Sugarman said. He was smiling. He couldn't help himself. This woman had an elfin mischief about her. “Why do you think your father was murdered?”

“That's pretty general,” she said.

“I like to start general and work toward the specific.”

“Okay,” Angela said. She gave him a fleeting glance, then her eyes sailed away to the stars again. “My dad knew something was very wrong in the Braswell family. And what he knew got him killed. If Lawton Collins knows the same thing my dad knew, then it could get him killed, too.”

“You know what that thing is?”

“Yes,” she said. “I certainly do.”

“Is it about a ray gun?” Sugarman said. “Airplane crashes?”

The woman stopped breathing and brought her eyes back from the heavens and gave Sugarman her full attention.

“You know about MicroDyne?”