Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (12 page)

Twenty minutes later, Byers grabbed a bus schedule from the rack by the door and stepped off when the bus stopped in downtown Key West at the corner of Caroline and Duval Streets. From here it would circle the south side of the island and head back up the Keys.

Walking down Duval Street, it didn’t take Byers long to know he was in the right place. He’d already spotted two hookers, one dragging a john down a narrow side street and another climbing into the passenger side of a rental car.

Finding a spot in the shade where he could lean on a light post, Byers waited. He didn’t have long to wait. After a few minutes, the guy he’d spotted disappearing down the side street with the hooker stepped out of the shadows and started south on the sidewalk. Another minute passed before the hooker emerged. Adjusting her short skirt, she quickly crossed the street toward Byers.

“Wanna make it two?” Byers asked when she stepped up onto the curb.

The hooker stopped short on seeing him and looked him up and down in a flash. “Not right now, sugar. I need something a little more filling.” She forced a smile, showing stained teeth. “Buy a girl a burger first?”

“Twenty bucks and a burger for a blowjob?” Byers offered.

“Follow me,” she replied. “The Half Shell makes a killer cheeseburger.”

Byers fell in beside her and the two walked back up Duval toward Caroline Street. He pointed to a burger joint across the street. “What about that place?”

“They won’t let me in there,” the hooker replied, grabbing his arm and pulling him along like an errant child. Coming out of a bar next to the burger joint, Byers saw the coke dealer whose wallet he’d lifted. A woman in a yellow dress was nearly dragging him, pretty much the way this hooker was doing him.

Byers frowned and thought he’d gotten a shitty deal. The hooker with the coke dealer was a lot better looking than the one he was with.
I’ll need to keep an eye out for him
, Byers said to himself.
Maybe I’ll get another chance to get to his stash, or maybe sell him mine at least.

Byers watched as the coke dealer hurried after the hooker in the skimpy yellow dress. His hooker turned, pulling him across Duval and down Caroline Street. Several blocks later, they arrived at a seafood place and took a table in the corner. They each ordered a burger and ate impatiently as the sun slipped below the horizon.

“They call me Tiffany,” the hooker said, her hunger sated.

“Byers. Say, maybe we can do a little bartering?”

“Pay for the burgers any way you want, Byers. The blowjob will be twenty bucks cash, as we agreed.”

“Trade a boulder?” he whispered and watched as some of the dullness left Tiffany’s eyes.

Her lips peeled back, exposing her brown and rotting teeth. “I know just the place.”

Byers paid the tab, leaving a measly tip before they left the deck area of the restaurant, Tiffany leading the way. Turning toward the water, they walked out onto the long dock, a little past the restaurant.

Tiffany led him out onto the end pier, which extended nearly a hundred feet, with shorter docks at right angles, several stacked high with lobster traps and a few boats tied up between them. They didn’t look like pleasure boats, Byers noted.
Fishing boats or work boats
, he thought.

Tiffany found a spot fairly well hidden by the traps and Byers pulled his little glass pipe from his pocket. He then took a decent-sized ten-dollar rock from the small cellophane-wrapped stash and held it up in the moonlight.

Tiffany eyed it with the fervor of an obvious addict. “Payment up front,” she nearly pleaded, one hand on her cocked hip in a pitiful attempt to look sultry.

Byers put the flame from his lighter to the small bowl at the end of the tube, heating it quickly and handing it to her. She put the pipe to her lips and Byers dropped the little rock in. It immediately vaporized, filling the bowl and stem with bluish-white smoke, as she gently rolled the glass tube back and forth between her finger and thumb. In one long drag she’d spent the whole rock and handed the pipe back to Byers. She leaned her head back, holding her breath and stroking her heavy breasts.

Byers watched her hungrily as he deftly reheated the bowl and dropped another rock in the pipe for himself. The cellophane-wrapped rocks and glass stem quickly went back into his pocket as he unbuckled his jeans and hastily pulled them down.

A few minutes later, Tiffany staggered along the dock, laughing uncontrollably and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Byers hurriedly pulled up his jeans and went after her.

He caught her arm and said angrily, “I didn’t get my money’s worth!”

“Sure ya did,” Tiffany replied, jerking her arm away and producing a switchblade out of nowhere. The blade flicked open with a snap, the steel glinting in the moonlight.

“You paid, I did my thing and you did yours. End of transaction.” She laughed again at the ugly little man, attracting the attention of several people on the main dock. Loud enough for them to hear, she added, “I guess a dick that little just can’t last very long. That’s gotta be the tiniest one I’ve ever seen.” With a wary eye over her shoulder, Tiffany hurried back to the parking lot, laughing all the way.

Embarrassed and dejected, several people on the docks whispering and pointing at him, Byers tried to go after her. But she’d disappeared and he again cursed himself. Angry now, he stalked off through the parking lot in front of the Half Shell Raw Bar, unaware of the large black man that had been standing in a darkened part of the dock when the hooker had ridiculed him. The black man stayed to the shadows as he followed Byers discreetly.

A
s they drove slowly through Big Pine Key, Erik glanced over at GT. “Aside from being short, the description the fat guy gave doesn’t match Grabowski at all, boss.”

Sitting in the passenger seat, GT was still pissed about those people getting the best of him. And worst of all, he and Erik were now unarmed. GT felt naked without a gun in his shoulder holster.

“One of three things,” GT surmised. “Grabowski either dumped his wallet and somebody found it, or he got robbed. If it’s one of those, we’re on a wild-goose chase. Third thing, Grabowski has a partner and the partner has his plastic. We find him, maybe we find Grabowski.”

Just then, the phone in his pocket played a Beyoncé song. When he pulled it out and saw who it was, he hit the accept button and said, “Give me some good news, Stewie.”

After a moment, he said, “Hang on. Let me write that down.” Fishing his notepad and pen from his inside jacket pocket, he told his computer hacker to go ahead. He wrote the information down and, without another word, ended the call.

“Step on it, Erik. The ugly dude with Grabowski’s card just checked in to a cheap motel on Stock Island.” Digging around in the detritus from three days on the road, he pulled out a map of the Florida Keys. “Stock Island’s the last one before Key West.”

Erik accelerated, but kept it just a little above the ridiculously low speed limit. Within a mile, they saw blue flashing lights ahead. A cop had a car pulled over and was pointing to a sign right in front of the car, ranting at the driver.

The sign read,
Endangered Key Deer Next Three Miles
.

“Keep it at the speed limit. That’s the third cop I’ve seen since coming off that long-ass bridge. These guys take shit to another level with them deers.”

Erik nodded, slowing the big SUV to forty-five as they passed the cop car. Once off Big Pine Key, he accelerated to sixty, slowing only when the various city speed limits required him to.

Less than an hour later, they rolled onto Stock Island, the GPS on the dash telling Erik to take the next left. A bus pulled up onto the road, belching blue-gray smoke, as Erik slowed to make the turn. A block later, they stopped in front of a seedy-looking motel wedged between two dilapidated boatyards.

“Wait here,” GT said and climbed out of the car, looking around the nearly empty parking lot. There was only one car, a beat-up and rusted old Chevy.

The lobby was small, with fake plants in the corners and a thick glass window between it and the clerk behind the counter. When the man sitting there looked up, GT gave his best smile.

“Looking for a friend. Name’s Grabowski. Checked in sometime today? Michal Grabowski?”

“Room eight,” the man said without glancing at his computer.

“You sure?” GT asked. “You know the room numbers and names of all your guests without looking?”

“It’s summer and lobster season ain’t open yet, so we don’t get many. He’s the only one checked in today.”

GT muttered a thanks and went back out to the idling Escalade. Climbing in, he said, “Number eight. But park a couple spots down from it.”

With the quiet interrupted only by the ticking of the engine as it cooled, the two men climbed out of the SUV. It was late afternoon, but the heat and humidity were still unbearable, especially in the jackets they were wearing.

“Lose the jacket and holster,” GT instructed, quickly shrugging out of his own and using the door to shield anyone watching as he removed his empty shoulder holster and tossed both in the backseat.

Approaching the door to room eight, GT noticed the peephole. His back to the wall, he reached a long left arm out and knocked three times, then twice more, before pressing himself close to the wall and listening. Erik hugged the wall beside him.

Waiting only a moment, he knocked again. No answer. The guy was either not inside or cagey and not making any noise. “Wait here,” he ordered Erik and turned to go back to the office.

Stepping into the dusty lobby, GT stepped up to the glass again. “Are you sure he’s in room eight?”

“Never said he was,” the old man behind the glass replied, looking up from a little TV on the desk. “You didn’t ask if he was here, just if he’d checked in. Left not twenty minutes ago. Asked where he might find a hooker! Like I’m some kinda pimp.”

“Look, mister, I need to find him,” GT said, knowing that even if he had his gun, the thick glass between them meant he couldn’t intimidate the man. He pulled a twenty from the roll in his pocket and slipped it into the tray under the glass. “If he was successful in finding what he was looking for, where do you think I might find him?”

The old man snatched the twenty. “Duval Street, where you can find anything.” He grinned and added, “One end swings one way, the other end swings the other, families in the middle.” Then he turned back to the TV and turned it up, the familiar sound of a porn movie coming through the little holes drilled in the glass.

“Duval Street,” GT said as he climbed into the car. “It’s the main drag in downtown Key West, just across the next bridge.”

With the air conditioner turned on high, the big Escalade maneuvered through the traffic on Truman and then went up and down Duval Street for the next two hours, which was exactly three trips. Not that Duval Street is long—it’s barely over a mile end to end, but traffic was very slow moving. After the first trip to the south end, they both realized that they wouldn’t find the guy there. It was mostly a quiet residential area, not a hooker in sight.

The narrow pavement north of Truman Street, coupled with the high volume of tourists, in cars, on mopeds and bicycles, and on foot, made for very limited space to maneuver the enormous SUV. GT noted a few girls who looked like hookers, even a couple of girls, who looked like guys, who looked like hookers. So he knew they were in the right area.

“We might as well park somewhere,” GT said. “We can move just as fast on foot and split up, covering twice as much ground.”

Erik was forced to park two blocks off Duval on Truman Street. “Remember,” GT instructed, as the two walked back to Duval. “The guy’s short and ugly. The guy that said he was short and ugly was short and ugly himself. That means we’re looking for a really short, really ugly guy, with scraggly hair and a nasty smell.”

When they got to Duval Street, they split up. Erik took the right side and GT the left, as they moved north. Before splitting up, the two men agreed that with all the noise, they’d be better off sending a text message if either of them saw a guy fitting the description.

Within a block, GT realized the guy had definitely exaggerated about end-to-end fun. Everywhere he looked on this part of the street he saw mostly guys, some walking hand in hand and some even making out. Then it dawned on him what the old guy said about one end swinging one way.