Fallen Honor: A Jesse McDermitt Novel (Caribbean Adventure Series Book 7) (8 page)

“This is my bar,” Rusty said, a bit of anger rising in his voice. “A lot of people eat and drink here.”

“Paid with a credit card. Name’s Michal Grabowski.”

“Figures,” Rusty said and turned toward the bar. “Another damned smug druggler.”

“You see what I mean?” I said to my old friend. “This isn’t what I came down here for. And it’s getting worse.”

“Yeah,” Rusty said and then turned back to Bradley. “Your
friend
was here a while ago, ordered lunch. Short guy, long, greasy hair, rotten teeth, and a really ugly mug? He tried to sell drugs to one of my friends. Now the two of you can do the same as he did. Get your asses outta my bar and don’t even think of coming back.”

Both men still looked confused as they slowly stood up. “What about our guns?” Bradley asked.

“What guns?” Rusty snarled. “Come back again and I’ll blow your heads off with them.”

M
ichal Grabowski hurried along Duval Street in the sweltering late-afternoon heat. Today, he sported a new pair of Kino sandals and his feet were tinged pink from the previous day’s hot sun. The girl last night had given him a lot of advice about how to dress under the tropical heat, but he was determined to at least get some sun on his legs and feet before taking her advice. She was spot-on about the sandals, though. The leather didn’t seem to transfer the heat as bad as the rubber flip-flops he’d bought his first day here.

Michal had spent the prior afternoon and most of the evening at
Irish Kevin’s
, talking with the bartender. She’d said her name was Coral and she was from Boston, but had now been living in Key West for three years. Michal had lost all track of time and purpose, enchanted by the girl’s ready smile and sharp wit.

Forgetting his mission to unload the coke he’d stolen, he’d nursed a brace of beers while watching the girl work, occasionally talking with her about Key West and how to dress so as not to be marked as a tourist. Then she’d asked if he liked hockey. She was a huge Bruins fan.

Being a Pittsburgh native, Michal was a Penguins fan. In fact, hockey was his favorite sport, being one of the few physical team sports where size took a backseat to agility and speed on the ice. It was obvious that she had more than a bartender’s passing knowledge of the sport.

Watching Coral work the tourists and locals alike was similar to watching a play, he’d decided. She was friendly, smiling and even a little flirtatious with the guys that visited her bar. Dressed in cutoff denim shorts and a short
Irish Kevin’s
T-shirt, she moved around behind the bar like a dancer. Her tip jar quickly filled.

During a lull, he’d asked about her hair. What he’d at first perceived as a short, tangled mess were actually dreadlocks, like they wore in Jamaica.

“Baby dreads,” Coral had explained with a bright smile, shaking her head, causing the braids to bounce around beneath her Bruins cap. Leaning close on the cooler, she smiled, fiddled with one of her blond locks and added, “Like in the Kenny Chesney song. I like everything to be in a no fuss, no muss kind of way.”

While Michal couldn’t be certain, he thought she was paying him slightly more attention than the other men at the bar. When she finished her shift at seven, he mustered his courage up to ask her out.

New place, new life, new person,
he’d thought at the time. Overcoming his awkward shyness, he’d asked her to have dinner with him.

Coral had touched his hand then and smiled very warmly. “I never go out with someone I just met.” Then, with a teasing grin, she asked, “Will you be back here tomorrow?”

He’d promised he would and stood at the door watching as she’d climbed into the front seat of a big black taxi, driven by a silver-haired black man.

All morning, he’d been anticipating returning. She’d finished her shift before sunset last night and disappeared in the taxi, so he was pretty sure she didn’t live nearby. If she worked a later shift today, he’d been planning to just nurse a couple of beers until then.

Feeling the cold blast of air as he opened the door, Michal stepped inside, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light inside
Irish Kevin’s
.

Coral was behind the bar, her back to him, as she stocked a cooler with beer bottles at the far end. She was wearing the now familiar Boston Bruins ball cap, loosely covering her baby dreads.

Michal walked around to the end of the bar, stealing a glance at Coral’s firm ass and legs as he passed the bar’s length and took the stool in the corner. She was wearing a bright neon-green T-shirt this time. Again it was cut off and exposed a couple of inches of fit, tanned belly. Below that, she wore high-waisted spandex shorts, with no sign of a panty line. The bright red shorts were very revealing, barely covering her ass cheeks, and so tight that there was very little left to a man’s imagination. But imagine he did.

When Michal sat down at the bar, Coral looked up, surprised. Bending over the cooler as she was, her T-shirt hung loosely from her shoulders, the V-neck offering a substantial view of the cleavage between her small, firm breasts. On the front of the shirt was a little bearded man, wearing a green top hat. Below that, in big dark green letters, it proclaimed, “I’m A Fucking Leprechaun.” But the U was replaced with a shamrock, covering one pert nipple.

Coral smiled brightly. “I’m glad you came back, Michal. Wasn’t sure if you would after I saw that the cruise ship that was at the docks yesterday had left some time last night.”

“Not on a cruise,” he said with a grin. “I’m here for a while. Maybe permanently if everyone’s as friendly as you, Coral.”

She spun around and pulled a frosted mug from the cooler below the long row of beer taps, tilting it under the Iron City Beer one. She filled it with a nice foamy head, which she deftly swiped with the blade of a long knife, and placed it on a coaster in front of him.

“I’m off in two hours, if that invitation to dinner is still on,” Coral said, a coy smile lighting her face as she twirled one of her dreads.

Michal couldn’t believe his luck. Back home, women mostly ignored him, which he sometimes attributed to his invisibility. But here, it was different. His plain, normal features were a novelty.

He grinned from ear to ear. “Absolutely!” Emboldened by her forwardness, he added, “But you’ll have to pick where we go. I only got into town three nights ago.”

“Edith raw?” Coral said, her smile becoming brighter still. At first, Michal misunderstood her words and blushed. She winked and enunciated more clearly, “Edith, like Archie’s wife in
All in the Family
? The
Half Shell Raw Bar
is a couple blocks away, over on Key West Bight. Edith raw is kinda their slogan.”

“Raw bar?”

“Oysters are great for the libido,” she said, twirling her dreads once more, amused at his misunderstanding, though she’d done it intentionally.

She turned away to wait on other customers, giving Michal a better view of her perfect little body as she stretched high on bare feet for a wine glass from the overhead rack. She disappeared down the bar, Michal grinning like the Cheshire cat.

Earlier in the day, he’d been able to sell quite a few of the small packets and had several hundred bucks in his pocket. More importantly, the guy he’d sold them to was a local he’d met the night before, and he’d said he knew a guy that might be able to buy quantity. He explained that things were kinda dry at the moment. Michal had planned to sell it off a little at a time, but the longer he had it, the more chance there was of selling to the wrong person and being caught by the law.

Looking out the front window, Michal thought this was something he’d have to consider. He could probably unload all he had left to one person, but then he’d only make a tenth of the money.
Selling ounces could go faster
, he thought while watching the throngs of people walk by on the sidewalk.
Feed the guy an ounce at a time.
He’d try to find the guy again tomorrow.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Coral asked, surprising him as he nursed his beer.

“Oh, I was just thinking how nice it must be to live here. I’m considering making it permanent.”

“You said last night you worked in a steel mill. I doubt you’ll find that kind of work here. Can you weld?”

What’s she know from welding?
he wondered. “Yeah, I’m a welder. Arc, mig, tig, steel, aluminum, just about anything.”

“Cool,” she said, leaning over and opening the cooler in front of him again, giving him another look down the neck of her loose T-shirt. Coral slid the cover back in place and made a note on a pad next to it. “I do a little welding on the side. At a bike shop.”

“You’re a welder?”

“What? Girls can’t do tough guy jobs?”

“No,” he replied quickly, not wanting to insult her or anything. “Nothing like that. Some of the best welders I’ve ever met were women. It’s just that none of ’em looked like you.”

“Well, there’s a lot of welding work around here,” Coral said. “The whole island is practically a boatyard, and good welders are hard to find. You should check around some of the bigger marinas. I helped out on a job a year ago, but on account of my size, I’m more comfortable working on something not quite so big, like a custom chopper.”

He thought about that a moment. He had a pretty good stake. If he could unload a bit more, he could easily make a go of it, living legally. The young woman in front of him was being more helpful than anyone he’d ever met. Before he could check himself, he blurted out, “Why are you so nice to me?”

“You’re cute and you don’t smell like fish,” she replied with a wink, picking up her notepad and whirling to the cooler on the other side of the bar to check the stock.

When she bent over, she bounced her hips to the music from the jukebox, shifting from one leg to the other. Michal had a magnificent view of her perfect little butt in those tight spandex shorts and was staring. He nearly fell off his stool when Coral looked back suddenly and caught him, winking and giving her backside another bump before moving off down the bar to wait on other customers.

Michal was nearly finished with his second beer, nursing them slowly, when a new waitress went behind the bar and Coral started to cash out her drawer, stuffing the money from the full tip jar into a small purse under the bar.

“Care for another beer?” the new waitress asked him, a tall brunette with long straight hair and bangs to just above her eyes. She was just as beautiful as Coral and dressed the same way. But she was a lot taller, at least four inches taller than Michal.

“No, thanks,” he said, as Coral slid his tab in front of him. The brunette went down to the other end of the bar.

He looked at the bar bill, took a twenty from his pocket and placed it on top of the tab, smiling at Coral. “Keep the change.”

Coral gathered both the tab and the bill and went back to her cash drawer. A few minutes later, she closed it and took a fresh, chilled mug from the cooler and held it under the Iron City tap. She placed the frosted mug in front of him and winked. “This one’s on me. Take your time, while I go get changed.”

Ten minutes later, Coral sat down next to him at the bar. She was wearing a lightweight and loose-fitting yellow sundress, with thin straps over her tan and slender shoulders. If possible, the bright yellow dress made her tan look deeper and richer and her bright blue eyes and blond hair lighter. It was obvious that she wasn’t wearing a bra under it and when she sat down on the stool, the short dress exposed nearly as much of her tanned thighs as her shorts had earlier.

Gone was the Bruins cap, though, and for the first time Michal could see all of her dreads.
On anyone else
, he thought,
that would look just plain ridiculous
. She made it look ridiculously fun and cute.

“Hurry up with that brewski, Michal. I’m starving.”

“Then let’s rock,” he said, standing up and draining the mug. When she stood next to him, he felt like a giant, despite his size. Looking down, he saw that she now wore flat sandals that laced halfway up her calves. Lifting his eyes to take her all in, he found the top of her head barely reached his nose.