Hawk Channel Chase (16 page)

I thanked the woman for her support.

Short guilt, short nervous, short night. Walking home with the half-full bottle of Pinot Gris, sipping from a roadie cup, I wondered if I had stomped too hard by suggesting that Bobbi might be marketing her soul to the boss, though I also could have asked why she didn’t just go to jail. Bound to a desk, how was her life right now different from those of criminals she sent away? Or could I have shown more sympathy, been less imperious about telling her where Bimini was located?

Shit, I thought. She could have asked where my life was stuck.

I was bogged down looking for Sally Catherman. I could call her father in the morning, find out her class schedule, professors’ names. I could dream up ten ways to keep my search going. I tried to picture Bob Catherman doing identical grunt work but couldn’t.

The clock had ticked. Too tired to care, I wanted to hide in my cave, master the horizontal. I had failed to patch up our romance.

Wisps of pot smoke floated in the lane, probably drifting from a rear cottage of the Eden House Hotel. Then I found Mikey Bokamp cross-legged on the recliner. She grinned when I stepped inside the porch screen door. She wore a C
AN’T
T
HINK
S
TRAIGHT
T-shirt and cut-off jeans and wasn’t holding a joint. Only a Smirnoff Ice. I saw no evidence of a roach, but the silly grin remained. I would have to inspect the yard in daylight. In my new line of work, with badge thugs tailing me on the highway, I would have no warning if some officer felt compelled to throw a surprise inspection, turn up trace evidence of massive drug use. Not so much to pitch me in jail but to twist my arm, make me tell secrets, back off from my mission. Or throw me in jail.

Mikey saw my wine and lifted an Ice salute, down to its last ounce. I heard soft music, saw an iPod on the table, wires leading to miniature speakers.

“It’s not a school night?” I said.

She pretended to rub her chin, wiped a dribble. “I quit going to class. I couldn’t concentrate.”

“Doobies are hell on grades,” I said. “It was that way twenty-five years ago, too. And one other reality. You don’t want to be exhaling pot fumes if the cops ever take interest in your missing friend. They tend not to believe anything you say. They take you to the station to dig for truth.”

“If anyone whips a badge on me,” said Mikey, “I can flash flesh Kevlar.” She lifted her T-shirt to bare one lovely breast, half of another.

“Very sweet, but it doesn’t always work.”

She covered herself, sneered, put a blasé look on her face. “I can deal with gay cops, too. You keep looking at my iPod, those speakers. Sometimes ear buds make me batty, like when I need more chill than hyper.”

“Your mood tonight,” I said, “you’re more relaxed than in the grocery.”

“Oh, I wasn’t alone, sir. You walked out his office door looking like every poor fool that met Cecil for the first time. Uptight, out of sight. What are you doing?”

“Recovering from a dinner date.”

“You don’t bring your dates home?”

“The idea crossed my mind,” I said. “We had words.”

“Gotcha. So what are you doing in general, looking for Sally? You don’t look to me like a friend of her father. Why isn’t he out asking questions?”

“He wants to hang close to the phone, wait for news.”

“Like he doesn’t carry a cell?” she said. “What do you do for a real job?
 
Do you own this place?”

I nodded.

“So how did you get to be his friend? Did Mr. Catherman pound on your door and demand to buy your house? What did he do, buy you too?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”

“That’s it?”

“I take pictures.”

“Bullshit. You’re some kind of private eye. I think that’s cooler than shit. Can I take lessons?”

“How do you know he offered to buy my house?”

“That’s what he did to Honey Weiss. She owns a cottage right across Fleming on Nassau Lane. She hasn’t been there for five or six years. She rents it out these days for the high dollar and lives on Middle Torch. But she was pissed that you didn’t recognize her today. She used to see you all the time on your bike and your motorcycle. Did Mr. Catherman tell you that I used to ride to school with Sally?”

I nodded.

“And because I got to know her, all those miles between home and school, you figure that I would know if she was dating someone.”

The night wind blew a gentle gust at the screens. I nodded.

“So maybe I do. But she told me that if her father found out, especially that she was doing this particular guy, he’d quit paying for college. She’s got two and a half years to go. Why don’t those wind chimes make any noise?”

“They were a gift,” I said, “but I don’t care for wind chimes. I glued plastic straws up inside them. They click, if they make any sound at all.”

“What’s wrong with wind chimes? You’re not into sharing beauty?”

“It’s not sharing, it’s imposing,” I said. “It’s audible trespassing. With houses this close together, my neighbors would be forced to hear mine and vice versa.”

“I like men who think clearly.” She reached under her chair and pulled out another Smirnoff Ice, twisted off its cap. “These, for me, are like peanuts. I can’t have just one. Would you like to see my boobs again?”

“I would rather continue your conversation.”

“Yes,” said Mikey. “I tend to carry momentum. And I’m seeing someone right now, so I shouldn’t be offering what I can’t deliver.”

“Why did you come?”

“I thought you were cute and I’m worried about her. I figured what the hell.”

“Obviously you know some things,” I said.

“There’s this older guy. I mean like thirty. But you can’t tell her father.”

 
Make an end run, I thought. “She could be in real danger, Mikey. Why did she come to the Keys?”

“My impression was that she had a little breakdown, and I don’t mean the babbling idiot kind. It was more like wanting to distance herself from something. Mommy drama. Her mother’s disgusting boyfriends, something in that area.”

“But her father thinks she’s a Goody Two-Shoes?”

“Oh, God, the idea that she’d had a dick in her hand or anywhere else. I don’t know what century he came from, but… Now I could get in real trouble.”

“Lips sealed.”

“That guy she buzzed had, like, ‘good fuck’ written on the pupils of his eyes. Like you got it, too, but don’t get the wrong idea. I started with girls, still in high school. Then I went hasbian long enough to sleep with three guys. Then I fell in love with Honey Weiss. That’s who I live with on Middle Torch.”

“Does this guy work around here, live in the Keys?”

“They call it the Mansion, the place where he works, her boyfriend. Even that nickname for the house is like the big shit secret of the universe. She freaked and told me she slipped when she said it, and I wasn’t supposed to repeat it. Anyway, he keeps a motorboat at a friend’s house somewhere on Sugarloaf. They go out and drift and mess around and she works on her all-over tan.” Mikey took a long slug from the Ice bottle. “One time driving to the college she said, ‘He loves to snorkel.’ She made it sound really good and dirty. Well, damn, I thought, who doesn’t?”

“How did Sally meet this fellow from the Mansion?”

“The first time I saw him in the grocery, she acted like she already knew him. Maybe they met one day when I wasn’t working. Or when I was back in Cecil’s office.”

“When did she have time to be dirty?” I said.

“I knew you were going to ask that. She didn’t work all the hours her father thought she did. Wednesdays she got off at 7:15 instead of 9:15. On Monday she didn’t come in until a quarter to five but her dad thought she started at two.”

“Surely Colding knew her schedule,” I said. “He must not have compared notes with Mr. Catherman.”

“He was sort of in on the thing. He got his jollies in the back room.”

“That room didn’t look too accommodating for jollies.”

“He’s a titty freak, like me. So… she let him look but no touchies.”

“She pulled up her shirt for him?”

“We all mess with him, give him shows every so often. He tries to be such a hardnose. It’s a hoot to watch him get flustered. Anyway, if her dad called when she was supposed to be there, Uncle D. made up excuses like he’d sent her on an errand or she was helping a customer. Happened a couple times.”

“Uncle who?”

“Uncle Disgusting. Don’t tell him that one, okay? She called it a pole dance without the pole, thank God, especially his. One time she came out of his office and she was like, ‘Oh my God, he wanted to see my little rug.’”

“Was that his term?”

“I guess. She called it her Mohawk, and it looked like its name, and no, I never did her. I just watched her change into her bikini a couple of times.”

“Should I talk to Alyssa?” I said. “Did she know Sally at all?”

“Our checkout wizard.
 
She wanted you to buy lunch at Mangrove Mama’s. We loved that. She’s a dyke-in-training and deep in the dark. She might sneak up on a few facts but she’ll twist them to fit her TV philosophy of life.”

“I’d be wasting my time?”

“Never know. We don’t hang with her all that much. I don’t know where she goes.” She checked her Swatch. “I gotta get back sometime.”

“How did you get here, drive?”

She nodded. “Honey’s car is up at the Sunbeam Market. Actually, being fucked up so slightly as I am… I was hoping I could crash here a few hours, drive home whenever I wake up.”

For a scary moment I began to weigh wisdom against sport.

“Gotcha,” she said. “Okay if I nap here on the porch?”

“Might be best.”

“Look, please don’t repeat about Cecil’s cheap thrill sessions. It’ll come back around to me, and I need my job even though it’s a beer and cigs gallery. Uncle Disgusting thinks his sty is a fucking salad salon, a thick-cut beef boutique. We’d all rather work at Murray’s Market, but you take what you can get. But I’ve got to ask this, now that I’ve blabbed my ass off.”

“Ask away.”

“I’d like a ride on your motorcycle some day.”

“That’s a question?”

She laughed. “You’re so right. Ask me your answer.”

11

Upbeat Cuban music, the great Ibrahim Ferrer, strong decibels and what will the neighbors think? Smells of dark coffee, warm Strawberry Pop-Tarts. No shirt, no shoes, parched throat, damp sheets. Damp sheets?
 
A thick coat of night varnish on the teeth. Sensory overload when I might rather lighten up.

The sun fought its way through slits in the mini-blinds. Bobbi Lewis, dutiful and tough, would be at her sheriff’s office desk by now. Lisa Cormier, holding to her husband’s subterfuge, if not his heart, would not have come to my home. End of list, and so much for plausible alternatives. I couldn’t recall the departure of my late evening guest.

Oh, Mikey Bokamp, what have we done?
 
Please give me details. Honey Weiss will kick my ass.

A closer inspection offered token comfort: I was still wearing the shorts I had worn to dinner. A soft, feminine voice said, “Don’t worry, I haven’t been watching you sleep.”

“What the hell have you been doing?”

“Keeping my distance.” Beth Watkins leaned against the bedroom door frame, a sultry pose, especially for that hour of the morning. She wore form-fitting khaki pants, a snug, badge-logo polo shirt and her black belly pack. “Just standing here I should be wearing an oxygen breathing apparatus.”

“I stayed up late,” I said. “Drank fancy wine.”

“You should clean up your lifestyle.”

“Every day I try.”

She laughed. “You make it a constant process.” She wiggled the photo of the Dodge Charger that I had left on my printer tray. “Surveillance?”

“Someone watching me, not the opposite. And, I might add, a huge relief.”

“You took the picture, right? It’s a Rutledge original taken by you?”

“Call it counter-surveillance. I’m going to get up now.”

“Of course, I have to ask,” she said. “What relief?”

“If you’ve been rummaging around my home without first presenting a search warrant, I’m no longer a person of interest. I beat the murder rap. Huge relief.”

She shook her head. “I’m from California where people are even more transient than Key West. That made it easier to believe that you never met the man.”

“Aside from believing that I tell the truth?”

“Allow me the slack. My disbelief makes me a better cop.”

“I now intend further relief.”

“Your coffee awaits. After your third sip I’ll tell you why I’m here. Don’t take a shower yet.”

“That’s an ominous request,” I said.

“I’m in sort of a hurry. I like these Pop-Tarts. I’ve never had this flavor.”