The Naked Detective (23 page)

"If I knew that ..." I began, then abruptly broke off. If I knew that,
what?

I pushed out my lips and looked across the water. We were nearing the jetty at Fort Zack. Currents lifted a magenta chop. Channel markers flashed red and green. After a moment Maggie said, "Maybe finishing is just a habit."

"I wouldn't know."

"The conviction," she said. "The confidence. Maybe they come after. You finish something,
then
they're there."

I gave a noncommittal shrug. I wasn't sure I got it. The paradox struck me as a little glib, a little yoga-like. Frankly, I found myself irritated. In some perverse way, I cherished my failings; I'd lived with them a long time, was used to them in the way people get used to pets that smell. I sort of resented the idea of someone blithely stepping in and disinfecting them.

I didn't have long to brood on this, because as we scudded through the harbor entrance, the shock of tropical daybreak made everything start over. Low clouds sundered like a cracking egg, and all at once the naked sun was there, orange yellow, flinging spiky rays up toward the zenith and out across the water, so bright, hot, and instantly sovereign that in a heartbeat it became hard to remember that night had ever been. A puff of breeze that seemed to be the sun's own breath bumped the sailboats on their moorings. On land, blank windows flashed suddenly silver; flat black palms turned green and animate and shook their heads.

We were opposite Tank Island—excuse me, Sunset Key. Virgin daylight put a sharp gleam on the enclave's stamped tin roofs, and a jewel-like sparkle in its creamy yellow sand. Cool blue shadows stretched back from its contrived, imported dunes—and all at once I noticed something; or, to put it more precisely, something I'd been noticing for days finally ripened into meaning. I'd noticed it when I'd pulled my rented Jet Ski up onto the extended foreshore; I'd noticed it as I took in the view from Mickey Veale's study. Now, in the sharp and probing light of daybreak, it could hardly have been clearer: This was nothing like a natural Florida shoreline. True, Tank Island had been man-made to begin with, but it had been piled up from what was there and then been left alone. Whereas the real estate of Sunset Key had been designed, invented, tampered with, reshaped.

Pointing, voice pinched, I said to Maggie, "That whole damn beach has been moved."

I said it in the tone reserved for deep, original discovery. Maggie's response was deflatingly matter-of-fact. "Sure it has," she said. "Remember when the cranes were here, the barges? A year or so ago? They dredged and filled and planted for a solid week."

Well, no, I hadn't remembered the cranes and barges. Maybe I was out of town. More likely, more characteristically, I just hadn't paid attention. Now I said to Maggie, "Go in closer."

She nosed the dinghy toward the phony shore. I leaned forward and squinted at palms. I was struck by several things about them. Palms rustled softly and they threw long shadows. Alone or in small clusters, they back-bent with the prevailing winds. And they basically all looked alike.

I found the trees that Kenny Lukens had been scrabbling under when he died, the ones that butted up against the fence. They were a pair; their bases perhaps four feet apart. For maybe ten feet up, their trunks diverged, then gradually leaned together in an inevitable parallel.

I looked beyond the steel enclosure. Three, four yards inside it, there was a virtually identical pair of palms. The same distance apart. The same raised and stringy roots. The same windswept geometry.

I rubbed my stinging eyes. Kenny Lukens had memorized the trees under which he'd stashed his treasure. Probably he'd counted steps up from the water's edge. He'd counted right, he'd remembered right, but new trees had been put in and the shoreline itself had been moved, widened as a stabilizing buffer for the private lots beyond. A final insult to poor strange Kenny: He'd died digging the wrong hole.

She didn't take the wager. Instead, she blinked and panned across as much of the island as we could see from where we sat. She said, "I know a little bit about the setup here. It's a pain getting past that fence."

Getting past the fence? Until she said it, I hadn't really thought of getting past the fence. I kept thinking that I'd done enough. Like figuring out where the pouches were, why no one had found them so far. Wasn't that enough?

"Just one entrance," she went on. "By the dock where the island's own launch comes in. There's a guard there. You have to be a resident or an invited guest to be let in."

I frowned up at the private island. It was elaborately landscaped. Manicured. Hibiscus shrubs had been sculpted into hedges; patches of coarse Bahama grass gave neatly onto beds of vinca and bird-of-paradise. This was a version of nature that took a ton of work. "How about if you're a gardener?" I said.

Maggie lifted an approving eyebrow.

Too bad, though, that the idea hadn't come a couple minutes sooner; and we'd gotten out of there by now. Because as I was speaking,
The Lucky Duck
—its bow wave pink, its windscreens glinting—roared by in its early morning return trip to its berth.

The gambling boat stayed in the main channel, perhaps forty yards from where our dinghy lightly bobbed; and maybe I only imagined that it slowed as it was pulling even with us. But no— the drop in pitch of its engine was hard to deny. We turned our backs, whether soon enough or not we couldn't tell. We had no idea if we'd been noticed, if there was anyone to find it strange that we were reconnoitering at daybreak. But there was something slightly sickening in the way that Mickey Veale's spreading wake crawled beneath our little craft, slithering and undermining.

The big boat lumbered past; the skiff eased off in its rocking. We swallowed fear and Maggie feistily picked up where we'd left off.

"Gardeners," she said. "That could get us in."

Us again. I didn't have the energy to argue. Even though my gut was telling me the whole thing was a really bad idea. Still, I said, "I think I know a way. I've got to talk to someone."

The sun was already bleaching out to white, and the dark water had turned emerald. We sat there for a moment, letting the gambling boat get well clear of our path. Maggie seemed about to speak, then caught herself, then gestured toward the island and spoke up anyway. "Pete," she said, "you're going to finish this. I know you are."

I didn't answer. I had my doubts. I yawned.

"It's just a habit," she said, as she turned the skiff and motored slowly to the dinghy dock at Redmond's Boatyard.

Potatoes were frying at Raul's; coffee had just been brewed.

We were among the very first customers, and we grabbed the choicest table—in the corner, next to a wall that dripped purple bougainvillea, under a mahogany tree. I suddenly realized I was famished. I ordered steak and eggs. Maggie laughed, but then she did too. You can't do this kind of stuff on oatmeal.

Waiting for the food, I looked at her. I was so tired that my drooping eyelids started twitching. It occurred to me that we'd just spent the night together. We hadn't done what was usually suggested by the phrase, but it was plenty intimate nevertheless. I'd had time alone with her eyes, her mouth. We'd leaned against each other, our flanks making a hot seam against the misty coolness of the night. I'd seen her yawn and stretch.

Now I watched her eat. I loved the way her loose blouse moved each time she raised her fork. I admired the little muscles in her forearm, which rippled slightly when she used her knife. She pressed her napkin to her lips and I felt their texture once again.

After breakfast I walked her back to her brightly painted trawler. Then, some time after eight, I reclaimed my bike and rode to Bayview Park.

I pulled into the shade of the players' enclosure. Ozzie Kimmel was sitting there, shirtless, in his perennial puke-green bathing suit. He was wrapping gauze around the handle of his racquet, concentrating so hard that his tongue stuck out from the corner of his mouth. He looked up as I approached and, tactful as ever, said, "You look like shit. Where's your stuff? You here to play?"

I told him that I wasn't there to play.

"Not here to play!" he parroted disgustedly. "What is with you, man? Look at you. Fuck has happened to bright-eyed Pete, here at eight and hot to—?"

"Oz," I said. "I need a favor. It's important."

"Important? Uh-oh. Guy starts thinking something's important, you know he's going down the—"

"You know who does the gardening for Sunset Key?"

"You mean Tank Island? That abortion? That pimple on—"

"Oz—who's got the contract for the landscaping?"

He pursed his lips and rubbed his chin. "Why you wanna know?"

"I can't tell you why I want to know."

"Then I can't remember who has the gig."

I said, "Oz, please don't be an asshole."

He said, "I'm an asshole? 'Cause a you I'm getting really shitty tennis lately. When we gonna start playing again?"

"When this is done," I said. "Few more days. I hope."

He pouted, went back to gauzing up his racquet. "Okay," he said, "okay. I'm pretty sure it's Cayo Hueso Landscaping. Eddie Baskin."

"You know him?"

" 'Course I know him. Poor bastard's been rotting here almost as long as I have."

"Take me to meet him."

"Now? I'm here for tennis!"

I just stared at him with tired pleading eyes.

"Awright, awright," he said. "We'll take the cab."

"The cab?"

"It's a workday for me. I'm working—can't you tell? Christ, you don't even remember what days I work."

———

"No way," said Eddie Baskin. "Could cost me the whole damn contract."

We were standing in his backyard at the end of Elgin Lane. The yard was part nursery, part jungle, part alfresco tool-shed. Giant tree trimmers leaned on top of sky-flower shrubs; weed whackers stood like golf clubs in a row. Baskin himself was tall and skinny, but with huge gnarly hands and forearms. He had a ponytail and a torn shirt and some kind of funky coral necklace on a leather string. He also, according to Ozzie, had three trucks, a crew of twelve or so, and most of the town's high-end gardening work. A Key West type—the hippie bum with an embarrassing knack for making money.

"Look," I begged, "we'll be on the island half an hour. Anything goes wrong, I stole the shirts, I stole the tools, this meeting never happened."

"Why should I risk it?" Baskin said. "There's no reason I should risk it."

"Yes, there is. It's real important."

"To you maybe."

"Not just to me. To a lot of people."

"Like who?"

"I can't explain right now."

Baskin lit a cigarette, squinted past smoke at Ozzie. "Oz," he said, "I don't know this guy from Adam. Gimme one good reason I should trust him."

My tennis buddy thought that over; a little longer than was flattering or reassuring. Finally he said, "He's very fair on line calls."

The gardener said, "Line calls?"

"All the times I've played him," Ozzie said, "I've gotten maybe two bad calls."

Over several years and a hundred matches, he remembered two bad calls? What kind of lunatics was I recruiting as my allies?

Baskin took a deep drag, slowly exhaled, and waved away the smoke. He frowned at Ozzie. He frowned at me. Finally he said, "Fuck it. Grab some rakes. Grab some shovels. I'll go inside and get a couple shirts." He headed for the house, looked back across his shoulder. "You get snagged out there, you're on your own."

———

The tools
did not quite fit in the trunk of Ozzie's cab. No matter how he laid them in, the handles stuck out past the fender. Finally he found a piece of fraying twine and tied the trunk lid down. I rolled up the borrowed shirts and held them on my lap.

As we drove away from Elgin Lane, I asked him if we could drop the gear off at my house before returning to the park so I could get my bike. He surprised me then.

He said, "I'll bring you down to where you get the launch. What time you wanna go?"

I said, "You don't need to do that, Oz."

"No problem. I wanna do it."

"How come?"

"How come?" He gave the steering wheel a little slap. He didn't look at me. He said, "You don't think I pay attention, do you? You don't think I notice things. How come? Because this is a big deal to you. That's how come."

That put me at a loss. I swallowed. I said, "We'll be picking up another person."

"The woman you hide in the backyard?" said Oz. "The one who makes your little thing stand up?"

What could you do with a guy like this? I just looked at him and gave a cockeyed nod.

"Very nice. Just say what time you want to be picked up."

"Let's make it three." I thought about bed, how much I longed to be racked out, curled up beneath a steamy sheet. "No, let's make it four."

"Whatever."

He brought me back to Bayview. I said, "Thanks, Oz. Thanks a lot."

He got shy and waved it off.

I said, "Soon we're back to tennis. Really soon."

"I'll kick your ass," he said.

I locked my bike to the palm I always lock it to, and trudged up the three porch stairs.

It was around ten o'clock by now. Ten, in late April, is just about the time that the freshness of the morning has been all used up, and it starts feeling very hot, and somehow parched in spite of the humidity. The plants have given up the little dribs and veins of moisture they'd hoarded through the night; their leaves begin to curl. Shadows shrink inward like evaporating puddles; collected sun throbs upward from the pavements. I was glad to be going inside.

I opened my front door. A wedge of sunlight slipped in with me, and in its yellow glare I saw a piece of paper on the floor. The paper was around four inches square—a torn-off sheet from a desk pad of some sort. I bent to lift it up. It had three words printed on it. The words were
Stop Right Now.