Loitering With Intent

by Stuart Woods

  “Still, the other check sounds like a big one, if they’ve got nineteen factories around the world.”

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  “I didn’t ask, but I guess so.”

  “You didn’t read the documents?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Read them; I’d like to know what we’re dealing with.”

  Stone opened the envelope and flipped through the pages.

  “Well, the tone is a little Dickensian— I guess that’s what you get when you’re dealing with his great-great-grandfather’s will.” Stone stopped flipping. “Holy shit,” he said.

  “That much?”

  “That much. It would be a breach of attorney-client confi dential ity to tell you how much, but I think you’d be impressed.”

  “This is getting easier and easier. Where are we staying?”

  “Good question.” Stone got out his cell phone and called his twenty-four-hour-a-day travel agent. He explained himself and waited for a moment. “Sounds good,” he said. “A week, I guess. What’s the address?” He jotted some notes, thanked the woman on the line and hung up.

  “Find something?”

  “Place called the Marquesa. It sounds comfortable, and it has a good restaurant, too.”

  “All I’m eating is shrimp and conch.”

  “Conch? That spiral shell thing you find on the beach?”

  “Something lives inside that shell thing, and there are lots of ways to cook it, and it’s really, really good.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Native-born Key Westers call themselves Conchs, too.”

  “You’re a mine of information, Dino; what else do you know about Key West?”

  “They have nice sunsets, and you can see the Green Flash, if you’ve had enough margaritas.”

  “I can do that,” Stone said.

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  STON E W O K E A N D looked out his bedroom window. The gardens inside the U-shaped row of Turtle Bay Townhouses sat, resplendent, under six inches of fresh snow, made glaring by bright sunshine. He picked up the phone and called Jet Aviation, at Teterboro Airport, in New Jersey.

  “I’d like my inboard and outboard caps topped off with JetA with Prist and the airplane deiced,” he said. He received an affi rmative answer, then went to his computer and created two fl ight plans, one for each leg, for the trip south, then called Flight Services for a weather forecast, which was highly favorable, even sporting a tailwind, unusual when flying north to south. The downstairs doorbell rang on the telephone system, and Stone picked up the phone. “Dino?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You have a key, use it.”

  “I didn’t want to come in unannounced and interrupt something.”

  “Fat chance,” Stone said. “Put your bags in the car. I’ll get a 11

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  shower and meet you in the kitchen. Tell Helene what you want for breakfast.”

  Twenty minutes later, Stone stowed his bags in the car with Dino’s, then joined him in the kitchen.

  “I made you eggs and bacon,” Helene said, as he took a seat.

  “You’re psychic,” Stone said, sipping his freshly squeezed orange juice.

  “How long a flight?” Dino asked.

  “We have a bit of a tailwind, so around five hours, plus one fuel stop in South Carolina,” Stone said, gazing out the window.

  “I can stand that, I guess. You’re looking at Tatiana’s house.”

  “I wasn’t looking at anything in particular,” Stone lied, “just out the window.”

  TH E Y A R R I V E D AT Teterboro Airport to find the airplane refueled and the deicing nearly complete. Stone stowed their golf clubs and tennis rackets in the forward luggage compartment and their bags in the rear. After a thorough preflight inspection and a call to Clearance Delivery, they taxied to runway 1 and were cleared for takeoff.

  The departure controller turned them south and gradually gave them higher altitudes, but not until they were handed off to New York Center did they receive their final clearance to their chosen altitude, flight level 260, or 26,000 feet. Stone leveled off, adjusted the throttle and switched on the XM Satellite Radio. Dino was already doing the Times crossword puzzle, and Stone started on the front page.

  “I hope you made a copy of the crossword,” Dino said, scribbling away.

  “If I hadn’t, I would have already strangled you and dumped your body over Virginia.”

  Stone had fi nished reading the Times when they started their 1 2

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  descent into their refueling point, a small airfield at Monks Corner, South Carolina, which offered fuel prices a couple of bucks less than nearby Charleston.

  Half an hour later they were climbing back to altitude, and two hours after that they were crossing the south coast of Florida at last over open water. Key West lay, invisible, another hundred miles south. Dino was squirming in his seat.

  “I’ve never flown over open water,” Dino said.

  “The life raft is on the seat behind me,” Stone said, “and the life jackets are in a blue zipper bag right behind my seat. In the event of an unscheduled landing, you put on a life jacket, strap yourself into a rear seat, and when the airplane has stopped moving, open only the top half of the door. We’ll float for a while, but if you open the bottom half, the Atlantic Ocean will join us inside immediately. You wrap the rope attached to the raft firmly around your wrist and hand, push the raft out the top of the door and jerk the cord hard. The raft will inflate. You hold it there until I can get out, then you pull the tab that inflates your life jacket and join me in the raft. I’ll bring along the handheld radio and the beacon that broadcasts our position to the Coast Guard via satellite.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we wait for the Coast Guard to show up, remove us from the life raft, give us a cup of coffee and take us to a convenient land location.

  “How long do we wait?”

  “A few hours, maybe less.”

  “A few hours in a tiny life raft with you is all I need to complete my day.”

  “It’s a character-building experience.”

  “And then?”

  “We make our way to Key West by available transportation, and my insurance company buys me a new airplane. Feel better now?”

  “And I lose all my stuff?”

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  “No, your household insurance reimburses you for your clothes and buys you a new set of golf clubs and tennis racket.”

  “You make it all sound so attractive,” Dino said.

  “Don’t worry, it will scare the shit out of you,” Stone replied. FIR S T, THE Y S AW some small islands to their left. Dino looked at the chart. “The Keys don’t run north-south,” he said.

  “You’re very observant. They run

  northeast-southwest, and

  toward the end more west. Look.” He pointed out the window as an island swam into view through the haze. Key West Approach had them down to 1600 feet now.

  “N123TF, Key West Approach, report Key West Airport in sight.”

  Stone looked to his left and saw an airplane take off in the distance. “N123TF, airport in sight.”

  “Fly direct Key West VOR, then enter a left downwind for runway niner. Contact Key West Tower on 118.2. Have a good day.”

  “Thanks, and good day,” Stone replied, then switched frequencies. “Key West Tower, N123TF at the VOR, left downwind for niner.”

  “N123TF, Key West Tower, cleared to land.”

  Stone pointed as they approached the island. “We can see everything from here.” The island was laid out before them, every inch of it. “You been here before?”

  “Once, a weekend with the ex. You?”

  “My fi rst time.”

  Stone turned final at 500 feet and lined up on the runway. He made a smooth landing, and Ground Control directed him to parking
.

  They unloaded their gear, left refueling instructions and picked up their rent-a-car. Twenty minutes later they were parking in front of the Marquesa.

  “Looks like somebody’s house,” Dino said.

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  But after they had checked in and followed a bellman out a rear door, they found themselves in a large courtyard with two pools, surrounded by small cottages. Stone and Dino were shown to a pair of them connected by a front porch, and were soon sitting on the porch in rockers sipping something tropical with a little umbrella in it, ogling some girls in the pool at their feet.

  “So,” said Dino, “when do we start looking for this kid, Evan Keating?”

  “What’s your hurry?” Stone murmured, sipping his drink and watching the girls. “Tomorrow is soon enough.”

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  TO R E A C H T H E restaurant, Stone and Dino walked out the front entrance of the hotel and to the street corner, to the front door of the dining room. It was a tastefully decorated space, with a bar to the left and a dozen or fifteen tables to the right. An attractive blonde greeted them.

  “You must be Mr. Barrington and Mr. Bacchetti,” she said,

  “according to my list.”

  “That’s us,” Stone replied. “And we have another gentleman joining us.”

  “I’m Janet,” she said. “Right this way.” She seated them at a corner table and left menus. A waiter materialized, greeted them and asked for their drinks order.

  “I don’t suppose you have Knob Creek bourbon,” Stone said resignedly.

  “You may suppose we do,” the waiter replied. “We have another customer who forced us to order it.”

  “On the rocks, please.”

  Dino ordered his Scotch.

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  The restaurant was filling up rapidly; even all the bar stools were taken. “Busy place,” Stone said.

  “The food must be good,” Dino replied. “Hey, here’s Tommy!”

  He stood up to greet their old acquaintance as he entered the restaurant, and so did Stone. Shortly, Tommy had a margarita before him.

  “You’re drinking that tropical swill?” Dino asked.

  “After a while down here, it gets to be unpatriotic if you don’t,”

  Tommy replied.

  “How’s retirement treating you, Tommy?” Stone asked.

  “Who’s retired? A week after I hit town, I was a detective again.”

  “Working homicide?”

  “Are you kidding? You’re in Paradise; we get like one homicide a year, if we’re lucky, and it’s nearly always perfectly clear who the killer is. He’s usually standing there, holding a gun or a claw hammer in his hand, when we walk in. The only problem is getting him not to talk too fast while we’re taking his statement.”

  “What keeps you busy, then?” Dino asked.

  “Drug stuff, burglaries, mostly small-time. We get a lot of drifters down here, especially in the winter. They at least know they’re not going to freeze to death, and they can steal enough to eat. We get the usual domestic stuff, too, only more of it is gay than in New York.”

  “What’s the job like?”

  “Pretty interesting. The first thing I had to do was to train my partner, a kid named Daryl, whose acne had not yet cleared up. He was the chief’s nephew at the time.”

  “Sounds like a drag.”

  “No, he was quick to learn, and he’s turned into a pretty good detective. His uncle is gone now, and so is the guy who replaced him. Last week, the chief and two captains resigned over a scandal.”

  “What kind of scandal?”

  “Fixing parking tickets, harassing gay guys on bicycles, hiring girlfriends as secretaries and fucking them in the supply room, 17

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  drinking on the job, you name it. Nothing big, just a lot of continuous horseshit. I’m currently acting chief of detectives—all six of them. They offered me the chief’s job, but I’m too old for the politics and the PR horseshit.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Dino said. “I’m running the squad at the Nineteenth, and that’s almost more politics than I can stand.”

  “What’s the most interesting case you’ve worked down here, Tommy?” Stone asked.

  “Oh, that’s an easy one,” Tommy laughed. “We had a big drugs, murder, sex thing right after I signed on that involved some prominent locals, among them the local tennis pro. You remember a player named Chuck Chandler?”

  “The guy who choked in the Wimbledon final some years back?”

  “That’s the guy. The sports pages called it the Chuck Choke, and it stuck.”

  “I hope he didn’t murder anybody.”

  “Nah, he was pretty much the dope in the thing. There was one very hot babe mixed up in it, though. She’s doing time right now, ought to be out soon.”

  “What’s it like living here?” Stone asked.

  “Beautiful in the winter, spring and fall; hot as hell in the summer, but no worse than New York. At least we get the breeze. You like boats?”

  “Sure, who doesn’t?”

  “I’ll take you out for some snorkeling,” Tommy said. “Snorkeling and a few drinks. We got a very nice little yacht club here, and I’ll take you there for dinner. Tomorrow night?”

  “Sure,” Stone and Dino said simultaneously.

  “So,” Tommy said, “what brings you guys down here?”

  “It’s winter, isn’t it?” Dino answered.

  “I’m running a legal errand,” Stone said. “I’ve got to fi nd a guy and get him to sign some papers.”

  “Anybody I know?”

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  “I doubt it. Kid hates his father, but the old man needs his signature on some papers to sell the family business. Means a lot of bucks for the whole family, the kid, too, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble to persuade him.” Stone showed Tommy the old photo of Evan. Tommy looked at it and screwed his face up. “What’s his name?”

  “Evan Keating,” Stone replied. “Know him?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Tommy replied. “I busted him in a drug case yesterday, but it ain’t going to stick.”

  “Do you know where I can fi nd him?”

  Tommy motioned his chin in the direction of the bar. “Right over there, third stool from the left.”

  Stone looked toward the bar. The man’s back was mostly to him, but he could catch a little profile. He was heavier than in his college photo and had longer hair, and he was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a flowered shirt, with the tail out, Hawaiian-style. He was talking to a beautiful girl on the next bar stool, with long, honeycolored hair, dressed in tight jeans and a leather jacket.

  “Excuse me a minute,” Stone said, rising and walking toward the bar. He walked up to the two people, who turned and looked at him. Evan Keating had a thin, straight nose and bright blue eyes.

  “Mr. Keating?” Stone said. “I’m sorry to intrude, but I just wanted to introduce myself.” He handed the young man his card. “My name is Stone Barrington, and I’ve been sent by my law firm to Key West to deliver some documents for your signature.”

  “You must think I’m somebody else,” Keating said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m aware of that, Mr. Keating, but we could get together for a few minutes tomorrow morning. I’m sure you will find our conversation greatly to your advantage.”

  Keating regarded him evenly for a moment without speaking, then he said, “Why don’t we step outside for a moment and discuss this?”

  “Of course,” Stone replied.

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  Keating got up and led the way out, while Stone followed. Outside on the sidewalk a bench had been placed as a waiting area for the restaurant, and Keating motioned Stone to sit down. Stone sat down next to Keat
ing, his back to the restaurant door.

  “I know this will come as a surprise to you, but my law fi rm represents Elijah Keating’s Sons, and …”

  Something struck the back of Stone’s neck, and the night exploded in stars.

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  STON E S WA M B A C K into consciousness, opened his eyes, then closed them again. Some sort of bright light had blinded him. A cool hand was resting on his forehead.

  “Mr. Barrington?” a woman’s low voice said.

  “What?” Stone replied. He tried to open his eyes again but it didn’t work.

  “Can you look at me, please?”

  “It’s too bright,” Stone said. Immediately, the brightness disappeared.

  “Is that better?”

  “Okay, yes.”

  “Can you open your eyes now?”

  Stone opened his eyes and found his vision filled with the face of a woman. “What happened?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” she replied.

  Dino’s face replaced the woman’s, and Tommy Sculley was right behind him. “We found you face down on the sidewalk,” he said.

  “I liked the other face better,” Stone said and tried to sit up straighter.

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  “Let’s get him up on the bench,” the woman said, and hands gripped his arms and helped him upward.

  “What happened to you, Stone?” Dino asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” Stone said irritably. “I was unconscious, wasn’t I?”

  “Yeah, that was kind of the point,” Dino said. “Do you have any idea how you got that way?”

  “Well, I was sitting at a table with you and Tommy, having a drink, and then I woke up here.”

  “Nothing in between?” Dino asked.

  “I’ve got a headache,” Stone said, rubbing the back of his neck and fi nding it sore.

  The woman spoke again. “He should really be in a hospital,” she said.

  “I don’t need to go to a hospital,” Stone retorted. “I need some aspirin and a drink.”

  She explored the back of his head and his neck with her fi ngers, and he winced when she got to his neck. “Seems like a blow to the back of the neck, rather than his head, so I think we can discount a skull fracture or a concussion.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Stone grumbled. “And where’s that drink?”