Ben and I didn't look that much alike, but we had the same coloring and hairline. It was good enough to fool anybody who didn't look too closely. I also had a credit card in Ben's name. I'd promised I would repay him for any charges.
I bought the bus ticket with the credit card. If anyone was curious, or anything showed up on somebody's computer, it would show that Ben had bought a one-way ticket to Key West, and paid for it with his credit card. That would dovetail with any use I had to make of the card while in the Keys. I was probably being too cautious, but, as the old saying goes, even paranoiacs have enemies.
I kept the credit card, ID, and two thousand dollars in twenties and hundreds in a money belt under my shirt. I'd get by on cash in Key West, but I had the credit card if I got into a pinch. My backpack also held toiletries and a couple of changes of clothes.
My bus was called, and I grabbed a seat toward the rear. There were only a few other passengers, and we started the five-hour trek south. We picked up several people at Homestead, mostly Hispanics who daily commuted to work in the Keys. At Florida City, the last stop on the mainland, more passengers crowded onto the bus. There were not enough seats and some stood in the aisle.
The Keys had become the playground of the wealthy. The people who cleaned the hotels and mansions and worked on the roads could no longer afford to live there. They'd found affordable housing in Florida City and Homestead, and would make the daily trip by Greyhound to their jobs in the Keys. Now, even those mainland towns were in danger of being overrun by the middle class who had been displaced from the Keys. Soon, there would be no place for the workers to live. There were no solutions in the works. One day the rich people would wake up and figure out that they either had to do the work themselves or move back to wherever they came from. Most would leave, and maybe the Keys would get back to what they used to be; funky islands peopled by oddballs who appreciated the paradise they'd been bequeathed.
U.S. 1 is known as the Overseas Highway as it makes its way from island to island. It was built over the bed of the railroad that was washed away in the great hurricane of 1935. Some of the ancient bridges still supported the road, but much of it was now bottomed on new structures spanning the water between the keys.
I watched the ever-changing colors in the seas surrounding us. It went from turquoise over sand bottoms to brown coral heads to blue in the deeper holes. It was magnificent, but like much of the world's greatest scenery, it finally becomes boring. Perhaps we can only drink in so much beauty before it all pales into mediocrity. The human condition. Even great beauty finally bores us.
A few of the domestic workers got off at each stop, and by the time we arrived in Marathon, about halfway to Key West, the bus was virtually empty. We took a rest break, and I went inside the tiny terminal to use the bathroom. When I came out, there was a large group of senior citizens milling about in the parking lot, waiting to board the bus.
I retook my seat, and the driver told the new passengers to board. A wizened old gentleman sat next to me, stuck out his hand, and said, "I'm Austin Dwyer."
I took his hand. "Ben Joyce," I said.
"Headed for Key West?"
"Yes."
"Vacation?"
"Looking for work."
"I'm on vacation," said Dwyer. "A whole bunch of us from Connecticut are seeing Florida. Our tour bus broke down, and they put us on this one to Key West. We'll have another bus waiting for us down there."
"Hope it works out," I said, thinking that I had to end this conversation.
"Where're you staying down there?
"Don't know. I'll get a room somewhere."
"What kind of work do you do?"
"I work the fishing boats."
"Well, good luck," he said and turned to talk to the lady sitting across the aisle from him.
I lay my head on a pillow against the window and pretended to sleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Key West is a big coral rock that hosts a small city. The place is a state of mind as much as a geographical location, and it's undergoing drastic change. The old stores along Duval Street have given way to T-shirt shops that are now being replaced by major chain stores usually found in shopping malls. The town is schizoid, the residents resenting the tourists, but unable to survive without them. Stasis is never attained, balance never found. Change is constant, turmoil a part of daily life.
Cruise ships dock daily, disgorging midwestern tourists in guyabara shirts and Bermuda shorts. They fill the bars, especially the ones made famous by Ernest Hemingway, and leave before dark to take their ship to the next island destination. Then the locals and the tourists who fill the hotels and bed and breakfast establishments come out to take their places at the bars. Key West never sleeps.
It's a small island, about a mile wide and four miles or so long. It covers a little over eight thousand acres and houses twenty-five thousand locals, who like to call themselves Conchs.
Its history is full of robber barons, pirates, thieves, wreckers, sailors, and whores. Bad people doing bad things made fortunes in every decade. In the eighties it was the drug runners based here at the end of the country, and many of the bad guys who were lured here stayed.
The Greyhound station in Key West is on the south side of the island near the airport, about as far away from the downtown section as you can get. It was going to be a long hike. I couldn't afford to be seen in a cab. A guy looking for work on the fishing boats wouldn't have the cab fare.
The elderly crowd exited the bus and began to fill up vans with the Hyatt Hotel logo on the doors. I'd started my walk toward town when one of the vans pulled up beside me. Austin Dwyer stuck his head out of the window and said, "Ben, you going downtown?"
I nodded my head.
"Get in. We're going to the Hyatt."
It beat walking. I got in. The conversation was mostly about what they were going to do over the next few days in Key West. When we pulled into the Hyatt, I thanked the driver and Austin, hiked my backpack onto my shoulders and started up Duval Street.
I went several blocks and turned onto a side street near the Garrison Bight. I entered a neighborhood that hadn't yet seen urban renewal. The houses were old and dilapidated, and they wouldn't last long. The guys with the money would tear them down and build monuments to themselves and their successes. They'd spend a few weeks each winter in their new acquisitions and have the maids take care of it the rest of the year.
I found the house I was looking for. One of Cracker's fisherman friends from Cortez told him about this rooming house where nobody got too nosey. It was bigger than the others in the block, but just as unprepossessing. It had once been painted white, but most of that had peeled off, leaving bare clapboard. There was a large porch running along the front of the house, with a few rocking chairs placed haphazardly. They were all empty.
A screen door with rusty hinges guarded the entrance. I opened it and went in. In what had been the entrance hall in better days, there was a desk piled high with newspapers. A bulletin board took up space along one wall. It had newspaper clippings pinned to it, that I realized were help wanted ads from the local mullet wrapper. Nobody was in evidence, but a little round bell with a plunger on top sat on the desk. I hit the plunger, and in a minute a stooped elderly woman came out of the back, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
"Help you?" she said.
"I need a room."
"How long?"
"I don't know. Can I get it from day to day?"
"Yeah, but you got to let me know by ten every morning if you're planning to stay another day."
"That's fair. How much?"
"Thirty a day. Share a bathroom."
"Okay." I pulled two twenties from my pocket and set them on the desk.
"Got to register," she said. "City ordinance." She handed me a registration card and ten wrinkled one-dollar bills in change.
I filled it out with Ben Joyce's name. "I don't have an address," I said, putting the pen down.
"Where did you come from?"
"Tampa."
"Put your last address in there. That'll do."
I made up a street address and wrote it on the card.
The old woman gave me a key. "Up the stairs, second door on your right, room eight."
I went to the room and called Logan to tell him where I was.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Sharkstooth Bar was without atmosphere. It was a dim and dirty place where hard men came to drink themselves into oblivion. They came here early, chased by the demons that infested their lives, bringing body odor and a monumental thirst. They sat quietly, drinking their poison of choice, occasionally acknowledging each other with a joke or an observation. This was the bar from which the call to Jeff had originated the day before.
The place was small. A chipped and scarred bar of some indeterminate wood took up one side of the room. A few tables were scattered about a concrete floor. A single pool table sat across from the bar. Two men were playing a desultory game, drinking from green bottles of beer, not talking. A forlorn neon sign advertising a brand of beer I'd never heard of sputtered over the lone window, its dirty panes diffusing the light from outside. A few dim light fixtures hanging from the ceiling created a brownish glow in the room. The smell of dead fish wafted in from the nearby commercial docks.
I saw the pay phone in the corner, under a sign advertising the unisex restroom. I reached into the pocket of my cargo shorts and fingered the cell phone button that I had programmed to ring with the number on Jeff's caller ID. The pay phone rang once, and I fingered the off button. A couple of heads turned expectantly toward the phone, but returned to their drinks when it didn't ring again. Right phone, right bar.
In addition to my cargo shorts, I was wearing an old T-shirt with the faded logo of the Tampa Bay Bucs on the front. Reeboks, no socks. I sat at the bar and ordered a Miller Lite from the ancient bartender. He had a shaggy head of gray hair, bloodshot eyes, and a face so wrinkled it was hard to make out its features. He didn't say a word.
I sat quietly, nursing my beer. The customers ignored me, no one acknowledging my presence, not even the bartender. When my beer was gone, I held up the bottle and wagged it at him. He bent to the cooler and brought me another one.
"Barkeep," I said. "I'm looking for a woman who was here yesterday."
"Can't help you." he said.
I put the pictures of Peggy and Laura on the bar next to a twenty dollar bill. "Just take a look," I said.
He bent over the photos. His gnarled hand, quick as a snake, grabbed the twenty and transferred it to his pocket.
"Nope," he said. "Never saw either one of them."
I put another twenty on the bar. "Would you be kind enough to show the pictures to your customers?"
The gnarled hand made another quick swipe and the bill disappeared. He nodded his head and picked up the photos. I watched him walk the length of the bar, showing the pictures. Heads shook in the negative.
The bartender shuffled over to the pool table and held out the pictures to die two men. One of them, a big man about thirty years old, with blond hair, craggy face, and skin ruined by the sun looked over at me, locked eyes, and then looked away, shaking his head.
The bartender brought the pictures back to me. "Nobody saw them. I ain't surprised."
"Why aren't you surprised?"
"Mister, this is the kind of place where everybody takes care of his own business and don't pay no attention to anybody else's troubles. If a woman had been here, either somebody would have noticed and remembered or just not give a shit, if you know what I mean."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Do you remember or just not give a shit?" I put another twenty on the bar.
The old man stared at the bill for a moment, as if making up his mind about something important. He wanted the money, but he wasn't sure what or how much he should tell me.
Finally he said, "Who are they?"
"They're my wife and daughter." The lie slid easily from my mouth.
"I used to have a wife and a daughter," he said. Something passed over his face, maybe an emotion, maybe sadness. "They left me twenty years ago. Never heard from them again."
"I'm sorry. That's tough."
"The young one was here yesterday," he said, pointing to Peggy's picture, still lying on the bar. "She came in here late in the morning, started to make a phone call, and ran out the back door when some guys came in the front door. They went after her."
"Did you know the men who came after her?"
"No. Never saw them before."
"I appreciate the help."
He took the twenty and moved to the other end of the bar.
I finished my beer, thinking about what little I had found out. Peggy had been here, and that meant she was in Key West. But, who was after her, and why? Not much to go on, but it was more than I had when I got here.
I had to assume that the men chasing her had caught her. I didn't know what that meant. Was she okay? No. Not if grown men were chasing her through a grungy bar. Maybe she'd escaped from whomever was after her, and had come to the nearest place with a phone. Tried to call her dad, but the men showed up before she could complete the connection. I'd have to try some other places in the area, see if she had been seen by anyone else.
I left money on the bar for the beer and started for the front door. One of the pool players was blocking my way. It was the big man who'd locked eyes with me before. His feet were planted firmly on the floor, spread slightly in the stance a man often assumes when he's about to knock the crap out of you. He had about four inches and fifty pounds on me. This wasn't shaping up as one of my better days.
I walked toward him, thinking he might move out of my way. He didn't. I stopped about a foot in front of him, and said, "Excuse me."
He looked mildly surprised. "Who the fuck are you?" His voice was a deep rumble tinged with the accents of the Everglades, southern, but not quite.
"Just a guy looking for his family," I said.
"I don't believe you."
"I'm sorry, but that's who I am."
I saw it in his eyes first, before his hands moved. I was a little slow as the punch came toward my face. I ducked, but not quickly enough. His fist had been heading for my jaw, but it caught me in the head, just above my left ear.
I staggered back on my right foot, stunned slightly from the blow. He was still in his flat-footed stance, but was shaking his big right paw. My head was harder than his knuckles, and I thought he'd probably busted one or two.
When I was in high school, I was trying to become a punter on the football team. This seemed to be a safer job than running with the ball and having bigger boys tackle me. The coach soon decided I was hopeless, but he tried to teach me the rudiments of kicking.
"Follow through, Royal," he'd say. "Kick the damn ball to the moon."
A nanosecond had passed since the big guy swung on me. I took aim with my right foot and kicked his family jewels to the moon. The coach would have been proud of my follow through. It raised my attacker onto his toes.
A scream escaped the big man's lips, and his face turned blood red, the pain starting to erode his features. Both hands went to his crotch, bending him forward. I turned 360 degrees, pivoting on my left foot, and brought the right foot in a soccer-style kick to his left kidney. This straightened him up some, and I ducked my head and butted him in the face.
As I backed off, I could see blood and mucus flowing from his busted nose. He fell to the floor moaning, writhing in pain. I started to kick him again, but as suddenly as it had appeared, the blood lust that had saturated my brain ebbed.
I stood there, breathing through my mouth. The whole thing had only taken a couple of seconds. I looked up to see three men coming my way. One had a pool cue held like a bat. He was lanky with roped muscles running up his arms. His unwashed hair hung to his shoulders. A scar ran from his nose back to his right ear.
I pulled the pistol
out of my pocket and pointed it at them. "The guy with the cue will go first."
They stopped dead in their tracks. They were bullies and weren't used to someone else having the upper hand. They didn't know what to do. I thought I'd help them out a little. "Get on the floor, on your stomachs," I said, motioning with the pistol.
The man with the cue stick dropped it and sank to his knees and then onto his stomach. The other two followed suit.
"Who are you guys?" I asked, quietly, putting an edge to my voice.
The bar was dead silent, the bartender standing still, his hands on the bar. The two men remaining on their stools sat like statues, not moving, not even blinking. They wanted no part of this fight.
The big guy moaned and rolled over on his side. No one spoke.
"I'm going to shoot you one at a time until somebody talks," I said, and pointed the pistol at the one who'd brandished the pool cue.
"Wait," he said. "We didn't mean no harm."
I laughed. "Okay, do these jerks know who your next of kin is? Where to send your body?"
"Don't shoot," he said, his voice shaky, pleading now.
I aimed the pistol at his head. "What do you know about the woman who was here yesterday?"
"Not much. I just know the guys who were after her."
"Names."
"Charlie Calhoun and Crill somebody. I don't know his last name."
"Where can I find them?"
"I don't know. They sometimes hang out at the Mango Bar. That's all I know. Honest."
"Why in the hell did you attack me then?"
"Big Rick," he said pointing to the prostrate man who'd swung on me. "He said we could probably make a couple of bucks if we took you down and gave you to Charlie and Crill."
"Brilliant plan. Next time I see you assholes, I'll shoot you. Understand?"
"Yessir," they all said together.
The world is full of people who live their lives in a miasmal world of pure meanness. They prey upon the weak and don't know how to react when confronted by someone stronger. They figuratively adopt the canine surrender posture, rolling onto their backs, feet up, showing their vulnerability to the aggressor. They have no sense of shame in their behavior, because they see themselves as part of a pecking order. The strong devour the weak. Some days they're the stronger, and some days they're the weaker. It all works out.
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