Choke

by Stuart Woods

  “Then why did you choke at Wimbledon?”

  “That had nothing to do with temperament; it was all about confidence, and at the worst possible moment, I lost my confidence. I didn’t believe I could do it, so I couldn’t.”

  “Well, I guess you’ve had some time to think about it.”

  “Plenty of time.”

  “There’s something else you maybe ought to think about,” Victor said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Staying out of Clare Carras’s pants.”

  Chuck looked at Victor. “You think I’m messing with Clare?”

  “I think you’re screwing her socks off every chance you get, is what I think.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because I can look at you and look at her and tell, that’s why. And if I can figure it out, so can Harry Carras. And I’ll tell you something else, I don’t think he’s the kind of guy to take it well.”

  “What makes you say that?” Chuck asked. “You know something I don’t?”

  Victor shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m a good judge of character.”

  “There’s more to it than that, Victor; you know something you’re not telling me.”

  “I know a lot about a lot of things I’m not telling you, kid, but your personal life is really none of my business, so I’ll keep most of it to myself. Just this one piece of advice: Unless you want to start walking around with your dick in your hip pocket, you’d better watch whose wife you stick it in.”

  “I guess that’s pretty good advice, generally,” Chuck said.

  “It’s good advice, specifically, too,” Victor replied. He looked up. “Well, here come the Sculleys, Tommy and Rosie, my most enthusiastic new students.”

  “How are they doing?” Chuck asked.

  “Remarkably well. I wish all my students caught on so fast.”

  “It must have been their first lesson with me that did it.”

  Victor laughed, got up, and strolled toward his teaching court. He looked back over his shoulder. “Remember my advice, kid,” he called.

  “I’ll remember, Victor,” Chuck called back. For about five seconds, he thought. Just thinking about Clare Carras made him hot. Oh, it would end, he knew that, but not for a while. They were a long way from being through with each other.

  He mopped his face again and headed for his next session. It was Larry, the writer, and he’d have to remember to lose, but not by much.

  11

  Tommy sat at the Raw Bar at Key West Bight and looked out over the little harbor as he munched a conch fritter. Occasionally he tossed the gulls a crumb, and they made a fuss as they went for it. Pelicans sat sleepily on pilings, undisturbed by the gulls, or anything else, for that matter.

  Daryl poured himself some more iced tea. “So who you figure is trying to knock off Carras?” he asked.

  “Before we know who Carras’s enemies are, we have to know who Carras is. You follow?”

  Daryl nodded, chewing his calamari. “I guess that makes sense. You don’t think it’s anybody around here, then?”

  “I only know of one candidate here,” Tommy replied, washing down the fritter with some tea.

  “Who’s that?”

  “The guy who’s screwing Mrs. Carras.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Listen, Daryl, I’m kinda thinking out loud here, you know? This isn’t necessarily serious.”

  “Okay, it’s not serious. Who you thinking about?”

  “Tennis pro down at the Olde Island Racquet Club, name of Chuck Chandler.”

  “Don’t know him,” Daryl said. “How do you know he’s screwing Mrs. Carras?”

  “I just know, Daryl. Trouble is, he’s not the type.”

  “To screw Mrs. Carras?”

  “To commit murder, dummy.”

  “Lots of people who aren’t the type commit murder,” Daryl said.

  “Not really,” Tommy replied. “Murderers who aren’t the type are in the minority. How the hell did you get to be a detective so quick, anyway?”

  “The chief is my uncle,” Daryl replied, without embarrassment. “My mother’s brother.”

  “That explains a lot,” Tommy said.

  “Listen, Tommy, maybe we’re off on a wild goose chase, you know? Maybe nobody tampered with Carras’s car; maybe it was just a defect in the tubing.”

  “Nah,” Tommy said. “I mean, if that was all we had to go on, you might be right. But we’ve got more than that.”

  “What else have we got?”

  “Over there.” Tommy pointed toward the hotel marina across the way.

  “Where?”

  “The boat on the end of the dock; the big one.”

  “Fugitive?”

  “That’s the one. I’ve seen another one just like it.”

  “It’s a Hatteras; lots of them up and down the coast.”

  “The one I saw is on the bottom, the other side of the island.”

  “The one that blew up?”

  “That’s the one. It was just like that one, the Fugitive, that belongs to Harry Carras.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “There was a picture in Carras’s living room of him and his wife aboard it. I could read the name. I wonder if the name means something.”

  “You think Carras is a fugitive?”

  “Of a kind,” Tommy replied. “I suppose he could be a fugitive from the law, but maybe he’s running from something or somebody else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but a guy doesn’t change his name at his age unless he’s running from something.”

  “Ex-wife, maybe? Or even a current wife?”

  “That’s a possibility, but wives, even mean ones, can be handled with lawyers. You don’t have to run from them. Also, Carras obviously ran with some money in his pockets-a lot of money, probably. Look at the way he lives-big house, Mercedes, airplane, yacht. That takes big bucks.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Say you’re Carras, in a previous existence. Your work makes it possible to put your hands on a lot of somebody else’s money.”

  “Why somebody else’s? Why couldn’t it be his?”

  “Because you don’t have to become somebody else to spend your own money, Daryl.”

  “I suppose. Unless there’s a wife breathing down your neck.”

  “Forget the wife for just a minute. So you’re Carras,” Tommy continued, “and you want to take all this money and run, okay? Well, you can’t just write a check and get on a plane. That kind of stealing takes lots of planning. You’ve got to find a way to move the money, hide the money, but still have it accessible. I mean, you don’t just fill up the trunk of your car and drive off into the sunset, paying your way with hundred-dollar bills.”

  “He must deal in cash only,” Daryl said. “According to his credit report, he doesn’t have any credit cards or charge accounts.”

  “True, but he has a checking account at First State. He’s got to feed that from somewhere. I bet he’s got a brokerage account or two, probably in Miami or another city. If he knows about money, it would annoy him to have a lot of cash sitting around earning nothing. He’d want it invested, but where he could get his hands on it.”

  “He probably doesn’t pay any taxes, either,” Daryl said.

  “Good point. Brokerage houses report your earnings to the IRS. Pretty soon, they’d be knocking on his door. He’s been in Key West for seven months, is what he said. That’s probably not long enough for the tax people to catch up with him.”

  “Maybe he plans to move on before they catch up; maybe he plans to change his name again. But,” Daryl said, raising a finger, “if he’s on the run, why does he have all this stuff? House, car, boat, airplane? That’s a pretty big tail to drag around with you, isn’t it?”

  “You’re right about that,” Tommy agreed. “So maybe he’s not planning to decamp again. But let’s get back to the boat. Right after I move down h
ere I’m having dinner at Louie’s Backyard on my wife’s birthday, and the big yacht goes up in flames.”

  “But it wasn’t Carras’s yacht,” Daryl pointed out.

  “But one just like it.”

  “Ooooh, now I’m getting it,” Daryl said. “Whoever is trying to punch Carras’s ticket mistakes the other yacht for his and blows it up.”

  “Now you’re following me.” The waitress brought the check. Tommy left some money on the table and beckoned Daryl to follow him. They walked out of the restaurant and down to the water’s edge.

  Daryl spoke up. “Doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “If you’re Carras and you’re running from somebody and then a yacht just like yours goes up in smoke, and somebody sabotages your Mercedes, wouldn’t you notice? I mean, we couldn’t have been bringing him much in the way of news when we told him about the fuel line. Wouldn’t all this mean that whoever is looking for Carras has found him and is trying to do him in? So wouldn’t Carras be running? ‘Course, I’m just thinking out loud here, Tommy.”

  Tommy looked at him sharply. “Don’t be a smartass, kid.”

  “Okay, straighten me out, Tommy. Make it all make sense.”

  “I think I’m back to the wife’s lover,” Tommy said. “That, Carras wouldn’t know about, so he wouldn’t have any reason to run.”

  “Okay, I’ll buy that, but all we’ve got for a lover is the tennis pro, and you say he isn’t the type.”

  “Yeah, and there’s another problem,” Tommy said. “When the yacht blew up, Carras and his wife were having dinner with the tennis pro. I saw them together. So it wouldn’t make much sense for the pro to blow up the yacht while he was having dinner with his victim. He’d expect the victim to be aboard, and maybe Mrs. Carras, too. Also, I don’t think the tennis pro had been in town long enough to get that involved with Carras’s wife at that time. I’ll have to check on that.”

  They stopped beside a pretty little motor yacht tied up alongside. “That’s nice, huh?” Tommy said, indicating the boat. “Choke, she’s called. I wonder why?”

  “That’s pretty nice, too,” Daryl said under his breath, nodding toward a girl in a bikini sunning herself on the next boat.

  “We’re talking business here, Daryl,” Tommy said. “Concentrate!”

  “I’m concentrating,” Daryl said. “We’re back to square one. We’ve got nothing to tell us who Carras is; we’ve got nothing on him; we’ve got nothing on the tennis pro, except your intuition. In short, we’ve got nothing.”

  “Great oaks from small acorns grow,” Tommy said grumpily.

  “Takes a long time, though,” Daryl replied.

  “Everything is still too confused to make any sense of all this,” Tommy said, sighing. “There’s a thread here somewhere, but I’m missing it. It’ll come together, though, you wait and see.”

  “Have I got a choice?” Daryl asked.

  12

  Tommy looked at his wife in the car seat next to him. “Tell me again how this invitation happened,” he said.

  “I already told you, Tommy,” she replied, sounding exasperated.

  “No, I mean exactly how it came up. It’s important, Sweets.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I was in the pro shop looking at some new tennis shoes, and this Clare Carras struck up a conversation. She was nice, I guess, and I kind of liked her. Later, as she and her husband were leaving the court, she came over and asked if you and I would like to do some snorkeling on Monday and have lunch on their boat.”

  “How did she know that Monday was my day off?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t know that she did; she just asked. Why is all this so important?”

  “Come on, babe, you remember that we saw them at Louie’s the night of the yacht explosion, right? And I mentioned that I thought there was something funny about him? That he might be connected?”

  “Yeah, I remember that.”

  “Well, I don’t think the guy is who he says he is. I’ve done some checking on him, and things just don’t add up.”

  “Then I would have thought you would welcome the chance to get to know him better,” Rosie said, “instead of giving me a hard time about accepting the invitation.”

  “I didn’t mean to give you a hard time, babe, really I didn’t, and you’re right-I do want to get to know him better. Matter of fact, I’d be real happy if you’d try to get to know her better, find out something about her background. By the way, is anybody else coming?”

  “She didn’t say; I assumed just the four of us.”

  “Weird,” Tommy said. “If Carras is somebody else, you’d think he’d want to stay as far away as possible from a cop.”

  “So, maybe he’s who he says he is.”

  “If he is, then he’s paid cash for everything he ever bought since high school,” Tommy said, “and you can’t get any weirder than that.”

  The Carrases were waiting for them aboard Fugitive, and so were the two tennis pros, Chuck and Victor. Rosie started to introduce Tommy to Carras, but Carras threw up a hand. “We’ve already met,” he said. “It’s Tommy, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Tommy replied.

  “And I’m Harry,” he said. “Well, shall we get under way?” He ran up the steps to the bridge, cranked the engines, and expertly backed the sixty-footer out of her berth, then headed for the entrance to Key West Bight.

  Clare produced Bloody Marys for everybody, and they took seats on the broad afterdeck and sipped their drinks, chatting idly and enjoying the winter sun.

  They had traveled perhaps ten miles when Tommy noticed smoke coming out of a ventilator. He stood up and shouted, “Hey, Harry! You got a problem down here.”

  Harry stopped the engines and looked over the railing at Tommy. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Looks like smoke coming from down below,” Tommy called back.

  Harry came down to the deck, looking worried. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about the mechanics of this vessel,” he said.

  Chuck spoke up. “Looks like exhaust to me, Harry. Have you got a tool kit aboard? I’ll be glad to take a look at it.”

  “Sure, Chuck, right under the seat, there, in the locker.”

  “Let her drift for a few minutes, and turn on your blower. We’ll give it a chance to clear out down there.”

  Harry followed Chuck’s instructions, and after a few minutes, Chuck went belowdecks.

  “Gosh, I hope it isn’t serious,” Clare said. “I’ve been looking forward to getting out on the water.”

  “Chuck sounds like he knows what he’s doing,” Tommy said.

  Shortly Chuck came back on deck. “Harry, nothing to worry about, just your exhaust tubing for the starboard engine came loose from the overboard vent. I put it back on and put a second hose clip on real tight. You shouldn’t have any further problems.”

  Harry placed a hand on his heart. “Thanks so much, Chuck; I thought I’d burned up an engine or something.” He turned back to the controls, started the engines, and they were immediately under way again.

  They layed anchor off Sand Key, on the reef, and finished their second round of Bloody Marys.

  “Anybody for a dive?” Harry asked.

  “Sure,” Chuck said. “I brought my gear, and I see you have a compressor down below. I was working right next to it.”

  “I sure do; I hate lugging tanks back and forth from the dive shop. It’s much more convenient to be able to fill them myself aboard. Tommy, do you and Rosie dive?”

  “Nope,” Tommy said. “We’ll stick to snorkeling.”

  Equipment was produced. The Carrases, Chuck, and Victor got into their diving gear and set off along the reef. Tommy and Rosie donned masks and snorkeled lazily along in their wake.

  Rosie was in the galley with Clare, putting together lunch. “So, Clare,” she said, “how long you been in Key West?”

  “Just a few months,” Clare replied.

  “Where do you
come from?”

  “New York. Harry was in business there, and when he decided to retire, we came south.”

  “We’re from New York, too,” Rosie said. “What part of town did you live in?”

  “The Upper East Side,” Clare replied. “Park Avenue.”

  “We were in Brooklyn Heights,” Rosie said. “We’ve put our house on the market, and I think we’ve got somebody interested.”

  “It’s nice in Brooklyn Heights,” Clare said. “We used to go to the River Cafe. You and Tommy have any kids?”

  “A boy, Tommy Junior. He graduated from NYU last spring. How about you?”

  “No, Harry and I have only been married for a little over a year, and at his age, he’s not too interested in kids. To tell the truth, neither am I, much. We have an awfully good life the way we are.”

  “I see your point. How’d you and Harry meet?”

  Driving home, Tommy grilled Rosie about her conversation with Clare. “Is that it?” he asked. “I already knew all that part of their story.”

  “That’s it, Tommy; I guess I’m not too good at the third degree.”

  “Don’t you believe it, babe; you’ve grilled me often enough.”

  “Well, I asked her all the girl questions, and that’s all she told me. It didn’t seem to me like she was hiding anything.”

  Tommy shook his head. “Those two have one hell of a lot to hide. And believe me, before I’m done, I’m going to know it all.”

  “Tommy, when you own a boat that big, aren’t you supposed to have some help on it? I mean, I made the tunafish. That girl doesn’t have a clue about food.”

  “Maybe they like to do for themselves.”

  “Or have their guests do for them,” Rosie said grumpily.

  13

  Clare Carras looked across at her companion. They were sitting, naked, in the back seat of the Mercedes in a grove of trees on Stock Island, near the huge lump of garbage the locals called Mount Trashmore, and they had just made love. “We’re going to have to cool it for a while,” she said.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “This cop, Tommy Sculley, has been too much in evidence the past week or so-on our diving trip, for instance. It was Harry’s idea to invite him and his wife.”