Bone Key

by Les Standiford

  “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to skip dessert, just go home and get some rest.”

  Stone followed his gaze toward the waiting limo. “Of course,” he said. He lifted his fingers to his lips and issued a whistle worthy of a Park Avenue doorman. In seconds Deal heard the sound of the limo’s engine starting.

  “Go on. Get some rest,” Stone said, his arm encircling Deal’s shoulders. “We’ll hash all this out by the light of day.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “I wonder what that dessert was, anyway,” Deal heard Russell say at his side.

  Deal shrugged, his eyes on the departing catering van. “I’m sure it’s on the menu at Louie’s,” he said.

  “Probably can’t get it in jail, though,” Russell said.

  Deal ignored that one. When the van’s lights had finally disappeared around the bend far down Beach Road, he started the Hog’s engine and pulled out from behind the screen of palmetto scrub north of the tower site, where they’d been keeping watch for the past half hour. He drove a hundred feet without turning on his lights, guided by the light of a pale, if nearly full, moon that had risen since their first visit to the tower that night.

  He glanced up at the glowing orb—a macular moon, wasn’t it, just like the one in the song?—then swung the Hog back off the deserted highway and into the lot, parking near where the limo had been earlier. When they got out and the sound of the Hog’s doors had died away, he stood for a moment to listen: no shouts of alarm, no guard dogs barking, no distant sirens. Just the sound of the waves lapping at the shore across the highway and, down the strand, the clatter of the palm fronds above, the ticking of the Hog’s engine nearby.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Russell said.

  “Me too,” Deal said. He moved around to the bed of the Hog and opened the toolbox he’d checked before they left the parking lot of the Pier House. He took out what they would need and handed the items to Russell, then led the way to the tower entrance.

  No security lights popped on at their advance, no whooping warning alarms switched on. Stone was right, he thought. This was a long, long way from Miami.

  He held a penlight in one hand and punched in the code he hoped was correct. As red lights danced about the panel in response, he couldn’t help but glance Russell’s way.

  The big man was nodding. “Same numbers I remember,” the big man said.

  Deal felt himself break into a smile that was only part nervousness. “I hope we’re right,” he said.

  Abruptly, the red lights stopped their dance and switched to amber. “A pair of born thieves,” he said to Russell, then pulled the heavy door lever down. Jackpot, he found himself thinking as the wooden door swung open and no warning Klaxons sounded.

  “Could still be wired to the station,” Russell observed.

  “That’s why you’re going to stay out here,” Deal said. “You see trouble coming, tap the horn. You keep the lights off and drive away, I’ll close up and leave that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the salt marsh. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”

  Russell shrugged. “Last time I was a lookout it didn’t work out so good.”

  Deal pointed inside the dark tower. “There’s no one inside there, Russell,” he said, extending his hand for the tools. “I’ll be in and out in a flash.”

  Russell handed the things over and turned back for the Hog in what seemed a minor huff. Deal glanced down the lonely beach road once more, then hurried inside, guiding himself with his tiny penlight.

  He rounded the first curve to his left, in deep shadow now, running the slender beam along the rough inner wall until he found the grated stairwell. A door that was fit to have a groaning prisoner or two behind it, he thought, though he could see only a set of dusty stone stairs leading up on the opposite side.

  It only stood to reason that there was a matching set of steps that led downward behind the padlocked door before him. He reached down and turned the knob until the latch was free, pushing to get as much play behind the padlock hasp as possible.

  He thought about using the hammer first, but took another look at the hasp and decided to try the heavy pry bar. He set the hammer down headfirst on the floor, leaning it by its handle against the jamb. He straightened and slid the flattened tip of the pry bar toward the hasp, grunting with satisfaction when it slid beneath the shiny metal.

  There would be no covering up the signs of what he was about to do, he realized, but if he was right, it would hardly matter. He took a deep breath, then gripped the end of the bar and jerked backward with all his strength.

  There was a shriek that sounded almost human as the hasp gave way, and he staggered back a step. The pry bar slipped from his hands and went down to the floor with a clang.

  Just screws ripping free of wood, he assured himself as he caught his balance and moved quickly back toward the wavering door. A sound a carpenter might hear every day of his life.

  He clutched the doorknob again and leaned his weight into the heavy slab, feeling something behind it grinding on stone as he shoved. A wooden crate? Was it possible?

  He fought his growing excitement as the door swung inward. For Christ’s sake, you’ll have a heart attack, he told himself as whatever was holding the door finally gave way and he staggered forward.

  He swung his penlight up as he stumbled, still clutching the doorknob with his other hand. Then he saw it, the glint of the eyes first, and in the next instant the sharp tip of the sword, and nearly dropped his light in shock.

  He was backpedaling automatically, moving for all he was worth, cursing himself for his brave statements to Russell, groping wildly on the floor behind him for the pry bar or the hammer, anything for a weapon.…

  He felt a pair of arms encircle him from behind and realized that what he had hit this time was anything but a jackpot.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  “What the fuck was that, anyway?” Russell Straight asked as Deal piloted the Hog resolutely northward along Beach Road.

  “A marlin,” Deal said.

  “I thought that was baseball players,” Russell said.

  Deal stared. “That’s where the nickname comes from, Russell. It’s a kind of swordfish.”

  “Whatever it’s called,” Russell said, shaking his head, “I’d hate to pull something like that into my boat.”

  Deal glanced at him. The big man had been the one who’d caught him as he came backpedaling out of the closet, like some scared-stiff heroine from a horror film. It hadn’t taken long to realize that Stone had been telling the truth about what was inside: just a dusty, cobwebbed nook beneath the staircase, crammed full of boxed records, a few moldering Audubon prints, and the enormous stuffed trophy fish propped atop some filing cabinets, with its bill pointed toward any unwary intruder to come barging through the door.

  “They’re usually dead before they come over the gunwale,” he said idly, still trying to come to terms with what he’d found, or rather, hadn’t found. He’d been so sure. Some detective, he thought.

  “Dead of what?” Russell was asking.

  Deal shrugged, ready enough to divert his thoughts. “Somebody might lean over the side and club it,” he said. “Or pop a bullet in its brain.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Deal saw Russell shaking his head again. “Puts a whole new wrinkle into being a fish,” he said finally.

  Deal nodded. Not long after he’d recovered from his fright and disentangled himself from Russell, he’d gone back to check inside the closet, gradually coming to realize he’d actually seen the gigantic stuffed marlin before: For years the trophy had graced a wall above the bar in the Full Moon Saloon, a once-favored locals hangout long since closed. One of the regulars had landed the near-record game fish in the waters just off Cuba and had brought the carcass home as proof.

  The last time Deal had seen the thing, there had been a Florida State gimmee cap smashed on its head while
a boisterous crowd cheered a college football game on the bar’s television sets. How it had become part of the historical society’s holdings, he couldn’t quite imagine.

  “So maybe your buddy Malloy is right,” Russell said, glancing at Deal through the greenish glow cast by the Hog’s dash lights. “Maybe we ought to beat it out of Dodge, let things sort themselves out.”

  Deal raised an eyebrow in response. “You think Malloy’s right? All this is just some fantasy I’ve dreamed up?” After what had just happened, of course, he couldn’t blame Russell for feeling that way about his cockeyed theories. He was beginning to have doubts himself.

  Russell shook his head. “Not what I said at all.”

  Deal glanced at him. “Then what?”

  “Far as I know you’re absolutely right about Dequarius having something somebody else wants,” Russell said. “But this somebody already killed one dude. No reason for them to stop now.”

  Deal slowed, bringing the Hog around a curve and past the entrance to the airport. No traffic at this time of night, of course, but the vapor lamps still glowed orange above the parking lot, and strings of red and blue runway lights winked in the distance. In a few hours, they could board a plane, be back on the mainland for breakfast, have someone—Balart maybe—drive the Hog up in due time.

  “You could be right,” he finally said to Russell. “But just going back to Miami wouldn’t put an end to anything. If I’m right, whoever jumped me back at the Pier House thinks I know where Dequarius Noyes stashed a valuable case of wine—or maybe thinks I have it—that’s the bottom line.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a fish out of water down here, my man. You could end up stuffed and mounted like that marlin.”

  Deal considered it a moment. It was true that paradise tended to cast a certain rosy glow on things. Spend enough time in cozy Margaritaville, you could end up thinking that calamity meant running out of rum before the sun was up.

  And Russell was right. He didn’t know Key West well enough to be certain that anything he saw was the same as what was real. Take what had happened between himself and Annie, for starters.

  He turned back to Russell finally. “This isn’t your show, you know. There’s no place in the DealCo handbook that covers gunfire or breaking and entering.”

  “Yeah, well, why don’t we take that up at the next contract talks,” Russell said. “I came down with you, I’ll go home with you. Whenever you say.”

  Deal stared at him for a moment, then nodded, piloting them around another curve, leaving the airport and its lights behind. They were at the far eastern tip of the island now, traveling north, with the waters of Cow Key Channel on their right. Across the cut was Stock Island, the first of the coral stepping-stones that dotted the shallow waters northward to the mainland. A mile or so ahead was a bridge that carried the traffic of Highway A1A across the channel and up the line that connected all the dots. In less than a minute, he could be hanging a hard right turn, they could be back in Miami before the sun rose.

  “And pigs might fly, too,” he mumbled. The asphalt surface of Roosevelt Boulevard was rolling through the headlamps of the Hog before his eyes, but what he saw was Annie Dodds’ face as she reached to pull him down to her breast.

  “Pardon me?” Russell Straight said, at his side.

  “Just one more stop,” Deal answered, and abruptly nudged the Hog off the boulevard. They were traveling on a narrow access road now, one that led down to a set of rickety docks where houseboats were tethered, and had been, as far as Deal knew, since the beginning of time.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Which one of these you figure belonged to Dequarius?” Russell said, joining him at the prow of the Hog.

  Deal had pulled to a stop, cutting the engine and the lights before they’d gotten too close to the line of bobbing craft. No sense getting any jittery residents riled up. One of the reasons people lived out here was for their privacy.

  Deal glanced up at Russell, then back toward the docks. “Probably not that one,” he said, pointing to a boat tied up near the far end. That craft was ablaze with light, where raucous party chatter underscored Jimmy Buffett’s voice booming into the night, proclaiming himself to be the son of a son of a sailor.

  There was a certain raspiness to the rendition, a hint of the been-there, sung-this-to-death that suggested to Deal it might actually be Buffett himself down there leading the revelers’ charge, but that was probably just his imagination. For that matter, maybe there wasn’t a party going on at all. Maybe the boat was just a glittering mirage.

  “I never understood that music,” Russell said.

  Deal glanced at Russell, feeling reassured. “That’s probably what some people say about Destiny’s Child.”

  Russell snorted. “You think black people listen to Destiny’s Child?”

  By that time, Deal had spotted what he’d been looking for and was moving off through the darkness. He reached the jerry-rigged post-and-shelf construction that held all the mailboxes for the docks, saving the mailman from the trouble—not to mention the potential peril—of visiting each craft individually. He pulled his penlight from his pocket and ran it over the names on the front of the boxes, which dipped and rose on the swaybacked cross-plank like the waves that lapped at the nearby seawall.

  Stone, he read. Feathergill. Thomas. Galliard. Dobyns. McGrath. Fuck You. Catanese.

  There was a blank face plate next in order, followed by T. Martin, Whitehurst, and Tucker. The last, the party boat, was apparently occupied by someone named Pacheco.

  Deal switched off his light and regarded the gently bobbing silhouetted rooflines before them, ticking off names on his fingers. “I vote for blank,” he said, turning to Russell.

  “I’m not going on board Fuck You,” Russell said. “Not without a gun, anyway.”

  “Of course Dequarius could have been using an alias,” Deal said, moving along the docks now.

  “None of those names,” Russell said, keeping his voice low as he hurried after.

  Deal slowed, pointing at one of the more tidily maintained boats, its whitewashed planks glowing in the moonlight, its gangway flanked by a pair of potted Queen palms. “That’s Catanese,” he said, and turned to the next in line.

  “It looks like our man, all right,” Russell said at Deal’s shoulder.

  Deal turned to regard a listing craft with a roofline that bobbed and dipped as erratically as the swaybacked plank that held up the floating community’s mailboxes. A jagged crack ran diagonally across an uncurtained window in the wall that faced them, and a toppled plastic trash can shifted idly on the deck. There was a plank missing from the boat’s gangway, and the lines that tethered the craft to the dock cleats looked frayed and ready to burst.

  Deal heard a creaking noise as the tide shifted and glanced across the narrow gap separating dock and deck. The cabin door had swung open slightly, then settled back as the tide shifted again.

  “Don’t look like no one’s home,” Russell said.

  “I guess we’ll go see,” Deal said.

  He raised one foot to the gangway and tested it, then stepped as lightly as he could across to the houseboat’s deck. He felt the surface tilt slightly as Russell came quickly aboard behind him.

  He knocked softly on the aluminum door frame. “Anyone here?” he called, then knocked again, harder this time.

  They stood in silence for a moment, listening to the slap of water at the seawall behind them. Down the docks, the Beach Boys were lamenting the loss of the Sloop John B., their voices as confident and cheery as ever. Not a celebrity party, then, Deal found himself thinking. Not unless it was a doozy.

  He turned to glance at Russell and saw the big man’s shoulders rise in a shrug. Deal took his penlight out and pulled the door open. He had a quick, insane thought as a musty cloud of disuse and mildew swept out of the cabin toward him: The case of priceless wine had been here on Dequarius’ abandoned boat all right, but someon
e headed for the party had already spotted it and now it was down there being guzzled by a horde of merry parrot-heads, yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.

  “The man had absolutely no housekeeping skills,” Russell was saying now at Deal’s shoulder.

  Deal wanted to nod agreement, his penlight beam sweeping over the wild disarray before them. It was one big common room they’d entered—kitchen, dining, and living area combined—with a doorway that led down a short hallway to what was likely the bedroom and bath.

  God only knew what those looked like, he thought. Here the galley doors were all flung open along with those of the oven and refrigerator, the contents strewn about the floor. Wire shelving, pots and pans, a half-filled plastic milk jug, shattered plates and glassware, cereal boxes, a lolling head of lettuce gone way past wilted and on to brown. A tabletop microwave had been dashed to the floor, its door bent awry like a twisted limb.

  A Formica-topped dinette had been upended, the rug it had been resting on kicked into a wad, as if someone had been searching for a trapdoor beneath it. Sure, Deal thought. Straight to Davy Jones’ locker.

  There was a couch and chair in the living room—or what had once been a couch and a chair. Now their cushions had been slashed and torn and the stuffing erupted, great clumps of it shuddering with the movement of the tides like giant dust bunnies from hell.

  “Do we need to check the rest of it?” Russell said, gesturing toward the hallway.

  “Not unless you’re a masochist,” Deal said. He switched off his penlight and turned to step past Russell, suddenly desperate for a breath of fresh air. He’d also had an unreasoning flash of the interior of his own apartment back in Miami, the furnishing trashed, Isabel’s things mounded into an obscene pile, and though he knew it was only his imagination, he felt his jaw clench, his hands tighten at his sides. It wouldn’t be the first time in his life that he’d managed to step into the path of a train unawares, he reminded himself, but that didn’t make the possibility that it had happened again one bit easier to accept.