by Paul Levine
"Couple of questions, is all."
"Careful, Vic," Steve said. "You're dealing with Columbo of the Keys."
"I'll bet," she said.
"One of Solomon's Laws: Beware of a sheriff who forgets to load his gun but remembers the words to 'Margaritaville.' "
"Willis Rask," Bobby said, biting his lip and concentrating while he dug up an anagram. "IS RAW SKILL."
"Got that right, Bobby," the sheriff said. "Stevie, we been looking into that fellow who got stuck with the spear. Ben Stubbs."
"You're doing actual police work?" Steve said. "Tarpon must not be running."
"Stubbs was staying at the Pier House." Rask pulled a battered notebook from a shirt pocket, flipped a page. "He bought three charts-all of the eastern Gulf-at Charlie Simmons' store two days ago.
Stopped at the Oceanographic Institution, used his federal ID to get access, spent some time in their library and computer files. Pulled up some topographic maps of the ocean floor a few miles west of Boca Chica. Two nights in a row, he ate dinner at Cienfuegos. Snapper with a mango salsa." Rask looked up from his notebook. "You two know any of this?"
"No," Victoria said.
"All of it," Steve said. "Except the mango salsa."
"Uncle Steve's lying," Bobby said.
"I know," Rask said. "Your uncle lies, even when the truth's a better story." He flipped another page in his notebook. "After dinner, Stubbs had two beers at the Hog's Breath, then spent a couple hours at Fat Mary's over on Whitehead."
"Fat Mary's?" Victoria said.
"Strip joint," Steve said. He added hastily, "Or so I'm told."
Rask returned the notebook to his pocket. "That reminds me, Stevie. Fat Mary says howdy. Anyway, I was just wondering what Stubbs was doing on your client's boat."
"Fishing," Steve said.
"Research," Victoria said.
"They don't know," Bobby said.
"I see," Rask said. "Will Mr. Griffin give us a statement?"
"No," Victoria said.
"Yes," Steve said. "Later."
"How 'bout a polygraph?" Rask asked.
"Under the right conditions," Steve said.
"Under no condition," Victoria said.
Rask scratched at a sideburn. "You two do this on purpose to throw off honest constables such as my
own self?"
"Yes," Steve said.
"No," Victoria said.
The whine of the Grumman's props grew louder. The plane was about to splash down offshore, its nose pointed toward the beach.
"Anything else, Sheriff?" Victoria asked.
Rask made a show of removing his Oakleys, breathing on the lenses, and wiping them on his shirttail. "Now that you mention it, I did forget something."
"I knew it," Steve said.
They waited a moment as Rask slipped the sunglasses back on. Offshore, the seaplane hit the water with a splat and continued toward the beach. On the fuselage was a blue logo of cascading waves and the name "Oceania."
"Stubbs left his luggage in his room at the Pier House. Had a briefcase with the usual. Laptop, government papers, antacid pills. Plus forty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Now, what do you suppose a civil servant was doing with all that money?"
"Tipping big at Fat Mary's?" Steve suggested.
The seaplane rolled onto the beach, the pilot waving at them through an open side window of the cockpit.
"We gotta go, Willis," Steve said, above the noise.
"Ah, almost forgot. One more thing. My dang memory. ."
"C'mon, Willis," Steve said. "Give it up."
Rask shook his head, sadly, milking the moment. "That Stubbs fellow died this morning."
"Oh, shit."
"Yeah, Stevie. I figured you'd be broken up about it. And your guy Griffin? He's facing a murder charge."
Eight
DEAD AHEAD
The world was all blues and greens. The deep cerulean blue of the sky, the ever-changing turquoise of the water, the viridiscent greens of the endless string of wooded islands, fanning out like a string of emeralds in a balmy sea.
Only Bobby seemed to be enjoying the view through the seaplane's tinted windows. Steve was scribbling numbers on a pad, trying to figure how much they could charge for a murder trial, and Victoria was back on the cell phone with Hal Griffin.
"Forty thousand in cash?" Griffin said. "Where'd Stubbs get that kind of money, Princess?"
"I was hoping you'd know."
"Stubbs dying is bad. The money only makes it worse. Someone's gonna say I was bribing the bastard."
"To do what?" Thinking Uncle Grif's sympathy seemed to be reserved for himself.
"Not that Stubbs didn't hint around. Sees my house, says something about how he got into the wrong racket. Gets on the boat, same thing. 'You builders got more money than Croesus.' Jesus, Princess, this is just like with Nelson and me."
The mention of her father's name startled her. "What do you mean?"
"Those condo towers on the beach up in Broward. Some snitch claimed we were bribing zoning officers, but we weren't. A competitor of ours paid the son-of-abitch to make it up. It's one of the things that drove Nelson over the edge."
"What were the others, Uncle Grif?"
"Aw, jeez, Princess. I'm not a shrink, and it was a long time ago."
She heard a voice in the background on the line, then Griffin told her a doctor needed to examine him.
After the phone clicked off, Steve said: "Let me guess. Uncle Grif's conscience cried out and he confessed."
"Do me a favor, Steve. When we meet Junior, drop the sarcasm."
"Why? Won't he get it?"
The Grumman swooped low over the crystalline water, the engines a peaceful drone. No one had spoken for thirty minutes-meaning it had been half an hour since Victoria reminded Steve she was sitting first chair-when Bobby shouted: "Dolphins!"
They looked out the windows. Below them, two bottlenose dolphins leapt skyward, knifed back into the water, then leapt again. All in perfect unison.
"Yeah, your buddies," Steve enthused. Wondering if the dolphins were mates. Wondering, too, if the female complained, "Next time, I'll say when we jump." And was the male confused when she said she was tired of being treated like one of his groupers?
"They're beautiful," Victoria said.
"Tursiops truncatus," Bobby said.
The kid knew his dolphins. He'd studied them, telling Steve that fifty million years ago otters returned to the sea, where they developed into the silvery creatures who can swim at thirty knots and can be trained by the Navy to clear harbors of mines. For nearly a year, Bobby had been a regular at a dolphin sanctuary on Key Largo. That first day, he was afraid of the animals. Of course, then he feared people, too. The kid had all the symptoms of the abused child: nightmares, tantrums, eating disorders. But once he was in the water, the dolphins seemed to calm him, taking to him immediately, pinging him with their sonarlike sound waves, which Bobby said tickled him all over, then letting him hitch rides, or nudging him through the water with their snouts.
A marine biologist at the facility told Steve that dolphins somehow sense when children are ill. Something to do with their echolocation abilities. Dolphins emit ultrasound frequencies, like an MRI scan in a medical facility, he said. If you put four healthy children in the water and one suffering from Down's syndrome or leukemia or autism or cerebral palsy, a dolphin will approach the ill child.
Hanging out with Bobby alongside the penned-off canal in Key Largo, listening to the dolphins chirp and creak, Steve learned all the stories about their strange powers. There was JoJo, the docile female dolphin who one day inexplicably butted a girl in the rib cage. The bruise was so severe, the girl was treated at the hospital, where an X-ray revealed a tumor in her abdomen. Doctors dismissed the idea that JoJo had intentionally communicated her knowledge of the girl's condition, but the dolphin experts at the facility disagreed.
Though he didn't want to get all New Agey about it, Steve fi
gured there just might be something to the healing and rescue powers of the dolphins.
Once in the water with the sleek animals, Bobby had quickly loosened up. He played with them, returned their affection, splashed them when they slapped the water to douse him. He had his favorite, Bucky, a speedy male with a pink-striped belly. Bobby would stroke Bucky's fluke and imitate his high-pitched squeaks and creaks. He told Steve he understood the dolphin's language. Bucky would say when he was tired or bored or hungry-and specifically whether he preferred smelt or herring for lunch. Bobby said Bucky understood him, too, and Steve wondered whether a relationship with a fifty-million-year-old species called "Tursiops truncatus" might be easier than one with a modern woman.
Now the seaplane skimmed over the Gulf, temporarily cooling the simmering dispute between Steve and Victoria. The water color kept changing, from turquoise to emerald to muddy brown to muted rust, depending on the depth and the grasses and coral below. He watched the shadow of the plane as it crossed miniature islands, some little more than marshy savannahs and woody hammocks poking out of the sea.
Steve was still thinking about what Sheriff Rask had told them. Ben Stubbs died without regaining full consciousness. There'd be no "Griffin shot me" statements. Once the Grand Jury handed up the indictment, it would be a purely circumstantial case. Steve still wondered about Stubbs raising two fingers in the ICU. Had he meant there'd been two attackers? Or was he giving the old "peace" sign? Or maybe just waving good-bye?
Even before Griffin was officially charged, there were things to be done. Jury selection didn't begin in the courthouse. It started in the news media and spread to the taverns and beauty parlors and coffee shops. Steve was already planning a statement for his client.
"Harold Griffin, noted builder and philanthropist, deeply regrets the unfortunate accident at sea that claimed the life of a dedicated public servant."
Steve hadn't a clue if Griffin was a philanthropist, but it sounded better than "a rich dude who builds mammoth resorts in environmentally sensitive ecosystems."
"Just a few more minutes, folks," the pilot said over the speaker. He was a man in his forties with wispy blond hair and a sunburned face. Wearing chino safari shorts and a navy blue shirt with epaulets, he spoke with a British accent, telling them his name was Clive Fowles. Pronouncing it "Foals." He had invited Bobby to sit copilot in what he called his "magic flying boat," but the boy, always shy with strangers, turned him down. Then he'd offered to take them all diving on the reef if their stay allowed it.
"Anything you need, just ring up Captain Clive," Fowles told them as they settled into their seats. "Mr. G told me to take good care of you."
"Mr. G, Senior, or Mr. G, Junior?" Steve asked.
"Only one Mr. G," Fowles said. "That's the boss."
Now, as they neared Paradise Key, Steve glanced at Victoria. She was staring out at the sea, quietly smiling to herself.
"Excited about seeing the hottest boy at Pinecrest?" Steve asked.
"Do you remember the first girl you kissed?"
"Sarah Gropowitz. Beach Middle School."
"You ever think of her?"
"Only when I send a check to the ACLU. She runs the Equal Rights for Lesbians Committee."
Victoria turned to look at him.
"But my kissing her didn't make her that way," Steve defended himself.
"Would you at least concede the possibility of cause and effect?"
"Sharks!" Bobby shouted.
Sure enough, maybe a dozen sharks were cruising the shallow water, the plane's shadow darting over them. Well, why not? They were flying over Shark Channel just off Upper Matecumbe Key. Suddenly two sharks leapt out of the water.
"Spinners, Uncle Steve. A hunting party."
Bad omen, Steve thought, just as Fowles said over the speaker, "Paradise Key. Dead ahead."
Dead ahead.
Steve thought of Ben Stubbs, dead indeed. He thought of Victoria, upset with him for grievances he could barely comprehend. He thought of his father, angry at him for nothing more than trying to restore his lost reputation. With a sense of uncertainty and foreboding, Steve tried to figure out just what was going on.
Why is Vic so pissed off, anyway?
Hadn't he curbed the habits that offended her feminine sensibilities? He'd cut way down on the scratching, burping, and farting. He'd quit representing hookers, and it had been months since he'd spent all night playing Texas Hold 'Em at the Miccosukee casino. Not only that, he'd been considerate of her foibles, too. Did he say anything last week when she used his razor to shave her legs, then put it back on the sink, where it lay, waiting to maim him like a rusty machete? Not a word, other than "Ouch!" On her birthday, hadn't he written her a sexy poem, working her love of tennis into the last stanza? She didn't seem to appreciate the effort it took to find a rhyme for "Martina Hingis." Did she think the word just popped into his head: "cunnilingus"?
He pressed his face to the window just as the plane banked hard and began to descend. An island shimmered out of the water like a green mirage. Circling the shoreline was a single-lane road that connected to a private causeway linking the island to Lower Matecumbe Key.
The seaplane headed for a horseshoe-shaped cove on the Gulf side. At the far end was a concrete dock where the Force Majeure would have been docked if it wasn't being hauled away in pieces from Sunset Key. Next to the dock, a sandy beach studded with saw palmetto trees. Half-a-dozen snowy egrets wading in the shallow water took to the air at the sound of the engines. A sloping lawn rose from the shoreline to a strand of Australian pines that surrounded a large, three-story wooden house. Solar panels on the roof flashed brilliantly in the sun.
"Everyone buttoned up back there?" Fowles asked over the speaker. "There'll be a bloody big splash when we hit."
The plane was at thirty feet when it passed through the opening in the cove, and Fowles set it down with the promised splash, the windows plastered with streaming water. The plane slowed immediately, the two props on the high wings still whirling, the plane now a boat chugging toward the shoreline.
"Welcome to Paradise," Fowles told them. "Junior should be waiting in the. . oh, sod it all! Look at that, off the starboard."
Steve was already looking out his window, so he caught the entire amazing sight. Maybe it wasn't a pair of dolphins jumping in tandem or a school of sharks in a hunting party. This was both more impressive-and more threatening. Without quite knowing why, Steve sensed that this sight portended a greater impact on his life than the wonders of nature.
A man in skimpy, black Speedos shot out of the water, smooth and sleek as a Polaris missile. He held a lobster in one hand and grabbed the pontoon of the seaplane with the other. With athletic grace, he hoisted himself onto the pontoon and waved the lobster over his head, flashing a smile toward the fuselage windows.
Could he see Victoria through the glass? Steve wondered.
She could surely see him.
And what would she have seen? Or, more important to Steve, what would she have felt?
The man was an inch or two over six feet tall, with a swimmer's body. Flat waist, ridged six-pack of abs, carved shoulders, and long, smooth, muscled arms. With his arms raised, his lats flared like stingrays from his sides. His chest was simply too large for the rest of him. Two slabs of meaty pecs, like thick steaks, and an overall impression of chesty, brutal strength. He was suntanned a deep bronze, so deep that his smile looked dangerously bright. His long hair was slicked straight back and darkened from the water, but Steve could see it was sun-streaked. An Abercrombie amp; Fitch ad come to life, a fucking nightmare of a guy, Steve thought. But even worse, he wasn't just some chiseled waiter-actor or model-poseur or jock-beach bum that infested South Beach like cockroaches in the hotels. No, this guy had a history with Victoria, and with fissures already appearing in the professional relationship of Solomon amp; Lord, Steve was starting to feel insecure about their personal relationship as well.
"Jun-ior," Victoria breathed, her
face pressed to the window, somehow making the name sound pornographic. "My, but he's all grown up."
Was it Steve's imagination, or was her breath fogging the window?
Standing on the pontoon, one arm gripping the strut-all the better to display his undulating muscles-Junior Griffin turned squarely toward the fuselage, and now Steve noticed one final attribute. The sizable bulge in his Speedos. Steve wasn't sure where Victoria's gaze was directed, but he could swear he heard her sigh.
Nine
SPEEDO GUY
The seaplane rolled onto the concrete ramp at the water's edge. Bobby clambered down the stairs, followed by Victoria and Steve. In an instant, Junior appeared, kissing Victoria swiftly on the lips, then twirling her off her feet in a big, wet hug.
"Wow! You're here," he said. "You're really here."
She laughed at his enthusiasm, so straightforward and without irony or sarcasm.
He set her back down on the dock as if she were made of glass and looked into her eyes. "Tori, I've really missed you."
Tori. No one had called her that since she was twelve. In fact, nobody except Junior had ever called her that, and just now it sounded so sweet and lovable that she felt herself blush.
Junior exchanged pleasantries with Steve and Bobby but never broke eye contact with Victoria. Was his smile always this radiant, she wondered, his dimples so deep? His eyes were a deep blue, almost the color of one of her eyeshadows, Adriatic Azure. She watched him towel off and pull a pair of white canvas shorts over his Speedos. The rich golden hue of his skin, the lingering taste of salt water from his kiss, the warmth of the sea breeze. . so many sensations bombarding her.
Bare-chested and barefoot, like a preppy Tarzan, Junior led his visitors up a flagstone path toward the house, Casa de la Sol, according to a tasteful sign embedded in the wall of coral boulders.
"Dad told me how beautiful you are," Junior said, "but wow. I'm at a loss for words."
"That's so sweet." She was aware of Steve next to her, could feel his discomfort.
"And a big-time lawyer, too. Wow."
