by Anthony Rome
“There’s one more thing you can do while you’re tying up loose ends,” I told him. “Lorna, your ex-wife, claims she knew nothing about Boyd’s illegal doctoring of criminals. A good lawyer shouldn’t have much trouble making that stick. I’d suggest you hire a lawyer for her. For your daughter’s sake. And then I’d suggest that you see to it Diana’s mother doesn’t have to go on living the way she has been. It would take a weight off your daughter. Then maybe she’ll be able to concentrate better on her own problems. She won’t have to go on a binge every time her marriage suffers a normal upset.”
Kosterman nodded slowly. It came hard for him, but he said it: “I know I was wrong about that . . . I’ll do it.”
“That’s it, then,” I said, straightening, feeling weights of my own beginning to drop away from me. “It’s still in the family, the way you wanted it. If your luck holds, it’ll stay that way.”
“Thank you,” Kosterman said. “I’ll be sending you a check. That bonus I promised you.”
“You do that,” I said, turning to leave. “I earned it.”
I was crossing the rough water over the reef when dawn spread across the sea. I turned my head and looked back from the wheel of the Straight Pass at Miami. It looked beautiful—a long line of tiny, shining white buildings edging the sea, their towers tinted rose by the rising sun, the long thin strip of golden sand below them. From that far out, you couldn’t see all the beasts that crawled through that beauty.
I kept sailing out to open water, heading north of Bimini.
An hour later there was no land in sight anywhere around me.
