“Yup,” Pilate said.
“Might I ask why you don’t just catch the ferry like anybody else would?” Malley said. “Cheaper.”
“Well, I might need you to wait for me a while. I’ve got some business to tend to,” Pilate said.
“And what kind of business is that?” Malley’s eyes looked over Pilate’s head to the sunset. “Look at the goddamn cat head out. Rick Rogers and his booze cruise. Pfft.”
Pilate smiled. “I hear he has a hot bartender.”
“Wouldn’t know,” Malley said. “So again I ask, what kind of business?”
“I’m a writer, working on a book. I need to get up to Naples, and I don’t want to deal with a bunch of drunken tourists or all the hassle of renting a car.”
“Okay,” Malley said, “but what else? I know there’s more to it than that.” Malley moved his right arm as if he were working on a sore rotator cuff.
“I need to get up to a condo on the bay,” he said, looking straight at Malley. “I need to discreetly put in at the Barabbas Colony Bay condo canal slip, preferably near dark.”
“Hmm. And what dark purpose does this mystery mission serve?” Malley said.
“I just need to get a look around, “ Pilate said, “to get the details right in my book.”
Malley whistled through his teeth and scratched the back of his neck.
“Look, Mr., uh…”
“Pilate.”
“Pilate, right. Look, I don’t do anything that might come between me and my freedom,” he said. “You pipe that pretty face I was with at Pepe’s?”
Pilate nodded.
“So you understand I don’t want to risk losing that lady,” he said, “or this lady I’m standing on now.”
“Look, Mr. Malley, if we get in any trouble—which I am sure we won’t—all you know is I wanted a ride in to my condo. You get paid, and I take the heat.”
Malley sighed. “It’s rarely that simple, Mr. Pilate,” he said, “but it’s the slow season, and $500 would do me some good, so—”
“Wait…did you say $500?”
“Be $600 if you ask again,” Malley said. “Half down, half when we’re back. Plus, I want another $500 deposit just in case you get yourself, um…indisposed. Returnable when we return sans handcuffs, and breathing, all in one piece.”
“Okay,” Pilate said. “Done, but I want to go tonight.”
“And people in hell want ice water,” Malley said. “Come back tomorrow around six. We’ll leave then.”
Pilate nodded. “Fair enough. See you tomorrow.” Pilate turned back up the dock.
“Hey, Mr. Pilate!” Malley called.
Pilate turned back to Malley.
“As far as Jordan knows, I’m taking you fishing,” he said, pulling his straw hat on rakishly over one eye.
“Of course we are,” Pilate said.
Pilate spent the better part of the day working on the book; he managed to put several chapters to bed about the architects of the conspiracy of Cross College, as well as his own interpretation of events. He found himself on a tear, ripping through fifty pages of narrative about the night he’d trudged through miles on foot in a snow-blinded haze, trying to get word to the authorities about the murderous events perpetrated by the now-deceased Derek Krall, Mayor Olafson and now, President Lindstrom.
Pilate thought back to the few occasions when he had to speak with the former leader of Cross College. Was it truth or merely twenty/twenty hindsight that made him recall that every word with the man was nasty and unpleasant?
Pilate had gone to Cross looking for a fresh slate, but what he found was blood, conspiracy, and Kate. Now, he was in Key West to wash clean the bloody slate in the waters of the Gulf so he could truly be fresh. He was desperate to start over with Kate by his side.
But that was already ruined. He had slipped up badly. He had rationalized his run of bad luck and near-death experience as worthwhile reasons to bed Kay.
“Trying to screw things up, were you?” Dr. Sandburg said, stepping in where Simon usually trod.
“I don’t know,” Pilate said. “I just…I just wanted her. I wanted something fresh, something uncomplicated.”
“Sex can be uncomplicated,” Sandburg said, “but usually only in the movies. In real life, it’s pretty tough to find that zipless fuck everybody used to talk about, unless you order one off those vinyl company websites.”
“Are you judging me?” Pilate asked, looking at Sandburg.
“Nope,” he said, making a hands-clean gesture. “Just making an observation.”
“Ever had one?” Pilate said. “A zipless?”
Sandburg smiled. “Yes. I suppose I have.”
“Did you find it satisfying?”
“On what level?” he said. “Did I cum? Yes. Did I fall in love? No. Did I care about that girl afterward? Not really.”
“Hmm,” Pilate said. “Sounds complicated.”
“Touché. How about you?”
“I came, but I did not fall in love, though I do like her. Do I care about her? Well, kind of, if we’re talking about how—”
“As you would any human being, or is it a special kind of caring?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get what you’re saying,” Pilate said. “I like her, but the truth is, if I never saw her again, it wouldn’t kill me.”
“What about Kate?” he said. “If you never saw her again, how would you feel?”
Pilate looked at the baseballs and bobble-heads on Sandburg’s shelf. “Hollow.”
The eyes were like a shark’s eyes; dull, black, and somehow unsettling. Even from behind the security of his glass case, Robert’s pockmarked face looked as if he could do harm.
“Hello, Robert,” Pilate whispered.
A skinny boy of ten or so and a large woman, stuffed into a tight polyester outfit, stood some three feet away in the Fort East Martello Museum. When they overheard Pilate talking to the creepy sailor-suited doll, they backed away.
“Have you any advice for me, Robert? See,” Pilate said, “I’ve been up to some mischief of my own lately.”
“This is a tad creepy, even for me, John,” Simon said.
Contrary to its urban legend reputation, the doll didn’t move, nor did its facial features change as they were reputed to do.
Pilate stared at Robert the Doll for twenty minutes, with nothing but the hum of ceiling fans and the occasional footfall of tourists breaking the silence.
He took in the rest of the museum’s bloodless military exhibits, Civil War memorabilia, and the brilliantly colored art of Mario Sanchez before hailing a cab to take him to the wharf, where Taters was expecting him. Mischief indeed, he thought.
CHAPTER NINE
From the dock, a taciturn Jordan Malley handed Taters a small ice chest, several bags of ice, and two cardboard boxes filled with food and water.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Taters said. “We’ll be back late. Our pilot friend here likes to night-dive and fish.”
Jordan Malley shrugged, blew Taters a kiss, and held out her hand to Pilate, who almost reflexively shook it.
“I don’t handle money anymore—not since I retired from the CPA biz.” Taters laughed.
“Oh, right,” he said. He forked over the deposit and half-payment to Jordan. She tucked it into her cutoff jeans and walked up the dock.
“Damn, look at that ass. Nice, huh?” Taters asked proudly.
“She is certainly a beautiful lady,” Pilate said.
“Good answer,” Taters said. “Now, welcome aboard, Mr. Pilate.”
“Call me, John,” Pilate said, hopping from the dock to the deck of the TenFortyEZ.
“You got it, John,” he said. “Stow your gear below. We get underway in a few.”
Calm waters greeted them, and two hours into their journey, Taters set the boat wheel and opened a Modelo. He offered one to Pilate.
“Really good,” Pilate said.
“That first one always is. That’s the Taters Malley Theory,” he said. “Even
better with a shot of tequila, but that’ll have to wait for another time.”
Pilate nodded.
“Looks like we’ll get in around nine,” he said. “Dark, but not pitch black.”
“Perfect,” Pilate said.
Taters leaned against the cabin wall beside the wheel. “So, you’re just going to have me cruise up the bay, into the canal beside the condo, tie up, and wait?”
“Yup,” Pilate said, drinking a big gulp of Modelo. “That’s the plan. I shouldn’t be long.”
“John,” Taters said, folding his arms across his chest, beer in hand, “are you planning on stealing something?”
“Hell no!” Pilate said. “I meant it when I told you all I’m doing is taking a look around.”
“At a condo? If you’re a writer, couldn’t you have thought those details up on your own?”
“I didn’t realize I was paying for an inquisition. Thought this was just a charter,” Pilate said.
“And that is correct,” Taters said, throwing his arms up in a gesture of surrender.
“Besides, I want to ask you a question,” Pilate said.
Taters shrugged. “Shoot.”
“Really, why do they call you Taters?” Pilate finished off his Modelo.
“Let’s see…” Taters made a grand musing gesture of stroking his chin, as if he were cogitating about the secrets of the ancients. “Taters. Why would any grown man be called ‘Taters.’ Hmm. Why would anyone named Vernon Kennedy Malley be nicknamed Taters? That’s a real head-scratcher, ain’t it?”
Pilate threw his head back and sighed. “Malley. Irish. Potatoes.”
“Or, as we called them in Arkansas, where I grew up, Taters, “ he said. “Dumb ass.”
The men laughed as the TenFortyEZ plowed northward through the dark night waves.
“So, you were an accountant?” Pilate asked, inhaling deeply as sea spray smacked him in the face while he leaned into the wind through the window. The cool, salty moisture invigorated him.
Quizzical, Taters remarked, “Better be careful stickin’ your head out there. Shark might hop up and kiss ya.”
“I just like the salt air and the sea,” Pilate said, smiling.
“I get it,” Taters said. “I was the same way when I first got here. Took me a while to get to the point where it wasn’t special anymore.”
“When was that?”
“About ten years in.” Taters laughed.
“So, you were an accountant who threw it all away and ran south?” Pilate asked, shutting the sliding window.
“Well, if you put it that way, I s’pose I’m pretty much a cliché, yeah,” he said, adjusting the GPS console. “I built a pretty solid practice, but I hated the work. Hell, my degree wasn’t even in accounting.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. And it’s funny you should say that.” Taters chuckled.
“Why?”
“Got my degree in city planning, and my first job outta college was managing waste water systems for a small town in Texas. Bored me to death, spending all day worrying about water treatment stuff. Hated that shit! And let me tell you something, Mr. Pilate.”
“What’s that?”
“Waste is a terrible thing to mind.”
Pilate rolled his eyes as Taters cracked himself up, literally slapping his thighs and laughing.
“Anyway, after a couple years of trying to keep the effluent from hitting the fan, I met a nice girl and married her. Her daddy was a CPA and made a pile of cash doing that. We had a kid on the way, so I studied up, took the exam, and followed in my daddy-in-law’s footsteps. Fast-forward twenty years, my wife’s passed, and I’m avoiding the work and paying other people to do it. I just knew I had to get out of there.” He took a slug of his Modelo before he continued, “I had four accountants under me, and I let them handle the work. Now, don’t get me wrong. I busted my ass to get that firm in a good place, but my staff knew my heart wasn’t in it, so they all got together and asked me if I’d sell it to them.”
“Not all of them though?” Pilate said.
Taters smiled broadly. “Well, no. Jordan came with me,” he said. “She hated working there, but for some reason that I still ain’t figured out, the silly woman fell for me.”
“That’s great,” Pilate said.
“Yeah, I’m lucky to have her,” he said, turning the wheel slightly to port. “So anyway, we came out here for a honeymoon and decided we were home. We’re freshwater Conchs, lovin’ every minute of it.”
“Freshwater Conchs?”
Taters looked at Pilate as if he had just said he’d never heard of the Dallas Cowboys. “Yeah. You know they call the natives Conchs, right?”
Pilate nodded.
“Okay. Well, if you’re born here, yer a saltwater Conch, a member of the Republic. If you’re a transplant like me and the missus, you’re a freshwater Conch.”
“What’s that make me?”
“A fucking tourist.” He smiled broadly. “Stay a while, though, and you might just make the cut.”
Pilate looked back toward Key West. “There are worse places to be,” he said.
“You’re tellin’ me. My boy’s off at Baylor—damn, that school has the shittiest football team—and here I am, in paradise. Couldn’t be happier—Jordan, me, and this old boat.” Taters turned back to the controls, whistling a faint tune through his teeth. “We’re about an hour out now. Be there in no time.”
Taters expertly docked the boat at the slip closest to Jack Lindstrom’s condo. It was dim and quiet except for dock lights and the tiki lights from a gathering on a deck six condos down.
“I won’t be long,” Pilate said, pulling a black hoodie over his head.
“Is that your ninja camouflage?” Taters said, opening his third Modelo of the voyage.
“Just keep out of trouble,” Pilate said before he hopped off the boat, tied the bowline to a cleat on the dock, and scampered up the path.
Lindstrom’s condo wasn’t tough to spot: Yellow police tape crisscrossed the door and patio, as well as the sliding glass doors of the deck and the front door.
“And just what do you plan to do now, John?” Simon said, his voice ringing in stereo. “Use some hand warmers to get the door open?”
Pilate stopped for a moment, leaning against the outer wall of the condo in the shadows. Simon had a point. He could break in through a window or door and get a great view of what was left of Jack Lindstrom, but that would tell him absolutely nothing—other than the fact that he was damn near a ghoul for having the audacity to inspect such carnage. On top of that, he’d probably get arrested. “Damn it,” he said. “Stupid.”
Trying to effect a careless saunter, he hurried back to the dock to board the TenFortyEZ.
Well, at least I have an idea of what Lindstrom did with his money, he thought, deciding he could work a description of the pricey condo development into the book.
Voices from the dock startled him. As he approached, he saw Taters talking with a shapely blonde woman wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops. She held a Modelo and leaned against a tall post. “And the next thing we know, the ambulance is here,” she said.
“Wow,” Taters said, arms crossed, beer in hand on his boat deck. “We had no idea. Oh, here he is now. Peter! I think you’re gonna need a beer for this one.”
“Um…what?” Pilate said warily.
“Gina, this is Peter,” Taters said. “An old buddy of Jack’s. We were fishin’ up off Marco Island and thought we’d drop by.”
She turned to Pilate, the dock light revealing an attractive woman in her fifties. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?” Pilate said. “Does this have to do with the police tape on Jack’s door?” he asked, playing naïve.
Gina nodded, sipping her beer.
“Peter, Gina said Jack had…well, uh—”
“An accident,” Gina said. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?” Pilate said, accepting a beer from Taters’s outstretche
d hand.
“Gina says he hasn’t been here all season, then he showed up a few days ago. Isn’t that right, Gina?”
She nodded. “Jack was always the life of the party up here,” she said, her eyes wet. “Used to do nutty things. Like this one time, we had a wine-tasting, and he bet everyone $100 that he could drink the spittoon without getting sick. It was disgusting, but Jack liked to be the center of attention—and he ended up $100 richer that night!”
Pilate couldn’t quite make his mind’s eye conjure up such an image.
“Anyway, he came up here a few days ago and hardly said a word to anybody. I don’t think his wife was with him,” Gina said. “She’s such a sweetheart. Anyway, we saw their Mercedes come and go a few times, and I said hello to him once, but he was pretty short with me, like he had a lot on his mind.” Gina rubbed her sun-freckled right arm with the cool beer bottle.
“So he just kept to himself?” Pilate asked.
Gina nodded. “Yeah, except my husband George said he saw Jack the night before he died, out here on the dock with some guy.”
“A guy?” Taters said.
“Yes. George only noticed because it was late, and they were getting out of a little dingy here at the dock. The guy must have been pretty smashed, ‘cause he was talking pretty loud. George said Jack had to help the guy out of the boat.”
“Were they together, or was Jack just helping the guy or what?”
Gina drank another sip of beer and looked up at the insects swirling around the dock light. “Not sure,” she said. “George was tired. He just mentioned it when he came to bed.”
Taters furrowed his brow. “So the night before Jack died, he was with some guy?”
“Do you think that guy hurt Jack?” Pilate said.
“I’m sure Jack was just trying to help the drunk guy out. Jack was always trying to help people. Maybe he tied up in the wrong place and Jack was helping set him straight.” Gina looked at Pilate and Taters and brushed aside a tear. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Peter, but I’m afraid Jack shot himself. It wasn’t somebody else. From what I read in the papers, Jack was in some kind of trouble back at the college he ran in South Dakota.”
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