He reeled back to face her. “Is this some kind of joke? Is it? Because I’m not fucking laughing.”
Samantha’s eyes watered. “John, I’m not laughing either, in case you didn’t notice. Do you think I wanted this? I had what I wanted! I had Dave, and now—”
“Did it even occur to you that I might finally have what I want?” he snapped. “Hell, I just barely got out of a situation with my fucking life, and now you want to walk in here and wreck everything! Did you ever think about that?”
“You tell her, John,” Simon offered.
“Shut up,” Pilate said.
Samantha looked confused. “What? Don’t you tell me to—”
“Sorry, not you—no, wait…yes you! Just shut up, Sam. I’m so sick of your bullshit.”
“Now wait just a minute, John. I came here so we could have a rational conversation about a problem we need to work on,” she said, dragging her butt to the edge of the sofa and placing the glass on the coffee table.
She was like a ghost of someone he once loved, and he felt as if he were trapped in some state of suspended animation or a coma like Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone. Like Walken’s character (curiously enough, also named John), Pilate had been asleep in his cocoon in the snowy Midwest—in a manner of speaking—and when he awoke, he still loved as he had before. But everything else in life had moved on—everyone and everything had gone forward, and in the process, feelings had atrophied and died. He sat down and took deep breaths.
“I know you had a horrible experience in that town in Arkansas,” she said.
“Not even close,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I know you had a brush with cancer, then got shot, and I’m sorry to have to drop this on you now, for I’m sure it comes as a terrible shock.” She reached for his hand.
He pulled away. “And now that I have a book deal, you smell money and come running, all knocked up and ready to collect, right?” he said. “How do I know there’s even a baby in there? It’s probably a damn pillow.”
Samantha rose shakily and lifted her maternity blouse, revealing the tautly stretched skin of her belly.
“That’s a baby all right,” Simon said, whistling, “and the bitch doesn’t even have stretch marks! God, it’s easy to hate her.”
“Okay, fine, but how do I know it’s mine?” Pilate said. “I mean, you were screwing Dave the whole time, and—”
Samantha popped Pilate in the mouth with her bony fist.
Pilate touched his jaw. “Thanks.”
Fat tears rolled down her face, and her engorged chest heaved as she moved away from him and picked up her purse. “A woman just knows,” she said.
“And what does Dave think?”
“Dave thinks I’m seeing some friends in New York,” she said.
“What? He thinks you just picked up a plane ticket to go visiting when you’re thirty-four weeks pregnant? Sounds to me like you got yourself a real genius there, Sam—a real fucking genius that you can feed all your bullshit to.”
“Dave doesn’t think that way,” Samantha said.
“You mean he’s not very bright,” Pilate volunteered, looking at his feet.
“Oh, John, why don’t you just fuck right off!?” she said, wiping her tears with a tissue.
“Well, I’m just saying…” he said. “I mean, come on.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, turning back to him long enough to regain her composure. “What matters is that you have a child on the way—”
“Um, no. I’m very happy for you and Dave for starting your little dim-witted family, but until I see paternity test results, in writing, that baby is nothing more to me than a poor kid with two exceedingly shitty parents.”
“Oh do give over,” Samantha said, her hands on her belly. “You know this is our child.”
“No I don’t—and I suspect you don’t know either,” Pilate said, rising. “The odds speak for themselves, Samantha. You were in the full bloom of passion with Dave for the weeks leading up to our one—I repeat, one—very brief encounter in the back of a Chrysler, and that indicates that the baby is his, not mine. No fucking way am I taking any responsibility for that offspring of yours until I get a paternity test.”
“This isn’t fair, John,” Samantha said.
“Sam, think about this.” Pilate lowered his voice to a calming purr. “Do you really think Dave will want you if he finds out you gave birth to your ex-husband’s kid?”
Samantha bit her lip, lowered her eyes a moment, then met Pilate’s glare. “And can you live with the idea of another man raising your child?”
Pilate felt the weight of her statement; his stomach roiled, and his head ached.
“Prego has a point there, John,” Simon called from the cheap seats.
He reached for a cigarette.
“Really, John?” Samantha said, looking at her belly, then the cigarette, then back to her belly.
“Of course. How silly of me. I should listen to the pregnant, safety-conscious frequent flyer,” he said, throwing the pack on the table.
“Sam, even if the baby is mine, there’s no way I’m going to be part of its life. You and Dave will still live back home, and I have other plans.”
“Is it that woman?” Samantha said.
“What woman?”
“I can read a magazine, John,” Samantha said. “Kate, the woman who helped you with that mess back in—”
“Yes, yes, Kate. She’s important to me,” he said.
Samantha glanced around Trevathan’s glorified fishing shack. “Then why are you here? Where is she?”
“I’m writing—you know, so I can have a bestseller and you can take half of the profits.”
Samantha rolled her eyes and ran a hand through her hair. “I don’t want half of anything, but I want you to take care of your…uh, do you want to know what it is?”
“No. What I want is for you to go,” he said, taking her arm gently and walking her to the door. “If you think you’re going to get my money by claiming your lovechild with Dave the Stupid Bartender is mine, then you better get some goddamned proof. Until then, stay the hell away from me, in person and on the phone.”
“Please, John! We can be civil about this,” she pleaded, her voice cracking.
“The time for civility between us passed a long time ago,” he said, opening the door. “Now, from the looks of it, you’d better get your pregnant ass back on that plane before your water breaks here—or worse, at 30,000 feet.”
Samantha shook his hand off her arm and faced him. Her almond eyes were darker than he’d ever seen them. “John, I’m going to have this baby, and you should be watching for a court order for a paternity test.”
“You really want to do that to Dave?” he said. “Are you so greedy that you would hurt him?”
“You really want to risk missing out on your own child’s life?” she said, the cold almond eyes tearing up again.
“My entire life is one big fucking Hobson’s choice,” he said.
“As I understand it, a Hobson’s choice is ‘take it or leave it.’ You have a different kind of choice here, John. You take the test, and when it reveals that you’re the father, you get to share in the life of your child. Refuse, and you still take the test, but I’ll see to it you’ll pay child support and never see the kid without my say-so or supervision. How’s that for greedy?”
Pilate stared at her, mouth agape. “What the hell happened to you?”
She shrugged. “Nothing happened to me. This is who I am. I am capable of taking care of myself and what’s mine,” she said, looking down again at her round belly. “You just never paid enough attention to notice when we were together.”
“Goodbye, Sam.” Pilate tried to close the door.
She put a slightly swollen ankle in the way. “I’m at the Blue Marlin until tomorrow afternoon.”
Pilate felt the knife twist. “Nice. Feeling nostalgic?”
“
We had some fun there,” she said. “I thought you’d be chuffed that I remembered.”
“Sam, and I mean this sincerely, goodbye.” He nudged her water-retaining foot from the door and slammed the door in her face.
“Have it your way! See you in court, John!” she yelled.
“Tell me again why you pined after that woman for months and months?” Simon said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pilate found a memory card reader at the local Radio Shack.
The sales clerk handed it over. “All you have to do is pop that memory card into this reader, then plug it into the USB port on your laptop. Should open up and show you what’s on it,” the man said, digging a finger in his ear.
“Will I be able to read it?” Pilate asked.
“Well, that might be a different story,” he said. “That size of memory card is usually found in a cell phone or digital camera, but they can be used for a lot of stuff. If your computer doesn’t have the software to read what’s on it, you’ll have to load that up.”
“Okay. Sounds good,” Just as Pilate slid cash across the counter, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Pilate took it out and looked at the screen: Kay.
“You know, you could just try it in a cell phone,” the sales clerk said, pointing at the Pilate’s cell. “Then it will show if it’s phone numbers and stuff.”
“It doesn’t fit my cell phone. My uncle broke his and took it out,” Pilate said. “He uh…well, he died and left it in his desk, so I thought I’d double-check to make sure it’s nothing important.”
“Yeah, it could be a real treasure,” the sales clerk said. “Maybe his Last Will and Testament or something.” The clerk laughed, made change, and handed it to Pilate with a receipt.
“Right,” Pilate said, “or just some old cell phone digits.”
“Yup,” the clerk said. “Need a bag for that?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Well, thanks for coming in. Good luck.”
“So you show a girl a good—no, scratch that—a great time and don’t call?” Kay Righetti said on his voicemail, the crackle of her police radio evident in the background. “Call me, John. It’s all good.” Her voice was warm and sweet but tinged with the police officer’s practiced stentorian Jedi mind trick—a request that wasn’t really a request. Call me back you will. Yessss…
“She’s not the droid you’re looking for, John,” Simon said, his eye looking back at John from the tiny cell phone screen.
“You’ve really lost your edge, Simon,” Pilate said.
“You wound me, sir!”
“Thanks again for proving my point,” Pilate said, walking back to Trevathan’s place.
“John, you need to be more careful,” Simon said. “You’re walking back to the place where they expect you to be—where they expect you’ve hidden the chip.”
Pilate stopped in the shade of a palm tree in front of St. Paul’s Episcopal. He admired the simple white spire of the venerable church that had existed in Key West, in one form or another, since 1831.
Simon was right: He was wandering around Key West with his ass hanging out and a target painted on each cheek.
“Does the phrase ‘in over your head’ mean anything to you, John?” Simon said from the recesses of his mind.
“I’ve been there before,” Pilate murmured, leaning against the palm tree and looking up at the white cross atop the church.
“And nearly died,” Simon said. “Get your shit together, John. Tell Kay what’s going on…and fast. You can chalk it up to your writer’s curiosity and get out of this with a slap on the wrist and a plane ticket back to Cross Township. Leave this to the pros.”
Pilate nodded, shoving the memory chip reader into his pocket. “I need to finish the book before I—”
“The book can be written anywhere. In fact, it would be much better to write it somewhere that doesn’t offer so many distractions.”
“Simon, you are a distraction.”
“Yes, but there’s nowhere you can go to get away from yourself,” Simon said, “especially a self as fun and attractive as me.”
Pilate changed his mind about going straight home. He wanted to think, but more than that, he needed to know what was on that memory chip.
Not far from the church, he found an Internet café that offered a couple of PC workstations. They looked relatively old, and they were not being used because most of the people in the café seemed more interested in their coffee and newspapers. and set unused as most people in the café were more intent on their coffee and newspapers.
Pilate bought a cup of something billed as Jimmy’s Key West Blend and paid for a half-hour on a computer. He dosed the coffee with sugar and cream and took a seat. After logging in, he looked over his shoulder and saw no one new or suspicious looking in the café. He took the memory chip and chip reader from his pocket, mated them, and placed the reader in the USB port of the computer.
When the icon representing the reader popped up, he clicked on it. The old PC whirred as Pilate sipped his coffee, making a face. Too sweet.
His palms were moist, his heart beating fast as the computer went to work, trying to communicate with the memory card. A new window opened, revealing a file marked MRCHND LOC, a simple Word or notepad-type document, something simple that even the ancient café computer could handle.
Pilate’s hand shook as he placed the mug beside the keyboard. A smothering weight returned to his shoulders and chest. Somebody wants whatever’s on this chip—enough to break into that house to look for it, never mind killing a guy named Juan. And now John was quite possibly seconds from learning why.
Pilate clicked on the file.
The file opened to reveal a scan of a hand-drawn map, with Key West clearly marked, then a blob of what he presumed to be islands marked Marquesas, and just north of there, a comical X near the initials DK, like something one might see on a pirate’s treasure map in a kid’s storybook. Scrawled beside the X were a series of numbers: +24° 32' 57.10", -81° 59' 49.60".
“Longitude and latitude,” Pilate whispered.
“Buried treasure?” Simon intoned in his best pirate voice. “Aye, matey, we be rich!”
We be dead.
Pilate sent the document to the printer slaved to the café PCs and waited what seemed like hours as the old thing warmed up, spooled paper to be printed upon, and then promptly jammed.
“Sorry about that,” said the barista, a fresh-scrubbed, summer-blonde girl in cutoff shorts, a tank top, and a red bandana. “Happens all the time.” She reached for the paper that was jammed halfway in the printer, halfway out, revealing the longitude and X, but nothing more. She ripped the page out and tore it in the process, so she crumpled it and tossed it in a wastebasket. “Here. Try it again,” she said, leaning over the printer.
Pilate’s anxiousness didn’t divert his attention from her lovely golden breasts; the white tank presented them as if it were a pillar displaying a bronze.
She glanced up and caught his eyes, giving him a stern look that said, “I get that kind of leer all the time, Mr., and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
The printer worked the second time, so Pilate thanked her, tossed a tip in her jar, and closed down the PC, careful to remove the memory chip and reader from the USB port.
“I need more time,” Pilate said from a payphone on Duval Street. Cradling the phone between his ear and neck while he unfolded the piece of paper from the computer printer at the Internet café, Pilate eyed the tan, shapely legs of a pretty woman window-shopping the numerous t-shirt and trinket shops that lined the street. “You’re not going to believe it, but I seem to have found a…a situation down here.”
“What does that mean, sweetie?” asked Angie, his agent. Pilate could hear her shuffling papers and brusquely covering the mouthpiece on the phone to say something to an assistant. Pilate couldn’t be sure, but he thought it sounded like, “My problem child.”
“Angie, all I can tell you is that the Lindst
rom angle has legs,” Pilate said. “There’s something big going on with that part of the story—something we won’t want to miss, and—”
“John, what we won’t want to miss is your deadline. You have to fucking turn in a fucking manuscript on time, or the deal may get flushed,” Angie said. “You know this, John.” He heard her snapping her fingers, hopefully at an intern and not him. “They don’t want to extend your deadline.”
“Well, Angie, what if I fucking have the fucking biggest story imaginable and we miss it because we rush the Cross book out without it?” Pilate palmed the poker chip, its label, and the memory card. He placed the memory card back in its cubby inside the poker chip and reapplied the label. Though it wasn’t as sticky as it was originally, it affixed satisfactorily after he rubbed it a moment with his thumb.
“That’s why you write a second book, my dear,” she said. Pilate pictured Angie, the agent he had met only once for a brief lunch in New York City. They celebrated over a slice of pizza and a beer (Angie wasn’t a big-time agent, and the publisher wasn’t all that big time either) after a quick visit to the publisher, who commissioned Pilate to write about his near-death and amateur sleuthing experiences at Cross College. He was sure she was on the other end of the phone adjusting her square, heavy-framed black glasses, absently scrubbing at her scalp with a free hand and making “What the fuck?” faces to the universe at large.
“Angie, look, I may be on to something really big here,” he said, slipping the poker chip/memory card in his pocket. “I need more time. I’m not asking for any more money—just a little more time.”
A pause, and then Angie took a breath. “And you can’t tell me what the hell this big thing about Lindstrom is?”
“It’s best I don’t,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her voice hushed. “Is it serious…like really fucking serious?”
“Angie, I was nearly killed by this guy back in Cross,” Pilate said, looking about him for anyone who might be paying attention; he saw no one but souvenir hunters sauntering by, so he went on, “And I think there is every chance that he may still be alive.”
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