Another creaking sound—more of a wrenching sound, really, as if someone were trying to pry the bars off the window downstairs.
Pilate slowly released the safety on the .45 and rose to his feet. His heart pounded, and a bead of sweat tickled his side as it crossed the distance from his armpit to his underwear.
“Why didn’t you wear some clothes?” Simon said. “You’re going to die in your damn tighty-whiteys? How embarrassing! Please tell me it’s at least a clean pair—you know, in case you have to go to the hospital.”
Ignoring Simon’s taunts, Pilate tucked the cell phone in his waistband and crept to the stairs.
The wrenching sound grew more frequent and less careful. Whoever was out there was going for broke—either assuming Pilate wasn’t home or was completely knocked out from exhaustion, booze, or drugs.
Pilate rounded the stairs to the landing and peered around the corner. He saw two shadows in the alley. There wasn’t much to see besides that, though, as someone had taken great pains to disable the streetlight.
He heard a motor-scooter zip down the street in front of the house. He had a couple of choices: fire a warning shot and scare them away; call the police; or run out the front door and keep running until he found a crowd of people.
“In your underwear?” Simon asked.
Or, I could just wait and see who broke in and turn on the light to face them.
Splinters made sharp cracking sounds as the screws holding the brackets of the bar gave way. The bars were strong, but the wood of the house was rotten. It would be off in another minute, and the window would be no trouble at all.
Pilate moved slowly, hugging the wall until he was behind the sofa. He decided it was time to find out who was after him and why. He was sick of playing cat-and-mouse, so he waited for them to come in.
Eons passed in mere seconds as the bars ripped free, the window smashed, and a thin, dark man slid into the hallway. He gestured for his friend to follow and helped him inside.
Pilate took the cell phone from his underwear waistband and called 911, then laid it on the rug beside him.
The men took a second to get their bearings, then started up the stairs as if they’d been in the place a million times before.
Pilate picked up the cell.
“This is 911 emergency. What is the nature of your emergency?”
“This is John Pilate. I’m at 1013 Patterson, not far from the harbor. I have two intruders.”
“Sir, where are you in the house?”
“Downstairs,” Pilate hissed. “They went upstairs.”
“Can you get out?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “The door is barred and locked, and I’m afraid they might hear me trying to leave. I’m hiding downstairs behind the sofa.”
“Sir, we have units on the way,” the dispatcher said. “Please remain calm and stay on the line.”
Suddenly, there came a crash from the second floor, and Pilate could only assume it was the result of their fury at finding nothing in the bed but pillows, strategically placed.
“Oh shit! They’re coming back down,” he said.
“Sir, please remain on the line and stay out of sight. We have units on the way.”
When Pilate heard a siren in the distance, he hung up the phone.
The men thundered down the stairs, heading back for the shattered window.
Pilate jerked the chain on a lamp, stunning and temporarily blinding them. “Don’t you fucking move!” Pilate yelled, extending the .45 over the back of the sofa. “I will fucking blow your asses away.”
The men were in their twenties. One was an extremely dark man with dreadlocks, and the other was of Hispanic descent, with short-cropped hair and a neatly-trimmed mustache. He looked vaguely familiar. The dreadlock man carried a machete, and the other had a small pistol.
“Drop it! The cops will be here any second,” Pilate said, his voice shaking with adrenaline and fear.
The man with dreadlocks smiled, revealing pearly white teeth. The Hispanic man simply shrugged.
“We don’t fear the cops more than we do our boss, man,” dreadlock man said.
Pilate couldn’t tell if his smile was ironic or mirthful.
“And no matter what happens here, you’re a dead man. You’d do well to give us the chip.”
“What chip?” Pilate said.
The Hispanic man looked at the dreadlock man, who nodded. The Hispanic man raised his pistol and fired two shots.
Pilate fell back behind the sofa—checking himself for wounds.
“You’re fine, John. Stay down!” Simon screamed in his skull.
Pilate heard the men scrambling back out the alley window. Shaking, he couldn’t force himself to move. He stayed on the floor as the sirens drew near. Things were quiet for a moment, and Pilate shoved the gun under the sofa. He heard pounding on the door.
“Police! Open the door now! Key West Police! Open Up!”
Pilate drew himself up, staggered to the door, and opened it to see men standing there with their guns drawn—the same men who had delivered him into Kay Righetti’s arms the night before. “They went back out the window down the alley,” he said, pointing down the hall.
“You?” the young officer with the huge biceps said, looking at Pilate’s underwear. He radioed in that the caller was safe. “Perps escaped into the alley,” he reported.
“We’re on it,” a familiar female voice responded over the radio.
The older officer lowered his weapon. “Kay and Tom are covering the alley.” He glanced at Pilate. “Nice undies. You okay?”
“I, uh…I think I might need a new pair about now,” Pilate said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kay and the other officer, Tom, sat at the kitchen table with Pilate, who had changed into some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Tom had salt-and-pepper hair and was around forty-five or fifty, fit but not very tall. He wore sergeant’s stripes; thus, he was Kay’s boss.
“Sorry to have to bump into you under such circumstances, Mr. Pilate,” Kay said, all business.
“Ditto,” Pilate said.
“We unfortunately could not locate the men you described,” Tom said.
“Unfortunately,” Pilate said.
“Kay tells me this is the second break-in you’ve had here in the past week or so. Is that correct?” Tom looked at Pilate impassively.
“Yes,” he said.
Kay wrote down Pilate’s answers on her notepad.
“Interesting,” Tom said. “And you had bars placed on the downstairs windows after the last break-in?”
Pilate nodded.
“And this isn’t your home?” Tom said.
“No. As Kay can explain, I’m borrowing a friend’s place. Dr. Trevathan authorized me to have the bars installed,” Pilate said, lighting a cigarette.
“I see that nothing was stolen,” Tom added, “again.”
“Right.”
“What do you think they’re after?” Tom said, his gray-flecked eyes boring into Pilate’s.
Pilate shrugged. “No idea.”
“Well, this isn’t exactly a high-crime area, and to have two break-ins in a week—especially after bars have been installed…” His voice trailed off as he turned to look at Kay.
“It looks to me as if you have something they want,” she said.
“Well, obviously,” Pilate said, looking at Kay, who kept her face frosty, flat, and all business.
“Let’s cut the crap, Mr. Pilate,” he said. “You have a choice here. You can start telling us the whole truth, or we can take you to the station and wake up the lawyers and officials, who I can assure you won’t be too happy about that.” His eyes stayed on Pilate’s face.
“What’s this ‘whole truth’ you’re looking for?” Pilate said. He had dealt with cops plenty before, and though he respected them, he wasn’t going to be pushed around by anyone. “And I’d appreciate it if you’d stop threatening me. I’m the one who was nearly killed here tonight.”
>
“Look, it makes no difference to me whether or not you’re stubbornly hiding something that might get you killed,” the sergeant said, “but what does matter is if you’re doing something illegal that can get other people hurt or reflect poorly on Key West.”
“Sergeant, I know this looks strange,” Pilate said, exhaling and stubbing out the cigarette, “and believe you me, I know strange.”
“Yes. I’m well aware of who you are,” he said, “and of how enamored the media and…uh, others are with you.”
Kay looked at the table.
“But your celebrity doesn’t cut you any ice here,” he said.
“Just what is it you think I’ve done?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said, leaning back in his chair and shrugging his shoulders. He folded his arm across his chest, a maneuver that looked far too uncomfortable with the regulation bulletproof vest underneath. “Maybe it’s drugs. Maybe you’re trafficking stolen goods or treasure. Maybe you’re living in a house built over a goldmine. Whatever it is, you’d better start talking.”
“Knock, knock!” a gravelly voice called from the open doorway.
At the door stood a man in his sixties. He had gray hair, an unkempt, bushy mustache, and a prodigious beer gut that nearly burst the buttons on a gaudy red Hawaiian shirt: a modern-day Magnum P.I. if he’d gone to seed in Key West. Police lights from the cruiser flashed, providing him with a flickering red and blue halo.
“Oh hey, Buster,” Tom said. “What can I do you for?”
“I’m just looking in on my buddy Trev’s place,” the man said, with his hands jammed in his pockets, jangling keys and coins. “Mr. Pilate here is a guest, and I saw the commotion driving by.”
“Well, two guys tried to break in and fired a couple of twenty-two slugs at Mr. Pilate here, but he’s okay,” Tom said.
Buster looked around the room, then at the fresh holes in the sofa. “Mind if I hang around while you talk to Mr. Pilate? I need to chat with him after you’re done. From the looks of it, we got stuff to fix up before Trev comes back next week.”
“Well—“ Tom began to object.
“Tom, I’m kinda looking after the place,” Buster said, blowing his nose into a hankie. “I won’t be any trouble. Besides, I think Mr. Pilate might need someone to talk to after you all leave—to calm his nerves and all.”
Pilate looked back at Tom.
The sergeant’s face softened. “Of course. We’ll be just another minute. We dug the slugs out of the sofa but keep it clean till we’re done here. The crime scene guys will be leaving soon.”
“I think they just did,” Buster said, gesturing to the white van pulling away outside. Buster walked leisurely around the room, whistling low under his breath. Observing Tom and Kay’s attention diverted back to Pilate, he wandered behind the sofa and made a solid, surprisingly fluid motion to look under the fringe that obscured the area beneath the it. Then he stood up and dropped a handful of change on the floor. “Damn it,” he said, bending over till he was out of Tom’s and Kay’s sight. He picked up the change and snatched the pistol, quickly tucking it into the belt under his garish shirt. “Sorry,” he said, standing erect again and walking toward the kitchen.
After a few more questions, Tom and Kay stood. “Okay. We’ll be in touch.”
“What? I thought we were going to do the whole ‘take this downtown’ thing?” Pilate said.
“Do you want to go downtown?” Tom asked.
“No,” he said. “Thank you for coming here so fast. I’m sure you saved my life.”
Kay said nothing; she only nodded and walked past Tom to the patrol car.
Tom walked a step past Pilate, then took his forearm. “Listen, for your own safety, if something is going on, don’t play us for morons. Let us help. That’s what we’re here for. On top of that, for some reason, Officer Righetti likes you. I don’t want to be the one to break it to her if we find you dead or missing.”
“Thanks, Sergeant,” Pilate said. “I assure you that I haven’t done anything wrong. I really don’t know why these guys broke in. I wish I did, believe me.”
Tom regarded Pilate for a moment, then let his go of his arm. “Call us if you suddenly remember something,” he said. He turned to the elder man and nodded. “Buster,” he said by way of farewell, then closed the front door behind him.
“Can you believe they didn’t bother to look under the sofa?” Buster said, brandishing Pilate’s borrowed pistol in his meaty paw.
“Okay, so who the hell are you?” Pilate said, his untrusting eyes locked on the pistol.
“Buster. Trev’s a buddy a mine,” he said, checking the safety and placing the .45 on the counter. “I see you didn’t want the cops to know you had an unregistered firearm. Can’t say as though I blame ya, but that doesn’t look like one of Trev’s.”
“That’s ‘cause it isn’t,” Pilate said.
“It looks like the one you borrowed from your pal on the boat.”
“Huh? How did you know about that? You spying on me?”
“Well, now, ain’t that a nasty way of puttin’ it? Surveillance is better, for your protection.” Buster nodded almost imperceptibly. “Trev and I go way back—Vietnam.” he said, leaning against the range. “I’m the guy who convinced him to buy this shack.”
“I see,” Pilate said.
“He comes out most every summer,” Buster said. “We get drunk, tell stories, make up more stories, and look at women—though at our age, it’s like Chihuahuas chasing Cadillacs, ya know?”
“Uh-huh. So you were just driving by and saw the lights and—“
“No. That was a bit of a fib, I’m afraid. Trev called and asked me to check on you,” he said. “I followed you from the marina. Nothing was happening, so I went and grabbed some dinner over at the Wharf Café. On the way back, I saw all this commotion.” He hocked something that sounded nasty from his throat and spat it in the sink.
Pilate made a face.
“Anyhoo, I was gonna come by and introduce myself. Trev called the other day and said I should say hey and make sure you’re getting along all right,” he said.
“He asked you to check up on me?” Pilate folded his arms.
“Call it what you want,” Buster said, “but be grateful. Trev cares about you, and that’s sayin’ a lot. He don’t care about hardly anybody since his lady died.”
Pilate nodded. “You played some kind of a Jedi mind trick on the cops too.”
“Jedi? What the hell’s that mean? If you mean I got Tom and that sweet piece of ass to call off their dogs, then yeah,” he said, smiling broadly and clearly pleased with himself.
“How’d you do that? I don’t see a light saber,” Pilate said.
“Just something you learn after twenty-five years on the force—especially when you retire as chief of detectives.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, Pilate nursed the cup of decaf, which Buster generously spiked with a few drops from his flask.
“Whiskey?”
“Yup,” Buster said. “Takes the edge off,” he proclaimed, pouring a healthy shot into his own mug.
“Thanks.” Pilate took a sip, and the burning sensation of the hot coffee and whiskey gave him a jolt. “Nice.”
“It’s dog piss, but on my pension, I gotta stay cost conscious,” Buster said, stroking his mustache to wipe away coffee. “This soup strainer of mine is a delight to the ladies, but damn it if it don’t get in the way of eating and drinking.”
Pilate raised both eyebrows in a gesture that said “I hear ya,” but he left that unsaid.
Buster looked Pilate in the eye. “Trev says you saved some lives up there in Kansas.”
“Close enough,” Pilate said, taking another swig of the laced coffee.
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, he says you pert near saved his life,” Buster said.
“It wasn’t really like that,” Pilate said, his voice low and monotone.
“Trev don’t
mince words, and if he says you saved his life and a buncha other people’s in the process, I believe him.” He gestured at the shotgun pellet marks on Pilate’s face. “And it looks to me like you took some buckshot in that kisser of yours too.”
“Well, yeah. To quote Ronald Reagan, ‘I forgot to duck.’”
“Ha!” Buster slapped the table. “Loved Reagan. What I wouldn’t do to get a man like that back in the White House.”
“That would certainly be something,” Pilate said. “Anyway, thanks for helping me out here.”
“Look, this is hardly any of my business, but I gotta tell you you’ve got your butt in a crack, Mr., uh…”
“Pilate. John Pilate.” He extended a hand across the table.
“Buster Campbell.” He shook Pilate’s hand. “Real name’s Garrett, but when I was born, I was so big they called me Buster. The name stuck.”
Pilate smiled, wondering if Samantha’s baby would be a “buster.” She looked pretty damn huge to me, he thought.
“As I was saying, you have a problem, and it’s apparently one you don’t want to share with the local constabulary,” Buster said, pushing his mug away. “Now listen, I’m retired police. I do some private investigator stuff to supplement my income—mostly process serving and the occasional snoop on a cheater. But I’ll tell you right now that if you’re into something nasty, you need to come clean with the cops.”
“Why are you covering for me?”
“I’m not really,” he said, sitting back in his chair. His back made a popping sound. “Ahh, that felt good. I’m just doing a favor for a friend. But if there’s something bad going on that the cops should know about, I can make sure you get the best possible treatment from them, as long as you fill me in. Still got quite a bit of pull around there, believe it or not.”
Pilate looked at Buster’s lined, cracked face, and comically bushy mustache. “Those guys who broke in, I don’t know who they are,” Pilate said. “That’s the whole truth.”
“Okay. But why do you think they broke in, whoever they were?”
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