by Stuart Woods
“Okay, let’s play a set. I’ll use the singles lines.”
Half an hour later, when Chuck had won six-two, they took a break and had a soft drink.
“Have you taken the boat out yet?” Stone asked.
“Just the run from the Peninsula yard on Stock Island to the yacht club. It’s tough to get much time off during the winter season—I’m so booked up with students.”
“Are you living aboard?”
Chuck laughed. “That’s the only way I can afford the boat. I can’t 47
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buy a house, too, not with real estate prices the way they are down here. I’m comfortable, though. The old boat was a lot more cramped, and every time I bought a piece of clothing, I had to throw one away.”
“What did you do with the old boat?” Stone asked.
“I sold it to the first guy who looked at it. I think I may not have asked enough.”
“I’ve heard about the Peninsula Marina. Is that where you did the work?”
“Yeah, I rented a shed in the yard.”
“Did you ever run into a guy named Evan Keating in the marina there?”
“Sure did; I sold him my boat.”
Stone broke into a broad smile. “Finally!” he said.
“Finally what?” Chuck asked.
“We came down here to fi nd Keating; I’ve got some documents for him to sign. I saw him once, but he got away from me, and we haven’t been able to find him. Do you have an address for him?”
“No, but as far as I know, he’s living aboard my old boat. At least that’s what he told me he was going to do.”
“Where is he berthed?”
“I don’t know. I know the Peninsula didn’t have a berth for him.”
“Where did you keep the boat?”
“In the same slip at the yacht club where the new boat is.”
“Did you get an address from Keating or any other information that might help me fi nd him?”
“No. It was a cash deal, so I didn’t need an address, and, like I said, he was planning to live aboard.” He dug into a pocket of his shorts for his cell phone. “I’ve got his cell number, though,” he said, and he read it from his phone. It was the number they already had.
“Do you remember what bank his check was written on?”
“No bank. He showed up at the club with a paper bag with a hun4 8
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dred and thirty thousand in hundreds in it. I’d never seen that much cash before.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Yesterday.”
“The same day he checked out of his hotel,” Dino said. “At least we know what boat to look for now. What’s the name?”
“Choke, ” Chuck said.
“Can you describe the boat?”
“Sure. Thirtytwo-footer, white hull, mahogany superstructure, twin screws.”
“That’s pretty small for twin engines,” Stone said.
“They’re small engines, but they give you a lot more maneuverability than a single.”
“Gas or diesel?”
“Gas.”
“Anything else you can tell us about it?”
“Prettiest boat in Key West, except for Choke II. ”
“Do you know anything at all about Keating, besides that he bought your boat?” Stone asked.
Chuck thought about it. “He has a pretty girlfriend, name of Gigi.”
“Anything else?”
“He saw me play at Wimbledon, the year I, ah, fi nished second. Seems like half the world saw me fuck it up.”
“Was Keating driving a car when you met him?”
“Oh, yeah, he was driving a Chrysler convertible; that’s a common rental here.”
“Color?”
“Ummm, silver—no, white. Oh, and he brought a guy with him to help him move the boat. I spent an hour showing them around it. The girl drove away in the convertible.”
“Can you describe his helper?”
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“A little under six feet, I guess, fairly scrawny. Full beard. Oh, and Keating called him Charley.”
“Aha,” Stone said, “Boggs lied to us.”
“What did you expect?” Dino asked.
“Want to play another set?” Chuck asked.
“I think we have to go see Charley Boggs,” Stone said. TH E Y D R O V E B AC K to Garrison Bight, parked near the sport fi sherman fleet and walked over to Boggs’s houseboat. Nobody home. Stone and Dino looked through the windows. The boat was sparsely furnished.
“Can I help you?” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find a woman on the next boat looking at them.
“We’re looking for Charley Boggs,” Stone said.
“Haven’t seen him since yesterday,” the woman replied. “A couple came and got him in a boat, and he hasn’t come back yet.”
“What kind of boat?”
“Old, pretty; white hull, mahogany everything else.”
“Right. Do you know Charley well?”
“Well enough to know that he doesn’t seem to do anything to make a living. Most of the time, he’s fishing off the back of that boat.”
“Has his houseboat been moored here long?”
“He bought it from the previous berth holder a few months back. That’s how you get a houseboat berth in Key West—you buy the houseboat.”
“Had you seen the couple in the boat before?”
“I saw them once having a drink with Boggs up on the top deck.”
“Do you have any idea where they live?”
“No idea at all. You want me to give Boggs a message when he comes back?”
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Stone wrote his cell number on his card. “There’s a hundred in it for you if you’ll call me when he returns—or if you see the couple again.”
“I can always use a hundred,” the woman said, stretching out between the boats to take the card.
Stone and Dino drove back to the Marquesa.
“Evan Keating is … what’s the word?” Dino asked.
“Elusive,” Stone replied.
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STO N E , A S E A R L I E R requested, picked up Annika Swenson at a small, pretty conch house on South Street. She was dressed in white—lacy top, linen pants—with a yellow sweater thrown over her shoulders. Stone put her in the car.
“I booked us a table at Louie’s Backyard,” she said. “Straight ahead, I’ll direct you.”
Louie’s turned out to be a large clapboard house on the beach with a big deck out back overlooking the water. They took a table on the deck, ordered mojitos and asked the waitress to call them when their dinner table was ready. The sun was going down.
“The light is beautiful here,” Stone said.
“Always,” Annika replied.
“What brought you to Key West?”
“A job in the ER here. I was a late finisher from med school—
Johns Hopkins—and by the time I finished my internship and residency, I was already thirty-five. I had had enough of cold winters, so when I got the Key West offer I jumped at it.”
“Were you born in this country? I think I detect a slight accent.”
“No. I was born in Stockholm. My parents moved to Miami 5 2
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when I finished college, and I came with them and applied to Johns Hopkins.”
“Do you prefer the United States to Sweden?”
“Yes, I think so. At any rate, I never think about moving back to Sweden. I do miss some of the Swedish attitudes.”
“Attitudes about what?”
“Sex, mainly. Americans have so many hang-ups about sex. Things are simpler in Sweden.”
“I’ve heard that, but I haven’t encountered it.”
“You have now. For instance, what would you say if I told you that I find you att
ractive, and that after dinner I would like to take you back to my house and make love to you?”
“Are we speaking hypothetically?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I would be flattered and pleased,” Stone said.
“Then you have a Swedish attitude,” she said. Then there was some sort of scuffle at the bar, and Stone turned to see a man take a swing at another. The swinger was a compact, muscular man with blood in his eye; the one scrambling to his feet was Charley Boggs.
Two men came running down the stairs from the main restaurant and pulled the fighters apart. There was some discussion, which Stone couldn’t hear, then Charley Boggs stalked away from the deck and out of the restaurant, while the shorter man returned to his table and his drink.
“Why are you so interested in this argument?” Annika asked.
“I’m sorry, I’m a great deal more interested in you, but I know one of the men.”
“Which one?”
“The one who got thrown out. His name is Charley Boggs, and the local police suspect him of being a drug dealer.”
“And why are you acquainted with a drug dealer?” she asked, not unreasonably.
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“I’ve met him only once; he’s apparently an associate of a man I’m trying to fi nd.”
“Do you want to follow him?”
“No, I want to have dinner with you, then take you back to your house and make love to you.”
She smiled. “Thank you, I would prefer that, too. Who is the man you’re looking for, and why?”
“His name is Evan Keating, and I need to get his signature on some legal documents.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“Yes, in New York.”
“Does your work often bring you into contact with drug dealers?”
“No. Keating’s father wants to sell the family business, and they need the agreement of the young man. The company is a client of a law firm I’m associated with.”
“Well, if you are sent to Key West on business, then you lead an interesting life,” she said.
“Sometimes it’s interesting; sometimes it’s too interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s interesting if I meet someone like you during the course of my business, and it’s too interesting if I’m knocked unconscious outside a restaurant.”
She smiled. “Well, you are the first man I’ve ever met when he was lying face down on a sidewalk.”
“Did you see whoever hit me?”
“No. I turned a corner, and there you were. A car was driving away.”
“What kind of car?”
“A white convertible with a man and a woman inside.”
“That would have been Evan Keating and his girlfriend, Gigi Jones.”
“The man you’re looking for?”
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“Yes. I had approached him at the bar in the Marquesa and asked to speak with him. He suggested we go outside.”
“Isn’t that what American men do when they wish to fi ght? Go outside?”
Stone laughed. “Sometimes. I wasn’t expecting a fight on that occasion, though.”
“She must have hit you with something heavy,” Annika said.
“Why do you think the girl hit me?”
“She was with the man. Was there any other man present?”
“No.”
“Then it must have been the girl. You should not turn your back on strange women.”
“That’s good advice,” Stone admitted. They were called to their table, where they ordered another mojito and dinner. AF T ER D I N N ER , they returned to Annika’s house, as previously discussed, and she led him upstairs to her bedroom. She undressed and hung up her clothes, and Stone draped his over a chair. She pulled the bedcover off the bed and onto the fl oor.
“You’re very beautiful,” Stone said.
“You’re beautiful, too,” she said. “I think we will be good lovers together.”
They lay on the bed and came into each other’s arms. “First, we will do the missionary position,” Annika said, pulling him on top of her. “I love that name. Then we will rest and we will do it a different way.”
“All right,” Stone said. “Should we discuss which way now?”
“You are laughing at me,” she said, taking his penis in her hand and sliding it inside her. She did not need a lubricant.
“Only a little,” Stone said. “And suddenly I can’t remember why.”
“Good,” she said. “You must think only of now.”
She was right, he decided.
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ST O N E WA S WA K E N E D by a buzzing noise that he did not immediately recognize. It took him a moment to see that his cell phone, vibrating, was doing a little dance on the glass top of Annika’s dressing table. He gently removed Annika’s blonde head from his shoulder, tiptoed naked across the room and picked up the phone. “Yes?” he whispered.
“Where the hell are you?” Dino asked. “As if I didn’t know.”
“I’m at Annika’s. What do you want?”
“That figures. This whole thing is blowing wide open, and you’re in the sack with a blonde.”
“What do you mean, it’s blowing wide open?”
“I mean that Charley Boggs was found floating face down in Garrison Bight this morning, not far from his houseboat, dead as a mackerel.”
“I saw him get into a fight last night at Louie’s Backyard. He lost.”
“Was he alive after the fi ght?”
“Yes, he left under his own steam.”
“You might want to pass that news on to Tommy Sculley,” Dino said. “I expect he’d want a chat with the other fi ghter.”
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“I’ll call him in a few minutes,” Stone said.
“What, after you’ve fucked the blonde again?”
“None of your business. And don’t worry, Charley Boggs isn’t going anywhere.”
“Okay, you fuck the girl, and I’ll call Tommy. Give me a description of the fi ghter.”
“White male, fi ve-nine, a hundred and seventy, dark hair, lots of stubble. Built like he labors for a living.”
“That’ll do. Go get back in bed.” Dino hung up. Stone got back in bed, and Annika snuggled up close to him. “I like it that we’re both blonde,” she said. “I mean blonde all over. That must be very rare in this country.”
“Now that you mention it, it is rare, at least for me.” He kissed her and their tongues played with each other.
“I hope you are fully rested from last night,” she said, “and ready to make love again.”
“I think I might just manage it,” Stone replied, “if you do most of the work.”
“All right,” she said, cheerfully. “We did the missionary position and the doggie position last night; now we will do the blow-job position. Lie on your back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Stone said, following instructions. She glanced at the clock. “You mustn’t take too long to come, because I must go to work.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
STON E G O T B AC K to the Marquesa in time to see Dino’s breakfast dishes taken away.
“Have you eaten anything?” Dino asked. “I’m referring to the like of bacon and eggs.”
“Nothing like that,” Stone said. He picked up the phone and ordered.
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“As soon as you can get yourself together, we should go over to Boggs’s houseboat,” Dino said.
“Why?”
“Well, don’t you think we might find something there that could tell us more about your Evan Keating?”
“I suppose we might.”
“You don’t think very clearly first thing in the morning, do you?”
“I do, but I wasn�
�t thinking about Charley Boggs.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I take it you had a pleasant evening.”
“That is an inadequate description of my evening.”
“I think I’m going to have to call Genevieve and get her down here,” Dino said, referring to his girlfriend.
“If that will keep you from exploding with envy, by all means. She can ride back with us.”
Dino went inside to use the phone, and Stone had his breakfast. TH E Y A R R I V E D AT the Garrison Bight houseboat of Charley Boggs an hour later, with Stone freshly shaved and showered. Tommy Sculley was sitting in a teak chair on the rear deck reading the local newspaper.
“Take a pew,” Tommy said. “My crime scene people will let us in there in a few minutes.”
“This is your idea of working a scene?” Dino said, sitting down.
“First, they work it and show me any evidence, then I work it. Like that, we don’t get in each other’s way.”
“This is where Charley Boggs liked to do his fishing,” Stone said, sitting down. “You think he fell in and drowned?”
Tommy nodded. “I think he could have fallen in and drowned 5 8
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right after he caught the bullet in the back of the head. He might have lived long enough to drown.”
“Any luck on the guy he fought with at Louie’s last night?” Stone asked.
Tommy nodded. “Guy name of Billy Guy.” He jerked a thumb behind him, toward the row of charter fishing boats. “He skippers a fisherman parked over there. My guy Daryl is talking to him now.”
“That’s quick work,” Stone said.
“It’s Key West; nobody who lives here can go into a restaurant or bar without being seen by somebody who knows him. It makes life simpler when you want to find a guy.”
“Any news on what the fight was about?”
“Daryl will bring us up to date after he pumps Billy. He’s already talked to a couple of witnesses; you’re next.”
“Sounds like he won’t need me,” Stone said.
“You could be right,” Tommy replied, turning the page of his newspaper.
“Anything worth reading in there?” Dino asked.
“Nothing about Charley Boggs,” Tommy said. “He was found only a couple of hours ago.”
“Do a lot of people in Key West get shot in the back of the head?”