by Stuart Woods
Stone asked.
“Remarkably few compared to, say, New Orleans or Chicago. Last execution-style killing I can remember here was year before last. This one is the first gunshot killing of any kind this year. Hope it’s the last.”
Daryl appeared on the gangplank. “Permission to come aboard, skipper?”
“Get your ass aboard,” Tommy called back.
Daryl, clad in jeans and a splashy shirt with a lot of tropical fruit on it, came onto the rear deck and seated himself on the railing, since all the chairs were occupied by his elders. 5 9
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“So?” Tommy asked. “Are we charging Billy Guy with Charley’s murder?”
“Probably not,” Daryl said.
“What was the fi ght about?”
“Charley made an unkind comment about Billy’s girl. Billy took exception and put a fist in Charley’s face.”
“I got sort of a sideways look at that,” Stone said. “The management separated them before it got any farther.”
“Was Charley’s remark unkind enough to make Billy want to kill him?” Tommy asked.
“Nah,” Daryl replied, “and his girl wasn’t even along. She was back on his boat with PMS. He got home about nine and stuck.”
“Is that just Billy’s story, or did she confi rm it?”
“She confi rmed.”
“It’s not very far from over there to over here,” Tommy pointed out.
“I know Billy,” Daryl said. “I don’t think he has a murderous streak.”
“If you say so, Daryl,” Tommy said.
A Boston Whaler putted by with Charley Boggs’s corpse covered and strapped to a stretcher.
“You have a decent medical examiner down here?” Stone asked.
“Yeah, but he ain’t going to find anything, except a bullet in Charley’s brain. This one ain’t rocket science.”
“Then somebody tell me who offed Charley Boggs,” Stone said.
“And tell me if Evan Keating had anything to do with it.”
“All in good time,” Tommy said, turning to the sports page. 6 0
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THE IN S I D E O F Charley Boggs’s houseboat looked like he hadn’t lived there for very long. There was a sofa, a big fl atscreen TV and an expensive-looking audio system and a lot of CDs.
“Pretty easy to see where Charley’s interests lay,” Tommy said.
“Yeah, and his interests make the place easy to search,” Dino agreed.
“Let’s look at upstairs,” Stone said. “I predict a bed and another TV.”
Stone turned out to be right.
“Look, there’s a bedside table, too,” Dino said.
“They must love Charley at the furniture store,” Tommy opined. He opened a drawer in the bedside table and pointed. Inside was a new-looking semiautomatic pistol.
“SigArms P229,” Stone said. “Charley lived simply, but he liked the best of everything—at least, the best of everything he owned: TVs, stereos and weapons.”
Tommy pulled on a pair of latex gloves, popped the magazine from the gun and racked the slide, spitting a round onto the bed. He sniffed the barrel.
“Cordite?” Dino asked.
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“Gun oil,” Tommy replied. “The deed didn’t get done with Charley’s own gun.” He put the round back into the magazine and bagged the works.
Tommy checked the closet, which contained some jeans and Hawaiian shirts. “He’d blend right in in Key West with that wardrobe,” he said. They checked the bathroom medicine cabinet, which contained a toothbrush and a razor, and the toilet tank, which contained water. They went downstairs and checked the kitchen. There were two cases of Bud in the fridge, along with a jar of peanut butter and some left-over Chinese in cartons. In a drawer they found some utensils, and in a cabinet a few glasses.
“That’s it,” Tommy said. “Do you believe it? I mean, everybody collects a little of life’s detritus, but not Charley.”
“How long did the neighbor say he’d lived here?” Stone asked Dino.
“Since last year. She didn’t say when last year.”
“Did he own a car?” Stone asked.
“There was a motorcycle chained to the electrical post on the dock,” Tommy said. “I reckon that’s his.”
“Was it searched?” Stone asked.
“Search a motorcycle?”
Stone walked up the dock and found the motorcycle, a light Honda. “Do you have the keys?” he called back to Tommy. Tommy produced a plastic bag containing some items and found some keys. He tossed them to Stone. “These were in his pocket.”
Stone found the right key and unlocked a little storage compartment on the cycle. “Hey, hey!” he yelled and held up a ziplock bag with two fingers. “That’s half a key, I reckon.”
Tommy walked down the dock, took the bag, opened it and tasted a sample. “Cocaine,” he said, “and my guess is it’s uncut.”
“That’s a lot of product to be walking around with,” Stone said,
“and there were no smaller bags, so I guess he wasn’t hawking it on the street.”
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“More like a delivery,” Tommy said, “one that didn’t get made.”
“Enough to get killed for,” Stone pointed out.
“I guess the killer asked Charley for it, and when he didn’t give, the guy got pissed off.”
“It wouldn’t have taken long to search the houseboat,” Stone said,
“but he didn’t search the motorcycle.”
Dino had joined them. “Let’s take another look at the boathouse,”
Dino said.
They did, and this time they looked everywhere. Dino stood in the little wheelhouse, holding a fl oorboard in his hand. “Take a look at this,” he said to Tommy. Tommy looked and found an empty compartment with a trace of white powder at the bottom. “Maybe the shooter didn’t go away empty-handed after all.”
“You could get half a dozen kilos in there,” Dino said.
“Yeah, and that’s more than enough to get shot for. Anybody know what a key goes for these days?”
“I don’t know,” Dino said, “maybe twenty-five, thirty thou? I guess it would depend on availability.”
“There’s no way he could sell five or six kilos of uncut cocaine in Key West,” Tommy said. “If that much was in there, it was bound for somewhere else, like Miami.”
“Tommy, if you had half a dozen kilos of pure coke and you wanted to get them to Miami, how would you do it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t drive it,” Tommy said. “There’s only one road, and if you get stopped for a broken taillight and get searched, well …” He looked thoughtful. “Boat or light aircraft,” he said. “And there’s a lot more boats around here than light aircraft.”
“How long to Miami in a boat?” Stone asked.
“Well, in something that could do twenty-five, thirty knots, one long day. Any faster than that might attract the attention of the Coast Guard.”
“The right boat sounds like a good investment in time,” Dino said. 6 3
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“We got two questions to answer here,” Tommy said. “Where did he get it, and how was he going to move it?”
“He got it from South America or Mexico, like everybody else,”
Stone said. “And there’s no shortage of means to move it.”
“Evan Keating has a new boat,” Dino said, “and he was chummy with Charley Boggs, at least for a while.”
“And his boat was parked all night out at the reef,” Tommy pointed out. “Another boat could have handed something off.”
“Or an airplane could have dropped it,” Stone said. “As I recall, it isn’t very deep out at the reef.”
“Not deep at all,” Tommy agreed. “You could pick something off the bottom with a snorkel; you wouldn’t even need scuba gear.”
“Well,” Dino
said, “I guess we’ve solved this crime. Except for the part about who killed Charley and where the cocaine is now.”
“Yeah, except for that part,” Tommy said.
“I don’t think Evan is our guy,” Stone said.
“Why not?” Dino asked. “I like him for it.”
“Okay, let’s say that Evan bought Chuck Chandler’s boat for the purpose of picking up packages at the reef and delivering them to Miami. Was Chuck’s old boat good for that, Tommy?”
“Yeah, I know the boat, and it was pretty fast. It also doesn’t look like something a drug dealer would use, it being an old classic and all.”
“But why would Evan hide the coke on Charley Boggs’s houseboat? Why wouldn’t he pick it up at the reef and just keep going until he got to Miami? Why trust Charley with a hundred and fi fty grand worth of powder? Charley didn’t look all that trustworthy to me. And if Evan and Charley were in business together, why would Evan have to kill him to get the product?”
“Partners can disagree,” Dino pointed out.
Tommy sighed. “I don’t think we’ve solved this crime yet.”
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THE THRE E O F them had lunch at the Raw Bar. Dino looked across the table at Stone. “Why are you looking so glum? Are you sad that Charley Boggs is dead?”
“Well, yeah, since he was our only connection to Evan Keating.”
“We know what kind of boat Evan is driving now. How about that?”
“Dino, you remember the whole afternoon we spent in a rented boat looking for Evan?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Do you recall seeing anything that answered the description of Choke?”
Dino thought about it. “Now that you mention it, no.”
“That’s because ninety-nine percent of all boats in Key West are white plastic tubs. There aren’t that many 1930s craft around.”
“But at least we have a boat name now.”
“Probably not,” Tommy said. “It’s awful easy to change the name on a boat these days. You don’t have to wait for a guy to paint it on—you just go to a graphics shop and they print it out on a sheet of polyethylene, and you slap it on the stern of your boat. The whole 6 5
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thing takes maybe a couple of hours, and that includes lifting the old name off with a hair dryer. If Keating doesn’t want to be found, you can bet he’s changed the name of his boat.”
“Now I’m feeling glum,” Dino said.
“You’ll feel better when Genevieve gets here,” Stone said.
“She isn’t coming; she couldn’t get the time off.”
“Okay, so we’re both glum.”
“I don’t know why you’re glum; you’ve got the Swedish doctor.”
Stone brightened. “That’s right, I do. We’ve already made dinner plans for tonight.”
“Where are you going?” Tommy asked. “You need a recommendation?”
“Nope, she’s cooking.”
“What’s she cooking?” Dino asked.
“Who cares? I’m sure it will be delicious, and if it isn’t, she will be.”
“I’d call that an evening with no downside,” Tommy said. “What’s her story, anyway?”
“She’s Swedish,” Stone explained.
“Oh.”
“You seem to have gotten over Tatiana pretty easily,” Dino said.
“I thought you were all broken up.”
“I was,” Stone replied, “and more than I’d realized at fi rst. But it’s easier to pick up the pieces if there’s somebody to help rearrange them.”
“And he isn’t talking about you, Dino,” Tommy said.
“You think I didn’t know that? It’s a pity, really. This Tati was a beautiful woman. And the killer is, she went back to her awful ex-husband.”
“They’ll do that,” Tommy said. “No guy can ever understand why a woman would go back to her ex.”
“Do you have an explanation for that phenomenon?” Stone asked.
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“Nope. I’m a guy.”
“Don’t worry,” Dino said. “It’ll end badly. She’ll come back after he goes off the wagon a couple of times and breaks her china.”
“Let’s not talk about Tati anymore,” Stone said. “There’s nothing I can do about her. I’m in Key West.”
“With a Swedish beauty,” Dino added.
“That too.”
“What happens to her when we find Keating and go back to New York?”
“I’ll throw a sack over her head and take her with me.”
“Now you’re talking!”
“I’ve thought of a way we might find Evan Keating,” Tommy said suddenly.
“Speak to me,” Stone replied.
“I’ll have somebody at the station call the twenty best restaurants in town and alert them to call us if Keating makes a reservation.”
“That’s brilliant,” Stone said. “He looks like the kind of guy who’s eating out at the best places every night.”
“He’s gotta eat,” Tommy said, reaching for his cell phone and pressing a speed-dial button. He gave the instructions and hung up.
“It’s done; all we’ve gotta do is wait, then meet him at the restaurant. It helps that he’s now a person of interest in the death of Charley Boggs.”
“Did Charley have any visible means of support?” Dino asked.
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Tommy said.
Dino sighed. “One more dead end.”
“I like the restaurant idea,” Stone said.
“It occurs to me,” Dino said, “that maybe, in light of what happened to Charley Boggs, we should be packing.”
“The State of Florida is okay with cops from other jurisdictions packing,” Tommy said.
“How about retired cops?” Stone asked.
“We’ll cut you some slack.”
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Stone’s cell phone buzzed, and he flipped it open. “Yes?”
“It’s Eggers.”
“Oh, hi, Bill.”
“Don’t hi me; where’s that signed paperwork?”
“We’re working on a new way to track the guy down.”
“Working? Why haven’t you already worked?”
“Bill, it’s tougher than you think. A friend of Evan’s turned up dead, so we’ve got the local cops on our side now; they want to talk to him as much as we do.”
“I don’t care if they talk to him or not,” Eggers said. “I just want those papers back—signed, sealed and delivered.”
“That’s what I want, too, Bill, but I’ll understand if you’d rather send somebody else down here to find the kid.”
“Don’t hand me that crap. You know I don’t have time to start over with somebody else.”
“Then leave it with me, and let me get the job done, okay?”
Eggers made a harrumphing noise and hung up.
“He’s not happy?” Dino asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s not happy.”
“Good guess. I can’t say that I’m happy, either.”
“Except for the Swedish doctor.”
“Except for the Swedish doctor; I’m happy about her. You want me to see if she has a friend?”
Dino thought about that. “Nah, Genevieve would find out and nail me with it.”
“How would she find out? I wouldn’t tell.”
“She’d find out, believe me. Sometimes I think she has some sort of ESP girl-to-girl network that constantly broadcasts my whereabouts and my company.”
“That’s a scary thought,” Stone said.
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STON E K N O C K E D ON Annika’s door, clutching a bouquet of flowers. She opened the door, kissed him, took the fl owers and led him inside.
“Can I get you a drink?” she asked.
“Do you have any bourbon?”
; “I don’t know,” she said, pointing at the bar. “Look through those bottles.”
To Stone’s surprise, he found a bottle of Knob Creek, unopened.
“My favorite,” he called to her, holding up the bottle. “How’d you know?”
“I didn’t,” she called from the kitchen. “Most of those bottles were brought by other people as gifts.”
Stone was opening the bottle when his cell phone vibrated. “Yes?”
“It’s Tommy. Evan Keating has a reservation at Louie’s Backyard.”
“When?”
“Five minutes ago. I’m going over there myself.”
“Will you give me a couple of minutes with him before you barge in?”
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“Yeah, sure, but move your ass.”
Stone hung up and went into the kitchen, where something smelled good. “I have to go out for a few minutes. It’s business. Will you forgive me?”
“If you hurry,” she said.
He kissed her and ran for his car. Five minutes later he was walking into Louie’s. He looked around the restaurant but didn’t see Keating, then he walked outside to the bar area and saw him seated, alone, at a table by the water. He walked over to the table and sat down.
“Now listen …” Keating said.
“No, you listen.” Stone took a card from his wallet and wrote his cell phone number on the back. “Here’s how you can get in touch with me.”
Keating looked at the card on the table but didn’t pick it up. “I don’t want to get in touch with you. Now, leave.”
“How would you like to have twenty-one million dollars?” Stone asked.
“You’re going to give me twenty-one million dollars?”
“I think I told you this before, but your father is selling the company, and that’s your share of the proceeds.”
“That’s what my father says my share is?” Keating asked.
“It is.”
“Then it’s the wrong amount. My father is a liar and a thief, and if he’s offering me that much money, he owes me a lot more.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Why don’t you ask my Uncle Harry?”
“I didn’t know you had an Uncle Harry.”
“I don’t anymore; he’s dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Barrington, my Uncle Harry is the one who made the company into what it is. My father had nothing to do with its success, and now that Uncle Harry is dead, he’s cashing in.”