Tropical Swap (Key West Capers Book 10)

by Laurence Shames

  “Who’s the client?”

  Lydia leaned down and nuzzled Sheehan’s neck. “Why’s it matter now? You can’t use the information. You swore.”

  “I want to know.”

  “You’re just teasing yourself.”

  “No, you’re teasing me. And you said you’d tell me everything. Who’s the client?”

  She stroked his arm, traced out a vein that wound from his wrist to his elbow.

  “Who’s the client?” he said again.

  “Okay,” she sighed. “A mobster named Fortuna.”

  “Frank Fortuna!” Sheehan said, sitting up so quickly that he bumped Lydia’s head with his chin. “Shit! I’ve wanted him for years.”

  “And you almost had him. Too bad you’re a friend of the family now.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The people I’m staying with, Glenda and Benny, that’s Fortuna’s daughter and son-in-law. Benny was supposed to kill me because Fortuna got it in his head that I was going to turn. But he didn’t kill me, and we’re buddies now. The wife too. And I don’t rat out my buddies. That’s why you can’t have Fortuna. He’s still Glenda’s father.”

  “But he’s a really awful guy,” said Sheehan, something almost pleading in his voice.

  “You’re telling me? But look, he thinks I’m dead. If he finds out I’m not, he kills Benny. No way I can let that happen.”

  Sheehan scratched his stomach for a moment and thought it over. “You and Benny,” he said, “I could get you both into the Program.”

  “Witness Protection?” Lydia said. “You mean where you get a new face and a new name and you have no idea who you are and you’re dependent on the whims of the Feds for the rest of your life? No thank you. I have a different idea.”

  “Which is?”

  She hesitated. “You’re still sworn to secrecy. Agreed?”

  Grudgingly he accepted the condition.

  “Cuba. I’m hoping to disappear there in a day or two.”

  Sheehan said nothing to that and he hoped it didn’t show that he winced. But he felt slightly dizzied, as though the walls and floor had suddenly shifted. Over the past twenty-four hours he’d been gradually surrendering his certainties to the warm haze of Key West and his unruly desire for this subversive and compelling woman, and now she was vanishing to Cuba? Just like that? Sending him back, alone, to the life and purpose he was used to, but which, by anguished and half-conscious increments, he’d already begun renouncing? He worked at getting his mind around it, and meanwhile Lydia let her body slink down a little farther toward the trough in the middle of the bed so that it was pressed more firmly against his.

  As if reading his thoughts, she said, “Maybe you’d like to disappear with me.”

  The notion was so intoxicatingly outré that at first Sheehan could only bring forth a nervous laugh. “Lydia, I have a job.”

  “You’re not acting like you do.”

  “Look, I have things I’m in the middle of, things I haven’t finished.”

  Lydia shrugged. The shrug raked her skin against his. “Being in the middle of things, that’s life. It’s never a convenient time to change.”

  “I can’t quit now,” he said, in the somewhat strangled voice of a person trying to convince himself. “Not just yet. I have a pension coming up.”

  “When?”

  “Six months. Wait for me. Wait for me in Cuba.”

  She touched his chest, toyed with a little whorl of hair. “I don’t make promises I’m not sure I can keep. Six months is a long time, Sheehan.”

  He tried to visualize six months, pictured a calendar, a bland parade of nights and mornings, a succession of coffee shop meals, a flickering of office lights turned off and office lights turned on again. The images gave him a pang of despair but also a fresh hunger for the moment and for Lydia. “Six months without you would be hell,” he said, “but maybe I can persuade you the wait would be worthwhile.”

  He let himself sink down into the hollow of the bed and took her in his arms.

  34.

  Benny’s meeting with Carlos Guzman was scheduled for ten a.m. next morning, and when Lydia still had not come home by nine-fifteen he was almost starting to think that she had sold him out.

  Meg, for one, refused to believe it. “She wouldn’t do that,” she insisted, as the four of them sat rather gloomily around the breakfast table, poking without appetite at slabs of mango and papaya. “It’s a karma thing. You saved her life. She’s not going to turn around and…”

  She paused out of delicacy, and Benny finished the thought for her. “Get me killed? I don’t know. Why wouldn’t she? I mean, everything’s been so intense, so sped up, it feels like we’re old friends and all of that. But think about it. How long we know each other? Three days? Four? And it’s not like I did anything wonderful for her. All I did was not kill her. But I grabbed her. I scared the crap out of her. Why would she think she owes me anything?”

  “She owes you plenty,” Glenda said. “It’s not just that you didn’t ice her, it’s that you’re helping her get out of this mess she made for herself. You’re helping her start a whole new life.”

  “In Cuba?” Benny said. “With dicey papers? Without friends? Nah, the Feds can offer her a better deal. That’s what’s unfair about this game. The Feds can always offer a better deal if they want to.”

  Rather to his own surprise Peter spoke up then. “It’s not about the deal,” he said, with a seeming assurance that no one at the table had heard from him before, and without quite realizing that his convoluted logic was borrowed straight from Bert the Shirt. “She’ll do the right thing because she’ll do the right thing. And she’ll do the right thing because she’s bad. Or thinks she is.”

  Glenda said, “I’m not quite sure I follow that.”

  The cat was on Peter’s lap and he lifted it off before continuing. It looked at Peter reproachfully as he gently placed it on the floor.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand it either,” he went on. “But look, ever since I got here I’ve been misjudging people. Benny, you I thought—no offense, okay?—“

  “Go on.”

  “I thought you were just a knee-breaker, a brute. Glenda…let’s just say I sold you short, too. Why? Why did I keep getting it wrong? I think it’s because you guys play by rules I’m just not used to. And because they’re different rules, I didn’t understand that they were rules at all. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe in a Zen koan kind of way,” said Meg.

  “So now here’s Lydia,” Peter said, “always trying so hard to convince herself that she’s bad. But what I finally figured out is that being bad, or thinking you are, it takes a lot of work. I mean, if you’re good—or imagine you are--you don’t really have to make that many hard decisions. You do what’s expected. You follow the rules that almost everybody follows.”

  “Right,” said Benny. “You’re just a solid citizen.”

  “Exactly,” Peter said. “But if you see yourself as bad, all you have is your own code, nothing else. That’s your law. It goes deep. It’s who you are.”

  “Sometimes it’s who you’re stuck with being,” Benny said.

  “So why’d you let Lydia go to meet the Fed?” Peter asked him, then answered it himself. “You let her go because your code says that if a friend gives her word, you honor that. And her code says you don’t screw a friend who trusted you. That’s why she’ll be back. Quod erat demonstrandum.”

  “I didn’t quite follow that very last part,” Glenda said.

  Then there was a knock on the front door. Benny sprang up to answer it and he soon came back with Lydia and Sheehan in tow. Their hair was damp, they had a glow about them, and they were holding hands. Lydia started to apologize about staying away so long, but Benny cut her short, saying it was all okay and asking her if she was still onboard.

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “What about him?” asked Benny, pointing sideways at Sheehan. It felt weird to have an FBI
agent standing in his kitchen holding hands with a suspect and he couldn’t quite get himself to address the man directly.

  But Sheehan spoke up for himself. “I’m here to help.”

  “Help?” said Glenda. “Yesterday you were falling out of trees and pointing guns at people.”

  “That was then,” he said, in a tone that was disarmingly mild, almost contrite. “Lydia and me, we have an understanding now.”

  “So lemme get this right,” said Benny. “Yesterday you were a Fed and today you’re not a Fed?”

  It was a profoundly disorienting question but the tall man tried to answer honestly. “I’m still on the payroll, okay? But I’m not on a case. I’m reporting to no one. Call it vacation.”

  “Weird vacations in this town,” said Peter.

  Glenda was skeptical. “We got enough problems here as it is. I just don’t see why the hell we should trust you.”

  The statement hung in the air a moment. People shuffled their feet in discomfort. Then Meg spoke up. “I think we can trust him. It’s like Peter said. We can trust him because he’s bad.”

  Sheehan’s face showed nothing but his first reaction to that was inwardly to bristle. Bad? Him? The altar boy? The cop? The occasional hero? He considered the notion for a moment. Then he tried to dismiss it, but by then it had seeped into him like a stain spreading through muslin. Finally he almost smiled. “You can trust me,” was all he said.

  Benny straightened up his clothes and headed to his meeting.

  35.

  He was back in an hour, and he came home to an odd scene that was somewhere between a retro pool party and a swim-day outing at a lunatic asylum. Glenda, Lydia, and Sheehan were standing in the pool playing some mongrel version of volleyball and water polo. They’d found an old striped beach ball and improvised a net with two chairs and a clothesline. Sheehan, wiry and strong but pasty white everyplace except his forearms, played both sides of the net except now and then when he would tuck the ball and dive underwater with it, most likely so he could grab a feel of Lydia beneath the roiled surface. Meanwhile, Peter was rolling around under lounge chairs and at the bases of shrubs, holding a rubber mouse by the tail and yanking it away as Tasha tried to pounce on it. Meg was standing on her head in a shady corner of the yard, using her thumbs to alternately pinch her nostrils so she could inhale through one and exhale through the other. A soft two-note wheezing escaped her as she did this and she was murmuring something in Sanskrit.

  Amid all the frolicking, it was some moments before anyone noticed Benny standing there in his hard, thin shoes and his dress shirt streaked with sweat along the backbone and his now-loosened tie still chafing against his throbbing neck. When Glenda finally spotted him she put down the beach ball and called out, “How’d it go, honey?”

  Everything stopped in anticipation of the answer. Peter sat up on the pool apron, the toy mouse clutched in his fist. Meg gracefully descended to a kneeling position on her mat.

  Benny said, “Went well,” and a silent sigh, a collective relaxation of the shoulders went through the ill-assorted little group.

  But then his face darkened and he slowly sat down in a chair. The slowness of the movement suggested not defeat, exactly, but bewilderment, the burden of a crucial riddle perhaps misunderstood. “Went too well,” he added. “Too easy. It worries me.” He paused a moment then said, “I think I need to talk to Bert.”

  Hospitable as always, Glenda said, “Why not invite him over here?”

  Benny glanced dubiously around the yard and tried to see his guests as he imagined Bert would see them. Two nice but completely clueless citizens; a loose cannon of a woman on the lam; an FBI guy either going rogue or pretending that he was. Benny just didn’t think Bert would approve of or enjoy the company, and he hesitated in deciding what to do.

  Meg, unasked, suddenly said, “I think calling Bert’s a great idea.”

  The comment only increased Benny’s confusion. “You know Bert?”

  “We’ve met,” she said casually, pleased with herself for being able to say so. “We’ve chatted.”

  “You’ve chatted,” Benny echoed numbly. His world, no less than Sheehan’s, seemed to be dissolving and re-forming before his very eyes. Suddenly his wife was playing swim-club games with a Fed. His old friend Bert, an icon of Mafia decorum, was making chitchat with his woo-woo houseguest.

  “He’s like a Taoist master,” Meg put in. “Sometimes he seems to be speaking total gibberish but then he turns out to be right. I think you should call him.”

  Benny took one more doubtful glance at the people in his swimming pool and yard and then reached for his phone.

  36.

  “Here’s the first thing I don’t like,” said Bert, who’d installed himself at the shady outdoor table and accepted a tall iced tea from Glenda. He was wearing one of his gorgeous linen shirts with top-stitching on the placket and around the monogrammed chest pocket. He held his chihuahua firmly in his lap for fear it would be clawed to death or eaten by the cat. The little dog’s leash was of vermilion canvas; it was the same color as the old man’s shirt and the match was not coincidental. “The first thing I don’t like,” he went on, “is that he changed his mind about hitting you up for cash. Now he’s calling it a favor and saying maybe you’ll pay it back sometime. Due respect, Benny, why does Carlos need a favor from you? What can you really do for him?”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” said Benny. “But then he says it’s a goodwill thing, because, ya know, we may be getting into business on a lease together.”

  “Right,” said Bert. “Getting into business. Business is when money changes hands. This favor stuff is something else.”

  Benny couldn’t disagree but he wanted to present all sides. “So then he says this friend of his, this Benavides, is making a Cuba run anyway, bringing in some things that probably aren’t strictly legal, so what’s one more piece of cargo?”

  “Oh, nice,” said Lydia. “Now I’m a piece of cargo.”

  “What were you expecting?” asked Bert. “A stateroom? But okay, let’s take it one thing at a time. Another thing I don’t love is where he says the pick-up is. Big Sandy Key? I mean, I understand you don’t want to have a bon voyage party right next to the Coast Guard station, but does it really have to be someplace as godforsaken as that? And at midnight?”

  “I think that’s to do with the moon or the tides or something,” Benny said.

  Bert said, “I don’t think there’s even a dock there anymore.”

  Benny shrugged. “He says that’s the place Benavides uses. Knows where the channel is. Has it marked with sticks. Says he can nose the boat right into the mangroves.”

  Bert slowly stroked his dog. He did this contemplatively, as if he was rubbing his own chin. “Okay, fair enough. Guy’s gotta be comfortable where he can bring the boat. But it’s just so isolated. And you say Carlos was pretty clear that it should just be you and Lydia?”

  “Very clear.”

  “This I don’t like,” said Bert, and he went on rhythmically rubbing the dog. After a pause he said, “I dunno, maybe I’m just too cautious. Something like this, I get all hung up in the details, I worry about every little thing. Guess I’m just sort of whaddyacallit, OTB.”

  “OTB?” said Glenda.

  “Ya know, when ya get all fussy about something, ya can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “OCD,” said Peter. “OTB is Off-Track Betting.”

  “Right, whatever. But what I’m saying is I don’t like it that he just wants Lydia and Benny and no one else out in a place where’s there’s no street lights and not even a real road and nothing but mangroves and muck and it doesn’t take an Einstein to realize that something bad could happen.”

  Bert’s analysis cast something of a pall over the group. People looked down at their hands or the table or their glasses of iced tea with rivulets of condensation running down the sides. Then Meg said, “But wait a second. None of this is a problem if Carlos is on the level
. I mean, none of it’s unreasonable. The boat guy’s a smuggler, right? He wants a dark place with no extra people around. Why think the worst? I mean, life’s nicer if you think positive.”

  “Nicer but maybe shorter,” Bert said. “Look, I don’t know what’s on Carlos’s mind. His people were refugees once. Maybe he’s got a soft spot for someone who has to get out of a country. Maybe he just wants to do Benny a solid. It’s possible. All I’m saying is that it might maybe be unwise or let’s call it imprudent to send two people who are in quite delicate or let’s say vulnerable positions off to such a remote and without overstating even a desolate location without some form of support or what would usually be referred to as backup.”

  “I’ll be the backup,” Andy Sheehan said without the slightest hesitation.

  Bert turned toward him, took a moment to tug on the loose skin beneath his chin while sizing him up. Bert had known some Bureau guys. Some he liked and some he didn’t. The ones he liked were tough but not sneaky. When they were after you they let you know it and then they played the game as hard as they could play. They didn’t give you high and mighty lectures about right and wrong, they just broke your balls if they could. But they also seemed to understand that without criminals to chase they’d just be bored, suspicious guys in cheap suits. So there was a bond there, a kinship almost. Guys like that you could talk to. Bert said just one word to Sheehan. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you willing to do backup? What do you want from this?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Like, to arrest her?”

  “No, to live with her.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Bert weighed the words and stared hard at Sheehan. Then he said, “Pet my dog.”

  “Pet your dog?”

  “Pet my dog.”

  Sheehan gave the chihuahua a perfunctory pat but he kept his gaze firmly locked on Bert as he did so.