Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
PRAISE FOR RANDY WAYNE WHITE AND HIS NOVELS
“What James Lee Burke has done for Louisiana, Tony Hillerman for the Southwest, John Sandford for Minnesota, and Joe R. Lansdale for east Texas, Randy Wayne White does for his own little acre.”
—Chicago Tribune
“White takes us places that no other Florida mystery writer can hope to find.”
—Carl Hiaasen
“White brings vivid imagination to his fight scenes. Think Mickey Spillane meets The Matrix.”
—People
“A major new talent . . . hits the ground running . . . a virtually perfect piece of work. He’s the best new writer we’ve encountered since Carl Hiaasen.”
—The Denver Post
“White is the rightful heir to joining John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, James Hall, Geoffrey Norman. . . . His precise prose is as fresh and pungent as a salty breeze.”
—The Tampa Tribune
“White doesn’t just use Florida as a backdrop, but he also makes the smell, sound, and physicality of the state leap off the page.”
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
“This satisfying madcap fare could go seismic on the regional bestseller lists.”
—Publishers Weekly
“He describes southwestern Florida so well it’s easy to smell the salt tang in the air and feel the cool Gulf breeze.”
—Mansfield News Journal
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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Published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, May 1982
First Printing (Author Introduction), April 2009
Copyright © New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 1982 Introduction copyright © Randy Wayne White, 2006 All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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For the Duke . . . and Trav
Introduction
In the winter of 1980, I received a surprising phone call from an editor at Signet Books—surprising because, as a Florida fishing guide, the only time New Yorkers called me was to charter my boat. And if any of my clients were editors, they were savvy enough not to admit it.
The editor said she’d read a story by me in Outside Magazine and was impressed. Did I have time to talk?
As a mediocre high school jock, my idols were writers, not ball players. I had a dream job as a light-tackle guide, yet I was still obsessed with my own dream of writing for a living. For years, before and after charters, I’d worked hard at the craft. Selling a story to Outside, one of the country’s finest publications, was a huge break. I was about to finish a novel, but this was the first time New York had called.
Yes, I had time to talk.
The editor, whose name was Joanie, told me Signet wanted to launch a paperback thriller series that featured a recurring he-man hero. “We want at least four writers on the project because we want to keep the books coming, publishing one right after the other, to create momentum.”
Four writers producing books with the same character?
“Characters,” Joanie corrected. “Once we get going, the cast will become standard.”
Signet already had a template for the hero. He was a Vietnam vet turned Key West fishing guide, she said, talking as if the man existed. He was surfer-boy blond, and he’d been friends with Hemingway.
I am not a literary historian, but all my instincts told me the timetable seemed problematic. I said nothing.
“He has a shark scar,” Joanie added, “and he’s freakishly strong. Like a man who lifts weights all the time.”
The guys I knew who lifted weights were also freakishly clumsy, so . . . maybe the hero, while visiting a local aquarium, tripped during feeding time?
My brain was already problem-solving.
“He lives in Key West,” she said, “so, of course, he has to be an expert on the area. That’s why I’m calling. You live in Key West, and I liked your magazine story a lot. It seems like a natural fit.”
Actually, I fished out of Sanibel Island, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, a six-hour drive from Sloppy Joe’s, but this was no time for petty details.
“Have you ever been to Key West?” I asked the editor. “Great sunsets.”
Editors, I have since learned, can also be cagey. Joanie didn’t offer me the job. She had already settled on three of the four writers, she said, but if I was willing to submit a few sample chapters on speculation, she’d give me serious consideration.
Money? A contract? That stuff was “all standard,” she told me, and could be discussed later.
“I’ll warn you right now,” she said, “there are a couple of other writers we’re considering, so you need to get at least three chapters to me within a month. Then I’ll let you know.”
I hung up the phone, stunned by my good fortune. My first son, Lee, had been born only a few months earlier. My much-adored wife, Debra, and I were desperate for money because the weather that winter had been miserable for fishing. But it was perfect for writing.
I went to my desk, determined not to let my young family down.
At Tarpon Bay Marina, where I was a guide, my friend Ralph Woodring owned a boat with Dusky painted in big blue letters on the side. My friend, Graeme Mellor, lived on a Morgan sailboat named No Mas.
Dusky MacMorgan was born.
Every winter, Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus came to town. Their trapeze artists, I realized, were not only freakishly strong, but they were also freakishly nimble.
Dusky gathered depth.
One of my best friends was the late Dr. Harold Westervelt, a gifted orthopedic surgeon. Dr. Westervelt became the Edison of Death, and he loved introducing himself that way to new patients. His son, David, became Westy O’Davis, and our spear-fishing pal, Billy, became Billy Mack.
Problems with my hero’s shark scar and his devoted friendship with Hemingway were also solved.
Working around the clock, pounding away at my old black manual typewriter, I wrote Key West Connection in nine days. On a Monday morning, I waited for the post office to open to send it to New York.
Joanie sounded a little dazed when she telephoned on Friday. Was I willing to try a second book on spec?
Hell yes.
God, I was beginning to love New York’s cando attitude.
The other three writers (if they ever existed) were fired, and I became the sole proprietor of Captain Dusky MacMorgan—although Signet owned the copyright and all other rights after I signed Joanie’s “standard” contract. (This injustice was later made right by a willing and steadfast publisher and my brilliant agent.)
If Joanie (a fine editor) feels badly about that today, she shouldn’t. I would’ve signed for less.
I wrote seven of what I would come to refer to as “duck and fuck” books because in alternating chapters Dusky would duck a few bullets, then spend much-deserved time alone with a heroine.
Seldom did a piece of paper go into my old typewriter that was ripped out and thrown away, and I suspect that’s the way the books read. I don’t know. I’ve never reread them. I do remember using obvious clichés, a form of self-loathing, as if to remind myself that I should be doing my own writing, not this job-of-work.
The book you are now holding, and the other six, constituted a training arena for a young writer who took seriously the discipline demanded by his craft and also the financial imperatives of being a young father.
For years, I apologized for these books. I no longer do.
—Randy Wayne White
Cartagena, Colombia
1
The corpse was gone, but the sprawled outline was still there—traced in white chalk.
The floor was of pale wood. Not pine. Some kind of tropical planking that held the metallic stink of blood: a black amoeba splotch that had rivered beyond the chalk confines and dried.
“You found her just like this?”
“Aye. I did, mate.”
“And they think you murdered her?”
“They thought I’d murdered her. Can you imagine? A sweet lad from the home soil like meself!”
I turned away from the outline on the floor. The cop who had traced the corpse had caught the feminine curvature of hips and the delicate fingers of her left hand, which had been thrown out wildly to stop her fall.
Only there was no stopping that fall.
It was the final descent.
Death.
There was something grotesque about a thing so temporary as chalk marking the resting spot of a being who had lived and laughed and loved only to rendezvous, facedown, with wood and a knife slit across her throat.
That plus the stink made me feel unexpectedly queasy. Unexpected because I’ve seen plenty of death before. But there was a coldness to this white outline of a woman who I would never know. Like so many things the cops do, it seemed to reduce murder to a faceless shape, complete with bloodstain.
“Mind if we step out onto the porch?”
“Aye. I canna stand the sight of the blinkin’ thing meself.”
I followed him outside. The screen door slammed behind us. Beyond the black growth of gumbo-limbo, mahogany, and jasmine, stars threw paths upon the Caribbean Sea. It was one of those soft winter nights in the tropics. The sort of night people come to Grand Cayman to enjoy. The wind was cloying, blowing off the sea, and you could hear the roar of waves upon the reef, half a mile out.
“You knew her, right?”
The features of my good friend Wes O’Davis seemed softer by the yellow porch light. Or maybe by the finding of a dead woman upon his living room floor. There was the broad Gaelic face and the Viking beard and the ugly broken nose—but the pale eyes seemed withdrawn, as if he were someplace else.
“Did I know tha’ poor wee girl? Aye, I knew her. Treated ’er like a tramp, I did.”
“Is this a confession?”
“Hah! Might as well be, lad. Might as well be.” He stepped off the porch and kicked at a big conch shell—forgetting he was barefoot, apparently. He jumped around for a second, then grabbed the shell and gave it a savage toss. You could hear it hit the water. “I treated her like a brute, I did,” he said.
“But you didn’t kill her?”
“N’ do I look like a murderer to you, Mr. Dusky MacMorgan?”
“You look like you are capable of robbing churches and assaulting nuns.”
“I take it that’s a yes.”
“It is.”
“So you think I killed her?”
“I didn’t say that. I know you, remember? I know you’re no murderer. But you called me down here to help, right? So let me help. Shake off that case of the guilts you have at least long enough to tell me what in hell happened. Ever since I got here you’ve been tight as a drum. A blacksmith couldn’t get a pin up your ass with a hammer. Just relax—I’m a friend, remember?”
He rolled his shoulders, flexing his neck. Then he gave a sudden leprechaun grin that I knew well. “Yer right. I’ll be needin’ to fill you in on all the particulars—if yer ta help me, that is.”
“Okay. Good. So talk. You knew the girl.”
“Aye. Monster that I am, I knew her the way I’ve known a hundred other lonely tourist ladies. They come to Grand Cayman by themselves or with a husband who is no longer very attentive.”
“Then you step in.”
He nodded. “In me own defense, Yank, I must say most o’ them seem the happier for it.”
“What was her name?”
“Cynthia. Cynthia Rothchild. Met ’er at one of those snooty little teas in Georgetown. We’re still very English here in Caymans, ye know.”
“She was wealthy?”
“Said she was a nanny. Had the care of a boy child fer some very rich folks from London. Sir Conan James and Lady James. Sir Conan has an advisory position with Government House, appointed by Her Majesty. That’s why I was invited to the snooty tea.”
“As a bodyguard?”
He shrugged. “’Tis probably the real reason. But they said me attendance was required so they could present me with some damnable award.”
I smiled. “From the Queen?”
“Aye. Pretty little thing it is, too. Lady James pinned it on. A great beauty, that Lady James. Magnificent woman—even if she is English.”
“But you settled for the nanny, Cynthia Rothchild.”
“Aye. She was something of a beauty herself, Yank. Very black hair. Lovely figure. You know me weakness fer the ladies. Saw her three—no, four times. She’d drive her wee rental car over from Three Mile Beach when the lad was asleep.”
“And spend the night?”
“Aye. The best part of it.”
“So she lived on the island.”
“Sir Conan keeps a home here. But they live in London.”
“And he didn’t mind his nanny’s sneaking out?”
“He’s a bit of a womanizer himself, I’m afraid. So I’m sure he understood. Besides, Her Majesty honored me with an award, remember? Sir Conan would overlook such a thing with me.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“In the afternoon, day before yesterday. We had lunch together. She seemed very nervous, Yank. Bothered me, it did. She had the lad with ’er—little Tommy. Fine-looking boy, ’bout fourteen. Something of a genius, to hear Lady James talk. A regular wizard. That night I supped at Betty Bay Point, made the round of the pubs with a few of me island mates, and then went home. She was layin’ on the floor of me living room. Part o’ her dress was ripped away. She had this awful look o’ surprise on ’er face. Her throat had been cut.”
“And you called the police?”
“Aye. Rang up the substation at Boddentown. The constable is a friend of mine. He seemed very sorry to have to arrest me. That’s when I called you.”
“I was kind of surprised you met me at the airport.”
“They knew straightaway I didn’t do it. I was with me mates, remember. Besides, Sir Conan found the note.”
“What note?”
The Irishman picked up another conch shell and threw it in a moonlit spiral toward the sea. “The ransom note, Yank. They’ve taken little Tommy. Kidnapped ’im, they did. Sir Conan has seventy-two hours to pay them two million pounds. So that gives us three days to find the kidnappers, snatch the lad, and bring him safely home.”
“Wait a minute—does Sir Conan want you to get involved?”
“Her Majesty does, Yank. It’s a dangerous precedent to set—a true Irishman serving the Queen. But they killed me little Cynthia. And she was a fine sweet girl with a pretty laugh and a wonderful way beneath the covers. She was too good for the likes of me, Yank. Treated’er like nothin’ but a sleepover. So now it’s me dooty to make amends. And yer jest mean enough to help. Three days, Yank—that’s all we have. An’ three days is all those bloody buggers have to live. . . . ”
Grand Cayman Slam Page 1