Bone Key

by Les Standiford

  Boussier had defected from New York’s Danielle to come south and open up his own place on the island, Stone had told them, and was using the summer doldrums to work out “the kinks” in his new establishment’s operations before the seasonal hordes descended.

  “François is a bit high-strung,” Stone was saying, “but he’s a marvel in the kitchen. We’re fortunate to have lured him here. Just one more jewel in the Key West crown, Johnny-boy.”

  Deal nodded absently, though he suspected there might be a flaw or two in that particular jewel. He wondered idly if Stone might be backing the restaurant enterprise.

  As far as the quality of the food went, however, he could hardly complain. They’d worked their way through an appetizer of delicately spiced crab cakes, followed by a fresh mozzarella salad sliced tableside by an assistant. Now, Deal found himself staring down at a version of the yellowtail dish he’d had at Louie’s what seemed like aeons ago, this rendition topped by a sauce that suggested béarnaise without the threat of angioplasty and surrounded by artfully carved rosettes that he realized were actually bits of lobster meat.

  His only disappointment concerning this dinner had been the absence of Annie Dodds. Deal assumed she was onstage at the Pier House, but when he’d asked—innocently enough, he thought—Stone had said she’d begged off at the last minute with a headache. His manner seemed to suggest it happened often enough, and Deal didn’t press the matter. He supposed it would have made for something of an awkward dinner:

  “So, Franklin, Annie and I were screwing our brains out earlier over at the Pier House, then someone tried to kill me. You know anything about that?”

  “More wine?” Stone was asking, his practiced smile glowing as he hoisted a dripping bottle from the silver holder at tableside. He’d sent a glance at the cuts on Deal’s forearms, but hadn’t commented. Was that because Conrad had already given him a full report? Deal wondered.

  Deal held up his hand. “I’m more into the reds, myself,” he said, watching Stone carefully.

  Stone seemed perplexed. He raised his eyebrows, glancing from the fish plate before him, then off toward the preparation table, where the chef, waiter, and assistant all seemed busy on a dessert that promised to surpass imagination. “I chose white with the fish, but I’m sure we have something,” he said, a note of apology in his voice.

  “Forget it, Franklin,” Deal said. “I’ve had more than my share this evening.”

  “But I’d be happy—”

  “Really,” Deal said. “I’m fried as it is.”

  Stone nodded finally, replacing the bottle of white in the perspiring bucket. “All this romping through paradise finally getting to you?” he said.

  The remark sounded innocent enough, Deal thought, as he nodded agreement. Or maybe Russell was right. All this was by way of softening him up for the hit. In a moment, the chef would pull a Mac-10 from under his toque, there would be a burst of silenced fire, and he and his new crew chief would be sleeping with the fishes.

  “Your father was a great champagne drinker,” Stone was saying, his gaze drifting off momentarily.

  “I don’t recall,” Deal said.

  “Oh, yes,” Stone said, coming back. He gave Deal a smile. “Scotch was his signature drink, but Barton never turned down a good bottle of champagne.”

  Nor much of anything else, Deal thought. His old man had had the constitution of a Ford truck, right up to the end.

  “Times have changed, of course,” Stone was saying. “Now there’s all this interest in wine…” He drifted off, shaking his head.

  “And you’re not interested?” Deal asked.

  Stone turned back to him as if startled by something in Deal’s tone. “I’ve come to a new appreciation, along with many others,” he said. “I was just thinking about how tastes change over the years, that’s all. When I was a child, it was hard to find a nightspot that didn’t use a martini glass in some aspect of its signage or decor. But by the seventies and eighties you never heard the word ‘martini.’ Now it’s all the rage again: martini hours, martini bars, chocolate martinis…good God.” He shuddered with distaste. “James Bond must be rolling over in his grave.”

  “I suppose so,” Deal said. “But 007 knew a little about wines, too, as I recall.”

  Stone gave him a wicked smile. “Mr. Fleming’s creation was an aficionado of many pleasures.” He waved at the scene around them, then turned back to Deal. “He would have been right at home here, don’t you think?”

  Deal kept himself from glancing at Russell, wondering if Stone was dodging, if there might be some hidden message in those apparently casual remarks. “Who wouldn’t enjoy it?” Deal said. He was looking in Stone’s direction, but all he could see was the vision of Annie glancing up at him from her place at poolside, her lips parted, her long legs crossing in a motion that never seemed to end.

  “Someone told me you collect wines,” Deal said, forcing himself back to the point. “Château Margaux, Lafite-Rothschild, Haut-Brion…”

  Stone paused to stare as Deal lingered on the last. “Who told you that?” he asked mildly.

  Deal shrugged. “A man named Gonzalo Fausto,” he said. “I dropped in to buy a bottle, and your name popped up.”

  Stone nodded thoughtfully. “You were shopping for some rather expensive wines, Johnny-boy.”

  Deal shook his head. “I went in for a six-pack. Somehow Gonzalo and I got to talking about rare wines. Nineteen twenty-nine, vintages like that.”

  Stone considered Deal’s words, then turned to stare off thoughtfully into the darkness. After a moment he turned back to Deal. “Did Gonzalo tell you about the Cherbourg consignment, then?”

  Deal stared blankly. “He must have skipped that part.”

  Stone raised his brows. “If you were talking about the ’twenty-nines, I’m surprised he didn’t mention it.”

  Deal glanced at Russell. “Why don’t you fill me in,” he said, turning back to Stone.

  Stone had a sip from his glass. “It was one of the greatest wine thefts in history, that’s all.”

  Deal glanced again at Russell. “When did this take place?”

  “Oh, a long time ago,” Stone said, waving his hand. “Shortly after the vintage had been released in the early 1930s. A shipment of Haut-Brion on its way to London was hijacked from the Cherbourg docks, some three hundred cases of one of the finest wines ever produced.”

  “Who took it?” Deal asked.

  Stone shrugged. “No one knows. The thieves were never caught, nor was the wine ever found.”

  “How do we know that?” Deal asked.

  “Each bottle was numbered,” Stone said. “Stamped on the label as if it were currency.” He shrugged and gave Deal a look. “It might have been rebottled and sold as something else, of course…but then why go to the trouble of stealing it in the first place?” He raised his palms in a gesture of uncertainty. “Or perhaps it was consumed by the person who stole it.” He smiled. “This would have been a very contented man, to be sure.”

  “Three hundred cases?” Deal repeated, trying to do the math.

  “And that from barely ten thousand produced,” Stone continued. “A loss that makes what few bottles are left all the more valuable.”

  Deal nodded, thinking about the implications. “Have you ever had any of this stuff?” he asked.

  Stone gave him a smile. “I can say that I tasted the Haut-Brion ’twenty-nine once, and it was excellent.” He glanced away for a moment as if savoring the memory, then finished the glass in his hand. “I like my wine, there’s no doubt, but spending that kind of money just seems foolish, wouldn’t you say?”

  Deal stared back, trying to decide whether Stone was oblivious to his suspicions or simply toying with him. Suppose Stone had come into possession of a stolen case of wine and that Dequarius Noyes had somehow gotten his hands on it, pegging Deal as someone with enough money to take it off his hands? Would Franklin Stone have killed
Dequarius to get his wine back and cover up the fact that he’d been trafficking in stolen property?

  Interesting questions, but hardly the kind he could blurt across the table. He’d get back to Malloy in the morning, find out if there was some kind of international black market in rare wines similar to that in stolen art.

  “But enough rambling,” Stone was saying. “It’s time we got down to business.”

  He tossed his napkin on the table, glancing at Deal’s untouched plate, then at Russell, who was just lifting his last bite of yellowtail to his mouth. “Come on, Johnny-boy, eat up, then let me take you inside the tower and show you a few things.”

  Deal glanced down at his plate. He ought to have been hungry all right, but his appetite had disappeared. “I’m full,” he told Stone, then turned to Russell. “You feel like taking a walk?”

  Russell cut a glance at the trio working fervently at the portable serving station, then shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Good,” said Stone, already on his feet. “I want to show you the true Cayo Hueso experience.”

  ***

  Given the possible derivations of the name, the “true” Bone Key experience might be a bit more intense than he was ready for, Deal thought as he and Russell followed Stone around the curving facade of the ancient battlement tower and into the shadows near the parking area. Still, he felt certain Stone wouldn’t try anything in front of witnesses, even if he did think Deal was a danger to him.

  If he had any connection with what Deal suspected had gotten Dequarius killed, then Stone was being remarkably cool about it. Just as it seemed he had no inkling of what had happened between Deal and Annie. Whatever turned out to be the truth concerning Dequarius’ murder, however, the latter was an issue that the two of them would face, sooner or later.

  And forget Stone for the moment, he thought as the warm breeze swept in off the Atlantic and the palms rustled softly overhead. It was a matter that Deal himself would have to come to terms with. 007 might have himself a roll in the hay, then go on about his merry business, but it wasn’t going to work that way for Johnny Deal. He’d had his share of Jimmy Carter, lust-in-his-heart moments over the years, but there had never been anything like what had happened between him and Annie.

  And while a part of him insisted that he had done nothing wrong, especially given all that had gone awry with Janice these past several years, another part was wagging a shameful finger his way. Worst of all was his uncertainty regarding Annie’s own feelings. He hadn’t had much time to dwell on it since Russell had dragged him from his stupefied slumber earlier in the evening, but his mind had been nibbling at the matter all along, he realized.

  Maybe it all had been just a pleasant diversion for her. Maybe she had no intention of seeing him again. Maybe he wasn’t really an adult at all, he thought, but the same seventeen-year-old kid who thought he would die of a broken heart the night his girlfriend said she was leaving him for the big city.

  He shook his head to chase his clamoring thoughts away as Stone brought them to a halt before the imposing entryway of the battlement tower. “Every guest will enter here,” Stone said, pausing to tap in a code on an alarm keypad sunk into the stone sidewall.

  When the warning lights switched from red to amber, Stone reached for the lever of the massive wooden door and pulled it down. There was a heavy clanking that made Deal think of giant slot-machine gears engaging, and then the door was swinging toward them, loosing a gust of cool air that carried the odor of centuries-old stone and moisture with it.

  “That’s not air-conditioning you feel,” Stone said proudly as he found a light switch and ushered them inside.

  “Could have fooled me,” Russell said, glancing around the foyer where they were gathered.

  “We’ll have AC installed, of course,” Stone went on. “But the fact is, you could almost get by without it.” He gestured at the rough-textured walls around them. “During the heat of the day, the coral absorbs the moisture in the air, then releases it at night. Combined with the natural convection that moves through all these nooks and crannies, the place practically air-conditions itself.”

  “I could use that in my place,” Russell said.

  “They don’t build them like this anymore, eh, Johnny-boy?” Stone said.

  “No, they don’t,” Deal said, glancing around. Down the hallway that curved away from them, where he vaguely remembered historical photographs and reproductions of yellowed documents once hanging, a series of artists’ renderings of Stone’s proposed Villas of Cayo Hueso had been hung, including one that featured Annie poised to dive into an as-yet-to-be-built swimming pool.

  “You’re going to get into trouble if that stays up,” Deal said, pointing at the doctored photograph. He realized with a start that she had been wearing the same suit when she’d come to see him earlier that day. Coincidence? he wondered.

  Stone glanced at the photograph and made a dismissive gesture. “Just modesty,” he said. “Besides, how could I justify taking such a picture down?”

  Deal nodded. He and Stone could agree on one thing, it seemed. Then he remembered Annie with her pistol stuck in Ainsley Spencer’s ear and wondered if Stone should be so cavalier. Just how well did Stone know Annie, anyway? he wondered. No sooner had that question occurred to him than it furnished an accompanying jab of pain.

  Something to think about tomorrow, Deal thought hastily. Or maybe never at all.

  He was following Stone down the twisting passageway that circled the tower floor, listening only vaguely to the sales pitch that was a variation of what they had heard before. Once wiring and other necessary modifications had been made, Stone had explained, there would be interactive kiosks along the way where clients might design a virtual version of their condominium, and a sales pavilion would be built adjoining the tower to house offices and support staff, all of which would be eventually subsumed into the grand clubhouse that Stone envisioned as the centerpiece of his development. The gist of it was that he and Stone would become rich and that Barton Deal would have been proud to see it happen.

  And maybe he would have been, Deal thought, wondering at the same time how long this blessed collaboration would last if the events of the afternoon were laid bare, so to speak. Maybe he could work some language into their contract, Deal mused. All’s fair in love—take my girl, keep my job—or some such. Again, he tried to force himself away from this line of thinking. Wasn’t it about time for dessert?

  “We’ll have an observation deck up there,” Stone was saying, pointing to a doorway set in an inner wall. A steel grate blocked the way to a set of stairs that curled upward, where a guard’s post had once been, Deal supposed. He was about to turn away when he noticed another doorway set in a recess beside the grate, this one a solid slab of wood like the front door. There was an ancient-looking door handle with what looked like a skeleton-key lockplate beneath it, but a modern-day hasp and padlock had been added as well.

  “What’s this?” he asked, moving to try the knob.

  Stone glanced over. “Storage,” he said, a bit too quickly it seemed.

  Deal turned the heavy knob and felt the door give inward. Only the padlock was keeping him out.

  “The historical society’s got some of their things in there,” he heard Stone say over his shoulder. “I told them they had a little time until we began renovations.”

  Deal gave the padlock a tug as he stepped back. “Good of you,” he said.

  Stone gave him an odd look, nodding uncertainly. “Well,” he said, pointing over Deal’s shoulder. “We’re back to where we started.”

  Deal turned to see that they had, in fact, nearly completed a circuit of the tower’s base. “There’s not a lot to see right now, admittedly,” Stone was saying. “But you can feel it, can’t you? There’s a sense of history here, of rootedness. In a place like Key West, where everyone just sort of tumbles down to the end of the line and stops, you can’t put too high a value on such a t
hing. These places are going to sell themselves,” he finished with a flourish.

  Deal had a vision of a long line of millionaires stumbling down Whitehead Street, banging into one another as their progress slowed, splashing into the shallow waters like so many two-legged lemmings near the buoy marking Southernmost Point.

  “I’ll have to give you that much, Franklin,” Deal said. “Maybe after we’re finished here, we can go on to the Dry Tortugas, turn Fort Jefferson into a time-share.”

  Stone gave him a dry smile. “Can I take that as a yes?”

  Deal drew a deep breath. “This is a long way from Miami.”

  “Just my point, John. You need a change. It’d be good for you. No telling where this could lead.”

  Deal stared back, fighting the urge to tell him just where things had already led. “I just don’t know,” is what he found himself saying. “I’m going to need a little time. It’s not like things have been so placid, you know.”

  “I understand,” Stone said. He flipped off the light switch and ushered them outside, closing the heavy door behind them. Maybe he’d been wrong, Deal thought as he heard the latch mechanism reengage. More like bank vault than slot machine.

  Stone tapped at the security keypad once again, then turned to put his arm around Deal’s shoulder. “Sleep on it, that’s all I ask. Maybe tomorrow we can take a run on the boat, get out there and blow the stink away, see how you feel.”

  Stone swept his arm toward the dark waters in the distance. Deal followed his gesture and saw the distant lights of a freighter far out on the Gulf Stream.

  Like a floating island, he thought. Or a small city that had broken from the mainland to set sail.

  When he was a kid, he had equated the sight with his most exotic imaginings. Bogart. Ingrid Bergman. Foreign ports of call.

  The wind is in from Africa, he thought. God help us all.

  “We’ll see,” he told Stone. “I’ll give you a call in the morning, count on it.” He turned toward the parking lot then, where the limo sat, its parking lights glowing, Balart’s shadow visible behind the wheel.