“Maybe you should set the emergency brake.”
“Kitty—”
“Just kidding, Guy. God.”
Whatever current we were traveling in was not taking us to the Pirate’s Paradise. That was clear. Were we headed for the open sea, outside the reef? Then onward to the Gulf Stream for a brief eternal pit stop at the Bermuda Triangle? “At least it’s warm,” I said. “And the moon’s rising. That’s something.”
“Fucking mosquitoes.” Slap.
“Shit.”
“Now what?” she asked again. Then: “Guy, look!”
Looming ahead of us, directly in our path, was the rusted wreck of the shrimp boat, lit up by the low-lying waning moon behind us.
“I guess that’s something we can hold onto,” Kitty said.
“Razor sharp,” I reminded her. “That’s what Oliver said.”
“Any better ideas?”
“Nope, especially since—”
“What?”
“We must have scraped a hole in the bottom back there. We’re taking water.”
***
There wasn’t much left of Roger’s skiff by the time we bumped up against the metal wall of the shrimp boat. Fortunately we were able to step aboard fairly gracefully onto the low end of a deck that was leaning at a thirty-degree angle. We let the skiff sink behind us as we crawled on all fours up to the high side of the deck, where we could pull ourselves up and hang onto a rail.
“How are your hands and knees?” I asked.
“Scraped up. Probably bleeding pretty bad, but I don’t want to look. Yours?”
“Not so good. Well, if we die here we won’t have to have tetanus shots. I hate tetanus shots. Speaking of shots, where did you learn to shoot a gun? You’re a damn good shot.”
“Not hardly. I was aiming at his kneecaps. Both times.”
From our vantage point we could see firelight flickering through the trees on Polly’s Key. We had to hold tight to the rail, which left us only one hand each for slapping bugs. Every part of my skin was on fire with bites.
“Guy,” Kitty said, “I’m really sorry I got you into all this.”
“Oh well, I wasn’t really doing anything important at the time.”
“And I’m sorry I was so pissy to you this afternoon. When we were in the bar I was faking it, you know. I had to. I had to pretend I was on his side, so he wouldn’t think we were double-teaming him. You understand, don’t you?”
“You could have let me in on it,” I suggested.
“No way. You’d have blown it. You’re a terrible liar, Guy Mallon. Don’t ever play poker.”
“I’ll try to remember that. But you took a pretty big risk with both our lives, right?”
“Actually, by the time we were sitting out there on Roger’s deck, I had changed my mind. All of a sudden it seemed like a pretty good deal—give up stripping and spend all day snorkeling with Gracie, snorting coke with Roger. I had myself convinced he was going to come through for me. I know, stupid. But see, you’ve never been addicted.”
“I have been. Just not to coke. So what made you change your mind?”
“Well, when he got that gun out of the drawer, I woke up. Like, hello? Trust Roger? By then it was almost too late, but I knew I had to do something, anything I could to get that piece out of his hands. Fortunately my brain was on overdrive. I guess you can thank the coke after all. I mean, we got away with it, right?”
“Right. I guess. At least we got this far.”
The moon rose higher and gave us more light for slapping each other’s mosquitoes. It was like doing each other a favor. But after a while it seemed to me that Kitty was slapping harder than necessary.
“Kitty?”
Slap. “Did you mean that, Guy? About my tits sagging?” Slap. “Did you really mean that?”
“That’s not what I said,” I said. “I said your brains were sagging. But I didn’t mean that, either.”
“Okay, you’re forgiven. I guess now my tits never will sag, huh?” She began crying and moved close to me, let go of the rail, and threw both arms around my neck. “Oh, Guy, I’m so scared!”
I let the bugs have their way and wrapped my free arm around her back. We hugged and stayed in that perilous embrace until we heard the chugging of an approaching outboard motor.
“Kitty, I think we’re going to get off this disaster zone.”
“You think?” Her face was buried in the hollow between my shoulder and my neck. “Tell me when you know for sure.”
The motor grew louder, and a flashlight found us as the boat drew up alongside the wreck.
“You there!” the man in the bow of the boat shouted up to us. “Get down here. Come on, move it! Now!”
I whispered to Kitty, “Our luck has changed.”
She tentatively pulled her head away from my neck and looked into my face.
“For the worse, I’m afraid,” I continued. “But we don’t have a choice. Be careful climbing down.”
We held hands and stepped gingerly down the steep deck into the beam of the flashlight. When we reached the lower edge of the shipwreck, the boat pulled up close to us, and Lewis Pomeroy said, “Get in the boat. We’re going for a ride.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We stepped into the rocking boat and huddled together on the middle seat, facing Pomeroy. We were both shivering, and it was a hot night.
“Okay, let’s go,” Pomeroy told the dark mountain in the stern of the boat. We heard the throttle being opened and the boat putted backwards away from the wreck, then turned around and picked up speed as we went forward into the channel. Pomeroy didn’t look at us, but kept staring off to the side of the boat, as if keeping an eye out for bandits.
Nobody spoke until we were halfway across the bay, approaching the lights of Morgania. Then Pomeroy shouted over the roar of the outboard, “Cut the engine.”
Suddenly we were surrounded by throbbing silence, bobbing gently on the inky bay. The moonlight lit Pomeroy’s face, which he now turned to us. “I don’t mind telling you that I’m really pissed off,” he said. “You two came very close to getting yourselves killed out there, which would have been a shame. Even worse, at least as far as some people are concerned, you may have botched a major drug raid. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” I said.
Kitty said, “You mean you’re not working with Roger?”
“I’m not going to answer a bunch of questions right now. We don’t have time for that. But no, I don’t work for Herndon, or with him. I’m in law enforcement. There’s a sting operation scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, but if the Miami contingent shows up and things aren’t right on Polly’s Key, they’re not going to stick around and fill their pockets full of evidence. Thanks to you idiots, things are not right on Polly’s Key. As far as I could see from Herndon’s dock, his house is destroyed, along with any evidence that was inside it. Now listen to me. Listen to me carefully. Don’t ask questions and don’t you dare argue.
“We’re going back to the Pirate’s Paradise. I will give you exactly fifteen minutes to get cleaned up, packed, and out of your room. No more. Fifteen minutes. While you’re doing that I’ll get you checked out at the front desk and I’ll pay your bill. Then I’m going outside to the courtyard, where I’ll wait for you in a cab, with the motor running. You paying attention? Fifteen minutes. I don’t want to waste gas, and you don’t want to waste time.
“We’re going to make a quick stop in Morgantown. There’s an all-night pharmacy there. I’m going to give you both tetanus shots. The side effects can be pretty uncomfortable, but there’s no choice and you don’t dare wait till you get back to the States. And some cortisone cream for those bug bites. Even in this light I can see you’ve been eaten alive. Then we’re going to the airport. I’ll have you on the next flight to San Pedro Sula. From there you’re on your own, but I want you to catch the earliest flights available. Your return tickets are open-dated. Don�
��t ask me how I know that. What the hell are those things on your wrists?”
“Handcuffs,” I said, holding them up for him to see. “You like?”
“You’re a lot of trouble, Guy Mallon. You’re lucky I have skeleton keys that fit those things.”
“You travel with skeleton keys?”
“Standard equipment in my line of work.” He shook his head at me. “Okay, Oliver,” he called to the man in the stern. “Let’s get going.”
“Oliver!” Kitty and I said it together, twisting around to look at the big man behind us. There he was, chuckling, grinning in the moonlight.
“Yes sir, Oliver’s taxi service, at your service, on land, on sea. Mighty good to see you folks, yes sir. Mighty glad. On land, on sea. Mighty glad!”
***
An hour later Kitty and I were in front of the Morgania airport, hugging Oliver good-bye. Then Lew Pomeroy walked with us into the airport, stood with us at the ticket counter, and made arrangements for us to be on the flight for San Pedro Sula that left at six a.m. The agent was able to book us on all our other flights and check our baggage through to Los Angeles, where we would arrive at four-eighteen that afternoon, Pacific Daylight Time. Lew paid our airport departure tax and walked with us to the waiting room. We sat on little gray plastic chairs and scratched our bug bites. Breathed.
Kitty grinned at Lew and said, “So. So you really do work for the war on drugs. Man.”
Lew smiled back and said, “Doesn’t matter who I work for.”
“This soldier saved our ass, Kitty,” I said.
“It’s dirty money,” Kitty said. “I’m grateful you saved our ass, Lew, but the war on drugs is dirty money.”
“And drug traffic is clean money?” he asked. His tone was genial.
“I’ve been making dirty money myself,” I quickly admitted. Anything to segue off the subject. “Vanity press publishing. Easy money. But I’ve quit.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Lew said. “I don’t know anything about publishing, but easy money is an addiction.”
“So’s the war on drugs,” Kitty persisted. “Tell your boss Barry McCaffrey the war on drugs is stupid. It just goes after the victims. It’s just another big business, like napalm or whatever, and it’s dirty money.”
“Why would I tell him that?” Lew asked. “If I worked for him, I mean. It’s just a job for him. I should tell him to give up his career? He has a family to support, just as I do—”
“Dirty money.”
“And stripping isn’t dirty money? Taking your clothes off for horny old men?”
“Who told you I’m a stripper?”
Lew laughed. “Kitty, I’m not with the war on drugs. Honest. I’m a federal marshal working in cooperation with the Los Angeles Police Department. I was sent here to collar Roger Herndon for a number of crimes, only one of which was drug traffic, and I was also asked by Rosa Macdonald to keep an eye on you two and protect you. Now I’m sending you back, and that part of my assignment’s over. But I have to stick around to lend a hand tomorrow. I owe the DEA a favor. Okay? Give my friend Rosa a big kiss for me when you get back to Santa Barbara.”
“No kidding?” I said. “A federal marshal? You sure had me fooled. I was sure you were in real estate. You seemed to know a lot about it.”
He nodded. “My wife and I bought a house in Encino last year. Talk about a crash course in lunacy.”
“So how did you know we were coming here to Morgania, and, I mean, what’s going on?” Kitty demanded. “Just how much do you know?”
“Grace Worth told the LAPD all about Roger Herndon’s operation in Morgania. I have extradition papers prepared, and I’m taking him back to California tomorrow to stand trial for two murders and two arsons. He’ll also be charged with fraud, tax evasion, drug traffic, and car theft. I wanted to collar him right away, but McCaffrey’s team convinced me I should wait until they completed their sting. Then you two got in the way. But I’ll still get him. And as soon as we have him behind bars, awaiting arraignment, Grace Worth will walk free.”
“Maybe he died out there on the island,” Kitty said. “We might have killed him.”
Lew and I shrugged to each other. “No great loss,” I said.
“But will Gracie still walk free?” she asked, a whine in her voice.
“Of course. Just a little more paperwork for me, that’s all. She cleared her name by letting us know where to find Herndon. I found him. She’ll be outside in a few days, max. So you see, you really didn’t need to make this trip at all.”
Kitty nodded. “Shit,” she said. “It would have been a lot easier. But I didn’t know Gracie was going to tell on Roger. She didn’t tell me she was going to.”
“I needed to make the trip,” I said.
“You?”
“Roger Herndon took something from me, and I wanted it back.”
Lewis Pomeroy sighed. “Well, let’s hope that attitude is out of your system, Guy. I hope you’ve learned to leave crime-fighting to the professionals. Rosa told me you’ve got a bit of a problem that way.”
I shrugged. “I’ll be good from now on,” I promised. “Whatever that means.”
Lew stood up. “I guess I’d better get back to my hotel. Big day tomorrow. You guys okay on your own?” Then he turned to Kitty and said, “By the way, I hope you haven’t packed any of Roger’s cocaine into your luggage. They’re going to be going through your bags very thoroughly in Los Angeles, and—”
Kitty flared. “Don’t be silly. What do you think I am? Stupid?” Then she grinned and hugged him. “Thanks Loodood. You’re my hero.”
He blushed and was gone.
Kitty turned to me and said, “Guy?”
“Hmmm?”
“You’re my hero, too.”
Her eyes were nearly swollen shut from all the bug bites, and tears leaked out and found a path to her trembling smile. I took her in my arms and squeezed her fragile body, knowing somehow it would be my last hug from this dear, fucked-up friend.
Epilogue
Kitty and I arrived in Los Angeles late Monday afternoon, October 9. We stayed overnight in the Hacienda Inn, near the airport, and on Tuesday morning we drove back to Santa Barbara through a steady rain. “Weather sure changed since we left town three days ago,” I remarked.
“Lot of stuff has changed,” Kitty said. “One more thing I want you to know. Gracie didn’t kill Worsham. She handcuffed him, all right, and she did her lap dance, but he didn’t have a stroke and he didn’t have a heart attack. Roger came in, saw what was happening, and stuffed Worsham’s underpants in his mouth and sealed his face with duct tape. Then he poured the gasoline and lit the match. Worsham died in the fire. He was burned alive. And Gracie didn’t set that fire. She just watched, scared to death. And still she trusted him. Roger. Still she trusted that fucker, and so did I. Cocaine. Jesus. What was I thinking?”
“Well—”
“Shut up. I don’t want to talk about it.”
***
I stayed at Kitty’s place the rest of that week. We barely talked, and we didn’t talk at all about our adventure in Morgania. I spent my days at the office. She went back to work at the Kountry Klub, so she was gone every evening until all hours, and in the afternoons she cleaned house. She told me she took all the cocaine left in her apartment to the club and gave it to Terry, the bouncer. “But I’m keeping the weed,” she insisted. “Don’t expect me to give that up.”
“I never said a word.”
At the end of the week, Gracie called to say she’d been released from jail, and she was coming home. I moved out that day and checked into the Schooner Inn, where there was still a room waiting for me.
Santa Barbara was cool and fresh. The rains had washed the smog from the sky. I took long walks around the city every cool, crisp morning, always ending up at my office, where I’d stay until dark, except for short trips to the post office for mail and the Sojourner for lunch. I didn’t
have much of a business left, but I had paid the rent until the end of October. My poetry books were all packed up, sitting on the office floor in boxes, ready to be shipped to wherever Carol could find a buyer, or to Scarecrow Books if she wanted to hold onto them while they sold. I did some writing, and I read my way through the Sue Grafton oeuvre-to-date. I made arrangements to store my office furniture and equipment at Budget U-Stor, but that wouldn’t happen till the end of the month. I ate breakfast every morning at Esau’s and I had dinner every night at the Casa Blanca Mexican restaurant down the street, washing it down with one beer. That was all the drinking I did. It reminded me of how healthy I’d been in 1977, when I’d first come to Santa Barbara. Before I got into publishing. I realized I could live without publishing.
That was also before I knew Carol. I realized I could live without Carol, too, but I wasn’t happy about that. Nobody is guaranteed happiness anyway. I would survive. Not in this town, though. Santa Barbara without Carol? I didn’t think so. Come November, it would be time to move on. I had no idea where, but I had a few weeks left to think about it.
***
One morning as I left Esau’s, I found myself holding the door open for Maxwell Black, who was on his way in. He stopped, clapped me on the shoulder, and said, “Guy! I thought you were in Honduras, pardner.”
“Howdy, Max. Who told you that?”
“Carol,” he answered.
“Carol Murphy.”
“Herself.”
“You’ve been talking to Carol Murphy? She called you?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking a bit nervous. “She’s moving, you know. Selling her house and relocating.”
“I know that.”
“Yeah, well she called me and asked me—”
“Listen, Max, I’m in kind of a rush here. Late for the office. Have a good breakfast.”
So I took an extra-long walk that morning, through the upper East Side, where the Riviera comes down to the Mission and everybody’s wealthy and happy. I had a long talk with myself.
You’ve been in love before, right?
Right.
You’ve been dumped before too, right?
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