'You the guys went for a swim?'
'That's us.'
'You should watch out — when the water comes up like that, that's about the only time we see the 'gators real close.'
'We'll bear that in mind.'
'JJ fixing your vehicle?'
'Yes, he is.'
'Okay — well, anything I can do to help, just let me know. We have a small, peaceful community here, kind of like to keep it that way.'
'Absolutely,' I said. Then I nodded down at the x's on his door. 'Those all the people you've killed?'
He laughed. 'No, son, that's the number of days till I retire. Can't hardly wait.' He winked and said: 'See you boys around.'
Then he drove on.
'Didn't bother about a lift,' I said when he was completely out of range.
'Thank God,' Davie added.
We moved sluggishly on down Broadway. We laboured past a Spanish-style railroad depot and a frame community church. There was a flaking four-column temple building with a sign that said Old Collier County Courthouse and a plaque that told us it was built in 1926. We turned onto Shorter Avenue, moved past the Company Laundry Building, then finally came to a halt outside the Bank of Everglades. It had been built in the same year as the courthouse, which seemed to make sense.
'We have to go in, put this in their safe.' Davie nodded down at the gold.
'What we have to do,' I said, 'is get a room, get cleaned up. We walk in the bank like this they'll push the alarm button.'
Davie shook his head. 'Shit-kicking town like this, they're used to all sorts. They won't bat an eye.'
'Davie — they'll chase us. Or they'll shoot us. I know about places like this. My Cousin Vinny.'
'Trust me.'
'Yeah, right. That's what you said in St Pete — now look at us.'
Davie blew air out of his cheeks. Then he reached into his pocket. 'Tell you what, seeing as how we're not going to get anywhere like this, we toss for it.'
I thought about that for a moment. I'd read The Dice Man and knew what trouble following the whim of a dice could get you into: this was somewhat the same, only with fewer options. But as the alternative was getting into another scrap with Davie and having to live with the ignominy of being beaten up by a one-armed man, I nodded and he tossed and I called and he won.
We lugged the bags up the steps into the bank. Security seemed a little lax to say the least. There were a couple of elderly women drinking coffee and reading magazines on comfy seats set into a window alcove; a teenager was getting a Mountain Dew out of a vending machine; and instead of a series of windows with cashiers, there was a high desk with a bored-looking man in an open-necked white shirt sitting on what appeared to be a bar stool, reading a copy of the Everglades Echo. A small black plastic nameplate was sitting before him. Mr EC Hamilton, Manager (Owner). So now we knew.
'What sort of a bank is this?' asked Davie.
'No idea, Sundance,' I said.
EC Hamilton, the manager and owner, looked up from his paper. 'Bank's across the road,' he said.
'It says bank outside,' said Davie.
'Yes, sir, it does,' said EC, with the weariness of a man who'd spent his whole life apologising for not being a bank.' Used to be the bank. Now we're a guest-house. Kept the name. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Not so sure now. Like I say, bank's across the road.'
Davie peered back out through the door. 'There's a laundry across the road. The Company Laundry Building.'
'Yes, sir, that's the bank. It's the Company Laundry Building, but it's the bank.'
'So where's the laundry?' I asked.
'Ain't no laundry,' said the desk guy.
Now that we had that sorted out, and seeing as how we were actually already in a guest-house, albeit by default, we decided to take a room, get cleaned up, then deposit the gold in the bank later. Davie signed us in while EC blinked curiously at us.
'You fellas been for a swim?' he asked.
'Car trouble,' I said.
'Figures.' He returned his attention to his newspaper.
'JJ sent us,' I said.
'JJ ?'
'JJ of JJ's Auto-shop. That entitle us to some sort of discount?'
'Nope.'
There were no elevators in the guest-house, so we had to lug the gold up three flights of stairs to our room. When I glanced back I just caught EC's eyes flicking back down to the newspaper. Across the lobby, the two old women didn't even show us that courtesy; they watched us until we were out of sight. The only one who didn't show any interest was the teenager struggling with the vending machine. If past experience was anything to go by, we'd be better off killing him right away, because it's always the one you least suspect.
Upstairs we were more than polite to each other. There were single beds. Davie said after you and I said no, after you. So he chose the bed by the window. He said he was going to have a shower, and I said so was I. He said after you and I said, no, after you, and he said, no I got the bed I wanted, you have the first shower. It was going to get really annoying after a while.
I stood in the shower and scraped away the mud. I hadn't had a chance yet to think about the repercussions of what I'd done — killing The Colonel. I did not feel particularly different. I did not feel as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. But nor did I feel numb. Or racked by guilt. It almost felt like it hadn't happened at all, like it was someone else's memory. As if The Colonel, who had played such a significant part in my life, was now too insignificant to waste thought upon. He was dead. Gone. End of story.
Or end of that story. The complication was now the gold.
Davie had argued that the gold bars were the spoils of war, but they weren't. They were an afterthought. They were a different scene, from a different movie.
While I got dressed, and Davie was in the shower, I briefly debated phoning Patricia.
Only briefly, because I didn't know what to say. She believed that killing The Colonel would help bring back the old Dan Starkey. But it wouldn't. Because he had never gone away. Everyone else had changed, I had stayed the same. It was as if the world was rotating one way, and everyone on it was walking in that direction, while I was going the other way, against the flow, anti-clockwise. I phoned my psychiatrist instead.
Dr Boyle sighed and huffed and puffed while he got to his study. 'How's your friend?' was his first proper question.
'My imaginary one, or the real one?'
'Either.'
'They're one and the same, and they're fine. But thank you for asking. Never mind about me.'
'Dan, I—'
'I did it.'
'You did it?'
'I did it.'
'You . . . ?'
'I did it.'
'Oh. Well done.'
'Thank you.'
'And how do you feel?'
'Rotten.'
'Rotten in what way?'
'Rotten in any way you care to think of. Sick to the core. Feverish. Angry.'
'You're sure it's not smallpox? I hear there's a—'
'I did it and I'm not proud, and I'm not ashamed. Somewhere in the middle.'
'Times like this, somewhere in the middle is the best place to be. Do you know what I mean? It probably won't hit you for another six months. Have you told your wife?'
'No.'
'Do you want to tell your wife?'
'Yes. Yes and no. I don't want it to look like she told me to go out and kill him so I did it.'
'But that's how it could be interpreted.'
'Yes. But it's not how it happened. I — shot him, but it was in self-defence. He was attacking me. I had no choice. It was him or me.'
'Dan — that's perfect. You didn't murder him in cold blood then. You've nothing to feel bad about.'
'He didn't commit suicide. If I hadn't been there, he wouldn't be dead now.'
'It doesn't matter. Your hand was forced, you can't blame yourself, you were put in a position, you shouldn't feel guilty.'
'I don
't feel guilty.'
I happened to glance up, and Davie was standing in the doorway listening, a towel wrapped around him. 'Give her my love,' he said.
'My imaginary friend sends you his love,' I said into the phone.
My psychiatrist was silent for several moments. Then: 'Dan?'
'Mmm-hmmm?'
'Describe your friend.'
'About six foot two.'
'Yes?'
'White fur. Big pointy ears. Answers to the name of Harvey.'
'Dan?'
'Mmmm-hmmm?'
'You are barking, you realise that?'
I put my hand over the mouthpiece and smiled at Davie. 'She loves you too.'
21
First off, we tried the hotel safe. Said to EC that we had something valuable we needed stored and he said there was a safety deposit box in the room. We said yes, it's hardly big enough to take a shoe. And he said, 'What size of a shoe do you have?' We said, 'It's not about a shoe,' and he said, 'Well, what is it about?' He was as nosy as fuck but we were on our best behaviour so we didn't hurl abuse at him or, indeed, shoot him in the head. Perhaps we were maturing.
'So about this safe?' Davie asked.
EC sighed, folded away his paper — it was only about ten pages long, he must have read it a dozen times since we'd been upstairs and come down again — and turned and opened a small door leading into a storage room behind him. There were a lot of keys hanging on hooks, a big stack of towels and boxes of soap, and beneath them all a small, squat safe. EC bent to it, made a point of blocking our view while he twisted a dial, then stepped back to show us the interior. It was crammed full of papers and files and bags of coins. There was more space in the safety deposit box in our room.
'You should try the bank,' he said. 'They got a strong room. It's just . . .'
'Across the road. Yes, we know,' I said.
'It's in the . . .'
'The Laundry Building,' I said. 'I remember.'
'But don't be misled, it's not a . . .'
'It's not a laundry,' said Davie, "cause there ain't no laundry.'
EC nodded with the glum resignation of an actor whose best lines have been given to someone else. As we lugged the bag between us EC shouted after us, 'Tell the manager EC sent you.'
We nodded and stepped out into the late-afternoon sun. 'Fucked-up town this is,' Davie said. 'Bank's a guesthouse and the laundry's the bank.'
I nodded. 'We'll go to the pub later, discover it's a whorehouse.'
'Well, that would be a tragedy.'
We crossed to the Company Laundry Building and entered the bank. For all the activity inside, it could have run a laundry on the side. There were jokes to be made about money laundering, but we knew from the look on the manager's face that he'd probably heard them all before. He was deeply tanned, his hair was flecked with silver and perfectly coiffured, his body appeared to be thickly muscled: we could tell this because of the excellent cut of his expensive-looking white suit. He would just about have been every woman's dream date if he hadn't had a face like a bucket of spiders. You can tart ugly up a million different ways, but you still get left with ugly. The nameplate on his desk said BJ Harmon, President. He smiled widely at us and said, 'Afternoon, gentlemen. We're just about closing up here — what can I for you do?'
'For you do?' I said.
'We'd like to put something in your strong room. Kind of valuable.'
'You gentlemen have an account here?'
'No, sir, we do not.'
'Do you wish to open an account?'
'No, sir, we do not.'
'Bank rules say you can't use the strong room 'less you have an account. But it's no trouble to open one — that I can for you do right away. Even if you only make a small deposit, just to keep things right and above board. All I need,' and he produced a small form from beneath his desk, 'is for one or other of you to fill in this form. Your name here, your permanent address here . . . and your social security number here.'
I glanced at Davie. He shrugged. I said, 'We're tourists, we don't have social security numbers.'
'Then I can't open you an account. No, sir, that I cannot for you do. It's against the law. No offence, gentlemen, but we get a lot of illegal aliens these parts — Cubans, Mexicans — but they don't have no social security number, then they don't get no bank account, and they don't got no bank account they don't get no credit card, checkbook, they can't borrow money, buy a house . . . it's a way of keeping it all in check.'
'We don't want to borrow money,' I said. 'We don't want to buy a house. We just want to use your strong room.'
'I understand that, sir, but rules are rules.'
'EC sent us,' Davie said.
'And JJ.'
'JJ?'
'From JJ's Auto-shop.'
BJ nodded. 'That's as maybe, nevertheless . . .'
Davie sighed. He reached into his back pocket and produced a wallet I hadn't seen before. 'Hoped I wouldn't have to do this,' he said, in what seemed to me to be a passable American accent. He flipped open the wallet and showed BJ a police badge. 'Cody Banks,' he said, 'St Pete Beach Police.'
'Oh my,' said BJ.
And I thought something similar.
'We were transporting vital evidence back to headquarters when we got caught in that shower.' He leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. BJ leaned forward as well, his brow furrowed with curiosity and age. Much closer and Davie could have planted a smacker on his lips. If he'd been that way inclined. There was no need for any of us to be whispering. The bank was still empty. Davie glanced back at me, 'And this is Officer . . .'
He hesitated for a moment, allowing me in to dig my own grave. I stepped forward and leaned into the circle of enlightenment. I put out my hand to BJ. 'Dan . . . DM . . . DM Boots.'
Davie blinked at me.
BJ shook my hand warmly. 'Officer Boots.'
'BJ,' said Davie, 'I can't stress to you enough how important it is that you keep our presence here in Everglades City under wraps. We've been pursuing a Mafia gang
'Russian Mafia,' I put in. 'We're pursuing a Russian Mafia gang—' 'Actually they're from Georgia — that's Georgia in the old USSR, not the one up the road.'
I thought the extra detail might help convince BJ. Davie quietly stepped on my toe out of sight of the now perspiring bank manager. The fact that I was wearing flip-flops only added to the pain. The fact that he was wearing them as well was neither here nor there. He was a big bastard, and mean with it. But I grinned nevertheless, although I was crying inside.
'And unless this evidence gets back safely to St Pete's, then the whole case is all shot to hell. As we will be. We need the use of your strong room, sir. Just for one night.'
BJ stood back from his desk. 'Sir, it would be a pleasure for the Bank of the Everglades to help the officers of law enforcement in their time of need, an absolute pleasure.' He made a come-hither gesture with his hand. 'You just give me that evidence. I'll make sure—'
'We'd prefer to place it in the strong room ourselves.' Davie was a cop, just not an American one, and he knew how to sound authoritative.
BJ hesitated for just a moment. 'Of course. If you'll just come round . . .'
BJ pressed a buzzer which opened a door at the end of the counter, then led us through an office to the strong room. He yanked a heavy metal door open with some difficulty, then ushered us inside. There were several rows of safety deposit boxes, a medium-sized safe and several large filing cabinets within. BJ eyed up our bag.
'Looks kind of big for the safe,' he said. 'Unless we could squash it down.'
'It doesn't squash,' Davie said.
'That case, just leave it there in the corner. Be safe enough. Haven't had a robbery here in thirty years.' He blinked for a moment. 'Unless of course you're bank robbers. Guess I let you in here kind of easy.'
Davie smiled. For a moment it put the fear of God into BJ.
But then I smiled, and he relaxed.
Two smiles, totally different reac
tions. It said a lot about Davie, and it probably said a lot about me.
'Relax,' I said. 'Bank robbers don't wear flip-flops.'
'And besides,' Davie said, 'I spotted the security cameras. What sorts of fools would we be, comin' in here without masks?'
BJ swallowed. 'I guess,' he said. He ushered us quickly out of the vault and re-secured it. It worked on some kind of time-lock principle, with a combination thrown in — I didn't know or care. Egg-timers confuse me.
As he walked us towards the front door BJ said, 'You want I should tell the Sheriff, he could keep an eye?'
Davie shook his head. 'Appreciate the thought, but no thank you. Less people know about it, the better, you understand?'
'Yes, sir.'
These Georgian Mafia,' I added, for colour, 'their tentacles reach far and wide.'
BJ nodded as if it meant something.
'We'll be back tomorrow,' Davie said. 'We're just across the road if you need us.'
BJ nodded and hurried back inside his bank. A moment later a Closed sign went up and he locked the front door.
Davie blew air down his nose as we walked across the road to the bar.
'Cody Banks,' I laughed. 'Where'd you find that?'
'Left it in the car.'
'Very thoughtful.'
'Georgian Mafia — what are you like.'
'Trust me,' I said. 'The devil's in the detail.'
'Security cameras!' scoffed Davie. 'They're about as real as his hair.'
'Really? It's a wig?'
'Yes, it's a wig — and yes, they're fake. Just thought you'd like to know.'
I patted my hair down for reassurance. Forty and not a bare patch in sight. I was doing all right for an old drunk guy.
The Mountain View Bar and Grill was pretty much what it said on the tin, except if you wanted to view a mountain, then you'd have to move to a different state. There were decent views of the beach and the handful of tourists down to watch the sunset. It was the kind of bar the locals used and the tourists avoided. There was nothing particularly dark or dangerous about it, it just lacked the finesse tourists expected. The barman was the first person we'd met in a while who didn't have his name emblazoned on some kind of badge, but we knew soon enough that he was called DJ and that he owned the place. 'Hey DJ, set 'em up!' 'Hey, DJ, gimme a shot!' DJ was an impressively large figure in his late forties, muscled up like BJ but with a face to match — chiselled, rugged. He wasn't the kind of guy who slapped moisturiser on before going to bed; he probably wrestled alligators for fun and caught marlins with his teeth.
Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) Page 17