Loitering with Intent sb-16

by Woods, Stuart

  “Not bad,” Tommy said.

  “Yes,” Stone replied, “and I like the way she waved.”

  9

  THE THREE MEN ordered drinks and were given menus.

  “Everything’s good,” Tommy said. “I especially like the beef.”

  They ordered.

  “Do you have a boat here, Tommy?”

  “Yeah, a thirty-foot fiberglass bathtub, just big enough for my wife and me.”

  “How is Rosie?” Dino asked.

  “Unchanged,” Tommy replied. “Ornery as ever.”

  “Tommy,” Stone said, “how are we going to find this Keating guy?”

  “Well, I can’t put an APB out on him,” Tommy said. “It’s not like he’s committed a crime.”

  “Did you print him while you had him?”

  “We didn’t get that far. I ran his name, though, and he has no record.”

  “Keating has checked out of his hotel, and the desk clerk said he thought he was living on a boat.”

  “Any description of the boat?”

  “No.”

  “Good luck on finding it, then.”

  “Yeah, we spent most of the day looking in Key West Bight,” Dino said.

  “Well, that’s the most likely place for a visiting boat to be, but not the only place. They could be anchored almost anywhere, and there’s also Stock Island, of course.”

  “Where’s Stock Island?” Stone asked.

  “It’s the next key up,” Tommy explained. “Stock Island is sort of a suburb of Key West. It has all the stuff they can’t shoehorn onto this island—hospital, jail, trash dump, lower-cost housing and trailer parks, golf course—and a couple of marinas. It’s worth a shot; Peninsula is the big marina.”

  “I think we’re wasting our time without the name of the boat,” Dino said. “It’s like looking for a visitor to New York without an address.”

  “You got a point,” Tommy agreed.

  “Also, Keating is shy,” Dino said. “He doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Yeah,” Stone said, “a skip tracer found him in Miami, and he left town. He’s likelier to get shyer after his encounter with me.”

  “Sounds like he’s on the lam,” Tommy said.

  “From his father,” Stone replied. “Bad blood there.”

  “Well,” Tommy said, “at least you know what he looks like. His girlfriend, too.”

  “Not really,” Stone said. “I didn’t take a good look at her, and I’m not sure I’d recognize her on the street.”

  “You can always sit down with the phone book and start calling hotels,” Tommy pointed out.

  “That won’t help us if he’s living on a boat,” Stone said. “The desk clerk at his hotel said that a lot of boaters check in for a couple of nights to get a decent shower and have their laundry done.”

  “We talked to Charley Boggs,” Dino said. “He denied all knowledge of Keating, said he’d never seen him until they were all busted.”

  “How bad an actor is Boggs?” Stone asked.

  “He’s got a couple of drug busts, but nothing ever came of them.”

  “And why would a clean-cut rich boy with a trust fund be hanging out with a drug dealer?”

  “Thrills, maybe,” Tommy offered. “Do you know how big a trust fund?”

  “The old man described it as ‘a nice little trust fund,’ but who knows what that means.”

  “Maybe our boy Evan has dreams of bigger, easier money,” Dino said. “He wouldn’t be the first rich kid to go down for dealing.”

  “Trouble his,” Stone said, “we don’t know anything about this kid—who his friends are, how he earned a living in the past.”

  “His old man couldn’t help with that?” Tommy asked. Stone shook his head. “Apparently, they haven’t spoken since the guy was in college, and that was some years ago.”

  Tommy sighed. “Dealing with criminals is a lot easier,” he said.

  “They have accomplices and parole offi cers, people you can talk to when you’re looking for them. Rich kids just have drug dealers and maître d’s.” Tommy’s face brightened. “Wait a minute. Your boy had a table booked at Antonia’s, an Italian restaurant on Duval, the night we arrested him.”

  “So?” Dino asked.

  Tommy was already pushing buttons on his cell phone. “Hi, it’s Lieutenant Tommy Sculley, Key West PD. The night before last you had a reservation for an Evan Keating; did you get a phone number for him?” Tommy scribbled something in his notebook. “Thanks,” he said, then he hung up. He ripped the sheet from his notebook and handed it to Stone. “Your boy has a cell phone number, 917 area code.”

  “Can your computers track cell phone numbers?” Stone asked.

  “They can.”

  “Do me a favor, Tommy. Ask your office to wait until late tonight and see if you can locate the phone. That might tell us where Evan Keating is laying his curly head at night.”

  Tommy made the call.

  10

  STONE AND DINO were breakfasting on their front porch when Stone’s cell phone vibrated. He flipped it open. “Hello?”

  “It’s Tommy.”

  “Good morning.”

  “And to you. We got an overnight hit on Evan Keating’s cell phone.”

  “Hallelujah! Where’s he staying?”

  “Well, you were right, he’s on a boat.”

  “Which marina?”

  “No marina; he’s anchored out at the reef.”

  “Let me put you on speaker, so Dino can hear this.” Stone pressed the button. “Go.”

  “Key West has the only coral reef left in the continental United States. Everybody goes out there to snorkel and scuba, so a lot of moorings have been put down, to keep people from tearing up the coral with anchors. That’s where we picked up Keating’s cell phone, around two A.M.”

  “Great, I’ll go out there and visit him.”

  “Hang on. We’re not getting his phone now, not at the reef or anywhere else.”

  “Maybe he’s charging the thing. He could still be there.”

  “So are a lot of other people. How are we going to know which boat?”

  “Have you got coordinates?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know how accurate they are. If you like, I’ll take you out there. How about we meet at the yacht club in an hour? The boat’s name is Rosie, and she’s visible from the front door of the club.”

  “You’re on,” Stone said. “See you then.” He hung up.

  “Stone,” Dino said, “here’s a thought: You’ve got the guy’s cell phone number; why don’t you just call him up and talk to him?”

  “I thought of that; he’d just hang up in my face, and he might stop using the cell phone or change his number, and we’d have no way at all to trace him.”

  “Okay, it was just a thought.”

  They finished breakfast and headed for the Key West Yacht Club.

  ROSIE TURNED OUT to be just as Tommy had described her: a fat, 30-foot fiberglass bathtub, with engines, a cabin and a fl ying bridge up top.

  Tommy welcomed them aboard; the engines were already running.

  “Tell me something,” Stone said. “If we all went up to the fl y-bridge, would this thing turn upside down?”

  Tommy laughed. “It looks that way, but she’s well ballasted.”

  He edged out of the boat’s berth and began running along the east side of Garrison Bight, not far off the Roosevelt Boulevard sidewalk.

  “There’s a little channel here with six feet or so,” Tommy said. “All that open water to starboard is not navigable by anything more boisterous than a kayak; too shallow.”

  They picked up some channel markers and headed out of the bight, then under the bridge and into more open water. Five minutes later they were running at 25 knots, and Tommy pointed to their destination on his electronic chart plotter. “Keating’s phone was right about there,” he said.

  They ran on for another twenty minutes, then Tommy began to slow down. “See those boat
s out there?” he asked, pointing.

  “Yep,” Stone replied.

  “That’s roughly where we got the location of the phone.” He slowed down further as they approached the moored boats. There were a dozen or so, all but one powerboats.

  “Let’s get a close look,” Stone said.

  “Okay, we’ll check every boat.”

  Tommy’s cell phone rang. “Yeah? You’re sure? Where? Thanks, keep me posted.” He hung up. “We’re wasting our time out here.”

  Tommy turned back toward Key West and pushed the throttle forward.

  “Why?” Stone asked.

  “Because they just got another beep about a minute long from back behind us. Looks like Keating’s boat is heading back to Key West. It also looks like Keating is using his cell phone only to make calls. When he finishes, he turns it off.”

  “Shit,” Stone said. “You think he’s on to us?”

  “Nah, but he’s sure being careful. If he was on to us he’d just buy a throwaway phone at the supermarket.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’d sure like to know what kind of boat that is,” Tommy said. “It’s very odd for a boat to be spending the night out at the reef. I mean, I suppose a guy might go out there to have a few drinks and get laid, then feel too drunk to drive home, but it’s not a usual thing to have a boat out there at two in the morning.”

  “Maybe he’s meeting somebody out there,” Dino said.

  “A drug delivery? That’s possible, I suppose, but the Coast Guard might notice two boats out together and take a look. Halfway up the Keys there are two balloons moored to cables that are fi fteen thousand feet long. They run them up and use down-facing radar to catch smugglers who are flying low in airplanes or doing odd stuff in boats. I think two boats out at the reef in the middle of the night might draw their attention, but probably not one boat.”

  “Let’s make a pass at Key West Bight,” Stone said. “Maybe we’ll see the boat.”

  “Okay.” Tommy ran past the cruise ship docks and the waterfront hotels and slowed as he passed the breakwater.

  “Nothing but boats,” Dino said. “I think it’s too much to expect to get lucky doing this.”

  “You’re right, Dino,” Stone said, looking around. “We’re just wasting Tommy’s fuel. Why don’t you let me fill up your boat on my expense account, Tommy?”

  “Okay,” Tommy said, aiming at the fuel dock. They spent twenty minutes there filling the tanks, then headed back toward Garrison Bight and the yacht club.

  Once Rosie was secured in her berth, they went into the club to get a sandwich and a beer.

  “Stone,” Dino said, “how much longer is your law fi rm going to let you loiter in Key West before they pull the plug?”

  “I don’t know,” Stone replied, “but I’m surprised Bill Eggers hasn’t already been on the horn.”

  Stone’s cell phone vibrated.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Eggers.”

  “Speak of the devil.”

  “Give me a report.”

  Stone put aside his sandwich and spent five minutes bringing Eggers up to date.

  “You mean you’re on an island that’s four by five miles, you’ve already spotted this guy once, and now you can’t fi nd him?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Stone said. “It would be nice if you would call his old man and get me some background on the guy—

  how he makes a living, who his best friends are, anything that would give me a lead. This is a lot harder than you think.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do,” Eggers said. “I’ll call you when I know more, and I’ll expect you to know more by then.” Eggers hung up.

  “Is he pissed off?” Dino asked.

  “No more than usual.”

  “You didn’t tell him about the cell phone.”

  “That would just have raised his expectations,” Stone said, pick-ing up his sandwich again.

  “So what are we going to do this afternoon?” Dino asked. “We’re sort of out of leads.”

  Stone brightened. “Tennis, anyone?”

  11

  THE OLDE ISL AND Tennis Club was on the tourist map, next to and part of the Casa Marina Hotel, the first big tourist draw to Key West, built by the Standard Oil and railroad magnate Henry Flagler. Stone and Dino called Chuck Chandler, then dressed and drove over. They found Chuck in the pro shop.

  “Hey, guys,” Chuck said. “You want to go hit some balls? That’ll give me a chance to look at your game.”

  Stone and Dino had played together before. Stone had the better serve and stroke, and Dino was good at the net. Chuck stood back and hit against the two of them. After a few minutes, Chuck said,

  “Okay, let’s play a set. I’ll use the singles lines.”

  Half an hour later, when Chuck had won six-two, they took a break and had a soft drink.

  “Have you taken the boat out yet?” Stone asked.

  “Just the run from the Peninsula yard on Stock Island to the yacht club. It’s tough to get much time off during the winter season—I’m so booked up with students.”

  “Are you living aboard?”

  Chuck laughed. “That’s the only way I can afford the boat. I can’t buy a house, too, not with real estate prices the way they are down here. I’m comfortable, though. The old boat was a lot more cramped, and every time I bought a piece of clothing, I had to throw one away.”

  “What did you do with the old boat?” Stone asked.

  “I sold it to the first guy who looked at it. I think I may not have asked enough.”

  “I’ve heard about the Peninsula Marina. Is that where you did the work?”

  “Yeah, I rented a shed in the yard.”

  “Did you ever run into a guy named Evan Keating in the marina there?”

  “Sure did; I sold him my boat.”

  Stone broke into a broad smile. “Finally!” he said.

  “Finally what?” Chuck asked.

  “We came down here to fi nd Keating; I’ve got some documents for him to sign. I saw him once, but he got away from me, and we haven’t been able to find him. Do you have an address for him?”

  “No, but as far as I know, he’s living aboard my old boat. At least that’s what he told me he was going to do.”

  “Where is he berthed?”

  “I don’t know. I know the Peninsula didn’t have a berth for him.”

  “Where did you keep the boat?”

  “In the same slip at the yacht club where the new boat is.”

  “Did you get an address from Keating or any other information that might help me fi nd him?”

  “No. It was a cash deal, so I didn’t need an address, and, like I said, he was planning to live aboard.” He dug into a pocket of his shorts for his cell phone. “I’ve got his cell number, though,” he said, and he read it from his phone. It was the number they already had.

  “Do you remember what bank his check was written on?”

  “No bank. He showed up at the club with a paper bag with a hundred and thirty thousand in hundreds in it. I’d never seen that much cash before.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “The same day he checked out of his hotel,” Dino said. “At least we know what boat to look for now. What’s the name?”

  “Choke, ” Chuck said.

  “Can you describe the boat?”

  “Sure. Thirty-two-footer, white hull, mahogany superstructure, twin screws.”

  “That’s pretty small for twin engines,” Stone said.

  “They’re small engines, but they give you a lot more maneuverability than a single.”

  “Gas or diesel?”

  “Gas.”

  “Anything else you can tell us about it?”

  “Prettiest boat in Key West, except for Choke II. ”

  “Do you know anything at all about Keating, besides that he bought your boat?” Stone asked.

  Chuck thought about it. “He has
a pretty girlfriend, name of Gigi.”

  “Anything else?”

  “He saw me play at Wimbledon, the year I, ah, fi nished second. Seems like half the world saw me fuck it up.”

  “Was Keating driving a car when you met him?”

  “Oh, yeah, he was driving a Chrysler convertible; that’s a common rental here.”

  “Color?”

  “Ummm, silver—no, white. Oh, and he brought a guy with him to help him move the boat. I spent an hour showing them around it. The girl drove away in the convertible.”

  “Can you describe his helper?”

  “A little under six feet, I guess, fairly scrawny. Full beard. Oh, and Keating called him Charley.”

  “Aha,” Stone said, “Boggs lied to us.”

  “What did you expect?” Dino asked.

  “Want to play another set?” Chuck asked.

  “I think we have to go see Charley Boggs,” Stone said.

  THEY DROVE BACK to Garrison Bight, parked near the sport fi sherman fleet and walked over to Boggs’s houseboat. Nobody home. Stone and Dino looked through the windows. The boat was sparsely furnished.

  “Can I help you?” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find a woman on the next boat looking at them.

  “We’re looking for Charley Boggs,” Stone said.

  “Haven’t seen him since yesterday,” the woman replied. “A couple came and got him in a boat, and he hasn’t come back yet.”

  “What kind of boat?”

  “Old, pretty; white hull, mahogany everything else.”

  “Right. Do you know Charley well?”

  “Well enough to know that he doesn’t seem to do anything to make a living. Most of the time, he’s fishing off the back of that boat.”

  “Has his houseboat been moored here long?”

  “He bought it from the previous berth holder a few months back. That’s how you get a houseboat berth in Key West—you buy the houseboat.”

  “Had you seen the couple in the boat before?”

  “I saw them once having a drink with Boggs up on the top deck.”

  “Do you have any idea where they live?”

  “No idea at all. You want me to give Boggs a message when he comes back?”