"By any chance did Andy say what color they were?"
"Color?"
"Is Andy here today?"
"Playing volleyball," Shelley said.
"Mind if I talk to him a minute?"
"Sure."
Andy Beam remembered it vividly. Standing there with the volleyball in his hand, trim and tanned. The other members gathered around looking curiously at Thorn's clothes, and Andy Beam said, "Red."
"You're sure? You're positive?"
"Yeah, red. A bright ruby-red."
CHAPTER 10
That Monday night Jeanne Sugarman returned from her bonsai class at nine, looked at her husband sitting beside Thorn on the yellow sofa, a big bowl of popcorn in front of them, watching a videotape of First Federal Savings, and without a word she shook her head and stalked back to her bedroom.
"She hates my job. Says it disgusts her." Sugarman's mouth twisted into a pained smile.
"Why?"
"Well, for one thing, it doesn't pay anything. We've been living on savings for the last six months. And for another it has no spark."
"No spark?"
"That's her word. She got that from ballet class, or somewhere. All of a sudden one day she's talking about spark. What has it, what doesn't."
"And your job doesn't."
"My job. Me. My whole life. According to her I had more spark when I was a regular cop. Now, out on my own, I lost what little I had."
Thorn watched the flicker of the digital time display at the left-hand corner of the tape. It was running through the hours of the day at triple speed, making an eight-hour workday into a two-hour silent movie. Bank customers strutting about like awkward penguins, making spastic gestures, tellers spitting out sentences to customers, giving them fleeting smiles, then ripping up the phone and chattering into it.
Earlier in the evening double-speed was all the pace Thorn could manage, so untuned were his eyes to video. But now, after only a few hours of this, they'd adjusted and he was starting to crave a souped-up VCR, six times faster than real time, ten times. Anything to get through these tedious days faster.
"I bet I'm low on the spark totem pole myself."
"No," Sugarman said. Then lowering his voice he said, "Jeanne says you got lots of spark. But you're an ascetic."
"Ascetic?"
Thorn watched the customers, three of them in line waiting to cash their social security checks, chatting with each other. Little jerks of their head, the twitches and spasms of human interaction. People Thorn knew, people he didn't. The teller they were waiting for, a young woman he'd dated once or twice in high school, Judy Mueller, looking gaunt and hard-edged after three husbands and two kids, a short stint in jail for transporting a few kilos of grass up to Miami.
Sugarman said, "According to Jeanne, you keep your spark hidden inside. Like a monk. You're greedy with it. Use it on inner pursuits."
"That Jeanne. She's got some ideas in her, doesn't she?"
"Yeah, she keeps me on my toes." Sugarman drained the last of his Coke and set his glass down on the coffee table. He scooped up another handful of popcorn, and Thorn leaned forward and did the same.
With his mouth half full, Sugarman said, "Fact is, I'm up on my goddamn toes so much I about forgot what it's like to walk around normal."
Thorn patted his knee.
The walls of their living room were hung with the legacies of Jeanne's hobbies. Macramé, crocheted samplers with cute slogans, some black-and-white photos of bugs. Her bug phase. A whole wall devoted to religious icons: crucifixes; virgins; dark, somber carvings of saints. And beside them some framed awards she'd won selling cosmetics door-to-door, some others that her glee club won, and a plaque for honorable mention in a local art show. She'd been doing this for years, cycling through a new distraction about every six weeks. Nothing ever taking root.
"You have any adventures today?"
Thorn said no, nothing of any note. He could feel Sugarman looking at him, but he didn't glance over.
They watched the videotape, talking occasionally about the people who passed through them. People they hadn't seen around town in a while, ones they knew stories about. People they'd been friends with once, still were in most cases. They'd covered the last three weeks of banking business and absolutely nothing had snagged Thorn's attention.
Sugarman got up to put in the first Murtha's Liquors tape.
"You up to any more tonight?"
Thorn said yeah, he was still wired.
"Well, I'm fading fast myself, but I guess I could go maybe one more round."
"Tell me something, Sugar. What in the hell did these people expect you and Darcy to find looking at all that tape?"
"Oh, it's just standard procedure. They got these miles of tape sitting around, they invested all this money in it, they can't just throw it away, right?"
"So they pay more money to have somebody look at it."
"Not a whole lot more money, no."
"Ever find anything?"
"Once," Sugar said. "A month ago Darcy was watching, she spotted some young guy, a teller, he was palming a packet of bills from a cash drawer when another teller's back was turned. Close to five hundred dollars. He put it on the edge of his drawer, then about five minutes later he slipped it into his lunch sack. Had it down to a science. I had to watch the tape five, six times before I could see what he did. But Darcy spotted it right off."
"She never told me about it."
"Maybe she thought you wouldn't be interested."
"Yeah, maybe."
"Well, Bill Getty was thrilled. I took him the tape, showed it to him. He just wanted to look at it over and over. Finally, he'd caught one of these shitheads stealing from his bank. He's been running short once or twice a month for a year or two and couldn't tell how it was happening. Thought it might be some kind of conspiracy, everybody in the whole bank in on it. But then, there it is, in black and white. He loved it. And renewed his contract with me for a year."
"And Murtha?"
"Murtha's a different story. Old guy, seventies. Liquorland, you know his store, across from the high school."
Thorn nodded. He knew the place. He'd gone in there once or twice, though he didn't remember meeting the owner.
"Well, Murtha's all alone in that liquor store, no employees, so there's nobody to steal from the register. But he's got the camera going every minute of every day. Set to turn on at nine sharp and shut off at five."
"What's the deal?"
"Guy's paranoid," Sugarman said. "He's sure some of the lowlifes coming in are stealing bottles from him. A fifth here, a quart there. And Murtha's become goddamn obsessed. Has me mark every frame where any long-hairs or poor brothers could be slipping something inside their shirts, and he has the frames blown up, studies them with a magnifying glass. Makes these wild statements, threatening people, saying if he catches one of these assholes he's going to tear their fucking nuts off. Old guy like that, it's a little scary."
"Let's have a look."
Thorn settled back on the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table, aimed the control at the VCR, and began to speed-watch a day in the life of Roy Murtha.
For a while it was a relief after all those hours in the bank. But pretty quickly the routine became obvious. Murtha was a short, stocky man, dark complexion. He had large features, Mediterranean, Turkish or Greek. He wore dark clothes, strangely out of character for the Keys. He was in his early seventies, with thick white hair and a fragile step. He moved with slow caution, as though he was expecting any minute a trapdoor to spring open beneath him.
Murtha unlocked the store at nine, came in, went right into the back room. A minute later he came out with his apron on. He took a swipe at all the bottles with a feather duster, and when everything was clean, he went to the safe, opened it, filled the cash drawer.
By ten he had downed two cups of coffee and checked his hair three times in the mirror on the west wall. He unlocked the door, propped it open, looked around at the parking lot, and came
back inside. He settled into a chair behind the counter and began to read the New York Times, section by section, not skipping a page. At about eleven thirty each day he would pull from below the counter a plastic bag of junk food. Cheez Doodles, pork rinds, Thorn wasn't sure. The man would feast on them for a while as he finished the paper, a splurge of gluttony, and when the bag was empty, he wadded it into a small ball and tried a basketball shot into the can that sat near the front door. More often than not, he missed.
Thorn worked through the last week in July, watching the same white-haired crowd buying the same gallon jugs of vodka, the same construction guys plunking down their sweaty bills for fifths of rum and bourbon. On one Friday night a group of black teenagers descended on the store. They seemed to have something more than liquor on their minds. But one of them looked up and spotted the camera and all of them turned and stared at it and began to primp and mug for the video. Probably as close as they were going to get to their fifteen minutes of fame. A moment or two later they left without buying anything.
And then a day after that, a skinny young woman came into the store. She had short black hair and a pale complexion. She was pretty in a raw, mishandled way. She and Murtha talked for a few minutes. A longer conversation than Thorn had witnessed till then. Thorn punched the button and slowed the speed to normal.
Something had happened to Murtha's face, a stiffening that looked very much like fright. The girl edged around to the end of the counter, and bent her head to the side provocatively, eyes fluttering. Murtha came up to her and the girl reached out and touched him. The touch was hidden behind the counter, but it looked to Thorn from the way Murtha flinched that it was an intimate groping. At that point Murtha grew very agitated and hustled the girl toward the front door and practically pushed her out onto the sidewalk. She stood there for a moment smiling at him, then left.
Sugarman was snoring softly beside him on the couch. Thorn watched a few more uneventful days go by in Liquorland. Then one Saturday morning at the blip of ten, the first customer through the door was the same skinny young woman, early twenties, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt, a straw bag over her shoulder.
Murtha put aside the bag of Chee?tos he was working on and came out from behind the counter and stood close in front of her. She spoke a few words to him. Then Murtha squinted at her, standing very still as if he were having trouble digesting what she'd said. She came up on her tiptoes, leaned in, and kissed Murtha on the cheek. Then she reached into her straw bag and as she turned her back to the camera, she withdrew something and held it out to him. Murtha shook his head, sad but firm. Refusing with deep discomfort.
The young woman spoke again, stepping forward and setting the object on the counter. It was a black snub-nosed .38. At that moment Murtha seemed to remember the camera, for he glanced at it, then hurried over, reached his hand out toward the lens and the film turned black. When it came on again, the thin young woman was gone, and Murtha was again the methodical store owner, going about his routines. Gone was the amiable look that had taken him over when the young woman had appeared.
Thorn was sitting up, watching intently. But there was no more of the skinny girl on that Saturday. At five the camera blinked off, and came to life again at nine Monday morning. Nothing unusual on that day, and still no sign of the girl.
That tape ran out, and Thorn got up and inserted the next one. It was Tuesday, again the same routine. Then Wednesday turned out to be normal as well, and Thorn was about to file away Murtha's encounter with the girl as irrelevant. Then came Thursday, and the first person through the door was Darcy Richards.
Thorn picked up the control and backed up the tape. He slowed it to normal speed and watched again as Darcy entered the store. Murtha stood behind the counter, and Darcy spoke to him for a moment. In her blue jeans, white jersey top, her slouchy red jacket, the sleeves rolled up to her forearms. Over her shoulder her crocheted cotton bag with leather trim. A thumb hooked in the strap of the bag, holding it in a stiff pose.
She spoke a few sentences, and Murtha came out from behind the counter, bringing his bag of chips along. He stood before her. As she continued to speak, his eyes dropped, and his head began to sag. She kept speaking to him, talking to the crown of his head. Then she stopped. She shifted her stance, leaning toward him. She said something else, not more than half a sentence, something fierce and final. And his face bobbed up. He stepped away from her, shaking his head, then shaking it faster, speaking now for the first time, working himself up, showing his teeth, a snarl, then lowering his head and tilting it to the side like a boxer slowly boring in. He kept speaking, edging forward, and Darcy took a step backward. She said something more, then stumbled briefly, and as she did, Murtha dropped the plastic bag of chips and drew back his right hand and slapped Darcy Richards hard in the face.
Thorn hit the stop button.
He took a breath, blew it out. He backed up the tape. He hit play, then punched slow-mo. Took another careful breath, looked over at Sugarman sleeping. He turned back to the screen and watched Murtha bulling in on her, saw Darcy stagger, Murtha reacting, taking advantage, jerking his hand back and flashing it open-handed against her left cheek. Thorn froze the frame. Caught Darcy's face flinching, head snapped back, hair flying.
He stood up, walked around the coffee table to the TV. It was perched at eye level on a fake wood wall unit. Thorn stood close before it.
The house was soundless, only the quiet hum of the VCR, and the fizz of electrons bombarding the TV screen. Darcy's image fired at the silver-coated glass, some of the electrons penetrating, making it through, some of them crossing the space between screen and Thorn, across those seven, eight inches of air. Electrons sending Darcy's image beyond the tube, beyond the screen. Firing her into Thorn, into his body, lifting the hair on his neck.
CHAPTER 11
Roy David Murtha, 218 Sandpiper Bay Road. Thorn found the listing in the kitchen phone book.
He sprinted out to his car, drove furiously through Sugarman's neighborhood and the two blocks out to the highway, mashed the gas pedal to the floor and drove the VW straight across the northbound lanes, bounced across the median, swerving out in front of a southbound Greyhound, which honked and flashed its lights, Thorn holding the pedal down, past real estate offices and banks, hardware stores and pizza shops, restaurants and sea-shell shops, through downtown Key Largo, the shopping center dark and empty, past motels and dive shops, flashing past the Burger King and bait shops, bars and condo developments, the warm air blasting through the car, picking up old papers from the backseat, swirling them up into the night, Thorn holding the pedal down till the speedometer grazed eighty. Hurtling down the long straightaway past the Sheraton and Popp's Motel, the Stoneledge, holding it down around the big bend into Tavernier, swinging out to pass late-night cars and trucks and then braking hard, tires squealing, the VW tipping briefly onto two wheels, as he swerved into the parking lot of Sandpiper Bay Village. Thorn wrestled the car back under control, aimed it at a concrete parking marker and jolted to a stop against it.
He switched off the ignition and threw open the door. Half past eleven. The place quiet. Only a scattering of cars in the lot. Most of the condos owned by Miamians or snowbirds. The Canadian crowd. All the signs in French.
Sugarman would definitely consider this rash. He would've wanted Thorn to sit down and nonchalantly discuss things, decide together the best way to proceed. Maybe if Thorn had woken him they would've decided to wait till business hours tomorrow. Chill down. Then both of them would walk in, confront Murtha in his liquor store, in the doorway where he'd slapped Darcy. That was probably the sensible thing, the rational, under-control thing.
Thorn took the stairs three at a time, was in front of 218 before his conscience could mutter another word. He hammered the door. Eight times, ten. Rattled the knob, then turned around and kicked the door with the heel of his shoe. Seven, eight, nine. Spun back around and banged it with both hands. Pounding in time with his heart
.
The door to the apartment next to Murtha's came open. Eyes appearing in the crack above a gold security chain. Thorn hesitated, his fists raised.
"Thorn?" A woman's voice.
He lowered his hands, his heart lugging down.
"That you, Thorn?"
The woman's door closed. Thorn stood there for a moment, then the chain rattled and the door came open again. Rochelle Hamilton stepped into the outdoor hallway in a long white T-shirt with Snow White circled by the dwarfs on the front of it. The shape of Rochelle's body was a shadowy presence beneath the thin cotton.
Rochelle had been several years behind him at Coral Shores High, closer to Darcy's age than his. A cheerleader and homecoming queen. Class president, valedictorian. Won an academic scholarship to Harvard. But something mysterious happened to her up there. Thorn never heard what. After only a year in Boston, she'd come home full of dark jokes about the world out there, off the island. Now she and her parents ran a yogurt joint in one of the strip shopping centers. Beautiful and smart, Rochelle had begun running wild, drinking herself rubber-legged in public places, getting a reputation around the island for her willingness to snuggle up to any yahoo with a pickup truck and money for a six-pack. He'd spoken to her a few times across the counter of her shop as he and Darcy bought yogurt sundaes, but those were the only words they'd ever exchanged.
Thorn slid his gaze away from her, out toward the empty parking lot.
"You looking for Murtha?"
Thorn said yes, he was.
"What? You run out of Scotch? Can't wait till tomorrow?"
Thorn turned his head and looked her in the face, disciplining himself away from the shadow of her body.
"Sorry I woke you, Rochelle."
"Oh, you didn't. I don't sleep. I'm one of those. I lie down, close my eyes, but it doesn't happen. I go over things instead. While everybody else is rejuvenating, dreaming, I'm going over things."
"Well," he said, "dreaming's not always what it's cracked up to be."
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 10