She smiled and fingered the hem of her T-shirt.
"You're here about Darcy, aren't you?"
"Why do you say that?"
"I heard about it, about what happened to her. I assume that's why you're so wild-eyed."
"Whatta you know, Rochelle? Tell me."
She looked out into the night, buying a moment or two. Thorn's hands twitched. He felt the sweat trickle down his back.
"Talk to me, Rochelle."
"It's nothing really," she said. Looking back at him, doing something behind her eyes, a calculation, as if she were deciding just how honest to be. "Murtha asked me about her, that's all. Asked me what I knew about her."
"Oh, did he now?"
"And about you too. Who you were, where you lived."
"When was this?"
"I'm not sure. Little while back. Two, three weeks."
She stepped across to the aluminum railing, leaned against it and looked down into the parking lot. As she bent over the railing, the T-shirt rose to reveal the back of her thighs.
"He's not home," she said, turning back to him. "If his red Firebird isn't there, then he's out somewhere."
A hundred yards away, a transfer truck rumbled past on the highway, and beneath their feet the concrete shook.
"You know where he takes his Firebird? Where he hangs out?"
"From what I can tell, he has something of a sleeping problem himself," Rochelle said. "I gather he likes to drive. Go on little road trips at night, up to Miami, places up there."
"What kind of places?"
"He doesn't confide in me. I just hear him through the wall, coming in just before dawn. And I've been out walking a couple of times real early, and I saw him park, get out, he's all dressed up, coat and tie, shoes polished. So I assume Miami. I mean, down here, if you wear a suit and tie like that, you're risking a fistfight. Right?"
"Maybe he's been to church. Midnight mass."
Rochelle smiled. Her eyes wandering out to the dark and back to Thorn. She took a breath and let out a husky sigh. She arched her back against the railing, propped her elbows there. Thorn allowed himself a look. Purely clinical. His entire sexual apparatus was shut down cold. But she was still a beauty queen. Still the voluptuous and brainy woman who'd carried the town's banner off to the bleak Northeast to fight the big fight. Which she'd somehow lost.
"Okay, Rochelle. Sorry I bothered you." He turned to go.
"Why don't you come in? Have a beer. I might remember something else."
He turned back around.
"If you know something else, Rochelle, I want to hear it. But beyond that, no."
Rochelle straightened. She crossed her arms across her breasts. Her face, her body, a wild mix of signals. Defiant, coquettish, embarrassed.
"I wasn't propositioning you, Thorn. I just invited you in for a beer."
"I'm sorry if I misunderstood."
"You did. You misunderstood."
She held his gaze for a moment, then something collapsed in her eyes. Her face twisted as if she'd gotten a sudden whiff of something foul.
"Well, good night, Mr. Eagle Scout. Sleep tight."
Thorn said nothing.
She marched to her door and shut herself back inside her apartment. He counted four locks snapping shut. He turned and walked back to his car, limp and dazed. The afterglow of his adrenaline buzz vaporized in the flash of Rochelle's rage.
Thorn drove home, eyes heavy, feeling the accumulated lack of sleep from the last few days weighing down on his shoulders. Turning his blood to a numb syrup. Even picturing again Murtha's slap didn't revive him. What he needed was to sleep till three tomorrow afternoon. Eat a healthy breakfast, and sit down at his desk and draw up a plan of action.
Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked. It was possible the slap was about something else entirely. Maybe Sugarman even knew about the incident already. A disagreement over a bill, or something else totally unrelated to her death.
Thorn drove north along the overseas highway, watching the black asphalt unroll before him.
No. That slap was not about any late payment. That slap wasn't something that would've slipped Sugar's mind. Absolutely not. Not even mild, saintly Sugarman could have pardoned Murtha for that.
He drove the return trip well below the speed limit. And even with his eyes burning with weariness, something snagged his attention a half mile before the gravel entrance road to his house, and he jerked his head to the side before he even put a name to what he'd seen. Parked at the side of the Little General Food Mart was a glossy red car. Thorn lifted his foot from the gas, craned that way for a better look. And yes, by god, it was a Pontiac Firebird.
He hit the brakes, downshifted and swerved across the median, bumped down the steep gully, up the other side, across the road, and slewed into the parking lot of the convenience store.
When Thorn threw open the double glass doors, Abner Fellows looked up from behind the counter. Abner, a black man in his mid-seventies who Thorn vaguely knew through Sugarman. Same church, same bowling league.
Abner closed the magazine he'd been leafing through. Hollywood gossip.
"Hey there, Mr. Thorn," Abner said. "You up early or out late?"
"Little of both."
Thorn marched across the front of the store, looking down each aisle. The place gleaming, and empty. But he pushed on, prowled down every aisle, went to the rear of the store and shoved open the gray swinging doors into the storage area. Nothing back there either.
He walked slowly back to the counter, Abner giving him a pleasant smile.
"That Firebird out there. It belong to you, Abner?"
"Sure wish it did. Car like that, hell."
"Whose is it, you know?"
"Not by name, but I can tell you what he looks like."
"Old-timer?" Thorn said. "Short, stocky man with thick white hair? Greek-looking. Swarthy."
"That's right, that's the very one."
"When'd he leave the car there?"
"Little while ago."
"You see where he went?"
"North along the highway."
"Toward my place."
Abner stared at him and scratched his gray chin stubble.
In the lot outside, an old white van pulled in, and three men piled out, long beards and scraggly hair, leather hats and tattoos.
"Don't worry," Abner whispered. "They's regulars. Been smoking some reefer over at their clubhouse, now they gonna have themselves a Twinkie or two."
Thorn watched the motorcycle guys come in and spread out up and down the candy aisle.
"You still friends with Sugarman?"
Thorn said yes, they were still friends.
"That boy still with the police?"
"No, he's on his own now."
The Hell's Sweet Tooths began lining up behind Thorn, hands full of M&M's and Snickers. Thorn stepped out of their way and Abner began to ring up their booty.
"Well, now, you say howdy to Sugar for me, okay? I haven't seen him down at the church now for 'bout a year."
"I'll give him your regards."
"He still married to that same white girl?"
"Jeanne, yeah."
One of the motorcycle guys was giving Thorn a toothy smile like they were in on some gag together. The universal dope joke.
"Well, now, that's too bad," Abner said, ringing up more candy. "Yes, sir. That boy's taken on one heavy cross to bear."
"You should tell him that. Maybe he'd listen to you."
"Hell. Don't nobody listen to me. No, sir. Don't nobody listen to an old black man, not even another old black man."
The biggest of the motorcycle guys chuckled, and that set off the other two. Laughing, with their beards quivering, big bellies shaking inside their dirty T-shirts. Abner laughed, too, as he rang up some Reese's, a carton of doughnuts. The motorcycle guys laughing their wide asses off. Everybody looking at Thorn, waiting for him to join in.
He nodded solemnly to Abner and left.
***<
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Thorn turned in at his drive, angling the car to the right, blocking the entrance. He set the brake and got out and walked slowly through the grass at the edge of the gravel, eyes scanning the undergrowth. Nothing moving out there. At least nothing he could see. The three-quarters moon was hidden inside a bank of heavy clouds. The bay was about as dark as it ever got.
Thorn picked his way quietly to his wooden stilt house. He stepped beneath it, stood there for a moment listening. A light breeze was chattering in the silver palm, and there was the breathy whisper of the tide against the shoreline. Nothing else.
He edged over to the stairway, probing the dark, searching the hibiscus and oleander on the perimeter of the property. Nothing there either. And nothing passing by out on the water.
Above him rose his darkened wood house, his own creation, built painstakingly from boards scavenged at the shipyards in Miami. He'd spent months there dismantling packing crates from the Far East and Africa. Entire forests of exotic wood were being sacrificed to cradle the heavy goods shipped to the great gulping maw of America.
Thorn had constructed his house entirely from those scraps of wood, intercepting them before they could be burned at the dump. With the help of one old ship-building carpenter, Thorn had fit every board to every other board, dovetailed and pegged them, shaved them, planed and milled them. And as a result, he knew his house intimately, its sounds, aromas, its barometric feel. Its rhythms and dispositions.
Staring up at the floorboards, he listened now for the scuff or quiet creak of human presence. He made himself as still as he could, made himself a part of the dark. Holding back. Skulking there beneath his own damn house without a weapon, nothing but his wits. And they were so fired and quickened just now, it was a wonder he didn't glow.
He waited and heard nothing. No paper sack rustling, no gun being cocked, no swarthy man rattling in the woods nearby. He waited some more. Gave it a good wait. Fifteen minutes, twenty, twenty-five. And then there it was. Upstairs. An almost inconspicuous noise. The quiet rasp of grit beneath a leather sole.
He edged to his right, reached out and touched the knotted end of the hawser hanging there. A thirty-foot length of anchor line that had been tossed overboard from some passing tanker. A month ago the heavy rope had washed ashore somewhere alongside the roadway down in Islamorada. Darcy spotted it and lugged it home and found the right limb to attach it to. It was her joke. Tarzan, Jane, their tree house, the mighty yodel performed from the swinging vine. But only once since Darcy hung it from the oak limb off their bedroom had Thorn used it. Crocked on Chianti, he'd swung out from the balcony, done his squawking Tarzan call, and rope-burned his hands sliding down.
Now, hand over hand, cold sober, he pulled himself up into the trees. Ten feet, fifteen, his triceps and back muscles burning. He stifled his heavy breath, going higher, past the first low branches and then hauling himself up, eye level with the wraparound walkway. He paused, his palms on fire, then dragged himself higher until his waist was even with the wood railing.
He rocked his weight and gradually pushed the rope into a gentle swing. Wider and wider till he could touch the house with his toe, then one more arc and he was there. His foot on the mahogany rail and he stepped off onto it.
He took a long breath, stared at the side of his house. He picked his spot. And without further thought, he jumped down hard onto the porch, took a half second to set his feet, and dove headlong through the open bedroom window, ripped through the screen. Ducking as he flew, he meant to execute a judo roll, hit the mattress on his left shoulder and get to his feet and come up swinging.
But her scream changed all that.
The woman he landed on shrieked again, and began to claw and clamber out from under him. In his shock Thorn balked for a moment, then tried to grab her wrists and quiet her, but after only a second or two she twisted free. She was strong, all sinew and gristle, and her flesh seemed oiled. When she'd squirmed out from under him, she broke a leg loose and just as he sensed what she was about to do, her knee drove solidly into his crotch.
Thorn rolled away onto Darcy's half of the mattress. He groaned and tried to find a breath. Opening his eyes, flooded with nausea and wavering light, he watched helplessly as she got to her feet and stalked around the foot of the bed, down the aisle beside the window he'd crashed through.
The woman was panting, coming closer.
Thorn swallowed back the agony in his groin, tried to ready himself. Tensing as she came nearer. This girl from the video, from Murtha's liquor store. With her hair as short and dark as panther fur. Wearing a man's long-sleeved white shirt rolled up to her elbows, the tail hanging outside her cutoff jeans.
She held her hands out before her like someone fending off furniture in a darkened, unfamiliar house. Long, thin fingers. No rings. Nothing in her hands.
She came closer, and as she peered at him through the dim light, her breathing slowed. Until she was just beside him.
"You always come in like that? Or you just trying to impress me?"
He snorted. Raised himself onto his elbows and shot a hand out for her shirt. He took a handful of it and dragged her forward. She didn't fight this time, but gripped his wrist with both her hands, holding on for balance.
"Who the fuck are you?"
When she said nothing, he tightened his grip, holding her there at the side of the bed.
"Sylvie," she said, glowering. "Sylvie Winchester."
Thorn let go.
And in the next second, a yard from where they stood, a fist-sized plug of wood exploded from the plank floor.
CHAPTER 12
At first they didn't move.
Just watched the bright beam of light aim up through the hole in the floor and shine against the naked rafters. Then another explosion of wood, a foot closer to Sylvie. She leaped onto the bed and lay flat on her back beside Thorn.
Beneath the house, he could hear the shooter scuffling in the gravel. Then the flashlight washed over the floorboards, bright light leaking through hundreds of cracks. Thorn craned over the edge of the bed, watching the light explore the planks until the man downstairs located the new hole, and held his beam steady against it.
Sylvie leaned close and in a hoarse whisper said, "Friend of yours?"
Thorn drew himself upright and kneeled at the foot of his bed, began estimating distances across the room. His .357 was wrapped in an oily rag, stowed on the top shelf of the front closet, in the farthest corner of the living room. Not likely he could tiptoe that far across the bare floor without the flashlight catching him. And Christ, he wasn't even sure he had ammo for the thing anymore.
"Why doesn't he just come up?" she whispered. "Get it over with."
"Maybe he's chickenshit," said Thorn. "Wants to kill us without having to face us. The fucking asshole bastard."
"Is that what you do?" She gave him a scolding glance. "Get gross under pressure? Some kind of new Hemingway thing?"
He turned and peered at her. This woman with her airy smile, bantering while lead shrieked around the room. Sylvie Winchester was lying back down now, resting her head on Darcy's pillow. Just enough light to see her grinning eyes, the glitter of her diamond studs.
"We could go out the window," he whispered. "The rope I came in on. Surprise him."
"Boy, now there's a stupid idea. If he saw us coming down, it'd be a shooting gallery."
"You have a suggestion?" Saying it while he surveyed the room for a weapon. Seeing only soft domestic things, objects requiring hand-to-hand proximity. Angry at himself for growing so cozy, for forgetting the lessons he'd shed blood to learn.
"You could call 911."
"I don't have a phone."
"Well, hell, one thing's for damn sure," she said. "This mattress isn't going to give us a hell of a lot of protection."
Thorn watched the flashlight roam the cracks. In any other place in the world, his neighbors would have heard the shots and probably called the police. But along the Keys waterfront, with t
he quirky way sound traveled, it was impossible to tell where particular noises were coming from. The shots could be miles away, or could be coming from next door. And in any case, there was a certain south Florida tolerance for gunfire. A shoot-and-let-shoot covenant.
"I got an idea," Sylvie said. "Follow me, Hemingway."
She twisted to her right, reached up to the shelf above the bed and lifted a small queen conch that Darcy used as a bookend. Looked back at Thorn, and began to nod her head in cadence and said, "On your mark, get set . . ."
On go, she pitched the conch shell onto the floor against the far wall, and in the same moment jumped to her feet and sprinted noiselessly to the door of the outer room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, studying her choices.
Out there was a twenty by twenty living area, with a wicker couch, two flimsy rocking chairs. And to her right, a minimal kitchen, a stove, refrigerator, breakfast counter, and two stools.
Thorn watched her make up her mind, cut to her right and disappear behind the wall. He hesitated a moment, then cursed and followed her. Three quick strides and he was through the door, the bare floor erupting behind him, one explosion then another chasing him across the room. He risked a look, stumbling as he did. Another blast a few inches from his left shoe sent splinters into his ankle. The searchlight from below continued to sweep across the slits between the boards.
He found her perched on the stove.
For a moment he stood in front of her while she waved her hand frantically, motioning him to the burner beside her. A yard behind him another plank shattered. And with that he climbed aboard the old Hotpoint range and squeezed in beside her.
"You call this an idea?" he said. Shoulder to shoulder with her, squatting there, he rubbed at his ankle. "Sitting on the goddamn stove?"
"Our gooses aren't cooked yet," she said, and smiled. "Lights, camera, action." Sylvie held her hands up in a pantomime of a movie camera. She panned the room and cranked her right hand in a circle by her left fist. The beam of light continued to roam the cracks, searching for the fresh holes. They could hear the grim metallic clink of the man reloading down below.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 11