Tonasha concentrated on Eddie's lightning hands and said, "The man say it don't be none of Miss Richards's business what he said to anybody in his store. He call Miss Richards a bitch and says he's not paying her to spy on his personal affairs. And sure as shit he's going to cancel his contract."
"Maybe this is too strong for Eddie," Thorn said. "We should get somebody else to do it."
"He's heard worse," Tonasha said. "Every day of the week."
Sugarman turned his back on the TV.
"Right there the man's telling her to get on out of his store and to never come back," Tonasha said.
Eddie continued to sign, reading Murtha's final angry speech.
"The man is asking her who else she told this trash to. He call it slander. He ask her if she'd said anything to Sugarman." Tonasha paused and watched Eddie sign. Then said, "And Miss Richards, she answer him. She say something about you."
"Me?" Sugar said, turning around.
"No, him. Thorn."
On the TV screen, Murtha advanced on Darcy, she stumbled, and he slapped her. Thorn stepped over and turned off the TV. He stood in front of the blank screen and looked at Tonasha. He was sorry he'd done this now. Hearing Darcy's words come alive from Tonasha's mouth, bridging that impassable distance.
Tonasha shifted in her chair, watching Eddie's hands.
"Miss Richards telling the man she hadn't said nothing to her boyfriend about any of this, 'cause if she did, Thorn'd probably rush over and whop that man upside the head to get the truth out of him. Then Thorn be the one in trouble. And she say she didn't want that to happen. That's when the man smacked her."
Thorn took a long breath, and ejected that tape and slid in the other. He turned the TV back on. It took a minute to find the place, then Thorn stepped away from the screen and they all watched Murtha and Sylvie speaking to each other. Sylvie reaching behind the counter to touch Murtha. Then him hustling her out of the store. A moment later Sylvie was back and handed Murtha the pistol, Murtha shook his head in refusal, then reached up and switched off the camera.
Eddie didn't sign through either scene. Tonasha stared at Thorn.
"What's wrong?" Thorn said. "What's going on?"
"We already saw those," Tonasha said. "Couple of weeks ago."
"You did?"
"Thought you knew. Darcy brought it over, had Eddie read the lips just like you doing. We looked at that tape over and over, maybe twenty times. Liked to burned out my eyes watching the damn thing. 'Cause of how they got their faces turned, you can't tell exactly what they saying. Just a word now and then."
"What words?" Sugar said.
"The weird girl, the first time, she say that man is cute. A real attractive man. Coming on to him, like. Then he got her out of there. The second time, the girl say something about money. A lot of cash money."
Thorn backed up the video and they watched Sylvie's second visit replay in slow motion. Eddie signing now.
"Eddie say that girl is saying the man can have a whole lot of cash money if he just use that gun on somebody."
"On who?"
"That's exactly what Darcy wanted to know. But from this direction, Eddie can't tell."
"Anything else?" said Thorn.
"Yeah. What's that word, Eddie? That word she say when she talking about money."
Eddie spelled it out with his fingers and Tonasha said, "T-I-L-A-P-I-A."
"Tilapia," said Thorn.
"Yeah," said Tonasha. "Red tilapia. She say something about red tilapia and lots of money."
Sugarman stood up and snapped off the TV.
"And what in hell's name is a tilapia?"
"It's a fish," Thorn said. "An exotic fish."
***
Thorn and Sugarman rode in silence to the strip shopping center across from Coral Shores High School where Murtha's Liquors was wedged between an Ace Hardware and a small video arcade. There was a jewelry store on the far end of the strip and an empty shop on the near end. It was nine thirty when they pulled into the parking lot. Murtha should have been halfway through his opening up ritual.
"He's not here." Sugarman turned off the motor.
"Why am I not surprised?"
"Well, I guess we wait, see if he shows."
"Let's go to his apartment," said Thorn, "kick the damn door down."
"Already went there. This morning before you came over, Thorn. Thought it might be interesting to speak to the man, just me and him. Close and personal. Ask him why he had to break my Fantasia tape. When he didn't come to the door, I went and found the manager, convinced her to open his place up for me."
"How'd you manage that?"
"I believe I gave the lady the erroneous impression I was still with the sheriff's department, working plainclothes now. She was very helpful. Full of respect for the law." Giving Thorn a meaningful look.
"I'm glad to see you're loosening up a little."
They sat for a few moments watching customers go in and out of the hardware store. Roofers with long, snarled hair and well-dressed retirees, housepainters and women in silk blouses. All the social classes waiting in line at the cash register, everybody forced to mingle for a few uncomfortable seconds.
Thorn asked him what he'd turned up at Murtha's apartment. And Sugarman took a long breath and blew out a cheerless sigh.
"Guy lives like a slob. Place smells like rotten fruit and mildew. I thought, based on how shipshape he keeps his store, you know, he'd be a neat freak. But no, he's taken untidiness to a whole new level."
"That's it?"
"I found something else, yeah."
Sugarman reached across him, opened the glove compartment, and drew out a small pulp magazine. Captivating Lassies. Fifteen pages of naked girls not yet in their teens posing in various sexual positions with adult men. Grainy black-and-white photos, all of them shot against harshly lit backdrops. The girls ranged from ten to maybe as old as twelve. The men were in their forties, most of them sporting pompadours and lamb chop sideburns. The magazine had a musty smell and the edges of the pages were yellow and crumbled in Thorn's hands. There was no date stamped on the cover, but the thing had to be nearly a hundred years old.
"I was in there an hour," Sugarman said. "Dug around in the drawers, did a major snoop."
"All without a warrant," Thorn said. "Man, you must be feeling guilty as hell right now."
"I feel fine," he said. "Except for wanting to tear Murtha's dick off, I feel just fine."
"This magazine," Thorn said, paging through it carefully. "It's some kind of collector's item. Antique porn. These girls, by now they'd be in nursing homes."
"Yeah," Sugar said. "If any of them made it past childhood."
They watched a woman walk by on the sidewalk in front of them. White hair, shorts, and a sleeveless blouse. She went to the door of the liquor store, tried the handle, peeked into the dark, looked at her watch, tried the door again, and gave up.
"Take another look at page six."
Thorn glanced at Sugarman for a moment, then opened the magazine again, found the page. A young girl standing against a white curtain, black hair, thin, no breasts, her arms behind her head, while a naked man crouched before her and explored her crotch with his mouth.
"Look familiar?"
Thorn stared at the photo.
"Jesus."
"I thought so."
"I mean the body's similar, the nose, even her cheekbones, yeah. But the eyes are completely wrong. Sylvie's are bigger, wider set."
"But she's close, you'd agree. Striking resemblance."
"What the hell? This magazine is a hundred years old."
"So maybe it's just a coincidence. A guy sees a girl he's been staring at in a magazine for years. His bell goes off. He's got to have her."
Thorn shook his head, kept looking at the girl. Her eyes staring off at the ceiling. The look on her face, one part phony ecstasy, one part horror. Her lips were shaped into a sultry smile, but there was no real heat behind it. As if she'd plagiarized
the expression from somewhere, practiced before a mirror until she'd trained her muscles to portray an emotion she'd never known.
She looked painfully emaciated against that stark background, but there was still something compelling about her. An excitement in her eyes that Thorn associated with animals in the wild, a jittery look as if she were forever mapping out the geometry of escape.
Thorn lay the magazine on his lap, and they watched some high school kids in baggy shorts and T-shirts walk into the video arcade. Another kid arriving on a bicycle yelled to the group, dropped his bike on the sidewalk and followed them inside.
"Care to connect the dots?"
"I don't know," Thorn said. "I got to digest this."
"Well, we know a few things anyway," Sugar said. "We know Darcy watched the tape of Murtha and Sylvie. Sylvie hands him a pistol, Murtha shuts off the camera. Darcy must've sat up straight when she saw that. So, she thinks about it, then off she goes to Eddie and Tonasha. Sounds to her like Murtha and the girl might have been discussing killing somebody or something.
"But Darcy can't be sure. Lot of ambiguity here. So she shows up at the liquor store, confronts Murtha about it, and he slaps her. She leaves, and then maybe she starts worrying that Murtha has a right to be pissed. She can't be sure the thing she's witnessed is criminal. Could be a murder conspiracy or it could be nothing at all. Eddie can't read all the words, so it might be something else entirely. They could be talking about killing roaches, for christ sakes. Who knows?"
With his eyes still closed, Thorn said, "So Darcy's confused about the whole thing, maybe a little guilty she may have lost you guys a client. Fifty percent of your business. And she's decided she wants to do this completely herself."
"What? Where'd you dream that up?"
"Darcy told me. Out on the boat the day she was killed. She implied she was investigating something on her own."
"Why didn't she tell me?"
"She wanted some independence, I guess. Wanted something that was all hers."
"Oh, man."
"So, anyway," Thorn said. "She confronts Murtha about what she's seen, and if that truly was what he was doing, planning to murder someone, then Darcy put herself in some significantly deep shit."
Sugarman was staring at Murtha's liquor store, breathing hard. Thorn looked again at the skinny girl in the photo. All her ribs visible, the shadow of her skeleton.
"Goddamn it to hell," Thorn said.
"What?"
"This is my fault. I knew something was wrong. But I couldn't get it out of her. I didn't say the right words."
"Oh, sure, that's good, buddy. Blame yourself. Twist it around, put yourself on the old emotional rotisserie, get a good guilt burn going."
Thorn opened the glove compartment, pitched the magazine inside. He stared out the windshield at Murtha's front window.
"One thing that bothers me," Sugar said. "How the hell did the killer manage it? How'd he know you and Darcy were going out in your boat at that particular time, that Darcy was going to go swimming underwater? I mean, it's all a little too convenient."
Thorn looked off at U.S. 1, the endless stream of traffic.
"She was supposed to meet somebody."
"What?"
"She'd made an arrangement to meet somebody at Snake Creek Marina the morning we went out to the reef. I don't know who, but they didn't show. So somebody knew where she'd be and when. The rest was probably just free-form, make it up as you go."
Thorn looked out his window at a car pulling in beside them. A white-haired gentleman in long madras pants and a bright green shirt got out, headed into the hardware store. Living the colorful life of retirement. Socially secure.
Sugarman tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, both of them watching a fifteen-year-old boy standing at the doorway of the video game arcade, peering in.
"Now, look, Sugar. Does Roy Murtha strike you as a guy trained at some advanced military school? A Green Beret type. Scuba tanks, lethal hand grips. I mean, come on, the guy's doddering around his store, looks like a training film on heart attacks."
A young couple in blue jeans and matching plaid shirts strolled up the sidewalk, his arm over her shoulder, her arm around his waist. They walked the length of the shopping center, stopped in front of the jewelry store and looked longingly at the window display. Thorn turned his eyes away, stared at the traffic out on U.S. 1.
"Something else I'm curious about," Sugar said, "is why you forgot to mention this tilapia thing to me." He leaned forward, lay his cheek against his hands gripping the steering wheel. Thorn looked over, met his gaze.
"Just before she jumped in the water that last time, Darcy asked me if I'd heard of red tilapia. When I remembered it later, I wasn't sure, but I thought maybe it could be related to what was bothering her. So yeah, I needed to do something, so I dug around, studied up on tilapia. I did it yesterday."
"But you weren't going to share any of this with me."
"I didn't know what it all meant yet. If it was relevant."
Sugarman sat up, pointed a finger at Thorn.
"No Lone Rangers, Thorn. We're on the buddy system. Looking out for each other. You hear what I'm saying?"
Slouching lower in the bucket seat, Thorn reached out and pressed the glove compartment button, opened it, then snapped it closed again. He cleared his throat, stared out at Murtha's store. Then he began to fill Sugar in about Ludkin, Seamark, the dead bodies stacked up. He repeated what the professor had told him about red tilapia, lead to gold, giving it all to him, word for word, moment by moment, as much as he could remember.
When he was done, Sugar said, "All right, okay. Interesting stuff, but where's the tie-in? Sylvie, tilapia. Murtha. I don't get it."
"Well, for one thing," Thorn said, "there's Sylvie's name. It's the same as some guy who raises tilapia over on the Gulf coast. Sylvie Winchester."
"Well, well, well."
"As for Murtha, I don't know. Maybe that's just an anomalous return."
"A what?"
"One of Darcy's terms. From her weather forecasting days. Some kind of false echo from the radar bouncing off big office buildings. The radar screen shows thunderstorms that aren't there."
"Murtha's a false echo?"
"Maybe."
"But what about the Chee?to under your house? That doesn't sound like any false echo."
"Okay, Sugar, then you follow the Murtha thread. I'll take Sylvie."
Sugarman started the car and backed out of the space.
"You're getting that look again, Thorn."
"Which look is that?"
He found a break in the traffic and headed out onto the overseas highway.
"That look," he said. "Like somebody better start praying."
"They can pray all they want," said Thorn. "Believe me, Sugar, it won't help them one goddamn bit."
CHAPTER 15
Back at Sugarman's office Thorn called Jimmy Pat Criswell, a friend of his with the Florida Marine Patrol, but no, Jimmy Pat knew nothing about fish farming, tilapia, or the whereabouts of anybody in the business, but he did give Thorn a number of a guy at the Department of Interior he knew up in Atlanta, main number of the Richard Russell Federal Building. Jimmy Pat believed Interior was the agency that inspected aquaculture farms anyway.
But Jimmy Pat's guy wasn't in, and his secretary told Thorn it was U.S. Fish and Wildlife he wanted, and she gave him the number for the southwest regional office, a guy named Jones in charge, so he called that number, but Jones had transferred two months earlier to the Sarasota office, and the woman on the line asked Thorn if maybe she could help. The raspy voice sounding distantly familiar, but Thorn couldn't place it. Telling the woman who he was, what he wanted. She hesitated a moment, then said, Thorn? Fly-tying Thorn? The Key Largo hermit? Thorn, the hundred-yard-dash man?
Well, he said, I haven't been doing much sprinting lately, but yeah, the rest of it's accurate. You're not going to believe this, she said, but this is Judy Nelson. Used to be
Judy Murphy. Then paused for him to respond, but hell if he could place her. After an awkward silence, he said, oh, yeah, Judy Murphy, of course. Hi, Judy. Still having no idea who the hell she was. Yeah, yeah, she said, I married some no-account named Nelson, thing lasted a year and I dumped him, but kept the name, don't ask me why. And, hell yes, she knew Winchester. She'd even drive Thorn out to his place if he wanted. Catch up on old times on the way out. When did he want to come over? Tomorrow, he said. First thing Wednesday morning. Fine, she said, I'll be ready for you. And Judy, he said, I'd like to drop in on this guy unannounced. Is that all right with you? Judy considered it a moment, then said, You gonna tell me what this is all about? Tomorrow I will, Thorn said. Tomorrow.
"Now, that's weird," Thorn said as he set the phone down. "You remember a Judy Murphy?"
Sugarman looked up from his desk.
"Judy? Yeah, sure. Of course. Come on, Thorn, you don't remember her? Left defensive tackle."
Thorn had to work at it, but finally the image came to him.
"Oh, god. That Judy."
"Yeah," Sugarman said. "Big Jude."
Judy Murphy had been the only girl in Key Largo history to try out for Coral Shores varsity football. She'd been cut just before the first game of the season. By then Judy had knocked half a dozen of the starting offensive line on their butts. The coach decided it was too demoralizing to the boys to keep her around. Thorn and Sugar and a couple of the others said Judy didn't demoralize them. They liked having her around. But the coach had decided. Judy didn't squawk. She'd made her point. And afterward she went to all the games, sat in the last row of the bleachers, watched intently, but never cheered.
Sugar's phone buzzed. He picked it up and listened, then said, yeah, sure, Andy, send her in.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 14