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  Sam paid our fare, opened his door, then turned and looked her in the eye. “You mind if I ask your name?”

  She pointed to the license on the passenger-side visor. “Irene Jones. Unique handle, eh? The assholes at the morgue used to call me ‘Goodnight Irene.’ I guess that’s not the most sensitive thing to say to you right now.”

  Sam waved it off. She asked his name and he told her.

  We walked past a military-straight row of newspaper, real-estate-flyer, and coupon-pamphlet boxes. Sam said, “Let’s hope the place smells like grease. I want this stench out of my nose.”

  Inside the restaurant’s door, a dozen people waited for tables. Sam gave the greeter his name. She ignored the line, led us to a remote booth, and took our drink order. Sam ordered us two beers apiece.

  “Preferential treatment?” I said.

  Sam said, “We’ve got a meeting when the local fuzz gets here. Macho boy, said he’d buy our food, which is unlike a cop. I have no idea what he wants. He said to try the conch chowder.”

  “Local knowledge is good,” I said.

  We watched a server spritz a vacant glass-top table as if he owned stock in Windex. The mist floated our way, made us grateful our drinks and food hadn’t arrived yet. I let Sam have his quiet, his time to consider what might come next. I figured he was pondering the “straight talk” from the woman in the taxi.

  Detective Odin Marlow showed up four minutes later. I spotted the red polo shirt and muscular build immediately. He was the deputy I had seen in the morgue lot. He clutched a box of Benson & Hedges in his left hand. The pack and a Bic, just like Goodnight Irene Jones. Sliding a breath mint into his mouth, Marlow introduced himself as “BSO, CIU,” as if the initials meant big stuff to us. He wore a badge. That said it all. The greeter appeared with an iced tea, made special with two straws and two lemon slices on the rim. She put the glass down, gave the deputy a flirtatious sneer.

  Marlow took his tea, then said, “Mr. Rutledge, you mind sitting over there? I’m a lefty. I’ll bump your arm fifty times while I’m eating.”

  He didn’t give a crap about arm bumping. He wanted to face us and not worry about his gun being next to my hand. Sam slid over so I could fit on his bench. Marlow placed his cigarettes and lighter on the table as if they were ceremonial objects and settled into the booth. He smelled like a sniff sample in a fancy magazine. He wore a diamond pinky ring and an antique Gubelin watch on a leather strap. One more piece of jewelry and his department’s internal team would be on his butt. The men at the top don’t like to see their boys display wealth. Perhaps Marlow had shown his supervisor a receipt for zirconium. Maybe that’s how they all dress in Lauderdale.

  The server took our food order, and Marlow started right in. “We found her out in District Eight, in what we call the I-75 Corridor, the extension of 595. You got your housing developments popping up like palmettos, your wealthy folk from south of the Gulf Stream, most of them from south of the equator. Where they come from, you know, they’re kidnap targets, they can’t shop, can’t spend their money. It’s low profile for survival. This is the comfort life. They got their Expeditions, their cable TV, slate tile floors, the built-in vacuum cleaner systems, pools, the malls, red tile roofs. They also got public schools, no more political strife, no more family security guards.”

  Sam said, “This has to do with a dumped murder victim?”

  “The last thing they want in their new neighborhood is a body. I got no proof, but I say no way this was Latino connected…”

  Neither Sam nor I had suggested such a connection.

  “… and that improves our chances of solving this thing. Bumps it up from one percent to, say, three percent. So we know it’s not your sister. All we got is fingerprints and a dental imprint, which, with women, who are less often in jail and rarely in the military, drops our chances back to two percent. Take into account, women change their names when they get married, we’re back below the one percent chance.”

  “That relates to the victim,” said Sam. “Let’s go sideways. What’re the odds my sister’s alive?”

  “I hate to use the word ‘zilch,’ but here’s how it works. Criminals working credit scams swipe names from the living. People who want new identities grab names from the dead.”

  “And here we’ve got…”

  “New identities go to people hiding from the law, or hiding from partners they’ve screwed over, or hiding from abusive spouses.”

  “So, if I found old dental records for my sister…”

  “Don’t even think about it. It’s bad enough looking for a name to match a body. Working backward don’t cut it.”

  “You don’t call a slim chance better than none?” said Sam.

  “I know where you’re coming from. The M.E.’s investigators called you in, got you jacked up, put you on a mission. Before you knew it wasn’t her, you were thinking ‘eye for an eye’ to even the score. Call it a private retribution. You figured you owed your dead sister that much. Am I correct?”

  “Was it a robbery?” said Sam.

  Marlow shook his head. “You’d find high-end clothing. Tan lines where the watch and the rings are gone. This victim, she was a WalMart customer. She was small change. She was a poor target. I’d guess revenge, or she knew too much about bad people. Or, like I said, spousal abuse.”

  Sam shrugged, wandered off in his thoughts.

  No one spoke as our food arrived. We began to eat. Marlow shifted gears. “Tell me about that island of yours,” he said. “You really like Key West?”

  Sam didn’t look up from his food. “Other than the military, not many people live there because they’re forced to.”

  “It’s been years since I’ve been south of Florida City. Key West was full of gays and people smoking dope on the beach. That still the deal?”

  “It’s strange down there,” said Sam. “And loud. Chain saws, cockatoos, straight pipes, roosters, and sirens. You’d probably hate it, Officer Marlow. Don’t waste your gas money.”

  The detective gave Sam a minute of silence, then said, “It’s Detective Marlow, and I’m reading your mind.”

  “It’s blank,” said Sam.

  “You were thinking of ways, and don’t tell me it ain’t true. You’re riding revenge energy. Nine times out of ten we appreciate that type of reaction. It reduces our job load. Ten times out of ten we bust you for it.”

  “I’m not the violent type.”

  “You may not be the type, but you were a paratrooper. You’re the right age, you pulled a tour in Southeast Asia. It’s my guess you were trained for … what did they call them, contingencies? So you find out it ain’t her. You shift your mission, you try some freelance snooping. We like that about the same as two-bit vigilante work.”

  “Think what you want.”

  Marlow pulled a ballpoint and a tiny Spiral pad from his trouser pocket. “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “’Eighty-six.”

  The detective stared at Sam. “All these years, could she have found you? How long you lived in the same place?”

  “Since ’eighty-one, the same place. My number’s in the book.”

  Marlow stared at his pen, then began to snap it back and forth between the two bottles in front of Sam. The pen was not for writing. It was a prop, and the cop had taken notice of Sam’s desire for two beers. “So if she had gone online, clicked ‘People Search,’ typed your name, you’d have popped up on her screen?”

  Sam nodded, shrugged again.

  He said, “You got pictures of her?”

  “Nope.”

  The pen went to the edge of the table, its use as a prop expended. “We wanted to let you know, ask your cooperation. We’re gonna run a squib in the Sun-Sentinel, announce that the body was ID’d as your sister. It could work for both of us. I’ll maybe learn something about the victim, and you’ll maybe connect with a lost relative. The squib won’t show up in Miami. It won’t show in the Keys. We plan to keep it strictly local.”
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  Marlow went to a vacant expression, waited for Sam’s reaction. I didn’t look at Sam, but I knew he wasn’t showing emotion, either.

  Marlow found another prop, a subtle distraction. He used a french fry to trace designs in his remaining ketchup. “Your own sister,” he said, “and not a single photo? Can I ask why?”

  Sam looked him in the eye. “You have your methods. I have my limits.”

  “Nifty answer. What’s it mean?”

  “You want to blow her out of the weeds. I’d like to coax her out.”

  “Look at it this way,” said Marlow. “Her fifteen years to find you goes the other way. You’ve had fifteen years to find her. I take it you haven’t tried.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “And you’re worried about her picture in the paper?”

  Sam nudged me. “What do you think, Alex?”

  “There’s more to gain than lose,” I said. “But if she’s alive, could it put her in danger?”

  Marlow leaned toward Wheeler. “This guy your roadie?”

  Sam said, “No, my witness.”

  “You got a business card?”

  Sam pulled out his wallet and handed one to the man.

  The detective read the card, stood, snatched his cigarettes. “Do yourself a favor, Captain Wheeler. Do like you’ve been doing since Ron and Nancy were in Washington. Wait for her to call. Thanks for the club sandwich. You’ll find a taxi out front in five minutes.”

  Marlow sucked in air, tensed the muscles in his chest, then walked from the table. Ten feet away he hesitated, then looked back at me. “The watch was my father’s,” he said. “Right to the day he died, he was police chief in Greenwich, Connecticut.”

  Marlow exchanged patter with two waitresses on his way out.

  “Real sweetie,” said Sam.

  “His next smoke was more important than our talk,” I said. “He neglected to ask if you had other brothers or sisters.”

  “Right. The type who promises what he wants you to hear and delivers what he wants you to believe. Finish your beer.”

  We walked outside to find Marlow still there, leaning against his county car, smoking a cigarette. He said, “I’m curious, Mr. Wheeler. How’s fishing in the lower Keys this month?”

  Sam shook his head. “Constant east wind, just like here. Messed things up good.”

  Marlow agreed, “When the wind blows, fishing sucks.”

  “Let me put it this way,” said Sam. “Yesterday and the day before were my first all-day charters since mid-March. The weather kicked up the water. The bay-side shallows look like milky green soup.”

  Marlow had a distracted look in his eyes, as if he’d gotten smoke in one of them. “I was thinking of running my Fountain down there this weekend. It’s been months since I ran that Yamaha 225. I need to run it more often.”

  “If the sea bottom’s riled, the fish can’t see your bait,” said Sam. “The wind’s an ugly enemy. Like I said before, don’t waste your gas money.”

  Marlow nodded, still distracted. “Speaking of not setting your hook, you decide to snoop around up here, this is not a quaint beach town anymore. You’ll get yourself in a world of hurt. Hire yourself a private eye. We got ’em for all budgets and needs. You want to go that way, give me a call.”

  * * *

  Sam didn’t talk in the cab. He stared at sprawl, fast-food joints and tire stores, and reacted to none of it. At the airport, he called Marnie from a pay booth. I heard him say, “False alarm. I’d rather see Lorie dead than looking like that woman must’ve looked when she was alive.”

  The flight back to Key West was bouncy. Late-afternoon heat played hell with the air mass above heated land and the cooling sea. A salt mist lay on the Keys, reflecting sunlight, obscuring the horizon. North of us, a single-cell cumulonimbus had drifted off the mainland and vertical arrows of lightning danced inside it. If the pattern held, it would be seven months before the cool, dry breezes of tropical winter returned.

  Sam remained quiet, consumed by another man’s jargon and his own frustration. Throughout our fifteen-year acquaintance, the past six or seven in close friendship, Sam and I had come to know each other well. Even in his worst moods, Sam never had failed to express himself.

  The engines’ buzzing zoned me out. I fled to a half-hour nap. I dreamed about my father chasing me into the house, in a rage. I don’t remember why we argued—something about a friend’s loud muffler in our driveway—but I recall my mother screaming his name as he caught me in the kitchen and hauled off to slug me. I ducked, and the dent in the freezer door couldn’t be repaired. My mother got a new fridge. My father’s hand was in a cast for two months, but he got off my case for the rest of the school year.

  I woke and filed my dream under “the past,” then thought about the next forty hours of my future. I needed to squeeze in five days’ errands before I escaped to an island where I knew no one, where I would welcome solid, income-producing work. The Keys’ incessant wind had chipped away at my sanity. I damn sure would wallow in Grand Cayman’s perfect weather.

  Sam stared out the aircraft’s window.

  I said, “You ever wish your father was still alive?”

  “Yep, twice,” he said, “but only for two reasons. He would unplug my radio whenever he heard ‘What’d I Say?’ or anything by Buddy Holly. I wish he’d been around to see Ray Charles perform at the White House. I’d have loved to stuff that in his racist face. And I wish he could’ve attended that football game in Lubbock, Texas, when forty-nine thousand people made the Guinness Book of Records by singing ‘Peggy Sue’ in unison.”

  The pilot made his seat-backs speech. Sam poked me with his elbow. “Before I hung up, I asked Marnie to fetch us at the airport.”

  “Your Bronco’s at the airport.”

  “Yep, it is. Somehow that fact departed my mind while I was talking. So we won’t tell her it’s there, and we’ll hope maybe she won’t see it. I can’t have her worrying about me. She gets neurotic.”

  “What’s happened to your memory?” I said.

  “I keep forgetting to take my ginkgo biloba.”

  “Can I ask the main distraction?”

  “Marlow bothers me. What detective would ask if he could plant a phony squib in the paper? What cop would sit down to talk about immigrants? And how, on his salary, does this guy own a boat big enough for a Yamaha 225? Did he inherit that, too?”

  “Why lunch?” I said. “He thinks you know the dead woman? He suspects you of something? Doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s his cop job coming through. He thinks, ‘Arrest them all, let the courts sort it out.’”

  I heard a Vietnam echo in the phrase. “Arrest for what?”

  His grim expression had frozen as if he would never again laugh or speak in jest. “He’ll find something.”

  “What’s that look in your eye?”

  “I’ll find something, too. With Detective Odin Marlow attached.”

  3

  OUR COMMUTER PLANE ANGLED above a twenty-story cruise ship standing off from Key West Harbor, drew attention from flocks of pastel-draped sightseers on the redesigned Mallory Pier, then chased its cruciform shadow past a hundred bed-and-breakfasts, the bright tin rooftops of Old Town. It flew high above the ghosts of old turtle butchers, shrimpers, long-liners, career whores, chandlers, cockfighters, spongers, ice chippers, shipwrights, dock jockeys, mechanics, and stevedores.

  Sam checked without comment the charter wharf as we descended past Garrison Bight. Air turbulence bounced us above the Salt Ponds, mild wind sheer, an edgy end to our hollow trip. We touched down into what I guessed was a twenty-knot headwind, back on the rock, battle-weary, Sam no better off for his round-trip. After he’d had time to reflect, I’d tell him my theory. There is no such thing as a good phone call between three A.M. and sunup.

  Marnie Dunwoody had hung back by the Avis lot to save the short-term parking fee. We walked outside, saw her orange Jeep Wrangler, and waited as she pulled from the distant
curb and drove toward us.

  “What was our cabdriver’s name?” said Sam.

  “Goodnight Irene Jones.”

  Under a long-brimmed ball cap, Marnie had a wary look, trying to guess Sam’s frame of mind. I clambered into the rear seat as he walked around to the driver’s side to give her a hug. In a blue cotton shirt, khaki slacks, and walking shoes, Marnie was dressed for her ten-hour day, searching stories for the Key West Citizen. Her light brown hair was shorter than I’d ever seen it. Even after the hug her wariness remained; without words, she knew Sam’s mood, knew she would have to adjust to it.

  The scramble began around us. Taxi drivers threw down their smokes, popped trunk lids, solicited the first ones out the door. Marnie finessed the confusion of vehicles, then rolled between parallel rows of palms toward South Roosevelt. She said one or two things to Sam, raising her voice above the wind noise. He nodded but kept silent. I focused on an enormous anvil-shaped cloud to the south that expanded upward like a slow explosion of cotton. Three minutes later we stopped for the light across from the Grand Way Luncheonette. It hadn’t been open for business since I had lived in Key West. Every few years someone repainted the building and sign but never opened the doors. I didn’t know why, but that was okay. The place offered an aesthetic opposite to endemic tear-downs and remodeling jobs.

  “I need to stop by the boat,” said Sam. “Check a couple things.”

  “You want me to come back for you? I’ll drop Alex and—”

  Sam patted her on the thigh. “I’ll get a ride from Turk, or I’ll walk.”

  We followed two kids on motor scooters down First Street. They jacked around, wove back and forth, aimed at each other. They wore no helmets or shirts. If they tumbled they’d be scarred like barber poles—if they lived. We trailed their oily exhaust to North Roosevelt. They ran the light as it went red. Marnie stopped.

  Fifty feet away, Captain Turk, who kept a guide skiff next to Sam’s Fancy Fool in Garrison Bight, walked out of the Union 76 convenience store.