Mike Jastrzebski - Key Lime Blues

Billy was a Jimmy Buffet wannabe who played a fair guitar, and sang weekend nights at Dirty Alvin’s. Destiny usually came in on Friday nights, and a six-foot tall red-headed Amazon was someone I wasn’t going to forget, even if she had a boyfriend. She usually hung around until close, and then she would leave with Billy.

I e-mailed my mother to tell her that I knew when and where the girl could be found. I told her I’d give her the information when she arrived, and added that I was going to leave the boat within the hour and would be meeting with Davies to identify Nick’s body.

Once I let my mother know what I’d found out she would have no reason to drag me further into her case. Of course I still had to put up with her visit, and I had no doubt she was going to hassle me about coming back to work for the agency. It was in her nature and I figured I might as well accept it, but I didn’t have to like it.

I needed some time off to deal with my mother and with my grief. I called the bar and explained my situation to Tanya. I accepted her condolences and when she suggested I take the week off, I thanked her and told her I’d stop by that evening. What I didn’t tell her was that I wanted her to introduce me to Destiny. Finally, I changed my clothes and washed down a ham sandwich with another cup of coffee before climbing into my dinghy and heading into shore.

***

Even by Key West standards, the two men standing at the end of the dinghy dock looked out of place. It wasn’t the floppy straw hats, or their extraordinary height, or the matching faces on twin skeletal frames. No, it was the array of identical prison tattoos running up and down their skinny white arms and legs.

My first thought was that they were going to get one hell of a sunburn if they didn’t watch themselves. My second thought was they were looking for someone, and I figured by the way they watched me pull in, I was that someone. By the time I locked my dinghy to the dock, they had made their way over to me.

“You Wes Darling?” the one on my left asked.

The other brother snickered and asked, “What the fuck kind a name is that for a detective?”

“I’m not a detective,” I said. I stood and they moved in unison to block me from stepping onto the dock. “Now you want to move aside and let me up onto the dock?”

“You look like the picture your mother sent us,” the first man said. “She said you could tell us where we can find Destiny.”

I groaned inwardly. “She sent you a picture?” I asked, but I knew the answer before he said it.

“She told our boss, Frankie, that you knew where Destiny was. Frankie sent us to see you.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and showed me the print.

It was a copy of the promotional picture I had taken when my mother made me vice-president of the agency. She could have sent it, or it could have been copied from the business section of the Detroit Free Press, where it once ran with an article on the firm. One thing was for sure though, it was my picture. “Yup,” I said. “It looks like me so I must be Wes Darling. Now who the hell are you?”

“I’m Bob,” the man holding the picture said. “And this is my brother, Willie. Like I said, we work for Frankie. We just want to know where we can find the broad, and you can go about your business.”

“I don’t know you,” I said. “And I don’t know that you work for the person who hired us. Tell you what-I’ll fill my mother in and she can tell your boss.”

“We could make you tell us,” Willie smiled as if the idea appealed to him, then he added, “Or we could just kill you.”

“You could try,” I said. While we stood there talking, three dinghies had come and gone. There was also a small sailboat gliding back and forth along the canal that had passed us twice not thirty feet from the dock. I nodded toward the sailboat. “Of course there would be a lot of witnesses.”

Bob followed my gaze, and then said, “Go ahead and call her. We’ll wait.”

I shook my head. “Not with you guys standing over me. You guys leave-I call my mother.”

“This is bullshit.” Willie turned to his brother. “Give me five minutes with this clown, and he’ll tell us anything we want to know.”

“Shut up, Willie.” Bob stooped down and we were looking at each other, eye to eye. “I got a feeling there ain’t so many people around here at night. If you’re playing games with us, we’ll be back. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I understand,” I said. Up close I could smell his cologne, something fruity I didn’t recognize. When he stood back up, the collar of his shirt spread open and I caught a glimpse of a teardrop tattoo he had stenciled just below the neckline. Unfortunately, the tattoo added a little weight to the threat. In many prisons, a teardrop warned the other inmates the wearer had killed a man.

I watched the two men meander back along the dock and noticed Willie walked with a slight stoop and was bow-legged. It wasn’t much, but it might help me identify them should the need ever arise. I waited until they were out of sight, and then sat back down in the boat. It looked like I was going to have to call my mother before I headed off to see Davies.

Detective Davies was standing in front of the police station smoking a cigarette when I walked up. From the back, she was damn good-looking; too bad we had to talk face-to-face. She seemed lost in thought and didn’t notice me until I stepped in front of her. She lifted her eyes, blew smoke in my face, and gave me an unfriendly look. It took me by surprise; I thought we had been on reasonably good terms when she walked out the previous evening.

“I was just getting ready to send out an all points for you. I thought maybe you weren’t going to show up.”

“Well here I am.”

“Ain’t I lucky.” Davies took a final drag from her cigarette, flicked the butt into the street and turned away from me. “Come on in.”

I hadn’t realized how hot it was outside until the cool interior air of the station hit me. I followed Davies past the duty officer, through a door and down a hall. She opened the door to a small room and invited me in with a toss of her head.

There was a table, several chairs, and not much else. She waited until I took a seat, then said, “I’ve got to get my notes and I’ll be right back.”

When she walked out I sat looking at the back of the door and thinking that Detective Davies was never going to win the most congenial cop award. I expected her to keep me waiting just for the hell of it, but she was back in less than two minutes.

She walked in carrying a file folder and two bottles of water. After placing the file on the table, she took the seat across from me and held out one of the waters. “I thought you might be thirsty.”

“Thanks.” I opened the bottle, took a sip to be polite, and set it down in front of me. “So, do you know what happened to Nick?”

“First things first.” Davies opened the file, took out an eight-by-ten photo and slid it across the table to me. As I’d walked to the station I had tried to prepare myself for the worst. I hesitated, picked up the picture, and glanced at it. My stomach began to churn and my heart fluttered.

It was Nick all right. He was lying on his back with his eyes open, and there was a jagged hole near his left ear. This wasn’t the way I wanted to remember Nick. I couldn’t help but wonder if his death was connected to the case, and I swore if it turned out the two brothers who had confronted me at the dock had anything to do with his death, they’d pay for it.

“It’s him,” I said. I drew a deep breath, forced my eyes away from the photo, and stood. “My mother is coming down to Key West to handle everything. Will they release the body to her?”