John Lutz - Hot

With the tattooed man standing staring at him, Mustache suddenly was quiet. The evening had turned serious. The guy with the tattoos grinned at him, then in a quick motion grabbed his belt buckle and lifted and twisted, drawing Mustache’s pants tight into his crotch. Mustache screeched in pain, and Tattoo snapped a thick-wristed forearm up below his chin and pressed. The screeching became a series of strangled pleas for mercy. Tattoo shoved Mustache out of sight, toward the street door, then swaggered after him with a deliberate bow-legged gait, as if he were on a ship in high seas. Carver could no longer see either man, but in a few seconds Mustache appeared out on Main, limping bent over and in obvious pain toward a parked four-wheel-drive Jeep. With a hand cupped to his crotch, he climbed into the Jeep and got the engine started. He glared angrily but with terror in the direction of the Key Lime Pie, then drove away, the Jeep’s knobby tires spinning and throwing gravel. The conversation and noise level of the bar increased to what it had been before the trouble started.

“The boys get frisky sometimes when the charters are back for the day,” Fern said, “’specially if the fishing ain’t been good.” She was standing near Carver with her order pad in one hand, yellow stub of a pencil in the other.

“Who’re the boys?” Carver asked.

“Some of ’em are commercial fishermen, others are charter boat captains and crew. You can always tell if it’s been a good day by the way they behave.”

The tattooed man had returned to his bar stool. “Who’s the guy in the parrot shirt?” Carver asked, figuring he knew the answer.

“Some of those are cockatoos.”

“Yeah, I can see that now you point it out.”

“Anyway, that’s Davy inside the shirt. He’s part of the crew of a yacht belongs to some rich fella out on Shoreline. That joker that was arguing with him I never seen before, and if he hadn’t been a stranger, he wouldn’t have crossed Davy. That Davy’ll argue anything from baseball to politics, but he won’t stand for no badgering. He just wants to be let alone, is all, but if people push him just a little bit, they pay. He’s the sort that likes to make ’em pay. That fella he shoved outa here’s lucky it didn’t get more serious.”

Carver watched Davy calmly drinking his beer. No one was talking to him, or near him. He didn’t seem to notice. “So Davy’s a bad boy?”

“I dunno for sure, as he never caused any real trouble in here. Or anyplace else, far as I know. But I been told he’s bad, all right.”

Carver thought the mustached man might regard what had happened as real trouble.

“Don’t repeat this,” Fern said, “but he gives me the creeps. Maybe it’s all those tattoos.” She gave a mock shiver, almost dropping her pencil. “They tell me you’re a private detective of some sort.”

“Who tells you?” Carver asked. He shoved away his plate so he’d no longer have to breathe in the shrimp smell of the leftovers. He wished Fern would clear the table.

Fern shrugged. “That’s one of them questions like why’s the town named Fishback. Word just gets around, is all. They say you’re staying up at the Tiller place. You here about whoever it was run over Henry Tiller?”

“That’s it,” Carver said.

“How is Henry?”

“I think he’ll be fine, but it’ll take some time.”

“Shame what happened. He’s a nice old bird. A little vague at times, but ain’t we all?”

Carver agreed we all were. “There anyone here you think might feel strongly enough about Henry to try running him down?” he asked.

Fern shook her head. “Everyone figures he’s harmless, you know? Ask me, I’d say he was just the victim of an accident. But I guess, with a hit and run like that, the law’s gotta investigate.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Carver said. If she wanted to think of him as the law, that was okay. Even convenient.

“Get you anything else?” Fern asked.

“A refill on the coffee.” He swished around the mud-colored inch of liquid left in his cup to draw it to her attention.

“How about some dessert?”

He looked up at her. “What’s good here?”

She laughed. “You kidding? There’s only one item on the menu.”

“Then I’ll have it,” he said.

She licked the point of her stubby pencil, added the slice of key lime pie to his check, then scooped up his dirty dishes and ambled away toward the kitchen. A few minutes later she returned with the round glass coffeepot in one hand and the wedge of pie on a white china plate in the other. She refilled Carver’s cup, laid his check in a puddle on the table, then went around the restaurant topping off everyone’s coffee.

The pie was a delicate and delicious combination of sweetness and tartness. Carver ate it staring at the garish parrot-and-cockatoo pattern shirt stretched over Davy’s broad back, wondering if the wildly colored material concealed a steel cargo hook tucked in Davy’s belt.

One thing he did know, he shared Henry Tiller’s cop’s instincts about Davy. He was a bad one.

That night Carver sat on Henry Tiller’s screened-in porch, smoking a Swisher Sweet cigar, listening to the screaming lament of a thousand crickets, and looking out over the water at the lights of the Walter Rainer estate. There was movement over there, for a few seconds what appeared to be a man walking with a flashlight down by the dock. But the Miss Behavin’ itself stayed dark. Carver blew a smoke ring he couldn’t see but imagined as perfect in the darkness, and wondered if the boat would still be at its moorings in the morning.

It was. As soon as he’d climbed out of bed he limped onto the porch and checked, saw the sleek white hull with the red trim, the rising sun shooting sparks off the brightwork. For a moment he found himself speculating, if Henry were here, would he see the boat, or the unoccupied dock he wanted to see?

After getting dressed, Carver burned two eggs and three strips of bacon in a heavy iron skillet in Henry’s kitchen. His cooking was heating up the kitchen, so he switched on the air conditioner. That helped some, but the tropical climate was gaining. When he was finished eating, he turned on a paint-speckled radio on top of the refrigerator and listened to local news while he sipped a second cup of coffee.

Apparently not much happened on and around Key Montaigne. A couple of wedding announcements; the Holy Rock of the Keys Baptist Church was planning a fish fry next weekend; an octogenarian named Ida Fletcher had died in her sleep; and the Fishback Dinner Theatre was doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. After the news, it was time for music, a medley of numbers from Cats.

Carver washed the breakfast dishes and left them on the sink to dry, then switched off the radio, even though he liked Cats. Slow as things were on Key Montaigne, it would be a good time to extend the professional courtesy of dropping by to meet Chief Lloyd Wicke.

Key Montaigne police headquarters was a squat clapboard structure near the marina on Main. There was a steeplelike antenna next to a satellite dish on the roof. At the front curb was a dust-coated blue Ford Taurus with red and blue roofbar lights and an official-looking gold badge decal on its door. Through the windshield Carver could see a twelve-gauge riot gun mounted to the dash. Once, that had seemed a formidable weapon, in the time before drug dealers had taken up AK47 and Uzi automatic weapons. Beyond the police cruiser a dented tow truck and a maroon Toyota station wagon were parked at an angle in the small lot alongside the building. The lot was layered with chat, small white stones the size of gravel, which was used often in Florida. It was the reason for the pale coating of dust on the vehicles, like talcum powder.