Peter James - Dead at First Sight

‘So give me your press release, Mr Tooth — I’m all ears.’

‘Not really,’ Tooth replied. ‘Both yours were burned off by sulphuric acid.’

The baby-faced sixty-three-year-old, with a boyish mop of greying hair, looked more like a cuddly grandpa than a man with Ryukyu Kempo ninth-degree black-belt status. Sat at a wobbly, beaten-metal table in the outside area of the Gas Monkey bar, on buzzy Duval Street in Florida’s Key West, wearing his best seersucker coat and reeking of his best cologne, Matthew Sorokin swallowed the remains of his Space Dust IPA draught beer, watching the early-evening holidaymakers strolling by. Watching more keenly than ever. Waiting, increasingly impatiently, for his date to show up.

She was over an hour late.

He had a surprise for her tomorrow: he was taking her down to the Wounded Nature Organization’s Coast Preservation Day. He thought she would be impressed by his concern for the environment and wildlife, and it would show her another side to him other than just being a cop.

Sorokin had put on weight in the seven years since he’d retired from the New York Police Homicide Department and moved down south. Actually, quite a lot of weight — thirty-five pounds of the stuff last time he’d looked at the scales. He knew what surplus weight looked like from the numerous autopsies he’d attended over the years. It didn’t look pretty. It was a greasy yellow colour. Most of that weight he’d put on had come during the past two years, since leaving Rozanna — or rather, her leaving him.

She’d just woken up one morning and told him she hadn’t liked him for at least ten years, and didn’t want to be with him any more. Their two daughters had long left home and started their own families, and there was nothing left in their bankrupt relationship, she had said, except for them to grow old hating each other more and more.

Rozanna was a very private person, who had, throughout their long marriage, kept a lot to herself. Including the serial affairs she’d been having, which he’d only discovered when he took her cell phone to work by mistake, one day, instead of his own — dumbly, they had the same model and cover. It had rung soon after he’d left their house in Queens and he’d answered it to hear a male voice saying, ‘OK, babe, I can see on Friend Finder you’ve left home. I’m so horny today. I’ll be at the hotel in forty. Are you wet?’

‘Not really,’ Matt had replied. ‘This is her husband, want me to ask her to take a shower?’

He liked to imagine the guy at the other end had shat his pants. The noise he had made had sure sounded that way.

For all her faults, Rozanna was a brilliant cook, and aware of just what rubbish cops ate most of the time when on duty, she had always done her best to ensure they both ate healthily. At fifty-five, she still had a terrific figure. And thanks to her discipline over food, throughout their married life he’d remained in trim shape, with virtually no middle-age spread at all.

All that had now gone out of the window — or, more accurately, into his belly and then elsewhere around his body. He had no idea how to cook and wasn’t even much good at heating meals up in the microwave. He always forgot to remove the foil or the lid, ending up with the oven looking like Old Sparky, or the food exploding. It was because he was impatient and could never be bothered reading the instructions, he knew. But hey, at sixty-three years old, if you hadn’t discovered your limitations, you weren’t ever going to. For Matt Sorokin, a kitchen was forever going to remain a place where he cooled beers in a refrigerator, unwrapped and ate takeaways, and opened tins for his surly cat that had come with him because Rozanna didn’t like the creature.

Most of those extra thirty-five pounds were from burgers and pizzas, and bingeing on the French fries that Rozanna had never allowed in the house. He didn’t like all this weight — it felt like he was walking around with hammers sewn inside his skin, and he had to buy bigger pants. On top of that, as his weight had increased, he realized he was no longer as fit as he had once been. He still kept up his Okinawan karate, which he had been practising for just short of fifty years. But he was starting to find some of the youngsters he was up against in the gym a struggle these days.

One of his former NYPD buddies, Detective Investigator Pat Lanigan, had been down here last summer and cheekily ribbed him that he looked like he had gone to seed.

Huh.

But the barb had prompted him into action. After several years of doing little except fishing, hunting duck and drinking beer on the deck of his condo, bored out of his mind, he had joined the Hernando County Sheriff’s office as an unpaid Reserve Deputy. Once more with a badge and a gun, he’d felt he had his life back. And within twelve months he’d made himself indispensable to the Sheriff by solving two cold cases, the first a serial rapist who targeted older women and the second a murdered schoolgirl.

Then, eight months ago, another old buddy, Gerald Ronson, a former New York firefighter he’d met during the aftermath of 9/11, and who had since moved to Minnesota, came to visit with his new wife, a delightful lady whom he had met through an online dating agency. Gerry had convinced Matt that he should try it, too. So he had, and met the woman, online, he was convinced he was going to marry.

Evelyne Desota.

A Brazilian restaurant manager who was from São Paulo, she had been left in financial ruin by her rat of a husband who’d deserted her. For the past five months she’d been stuck back in her home city, dealing with family problems. Her mother, suffering from cancer, had been unable to afford the medication she needed, so he’d helped get her decent treatment. He’d also helped out her brother and his wife — her brother had lost his job soon after having their first baby, Evelyne had sobbed, telling him they were destitute. Then Evelyne had been in a bad car wreck, and he’d funded her hospital bills and bought her a new car. But Matt didn’t mind. Hey, what was a loan of ninety thousand bucks — his fun money — to help this amazing lady. She was going to pay it all back, and interest too, but he’d generously told her he would not accept any interest.

And, finally, they were going to meet. Tonight!

He just hoped with all his heart that when she saw him she wasn’t going to be disappointed — he’d fibbed a bit with his photograph, posting one of himself some years back when he’d been a lot leaner and just a little younger — by ten years. But, hey, he would charm her. He was pretty good at that. Slipping his hand inside the front of his jacket, he pinched a roll of flesh on his stomach. It wasn’t too bad. He’d managed to shed three pounds this past week. More to come. Just had to remember to hold his tummy in tight when he stood up to greet her.

One thing that rather surprised him was her choice of venue for their first date. She’d told him this was her favourite bar on the planet, that it served the best cocktails and was the coolest — uber-coolest — place ever.

Right. Yeah. This was a bar that served a range of beers, but there was nothing cool about it, other than the name, in his view.

When had she last been here? Had she gotten the name wrong? Was there some other place here in Key West where she was sat, drinking a Martini, waiting for him?

He looked at his watch. One hour and ten minutes late now. He texted her, for the second time since he had arrived from his home in Brooksville, Hernando County — ‘Home of the tangerine!’ — a six-hour drive. But worth every damned mile for what lay ahead.

Here waiting for you, craving you, my honeybunch!