Stuart Woods - Choke

“The one that blew up?”

“That’s the one. It was just like that one, the Fugitive, that belongs to Harry Carras.”

“How do you know that?”

“There was a picture in Carras’s living room of him and his wife aboard it. I could read the name. I wonder if the name means something.”

“You think Carras is a fugitive?”

“Of a kind,” Tommy replied. “I suppose he could be a fugitive from the law, but maybe he’s running from something or somebody else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, but a guy doesn’t change his name at his age unless he’s running from something.”

“Ex-wife, maybe? Or even a current wife?”

“That’s a possibility, but wives, even mean ones, can be handled with lawyers. You don’t have to run from them. Also, Carras obviously ran with some money in his pockets-a lot of money, probably. Look at the way he lives-big house, Mercedes, airplane, yacht. That takes big bucks.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Say you’re Carras, in a previous existence. Your work makes it possible to put your hands on a lot of somebody else’s money.”

“Why somebody else’s? Why couldn’t it be his?”

“Because you don’t have to become somebody else to spend your own money, Daryl.”

“I suppose. Unless there’s a wife breathing down your neck.”

“Forget the wife for just a minute. So you’re Carras,” Tommy continued, “and you want to take all this money and run, okay? Well, you can’t just write a check and get on a plane. That kind of stealing takes lots of planning. You’ve got to find a way to move the money, hide the money, but still have it accessible. I mean, you don’t just fill up the trunk of your car and drive off into the sunset, paying your way with hundred-dollar bills.”

“He must deal in cash only,” Daryl said. “According to his credit report, he doesn’t have any credit cards or charge accounts.”

“True, but he has a checking account at First State. He’s got to feed that from somewhere. I bet he’s got a brokerage account or two, probably in Miami or another city. If he knows about money, it would annoy him to have a lot of cash sitting around earning nothing. He’d want it invested, but where he could get his hands on it.”

“He probably doesn’t pay any taxes, either,” Daryl said.

“Good point. Brokerage houses report your earnings to the IRS. Pretty soon, they’d be knocking on his door. He’s been in Key West for seven months, is what he said. That’s probably not long enough for the tax people to catch up with him.”

“Maybe he plans to move on before they catch up; maybe he plans to change his name again. But,” Daryl said, raising a finger, “if he’s on the run, why does he have all this stuff? House, car, boat, airplane? That’s a pretty big tail to drag around with you, isn’t it?”

“You’re right about that,” Tommy agreed. “So maybe he’s not planning to decamp again. But let’s get back to the boat. Right after I move down here I’m having dinner at Louie’s Backyard on my wife’s birthday, and the big yacht goes up in flames.”

“But it wasn’t Carras’s yacht,” Daryl pointed out.

“But one just like it.”

“Ooooh, now I’m getting it,” Daryl said. “Whoever is trying to punch Carras’s ticket mistakes the other yacht for his and blows it up.”

“Now you’re following me.” The waitress brought the check. Tommy left some money on the table and beckoned Daryl to follow him. They walked out of the restaurant and down to the water’s edge.

Daryl spoke up. “Doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“Why not?”

“If you’re Carras and you’re running from somebody and then a yacht just like yours goes up in smoke, and somebody sabotages your Mercedes, wouldn’t you notice? I mean, we couldn’t have been bringing him much in the way of news when we told him about the fuel line. Wouldn’t all this mean that whoever is looking for Carras has found him and is trying to do him in? So wouldn’t Carras be running? ‘Course, I’m just thinking out loud here, Tommy.”

Tommy looked at him sharply. “Don’t be a smartass, kid.”

“Okay, straighten me out, Tommy. Make it all make sense.”

“I think I’m back to the wife’s lover,” Tommy said. “That, Carras wouldn’t know about, so he wouldn’t have any reason to run.”

“Okay, I’ll buy that, but all we’ve got for a lover is the tennis pro, and you say he isn’t the type.”

“Yeah, and there’s another problem,” Tommy said. “When the yacht blew up, Carras and his wife were having dinner with the tennis pro. I saw them together. So it wouldn’t make much sense for the pro to blow up the yacht while he was having dinner with his victim. He’d expect the victim to be aboard, and maybe Mrs. Carras, too. Also, I don’t think the tennis pro had been in town long enough to get that involved with Carras’s wife at that time. I’ll have to check on that.”

They stopped beside a pretty little motor yacht tied up alongside. “That’s nice, huh?” Tommy said, indicating the boat. “Choke, she’s called. I wonder why?”

“That’s pretty nice, too,” Daryl said under his breath, nodding toward a girl in a bikini sunning herself on the next boat.

“We’re talking business here, Daryl,” Tommy said. “Concentrate!”

“I’m concentrating,” Daryl said. “We’re back to square one. We’ve got nothing to tell us who Carras is; we’ve got nothing on him; we’ve got nothing on the tennis pro, except your intuition. In short, we’ve got nothing.”

“Great oaks from small acorns grow,” Tommy said grumpily.

“Takes a long time, though,” Daryl replied.

“Everything is still too confused to make any sense of all this,” Tommy said, sighing. “There’s a thread here somewhere, but I’m missing it. It’ll come together, though, you wait and see.”

“Have I got a choice?” Daryl asked.

Tommy looked at his wife in the car seat next to him. “Tell me again how this invitation happened,” he said.

“I already told you, Tommy,” she replied, sounding exasperated.

“No, I mean exactly how it came up. It’s important, Sweets.”

“Okay,” she said. “I was in the pro shop looking at some new tennis shoes, and this Clare Carras struck up a conversation. She was nice, I guess, and I kind of liked her. Later, as she and her husband were leaving the court, she came over and asked if you and I would like to do some snorkeling on Monday and have lunch on their boat.”

“How did she know that Monday was my day off?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know that she did; she just asked. Why is all this so important?”

“Come on, babe, you remember that we saw them at Louie’s the night of the yacht explosion, right? And I mentioned that I thought there was something funny about him? That he might be connected?”

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“Well, I don’t think the guy is who he says he is. I’ve done some checking on him, and things just don’t add up.”

“Then I would have thought you would welcome the chance to get to know him better,” Rosie said, “instead of giving me a hard time about accepting the invitation.”

“I didn’t mean to give you a hard time, babe, really I didn’t, and you’re right-I do want to get to know him better. Matter of fact, I’d be real happy if you’d try to get to know her better, find out something about her background. By the way, is anybody else coming?”

“She didn’t say; I assumed just the four of us.”

“Weird,” Tommy said. “If Carras is somebody else, you’d think he’d want to stay as far away as possible from a cop.”