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we’d just beamed down from Jupiter. “Don’t like the Stealth?
Everyone likes the Stealth.”
“So we’ve heard,” I said. “But it doesn’t quite fit our pur-
poses.”
“Well what y’all looking for—an Edsel?” Don said.
Eddie loved that one. He slapped his hand on the counter
and he and Don made noises I can only describe as hee-
hawing.
“What we all are looking for,” Angie said, “is something
like that green Celica you have in the parking lot.”
“The convertible?” Eddie said.
“Sure ’nuff,” Angie said.
We took the car as is, even though it needed a wash and
gas. We told Don and Eddie we were in a rush, and they
seemed even more confused by that than our desire to trade
in the Stealth.
“A rush?” Don said, as he checked our driver’s license in-
formation against that on the original rental agreement Mr.
Cushing had filled out.
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“Yeah,” I said. “It’s when you have places to go in a hurry.”
Surprisingly, he didn’t ask me what “hurry” meant. He just
shrugged and tossed me the keys.
We stopped at a restaurant called the Crab Shack to pore
over the map and figure out a plan.
“This shrimp is unbelievable,” Angie said.
“So’s this crab,” I said. “Try some.”
“Trade.”
We did, and her shrimp was indeed succulent.
“And cheap,” Angie said.
The place was literally a shack of clapboard and old piling
wood, the tables pocked and scarred, the food served on
paper plates, our plastic pitcher of beer poured into waxed
paper cups. But the food, better than most seafood I’d ever
had in Boston, cost about a fourth of what I was used to
paying.
We sat on the back patio, in the shade, overlooking a
swamp of sea grass and beige water that ended about fifty
yards away at the back of, yep, a strip mall. A white bird
with legs as long as Angie’s and a neck to match landed on
the patio railing and looked down at our food.
“Jesus,” Angie said. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s an egret,” I said. “It’s harmless.”
“How do you know what it is?”
“National Geographic.”
“Oh. You’re sure it’s harmless?”
“Ange,” I said.
She shuddered. “So I’m not a nature girl. Sue me.”
The egret jumped off the rail and landed by my elbow, its
thin head up by my shoulder.
“Christ,” Angie said.
I picked up a crab leg and flung it out over the rail
158 / DENNIS LEHANE
and the egret’s wing hit my ear as it took off over the rail
and dove for the water.
“Great,” Angie said. “Now you’ve encouraged it.”
I picked up my plate and cup. “Come on.”
We went inside and studied the map as the egret returned
and stared at us through the glass. Once we had a pretty
good idea where we were going, we folded up the map, and
finished our food.
“You think she’s alive?” Angie said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“And Jay,” she said. “You think he came here after her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Me either. We don’t know much, do we?”
I watched as the egret craned its long neck to get a better
look at me through the glass.
“No,” I said. “But we’re quick studies.”
17
No one we talked to at the Courtyard Marriott recognized
Jeff Price or Desiree from the photos we showed them. They
were pretty sure about it, too, if only because the Weeble
and Mr. Cushing had shown them the same photographs
half an hour before we arrived. The Weeble, smarmy little
bastard that he was, had even left a note for us with the
Marriott concierge requesting our presence in the Harbor
Hotel bar at eight.
We tried a few more hotels in the same area, got nothing
but blank stares, and returned to Harbor Island.
“This isn’t our town,” Angie said as we rode the elevator
down from our rooms to the bar.
“Nope.”
“And it drives me crazy. It’s useless our even being here.
We don’t know who to talk to, we don’t have any contacts,
we don’t have any friends. All we can do is walk around like
idiots showing everyone these stupid photographs. I mean,
duh.”
“Duh?” I said.
“Duh,” she repeated.
“Oh,” I said, “duh. I get it. For a minute there I thought
you were just saying duh.”
159
160 / DENNIS LEHANE
“Shut up, Patrick.” She walked off the elevator and I fol-
lowed her into the bar.
She was right. We were useless here. The lead was useless.
To fly fourteen hundred miles simply because Jeff Price’s
credit card had been used at a hotel over two weeks ago was
moronic.
But the Weeble didn’t agree. We found him in the bar,
sitting at a window overlooking the bay, an abnormally blue
concoction filling the daiquiri glass in front of him. The pink
plastic stirrer in his glass was carved at the top into the shape
of a flamingo. The table itself was nestled in between two
plastic palm trees. The waitresses wore white shirts tied off
just below their breasts and black Lycra biking shorts so tight
they left no doubt as to the existence (or lack thereof) of a
panty line.
Ah, paradise. All that was missing was Julio Iglesias. And
I had a feeling he was on his way.
“It’s not fruitless,” the Weeble said.
“You talking about your drink or this trip?” Angie said.
“Both.” He worked his nose around the flamingo and
sipped the drink, wiped at the blue mustache left behind with
his napkin. “Tomorrow, we’ll split up and canvass all the
hotels and motels in Tampa.”
“And once we run out?”
He reached for the bowl of macadamia nuts in front of
him. “We try all the ones in St. Petersburg.”
And so it was.
For three days, we canvassed Tampa, then St. Petersburg.
And we discovered that parts of both weren’t as clichéd as
Harbor Island had led us to believe or as ugly as our drive
down Dale Mabry. The Hyde Park section of Tampa and
the Old Northeast section of St. Pete were
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actually quite attractive, with cobblestone streets and old
southern houses with wraparound porches and gnarled, an-
cient banyan trees providing canopies of shade. The beaches
in St. Pete, too, if you could ignore all the crotchety blue-
hairs and sweaty redneck bikers, were gorgeous.
So we found something to like.
But we didn’t find Jeff Price or Desiree or Jay Becker.
And the cost of our paranoia, if that’s what it was, was
becoming tiring, too. Each night we parked the Celica in a
different spot, and each morning we checked it for tracking
devices and found none. We never bothered looking for bugs
because the car was a convertible and whatever conversations
we had in it would be drowned out by the wind, the radio,
or a combination of the two.
Still, it felt odd to be so aware of the watchful eyes and
ears of others, almost as if we might be trapped in a movie
everyone was watching except us.
The third day, Angie went down by the hotel pool to re-
read everything in our case file and I took the phone out [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]