Bone Key (21 page)

Deal glanced down at his plate. He ought to have been hungry all right, but his appetite had disappeared. “I’m full,” he told Stone, then turned to Russell. “You feel like taking a walk?”

Russell cut a glance at the trio working fervently at the portable serving station, then shrugged. “Why not?”

“Good,” said Stone, already on his feet. “I want to show you the true Cayo Hueso experience.”

***

Given the possible derivations of the name, the “true” Bone Key experience might be a bit more intense than he was ready for, Deal thought as he and Russell followed Stone around the curving facade of the ancient battlement tower and into the shadows near the parking area. Still, he felt certain Stone wouldn’t try anything in front of witnesses, even if he did think Deal was a danger to him.

If he had any connection with what Deal suspected had gotten Dequarius killed, then Stone was being remarkably cool about it. Just as it seemed he had no inkling of what had happened between Deal and Annie. Whatever turned out to be the truth concerning Dequarius’ murder, however, the latter was an issue that the two of them would face, sooner or later.

And forget Stone for the moment, he thought as the warm breeze swept in off the Atlantic and the palms rustled softly overhead. It was a matter that Deal himself would have to come to terms with. 007 might have himself a roll in the hay, then go on about his merry business, but it wasn’t going to work that way for Johnny Deal. He’d had his share of Jimmy Carter, lust-in-his-heart moments over the years, but there had never been anything like what had happened between him and Annie.

And while a part of him insisted that he had done nothing wrong, especially given all that had gone awry with Janice these past several years, another part was wagging a shameful finger his way. Worst of all was his uncertainty regarding Annie’s own feelings. He hadn’t had much time to dwell on it since Russell had dragged him from his stupefied slumber earlier in the evening, but his mind had been nibbling at the matter all along, he realized.

Maybe it all had been just a pleasant diversion for her. Maybe she had no intention of seeing him again. Maybe he wasn’t really an adult at all, he thought, but the same seventeen-year-old kid who thought he would die of a broken heart the night his girlfriend said she was leaving him for the big city.

He shook his head to chase his clamoring thoughts away as Stone brought them to a halt before the imposing entryway of the battlement tower. “Every guest will enter here,” Stone said, pausing to tap in a code on an alarm keypad sunk into the stone sidewall.

When the warning lights switched from red to amber, Stone reached for the lever of the massive wooden door and pulled it down. There was a heavy clanking that made Deal think of giant slot-machine gears engaging, and then the door was swinging toward them, loosing a gust of cool air that carried the odor of centuries-old stone and moisture with it.

“That’s not air-conditioning you feel,” Stone said proudly as he found a light switch and ushered them inside.

“Could have fooled me,” Russell said, glancing around the foyer where they were gathered.

“We’ll have AC installed, of course,” Stone went on. “But the fact is, you could almost get by without it.” He gestured at the rough-textured walls around them. “During the heat of the day, the coral absorbs the moisture in the air, then releases it at night. Combined with the natural convection that moves through all these nooks and crannies, the place practically air-conditions itself.”

“I could use that in my place,” Russell said.

“They don’t build them like this anymore, eh, Johnny-boy?” Stone said.

“No, they don’t,” Deal said, glancing around. Down the hallway that curved away from them, where he vaguely remembered historical photographs and reproductions of yellowed documents once hanging, a series of artists’ renderings of Stone’s proposed Villas of Cayo Hueso had been hung, including one that featured Annie poised to dive into an as-yet-to-be-built swimming pool.

“You’re going to get into trouble if that stays up,” Deal said, pointing at the doctored photograph. He realized with a start that she had been wearing the same suit when she’d come to see him earlier that day. Coincidence? he wondered.

Stone glanced at the photograph and made a dismissive gesture. “Just modesty,” he said. “Besides, how could I justify taking such a picture down?”

Deal nodded. He and Stone could agree on one thing, it seemed. Then he remembered Annie with her pistol stuck in Ainsley Spencer’s ear and wondered if Stone should be so cavalier. Just how well did Stone know Annie, anyway? he wondered. No sooner had that question occurred to him than it furnished an accompanying jab of pain.

Something to think about tomorrow, Deal thought hastily. Or maybe never at all.

He was following Stone down the twisting passageway that circled the tower floor, listening only vaguely to the sales pitch that was a variation of what they had heard before. Once wiring and other necessary modifications had been made, Stone had explained, there would be interactive kiosks along the way where clients might design a virtual version of their condominium, and a sales pavilion would be built adjoining the tower to house offices and support staff, all of which would be eventually subsumed into the grand clubhouse that Stone envisioned as the centerpiece of his development. The gist of it was that he and Stone would become rich and that Barton Deal would have been proud to see it happen.

And maybe he would have been, Deal thought, wondering at the same time how long this blessed collaboration would last if the events of the afternoon were laid bare, so to speak. Maybe he could work some language into their contract, Deal mused. All’s fair in love—take my girl, keep my job—or some such. Again, he tried to force himself away from this line of thinking. Wasn’t it about time for dessert?

“We’ll have an observation deck up there,” Stone was saying, pointing to a doorway set in an inner wall. A steel grate blocked the way to a set of stairs that curled upward, where a guard’s post had once been, Deal supposed. He was about to turn away when he noticed another doorway set in a recess beside the grate, this one a solid slab of wood like the front door. There was an ancient-looking door handle with what looked like a skeleton-key lockplate beneath it, but a modern-day hasp and padlock had been added as well.

“What’s this?” he asked, moving to try the knob.

Stone glanced over. “Storage,” he said, a bit too quickly it seemed.

Deal turned the heavy knob and felt the door give inward. Only the padlock was keeping him out.

“The historical society’s got some of their things in there,” he heard Stone say over his shoulder. “I told them they had a little time until we began renovations.”

Deal gave the padlock a tug as he stepped back. “Good of you,” he said.

Stone gave him an odd look, nodding uncertainly. “Well,” he said, pointing over Deal’s shoulder. “We’re back to where we started.”

Deal turned to see that they had, in fact, nearly completed a circuit of the tower’s base. “There’s not a lot to see right now, admittedly,” Stone was saying. “But you can feel it, can’t you? There’s a sense of history here, of rootedness. In a place like Key West, where everyone just sort of tumbles down to the end of the line and stops, you can’t put too high a value on such a thing. These places are going to sell themselves,” he finished with a flourish.

Deal had a vision of a long line of millionaires stumbling down Whitehead Street, banging into one another as their progress slowed, splashing into the shallow waters like so many two-legged lemmings near the buoy marking Southernmost Point.

“I’ll have to give you that much, Franklin,” Deal said. “Maybe after we’re finished here, we can go on to the Dry Tortugas, turn Fort Jefferson into a time-share.”

Stone gave him a dry smile. “Can I take that as a yes?”

Deal drew a deep breath. “This is a long way from Miami.”

“Just my point, John. You need a change. It’d be good for you. No telling where this could lead.”

Deal stared back, fighting the urge to tell him just where things had already led. “I just don’t know,” is what he found himself saying. “I’m going to need a little time. It’s not like things have been so placid, you know.”

“I understand,” Stone said. He flipped off the light switch and ushered them outside, closing the heavy door behind them. Maybe he’d been wrong, Deal thought as he heard the latch mechanism reengage. More like bank vault than slot machine.

Stone tapped at the security keypad once again, then turned to put his arm around Deal’s shoulder. “Sleep on it, that’s all I ask. Maybe tomorrow we can take a run on the boat, get out there and blow the stink away, see how you feel.”

Stone swept his arm toward the dark waters in the distance. Deal followed his gesture and saw the distant lights of a freighter far out on the Gulf Stream.

Like a floating island, he thought. Or a small city that had broken from the mainland to set sail.

When he was a kid, he had equated the sight with his most exotic imaginings. Bogart. Ingrid Bergman. Foreign ports of call.

The wind is in from Africa
, he thought. God help us all.

“We’ll see,” he told Stone. “I’ll give you a call in the morning, count on it.” He turned toward the parking lot then, where the limo sat, its parking lights glowing, Balart’s shadow visible behind the wheel.

“But if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to skip dessert, just go home and get some rest.”

Stone followed his gaze toward the waiting limo. “Of course,” he said. He lifted his fingers to his lips and issued a whistle worthy of a Park Avenue doorman. In seconds Deal heard the sound of the limo’s engine starting.

“Go on. Get some rest,” Stone said, his arm encircling Deal’s shoulders. “We’ll hash all this out by the light of day.”

Chapter Twenty-eight

“I wonder what that dessert
was
, anyway,” Deal heard Russell say at his side.

Deal shrugged, his eyes on the departing catering van. “I’m sure it’s on the menu at Louie’s,” he said.

“Probably can’t get it in jail, though,” Russell said.

Deal ignored that one. When the van’s lights had finally disappeared around the bend far down Beach Road, he started the Hog’s engine and pulled out from behind the screen of palmetto scrub north of the tower site, where they’d been keeping watch for the past half hour. He drove a hundred feet without turning on his lights, guided by the light of a pale, if nearly full, moon that had risen since their first visit to the tower that night.

He glanced up at the glowing orb—a macular moon, wasn’t it, just like the one in the song?—then swung the Hog back off the deserted highway and into the lot, parking near where the limo had been earlier. When they got out and the sound of the Hog’s doors had died away, he stood for a moment to listen: no shouts of alarm, no guard dogs barking, no distant sirens. Just the sound of the waves lapping at the shore across the highway and, down the strand, the clatter of the palm fronds above, the ticking of the Hog’s engine nearby.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Russell said.

“Me too,” Deal said. He moved around to the bed of the Hog and opened the toolbox he’d checked before they left the parking lot of the Pier House. He took out what they would need and handed the items to Russell, then led the way to the tower entrance.

No security lights popped on at their advance, no whooping warning alarms switched on. Stone was right, he thought. This was a long, long way from Miami.

He held a penlight in one hand and punched in the code he hoped was correct. As red lights danced about the panel in response, he couldn’t help but glance Russell’s way.

The big man was nodding. “Same numbers I remember,” the big man said.

Deal felt himself break into a smile that was only part nervousness. “I hope we’re right,” he said.

Abruptly, the red lights stopped their dance and switched to amber. “A pair of born thieves,” he said to Russell, then pulled the heavy door lever down. Jackpot, he found himself thinking as the wooden door swung open and no warning Klaxons sounded.

“Could still be wired to the station,” Russell observed.

“That’s why you’re going to stay out here,” Deal said. “You see trouble coming, tap the horn. You keep the lights off and drive away, I’ll close up and leave that way,” he said, pointing in the direction of the salt marsh. “I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”

Russell shrugged. “Last time I was a lookout it didn’t work out so good.”

Deal pointed inside the dark tower. “There’s no one inside there, Russell,” he said, extending his hand for the tools. “I’ll be in and out in a flash.”

Russell handed the things over and turned back for the Hog in what seemed a minor huff. Deal glanced down the lonely beach road once more, then hurried inside, guiding himself with his tiny penlight.

He rounded the first curve to his left, in deep shadow now, running the slender beam along the rough inner wall until he found the grated stairwell. A door that was fit to have a groaning prisoner or two behind it, he thought, though he could see only a set of dusty stone stairs leading up on the opposite side.

It only stood to reason that there was a matching set of steps that led downward behind the padlocked door before him. He reached down and turned the knob until the latch was free, pushing to get as much play behind the padlock hasp as possible.

He thought about using the hammer first, but took another look at the hasp and decided to try the heavy pry bar. He set the hammer down headfirst on the floor, leaning it by its handle against the jamb. He straightened and slid the flattened tip of the pry bar toward the hasp, grunting with satisfaction when it slid beneath the shiny metal.

There would be no covering up the signs of what he was about to do, he realized, but if he was right, it would hardly matter. He took a deep breath, then gripped the end of the bar and jerked backward with all his strength.

There was a shriek that sounded almost human as the hasp gave way, and he staggered back a step. The pry bar slipped from his hands and went down to the floor with a clang.

Just screws ripping free of wood, he assured himself as he caught his balance and moved quickly back toward the wavering door. A sound a carpenter might hear every day of his life.

He clutched the doorknob again and leaned his weight into the heavy slab, feeling something behind it grinding on stone as he shoved.
A wooden crate? Was it possible?

He fought his growing excitement as the door swung inward.
For Christ’s sake, you’ll have a heart attack
, he told himself as whatever was holding the door finally gave way and he staggered forward.

He swung his penlight up as he stumbled, still clutching the doorknob with his other hand. Then he saw it, the glint of the eyes first, and in the next instant the sharp tip of the sword, and nearly dropped his light in shock.

He was backpedaling automatically, moving for all he was worth, cursing himself for his brave statements to Russell, groping wildly on the floor behind him for the pry bar or the hammer, anything for a weapon.…

He felt a pair of arms encircle him from behind and realized that what he had hit this time was anything but a jackpot.