Matt Royal Mystery - 03 - Blood Island (13 page)

The Greyhound station in Key West is on the south side of the
island near the airport, about as far away from the downtown section as
you can get. It was going to be a long hike. I couldn't afford to be seen
in a cab. A guy looking for work on the fishing boats wouldn't have the
cab fare.

The elderly crowd exited the bus and began to fill up vans with the Hyatt Hotel logo on the doors. I'd started my walk toward town when one
of the vans pulled up beside me. Austin Dwyer stuck his head out of the
window and said, "Ben, you going downtown?"

I nodded my head.

"Get in. We're going to the Hyatt."

It beat walking. I got in. The conversation was mostly about what
they were going to do over the next few days in Key West. When we pulled
into the Hyatt, I thanked the driver and Austin, hiked my backpack onto
my shoulders and started up Duval Street.

I went several blocks and turned onto a side street near the Garrison
Bight. I entered a neighborhood that hadn't yet seen urban renewal. The
houses were old and dilapidated, and they wouldn't last long. The guys
with the money would tear them down and build monuments to themselves and their successes. They'd spend a few weeks each winter in their
new acquisitions and have the maids take care of it the rest of the year.

I found the house I was looking for. One of Cracker's fisherman
friends from Cortez told him about this rooming house where nobody got
too nosey. It was bigger than the others in the block, but just as unprepossessing. It had once been painted white, but most of that had peeled off,
leaving bare clapboard. There was a large porch running along the front
of the house, with a few rocking chairs placed haphazardly. They were all
empty.

A screen door with rusty hinges guarded the entrance. I opened it
and went in. In what had been the entrance hall in better days, there was
a desk piled high with newspapers. A bulletin board took up space along
one wall. It had newspaper clippings pinned to it, that I realized were help
wanted ads from the local mullet wrapper. Nobody was in evidence, but a
little round bell with a plunger on top sat on the desk. I hit the plunger, and
in a minute a stooped elderly woman came out of the back, wiping her
hands on a dishcloth.

"Help you?" she said.

"I need a room."

"How long?"

"I don't know. Can I get it from day to day?"

"Yeah, but you got to let me know by ten every morning if you're
planning to stay another day."

"That's fair. How much?"

"Thirty a day. Share a bathroom."

"Okay." I pulled two twenties from my pocket and set them on the
desk.

"Got to register," she said. "City ordinance." She handed me a registration card and ten wrinkled one-dollar bills in change.

I filled it out with Ben Joyce's name. "I don't have an address," I said,
putting the pen down.

"Where did you come from?"

"Tampa."

"Put your last address in there. That'll do."

I made up a street address and wrote it on the card.

The old woman gave me a key. "Up the stairs, second door on your
right, room eight."

I went to the room and called Logan to tell him where I was.

The Sharkstooth Bar was without atmosphere. It was a dim and dirty place
where hard men came to drink themselves into oblivion. They came here
early, chased by the demons that infested their lives, bringing body odor
and a monumental thirst. They sat quietly, drinking their poison of choice,
occasionally acknowledging each other with a joke or an observation. This
was the bar from which the call to Jeff had originated the day before.

The place was small. A chipped and scarred bar of some indeterminate wood took up one side of the room. A few tables were scattered about
a concrete floor. A single pool table sat across from the bar. Two men were
playing a desultory game, drinking from green bottles of beer, not talking.
A forlorn neon sign advertising a brand of beer I'd never heard of sputtered
over the lone window, its dirty panes diffusing the light from outside. A few
dim light fixtures hanging from the ceiling created a brownish glow in the
room. The smell of dead fish wafted in from the nearby commercial docks.

I saw the pay phone in the corner, under a sign advertising the unisex restroom. I reached into the pocket of my cargo shorts and fingered the
cell phone button that I had programmed to ring with the number on Jeff's
caller ID. The pay phone rang once, and I fingered the off button. A
couple of heads turned expectantly toward the phone, but returned to their
drinks when it didn't ring again. Right phone, right bar.

In addition to my cargo shorts, I was wearing an old T-shirt with the
faded logo of the Tampa Bay Bucs on the front. Reeboks, no socks. I sat
at the bar and ordered a Miller Lite from the ancient bartender. He had a
shaggy head of gray hair, bloodshot eyes, and a face so wrinkled it was
hard to make out its features. He didn't say a word.

I sat quietly, nursing my beer. The customers ignored me, no one acknowledging my presence, not even the bartender. When my beer was
gone, I held up the bottle and wagged it at him. He bent to the cooler and
brought me another one.

"Barkeep," I said. "I'm looking for a woman who was here yesterday."

"Can't help you." he said.

I put the pictures of Peggy and Laura on the bar next to a twenty
dollar bill. "Just take a look," I said.

He bent over the photos. His gnarled hand, quick as a snake, grabbed
the twenty and transferred it to his pocket.

"Nope," he said. "Never saw either one of them."

I put another twenty on the bar. "Would you be kind enough to show
the pictures to your customers?"

The gnarled hand made another quick swipe and the bill disappeared. He nodded his head and picked up the photos. I watched him
walk the length of the bar, showing the pictures. Heads shook in the negative.

The bartender shuffled over to the pool table and held out the
pictures to die two men. One of them, a big man about thirty years old,
with blond hair, craggy face, and skin ruined by the sun looked over at me,
locked eyes, and then looked away, shaking his head.

The bartender brought the pictures back to me. "Nobody saw them.
I ain't surprised."

"Why aren't you surprised?"

"Mister, this is the kind of place where everybody takes care of his
own business and don't pay no attention to anybody else's troubles. If a
woman had been here, either somebody would have noticed and remembered or just not give a shit, if you know what I mean."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Do you remember or just not give a shit?" I put another twenty on
the bar.

The old man stared at the bill for a moment, as if making up his mind
about something important. He wanted the money, but he wasn't sure
what or how much he should tell me.

Finally he said, "Who are they?"

"They're my wife and daughter." The lie slid easily from my mouth.

"I used to have a wife and a daughter," he said. Something passed
over his face, maybe an emotion, maybe sadness. "They left me twenty
years ago. Never heard from them again."

"I'm sorry. That's tough."

"The young one was here yesterday," he said, pointing to Peggy's
picture, still lying on the bar. "She came in here late in the morning, started
to make a phone call, and ran out the back door when some guys came in
the front door. They went after her."

"Did you know the men who came after her?"

"No. Never saw them before."

"I appreciate the help."

He took the twenty and moved to the other end of the bar.

I finished my beer, thinking about what little I had found out. Peggy
had been here, and that meant she was in Key West. But, who was after
her, and why? Not much to go on, but it was more than I had when I got
here.

I had to assume that the men chasing her had caught her. I didn't
know what that meant. Was she okay? No. Not if grown men were chasing
her through a grungy bar. Maybe she'd escaped from whomever was after
her, and had come to the nearest place with a phone. Tried to call her dad,
but the men showed up before she could complete the connection. I'd
have to try some other places in the area, see if she had been seen by anyone else.

I left money on the bar for the beer and started for the front door.
One of the pool players was blocking my way. It was the big man who'd
locked eyes with me before. His feet were planted firmly on the floor,
spread slightly in the stance a man often assumes when he's about to knock
the crap out of you. He had about four inches and fifty pounds on me.
This wasn't shaping up as one of my better days.

I walked toward him, thinking he might move out of my way. He
didn't. I stopped about a foot in front of him, and said, "Excuse me."

He looked mildly surprised. "Who the fuck are you?" His voice was a deep rumble tinged with the accents of the Everglades, southern, but not
quite.

"Just a guy looking for his family," I said.

"I don't believe you."

"I'm sorry, but that's who I am."

I saw it in his eyes first, before his hands moved. I was a little slow as
the punch came toward my face. I ducked, but not quickly enough. His fist
had been heading for my jaw, but it caught me in the head, just above my
left ear.

I staggered back on my right foot, stunned slightly from the blow. He
was still in his flat-footed stance, but was shaking his big right paw. My
head was harder than his knuckles, and I thought he'd probably busted
one or two.

When I was in high school, I was trying to become a punter on the
football team. This seemed to be a safer job than running with the ball and
having bigger boys tackle me. The coach soon decided I was hopeless,
but he tried to teach me the rudiments of kicking.

"Follow through, Royal," he'd say. "Kick the damn ball to the moon."

A nanosecond had passed since the big guy swung on me. I took aim
with my right foot and kicked his family jewels to the moon. The coach
would have been proud of my follow through. It raised my attacker onto
his toes.

A scream escaped the big man's lips, and his face turned blood red,
the pain starting to erode his features. Both hands went to his crotch, bending him forward. I turned 360 degrees, pivoting on my left foot, and
brought the right foot in a soccer-style kick to his left kidney. This straightened him up some, and I ducked my head and butted him in the face.

As I backed off, I could see blood and mucus flowing from his busted
nose. He fell to the floor moaning, writhing in pain. I started to kick him
again, but as suddenly as it had appeared, the blood lust that had saturated my brain ebbed.

I stood there, breathing through my mouth. The whole thing had
only taken a couple of seconds. I looked up to see three men coming my
way. One had a pool cue held like a bat. He was lanky with roped muscles running up his arms. His unwashed hair hung to his shoulders. A scar ran
from his nose back to his right ear.

I pulled the pistol out of my pocket and pointed it at them. "The guy
with the cue will go first."

They stopped dead in their tracks. They were bullies and weren't
used to someone else having the upper hand. They didn't know what to
do. I thought I'd help them out a little. "Get on the floor, on your stomachs," I said, motioning with the pistol.

The man with the cue stick dropped it and sank to his knees and
then onto his stomach. The other two followed suit.

"Who are you guys?" I asked, quietly, putting an edge to my voice.

The bar was dead silent, the bartender standing still, his hands on the
bar. The two men remaining on their stools sat like statues, not moving, not
even blinking. They wanted no part of this fight.

The big guy moaned and rolled over on his side. No one spoke.

"I'm going to shoot you one at a time until somebody talks," I said,
and pointed the pistol at the one who'd brandished the pool cue.

"Wait," he said. "We didn't mean no harm."

I laughed. "Okay, do these jerks know who your next of kin is?
Where to send your body?"

"Don't shoot," he said, his voice shaky, pleading now.

I aimed the pistol at his head. "What do you know about the woman
who was here yesterday?"

"Not much. I just know the guys who were after her."

"Names."

"Charlie Calhoun and Crill somebody. I don't know his last name."

"Where can I find them?"

"I don't know. They sometimes hang out at the Mango Bar. That's all
I know. Honest."

"Why in the hell did you attack me then?"

"Big Rick," he said pointing to the prostrate man who'd swung on
me. "He said we could probably make a couple of bucks if we took you
down and gave you to Charlie and Crill."

"Brilliant plan. Next time I see you assholes, I'll shoot you. Understand?"