Tango Key (24 page)

The thought made her dizzy.

"I know," Kincaid said. "We can resolve this traveling thing real easily. How about if you come to Chile for Christmas?"

She laughed. "Gee, Kincaid, I was thinking a lot smaller. Like Miami Beach for a weekend."

"We could do that, too, but it works a lot better if it's a foreign country."

Oh yes indeed. She loved the direction this conversation was taking. But she didn't want to appear too eager. Over the years, that had been one of the hardest lessons to learn, one of those things gorgeous women seemed to be born knowing, as though the knowledge were genetic. "You take all your ladies overseas first?"

She'd intended it as a joke. But he wasn't laughing. He cupped his hand at the back of his ear. "Hey, I think I hear echoes of Bernelli. What is it with you two, anyway? She thinks every guy she meets is a shit like her ex-husband, and you're getting me mixed up with your pal Murphy."

"What's Murphy got to do with anything?"

"Nothing. Forget I said anything."

"No, tell me. What's Murphy got to do with this?"

"Look, we're going to have an argument. Arguments are bad luck before a job."

"I want to know, Kincaid."

He exhaled loudly, a cloying, exasperated sound. "For three years you've been competing with the memory of a dead woman, Aline. I realize she was probably every bit as terrific a human being as you've said, and I realize her murder screwed up Murphy's life. But three years is three years. His grieving all this time has been his buffer against feeling deeply for anyone else. He's hidden behind it. And then wham, along conies Eve. She looks like Monica, and that's where the similarity ends. But Murphy can't see beyond her face or her body because he's thinking with his cock, and that's why the woman he's been involved with for three years gets left behind in the dust and sleeps with another guy on the rebound. It's not such an original story, really, just your basic lover's triangle, but this one has sure got some interesting twists."

"How the hell do you know what Murphy is feeling or isn't feeling?"

He slammed the gear into second as they descended the hill into the Cove Marina. "I don't have to know. I know what Eve's feeling."

"Oh. Now you're psychic, Kincaid?"

He swung into a U-turn in front of Cavello's shop, which was dark, and started back up the hill. "It's not a good idea to leave the car down here. I'm going to park up in the lookout area."

"Stop changing the subject," she said, infuriated now.

He gunned the accelerator, and they whipped around the turn and screeched to a stop in the lookout area above the marina, the harbor, the cove. "I have a good idea what Eve is feeling, Al, because I had an affair with her three Years ago. Now let's get moving."

July 5, 9:00 P.M.

A
fter dinner, he removes the handcuff and smoothes a soothing salve on the abrasions and cuts on the undersides of her wrists. It feels good. The long strokes of his fingers against her skin, the heat, the pasta she stuffed into herself—all of these make her drowsy. She nods off, comes to with a start, and sees him wrapping her left wrist in gauze. She closes her eyes again, and the second time her eyes blink open he is moving away from her, carrying the huge pot of water that's been warming on the gas burner into the bathroom to fill the tub.

The tub. Right. Like she is really going to sit in that grimy little tub. No telling what kinds of diseases she would pick up. Lice. Herpes. A fungus infection. Fuck that. Fuck him.
My hands are free, my . . .

Free.

Her hands and arms are free and she's just sitting here while the back door is six feet from her and not locked.

She sucks in her breath. Her head jerks toward the hall.

She sees him in the bathroom, a dark figure in the glow of the lantern.
Now. Go now.
She swallows hard. Her right foot moves. Her left. Now she sees her father, leaning against the counter with a mug of ice cold beer in his hand. He says:
You can do it, Evie. You can do more than your ma did. More than I did. You can get away from this asshole.

Her palms press down against the arms of the chair.
Go! her father shouts.

And suddenly she leaps up, sprints toward the door. She slams into a chair. It clatters as it strikes the floor. She hears him shout, "Hey! Hey, babe! Where the fuck do you think you're going!"

She throws open the inside door, bursts through the screen door. Now she races through the navy blue night, into the sweet smell of freedom, the grass cool and damp against her feet. Stars pinwheel above her. The moon slides lower. She hears him behind her, shouting, but she keeps on running, laughing now, pressing on and on, toward the dapple of trees to her right. In there and she'll be safe. He won't find her. No one will find her. She'll hide in the woods forever. She'll eat lizards if she has to. Flowers. Grass.

Her arms pump at her sides. Her lungs shout and shriek for air. Adrenaline rushes through her sore muscles, sings in her blood. The hot night air bites at her burning eyes until they tear. Burrs poke into her bare feet. She looks back once, sees him gaining on her. She runs faster. The moonlit ground blurs beneath her feet. She swims in moonlight. She is moonlight. She'll make it. She will.

Faster.

Faster.

Then he slams into her. She falls forward, crying out, rolling, but it's too late, he is already on top of her, holding her down. She kicks. She bites. She is rabid with fear, with rage, and for a
moment she is free of him, rising again, her breath coming in ragged, erratic bursts. But he falls into her again, knocking her to the ground. She bucks. His fist smashes into her mouth.

Black dots explode in her eyes, and her brain erupts in whiteness, in an agony so intense she's sure she's dying. Her lungs collapse. He is twisting her neck, pressing his fist into her mouth, oh Christ, oh God, oh please, the roof of her mouth is caving in, the tissue is tearing, he is squeezing the gums. It is a new stigmata. She has died and is being admitted to heaven because she's bleeding just like Christ bled.

Her teeth are broken, her beautiful teeth, her teeth . . . oh God . . .

Now he is yanking her to her feet. She spits out blood, chips of porcelain.

"My mouth," she sobs. "My mouth ith bleeding." She can't pronounce words correctly. It hurts. Oh God, it hurts.

He pulls her back toward the farmhouse. She keeps spitting out blood. Her mouth throbs and screams with pain.
My perfect teeth are gone.
She sucks in air, and it whistles against the stumps of her teeth, the jagged edges of the ones that were never capped.

He shoves her inside the kitchen, slams the door. She collapses against the counter. "Don't move," he hisses. "Just don't fucking move."

Move. Yeah, sure. She may never move again. She can barely lift her head. She cannot close her mouth because when she does, the agony burns through her brain.

He pours water from one of the jugs into a mug, sprinkles salt in it, stirs it, holds it out. "Rinse with that. C 'mon, rinse and spit. The salt will help."

A lie. The salt doesn't help. It stings. It burns. It feels like a dozen toothpicks are being jammed into her gums. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and cries until he grabs her hand and shoves a glass of something else into it. "Drink this. It's water. And take these. Codeine." He drops two tablets into her palm. She hates codeine. It makes her nauseous. She needs some coke. Coke would numb her gums, suck away the pain.

"Nuhnuhnuh, "she grunts, shaking her head, spitting into the sink. "Coke. Numb. Pleathe. Thome coke. You got coke?"

"Take the goddamn codeine."

She swallows them with a huge gulp of water. "My mouth hurth. My teeth. You broke my teeth. "And she starts to cry again.

"You were bad. You made me do it. You were bad and I had to hit you. You shouldn't have been bad, babe. Jesus. You shouldn't have been. You've got to learn not to be bad." He touches her hair, and she snaps her head away.

"Don't. Don't touch me."

He ignores her. He grabs her hand. He picks up the lantern. She doesn't resist. She doesn't have the energy. She feels like she used to when she walked the streets of Arcadia, the hot sun beating against her neck, the dust thick in her nose, her despair, her hopelessness, tagging along beside her like a shadow, an unwanted friend.

He leads her into the bathroom. He sets the lantern on the back of the toilet. He has placed a towel on the floor as a bathmat and another towel on the toilet seat. Clean
clothes are folded
neatly on top of it—a deep blue, short-sleeved silk shirt and matching silk pants. Not her own clothes. He has bought them somewhere. If he bought them, then someone will realize, someone will come to look for her
. . . . And the car will zip north along the Old Post Road, coming for me. Coming.

"Your bath is ready," he says. "And I got you some clothes."

Her lips are swelling. Her gums are nothing but hot shoots of agony. The taste of blood is bitter against her tongue, the roof of her mouth. And he's talking bath. Oh Christ. Bath. The prelude to lovemaking. Sure. She knows the type. He likes it clean. He likes it smelling good. She almost laughs. Almost.

She just looks at him, at his eyes. It is like peering into her old man's eyes when he was six sheets to the wind.

"I can't leave you in here with the lantern because you might throw it at me when I unlock the door and then I'd have to hurt you again." He caresses her chin. She wants to bite his hand. She imagines herself with canine teeth, snapping off the tip of his finger, snapping it like a chicken bone. "I can't leave you in here with a flashlight, either, because you could use that as a weapon. So here're your choices. You can bathe with the lantern and me in here, you can take a bath in the dark alone, or I can cuff your wrist to the handle of the soap dish and you can have the lantern and also be alone."

That's a choice?

"Alone. In the dark by mythelf"

"That wasn't one of the chokes, babe."

"It wuth," she sobs. "You juth said it wuth. The second thoith."

"That's not what I meant. There are only two choices."

He repeats what he said only seconds ago, but minus the
in the dark alone.

"The lath one."

"Okay. Then you'll have to take off your clothes, get into the tub, then I'll cuff your wrist."

"Cuff me and then I'll take off my clotheth."

"That's not one of the choices."

She will kill him. If she gets the chance, she will kill him.

He is bigger, he is armed, he preys on her fear, but if she has the chance, she will kill him and laugh.

She slowly removes her clothes. Her skin burns wherever his eyes touch.

A
line
was five or six feet behind him as he moved toward the trees at the edge of the hill. She passed the telescope where a quarter would buy her a glimpse of the Gulf, and a peek inside the windows of the boats in the marina. No telling what wondrous things she might see—a domestic argument, a TV screen, a frozen chicken pot pie.

Three years ago
: Kincaid and Eve.

Where? Here on Tango? Eve hadn't been living here then. Maybe Key West? Marathon? Oh yeah, she could see it now. Kincaid had stopped by the drugstore where Eve worked in Marathon and had fallen in love over a malt shake. Did it happen in between marriages? While he was married? When?

She almost called out to Kincaid to tell him the break-in to Cavello's had been postponed until he explained to her about Eve. But he was already lost in the trees, and besides, there might not be another opportunity to snoop around Cavello's office: tonight he was at the reading of Doug Cooper's will.

She followed Kincaid through the trees, half sliding down the steep embankment. The hot, still air magnified the smallest sounds: the hoot of an owl, a luculent peal of laughter from a boat in one of the slips on the other side of the building, and more dark of the hills.

Three years ago.

About the same time Monica had been killed.

Kincaid had had reached the dock that ran perpendicular to the canal which was home to perhaps two dozen vessels in various states of disrepair. Cavello's Boat Clinic. Murphy had brought his Scarab here once. Just once. The bill, she remembered, had come to over four hundred bucks, and the problem still hadn't been fixed.

Aline waited behind the building while Kincaid went around to the front to try the keys. He returned a few moments later. "No go. Where's the window?"