“Seventy feet,” said Thorn. “Six inches.”
“Three-thousand-gallon tank?”
“Around there.”
“So that gives you a smidge over thirty pounds per square inch of pressure in the house. Minimal, not much more than a trickle.”
“I never measured it, but a trickle sounds right.”
“Hard to take a shower in a trickle.”
“I manage.”
“Can’t run your dishwasher.”
“Don’t have one.”
“Barely enough to flush your toilets.”
Thorn took another dip into the shallow pools of the man’s eyes. “You don’t look like a building code inspector.”
“And what do I look like to you?”
Thorn couldn’t find a word that captured the full measure of his distaste. “Exactly what kind of bullshit are you selling?”
“Right now I’d like to know how you heat your water.”
Thorn sighed. He had to give the colossus credit for sheer gall. “I’ve worked out a deal with the sun.”
“Solar panels?”
“Exposed water pipes on the roof.”
The man nodded judiciously. “Primitive, but workable. And cloudy days in winter?”
“A week or two of shivering.”
“And the windmill, that’s your power source?”
“When there’s wind.”
“So you’re one of those.”
“I’m not one of anything,” Thorn said.
“Oh, sure you are. You’re a back-to-nature true believer. Self-sufficient. In touch with the ancient ways.”
“You’ve got it wrong.”
“I don’t think so. I look around and I see a guy living the pioneer life. Hard-ass maverick, don’t-tread-on-me philosophical view.”
“I don’t have a philosophical view.”
“Everybody does. Whether they admit it or not.”
“The man who raised me built that cistern. In his day it was the only way to get freshwater in the Keys. There was no pipeline coming down from Miami. That’s not philosophy, that’s survival.”
“But you’re still unconnected to the public water system. You made a choice to stay true to the old ways. You’re bucking the modern world.”
“You have a name?”
The man considered the question for a moment, taking another leisurely look at Thorn’s acreage. “I apologize for intruding on your privacy. I’ll be taking my leave. Have yourself a glorious day.”
Thorn’s memory wasn’t what it used to be, so he had to repeat aloud the string of numbers, then repeat them again as he walked back to the house to scribble down the asshole’s license plate.
FOUR
“YOU’RE NOT GOING TO TELL me what this is for?” Sugarman sat behind his desk, looking at the numbers Thorn had scrawled on a scrap of paper.
Sugar’s PI office occupied the narrow space next to Key Largo’s premier beauty salon, the Hairport. Running the length of the wall his office shared with the salon was a shadowy one-way mirror, a legacy of the previous owner of the beauty parlor, who’d believed it necessary to spy on her employees.
Sugar often toyed with the idea of walling over the mirror and disconnecting the speakers to make his office appear more professional, but he could never bring himself to do it because the constant bustle next door distracted him on slow afternoons, not to mention how much he prized the tidbits of Key Largo gossip and the invaluable insights into the riddle of the female mind. Plus watching what happened next door could often be a serious turn-on. The young ladies knew full well about the mirror, and like most women, they found Sugarman a winsome fellow, so they sometimes put on shows for his benefit.
“I did tell you,” Thorn said. “Some pushy guy shows up at my house. He refuses to identify himself.”
“And now you’re going to track him down and do what?”
“Can you do it or not, Sugar?”
“I usually get paid for this service.”
“I’ll buy you a Red Stripe. Take you on a boat ride.”
“You’d do that anyway.”
“Nope, not anymore. Not until you give me this guy’s name.”
“It’s just some Realtor looking for cheap land. You’re overreacting.”
“This guy was no Realtor.”
“You’ve gotten bored, now you’re out trolling for trouble.”
“I’m not bored, and I’m sure as hell not looking for trouble. Are you going to help me or not?”
“All right. Just to placate you. Simply to dulcify your savage breast.”
Vocabulary building was one of Sugarman’s hobbies, and Thorn was regularly subjected to his latest acquisitions.