"Arty, you sound lousy. You OK?"
"I'm not OK. This is what I'm getting to. Outa the blue I got these problems, and I'm wondering if my problem has to do with your problem."
"That's prob'ly impossible," Joey said offhandedly. But after the words were out he thought about them harder. Gino had a long inglorious history of sucking others into his calamities. Still, the only way he could possibly have dragged Arty in. . . . No, it was inconceivable. He cleared his throat. "So inna meantime, what's your problem?"
Arty told him about the break-ins.
Joey said, "Lotta crack-related bullshit goin'—"
"They stole my notebooks," Arty said. "They rifled my files. That sound like crack to you?"
There was a silence. Arty's air conditioner dribbled condensation; his feet were braced against his desk and he leaned far back in his squeaky chair.
"Ya know what ya should do?" Joey continued at last. "Right after work, come by the house. Take the El D, bring Debbi up ta No-Name, show 'er the deer."
The editor let his chair crash forward at the preposterous suggestion. "Joey, are you listening? I'm scared, Joey. I don't wanna go look at—"
The other man broke in, and Arty had a rare glimpse of Joey-his-father's-son, a young fellow who trusted in his own oblique shrewdness, who could take charge, take responsibility. "Arty, listen a me. What's goin' on with you, I don't think it's connected ta what's goin' on with us. But if it is, it's very bad—I tell you as a friend. So lemme take some time, siddown with my father, talk it over. You—stay out of it for now. Take Debbi. Look at deer. OK, Arty?"
At 5 p.m. Duval Street was bustling. Fat people waddled back to their cruise ships like ducks making the inevitable return to water. Pink tourists, their skins sheeny with emollients, twirled postcard racks along the sidewalk. Early drunks were tuning up for an evening of rude noises.
Arty unlocked his bike and pedaled off toward Joey's. He didn't notice the big dark car that pulled away from curbside a moment after he did and weaved along with him toward the quiet residential streets, keeping a careful block behind.
The ghostwriter cruised under the palms and poincianas, then slowly crunched up Joey's gravel driveway and leaned the bicycle against the house. Joey met him at the door, said a terse hello, handed him the keys to the Cadillac. It seemed clear he didn't want him coming in, upsetting Vincente. The son was handling things his own way for now.
Debbi appeared from the living room. She was wearing skintight leggings, cloth shoes, a big shirt over a leotard of electric blue. Her red hair and her freckled throat were swathed in a long navy scarf for the ride in the convertible. She held her big sunglasses in one hand, and she smiled so athletically that the ridges and valleys of her lips stretched away from their coating of lipstick.
The two of them went to the car. Arty settled in behind the wheel, got comfortable, adjusted mirrors. He could not see the dark sedan that had stopped around the corner, hidden by the house next door.
Slowly he backed down the gravel driveway. Debbi touched his arm a second. Her fingers were cool on his skin, he just barely felt the hardness of her nails. "I'm so glad we're doing this," she said. Her eyes were wide, the long lashes spread out almost vertical. "I really thought you were kidding me."
Arty managed a small smile and pointed the El Dorado toward the beach and up the Keys. It was half, three-quarters of an hour till sunset. The low sun gave the flat water of the Florida Straits a gleam like green aluminum; on the Gulf side, distant mangrove islands seemed to float on top of nests of silver cotton. Here and there ospreys circled, pelicans coasted, their dipping flight paralleling the droop and lift of the power lines strung along the road.
Debbi had as hard a time sitting still as a kid on a school outing. "You say they're like dogs?" she said. "About the size of dogs?"
Arty glanced across at her. He noted, to his great surprise, that her face made him feel better, less worried. "Big dogs," he said.
"Antlers like twigs?" she said.
He looked at her again, at the smile so big it was almost goofy, the avid eyes that seemed to pluck at sights rather than wait passively for things to come into view. His nerves were frayed; sensations good and bad tweaked him as though he had no skin. He heard himself say, "Debbi, I think you're terrific."
She blushed; they rode without talking for a while. Salty air whistled past the chrome edge of the Cadillac's windshield. The dark sedan buried itself in traffic and stayed half a dozen car lengths back.
Around mile marker seventeen, Debbi swept off her sunglasses and said, "Arty, can I ask ya something?"