The Godfather watched the other car recede, his face like that of a dying man watching his own breath leave his body.
———
Calmly, unhurriedly, Mark Sutton and Ben Hawkins approached the empty cottage.
They saw Arty Magnus's bicycle chained to the Christmas palm. They saw the ripped screen on the front door. Mark Sutton knocked. When there was no reply, he tried the knob. It turned without resistance. He hesitated just a moment, then he entered. Ben Hawkins, weighing his misgivings, followed him into the living room.
The agents heard nothing, saw nothing save for the soft gleam of the single candle that still burned on the bedside table. An abashing thought assailed Mark Sutton: What if no one answered the door because Arty and Debbi were in the sack?
"Mr. Magnus?" he sang out, a little sheepishly.
He was answered by a hollow silence. Emboldened, he took out a flashlight and moved toward the bedroom. He found sleeves and cuffs poking out of drawers. He found the shredded pink tatters of what seemed to have been a woman's scarf. Ben Hawkins knelt to examine the ripped-apart fabric; there was mayhem in it, and he realized all at once that this sideshow might yet be a violent sideshow. By reflex, he felt quickly for his pistol in its shoulder holster. Then, suddenly intent, he took out his own beacon, combed the walk and floors and furniture with it. He went back to the living room, raked the light along the baseboards, found the yanked-out wires of the telephone.
Mark Sutton's beam discovered the moisture-fattened spiral notebook on the ratty table. "I have a feeling someone's coming back for that," he said.
"Maybe," said Ben Hawkins.
"I say we wait and see."
For the first time since they'd come to Florida, the senior agent didn't disagree.
———
Joey roared off at the green, wove in and out among the mopeds, the drunks who spilled forth from roadside taverns, the high Jeeps with their booming speakers. He scanned ahead, couldn't find the T-Bird. To the left, moonlight glinted on the Gulf of Mexico; to the right, the trashy neon of the Key West strip assaulted the eye.
Joey humped and veered, and at the east end of the island, just before the Cow Key Channel, he again picked up the Thunderbird, maybe a hundred fifty close-packed yards ahead. He urged more speed out of the Caddy's bellowing engine, trying desperately to catch his brother before the road narrowed, went two-lane, at Boca Chica. He cut onto the dusty shoulder to pass an ancient van; the huge tires shied on the gravel, Vincente bounced against the door.
When they passed the lane drop there were still half a dozen cars between them.
The honky-tonk had been left behind now; both sides of the road were flat and dim. Slices of Gulf and ocean shimmered among plains of limestone spoil and creeping mangrove. Spectral pelicans swooped and dipped in moonlight. Joey kept sneaking into the oncoming lane like a voyeur creeping closer to a window, was thwarted in his attempts to pass by glaring headlights and screaming horns.
Three cars up, someone slowed to let an RV pull into the single line of traffic.
Joey braked, cursed, hammered on the steering wheel. Vincente, ashen, kept his veiny hand on the dashboard.
The Caddy passed one car, then another. The camper, big and square as a train, still loomed up ahead.
Moonlight poured down, the landscape grew ever sparser. Then Joey saw a little cloud of grayish dust, perhaps a quarter mile up ahead. The dust swirled and drifted at the margin of the roadway, pulsed and billowed like a genie.
"I think someone just turned off there, Pop. I'm not sure."
They neared the place. Vincente said nothing.
"What should I do, Pop?"
The Godfather looked at him with exhausted eyes, imploring eyes. "Your neighborhood, Joey. I need ya ta decide."
His younger son swallowed hard, braked hard, cut the wheel sharply to the right. The tires screeched, the car slid broadside, then was pointing through the cloud of limestone dust at an unpaved unmarked road that fell down from the hump of highway and snaked off through the mangroves.
———
Ben Hawkins unholstered his gun, positioned himself just to the right of Arty Magnus's bedroom doorway, and settled in to wait. The bedside candle still burned, soft breezes pushed its flame this way and that, shadows rolled around the walls with every flicker.
Mark Sutton staked out the kitchen. He put his pistol on the counter, leaned back and flexed his triceps. Now and then bugs rattled against the screen, time went very slowly. He crossed and uncrossed his ankles and at some point he knew he was going to slip across the living room and borrow Arty Magnus's notebook from the ratty metal table. He knew he shouldn't do it, it was privileged property, a journalist's personal notes. He teased himself another minute; then he held his breath and, stealthily as any thief, he glided through the dark and grabbed the stained and moisture-thickened book.