Or I had until a few weeks ago, when the client I'd been dimly dreading came marching into my unlocked house, stormed past the wine room and through the music room, out the back door and around the little pool, to catch me naked in the hot tub and to turn my whole life upside down.
2
My hot tub is under a poinciana tree—except for the occasional falling pod, a perfect tree to have one's hot tub under. Its branches are bare in the winter, when you want the sun. In late spring it sprouts an astonishing flat-topped canopy of bright red flowers, and in the summer it is mercifully covered with tiny leaves that cast an exquisite dappled shade. Now it was April and the milky buds were just starting to swell and ripen. I looked up at them and thought about my backhand. I'd played tennis that morning and had missed a couple of cross-court passing shots. Probably hadn't dropped my shoulder low enough. I closed my eyes and visualized the perfect motion.
The jets were on, pummeling my lower back. The pump made a sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar. The dreaded client was standing right next to me by the time I heard her say my name.
"Mr. Amsterdam? Mr. Amsterdam?
I opened my eyes. Tiny chlorinated droplets got in them and made me blink. Through the blinking I saw her. A blonde, of course; it's always a blonde, right? Tall. Green-eyed, with a little too much makeup for the daytime. Coral-colored lipstick that was a shade too orange for my taste. The top of a frilly white bra beneath a loosely buttoned lime-green blouse.
Apologetically, the blonde pointed toward the front door of my house. "I rang the bell," she yelled. "I knocked. The door just opened. I really need to talk to someone."
By reflex, I began to say what I always said to the rare misguided souls who tried to hire me. But it was a little hard, while sitting naked in the hot tub in the middle of what, for most people, was a working day, to claim I was too busy. So I said nothing.
"Please," the blonde implored. "A few minutes of your time."
I looked at her. She had a face that held attention. Not delicate but candid and determined, unflinching even in her obvious distress. I felt bad that the noise of the jets was making her yell. On the other hand, the bubbles were the closest thing I had to clothing. I hesitated then figured what the hell and switched the pump off. It was a very Key West way to hold a meeting.
"You're a private detective?" said the blonde. Her voice hadn't quite adjusted to the quiet, and it sounded very loud.
I tried to talk but nothing happened. My balls were half-floating like eggs in a poacher, and it's difficult to lie when naked. I wanted to tell her no, I wasn't a detective, the whole thing was a joke. Then I had an awful thought. Maybe she was from the IRS. Sent to entrap me. They do things like that, let's face it. Feeling ludicrous, I said, "I take on cases now and then."
"But you're new," she said. "Am I right?"
Absurdly, this made me feel defensive. What did I look like, an amateur?
She must have seen the hurt pride in my face. "That's good," she assured me. "This is a tiny town. I need someone who isn't known."
I didn't ask why. I just sat there in the steamy water. There was a silence, and I remember thinking: Now's when she reaches into her purse for a crumbling yellow newspaper clipping. I may not know diddle about being a detective, but I have a certain rudimentary grasp of the detective story. Doesn't everybody? We all grow up with it. It's like the thirty-two-bar jazz tune. We get it without analysis because it's heritage.
And sure enough she reached into her bag. But the clipping she came up with wasn't yellowed, it was mildewed. That's what happens to newsprint in Key West. It sprouts small black fuzzy dots that ripen from the inside out like certain kinds of cheese. Eventually the mold digests the paper and eats the ink and your memories are reduced to wet black dust. She dangled the clipping in front of me. "Are you familiar with this story, Mr. Amsterdam?"
My hands were soaking wet. I shook them off and took the paper.
The headline read apparent suicide in key west harbor, and it so happened it was a story I remembered fairly well. A man had disappeared.
His pants and shirt and wallet and sandals had been found at the water's edge down by the Fort Taylor jetty. He'd left no note. The disappearance had occurred late on a full-moon night, with a strong outgoing tide; the body had never been found. The man's name was Kenny Lukens. He hadn't been in town for long, and little was known about him. He'd lived on his sailboat, which had a broken mast and a torn-up deck and was resting in a cradle on the dry land of Redmond's Boatyard in the Bight. He'd worked as a late-shift bartender at Lefty's, on Duval Street. Seems he'd made no particular impression on his colleagues. Not friendly, not unfriendly. No crazier than most and not obviously despairing. No one knew of drug problems or romantic disappointments. Kenny Lukens just checked out.