This had happened very soon after I'd moved full-time to Florida—which is why I remembered it at all. I'd been feeling both smug and terrified about disappearing to Key West: Was I retiring at a lucky age to paradise, or making the first, half- conscious movement toward oblivion? Kenny Lukens' story had made me wonder what else would have to happen in a person's life so that he'd need to disappear from Key West and toward that ultimate retreat.
The blonde's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. "Some people thought the suicide was faked," she said. She said it with a hint of malice, though I couldn't figure who or what the nastiness was aimed at.
"Faked why?"
She looked down at her fingernails, which were the same pink-orange as her lips. Something unpleasantly playful, goading, had come into her manner. "Isn't that the kind of thing detectives figure out, Mr. Amsterdam?"
"Ambitious detectives maybe."
She pouted. She looked let down. I hate letting people down, which is why I don't have that much to do with people. There was a standoff. Finally I caved. "So you think Kenny Lukens is alive?"
She kept on pouting. She was very good at it. Just gazing wistfully between lashes that were lumpy with mascara. The gaze, the sorrow, the needling hope—they all reminded me how much I didn't want to be a private eye.
I dangled the soggy clipping in her direction. "Look, I'm sorry, but it's not the kind of thing I do."
I thought I'd sounded pretty final saying that, but the blonde just stood there over me. This wasn't how it was supposed to play. She was supposed to take the article back, put it in her purse, bite her lip, and maybe start to cry. Except she didn't. A long moment passed. The sun moved behind a poinciana branch and threw me into shade. I made the stupid, fundamental error of getting curious. "Who are you anyway?" I asked. "Ex-wife? Girlfriend? Sister?"
She stared at me. Something vaguely flirtatious happened at the corners of her mouth. She smoothed her skirt across her hips and waved with the muscles of her stomach. Then she reached up toward her hair. Her polished fingernails slid along her temples, made her shadowed eyes bend upward at the edges. She pried, apparently, beneath her scalp, then lifted off the wig, beneath which was some prickly fuzz not much longer than a crew cut. Tossing the ersatz coif onto a chaise, she reached into her blouse, probed past the lace top of her bra, and plucked out two perfect vinyl tits—which she placed on the damp edge of the hot tub.
Her voice dropped three-quarters of an octave. "How rude of me," she said. "I haven't introduced myself."
3
"So let me tell you why I had to disappear."
Like a traffic cop I raised a hand. "It's really better if you don't," I said, and tried to figure if I felt more ridiculous sitting naked in the hot tub with a woman I'd never met before standing over me, or a drag queen half undressed.
Kenny Lukens told me anyway, of course. "Someone was threatening to kill me."
I turned away, took a deep breath tart with chlorine. I knew it would come to this. I knew it! My asshole accountant. Why hadn't I just paid the fucking tax? Would I have ever missed the measly few grand?
"Kenny, look," I said. "I know jack shit about detective work. I'm not the guy to help you."
He went on like he hadn't heard. "Threatening to kill me, and there was nothing I could do, no one I could tell."
"Ever heard of the police?"
He looked down at my swimming pool, and for an instant I thought maybe he was flirting with suicide again. He would have had a tough time. My pool is four feet deep and not much wider. Without looking up, he said, "This guy owns the police. Besides, I was stealing from him."
Great, I thought. Just great. I'm sitting here braising and this admitted crook has just come swishing through my unlocked house, probably sweeping all my quarters straight into his purse. I have no problem with guys wearing dresses but I guess I'm judgmental about thieves. The disapproval must have shown in my face.
Seeing it, Lukens said, "Mr. Amsterdam, did you ever have a dream?"
A heartbreaking question, asked in a cheap, heartbreaking, Judy Garland tone. Did I ever have a dream? Shit, I've had 'em all. Grow up to be a fireman. Win Wimbledon. Do something grand while my parents were alive, while there was someone to make proud. The usual dreams, the usual unfulfillments. Clichés, in fact. Why did they still have the power to wring a person's guts?
"I had a dream," said Kenny Lukens. He raised his face, and the reflection off the water made him look almost angelic for a moment. "I was going to sail around the world."
I admit this surprised me more than anything so far. Call me conventional—I did not think of drag queens as being avid transoceanic yachtsmen. Those tight skirts and stiletto heels seem so impractical for scuttling across a rolling deck. "Around the world?" I echoed.