Corallo shot a disgusted look at Cruz. Cruz rubbed his eyes. I yawned. This was not calculated nonchalance, just plain exhaustion. After a moment, Cruz said, "Why the hell didn't you come to us? From the start?"
"Come on," I said. "What kind of private eye does that?"
They looked at me with a grudging respect then. No—I just wanted to imagine that they did. What they looked at me with was boredom and annoyance and fatigue.
Cruz said, "Listen, Amsterdam, no offense, but you're a fuckin' amateur. You want to be a PI in this town, get yourself a long lens and go stake out motel rooms. This is police business. Your client's dead. Your job's finished. Stay the hell out of it and we'll forget about tonight. Okay?"
I stared at the floor and made a point of looking like I was carefully weighing the proposition.
But the weird part is that I was weighing it. I should have been the happiest man alive. Absolved of my first felony, and unequivocally ordered to give up the fumbling crusade that was wrecking my small contentment. It was the perfect out, and yet it didn't set right. I felt like something of value was being wrested from me, even if it was a thing that made me miserable. And I found to my amazement that I wasn't ready to pledge to give it up. As if a promise still mattered in this world, I searched for a way to avoid giving my word. I said, "Will you let me keep the jumpsuit?"
It was way too late for anyone to see the humor. Cruz frowned so that his hairline moved. Corallo puffed up his barrel chest and said, "Take the fuckin' thing off. And go the hell home."
16
I crashed immediately and slept till ten.
I would have slept still later, except for a loud, insistent hammering on my front door. It went on awhile, stopped, then started in again; it got louder then switched over to a tapping on the window. At length I gave up on going back to sleep, pulled on a robe, and went downstairs.
I opened the front door and saw Ozzie Kimmel. This was not a great start to the day. He was wearing a tank top that had once been red. Now it had faded to a splotched and hideous orangey pink, with armholes so stretched that they hung down nearly to the waist. He was holding a newspaper; slapping it from time to time, and laughing maniacally. "Awright, Pete!" he yelled between cackles. "Popped your cherry, guy! You're a real local now! A regular Bubba. Right in there with the other deadbeat fall-down perverts! Yes!"
Beyond Ozzie, the morning was very bright. I narrowed my eyes, and wished I could have narrowed my ears. "What are you talking about?" I wearily asked.
He brayed in my face and slapped the paper again. "Page two! Police blotter, man! The locals' honor roll! The cavalcade of assholes! You made it! Right up there with the lunatics shooting BB guns at chickens and the crazy lezzies fighting over strap-on dildos. Congratulations, Bubba!"
"Let me see that," I said, and reached out for the paper. Sure enough, there I was. By name, in a bland little six-line item. Local detective arrested at murder site. Held for questioning at county jail.
Ozzie said, "You don't look happy."
I gave him his paper back. I didn't answer.
"Great publicity," he said. "You can't buy publicity like that."
"I need some coffee."
Ozzie seemed to think that meant I was inviting him in for some. But he was wrong. I started closing the door on him.
He was used to that kind of thing and didn't take offense. Through the narrowing aperture, he said, "Come on, let's play some tennis."
Tennis? Did I play tennis? It had only been a few days since my routine had been annihilated, but already the aimless, peaceful life I lived before was starting to seem as distant as a half-remembered dream. So I told myself: Play tennis. Start doing normal things again, and maybe you'll feel normal. I told Ozzie I'd meet him in an hour.
"I'll kick your ass," he said, and turned to go. "Here, I'm done with this." He handed me his paper.
I threw it in the garbage and made myself some breakfast.
———
Sometime between finishing my granola and pulling on my sneakers, I remembered that my bicycle was not locked to its accustomed palm.
It had been left behind, unchained, at Redmond's Boatyard when I got arrested. Which no doubt meant that it was gone by now—bicycle theft being Key West's crime of choice. Call me petty, but this bothered me a lot. It's depressing to lose a bike. It pulls you back to all the little heartaches of childhood, all the things that seemed wildly unjust and made you want to cry. Toys that broke the first time you played with them. Ice cream cones that tumbled to the ground. Things that grown-ups took away from you because they imagined you'd outgrown them. Oh well. I tried to shrug it off. I'd walk to tennis. No big deal.