I mean, okay, a woman was entitled not to sleep with me. But our foreplay had been tender, unhurried, marvelous. There'd been no sign of unease or hesitation before her abrupt and total change of heart. Could there have been something calculated about the whole performance? Sex me up and lead me by the gonads. Keep tabs on me by keeping me aroused. Why not? Lydia sent thugs, Maggie sent mixed signals. Either had the power to control a man, to make him captive.
But why? I watched the sun's fire melt into a copper slick that spread across the water; and tried to figure if Maggie had a reason for wanting to confuse me. The fact was, she knew more about Kenny than anyone, and she'd hid things from me once already. Supposedly she'd come clean. But coming halfway clean was a time- honored way of continuing to lie. What else might she be hiding?
I thought it over and stared at the sky. A broad band of yellow rolled up from the western horizon like an enormous bolster. At its upper edge it phased into a peculiar acid green that I've never seen anywhere but in the Keys. I stared, and a new misgiving tweaked me. Kenny Lukens had told me that he never even peeked inside the second pouch. But why should I believe that? Wouldn't it be more in line with human nature to check out what one had pilfered?
And if Kenny had looked in the pouch, and did know what was in it, and just had to tell somebody about it, who would he have told? His only Key West friend. His one true confidante. My supposed ally and almost my lover: Maggie.
I thought about that and my queasiness returned, but now it wasn't the waves that were giving me a bellyache. Now it was the possibility that Maggie knew exactly what was in that pouch, and wanted it, and, like her pal Kenny before her, was setting me up to run some potentially fatal errand to retrieve it.
The sky dimmed. So did my mood. By now I was taking something almost like pleasure in my mounting paranoia, and I probed an even creepier idea: How did I know for sure that Maggie had in fact been Kenny Lukens' friend? I had only her account of it. He hadn't mentioned her. It was she who'd prompted me again and again to imagine them as bosom buddies. But what proof did I have? She claimed he called her from the Bahamas; how did I know that was true? She said he'd sent letters; I'd never seen them. True, she had a story that neatly explained the matchbook from Green Turtle Cay—but that story didn't have to come from Kenny. It could just as easily have come from the person in pursuit of Kenny— someone with whom Maggie was in cahoots.
I shivered. There was moisture underneath my life vest and the air was gradually cooling, but that's not why I got goose bumps. I got goose bumps because I was weirding myself out, big- time. I felt by now that I had come this close to shtupping a murderess, commingling my seed with that of a monster. Then I thought: Pete, for God's sake get a grip. The woman teaches yoga. She drinks herb tea. Who ever heard of a killer teaching yoga? You can't send her to the Chair just because she put her leotard back on.
I frowned up at the heavens. The acid green had dulled to a lusterless silver. Looking back across my shoulder, I saw that the first stars were just emerging in the east. I took a long slow breath, then started up my Jet Ski. The engine noise was ugly but I was glad to have it drowning out my thoughts.
The harbor traffic had thinned to almost nothing as I headed in; the chop had all gone flat. Reggae wafted from the wharf-side bars. Lights spilled from the honky-tonks and tiki huts and made the water underneath me look magenta.
I was more than halfway home when the contraption I was riding took a sudden right-hand turn and carried me out again toward Sunset Key.
21
Back when it was still Tank Island, Sunset Key belonged to everyone and no one; it was one of those unofficial public parks that often get more use than designated ones. On the side that faced Key West, rocks and current made it difficult to land, but on the Gulf side there was placid water and tiny crescent beaches where people dragged their boats and laid out picnics and indulged in semipublic nudity. Dogs had adventures in the underbrush and came back with sandy snouts.
Now the current had been tamed by jetties, and there was a spiffy new dock that only the official launch was allowed to use. The underbrush had been cleaned out; No Trespassing signs had sprouted in its place. A metal fence ringed the island, as near to the high-tide line as the developers could sink their pilings.
In the gathering dusk, I edged closer to the shore and saw a classic image of half-finished Florida—fancy houses waiting for their grass to grow; others that were mere skeletons of two-by- fours. Promising graciousness, there was a club-house with a striped canopy; ersatz palapas lined a glowing pool. All very cozy.
But I was looking for a murder site, not a real estate investment—and some not quite reasonable hunch made me confident that I would find it. It would be away from lights and homes. At a spot where palms survived just outside the fence. A small dinghy could scrape ashore there, and there would be a nameless residue of something dreadful having happened.