I sat there for a while. Bugs buzzed; lizards posed on rocks. Then, spinning off my fear; a strange thing happened: Even though I absolutely knew I hadn't touched the rats, I became obsessed with the worry that I had rat on my hands. I splayed my fingers and held them out in front of me so that I wouldn't accidentally touch my mouth or eyes. Then I stood, and used an elbow to slide the screen door open, and moved in a quiet panic to the kitchen sink.
Using lots of dish detergent, I washed my hands over and over again. Scrubbing, wringing, I suddenly understood something that I hadn't grasped before: that there is no paranoia quite like island paranoia. Here I was, stuck on a flat, bare hunk of rock four miles long by two miles wide, with a deadly enemy who knew exactly where I lived. I'm no crusader. I'm a guy who's largely given up on the world. How in Jesus had I done this to myself?
I rinsed my hands and went to dry them. But then I was unsure I'd scrubbed them thoroughly enough, that I'd gotten to the tiny webs deep down at the bases of my fingers. I soaped them once again. And told myself I'd been a fool from the beginning for imagining that I could dip into this business, play detective for a while, then pull away whenever I decided that I'd had enough. Life and death were a shade more serious than that, even in Key West.
Naked at the sink, I turned the water off at last. Reached out for a dish towel and dried my hands. Dried them vigorously, roughly, to hide from myself the fact that they were shaking.
PART THREE
26
Say this for Lefty Ortega's daughter—the woman had some outfits.
I went to see her soon after pulling the dead rats from the pool. I'd finished washing my hands, then gone upstairs for a shower and washed them some more. Dressed, I choked down some toast against a faint but lingering nausea. Then I hopped onto my bike and rode through the stagnant heat of late afternoon to the giant oceanside condo.
I reached her door and rang the bell. A moment passed, then I heard the little shutter open on the peephole. The deadbolt slid free. The door swung open and there she was.
She was wearing backless, high-heeled silver slippers whose open toes framed ranks of bright red toenails. Her hair was a little bit askew; her lipstick overreached the boundaries of her lips and was just slightly faded. Covering her body, sort of, was a pink though mostly see-through tunic over tiny patches of polka-dotted undies. "Ah," she said, "it's my little private eye."
Sometimes diminutives suggest affection. Other times they're just... diminutives. I didn't feel like I was being complimented. But I didn't take time to brood about the slight. Still standing in the doorway, I said, "Lydia, we have to talk."
She looked at me harder then. "You seem pale."
I couldn't be sure, but I had the vague impression that she took a certain mean pleasure from the fact that I seemed pale, as if my being shaken vindicated her somehow.
"Have a scotch?" she asked.
I realized that, having once asked Lydia for scotch, I was doomed to drinking scotch with her forever. On the other hand, scotch at that moment did not seem like a bad idea at all. I nodded, and she led me toward the living room, regal on her silver slippers.
On the way, apropos of nothing, she said, "I'm just up from the pool."
"Ah," I said. Ridiculously, I was both deflated and relieved to gather that her polka-dotted undies were in fact a bathing suit. What the hell difference did it make? Then again, it made a difference.
She glided to the wet bar and started making drinks. I sat down in the armchair that was farthest from the AC vent. After a moment she delivered another of her heroic highballs. We clinked glasses and she folded herself down onto the sectional.
Once she'd settled into a pose of suitable languor, she said, "So. You're checking in. Like a good little detective."
The bantering tone again. The banter, the scotch—Lydia got cozy with a pattern and there she wanted to stay. Except the banter wasn't working for me now, had become an irritating habit I was bent on breaking. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. "Lydia, listen. You haven't hired me. I'm not working for you. I'm here to ask some questions. You're going to answer them."
She sipped her vodka and shot me a subtly infuriating look, the mock-impressed look that a woman gives a cocky boy when pretending to take him seriously. She wiggled her ass against the couch. "Ooh," she said, "we're masterful today."
I left that alone. "Someone's harassing me," I said. "Telling me to get lost. Which I would gladly do, except there's no place I can go. So I need to get this settled. What's in the pouch, Lydia?"
She shot me another of her coy and cool and goading looks, but this time I thought I saw just the narrowest little crack in it. Behind the courtesan's blitheness I sensed a hint of vacant desperation, a patch of something as dark and empty as a starless swath of midnight sky. She tried to cover it over with cuteness. "I thought it's the detective's job—"