"It's not your fault that Lydia's a nut," I said. "But maybe it is your fault two guys are dead."
He squeezed his hands together then. I saw the fingertips whiten. He said, "Be careful, Amsterdam. You're saying crazy things."
There was a pause. The sun must have hit the horizon or a last low cloud because the light dropped quickly in the room. It lost its ruddy color and turned grainy. I realized now how reckless I was being. The feeling scared me but suddenly I liked it. I said, "Okay, then let's talk about something else."
Looking weary, put-upon, dyspeptic, Mickey Veale waited for what the something else would be.
I glanced at the now-lavender window and said, "Let's talk about smuggling."
"Smuggling?"
"Jet Skis at four in the morning," I said, and I told him what I'd witnessed from the deck of The Lucky Duck—the rooster tails, the warning flashes.
Veale was unimpressed. "Two lunatics out for a joyride," he said dismissively, "while a guy happens to be fumbling with the light switch in the head."
"Or," I countered, "two couriers bringing something small enough to carry on a Jet Ski. Which would probably make it small enough to fit into a bank-deposit pouch which, in turn, would fit in Lefty's safe."
Veale slowly shook his enormous, flubbery face. "You're reaching, Amsterdam. There's nothing there."
I glanced down at my lap, tried to juice up my momentum. "Last night I asked you what other businesses you had to give Lefty a piece of. You wouldn't tell me. You wouldn't tell me because it was this smuggling deal."
"Wrong, Amsterdam. Totally wrong."
Weary as he sounded, he also sounded cocky now, combative in a passive way, untouchable.
This made me mad, and I longed to punch at least a small hole in his serenity. I said, "Listen, Mickey, you feel pretty pleased that the local cops are in your pocket. That's obvious. But smuggling—that's federal. You think these clowns can protect you from the feds?"
There was a heartbeat's silence; then, to my surprise, Mickey Veale laughed. It was a bitten snorting, percussive laugh without the smallest trace of amusement in it. He said, "You think the cops are in my pocket? Let me tell you something, Amsterdam. You don't know shit. You know worse than shit. You're the kind of half-smart guy who understands things just enough to get everything exactly wrong. So listen up. I'm not a blackmailer. I've never murdered anyone or had them murdered. So far. But you're getting to be more than an annoyance. So stay the fuck out of my face. Do we understand each other?"
It killed me to give him the last word, but a death threat is not an easy thing to answer, and the truth is, I couldn't speak just then. I forced myself to stare at him a moment. I wanted my eyes to tell him that, okay, I was through for right now but I wasn't backing down; I'm not sure how persuasively they conveyed the message. I drummed my fingers lightly on his desk, then stood up silently and turned to go.
I left his dimming office and walked down the corridor. Along the way I wondered why it was that in all these interviews—with Veale, with Lydia, even with the cops—I felt from moment to moment that I was doing fine, that I was winning, yet by the end it could not be clearer that I'd been outflanked, I'd lost.
I moved across the living room toward the door. The housekeeper with the bare midriff was leaning sultrily across a counter, her elbows spread around a magazine. There was a feather duster next to her, but as far as I could tell she hadn't dusted squat.
28
"He's lying," said Maggie. "Of course he's lying."
We were sitting on the deck of her trawler speaking softly in the thickening dusk. I'd gone to Redmond's after leaving Mickey Veale's, and following a spasm of indecision in which I literally rode around in circles for a while, doing doughnuts around the grand horseshoe entrance to Harbor Watch. My mind was cluttered. I was afraid. But the vector of my fear had changed. For a while it had pointed, so to speak, at my chest, pushing me back and down into my chair; counseling retreat. Now it poked me from behind, goading me forward on feet that tingled. Make no mistake—it was still naked, selfish fear and I still felt like a coward. But it had somehow gotten through to me that it didn't matter how I felt, it mattered what I did.
I needed to talk with someone, air things out. The time just after sunset is a lonely hour anyway, and suddenly I felt very alone. Who could I talk to but Maggie? Even though, face it, I knew her only slightly. Such was the life I'd been living.
Still, I felt lighter with a destination, and pedaled almost jauntily to the boatyard. Straddling my bike, I called up to her, and she emerged from the companionway and out into the cockpit. It seemed she hadn't been home for very long. She was wearing the baggy pants she always pulled on after yoga class. Her leotard still seemed slightly damp with sweat; there was a faint zag of moisture like a lightning bolt between her breasts.