Vigilant now, I began to steer a more eccentric course. Down narrow vine-choked lanes that tourists wouldn't know. Along the curved perimeter of the west side of the cemetery. The head-lights stayed with me, slicing through the vines, panning dully across the mausoleums. My mouth went dry. My churning knees got stiff, and I wrestled with the question of whether I should turn around and face my pursuer.
At a stop sign, I finally did—though without resolve, just peeking meekly back across my shoulder. All I saw was a dark generic car; a Chevy or a Chrysler or a Ford, discreetly crawling a block behind. I waited; it slowed still more. It slipped beneath a street lamp, revealing nothing but a windshield tinted a sinister purple. The car stopped altogether now, and idled, as though its driver would wait all night for me to carry on. Or as if he was taunting me, daring me to approach.
I didn't have the nerve. I sucked a breath and started pedaling again. Then, with guilt and horror; I realized that I was leading my pursuer straight to Redmond's Boatyard, straight to Maggie—who, if she wasn't part of some grotesque conspiracy, was an unselfish, almost saintly friend.
Needing badly to believe it, I told myself that no harm had yet been done. So far, I could have been headed almost anywhere—Duval Street for a beer; Mallory Square to hear some old songs badly played. Toxic Triangle was only one of many destinations in the extended arc of my meandering. Still, at the next corner I turned away from the harbor. I started making random lefts and rights, launched upon an itinerary as aimless as Key West life itself. The dark car stayed with me, harassing, although its driver had to know by now that I was leading him to nowhere.
Finally I lost him in a lane behind the library, a stanchioned dead end for cars but with a narrow rocky path that bicycles could slip through. I clunked along the coral knobs for a hundred yards or so, then stopped in the still and fragrant no-man's-land between two streets, a tiny patch of jungle in the midst of town.
Overgrown, it was primordially dark in there. Straddling my bike, I caught my breath and listened to the crickets and the toads, heard lizards and small snakes slithering under brittle leaves. For a moment I was pleased with my resourcefulness in finding this haven; then all at once I realized it was the dumbest place I could have stopped. It was visible from nowhere. The going was slow and essentially blind; a killer on foot had every chance of overtaking a bike that had skidded on a root or crashed against a stump. I'd cornered myself. My heart began to pound. Did I only imagine that I heard the dry click of a car door; the crunch of hard shoes on gravel, the swipe of undergrowth at pants legs?
I jumped on my pedals and took off. Straining to see the thin and rugged coral swath between the vines and shrubs, I bounced and leaned and fishtailed. Thorns slashed at my arms and shins; spider-webs stuck to my face; my scalp was grazed by an overhanging limb. I humped till I reached the alley that gave onto Elizabeth Street, then slowed just enough to pluck the burrs out of my sweater and shake the bugs out of my hair.
Mostly confident that I'd shaken my pursuer, I still took a long and circumspect meander to Redmond's Boatyard.
———
It was nearly twelve-thirty by the time I'd locked my bike and was jogging toward the dinghy dock. I didn't see Maggie right away. That's because she wasn't standing on the dock, but sitting in a dinghy. Waving up to me, she said, "I was getting worried."
Worried. The word seemed oddly mild. How about scared shitless? "Sorry," I said, "I was followed."
"Followed?" She narrowed her eyes and looked at me more closely in the ugly pink light from the security floods. "Your wrists," she said, "your legs. You're bleeding."
It was true. The thorns and sedges had got me pretty good. I was crosshatched with long and shallow cuts, the kind that bulge and pucker with lines of blood that stop just shy of overflowing. They didn't hurt, just itched. I shrugged them off and pretended to be calm. I don't think I pretended very well. I couldn't stop my feet from shuffling. My throat felt constricted, and my voice didn't sound exactly right.
"Who followed you?" she said.
My shoulders lifted to my ears. "Veale's people? Lydia's people? I don't know."
We looked at each other. It was a caring, comradely look and I guess it should have bucked me up. In fact it only multiplied my misgivings, reminded me how out of my depth I was, how trapped. Too late, I realized that of course I should have brought my gun—what kind of idiot liberal does this sort of thing unarmed? Not bringing it was the fundamental blunder of a person simply not up to the job. I was inadequate, and inadequacy now cast a sickly pall on everything.