I climbed out of the pool, dried myself, had some coffee and some food. And waited for four o'clock to come.
Waited with no patience whatsoever. Suddenly I was eager almost crazed to power through to a conclusion. I couldn't pinpoint when or how my reluctance had been transformed into avidity, but this much I knew: What I was feeling wasn't courage—unless courage is nothing more than fear stood on its head. What I was feeling was the same dread that had been urging me to flee, except that now it made me itch to charge, to take my shot and get it over with.
At ten till four I was on my porch, wearing a work shirt that bore the logo of Cayo Hueso Landscaping, waiting for Ozzie to come by and pick me up.
———
I sat up front with him as we drove to Redmond's Boatyard.
Amazingly, he hardly talked along the way. I could think of just one other circumstance in which Ozzie Kimmel didn't yammer. That was late in a tennis match, and only on those rare occasions when the outcome was in doubt. He was a spaceshot but he could focus when he wanted to.
Now he pulled up alongside the chain-link fence at Redmond's. Carrying the extra gardener's shirt, I got out and crunched along the coral gravel toward Maggie's trawler. I walked right past Dream Chaser. The stanchions that had held the crime-scene tape were still in place, but the tape itself had already gotten cracked and tattered by the sun. I vaguely wondered who would get the job of cleaning up the blood and who the next owner of the cursed craft would be.
I reached Maggie's boat and called up to her. She came out on deck and lowered the rope ladder. I climbed up. She kissed me on the cheek and we went down into the cabin.
I told her about the note that had been slid under my door. "Look," I said, "you really don't need to do this part."
With no hesitation, she said, "Then why'd you bring the shirt?" She reached out and took it from me.
She turned her back and pulled off the blouse that she'd been wearing. I watched her naked shoulders, sturdy and just lightly freckled. I watched the clean cleft of that enviable spine. She poked her arms into sleeves and I sensed the lifting of her breasts, saw their slight tug on the skin of her sides.
She buttoned up and faced me. There was something antic in the way she looked. The sleeves were much too long for her. The placket hung down to the middle of her thighs. She looked like a child dressing up. Except for her face, which was utterly composed and serious, the forehead intent but smooth. Efficient, she grabbed a canvas tote to put the pouches in.
We left her trawler and walked back to the cab. Ozzie seemed distracted when we got there. At first he didn't say a word as we climbed into the backseat. When I made the introductions, he said only a perfunctory hello. I noticed that his eyes kept flicking toward the rear- and side-view mirrors. At first I thought that, in his adolescent way, he was checking Maggie out. But that didn't seem to be the vector of his gaze. I began to have misgivings. I kept them to myself.
He put the cab in gear and we continued on our way downtown. The Sunset Key launch left from a private dock right next to the Hilton. The location was prestigious and wildly inconvenient. The only way to get there was to join the crush of traffic funneling toward Duval Street, then to crawl along the overburdened cobblestone lanes beyond it. With Ozzie drumming on the steering wheel, we idled past the tourist bars and T-shirt shops, braking now and then for oblivious pedestrians. The streets got narrower and narrower; Ozzie's eyes kept blinking toward the mirrors. My stomach tightened and began to burn; I wasn't sure if it was dread or just the traffic.
At last we picked our way across the parking lot that led to the foot of the pier. Ozzie stopped the car. I reached for the door handle; he gestured for me to wait. We sat a moment.
Then he said, "That's weird."
"What's weird?"
He studied the mirror some more. "When I stopped at Redmond's there was a black car tailing us. Now there's a dark blue one."
"You sure?" I said.
"I'm sure."
"Two different cars?"
"Two different cars. That's the part that's weird."
I scratched my ear, pulled on my face. "Jesus, Oz, you could've said something sooner."
"I didn't wanna worry you," he said. "You have enough on your mind." He paused then added sheepishly, "I can try and lose 'em. You want I try and lose 'em?"
"A little late for that," I said.
We sat in silence for a while, baking in the sun- shot cab.
I mumbled, "Why the hell two cars?"
Ozzie, backpedaling, trying to make amends, said, "I can lose 'em, we can come back later. Or tomorrow."
We stalled some more. The cab was getting very hot and close.
Finally Maggie said, "Look, we've come this far, let's just go and get the pouch."