The Naked Detective(68)

The sand got wetter and heavier as we went. It got more like cement. We couldn't dig straight through it anymore; we had to shave it from the edges of the hole. The hole got deep enough to fill with shadow; the shadow was dank and chilled our legs. The lip of the hole was at the level of our chests.

Then Maggie's shovel scraped against something that wasn't sand and wasn't root. We knew this because it made a foreign sound, a little squeak. With another bite of the shovel, a corner of wet vinyl was exposed—the vinyl of a bank- deposit pouch. It wasn't quite at the bottom of the hole, but in, so to speak, the wall. She scraped at it like a terrier until it fell.

I stepped across to help. Poking and twisting, I excavated a small niche. A second pouch came free.

Maybe it was only the coolness of the shaded hollow, but as I stared down at the pouches, a chill seized my back and lifted the hair at the base of my skull. I looked at Maggie, to see if she was sharing my freaked and unhappy awe. There was a stolid satisfaction in her face, but it hardly seemed like gladness. We'd done what we set out to do. I guess this was a victory, but a baleful one. We were in possession of what everybody seemed to want; what certain people had shown that they would kill for.

It occurred to me that wisdom would have been to leave the pouches where they lay and to bury them again. Instead, I bent to lift them. The first pouch I touched was swollen but soft, stuffed with what must have been a stack of mildewed cash, the take from Lefty's bar. But the second pouch had something hard inside. It had firm edges and sharp corners—a box of some sort.

Again I glanced at Maggie but couldn't say a word. She climbed up from the hole and handed me the canvas tote. Without ever lifting the pouches out into the daylight, I slipped them into the bag. Then, on legs that quivered with a mix of edginess and plain fatigue, I scrabbled up from the hole as well.

Quick and silent, we replaced the piled sand. We tamped it down; we raked it. Soon, light breezes and burrowing crabs and bugs would ripple through and make the place look as natural as it ever would. No one would know this sand had been disturbed.

It was getting close to sunset now. Tatters of cloud hung near to the horizon and made the red rays intermittent. Music wafted across the water from the downtown bars. Reggae. Probably it had been playing for a while, but only now did it register. Other people were having a pleasant afternoon, normal for Key West if not for other places, lazy, aimless, sensual. Music and a mar- garita as the sun dived into the Gulf. God, I missed my life.

We mopped our faces and our necks, and gathered up our tools, and strolled back to get the launch.





35


"Were you followed?" I asked Ozzie.

We were somewhat late and he'd been sitting in the parking lot awhile. We found him leaning up against his cab, arms crossed, staring at the water and the streaky sky.

"Yeah," he said.

I chewed my lip.

"I was followed to the Pier House, where I picked up a fare; followed to the airport; followed to the Casa, where I dropped off the next asshole. By then I think they realized I was just some jerk trying to make a living. After that I wasn't followed." He lifted his chin toward Sunset Key. "How'd it go out there?"

"Went okay," I said. "Followed by one car or two?"

"Hard to tell," he said. "The glare, the traffic. But anyway, I lost 'em."

I tried to feel reassured by this. I couldn't quite manage it. We were on a tiny island, after all, a place where it was no great trick to find someone again. But there was nothing to be done about it now. We put the tools back in the trunk and got into the taxi.

My nervousness made everything annoying. Our hot wet shirts had cooled and gotten clammy. My back itched. My bare legs stuck to the seat.

We entered the maze of tiny downtown lanes and crawled. Rental cars, pink mopeds, crazy bicycles—a tidal wave of vehicles streamed against us as they swarmed toward the Sunset Celebration, blocking our path, keeping us trapped. Drunks weaved. Kids swaggered. The bag that held the pouches was on the floor between my ankles. I hated having it there. I felt like I was handcuffed to a bomb.

Beyond Duval the traffic finally relented. In fact, with a macabre abruptness, the streets seemed all at once deserted. No cars moved now; nobody was walking. The lemmings had all massed at the water's edge; the land side was lifeless and bereft.

If the traffic had been frustrating, this sudden abandonment felt sinister and jarring. It was as if the town had been evacuated in a panic, emptied by a tragedy. Here among the unpeopled houses and the clustered trees it was already dusk. Light refused to come down from the sky; shadow spread and conquered. Quiet reigned, but it was not a peaceful quiet. It was the hissing silence of conspiracy, the silence that went with an absence of witnesses.