Then the sun slipped into the Gulf, slow and stately as a king entering his bath. People applauded.
The sky behind Tank Island went striped with jagged slabs of pink and purple that every moment compromised toward bluish gray. The colors faded; the show was over; the tourists left the pier.
Louie lingered a while, watched the dimming sky, walked in aimless little circles among discarded rinds of fruit, pieces of waxed paper smeared with mustard. Freedom tickled him, but with the noise gone and the light going, the beginnings of loneliness whispered gloom in his ear. But he would not be gloomy. No! He would smile, he would stroll, he would revisit places that amused him. And he wouldn't worry about a table for dinner! He would eat as he walked, and he would eat what he wanted. Ice cream. Pie. Conch fritters and Italian sausage if he felt like it. Just why the hell not? Could anyone tell him, could he tell himself, just why he should not for once do exactly as he pleased?
He left the pier, headed for the crowded streets with their colliding bodies, their winking signs, their carnival smells of beer and grease and perfume. He would walk and smile and maybe even talk to strangers; he would remember what it was like to be a person with fewer worries, without responsibilities.
As for finding Angelina, that high goal hadn't left his mind, but had for now become invisible. It was something he would think about tomorrow. Tonight, he thought, was just for Louie.
13
"I've gotta get out of here," said Angelina, already shouldering her purse and sliding off her barstool as she said it.
It was the third place they'd hit that evening, and before the after-sunset throng had been added to the happy-hour contingent, it hadn't been too bad. But now butane and phosphorous and cigarette smoke were fouling the air already turbid with the vapors of skin cream and libido; management had seen fit to crank up the music with its jackhammer bass. The bartender's hands had been futilely examined, and it was time to leave.
On the bustling sidewalk, with flashing neon throwing unflattering washes of orange, then blue, across her face, Angelina bit her lip and said, "I don't know how much more I can take of this."
Michael cinched his brows together, grabbed her gently by the wrists, tried with his gaze to lift her downcast eyes. "Look," he said, "do you want to find your prince, your stallion, your perfect love, or not?"
"The truth?" said Angelina. "Right at the moment I don't even know."
Michael frowned. He understood discouragement, recognized the dispiriting cycle of wanting too much and trying too hard, then plummeting down to a numbness where you ceased utterly to understand why you were bothering. Discouragement might yield briefly to serenity, which would be defeated in turn by loneliness and boredom, which would open the heavy creaking door to lust, which might cloak itself in the splendid garb of romance; romance would implode, and then the whole damn draining and befuddling thing would start again.
As fazed as Angelina by the relentless and exhausting weight of passion, he said, "Listen, hon, why don't we get off this vulgar street, forget about love, and just find someplace quiet and maybe a little seamy for a nightcap?"
* * *
Keith McCullough stepped out of his motel shower, patted dry, and thought about which of his crude moronic T-shirts he would wear that evening. He decided on the one that said free moustache rides.
For as long as he'd been working underground, he'd felt the simplest disguises were the best. His favorites weren't disguises at all, really—more like diversionary ploys. That was the beauty of these shirts—they made people dismiss him as a pathetic buffoon, embarrassed people to the point where they wouldn't meet his eyes, so that the smallest alterations—a pair of glasses, some fake sideburns— would make them fail to realize they'd seen his face before.
It helped, too, that his stature was average, his features unremarkable except in their flexibility, with hazel eyes that might appear amiably lax or killingly intent, a chin that could tuck down blandly or jut forth in recklessness. The pliant face was an asset, but more important was pliancy of personality. Disguises only worked if there was some oblique but resonant truth in them, a harmony between the mask and the person being masked. Working underground required, therefore, an unsqueamish knowledge of oneself, of one's alternate selves; and this knowledge was not the least scary thing about pretending not to be a cop while doing the things cops did.
In any case, Keith McCullough felt confident that his incognito was holding up, but he couldn't claim that his sporadic and routine surveillance of one Sigmund Maxx, a.k.a. Ziggy Maxx, a.k.a. Sal Martucci, had as yet turned up anything of interest. The guy had a job. He drove a crummy car and lived in a crummy bungalow whose upkeep seemed to be within the means provided by the job. If Ziggy kept criminal company, McCullough had not so far discovered it.