Virgin Heat(61)

Astonishment spread all through his scoured nerves, the glad news was passed along from one transfigured fiber to the next, and for a long time he lay very still, as if his newfound peace was a fine silk blanket that could easily slide off. Tears dried on his cheeks as the morning warmed. He pulled the scents of just-opening flowers into his expanded chest.

Then, as the breakfast table and the coffee urn were being trundled into place, his joy took pause to look at itself, and the first cruel jabs of doubt assailed him.

This ad—it said what it said, but what if it was for some other Louie, put there by some other Rose? The chances of there being a mirror-couple, he realized, were remote; but lives were shattered every day by odds that long, or longer.

Uneasy now, he shifted in his chair, but qualms pursued him no matter how he turned and twisted. His brother Paul was at the Flagler House. Was it conceivable that Rose was in cahoots with him, that this love message was nothing but a horrid stratagem to flush him out?

For that matter, couldn't it be imagined that his wife was not at Flagler House at all, had not cared enough to track him down, was back home in the Bronx, and the whole heartless ploy had been set in motion by his brother?

Having known contentment for half an hour, Louie was already wracked by a dread of losing it again—of learning that he'd never really had it.

Dread ushered in the looming hangover. A headache started clamoring in both his temples. His mouth went dry, his tongue suddenly felt thick. He went to the buffet, brought back juice and coffee.

He fretted as Coral Shores woke up around him, bit his lip as yawning men emerged in boxer shorts or towels. He couldn't stand not knowing if his fragile joy was real or fake. If the ad from Rose was on the level, he longed to hold her in his arms at once; if, God forbid, it was a sham, he needed to find out before the habit of believing he was loved became any more entrenched, making its loss even more of a calamity.

But he feared to go to Flagler House. Paul was there. If the whole thing was a trap, his brother could corner him, threaten him, beat him even, squeezing out the whereabouts of his daughter and his betrayer.

His brow furrowed, his scalp pinched, he went to the buffet for another cup of coffee. Ahead of him in line was a tall slim man in a green kimono, with eyebrows that were plucked and arched, a memory of rouge across his cheeks, a hint of shadow beneath the powder on his upper lip. An idea slipped like a fish through Louie's mind, was dismissed almost before it could be tracked. He got his coffee and went back to his lounge.

He sat there. Heightening sun scorched his eyes; inside his skull, hope and apprehension were colliding like a hammer and a gong. Finally he thought: Why not?

He walked over to the man in the kimono, stood before him as he sipped his coffee and smoked a thin brown cigarette, and said, "Good morning."

"Morning, hon. How are you?"

"I. .." said Louie. "I was wondering ... I mean, I wanted t'ask you . . ."

The man blew smoke out both his nostrils. "Life's short, sugar, say what's on your mind."

Louie leaned in closer, couldn't keep his eyes from flicking left and right. "I was wondering," he whispered, "if you have some woman's clothing you could loan me."





37


"Key West!" said agent Terry Sykes, as he filtered Flagler House coffee through his brushy blond moustache and looked out at the flat green water of the Florida Straits. He was wearing a loud floral bathing suit, a Miami Dolphins T-shirt, and the kind of chunky sunglasses cops wear when they want to look relaxed. "McCullough, you really get the postings."

"It's not vacation," said the undercover man.

Sykes fingered his way through a basket of warm rolls, touching every one. With the grin of the chronic shirker, he said, "It isn't hardship duty, either."

McCullough swallowed his annoyance, glanced off through the sweetly muted sunshine of their umbrellaed table to the tiki wing where, as far as anyone could tell, Paul Amaro was still asleep. "Hardship's not the point," he said. "Results is the point."

Sykes pulled his Marlins cap lower over his forehead as his light eyes tracked a woman in a thong bikini. "Supe thinks results'll be zilch."

That's why he sent you, thought McCullough. He said instead, "Supe always thinks that. Comes from sitting on his ass too long."

Sykes fished out another roll, thickly smeared it with strawberry jam. "This Ziggy guy, how long's the hit been out on him?"

"Coming up on his ten-year anniversary," McCullough said.

"We kept someone alive ten years?" said Sykes. "Whaddya know—sometimes the system works."

"Does it?" said McCullough. "Amaro only went away for nine."