My eyes began to smart as I drove into the sun. Colors were bleached to tones. The roots of the little mangrove islands looked like snakes poised to strike, and the water off the reef took on the flat purple-gray color of a bruise.
A pickup truck passed, going ninety-five. There was a rifle in the window rack, and two shirtless men in back with ragged beards and billed fishing caps, sipping beer from the can. they gave me a sinister wave, a silent greeting that said, We'll be seem' you later, hub, and, when we do, don't mess with us. Then they were gone, and ahead there was only the empty road again, the black baked-out ribbon, rolling south toward heat and emptiness.
Big Pine Key. Ramrod. Sugarloaf. Torch. The scrubencrusted islands called Saddlebunch. Then Boca Chica and Stock Island, a huge automobile graveyard, and thenfinally and at last-Key West.
At first it didn't look like any kind of paradise I had ever seen. There were gas stations and fast-food joints and a couple of shopping malls and an enormous flatroofed Sears. But when I got off the highway and drove deeper into town, a breeze blew forth, the sky began to darken, and I found myself in another world.
There was a special texture to the quiet shady streets, lined with old wooden buildings-shacks, houses, mansions all mixed together, some rotting, others superbly restored. Magnificent tropical plantings too;
I counted banyans, jacarandas, sapodillas and palms, hibiscus, oleander and fountains of bougainvillaea pouring off bal ies. And surrounding everything was a beguiling scent, warm sweet aroma of night-blooming flowers.
I wound my way through this section (which, I rned from my map, was called Old Town), I began to ecompress. I passed a young black girl skipping rope, a group of laughing Cubans clustered on a veranda playing cards. And then I spotted a truly beautiful woman of a certain age, sitting alone on a second-story balcony. I slowed my car, our eyes met, then, slowly, she smiled at me and waved.
I checked into a motel called the Spanish Moss, a little shabby, but a veritable Ritz Carlton compared with my lodgings in Cleveland. Then I took a walk.
I wanted to get a feel for the place, and so headed for the main street, Duval, to join the throngs. Here I merged with sailors, gay couples, bikini-clad adolescents carrying fishing poles, all headed toward Mallory Pier for the famous ritual of Key West-bearing witness to the sunset.
The pier was crowded, with circles formed around various human and animal acts. There was a juggler, and a jazz combo and a bagpipe player. There was a lady hawking cookies, and a sinewy youth, stripped to the waist, cracking open coconuts. I also saw examples of a type I hadn't seen in years: tall, thin stooped young men with gentle eyes and wispy beards, escorting stout young women, in tie-dyed clothes, with waist-length tresses and beauteous smiles.
There were whistles and cheers as the sun sank into the Gulf, and then the mob broke up. I was exhausted. In thirty-six hours I'd traveled between four cities, broken into a house, terrorized a man, and had learned crushing things about the woman I had loved. And so, even though it was only 9:00 P.m., I ate a quick dinner at a cheap Cuban restaurant, then went to bed.
I woke ten hours later, refreshed and eager to stalk my prey. On my way to my car, I ran into my motel-room neighbors, a friendly retired couple from Arizona with Mount Rushmore faces, struggling with two odd-looking machines.
I gave them a hand. The machines were metal detec tors, which they were going to use to scour the beach for coins and rings. After I helped them load the contraptions into their car, the woman took hold of my hands.
"Thank you and God bless you, son," she said.
"May you have good luck with your quest here too."
The Key West Post Office, on Whitehead Street, is a modern building with a normal enclosed section, and also a long grilled-in open-air arcade.
It is in this later portion that the P.O. boxes are situated, in easy view of the parking lot. The only trouble is that occupation of spaces in the lot is limited to fifteen minutes.
I found Kim's box and peeked inside. Nothing there. I certainly didn't expect to find it loaded with mail; she was in hiding, after all. But if Grace Amos was the only person who knew where she was, and if she and Grace spoke regularly on the phone, it could be as long as a week before she showed up to check her box. Could I mount a watch that long?
I had no alternative. Though I knew she was a waitress, it would be madness to track her down aggressively. The moment I started asking questions she'd hear about it, get spooked and run.
The hours for the arcade were 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.m., but since I couldn't possibly maintain a twelve-hour-aday surveillance, I needed a control for the times I wouldn't be there.
I entered the Post Office, bought a prestamped envelope, then returned to the arcade and started riffling through the contents of a trash container. It didn't take long to find what I was looking for, a discarded advertising flyer. I folded it neatly, sealed it inside the envelope, wrote "Boxholder" and Kim's box number on the front, then pushed the letter through the slot for local mail.
Once that envelope was in her box, I could check on it whenever I renewed my watch. If it was gone, or in an altered position, I'd know she'd been there while I was away.
That first morning I established my routine. I found a parking space on Whitehead, with a sight line to the arcade. But since the boxes were too far away to observe with the naked eye, I mounted a 135mm. telephoto on my Leica and used it as a telescope.
Even in the best cop movies I've yet to hear a character adequately describe how tough it is to man a stakeout. It's not just a. question of physical discomfort, though being cooped up in a car is excruciating enough. For me the most difficult part was the strain of keeping alert while watching a specific spot for hours at a time.
I had to constantly fight off the wanderings of my mind. I had to avoid moving around too much lest Kim appear from an unexpected direction, notice me and run. I dared not play the radio too long, lest I run down the battery, and although Key West in late summer is very hot, if I ran the engine, in order to run the air conditioning, I also ran the risk of running out of gas.
I coped by varying my position from time to time, and rationing myself to ten minutes of radio and air conditioning an hour. I also ate large quantities of unhealthy food, with the result that the backseat of my car was soon covered with crumpled bags. I tried every kind of crisp_ and salty snack, even purchasing a twenty-bag sampler pack-Corn Twists, Cheese Doodles, nacho and plantain chips, and, of course, plain old potato chips. I tried them "Hawaiian style… kettlecrisped,"
"thick cut… wavy… with 'tater skins," and fried in every sort of oil. It was the need for things that were starchy, salty and crunchy to keep my concentration sharp.
I had another problem too: sitting in a parked car all day would sooner or later attract attention. All I needed was for some Post Office employee to ask, "Why's this guy waiting around out front? Better call the cops."
By the end of my first day of surveillance, I had an upset stomach. I also dozed off twice. My back was sore and my muscles ached, but my control envelope was now safely in Kim's box.
The second day was equally painful, even though I raised my ration of radio and lowered my input of chips. The third day was so miserable I spent a good part of it wondering if I'd do better canvassing restaurants. I also spent some time thinking about how lucky I'd been in Cleveland, an en, with despicable self-pity, about how my good luck never seemed to hold.