them to these two trees, side by side, and we set one of the mines between the trees and rig it and then
we back off about a hundred feet and we keep shooting at the line and those two gooks are screaming
blood y-fucking-murder. It was Jesse finally tripped it. We left them hanging in the trees.
Psychological warfare, that‟s what we call it.
39
DEAD MAN’S FLOAT
It took me twenty minutes to make the drive to Skidaway Island. Three blocks on the far side of the
bridge I found Bayview, a deserted gravel lane, hardly two cars wide, that twisted through a living
arch of oak trees with Spanish m4ss. Here and there, ruts led to cabins hidden away among trees,
palmettos, and underbrush. I passed a roadhouse called Bennys Barbecue, which looked closed except
for a gray Olds parked at the side of the place that looked suspiciously like the car Harry Nesbitt was
driving when he followed me the night before. After that there was nothing but foliage for almost a
mile before I came to O‟Brian‟s shack.
It wasn‟t much more than that, although it seemed a sturdy enough place. It was built on stilts about
twenty yards off shore and was connected to land by a wooden bridge no more than three feet wide.
The tide was in and the cabin, which looked about two rooms large with deck surrounding it and
screened porch at one end, was perched barely three feet above the water. A small boat, tied to one
end of the platform, rocked gently on the calm surface of the bay.
Nesbitt was right—there wasn‟t a blade of grass within twenty yards of the cabin.
The place was as still as a church at dawn.
A slate-gray Continental was parked under the trees near the water‟s edge. It had been there awhile;
the hood was as cool as the rest of the car. I walked out to the edge of the clearing and held my hands
out, prayer style, palms up.
“O‟Brian? It‟s me, Kilmer.”
A mockingbird cried back at me arid darted off through the palmettos. Somewhere out near the shack
a fish jumped in the water. Then, not a sound.
I waited a moment or two.
“It‟s Jake Kilmer,” I yelled. “I‟m coming on out.”
Still nothing.
I tucked both sides of my jacket in the back of my belt to show him 1 wasn‟t wearing a gun and
started walking out onto the platform, holding on to both railings so he could see my hands.
“O‟Brian!”
A fish jumped underfoot and startled me. I could see why O‟Brian had built his shack on this spot. He
could drop a line out the window and fish without getting out of bed.
“O‟Brian, it‟s Kilmer. You around?”
Still no answer.
I reached the cabin. The front door was locked, so I went around to the porch, held my face up against
the screen, cupped my eyes, and peered inside. The place was as empty as a dead man‟s dream.
“O‟Brian?”
Still no sounds, except the tie line of the boat, grinding against the wooden railing.
Worms began to nibble at my stomach.
“Hey, O‟Brian, are you in there?” I yelled. I startled an old pelican setting on a corner of the deck and
he lumbered away, squawking as he went. There was no answer.
I tried the screen door and it was open. The cabin was empty; nobody was under the bed or stuffed in
the shower, But the radio was on with the volume turned all the way down, and the beginnings of a
fishing lure dangled from a vise on the porch table.
The worms stopped nibbling and started gnawing at my insides.
I went back outside and started around the deck. The boat was empty.
I might have missed the two bullet holes except for the blood. It was splattered around two small
nicks in the rear wall of the cabin; crimson, baked almost brown in the hot sunlight, yet still sticky to
the touch.
The worms in my stomach grew to coiled snakes.
“Oh, shit!” I heard myself whisper.
I knelt down on the deck and peered cautiously under the cabin. The first thing I saw was a foot in a
red sweat sock jammed in the juncture of two support posts. The foot belonged to Jigs O‟Brian. The
rest of him was floating face down, hands straight out at his sides, as if he were trying to embrace the
bay.
Fish were nibbling at the thin red strands that leaked from his head like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
I didn‟t need a medical degree to tell he was DOA.
40
SKEELER’S JOINT
Dutch almost swallowed the phone when I got him on the line. He was on his way before I hung up.
The coroner reacted in much the same way.
Dutch arrived fifteen minutes later with Salvatore at the wheel, followed by an ambulance with the
coroner and his forensics team close behind.
The big German lumbered out to the cabin with his hands in his pants pockets, an unlit Camel
dangling from the corner of his mouth, and stared ruefully down at me through his thick glasses.
Salvatore was behind him, glowering like a man looking for a fight.
“I take the full rap for this one,” I said. “If you hadn‟t called Salvatore off, O‟Brian might be alive
now.”
“1 should have left Salvatore on his tail,” Dutch said. “That was my mistake.”
“You just did what I asked,” I said. “I told O‟Brian I‟d be alone. Where are your pals from
homicide?”
“On the way,” he said with a roll of his eyes, adding, “What did it this time, a flamethrower?”
“Small caliber, very likely a submachine gun,” I said.
“How do you figure that?”
“He‟s got a row of. 22‟s from his forehead to his chin so perfect the line could‟ve been drawn with a
straightedge. My guess is, the first couple of shots knocked his head back. The gun was firing so fast
it just drew a line right down his face, zip, like that.”
I drew an invisible line from my forehead to my chin with a forefinger.
“Some gun,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “There‟s only one weapon I can think of that fits the bill.”
“Well, don‟t keep us in suspense,” said Dutch. Salvatore began to show signs of interest. He stopped
staring into space long enough to give rue the dead eye.
“The American 180. Fires thirty rounds a second. Sounds like a dentist‟s drill when it goes off.”
“Like on the tape of the Tagliani job,” Dutch said.
“Yeah, just like that. I figure whoever aced him came in by boat and whacked O‟Brian when he came
out of the cabin. Two of the slugs went through his head; they‟re in the back wall.”
“So what does all that mean to us?” Dutch said.
While the coroner was studying the bloodstained holes in the back wall of the cabin, his men were
shooting pictures of O‟Brian‟s body from everywhere but underwater.
“Chevos owns boats,” I said. “It‟s his thing. I‟ve heard he lives at the Thunder Point Marina. Where
would that be from here?”
Dutch pointed due east. Thunder Point was a mile away, a misty, low, white structure surrounded by
miniature boats.
“You really want to pin this one on Nance, don‟t you?” Dutch asked.
“Maybe.”
“Look, I got nothing against headhunting; sometimes it can get great results. You got something to
settle with that sheiss kopf it‟s okay with me.”
The coroner dug the two bullets out of the wall and went back across the bridge to shore.
“Maybe he‟s holed up on a boat,” I said.
“That‟s assuming he knows we‟re looking for him.”
“Well, hell, I make a lot of mistakes,” I said.