“He saw me play at Wimbledon, the year I, ah, fi nished second. Seems like half the world saw me fuck it up.”
“Was Keating driving a car when you met him?”
“Oh, yeah, he was driving a Chrysler convertible; that’s a common rental here.”
“Color?”
“Ummm, silver—no, white. Oh, and he brought a guy with him to help him move the boat. I spent an hour showing them around it. The girl drove away in the convertible.”
“Can you describe his helper?”
“A little under six feet, I guess, fairly scrawny. Full beard. Oh, and Keating called him Charley.”
“Aha,” Stone said, “Boggs lied to us.”
“What did you expect?” Dino asked.
“Want to play another set?” Chuck asked.
“I think we have to go see Charley Boggs,” Stone said.
THEY DROVE BACK to Garrison Bight, parked near the sport fi sherman fleet and walked over to Boggs’s houseboat. Nobody home. Stone and Dino looked through the windows. The boat was sparsely furnished.
“Can I help you?” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find a woman on the next boat looking at them.
“We’re looking for Charley Boggs,” Stone said.
“Haven’t seen him since yesterday,” the woman replied. “A couple came and got him in a boat, and he hasn’t come back yet.”
“What kind of boat?”
“Old, pretty; white hull, mahogany everything else.”
“Right. Do you know Charley well?”
“Well enough to know that he doesn’t seem to do anything to make a living. Most of the time, he’s fishing off the back of that boat.”
“Has his houseboat been moored here long?”
“He bought it from the previous berth holder a few months back. That’s how you get a houseboat berth in Key West—you buy the houseboat.”
“Had you seen the couple in the boat before?”
“I saw them once having a drink with Boggs up on the top deck.”
“Do you have any idea where they live?”
“No idea at all. You want me to give Boggs a message when he comes back?”
Stone wrote his cell number on his card. “There’s a hundred in it for you if you’ll call me when he returns—or if you see the couple again.”
“I can always use a hundred,” the woman said, stretching out between the boats to take the card.
Stone and Dino drove back to the Marquesa.
“Evan Keating is . . . what’s the word?” Dino asked.
“Elusive,” Stone replied.
12
STONE, AS EARLIER requested, picked up Annika Swenson at a small, pretty conch house on South Street. She was dressed in white—lacy top, linen pants—with a yellow sweater thrown over her shoulders. Stone put her in the car.
“I booked us a table at Louie’s Backyard,” she said. “Straight ahead, I’ll direct you.”
Louie’s turned out to be a large clapboard house on the beach with a big deck out back overlooking the water. They took a table on the deck, ordered mojitos and asked the waitress to call them when their dinner table was ready. The sun was going down.
“The light is beautiful here,” Stone said.
“Always,” Annika replied.
“What brought you to Key West?”
“A job in the ER here. I was a late finisher from med school—
Johns Hopkins—and by the time I finished my internship and residency, I was already thirty-five. I had had enough of cold winters, so when I got the Key West offer I jumped at it.”
“Were you born in this country? I think I detect a slight accent.”
“No. I was born in Stockholm. My parents moved to Miami when I finished college, and I came with them and applied to Johns Hopkins.”
“Do you prefer the United States to Sweden?”
“Yes, I think so. At any rate, I never think about moving back to Sweden. I do miss some of the Swedish attitudes.”
“Attitudes about what?”
“Sex, mainly. Americans have so many hang-ups about sex. Things are simpler in Sweden.”
“I’ve heard that, but I haven’t encountered it.”
“You have now. For instance, what would you say if I told you that I find you attractive, and that after dinner I would like to take you back to my house and make love to you?”
“Are we speaking hypothetically?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I would be flattered and pleased,” Stone said.
“Then you have a Swedish attitude,” she said. Then there was some sort of scuffle at the bar, and Stone turned to see a man take a swing at another. The swinger was a compact, muscular man with blood in his eye; the one scrambling to his feet was Charley Boggs.
Two men came running down the stairs from the main restaurant and pulled the fighters apart. There was some discussion, which Stone couldn’t hear, then Charley Boggs stalked away from the deck and out of the restaurant, while the shorter man returned to his table and his drink.
“Why are you so interested in this argument?” Annika asked.
“I’m sorry, I’m a great deal more interested in you, but I know one of the men.”
“Which one?”
“The one who got thrown out. His name is Charley Boggs, and the local police suspect him of being a drug dealer.”
“And why are you acquainted with a drug dealer?” she asked, not unreasonably.
“I’ve met him only once; he’s apparently an associate of a man I’m trying to find.”
“Do you want to follow him?”
“No, I want to have dinner with you, then take you back to your house and make love to you.”
She smiled. “Thank you, I would prefer that, too. Who is the man you’re looking for, and why?”
“His name is Evan Keating, and I need to get his signature on some legal documents.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“Yes, in New York.”
“Does your work often bring you into contact with drug dealers?”
“No. Keating’s father wants to sell the family business, and they need the agreement of the young man. The company is a client of a law firm I’m associated with.”
“Well, if you are sent to Key West on business, then you lead an interesting life,” she said.
“Sometimes it’s interesting; sometimes it’s too interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s interesting if I meet someone like you during the course of my business, and it’s too interesting if I’m knocked unconscious outside a restaurant.”
She smiled. “Well, you are the first man I’ve ever met when he was lying face down on a sidewalk.”
“Did you see whoever hit me?”
“No. I turned a corner, and there you were. A car was driving away.”
“What kind of car?”
“A white convertible with a man and a woman inside.”
“That would have been Evan Keating and his girlfriend, Gigi Jones.”
“The man you’re looking for?”
“Yes. I had approached him at the bar in the Marquesa and asked to speak with him. He suggested we go outside.”
“Isn’t that what American men do when they wish to fi ght? Go outside?”
Stone laughed. “Sometimes. I wasn’t expecting a fight on that occasion, though.”
“She must have hit you with something heavy,” Annika said.
“Why do you think the girl hit me?”
“She was with the man. Was there any other man present?”
“No.”
“Then it must have been the girl. You should not turn your back on strange women.”
“That’s good advice,” Stone admitted. They were called to their table, where they ordered another mojito and dinner.
AFTER DINNER , they returned to Annika’s house, as previously discussed, and she led him upstairs to her bedroom. She undressed and hung up her clothes, and Stone draped his over a chair. She pulled the bedcover off the bed and onto the fl oor.