“Tough titties,” Chemo said.
“Look, I don’t know who you are-”
“Sit,” Chemo said. “And keep your damn voice down.”
The wind was kicking up, and he was afraid the argument might carry across the flats to the house.
Chloe sat down but was not about to shut up. “You listen to me-”
“I said, keep your damn voice down!”
“Screw you, Velcro-face.”
Chemo’s brow crinkled, his cheeks fluttered. He probably even flushed, though this was impossible to discern.
Velcro-face- t here it was, finally. The insult. The witch just couldn’t resist after all.
“Now what’s the matter?” Chloe Simpkins Stranahan said. “You look seasick.”
“I’m fine,” Chemo said, “But you shouldn’t call people names.”
Then he heaved the thirty-pound anchor into her lap, and watched her pitch over backwards in her silky sailor suit. The staccato trail of bubbles suggested that she was cursing him all the way to the bottom of the bay.
9
Tina woke up alone in bed. She wrapped herself in a sheet and padded groggily around the dark house, looking for Mick Stranahan. She found him outside, balanced on the deck rail with his hands on his hips. He was watching Old Man Chitworth’s stilt house light up the sky; a cracking orange torch, visible for miles. The house seemed to sway on its wooden legs, an illusion caused by blasts of raw heat above the water.
Tina thought it was the most breathtaking thing she had ever seen, even better than Old Faithful. In the glow from the blaze she looked up at Stranahan’s face and saw concern.
“Somebody living there?” she said.
“No.” Stranahan watched Old Man Chitworth’s windmill fall, the flaming blades spinning faster in descent. It hit the water with a sizzle and hiss.
“What started the fire?” Tina asked.
“Arson,” Stranahan said matter-of-factly, “I heard a boat.”
“Maybe it was an accident,” she suggested. “Maybe somebody tossed a cigarette.”
“Gasoline,” Stranahan said. “I smelled it.”
“Wow. Whoever owns that place has some serious enemies, I guess.”
“The man who owns that place just turned eighty-three,” Stranahan said. “He’s on tubes in a nursing home, all flaked out. Thinks he’s Eddie Rickenbacker.”
A gust of wind prompted Tina to rearrange her sheet. She got a shiver and edged closer to Mick. She said, “Some harmless old geezer. Then I don’t get it.”
Stranahan said, “Wrong house, that’s all.” He hopped off the rail.” Somebody fucked up.” So much for paradise, he thought; so much for peace and tranquility.
Across the bay, from Dinner Key, came the whine of toy-like sirens.
Stranahan didn’t need binoculars to see the flashing blue dots from the advancing police boats.
Tina clutched his hand. She couldn’t take hereyes off the fire. “Mick, have you got enemies like that?”
“Hell, I’ve gotfriends like that.”
By midmorning the Chitworth house had burned to the waterline, and the flames died. All that remained sticking out were charred tips of the wood pilings, some still smoldering.
Tina was reading on a deck chair and Stranahan was doing push-ups when the marine patrol boat drove up and stopped. It was Luis Cordova and another man whom Stranahan did not expect.
“Now, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Stranahan announced, plenty loud. “Two Cubans in a boat, and no beer.”
Luis Cordova grinned. The other man climbed noisily up on the dock and said, “And here’s something else you don’t see every day: An Irishman up before noon, and still sober.”
The man’s name was Al Garcia, a homicide detective for the Metro-Dade police. His J. C. Penney coat jacket was slung over one arm, and his shiny necktie was loosened halfway down his chest. Garcia was not wild about boat rides, so he was in a gruff and unsettled mood. Also, there was the matter of the dead body.
“What dead body?” Mick Stranahan said.
Badger-like, Garcia shuffled up the stairs to the house, with Stranahan and Luis Cordova following single file. Garcia gave the place the once-over and waved courteously to Tina on her lounge chair. The detective half-turned to Stranahan and in a low voice said, “What, you opened a halfway house for bimbos! Mick, you’re a freaking saint, I swear.”
They went inside the stilt house and closed the door. “Tell me about the dead body,” Stranahan said.
“Sit down. Hey, Luis, I could use some coffee.”
“A minute ago you were seasick,” Luis Cordova said.
“I’m feeling much better, okay?” Garcia scowled theatrically as the young marine patrol officer went to the kitchen. “Interdepartmental cooperation, that’s the buzzword these days. Coffee’s a damn good place to start.”
“Easy, man, Luis is a sharp kid.”
“He sure is. I wish he was ours.”
Stranahan said, “Now about the body… “ Garcia waved a meaty brown hand in the air, as if shooing an invisible horsefly, “Mick, what are you doing way the fuck out here? Somehow I don’t see you as Robinson Crusoe, sucking the milk out of raw coconuts.”
“It’s real quiet out here.”
Luis Cordova brought three cups of hot coffee. Al Garcia smacked his lips as he drank. “Quiet-is that what you said? Jeez, you got dead gangsters floating around, not to mention burning houses-”
“Is this about Tony the Eel?”
“No,” Luis said seriously.
Garcia put down his coffee cup and looked straight at Stranahan. “When’s the last time you saw Chloe?” Suddenly Mick Stranahan did not feel so well.
“A couple months back,” he said. “She was on a boat with some guy. I assumed it was her new husband. Why?”
“You mooned her.”
“Can you blame me?”
“We heard about it from the mister this morning.”
Stranahan braced to hear the whole story. Luis Cordova opened a spiral notebook but didn’t write much. Stranahan listened somberly and occasionally looked out the window toward the channel where Al Garcia said it had happened.
“A rusty anchor?” Stranahan said in disbelief.
“It got tangled in this silky thing she was wearing,” the detective explained. “She went down like a sack of cement.” Sensitivity was not Garcia’s strong suit.
“The rope is what gave it away,” added Luis Cordova. “One of the guys coming out to the fire saw the rope drifting up out of the current.”
“Hauled her right in,” Garcia said, “like a lobster pot.”
“Lord.”
Garcia said, “Fact is, we really shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re the prime suspect.”
“That’s very funny.” Stranahan looked at Luis Cordova. “Is he kidding?”
The young marine patrolman shook his head.
Garcia said, “Mick, your track record is not so hot. I mean, you already got a few notches on your belt.”
“Not murder.”
“ Chloe hated your guts,” Al Garcia said, in the tone of a reminder.
“That’s my motive? She hated my guts?”
“Then there’s the dough.”
“You think I’d kill her over a crummy one-hundred fifty dollars a month?”
“The principle,” Al Garcia said, unwrapping a cigar. “I think you just might do it over the principle of the thing.”
Stranahan leaned back with a tired sigh. He felt bad about Chloe’s death, but mostly he felt curious. What the hell was she doing out here at night?
“I always heard good things about you,” Al Garcia said, “mainly from Timmy Gavigan.”
“Yeah, he said the same for you.”
“And the way Eckert dumped you from the State Attorney’s, that was low.”
Stranahan shrugged. “They don’t forget it when you shoot a judge. It’s bound to make people nervous.”
Garcia made a great ceremony of lighting the cigar. Afterwards, he blew two rings of smoke and said, “For what it’s worth, Luis here doesn’t think you did it.”
“It’s the anchor business,” Luis Cordova explained, “very strange.” He was trying to sound all business, as if the friendship meant nothing.
Stranahan said, “The murder’s got to be connected to the fire.”
“The fire was an arson,” Luis said. “Boat gas and a match. These houses are nothing but tinder.” To make his point, he tapped the rubber heel of his shoe on the pine floor.