“Bye,” she called. She waved goodbye, barefoot, swinging her sandals, then she turned and walked into the house. I watched through the back window as B.J. pulled away from the curb. Ely practically bounced up to the door. The buzzer sounded, and she passed inside. I saw her bending over talking to the person behind the counter as the door swung closed.
I settled myself on the seat next to the door.
We drove up Sunrise, past the strip malls and the fast-food joints. Groups of men loitered outside the convenience stores drinking out of paper bags in the glare of the fluorescent lights. Young women in skintight miniskirts stood talking in groups outside a package store. In the very next block, a brilliantly lit showroom displayed dozens of exotic Jaguars, Rolls-Royces, and Maseratis. I’d grown up in South Florida, and most of the time I loved my home, but there was a squalor, a tackiness that lived right next door to the palatial homes of the rich and famous. Just down the street from the oceanfront million-dollar condos we were passing prostitutes, drug dealers, adult bookstores. The neon lights bathed the street-level ugliness with a day-bright glow and lit the overhead tangle of telephone and electrical wires. I imagined for a moment that if alien spaceships ever hovered over this part of South Florida, they might think the earth’s inhabitants were a mutant form of spiders waiting to catch them in their wire webs.
“Where’s your Jeep?”
B.J. startled me with his question.
“It’s still down by Bahia Cabana.”
“Would you rather I take you back to pick up Lightnin’, or straight home?”
I thought about the mess in my cottage, and I groaned. “Damn, I’d almost forgotten.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody broke into the cottage last night while I was having dinner with you at the Downtowner. They really trashed the place. It’s still a mess. I didn’t feel like cleaning up, so I slept on the boat last night.”
“Did they take anything?”
“Only my rainy-day fund—about two grand.”
He let out a long, low whistle. “Would you feel more comfortable sleeping on the couch at my place tonight?”
I didn’t want to explain to him that I thought Neal had tossed my place, and that he might have killed that girl, and that both thoughts scared the hell out of me. I needed a good night’s sleep. If Big Guy and Shorty knew who I was, then they could easily find out where I lived and come back at night. The thought of sleeping with B.J. just in the other room sounded mighty appealing.
“I don’t want to put you to any kind of trouble.”
“It’s no problem,” he said in the fake South Pacific accent he sometimes used. In a matter of seconds he could switch from Masterpiece Theatre to Hawaii 5-0.
“I guess it would be better, then. Maybe you could run me over to pick up Lightnin’ in the morning?”
“Sure, my pleasure.”
B.J.’s apartment was a one-bedroom unit in a motel down near Dania Beach. A short section of the beach was backed with older vacation homes and run-down motels that had long been out of favor with any but the most tight-fisted tourists. Martha’s Restaurant and the Intracoastal Waterway were along one side of A1A, and the aging tourist traps were on the other. The older motels were slowly being bought up a few at a time, and the developers were building high-end townhouses or, more recently, posh beach condo towers. The Sands Motel (B.J. referred to the place as the “Shiftless Sands”) remained tucked back on a narrow street nestled in the shadows of the derricks building the high-rises. The bungalows were arranged around a sand and weed courtyard that harbored a motley collection of broken patio furniture and sun-bleached plastic toys. Several cement sea horses were stuck to the sides of buildings, and round concrete picnic tables were arranged around an old gas grill.
B.J. jingled his keys as we crossed the dark courtyard, and a black cat streaked out from under an ixora bush. It threaded its way between B.J.’s legs, leaning against his ankle and purring loudly.
“Okay, Savai’i, I know you’re hungry. You smell the moo shu pork.”
“I don’t believe it, B.J. You have a cat?” I looked up at him over the top of the white bags in my arms. We had stopped at Chinese Moon for takeout. “You might end up with cat hair on your clothes.” He was always disgustedly picking Abaco’s black hairs off my clothes.
Balancing the aluminum screen door open with his foot, he put the key in the lock. “She adopted me. I had no choice in the matter.”
“Oh, brother, even female cats can’t resist you.”
He pushed open the door and stepped into the dark room, but before he turned on the lights, I saw his teeth flash in a grin.
I’d only been inside his apartment once before, but I remembered the decor. It was a strange combination of tacky Florida transient and refined tastes. It had been a furnished apartment when he rented it, but it was now personalized with B.J.’s eclectic collection of personal belongings. On the chipped and dented gray terrazzo floors rested a thin blue-and-white hand-tied Oriental rug. The kitchenette consisted of a single-burner propane camp stove next to the sink on what had once been the suite’s minibar. A huge brown-and-white Samoan tapa cloth adorned one wall, while the remaining walls were covered with books neatly arranged in stacks of wooden orange crates. A small collection of exquisite jade and brass Buddha figurines was arranged atop one of the crates.
When he’d finished eating, B.J. washed up his plate, and I scraped the last of the shrimp fried rice out of the carton onto my fork. I refuse to eat Chinese food on a plate. It just doesn’t taste the same, and besides, it gets cold. I walked to the sink, gave him my fork, and dropped the empty white box into the trash.
He hung the terry dish towel on a cabinet door handle and handed me a cup of strong black tea. He had left the front door open, and through the screen I could hear the pounding surf on the beach half a block away. The air smelled tangy. I didn’t need to see it to know that the high-water mark was piled with dark seaweed, pushed ashore by the north swells.
Padding in his bare feet to the low table in the center of the room, he sat cross-legged on the floor and began to read the newspaper. A small transistor radio tuned to NPR played soft Brazilian jazz. B.J.’s hair, pulled tight against his scalp, shone in the light from the rice paper globe overhead. He looked so completely relaxed. I imagined that he would have done exactly the same things whether or not I was there. It was pretty decent of him to give me plenty of breathing room.
I looked up at the blue-and-green surfboard on a rack high on the wall. I had first met B.J. when I was still with the beach patrol. I knew quite a few surfers then. My brother Pit had been one. Several of the guys told me that B.J. was good enough to compete as a pro but that he would never do it. They said surfing was a spiritual thing to him.
Silently I mouthed the names on some of the books in the crates against the walclass="underline" Plato, Ezra Pound, Edmund Spenser, Krishnamurti, Mark Twain, Immanuel Kant. I didn’t know them all, but I knew of enough of them to know that I didn’t want to go up against him in a game of Jeopardy. There were both hardcovers and paperbacks, and most of them looked old and well thumbed.
He was still engrossed in his paper. I’d meant it when I said I didn’t want to put him out. I sat down on the tropical-print futon folded up against the wall, nearly spilling my tea in the process. How could he sit so still? Granted, he was extremely limber from practicing aikido most of his life, but even so, I found his state of total relaxation unnerving sometimes. I studied the way he had his legs crossed. He had a lot less hair on his inner thighs. It was amazing that he managed to keep his back so straight. Setting my teacup down on the floor, I tried to pull my left foot up on top of my right thigh. My knee made a loud popping noise, and something along the back of my leg hurt like hell. B.J. didn’t even look up. I guessed he was still giving me that breathing room. But on the other hand, it would be nice to be noticed.