“Where’s your home office?”
“Framingham, Massachusetts.”
“You happen to have a business card with you?” the second trooper said, and the highway went silent.
Eugene smiled pleasantly and said, “I don’t understand, officer. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. We were just wondering how come six respectable businessmen are traveling together with only this luggage, that’s all.”
Again the highway was silent. Off in the mangroves Rodiz could hear a bird calling stridently.
“There are six bags,” Rodiz said.
“Six overnight bags,” the trooper said.
“So?”
“So nothing. Six overnight bags, all the way from Framingham, Massachusetts.”
“We’re traveling light,” Rodiz said.
“What’s your name, mister?”
“Rafael Rodiz.”
“You Spanish?”
“Panamanian.”
“You’re from Panama?”
“That’s right.”
“Where in Panama?”
“Colón.”
“Mind if I see your passport?”
“I’m an American citizen,” Rodiz said. “I’ve been in this country seven years.”
“In Framingham?” the trooper asked.
“That’s right.”
“Got any proof of citizenship? Naturalization certificate? Draft card?”
“No, but—”
“All right, mister, you want to open those bags,” the first trooper said, and he drew his pistol. “You fellows get over here on the side of the car, let’s go,” he said, waving the pistol. The second trooper, following his lead, came over to Rodiz with his pistol in his hand and pointed to the bags with it. “Go on, open them,” he said.
Rodiz nodded and kneeled behind the closest bag.
“I don’t understand this, officer,” Eugene said. “Why are you—”
“Let’s just hold the violins a minute, huh?” the first trooper said. “Maybe you don’t see anything fishy about six guys driving along a highway at nine o’clock in the morning, but we do, okay? So if everything’s all right, you’ll be on your way in just a few minutes, provided your friend here can come up with some kind of satisfactory identification. You don’t expect us to—”
The first shot took the trooper between the eyes, and the second one was placed just a trifle lower and to the left so that it passed through his left cheekbone and blew away half of his skull as it exited. The other trooper stood stock-still as his partner collapsed to the highway dripping blood, and then, his reaction time just a few seconds too late, he raised his pistol and was about to pull off a shot at Rodiz when the next three bullets came in rapid succession, each thudding into his chest and sending him reeling back against the trunk of the car. He said something unintelligible — it could have been “Martha,” it could have been “Mother” — and then rolled onto the highway and lay still and bleeding beside his partner. Rodiz looked at them both silently. In the mangroves there was the flutter of wings, and then stillness. The men on the highway stood motionless. Rodiz said, “Get the patrol car, one of you.”
“What do we do?” Eugene asked.
“You, Vinny!” Rodiz snapped. “Get the car, hurry! The rest of you, pull them off the road, behind the car there. Go ahead.”
He threw the .38 into the bag again, zipped it shut, and hoisted it into the trunk.
“The flat,” Eugene said.
“In the back.”
“The other bags.”
“Hurry.”
“Here comes Vinny.”
“Get them.”
“What’ll we do with them?”
“The back. The trunk of their car.”
“Vinny, open the trunk.”
“Which key?”
“Find it.”
“This?”
“I need a hat from one of them.”
“There, it’s open.”
“This doesn’t fit. Give me the other one.”
“There’s blood on it.”
“Hurry.”
“You want them both in the trunk?”
“Yes, hurry. Is this better?”
“It’s all right. You going to drive them?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Into the water.”
“The ocean?”
“No, a swamp. We’ll find a swamp someplace.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. This is the Florida Keys. There’s got to be a goddamn swamp or a marsh someplace, doesn’t there?”
“Rafe, they’re in.”
“Close the trunk.”
“There’s blood on the fender.”
“Wipe it off.”
“What about the road?”
“They’ll think an animal got hit. How does this hat look?”
“Fine.”
“I’m gonna sit behind the wheel. Can you tell I’m not a trooper?”
“Rafe, let’s get moving.”
“In a minute, Vinny. What do you say, Eugene?”
“You look okay. Shall we follow you, or what?”
“You’ll have to.”
“Suppose we don’t find a marsh?”
“I’ll drive them right into the goddamn Atlantic.”
“Rafe?”
“What?”
“You killed them,” Eugene said. “You killed them both.”
“I know I did. So?”
“Nothing,” Eugene said, and shrugged. “Nothing.”
Rodiz got behind the wheel of the police car with his heart pounding and the stupid blood-stained state police hat hanging down over his ears, aware that there were two dead troopers in the trunk behind him and wondering whether or not their blood was seeping through the trunk and onto the highway. He drove at forty miles an hour, and the low speed seemed intolerable; he was sure that everyone in the world knew there were two dead men in the trunk. What the hell had that last marker said? What key was this, Summerland? Was this Summerland already? God, they were getting too close to Ocho Puertos! He began searching for a cutoff and found it at the eastern end of the island, a road marked S-492. Abruptly he made a screeching right turn and headed for the ocean. He recognized at once that he was driving into a community of houses built on long stretches of packed coral and that he could no more dump the police car here than he could in the middle of Key West’s Duval Street. He made a dusty U-turn, passing Eugene and the others in the car behind him, and then glancing into the rearview mirror to see if they had executed the same turn and were still with him. He was beginning to sweat profusely in the Italian silk suit now. He wondered whether he could conceivably pull the car off into the mangroves someplace and hope that it would be hidden from the road. He doubted it. And then suddenly he was on Ramrod Key with the road heading straight for Big Pine and still no place to dump the car, and then he was on Big Pine itself. He wet his lips and became really frightened then because he seemed to remember from the map that Big Pine was just that, a big island with plenty of people and houses and stores, and here he was sitting in a police car with a silly hat on his head and two dead men in the trunk. But wasn’t there a long spit of land here, jutting out into the Atlantic, pointing west? Hadn’t he seen that on one of the charts Randy and Jason had gone over repeatedly in the Miami warehouse? Wasn’t there a beach on that chart? He followed U.S. 1 until it curved right at Bogie Channel to parallel Spanish Harbor, and then continued on down, ignoring the bridge that led to the Spanish Harbor Keys. He drove south and then turned west onto Long Beach. He’d been right; there was a beach. Desperately he began searching for a spot to sink the car. He passed the single house on the beach and then there was only sand and mud and grass. He wished he had one of those charts now, wished he knew how deep the inshore waters were, and then suddenly realized he would have to do something soon, sink or swim, before he reached the end of the beach. He slowed the car, searching for an incline, dropping speed to the point where he almost stalled, and then throwing the car into second and hearing the police radio on the dashboard erupting with a call — was it for this car? He spotted a small shelf of land sloping into what looked like deep grass and mud, and wrenched the wheel sharply until the car was poised on the edge of the drop, ready to plummet below. The radio in the car was still calling when he carefully opened the door and stepped into the road. Eugene had parked the rented sedan some twenty feet behind him. Rodiz looked down the slope again and then threw the borrowed hat onto the front seat and placed his arm stiffly against the door plate and shoved. The car began rolling at once. He watched it silently as it gathered speed going down the slope and then began sinking into the mud.