“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder.”
“You need to start making plans.”
“I’m still thinking about Janet.”
“That’s what I’m talking about.”
“I never should have let her leave the truck stop. If only I’d driven faster…”
ANNA LOOKED AT the speedometer. A hundred and five. She took the second exit off the Interstate and raced east down a county road with cattle fencing and no street lights. Anna knew the area; she turned up an unmarked dirt road. The Trans Am had what’s known as racing suspension, which means it’s bad. Especially doing fifty without pavement. The uneven earth threw the car around. It seemed like forever, but the road soon dumped into a pasture. A dark aluminum building came into view at the edge of the Australian pines. Janet’s car was already there. Janet waiting inside. Good. Anna pulled nose-to-nose with the other car. What was up with Janet’s windshield? Those would be bullet holes. Thirty.
Headlights came on from an unseen car behind the building, two tubes of lighted fog across the field.
Anna threw the car in reverse, looked over her shoulder and began backing up as fast as she could. The rear end swished in the dirt. High beams from the oncoming car hit the Trans Am. Anna didn’t turn around, just kept fighting the Pontiac’s back end trying to muscle itself off the road. The other car was a quarter mile and closing, a white Mercedes with tinted windows. Anna came to the end of the dirt road, spinning backward onto the hardtop. She threw it in drive, went maybe fifty feet, then killed the lights and dove down another dirt road that she knew from memory would be there. The Mercedes wasn’t far behind; they’d check down the road and see her taillights. So Anna cut the wheel and crashed into the palmettos. She jumped out and braced behind a tree.
The end of the dirt road: High beams grew brighter on the hardtop until a white Mercedes came into view. It stopped. Anna knew they were looking. She didn’t breathe. An eternity. The Mercedes accelerated away.
Anna jumped in the Trans Am, praying it wasn’t stuck. She hit the gas and the front end popped out of the crunched brush. The car rolled without headlights back to the edge of the county highway. Anna looked to the right. No sign of the Mercedes. She turned left and floored it.
ANNA SAT BACK in her chair in the No Name. “…And then I called you from the turnpike and came here.”
“Jesus.”
“Thanks again for meeting me like this.”
“I told you, I’d meet you anywhere.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” asked Anna.
“Why?”
“You had that big falling-out with him. And everyone I know in our circle is dead.”
“Your circle,” corrected the man. “We were the ones who met you at the marina. It’s a little different code among us.”
“I remember that day. I didn’t like you.”
He smiled. “I could tell.”
“So what happened?”
“Fernandez got too crazy.”
“Is that his real name? I just heard his nickname.”
“That’s part of the myth. Except it wasn’t all myth. The violence is mostly true. But the worst part was his stare. He has this way of looking at you—”
“When? I never saw him,” said Anna. “In fact, come to think of it, I don’t know anyone who’s ever seen him.”
“Almost nobody has.”
ON THE OTHER side of the No Name Pub, Rebel Starke leaned low over the bar and spoke like a conspiracy. “Nobody’s ever seen him and lived to tell. Nobody knows what he looks like. He lives right across that bridge….”
“You guys are wussies!” said Sop Choppy. “That’s just a fairy tale.”
“I believe it,” said Bud. “I know this guy he had killed. Castrated him with a sharpened melon scoop, let him bleed out.”
“Who?” said Sop Choppy.
“My wife knows this woman at work. Her brother’s friend heard it—”
“Exactly!” said Sop Choppy. “Someone told someone told someone else. That’s how urban legends start.”
“How do you explain that big house across the channel?” said Bud. “Nobody’s seen the owner.”
“I believe some hermit lives over on No Name,” said Sop Choppy. “So what? That island’s full of recluses. And as far as the dope-running… like that’s far-fetched. Throw a rock anywhere in the Keys and it’ll bounce off three smugglers. I’d be more astounded if he ran a tire store. Remember back in the eighties when every other phone booth around here had a number to call if you found a bale, and a van would come by in thirty minutes and give you five grand, no questions asked? They were more dependable than Domino’s.”
“What about the model-ship story?” said Rebel. “That one I definitely believe.”
“Me, too,” said Bud. “The ship story is practically legend. I’ve heard it from at least four different people.”
“Big deal. A lot of people are telling the same rumor,” said Sop Choppy. “How many times have you heard the one about the rock star who had all that semen pumped out of his stomach?”
“I heard that one,” said Coleman. “It was—”
“Shhhhhh!” said Serge. “If you can’t say something nice about someone…”
“The point I’m making is it’s a physical and medical impossibility,” said Sop Choppy. “Semen’s nontoxic, so there’s no need to pump, and as far as the ridiculous amounts in those stories, it would take like two hundred guys to produce that kind of… What? Why are you all looking at me like that for? I don’t do it. I’m just saying check the facts before you go believing every stupid rumor you hear.”
“What’s the model-ship story?” asked Coleman.
“Don’t tell that idiotic thing again,” said Sop Choppy. “Everyone’s heard it.”
“I haven’t,” said Daytona Dave.
“Me neither,” said Coleman.
“Okay,” said Rebel. “There are only two things known for sure about the owner of that house: He’s ordered the murders of more than a hundred men, and he loves building model ships—”
“I’m telling you he doesn’t exist,” said Sop Choppy.
IN THE BACK of the pub, Anna Sebring picked at her fingertips. “Who’s seen him besides you?”
“Just a handful of the top people in Miami and South America. He actually gets a kick out of all the rumors. He’s got it so half the people around here are afraid to say his name and the rest don’t even believe he exists.”
“What about the guys you were with at the marina?”
“Nope. None of them was ever allowed to meet him. That’s the way he wanted it. Put an extra level of fear in the ranks in case someone decided to skim.”
“All I know is he’s an asshole,” said Anna.
“That’s why I had to quit. Too erratic with the violence. Didn’t make business sense.”
“So he just let you leave?”
“No, he had some guys looking for me awhile. To be honest, I was pretty scared. But I had some friends, too. He might take me out, but not without a war. We came to an agreement.”
They stopped and looked at each other. The man squinted at Anna. “You understand the risk you’re taking just by sitting here? He’s right over that bridge.”
“I know.” She was still fidgeting with her fingers.
“You fled all the way from Fort Pierce to be in his backyard?”
“He murdered my brother.” She looked up. “Will you help?”
“Don’t even—”
“I’m gonna kill him. I don’t give a shit anymore.”
The man shook his head. “I can’t help. It’s part of our understanding. When I walked away, I walked away. He gets the big house and I get a crummy job, but at least I’m alive.”
“You liked my brother.”
“I did.”
“And you won’t help?”
“Anything else. You need cash? Help getting away? I’ll even go over there and talk to him for you if you want.”