Tango key, p.30
Tango Key, page 30
She stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way to the station and called Kincaid's house. She got his answering machine. She thought a moment, fed another quarter into the phone, and dialed the number at Lester's Bar.
"Lester's," shouted a male voice over the background din of Elvis Presley singing "Heartbreak Hotel."
"Ryan Kincaid, please."
"Hold on a second, miss."
She heard him shout for Kincaid. She heard the ring of the cash register. The Elvis song ended. The sun beat against her neck, and she moved as far as she could to the side, trying to get into the shade of the awning.
"This is Kincaid."
"It's me. I was afraid I might've missed you."
"I just dropped Ferret off. What's up?"
She told him.
"I'm on my way."
During the winter, the Tango boardwalk was crowded with tourists. Sunbathers lounged in front of the cafes, people from places like Iowa and Nebraska hustled in and out of the shops, college kids necked and guzzled beer along the railing. But now, in the first week of July, in the middle of the week, the only people out and about were those on late lunch breaks and the die-hard sun worshipers who would have skin cancer by the time they were fifty.
Aline sat by herself at a table two doors away from Pepe's, a tall glass of iced tea in front of her. She had fixed her hair on top of her head and covered it with a floppy white straw hat. She wore very dark sunglasses, white slacks, and a white cotton tank top with an open yellow print blouse over it. Her legs were pulled up against her, heels hooked onto the edge of the chair, and she had a paperback open in her lap. By keeping her head slightly bowed, she gave the impression that she was deeply absorbed in her book, when in fact she'd barely glanced at it since she'd sat down.
She kept her eyes on the tables outside of Pepe's Cafe, where several people were standing at the counter, sipping espressos. Ortiz was among them, plainly visible in his lime green guayabera shirt, tipping an espresso cup to his mouth. Next to him was Alan Cooper, decked out in casual island clothes.
Just beyond the tables at Pepe's she spotted Mark Finley, her bookstore manager, and Todd McGuire strolling toward her. Finley was licking at an ice cream cone and Todd was patting his midriff and shaking his head as if saying, Thanks, but no thanks, Mark. I'm still on a diet. Cold spots of dread pimpled the back of her neck as she realized she was about to find out whether her disguise was any good. Go away, Mark. Don't stop, Mark. Keep on walking, Mark, yeah, great, that's right.
Both men glanced directly at her but didn't stop, didn't give the slightest indication that they recognized her.
She glanced at her watch: 2:45.
Ortiz was looking around, and he and Alan walked over to a table, pulled out chairs, and sat down.
She reached for her iced tea, and just then a voice to her left said, "Al?"
Oh Christ. Jack Dobbs came around from behind her chair and sat next to her. He set a bag from Jimmy's Subs in front of him. "Good thing it was you. I woulda been awfully embarrassed if it hadn't been," he said. "You heard about Murphy?"
"Just that they found him," she lied.
"Up in that old motel on the Post Road," Dobbs said, biting into his sub. "Crazy fucker's been drunk for two days. Frederick questioned him, sobered him up, and released him."
As Dobbs leaned over the napkins he'd spread on the table, she glanced quickly toward Ortiz and Alan. They were talking to a kid on a bike, who handed Ortiz a brown envelope. The Cuban asked him something; the kid shrugged and shook his head and wheeled off down the boardwalk. Ortiz tucked the envelope under his arm and walked away.
"What's the point of arresting him? He doesn't know anything about where Eve is," she said.
"I told Murphy right from the start that babe was bad news."
"Which start?"
He looked up then, dabbing at a spot of mayonnaise that had smudged in a corner of his mouth. He had tipped his sunglasses back into his khaki hair, and she saw the truth in his eyes: that he'd known about Eve and Murphy's affair for a whole lot longer than she had, perhaps since its inception.
And yet he'd never said anything. He'd offered her platitudes about how Murphy needed space and some time, that was all. So friendship, like love, she thought, had been split down the middle, neatly reduced to his and hers.
"Since the night of the—"
"Jack, don't lie. Please. Do us both a favor and don't lie, all right?"
He set down the remainder of his sub, attempted a contrite expression, but failed and merely looked annoyed. "How could I say anything, Aline? It wasn't my place to tell you. Murphy should have. But he's a coward, he always has been. In some ways, he was doing to you what Monica did to him when she was having her affair. Not confronting it. But at some level you must've known, Al, just like Murphy knew."
"I thought you told me you were convinced she wasn't the type to have an affair, Jack. That Murphy had never spoken to you about it."
"Well, yeah. But her brother had mentioned his suspicions about it, and he knew her a lot better than I did. So maybe there is something to it. All I'm saying is that if she was having an affair, then Murphy knew it at some level. You always do."
"Yeah." She drank down the rest of her iced tea, then got up, disturbed by something about this business with Monica, with the past. "Gotta run, Jack."
"You parked in the lot?"
She nodded.
"Hold on and I'll walk out with you." He popped the rest of his sub in his mouth and tossed the bag and papers in the trash as they headed for the lot. "Is Frederick going to have Murphy tailed, just in case?"
"In case of what?"
"In case he's a lot smarter than any of us have given him credit for."
"No, he's going to leave Murphy alone." But I'm not.
* * *
Fifteen minutes after Aline had called Ortiz, he arrived at her place. He looked frazzled from the heat and had lost some of that cool Latin composure that had seemed so intimately a part of who he was. His cheeks were damp, and he patted at his face with a handkerchief and poked his aviator glasses back onto his nose. "This kid on the bike, Aline," he said, settling on the couch in the living room. "He claims a woman came out of one of the shops and offered him fifty dollars to deliver the envelope to the man in the guayabera shirt sitting at the table in front of Pepe's. Me."
"A woman? What'd she look like?"
"Just some woman,' the kid says. He thought maybe she had dark hair, but he wasn't sure. He heard 'fifty bucks' and was gone."
Swell. "What shop?"
"He says the pizza place."
For all the difference it would make now. Eve's disguise must've been awfully damn good to get from wherever she was to the boardwalk without being recognized by someone. And how'd she get here? Cab? A rental car? A friend? But which friend? Eve Cooper had no friends. She had men. She had lovers. But not friends.
"Here's what he gave me," Ortiz said, and passed her the brown envelope.
She opened it and removed the sheet of paper inside. It was blank. She shook the envelope, but nothing fell out. She glanced at the paper again, as if hoping that something had appeared on it in the few seconds since she'd looked at it. Nothing had. She smelled it. She ran her hands over both sides, but they were as smooth as a baby's skin.
Ortiz said, "My guess, Aline, is that she recognized you."
"But then why do anything? Why give the kid the envelope with a blank sheet of paper? Why not just leave?"
"Maybe it is just her way of saying she was onto us."
No, not just that. Eve had to twist the knife a little deeper, had to rub it in, had to make sure Aline clearly understood who the victor in this intricate game had been.
But the game, she thought, wasn't over.
It was just beginning.
After Ortiz had left, Aline showered and changed clothes. She filled Wolfe's bowl with enough food to keep him through tomorrow morning and changed his litter box. He was none too pleased about being cooped up indoors all day, and for a few minutes followed her around the house with his tail quivering like he was going to let a load fly.
She packed a picnic basket with a thermos of herbal tea, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit. She made sure she had extra ammunition. She turned on her answering machine. Then she hopped in her car and drove to Murphy's. His Scirocco was in the driveway, the gate open, the lid of the mailbox standing upright. Good. He was home, and he'd picked up his mail.
Aline drove around the block and spotted the Saab parked under the umbrageous folds of a banyan, catty-corner to Murphy's place. She abandoned her Honda two blocks later and trotted back through the heat on foot, to the Saab. Kincaid was slumped down low in his seat as she opened the door and ducked in. Light poured through the sunroof, bleaching his sandy hair almost white. His face was already sunburned.
"Company." He smiled. "Thank God."
She set the picnic basket between them. "When'd he get home?"
"About an hour ago. He picked up his mail and went inside, and less than five minutes later he started loading some stuff into his car." He tapped the top of the picnic basket. "What happened with the boardwalk?"
She told him.
"So we're going to the farmhouse to wait for her." It wasn't a question.
"You have any better ideas?"
"Yeah, let's drive to Miami and fly to Chile."
"Sure''
"Al, I hate to pop your bubble, but I think your paranoia has gotten the best of you. If Eve sent those notes about the sale of the frog and if she recognized you on the boardwalk, she would not stick around to pay some kid on a bike fifty bucks just to deliver a blank sheet of paper to Carlos so she could twist the knife in you about Murphy."
"This isn't just about Murphy."
"That isn't my point."
"Then what the hell is your point?" She glared at him, at the gray speckling his beard, at his sunglasses tucked into his shirt pocket, at the set in his lapis eyes. "Huh? What is it?"
"You're making her out to be some vindictive woman who'll take every opportunity to rub salt in your wounds. The truth is, she's probably known about you and Murphy since the beginning and hasn't given you a thought since. She just doesn't give a shit. Eve is into Eve. Period. That's it."
Diogenes, Aline thought, pressing her thumb and forefinger against the bridge of her nose. He thinks he's Diogenes. But maybe that was Kincaid's role in this little drama. Kincaid was the truth-sayer—or the World in Lilly the Mentalist's Tarot cards. Eve was the High Priestess. The Devil represented Murphy. The Crumbling Tower symbolized the past. And I'm the fool.
Wonderful.
"So then who was the brunette who paid the kid on the bike the fifty bucks?"
"Maybe she works in one of the stores and someone paid her to pay someone else."
"But who? Alan Cooper? Murphy?"
"I don't know," he said. "We'll just have to wait and see."
"At the farmhouse."
"At the farmhouse," he echoed, and off they went.
July 6, 5:00 P.M.
In here, Evie, calls her daddy.
She hears the voice, but it's so dark and the air smells funny and the place between her legs burns. And her head hurts. What's she lying on?
The thing that fell over. Yes, she remembers. She remembers the blood she saw in the toilet and how the candle winked out and how she fell. She must have gone to sleep for a long, long, time after she hit her head because her eyes feel better; they aren't filled with sand now.
Matches. First she has to find the matches and the candle. "Daddy?" she whispers. "You there?"
Her words hiss out into the dark and seem to echo. But she doesn't hear her daddy. She crawls over the thing that fell, toward where the table should be. Her hand comes down on something sharp and she cries out, rolls back onto her heels, feels the end of a splinter of glass sticking up from the center of her hand. Whimpering, she tries to pick it out with her nails. When that doesn't work, she sucks at it, tasting blood.
The matches, Evie, find the matches first.
Her daddy again. She calls to him, loudly this time. He doesn't answer. She crawls to the right of where the glass is, and moves toward where she thinks she heard his voice. Her feet slide into the pile of matches and she laughs gaily, dipping her hands into them, and then up, spewing the matchbooks into the air. They rain down around her. She grabs a handful and stuffs them into the pockets of her jeans. She strikes two matches and holds them up high, so she can see.
9he spots the carton where she found the candle before. She digs into it, finds two more candles. She lights one, tucks the other in the waistband of her jeans, under her shirt. She feels it against her skin, smooth and cool. Now she'll always have light. Always.
She giggles and hurries across the room to the sink, to the shelves stacked high with cans, boxes of food, to the jars of water. Eve melts wax onto the edge of the counter first, twists the candle into it, then lifts one of the jugs off the shelf. She unscrews the cap and tilts it to her mouth. It tastes gross, of Plastic. But she's too thirsty to spit it out, and she drinks and drinks, water dribbling down her chin, the front of her shirt. Then she sets it down and looks at the labels on the cans of food. Apple sauce. Her favorite. She yanks open the drawers, looking for a can opener. The one she finds is rusty and barely works, but she keeps trying and finally gets the lid open enough so she can pry it back. She grabs a spoon from the drawer and drops it into the apple sauce and shovels it into her mouth.
It tastes funny, but it oozes over her broken teeth and eases that soft, persistent throb in her gums. Her stomach rumbles for more. She plucks another can off the shelf, removes the lid. Peaches in sweet, thick syrup. She dips her fingers into the syrup and the slices of peaches wiggle like worms as she tries to catch them. She sighs as the first slice slides over her tongue. She sits on the floor with it and finishes half the can. She sets it aside, wanting something else, something that will fill her. Meat. I want meat. But the cans contain nothing except fruit, and the boxes are things like cereal and grains.
"Meat meat meat." She crouches and pulls open the door to the cabinet under the sink. It's too dark to see anything. She lights the second candle, makes a nest of wax for it on the floor. There. Now she can see. More jugs of water. Cans of juices. A box of detergent. Insect spray. A carton of Pall Mall cigarettes. She rips open the carton, pulls out a pack, tears it open, lights a cigarette, and inhales it sitting there on the concrete floor. The first puff makes her so dizzy she stabs it out. But she pushes the pack into the pocket of her shirt and begins grabbing at the jugs of water, the cans of juices, tossing them out of the storage area, looking for food, real food. Meat. Sausage. Anything that will take away the dull hunger in her gut.
A while later, everything under the sink is strewn around her, and there's no meat. She screams. She pounds her fists against the cabinet door. It makes the cabinet rattle, and the drawer, which is tottering in its slot like a seesaw, suddenly tumbles to the floor, knocking over the can of peaches. Knives and forks and spoons clatter against the concrete. She grabs a long knife and slaps the flat edge of it against a jug of water.
"Punith," she whispers, and slaps it again, harder. "Punith punith." Then she clutches the knife in her hand and plunges it into the side of the jug. "Bad Doug, bad." She yanks the knife out and drives it into the jug again and again. Water leaks out of the holes. The knife comes through the other side of the jug and strikes the flour, bending the tip. She screams and kicks the jug away from her, then spins on her buttocks and impales the next jug with the knife. Again and again she thrusts, her chest heaving, her breath coming hard, her heart hammering. "You thouldn't have been tho mean, Doug." She carves into the jug now, smiling, pressing down on the edge of the knife, then jamming the tip up under the lip of the jug and lifting it. She hurls it across the room and turns to attack another jug, but they're all dead.
Dead dead dead
But the knife is alive in her hand. The knife pulses. The knife whispers to her. She slams it against the peaches that have spilled out of the overturned can, chopping them to bits. She whirls and plunges the knife into the side of a can of juice. But the tip is so bent it doesn't penetrate the aluminum, and the force sweeps up her arm and jars her gums. She screams and her hands fly to her mouth, her face. The knife hits the floor, and she sobs and sobs until her nose is so stuffed she can barely breathe.
She stretches out in the puddles of water, resting her forehead against the lower edge of the storage area, sniffling. She tells herself that when she opens her eyes, she will find herself in her room at home. In her wide, comfortable bed. In her ice blue nightgown. A man will be touching her, kissing her.
She shudders.
No.
The burning between her legs seems worse now. She has to pee. She is afraid that when she pees, she will see more blood. She will die like Mama did.
When she raises her head, she sees an opening in the wall under the sink, a vertical shaft of darkness. Frowning, she hunkers down and fits her fingers into the slat and shoves hard to the right. A door slides open.
"Daddy?" she calls.
In here, Evie, he whispers back, and she grins and reaches for the candle on the counter. She blows it out and loosens the other one from the floor. Her fingers pick through the knives scattered across the floor until she settles on a meat cleaver. It's heavy, but she knows her daddy would want her to take it with her.
She thrusts her legs into the space under the sink and wiggles through this new hole. She fixes the candle to the floor inside, then closes the outer door, the one to the cabinet, and then the door closest to her, the new door.
