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“Ed. What’s going on?”
“Tried calling you with this last night, but you weren’t answering. Figured you should know, your name’s on this story out here. Doyle gonna know you dropped the dime on him.”
“That’s good to know,” I said. “How’d you guys lose him?”
Ed chuckled. It sounded a little bit more like the old Ed, a little less strained and more amused. “He went and lost his own self. He’s under house arrest, discreetly observed by an Officer Bowden, and he just ups and slips off.”
“You mean he broke his word?”
“His word,” said Ed, and I heard him light a new Kool, “and Officer Bowden’s neck.”
“Oh,” I said. I remembered the terrible speed and strength of those hands. “Where do you think he went?”
“Well, Billy, I can only guess he’s gone out of my jurisdiction.”
“Good guess.”
“But since part of the indictment is federal, I talked some FBI guys into putting a watch on his boat in Texas.”
“Good thinking.”
“Only half-good, Billy. We got a missing-presumed-dead federal agent on our hands, and that sailboat’s gone, too. Got to figure Doyle is taking his self a little vacation.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess it was too much to hope he’d stand trial.”
“Yeah-huh.”
“He’ll be on his way to Central America by now.”
“He could be, Billy. He could be. They got a watch on every port in the Caribbean, all up and down South and Central America. Makes me feel safe.” I could almost see that Cheshire grin through the cloud of smoke. “But I’m out of it now, and you are too. One way or another, this is about wrapped up now.”
“I guess you’re right, Ed,” I said.
But Ed was wrong. We both were.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sunday morning at five A.M. I was already motoring slowly out of the channel and under the bridge.
The weather was good, in spite of a hurricane thrashing around in the Caribbean. They thought it might be a big one, and they were calling it Andrew. It was expected to move in on the mainland sometime in the next two days, but I didn’t think it would come anywhere near Key West.
Of course, you don’t have to be near a hurricane to get some bad storms. Every place within three hundred miles of the eye could be in for bad weather.
But this morning the seas were still calm and I had a charter who wanted a tarpon, no matter what.
My charter was two guys in their mid-thirties, very tan and fit-looking. They said they didn’t get seasick; they seemed to think that the idea was a little bit funny. So I opened up the throttle and headed for the Marquesas. If the weather turned bad, we were less than a half-hour’s run from shelter.
The two guys, Bill and Bob, didn’t say much. They just sat on their seat. Every now and then they would turn their heads slightly to look at something, but other than that they just sat quietly.
They’d been quiet since climbing onto the boat at the dock in the pre-dawn dimness. They’d been there when I arrived, standing beside the slip with a nylon gym bag apiece. They didn’t want coffee or anything else from the dockmaster’s shack. “Let’s not keep the fish waiting,” Bill had said. Bob had given him a small “huh” of laughter, like that was a pretty funny thing to say.
The sun was one thumbnail’s width up over the horizon when I throttled back in the big lagoon in the center of the Marquesas. “All right, gentlemen,” I said. “The tarpon will be coming in the channel and up across the flats to feed. I’ll be on the platform over the engine, watching for fish. When I see tarpon, I’ll get you close and one of you will cast to it. Any questions?”
They turned four blue, expressionless eyes on me. For the first time I felt a small twitch of alarm somewhere deep in the part of my brain that doesn’t need reasons. They just looked. Nothing showed except maybe very faint amusement. “No questions,” Bob said at last.
The rising sun was showing a storm front moving by over the Gulf of Mexico. Faint flickers of lightning showed between the dark line of the clouds and the water. “One other thing,” I said. “If that storm gets close, we head for shore until it’s gone.”
“We don’t want to get wet?” Bill asked with poker-faced amusement.
