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Bosch didn’t say that the Troubles were largely in Northern Ireland, not Dublin.
“Did your guy say whether he ever met him?” he asked instead. “Think he could pick him out in a photo?”
“He didn’t say but I doubt he ever did meet him,” Tommy said. “He’s got the Bud distributorship for all of Monroe County. So he knows what’s going on in every bar in the Keys, but he hasn’t driven a delivery route himself in years. He did say these guys stiffed him for a couple grand’s worth of beer when they shut it down.”
“You have a cell phone?”
“Sure.”
“Can you take a photo of this and shoot it to your friend anyway? You never know.”
Bosch unfolded the BOLO flyer on the bar top. Tommy looked at it for a long moment. Then he slid it down the bar until it was directly under one of the pendant lights, took a cell phone out of a pocket, and took a photo of the flyer. He handed the flyer back to Bosch.
“Los Angeles Police Department,” he said. “I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”
“I’m not,” Bosch said. “That’s old. From a case I had when I was still carrying the badge.”
“He’s like the one that got away or something? The white whale, ‘Call me Ishmael,’ and all of that?”
“Moby-Dick,right?”
“Yep. First line of the book.”
Bosch nodded. He had never read the book but he knew who wrote it and that Moby Dick was the original white whale. Between the references to Joyce and Melville, he got the idea that he might be talking to the most well-read bartender in Key West. Tommy seemed to know that was what he was thinking.
“When it’s slow in here, I read,” he said. “So, what did he do? Your white whale.”
“He killed a family of four,” Bosch said.
“Shit.”
“With a nail gun. The girl was nine and the boy thirteen. Then he buried them in a hole in the desert.”
“Oh, man.”
Tommy put his hand down on the fifties and slid them back across the bar top toward Bosch.
“I can’t take your money. Not for something like that.”
“You’re helping me here.”
“I’m sure no one’s paying you to chase this guy down.”
Bosch nodded. He understood. He then asked the most important question.
“Did your friend the beer distributor say whether Davy Byrne is still on the island?”
“He said, last he heard, Davy was working on the old charter docks. But that was a few years back when he heard that.”
“Where are the old charter docks?”
“Right below the Palm Avenue Causeway. You got a car?”
“I do.”
Tommy pointed toward the back of the bar.
“Easiest way is to take Front Street out of Old Town and geton Eaton,” he said. “Eaton becomes Palm Avenue. You go over the bridge and there’s the marina. You can’t miss it.”
