“What will it be?” he drawled as he rose unenthusiastically to his feet and tucked the book under the bar.
“I was wondering if you sold cigarettes,” I said. “I didn’t see a machine inside.”
“That’s it,” he said, gesturing toward a limited display behind him. I made a selection.
Slapping the pack on the bar, he charged me the outrageous sum of two dollars, and wasn’t particularly gracious when I threw in another fifty cents for a tip. His eyes were a very unfriendly green, his face weathered by years of the sun, his thick, dark beard flecked with gray. He looked hostile and hardened, and I had a suspicion he had lived in Key West for quite a while.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” I said.
“Doesn’t matter because you just did, ma’am,” he answered.
I smiled. “You’re right. I just did. And now I’m going to ask you another one. How long have you worked at Louie’s?”
“Going on five years.” He reached for a towel and began polishing the bar.
“Then you must have known a young woman who went by the name Straw,” I asked, recalling from Beryl’s letters that she had not used her proper name while here.
“Straw?” he repeated, frowning as he continued to polish.
“A nickname. She was blond, slender, very pretty, and came to Louie’s almost every afternoon during this past summer. She would sit out at one of your tables and write.”
He stopped polishing and fixed those hard eyes on me. “What’s it to you? She a friend of yours?”
“She’s a patient of mine.” I said the only thing I could think of that was neither off-putting nor a bald-faced lie.
“Huh?” His thick eyebrows shot up. “A patient? What? You’re her doctor”.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, there’s not a whole lot of good you’re going to do her now, Doc, I’m sorry to tell you.”
He plopped down in his chair and leaned back, waiting.
“I’m aware of that,” I said. “I know she’s dead.”
“Yeah, I was pretty shocked when I heard about it. The cops stormed in a couple weeks back with their rubber hoses and thumbscrews. I’ll tell you what my buddies told them, nobody here knows shit about what happened to Straw. She was real quiet, a real fine lady. Used to sit right over there.”
He pointed at an empty table not far from where I was standing. “Used to sit there all the time, just minding her own business.”
“Did any of you get to know her?”
“Sure.”
He shrugged. “We all drank a few brews together. She was partial to Coronas and lime. But I wouldn’t say the people here knew her personally. I mean, I’m not sure anybody could even tell you where she was from, except that it was from the land of snowbirds.”
“Richmond, Virginia,” I said.
“You know,” he went on, “a lot of people come and go around here. Key West’s a live-and-let-live place. A lot of starving artists here, too. Straw wasn’t any different from a lot of people I meet–except most people I meet don’t end up murdered. Damn.”
He scratched his beard and slowly shook his head from side to side. “It’s really hard to imagine. Kind of blows your mind.”
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” I said, lighting a cigarette.
“Yeah, like why the hell do you smoke? I thought doctors are supposed to know better.”
“It’s a filthy, unhealthy habit. And I do know better. And I think you may as well fix me a rum and tonic because I like to drink, too. Barbancourt with a twist, please.”
“Four, eight, what’s your pleasure?” He challenged my repertoire of fine booze.
“Twenty-five, if you’ve got it.”
“Nope. Can only get the twenty-five-year-old stuff in the.islands. So smooth it will make you cry.”
“The best you’ve got, then,” I said.
He shot his finger at a bottle behind him, familiar with its amber glass and five stars on the label. Barbancourt Rhum, aged in barrels for fifteen years, just like the bottle I had discovered in Beryl’s kitchen cabinet.
“That would be wonderful,” I said.
Grinning and suddenly energized, he got up from his chair, his hands moving with the dexterity of a juggler as he snapped up bottles, measuring a long stream of liquid Haitian gold without benefit of a jigger, which was followed by sparkling splashes of tonic. For the grand finale, he deftly sliced a perfect sliver of a Key lime that looked as if it had just been plucked from the tree, squeezed it into my drink and ran a bruised lemon peel around the rim of the glass. Wiping his hands on the towel he had tucked into the waistband of his faded Levi’s, he slid a paper napkin across the bar and presented me with his art. It was, without question, the best rum and tonic I had ever raised to my lips, and I told him so.