Moffitt was on his way out the apartment door when the phone rang. He couldn’t resist. The caller was a deputy for the Monroe County sheriffs office, inquiring about a 1996 Dodge Ram pickup truck that had been found stripped near the Indian Key fill, on the Overseas Highway. The deputy said the truck was registered to one Bodean J. Gazzer.
“That you?” the deputy asked on the phone.
“My roommate,” Moffitt said.
“Well, when you see him,” said the deputy, “could you ask him to give us a holler?”
“Sure thing.” Moffitt thinking: So the assholes ran to the Keys.
Immediately he began calling marinas, working south from Key Largo and asking (in his most persuasive agent-speak) about unusual rentals or thefts. That’s how he learned about the Whaler overdue in Islamorada, rented to a “nigrah girl with a sassy tongue,” according to the old cracker at the motel dock. The Coast Guard already had a bird up, so Moffitt made another call and got cleared to tag along. He was waiting at Opa-Locka when the chopper came in for refueling.
Ninety minutes later they’d spotted her—JoLayne with her new friend, Krome. Tooling along in the missing skiff.
Watching through the binoculars, Moffitt had felt sheepish for worrying so much about her. But who in his right mind wouldn’t?
After the helicopter dropped him off, Moffitt drove to Homestead to locate the house trailer from which a man known to his landlord as “Chub Smith” was being evicted. It was a dented single-wide on a dirt road way out in farm country. Inside, Moffitt came across piles of old gun magazines, empty ammo boxes, a white power T-shirt, a fry o.j. sweatshirt, a god bless marge schott pennant, and (in the bedroom) a makeshift forgery operation for handicapped-parking permits—the quality of which, Moffitt noted, was pretty darn good.
The mail was sparse and unrevealing, bills and gun-shop flyers addressed to “C. Smith” or “C. Jones” or simply “Mr. Chub.” Not a scrap of paper offered a hint to the tenant’s true identity, but Moffitt felt certain it was the pony tailed partner of Bodean James Gazzer. A clot of grimy long strands in the shower drain seemed to confirm the theory.
Parked outside the trailer was an old Chevrolet Impala. Moffitt made a note of the license tag before popping the trunk (where he found a canvas rifle case and a five-pound carton of beef jerky), checking under the seats (two roach clips and a mangled Out magazine) and unlatching the glove box (the video cassette now playing in his VCR).
Moffitt turned off the tape player and opened a beer. He wondered what had happened while he was out of the States, wondered where the white-trash robbers were. Wondered what JoLayne Lucks and her new friend Tom had been up to.
He dialed her number in Grange and left a message on the machine: “I’m back. Call me as soon as you can.”
Then he went to sleep wondering how much he ought to ask, and how much he really needed to know.
Mary Andrea Finley Krome sparkled like a movie star.
That’s what everyone at The Register was saying. Even the managing editor admitted she was a knockout.
She’d gotten her short hair highlighted and her nails done, put on tiny gold hoop earrings, pale-rose lipstick, sheer stockings and a stunningly short black skirt. The coup de grace was the rosary beads, dangling sensually from Mary Andrea’s fingertips.
When she entered the newsroom, the police reporter turned to the managing editor: “Tom must’ve been nuts to walk out on that.”
Maybe, thought the managing editor. Maybe not.
The elegant widow walked up to him and said, “So, where are they?”
“In the lobby.”
“I just came through the lobby. I didn’t see any cameras.”
“We’ve got ten minutes,” the managing editor said. “They’ll be here, don’t worry.”
Mary Andrea asked, “Is there a place where I can be alone?”
The managing editor glanced helplessly around the newsroom, which offered all the privacy of a bus depot.
“My office,” he suggested, unenthusiastically, and headed downstairs for a Danish. When he returned, he was intercepted by an assistant city editor.