“Gets me going,” suggested Joe Winder. “Hot is a cliche.”
Nina nodded in agreement. “That’s better, yeah. I love the motion of a big locomotive, it really gets me going.”
Joe Winder noticed that the tide was slowing. These fish would be gone soon.
But there was Nina in her black panties. Knee deep in the Atlantic. Blond hair tied back under her cap with a pink ribbon. Reading some damn nonsense about sex on the Amtrak, in that killer voice of hers. The words didn’t matter, it was all music to Joe Winder; he was stirred by the sight of her in the water with the sun dropping behind the Keys. At times like this he sure loved Florida.
Nina told him to quit staring at her all sappy and listen, so he did.
“Sometimes, late at night, I dream that you’re a locomotive. And I’m riding you on top, stretched out with my legs around your middle. First we go uphill, real slow and hard and rough. Then all of a sudden I’m riding the engine down, faster and harder and hotter until…”
“Until what?” Joe Winder said.
“Until whatever,” said Nina with a shrug. “I figure I’d just leave the rest to their imagination.”
“No,” said Winder. “A metaphor like that, you need a big ending.” He slapped a mosquito that had penetrated the sheen of Cutter’s on his neck. “How about: We’re going downhill, out of control, faster and hotter. I scream for you to stop but you keep pumping and pumping until I explode, melting against you.”
From someplace—her bra?—Nina produced a ballpoint pen and began to scribble. “The pumping business is a bit much,” she said, “but I like the melting part. That’s good imagery, Joe, thanks.”
“Any time.”
“Miriam’s writing up another hot-tub blowjob.”
“Not again,” said Joe Winder.
“She says it’s going to be a series.” Nina folded up the notebook paper and slipped it back in the pocket of her shirt. “I’m going to be late to work if I don’t get a move on. You coming in?”
“No, there’s another school working that deep edge. I’m gonna try not to brain ’em with this feather.”
Nina said good luck and sloshed back toward shore.
Halfway there, she turned and said, “My God, I almost forgot. I got one of those phone calls at home.”
Winder stopped tracking the fish. He closed the bail on his spinning reel, and tucked the rod in the crook of an elbow. “Was it Koocher?” he asked, across the flat.
Nina shook her head. “It was a different voice from last time.” She took a half-dozen splashy steps toward him, so she wouldn’t have to yell so far. “But that’s what I wanted to tell you. The guy today said he was Dr. Koocher, only he wasn’t. It was the wrong voice from before.”
Joe Winder said, “You’re sure?”
“It’s my business, Joe. It’s what I do all night, listen to grown men lie.”
“What exactly did he say, Nina? The guy who called. Besides that he was Koocher.”
“He said all hell was breaking loose at the park.”
“All hell,” repeated Winder.
“And he said he wanted to meet you tonight at the Card Sound Bridge.”
“When?”
“Midnight sharp.” Nina shifted her weight from one leg to the other, rippling the water. “You’re not going,” she said. “Please?”
Joe Winder looked back across the flats, lifeless in the empty auburn dusk. “No sign of those fish,” he said. “I believe this tide is officially dead.”
EIGHT
Bud Schwartz didn’t have to open his eyes to know where he was; the scent of jasmine room freshener assailed his nostrils. He was in Molly McNamara’s place, lying on the living-room sofa. He could feel her stare, unblinking, like a stuffed owl.
“I know you’re awake,” she said.
He elected not to open his eyes right away.
“Son, I know you’re there.”
It was the same tone she had used the first time they met, at one of the low points in Bud Schwartz’s burglary career; he had been arrested after his 1979 Chrysler Cordoba stalled in the middle of 163rd Street, less than a block from the duplex apartment he had just burglarized with his new partner, Danny Pogue. The victim of the crime had been driving home when he saw the stalled car, stopped to help and immediately recognized the Sony television, Panasonic clock radio, Amana microwave and Tandy laptop computer stacked neatly in the Cordoba’s back seat. The reason the stuff was lying in the back seat was because the trunk was full of stolen Neil Diamond cassettes that the burglars could not, literally, give away.