“Shit,” he said, thinking of the bleak possibilities.
“Don’t jump the gun,” said Danny Pogue, for once the optimist.
They made it back to the condo in twenty-two minutes, parked the rental car and went upstairs. The door to Molly’s apartment was unlocked. Bud Schwartz knocked twice anyway. “It’s just us,” he announced lightly, “Butch and Sundance.”
When he went in, he saw that the place had been torn apart. “Oh Jesus,” he said.
Danny Pogue pushed him with the crutch. “I can’t fucking believe it,” he said. “Somebody hit the place.”
“No,” said Bud Schwartz, “it’s more than that.”
The sofas had been slit, chairs broken, mirrors shattered. A ceramic Siamese cat had been smashed face-first through the big-screen television. While Danny Pogue hopscotched through the rubble, Bud Schwartz went directly to the bedroom, which also had been ransacked and vandalized. He reached under the mattress and found the Kingsbury files exactly where he had left them. Whoever did the place hadn’t been looking very hard, if it all.
A hoarse shout came from the kitchen.
Bud Schwartz found Danny Pogue on his knees next to Molly McNamara. She lay on her back, with one leg folded crookedly under the other. Her housecoat, torn and stained with something dark, was bunched around her hips. Her face had been beaten to pulp; beads of blood glistened like holly berries in her snowy hair. Her eyes were closed and her lips were gray, but she was breathing—raspy, irregular gulps.
Danny Pogue took Molly’s wrist. “God Almighty,” he said, voice quavering. “What—who do we call?”
“Nobody.” Bud Schwartz shook his head ruefully. “Don’t you understand, we can’t call nobody.” He bent down and put his bandaged hand on Molly’s forehead. “Who the hell would do this to an old lady?”
“I hope she don’t die.”
“Me, too,” said Bud Schwartz. “Honest to God, this ain’t right.”
SEVENTEEN
Joe Winder’s trousers were soaked from the thighs down. Nina took a long look and said: “You’ve been fishing.”
“Yes.”
“In the middle of the day.”
“The fish are all gone,” Winder said dismally. “Ever since they bulldozed the place.”
Nina sat cross-legged on the floor. She wore blue-jean shorts and a pink cotton halter; the same outfit she’d been wearing the day he’d met her, calling out numbers at the Seminole bingo hall. Joe Winder had gone there to meet an Indian named Sammy Deer, who purportedly was selling an airboat, but Sammy Deer had hopped over to Freeport for the weekend, leaving Joe Winder stuck with three hundred chain-smoking white women in the bingo hall. Halfway out the door, he’d heard Nina’s voice (“Q 34; Q, as in “quicksilver,” 34!”), spun around and went back to see if she looked as lovely as she sounded, and she had. Nina informed him that she was part-timing as a bingo caller until the telephone gig came through, and he confided to her that he was buying an airboat so he could disappear into the Everglades at will. He changed his plans after their first date.
Now, analyzing her body language, Joe Winder knew that he was in danger of losing Nina’s affections. A yellow legal pad was propped on her lap. She tapped on a bare knee with her felt-tipped pen, which she held as a drummer would.
“What happened to your big meeting?” she said. “Why aren’t you at the Kingdom?”
He pretended not to hear. He said, “They dumped a ton of fill in the cove. The bottom’s mucky and full of cut trees.” He removed his trousers and arranged them crookedly on a wire hanger. “All against the law, of course. Dumping in a marine sanctuary.”
Nina said, “You got canned, is that it?”
“A mutual parting of the ways, and not a particularly amicable one.” Joe Winder sat down beside her. He sensed a lecture coming on.
“Put on some pants,” she said.
“What’s the point?”
Nina asked why his tongue was blue, and he told her the story of the bogus mango voles. She said she didn’t believe a word.
“Charlie practically admitted everything.”
“I don’t really care,” Nina said. She stopped drumming on her kneecap and turned away.
“What is it?”