“I know how that goes,” Tina was saying, “with parties.”
Heather said, “Please, I don’t feel so hot. We’ve been drifting for hours.” Her face looked familiar, but Tina wasn’t sure.
The Cuban woman with the bald patch said, “Do you have an extra soda?”
“Sure,” said Tina. “Richie, throw them a rope.”
Sergeant Al Garcia bent over the rail and got rid of his break-fast muffins.
“I thought you were a big fisherman,” needled Luis Córdova. “Who was it told me you won some fishing tournament.”
“That was different.” Garcia wiped his mustache with the sleeve of the windbreaker. “That was on a goddamn lake.”
The journey out to Stiltsville had been murderously rough. That was Garcia’s excuse for getting sick—the boat ride, not what they had found inside the house.
Luis Córdova chucked him on the arm. “Anyway, you feel better now.”
The detective nodded. He was still smoldering about the patrol boat, about how it had taken three hours to get a new pin for the prop. Three crucial hours, it turned out.
“Where’s Wilt?” Garcia asked.
“Inside. Pouting.”
The man known as Chemo was standing up, his right arm suspended over his head. Luis Córdova had handcuffed him to the overhead water pipes in the kitchen. As a security precaution, the Weed Whacker had been unstrapped from the stump of Chemo’s left arm. Trailing black and red cables, the yard clipper lay on the kitchen bar.
Luis Córdova pointed at the monofilament coil on the rotor. “See that—human hair,” he said to Al Garcia. “Long hair, too; a brunette. Probably a woman’s.”
Garcia turned to the killer. “Hey, Wilt, you a barber?”
“Fuck you.” Chemo blinked neutrally.
“He says that a lot,” said Luis Córdova. “It’s one of his favorite things. All during the Miranda, he kept saying it.”
Al Garcia walked over to Chemo and said, “You’re aware that there’s a dead doctor in the bedroom?”
“Fuck you.”
“See,” said Luis Córdova. “That’s all he knows.”
“Well, at least he knows something.’“ Garcia groped in his pocket and came out with a wrinkled handkerchief. He put the handkerchief to his face and returned to the scene in the bedroom. He came out a few minutes later and said, “That’s very unpleasant.”
“Sure is,” agreed Luis Córdova.
“Mr. Tatum, since you’re not talking, you might as well listen.” Garcia arranged himself on one of the wicker barstools and stuck a cigar in his mouth. He didn’t light it.
He said, “Here’s what’s happened. You and the doctor have a serious business disagreement. You lure the dumb bastard out here and try to torture some dough out of him. But somehow you screw it up—you kill him.”
Chemo reddened. “Horse shit,” he said.
Luis Córdova looked pleased.
“Progress,” he said to Garcia. “We’re making progress.”
Chemo clenched his fist, causing the handcuff to rattle against the rusty pipe. He said, “You know damn well who it was.”
“Who?” Garci’a raised the palms of his hands. “Where is this mystery man?”
“Fuck you,” Chemo said.
“What I can’t figure out,” said the detective, “is why you didn’t take off. After all this mess, why’d you stay on the house? Hell, chico, all you had to do was jump.”
Chemo lowered his head. His cheeks felt hot and prickly; a sign of healing, he hoped.
“Maybe he can’t swim,” suggested Luis Córdova.
“Maybe he’s scared,” Garcia said.
Chemo said nothing. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the soothing sounds of freedom: the wind and the waves and the gulls, and the ticking of his waterproof wristwatch.
Al Garcia waited until he was outside to light up the cigar. He turned a shoulder to the wind and cupped the match in his hand.
“I called for the chopper,” said Luis Córdova. “And a guy from the M.E.”
“Gives us what, maybe half an hour?”
“Maybe,” said the young marine patrolman. “We got time to check the other houses. Wilt’s not going anywhere.”
Garcia tried to blow a smoke ring, but the wind sucked it away. The cusp of the front had pushed through, and the sky over Biscayne Bay was clearing. The first sunlight broke out of the haze in slanted golden shafts that fastened to the water like quartz, lighting up the flats.