The man did not have a light step; the captain was right—he was a big one. By the vibrations of the plankboards, Stranahan charted the intruder’s movements.
Finally the guy knocked on the door and said: “Hey! Hello there!”
When no one answered, the guy just opened the door.
He stood framed in the afternoon light, such as it was, and Stranahan got a pretty good look. The man had removed his sunglasses. As he peered into the dark house, his right hand went to the waist of his trousers. “State your business,” Stranahan said from the shadows. “Oh, hey!” The man stepped backward onto the deck, forfeiting his silhouette for detail. Stranahan did not recognize the face—an odd and lumpy one, skin stretched tightly over squared cheekbones. Also, the nose didn’t match the eyes and chin. Stranahan wondered if the guy had ever been in a bad car wreck. The man said: “I ran out of gas, and I was wondering if you had a couple gallons to get me back to the marina. I’ll be happy to pay.”
“Sorry,” Stranahan said.
The guy looked for the source of the voice, but he couldn’t see a damn thing in the shuttered-up house. “Hey, pal, you okay?”
“Just fine,” Stranahan said.
“Well, then, would you mind stepping out where I can see you?”
With his left hand Stranahan grabbed the leg of a barstool and sent it skidding along the bare floor to no place in particular. He just wanted to see what the asshole would do, and he was not disappointed. The guy took a short-barreled pistol out of his pants and held it behind his back. Then he took two steps forward until he was completely inside the house. He took another slow step toward the spot where the broken barstool lay, only now he was holding the pistol in front of him.
Stranahan, who had squeezed himself into a spot between the freezer and the pantry, had seen enough of the damn gun. “Over here,” he said to the stranger. And when the guy spun around to get a bead on where the voice was coming from, Mick Stranahan lunged out of the shadows and stabbed him straight through with a stuffed marlin head he had gotten off the wall.
It was a fine blue marlin, maybe four hundred pounds, and whoever caught it had decided to mount only the head and shoulders, down to the spike of the dorsal. The trophy fish had come with the Venezuelan’s house and hung in the living room, where Stranahan had grown accustomed to its indigo stripes, its raging glass eye and its fearsome black sword. In a way it was a shame to mess it up, but Stranahan knew the BB gun would be useless against a real revolver.
The taxidermied fish was not as heavy as Stranahan anticipated, but it was cumbersome; Stranahan concentrated on his aim as he charged the intruder. It paid off.
The marlin’s bill split the man’s breastbone, tore his aorta, and severed his spine. He died before Stranahan got a chance to ask him any questions. The final puzzled look on the man’s face suggested that he was not expecting to be gored by a giant stuffed fish head.
The intruder carried no identification, no wallet, no wedding ring; just the keys to a rented Thunderbird. Aboard the Seacraft, which was also rented, Stranahan found an Igloo cooler with two six-packs of Corona and a couple of cheap spinning rods that the killer had brought along just for looks.
Stranahan heaved the body into the Seacraft and took the boat out into the Biscayne Channel. There he pushed the dead guy overboard, tossed the pistol into deep water, rinsed down the deck, dove off the stern, and swam back toward the stilt house. In fifteen minutes his knees hit the mud bank, and he waded the last seventy-five yards to the dock.
That night there was no sunset to speak of, because of the dreary skies, but Stranahan sat on the deck anyway. As he stared out to the west, he tried to figure out who wanted him dead, and why. He considered this a priority.