“What dead body?” Mick Stranahan said.
Badger-like, Garcia shuffled up the stairs to the house, with Stranahan and Luis Córdova following single file. Garcia gave the place the once-over and waved courteously to Tina on her lounge chair. The detective half-turned to Stranahan and in a low voice said, “What, you opened a halfway house for bimbos! Mick, you’re a freaking saint, I swear.”
They went inside the stilt house and closed the door. “Tell me about the dead body,” Stranahan said.
“Sit down. Hey, Luis, I could use some coffee.”
“A minute ago you were seasick,” Luis Córdova said.
“I’m feeling much better, okay?” Garcia scowled theatrically as the young marine patrol officer went to the kitchen. “Interdepartmental cooperation, that’s the buzzword these days. Coffee’s a damn good place to start.”
“Easy, man, Luis is a sharp kid.”
“He sure is. I wish he was ours.”
Stranahan said, “Now about the body … “ Garcia waved a meaty brown hand in the air, as if shooing an invisible horsefly, “Mick, what are you doing way the fuck out here? Somehow I don’t see you as Robinson Crusoe, sucking the milk out of raw coconuts.”
“It’s real quiet out here.”
Luis Córdova brought three cups of hot coffee. Al Garcia smacked his lips as he drank. “Quiet—is that what you said? Jeez, you got dead gangsters floating around, not to mention burning houses—”
“Is this about Tony the Eel?”
“No,” Luis said seriously.
Garcia put down his coffee cup and looked straight at Stranahan. “When’s the last time you saw Chloe?” Suddenly Mick Stranahan did not feel so well.
“A couple months back,” he said. “She was on a boat with some guy. I assumed it was her new husband. Why?”
“You mooned her.”
“Can you blame me?”
“We heard about it from the mister this morning.”
Stranahan braced to hear the whole story. Luis Córdova opened a spiral notebook but didn’t write much. Stranahan listened somberly and occasionally looked out the window toward the channel where Al Garcia said it had happened.
“A rusty anchor?” Stranahan said in disbelief.
“It got tangled in this silky thing she was wearing,” the detective explained. “She went down like a sack of cement.” Sensitivity was not Garcia’s strong suit.
“The rope is what gave it away,” added Luis Córdova. “One of the guys coming out to the fire saw the rope drifting up out of the current.”
“Hauled her right in,” Garcia said, “like a lobster pot.”
“Lord.”
Garcia said, “Fact is, we really shouldn’t be telling you all this.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re the prime suspect.”
“That’s very funny.” Stranahan looked at Luis Córdova. “Is he kidding?”
The young marine patrolman shook his head.
Garcia said, “Mick, your track record is not so hot. I mean, you already got a few notches on your belt.”
“Not murder.”
“Chloe hated your guts,” Al Garcia said, in the tone of a reminder.
“That’s my motive? She hated my guts?”
“Then there’s the dough.”
“You think I’d kill her over a crummy one-hundred fifty dollars a month?”
“The principle,” Al Garcia said, unwrapping a cigar. “I think you just might do it over the principle of the thing.”
Stranahan leaned back with a tired sigh. He felt bad about Chloe’s death, but mostly he felt curious. What the hell was she doing out here at night?
“I always heard good things about you,” Al Garcia said, “mainly from Timmy Gavigan.”
“Yeah, he said the same for you.”
“And the way Eckert dumped you from the State Attorney’s, that was low.”
Stranahan shrugged. “They don’t forget it when you shoot a judge. It’s bound to make people nervous.”
Garcia made a great ceremony of lighting the cigar. Afterwards, he blew two rings of smoke and said, “For what it’s worth, Luis here doesn’t think you did it.”
“It’s the anchor business,” Luis Córdova explained, “very strange.” He was trying to sound all business, as if the friendship meant nothing.
Stranahan said, “The murder’s got to be connected to the fire.”
“The fire was an arson,” Luis said. “Boat gas and a match. These houses are nothing but tinder.” To make his point, he tapped the rubber heel of his shoe on the pine floor.