“Hello, Nicky,” I said. “Lose your way?”
“Christ on a fucking bun!” he gagged at me. “You bloody fucking near killed me, mate! Jesus’ tits, my fucking noggin is totally bashed in!” He spat a small amount of dirty sand.
“Sorry,” I said. “Thought you were a prowler, Nicky.” I set him down and brushed him off. Truth is, he was so light it would be easy to forget I was holding him a foot off the ground.
Nicky Cameron was my neighbor. He was an Australian by birth and had landed in Key West by some mysterious process similar to Brownian motion that leaves so many strange, dissimilar people on our island.
Nicky stood just about five feet even and weighed a full ninety pounds soaking wet with a beer in each hand. He was mostly bald, with a few scraggly brown tendrils of hair occasionally flopping over into his face. The face was dominated by two huge brown eyes. In between them was a foot-long nose that hooked slightly to one side, and a chin so far back from his face that it looked like a second Adam’s apple.
How he had come by it in Australia I never found out, but somehow Nicky was stuffed with every existing scrap of New Age lore. He knew all about astrology, crystals, shiatsu, channeling, aroma and color therapy, Atlantis, astral projection, herbal medicine, and reincarnation. He ran a shop not far from Mallory Square that sold crystals, New Age music, posters, and other stuff you would otherwise have to go to California to buy.
Nick tended to mind everybody else’s business, but I liked him. He was a pretty good neighbor, and those are hard to come by.
“Bloody fucking hell,” he mumbled, rubbing his neck and spasmodically twisting his head to one side.
“Sorry, Nicky,” I said.
“Put the Neighborhood Fucking Watch back ten years, mate. Can’t go ’round pulverizing fellas.”
“Sorry, Nicky,” I said again. But I knew there was really only one way to apologize, and surprisingly, I suddenly felt like company. “How about a beer?”
His leprechaun face lightened a little. “Too bloody right, a beer,” he said. “Reckon you owe me a fucking brewery for that one, mate.”
He shook himself like a terrier, said “Right,” to himself half under his breath, and led me up to my front door. I unlocked it and he pushed past me, making a beeline for my ancient refrigerator. By the time I caught up with him he had one of the bottles of St. Pauli Girl open and one-third drained. He was staring dismally into the back of the refrigerator, shaking his head with very real pity. “Oh, mate,” he said sadly.
Half-annoyed and half-amused, I stared past him into the refrigerator. I didn’t see anything to object to, but then I didn’t see much of anything at all.
Still, what there was was very neatly organized. I was a firm believer in Tupperware, and the largest shelf was neatly stacked with five containers. They all had labels: Two of them said CHILI—JULY 5. Another one was LASAGNA—MAY 23. The other two labels had somehow gotten smeared and were no longer legible. But I was sure that once I opened them I could probably figure out what was in them.
There was also a quart of Acidophilus milk, half-gone; a quarter stick of margarine, a lump of very questionable but neatly wrapped cheese, and a jar of jelly someone had given me for Christmas almost two years ago. It was all very well ordered and about as appetizing as a gravel driveway.
“What’s wrong?” I asked Nicky. He turned those two high-powered lamps on me full blast.
“Billy, lad, old son,” he moaned sadly, handing me the other beer. “This is fucking close to tragedy here.”
“Why is that, Nicky?”
“The Frigidaire, Billy,” he said, raising a finger into the air and then pointing it at me. “The Frigidaire is the window to a man’s soul.”
I looked at him, his eyes gleaming mournfully. Sometimes, when he went off on his monologues, it was hard to remember how much shorter than me he was. I sipped my beer. “That’s the eyes, Nicky. The eyes are the windows to the soul.”
He shook his head forcefully. “Never say it, mate. It’s the fucking Frigidaire. If old Johnny Keats had one, we’d be off on it all day long, ’stead of those bloody awful Grecian urns.” He stretched out the last word in his uniquely Australian way, eeeeehhhhrrrrnns, making the word into a long moan against all that was prissy and awful. “’Course, ’Strahlians”—he meant his countrymen—“our lot have that all figured out. Look in the Frigidaire and you know a man’s soul. And, mate—” He shook his head again. “Mate, your soul is on the shit-heap. Aside from the fact,” he added sadly, waggling a finger at me, “that I will now have to run off to the Seven-Eleven and get more beer, and something decent to eat.”
That reminded me of my mutton snapper, still sitting in the sink. “Uh, Nicky, I got a good piece of fish here—” I stopped since he was shaking his head again, eyes closed to shut out my nonsense.
“A piece of fish. He’s got a piece of fish. Billy, old sport,” he said, reaching up to put a hand on my shoulder, “a piece of fish is not something decent to eat.”
“I like fish,” I said.
“Yes,” he said with kindly logic, “but you’re a bloody loony. Where’s your veggies, Billy? And some rice? To say nothing of all the proper and necessary nutrients found only in beer?”
“You’re drinking my nutrients,” I pointed out.
“That’s mean and low,” he said with rising indignation. “You half-killed me and now you grudge me one of your horrible, tiny, watered-down beers. No, Billy,” and he held out his hand to me, palm up, “the only thing for it is for me to buzz down and grab some decent grub. Otherwise you’re going to harm yourself, and I can’t allow that.” He shook a finger so I would know he was telling the truth. “You need looking after. So fork over, mate.” And to my surprise I found myself handing him twenty bucks, even as I wondered what the hell it had been about his company I had thought I wanted tonight.
“Fry up the fish, Billy,” he admonished as he capered out the door. He vanished, then stuck his head back in again. “You have got an onion, haven’t you, mate?” he said, and then he was gone.
I turned back to the sink and rinsed off the fish. Every now and then I wondered why I actually liked Nicky, but I always ended up shrugging it off. I liked him. He was such an improbable guy. He seemed to move at about twice the speed of everybody else and was so full of manic rationality it was impossible to stay mad at him. He always had everybody’s best interests at heart, and never stopped telling us all about it. Nobody could stay mad at Nicky, even after watching him eat.
He was one of those tiny people, clearly evolved from the ferret, who must eat twice their weight every day, and Nicky was not refined in his attack. He ate with both hands and a wide-open mouth, spraying crumbs in all directions. He had a lot to say on most subjects and could not sit without wanting to talk. That usually made for problems at the table. I spent most of my dining time with Nicky dodging crumbs, trying to keep them off my food as they flew out of his mouth and across the table, rocketing high in the air, bouncing off the saltshaker, careening everywhere.
Still, there was an incredible charm to the man. I had seen women twice his size fall helplessly into those gigantic, luminous eyes and follow quietly, without struggle, as he led them off to his battered cottage next door. I didn’t think he could make an enemy if he wanted to.
I put the fish into a large baking dish and squeezed some key lime juice onto it. I’d let it soak in for a minute before I put it under the broiler. I smeared on a couple of pats of margarine. As an afterthought I sprinkled some cumin on top, then sliced on my last onion.
As I put the dish in the oven, the front door banged and Nicky was back with a paper bag under each arm. The bags looked bigger than Nicky. He roared into the kitchen and flung the bags onto my rickety kitchen table, already unloading them and opening two fresh beers before I could even open my mouth to speak. “Here we go. Not much to choose up there, bloody awful store, but thank you Jesus, they had two last six-packs of Foster’s. Not that Foster’s
is my first choice, you understand, but it’s the best we can hope for in this benighted cultural backwater. Cheers, mate,” he said and drained off about half of the squat blue-labeled bottle. He slammed open the oven door, slammed it closed again. “Fish in? Lovely. Now piss off,” he finished, shoving me out of my kitchen. He had things flying out of the bags and into pots and pans before I even made it to my chair.
I sat. I was suddenly exhausted, whether from Nicky’s unbelievable take-charge energy or from the letdown of my total screw-up with Roscoe, I couldn’t tell. I leaned back in my chair and held the beer bottle without drinking for a long moment. The racket from the kitchen was near the noise level of a Concorde taking off, plenty loud enough to bring complaints from the neighbors except that they, like me, were used to Nicky, totally charmed out of their natural hostility by his wide-eyed dazzling animation.
I let my mind drift. I still felt bad about Roscoe. I knew I should have found him. This was my island and I knew pretty well where he might go. But my first two guesses had been bad and I no longer had the energy. I gave up. I never used to give up. Something had changed in me; the thing that used to drive me was no more than a torpid passenger now.
Screw it, I thought, closing my eyes. I didn’t ask for this. Besides, I had just proved I was useless at this kind of thing. I couldn’t even find Roscoe. I was just not thinking like a cop anymore, and in a way that would have seemed lazy and cowardly a year ago, that seemed to me to justify turning down Roscoe, refusing to go back to my old world, refusing to look at all the memories of my old life again.
I was not the guy I used to be. I hated Los Angeles and everything I could remember about it. I knew that going back there would bring back all the things I had worked so hard to forget. I could not go back there. I couldn’t.
“Wake up, mate!” bellowed Nicky, standing about four inches from my ear. I didn’t quite hit the ceiling. “Grub’s on! Hop to!” And he was racing back to the kitchen with a manic cackle, a trail of rice already catapulting from his mouth. I wiped a few grains from my ear and followed him.
“Oh, fishy fishy fish,” he beamed at me as I finally made it to the table. He cut the fish and served two-thirds to himself, one-third to me, slopping it onto plates already heaped with rice and a vegetable medley containing broccoli, green beans, carrots and mushrooms, all boiled into submission. “Dig in, Billy. Go on, laddie. Eat up, go go go,” he said, mouth already stuffed with two forkfuls of rice, one of veggie, and one of fish. I dodged a flying broccoli flower and sat.
“Well, Billy,” he beamed at me. A grain of rice hit my forehead. “Life is worth living after all, eh?”
He waggled an eyebrow, and then his face disappeared into the plate. He wouldn’t have seen or heard me if I disagreed, so I didn’t. I ate my fish.
Chapter Six
The next three weeks went by without any real incident. The thought of Roscoe slipped into my mind a few times. I’d bat at it and it would go away again. It just didn’t seem to be anything to think about. There wasn’t much point, anyway; I felt very bad for Roscoe because I’d been there, been through the hell of losing a child. But he’d counted on that, hoped I’d have an empathetic response, and that made his visit a little too cold-blooded and calculated for me. I was having enough trouble right where I was, doing nothing more complicated than going fishing. I didn’t need to get back into the big game again.
I’d made a halfhearted try at running Roscoe down at the airport the morning after my dinner with Nicky. Fighting a foul little beer hangover—which Nicky never seemed to get, no matter how much he drank—I had pedaled over to the airport and looked around. But either Roscoe had gone out sometime the night before or he was still lying low somewhere.
Of course, they don’t tell you much at the airlines. The overly made-up woman at the American Eagle counter was just barely willing to admit that they had a flight to Miami, and under threat of torture she finally conceded that it was possible for someone to make a connection there for Los Angeles. But that was it. Since it was more than I expected I wasn’t all that disappointed. I figured Roscoe had flown out last night, after crapping out with me. I went home to an unwanted day off, feeling almost virtuous about my inability to track down any information at all.
It was August and it was hot. Business always slacked off in the heat of the summer, so much that most of the fishing guides left town. There were fewer charters, but there were even fewer captains around, so things evened out. I was averaging two or three charters a week and that kept me busy enough so I didn’t have to think too much about anything. In fact, for a fishing guide just starting out, two or three charters a week is pretty good. I was tucking away a little money, building up a small reputation, and settling back into forgetting all about everything west of the Marquesas.
That second week in August I had four charters. It was a new record and I might have celebrated, except I didn’t really feel like it, and anyway the fourth charter probably didn’t count since it was only ninety minutes long. It was a record in its own way. It was the closest I had ever come to cutting up a customer and using him for chum.
The day started badly and got worse faster than the Florida weather. My charter, a pudgy, chinless guy from Manhattan named Pete, had showed up an hour late without apology. When we took off in my skiff the sun was already up. The tarpon had been hitting in the Marquesas for the last two weeks, but it was too late to go there now. By the time we made the thirty-mile trip the morning feed would be over and we’d have several hours of hot, dull work before the action picked up again. So I headed for Woman Key, which is much closer and has some pretty decent flats if you hit the tide right.
It’s about a half-hour ride from the dock. Twenty minutes out Pete leaned back at me and signaled urgently. I throttled back and leaned forward to hear him better. Almost immediately I wished I hadn’t.
“I don’t pay for transit time, do I?” he asked aggressively. “Because I’m not going to.”
I was still fairly new at this. I had to believe I hadn’t heard him right. “What’s that?”
“Tra-vel time,” he said, drawing it out so even an idiot like me would understand. “Twenty-two minutes so far. I’m paying four hundred fifty bucks for a boat ride? I don’t think so.”
“It’s a package, not an hourly rate,” I said, showing him three teeth. “But if you’d rather fish right here, we can do that. Of course, then you’re not getting your money’s worth out of the guide, are you?”
He looked over the side of the boat. We were still in the Lakes, a series of flats and pools that run from Key West Harbor down to Ballast Key. At the moment we were idling over a stretch of unhealthy-looking weeds.
“They got fish here?” Pete demanded.
I shrugged. “Some grunts. A few eagle rays. Maybe a turtle.”
“So where are we going? I want a tarpon.”
I nodded at him like he had just made sense. “That’s where we’re going. To where the tarpon are.”
He looked over the side again. An old Clorox bottle floated past. “Uh-huh. How far is it?”
“Another ten or fifteen minutes,” I told him.
“So let’s go,” he said with authority, and turned back to face front again.
I pushed the throttle forward without saying anything. By the time we got to the flats on the south side of Woman Key, Pete was already fidgeting and looking at his watch. This is usually a bad sign.
Fishing, the way I do it, takes some patience. I like to fish proactively, like deer hunting. That means you stalk the fish carefully, because you have studied them and you know their habits and their hangouts. You pole up quietly, spot them, and cast directly, carefully, to the place the fish will be just after your bait gets there: not too close or you spook them, not too far away or they go right by.
I had just finished explaining that the faint ripple one hundred yards away meant the tarpon were coming in and we had been poling quietly towards them for less than a minute when Pe
te muttered, “Oh, hell,” and whipped a very clumsy cast straight ahead.
I was standing directly behind him, on the raised poling platform above the outboard, pushing the boat forward with my guide pole. I had to duck quickly as the crab on his hook whirred past my ear on his back-cast, snatched my hat off coming forward and whipped a good thirty feet ahead. His crab hit the water with a belly-flop smack, which knocked my hat loose from the hook. It went floating off to the right.
“What are you trying to do, Pete?” I said through carefully gritted teeth.
“This is supposed to be good fishing?” he accused. “You said fish. So where’s the fucking fish?”
“Well, the fucking fish were up ahead. If you haven’t terrified them into heading for Cuba with all that splashing, they might still be there.”
“That supposed to be funny?” He glared at me. “How the fuck long am I supposed to wait? While you dick around with the pole like it’s fucking Venice or something.”
“How about if you wait until I tell you, then cast to something we can see? Is that too long?”
He looked sour and savage and turned away. He started to pump his reel furiously. “I’m not paying four hundred fifty bucks for a fucking boat ride,” he grumbled. And since the reel was apparently too slow for him he gave a tremendous, two-handed backward yank on the rod. The tip slapped my ear and smashed onto the poling platform. Even as I turned slightly and watched the small silver loop of the rod tip snap off and roll onto the deck I felt the crab smack into my head just above the other ear.
“Some fucking guide,” said Pete. “Can’t find fish. Can’t even duck in time.” He snorted.
Some people belong on the dock. If they really have to go fishing they should do it standing on the end of a long pier, clutching a $6.98 Flintstones Model Zebco and a plastic bucket, swearing because the water is too far down for them to reach over and wipe the worm goo off their hands. They don’t belong on a flat guide’s skiff, sliding across the shallows on the edge of the great ocean. They don’t even belong on a head boat, where there are more people in range of their half-deadly stupidity.