Page 35 (1/2)

Chapter One

He was standing on the dock at City Marina as I came in He still stood there beside the ice machine as I eased into my slip, tied up, and wound up business with the day’s charter

I’d been fishing that day with a guy in his forties who ran aexcept the Buffalo Bills It had been an okay charter—very good, in fact, if you just wanted a chance to get away frouy did We’d hit into a few perood juasted by the size and otten to bow to it and the line had snapped That happens maybe four ti so like that jump made the whole trip worth every penny I wished I had that kind of outlook

My charter was still in a good mood when he climbed off the boat, with his ears newly pink frolanced up the dock

Roscoe just stood there, in a shadow made by the slant of the afternoon sun, over by the docklines, hose down the boat and the fishing gear, and filet a couple of three-to-four-pound ht in from the cut on the near side of Ballast Key By the time my charter had climbed into his rented Buick and headed for Duval Street and air-conditioning, I was getting curious—and a little mad

It didn’t seem like a very nice way to act I hadn’t seen Roscoe McAuley for alhteen months Seventeen months, teeks and four days was the actual count Anyway, he hadn’t changed much: he was just a hair over six feet tall and not an ounce over 185 He was black, skin the color of shoe leather, with soft brown eyes you wanted to trust even when you knew better He sported a thin ne He looked about as las as a man could and still be black

Roscoe was a headquarters cop What he was good at—and he was very good at it—was police paperwork and politics He had risen far and fast in the LAPD without learning anything about hoas on the street, out there alone in a cruiser He would probably go a lot further He had a political streak in hiames on an instinctive level, and he was so smooth and sharp you could shave with his résumé

Roscoe had been the one to try to talk ood at sincerity andyou should care about and work hard at He’d had a lot to say on the subject; it hadn’t been enough I had taken my back pay and come back to Key West

During the first bad days of trying to think up soht of this place, how I’d co It was the only good memory I could come up with that didn’t involve Jennifer and Melly, so I had co here would takeabout that We all carry around inside us more than a lifetime of bad e the scenery

I thought I had done that, and then here ca hunk of the old scenery in the shape of Roscoe McAuley He still just stood there, watching ear and walked up toward the dock and went in

The air-conditioning hitinto the shack was like getting whacked on the forehead with a two-by-four It was over ninety outside, and close to one hundred percent hurees and the contrast had a weight to it thatan ice-cold waterbed dropped on you froht, and for a few seconds I just stood there panting and feeling my forehead shrink Between the temperature and the darkness of the rooht of the flats, I couldn’t move If somebody had wanted my wallet they could have walked up and taken it from me But they would have been pretty disappointed in my wallet

“Billy!” cale froister sat in the ear, waterproof suntan lotion, floating key rings, chewing gulasses, Slim Jims, and crap

Captain Art was on his stool in the center of the glitz heap This was not a surprise; Captain Art lived on the stool and I had never seen hi business hours He was over sixty, over three hundred pounds, and could have been poster boy for the Skin Cancer Foundation His dark, leathery tan, built up by a life in the outdoors, washis hide on the wall it would look like an enor book

I stepped over “Hey, Art,” I said “Any es?”

“No es,” he said “No charter fer tomorrow, either”

He was looking at me funny, maybe a little hurt “What?” I asked him

“You telling , Billy?”

“No, Art,” I said, “want to hear rade report card? What’s up?”

He shook his head, a little sad, and gave a great loose-lunged cough He cleared his throat and spat so ashtray beside hiot trouble out there, Billy He’s just been standing there since right after one o’clock What’s the deal? I got a right to know if I got trouble on my dock”