34
THE MORNING SKY was threatening a slight drizzle. The local fishermen stayed in, but the tourists still went out in their rental boats, arrays of fishing poles sprouting from their holders like antennas. They wore bright yellow and orange rain slickers and fought uphill against the choppy tide in Bogie Channel with a style of seamanship suggesting future Coast Guard rescues. The weather wasn’t that bad today, but tourists were known to go out even under storm flags. Vacation would not be denied.
Two people watched the bobbing vessels through the back patio windows of a waterfront ranch house on Big Pine Key. It was one of the older homes, built on the ground before flood-plane ordinance required stilts. The streets on this side of the island had names like Oleander, Hibiscus, Silver Buttonwood. The front yard was a field of little brown river rocks because fresh water was scarce for lawns. The rocks had an unintended security feature: You could always hear people driving up. In the middle of the yard was the centerpiece, a faux nineteenth-century ship’s anchor. That’s how visitors were given directions — “Just look for the anchor” — one of those big, three-hundred-pound jobs with a new antique verdigris finish, festooned with fishing nets and strings of colorful Styrofoam crab-trap floats. The nautical kitsch was surrounded by rings of cheerful lavender and pink flowers that had recently opened and would soon be chewed to the stems by night-feeding mini-deer. The original owner had known the bridge tender who was killed when a trawler struck the old Seven-Mile Bridge and was honored by a memorial plaque at the top of the new span that nobody could read because they were going by too fast and weren’t allowed to stop. A baby-blue sea horse sat over the numbers by the door. A dark sedan was parked half a block up the street.
The two people watching the boats were sitting at the kitchen table. They had been there since long before dawn. Periods of intense conversation or awkward silence. This was one of the quiet spells. The table had a glass top with a pebbly surface and a round, white metal frame. It could be used outdoors. There were two coffee cups on the table. Bottle of scotch. Pair of dark sunglasses.
“I need another Valium,” said Anna.
“You need to slow down.”
“Are you going to give me one?”
The man opened his wallet and scooped out a pill.
Anna tossed it in her mouth and chased it with the contents of her coffee cup.
“It’s all going to work out,” said the man.
Anna set the cup down. “I feel even worse now.”
The man put a hand on hers in the middle of the table. “It’s over. You’re finally safe. Time will heal.”
“We could get the death penalty.”
“We’re not going to get caught. As long as neither one of us ever says anything. You can do that, can’t you?”
“I knew I couldn’t go through with it,” said Anna. “I knew I couldn’t shoot someone.”
“Then what were we doing there?”
“Jesus, you shot him in the eyes!”
“I was just aiming for the head.”
Anna’s stomach spasmed. “I’m getting another panic attack.”
“The Valium hasn’t kicked in.”
She poured more scotch.
“You’re going to make yourself sick.”
“I’m sick right now!” She fiddled with the sunglasses on the table. Her two black eyes had reached full bloom. She looked out the back window at the patio, which was the roof of the cistern. Her nose flared at the faint indication of the sulfur sticks that had been dropped in the tank for mosquitos. The man reached for her hand again. Drops of rain ran down the windows.
She pulled her arm away. “Why’d you grab the gun? Why’d you shoot him?”
“Because you didn’t.”
“I changed my mind. You heard him. He was ready to negotiate. And he started saying stuff about my brother that made no sense, a lot of stuff that made no sense, but you shot him before he could—”
“You think this is some kind of game? You think you can point a gun at someone like that and
“But we had his word….”
“You still don’t have any idea the type of person we were dealing with! He’s going to say anything! He’s not going to be grateful for sparing his life! He’s going to come after us first chance he gets!”
“So fucking what? I was already on the run.”
“But I wasn’t! I tried to talk you out of this, remember? Then I’m standing there watching you lose your nerve, and I’m like, shit, that’s my ass right there! Once you raised that gun, you wrote the future. Him or us.”
Quiet again. No lights on inside the house, just what was coming through the windows from the overcast dawn, suspending the house in an off-balance gray. It was actually a pretty nice day to be alive in the Keys. Curl up with a book, listen to the rain, watch the weather.
“I hate this. It looks like shit out there.”
“Are you going to be able to keep it together?”
“Why?” said Anna. “Are you going to kill me, too?”
The man looked down.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“You don’t need to say anything.”
“No, you’ve been too good to me.”
“I’ll always be there for you. You know that.”
