Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36) (90)

48


BOSCH SAT ON the bed with his bad leg up. He had a bag of ice on his knee and it seemed to ease the discomfort the second dose of Advil hadn’t yet reached. He was in his room at the Pier House and studying the tourist map of Old Town that he had received from the front desk clerk when he checked in. Clearly marked on it were the sunset viewing spots and the wharves where the cruise ships docked. He planned to check these out in his needle-in-a-haystack search for Finbar McShane.

His room had a small balcony and a view of the turquoise water. His eyes were drawn to it because he was so used to the coldly forbidding blue-black water of the Pacific. He now saw a large catamaran cruising slowly by, seemingly every inch of deck space occupied by a passenger. Painted along the side of the hull was a phone number for reserving a spot on a sunset cruise.

Before coming to his room, he had used a resort map, also given to him at check-in, to locate the Chart Room, and learned it did not open until five. He planned to be there then, with the hope of talking to the bartender before the place got crowded.

He had an hour to wait, so he decided to use the time walking through Old Town and showing around the BOLO flyer with the many possible faces of Finbar McShane on it. He got up and put the bag of ice in the bathroom sink. The ice and the painkiller had combined to make the knee feel usable—for a while.

He left the room and the hotel and started making his way up Duval Street, stopping at Sloppy Joe’s and other bars and asking bartenders if they recognized the man in the photos.

He got no takers. But he did get the idea that most of the bartenders and waitresses he showed the flyer to had fled from something themselves before landing in Key West. A bad life, a bad relationship, a bad crime—it didn’t matter, but it made people hesitant to finger a fellow traveler on the runaway trail. Bosch didn’t mention to any of those he spoke to that the man on the flyer was the only suspect in the killing of a whole family. He didn’t want to upset their romanticized version of running away from the past.

He got back to the Pier House by five and went directly to the Chart Room, which was tucked into a first-floor hallway in the main wing of the hotel. A man with gray hair pulled back into a ponytail was unlocking the door when he got there.

He entered and Bosch followed him in. The bar was small, about the size of a hotel room, because that was clearly what it had once been. There was a six-stool bar on the left side and there were a few small tables and sitting spots on the right. It looked to Bosch like the place would be over capacity with just twenty people.

Bosch took the first stool and waited for the man with the ponytail to come around behind the bar. It was all dark wood, with lights under the three tiers of liquor bottles, creating an amber glow. There were many photos pinned on the walls, almost all of them yellowed by time. There were no windows with a view of the water. This was a place for worshipping alcohol, not the setting sun.

“That looks like it hurts,” the bartender said.

He pointed at Bosch’s ear.

“It’s not bad,” Bosch said.

“Fishhook?” the bartender asked.

“I wish.”

“Bullet, then.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know fishhooks from Key West. Bullets from Vietnam.”

“Right. Who were you with over there?”

“Marines One-Nine.”

“The walking dead.”

Bosch knew about the walking dead. The First Battalion, 9 Marines took more casualties than any other unit during the war, hence the name they came to be known by.

“What about you?” the bartender asked.

“Army,” Bosch said. “First Infantry, engineer battalion.”

“The tunnels.”

“Yeah.”

The bartender nodded. He knew about the tunnels.

“You in the hotel?” he asked.

“Room two-oh-two,” Bosch said.

“Don’t look much like a tourist.”

“I guess I gotta get some shorts and sandals and maybe a Hawaiian shirt.”

“That’ll help.”

“Are you Tommy?”

The bartender stopped his busy work behind the bar getting ready for the night and looked directly at Bosch.

“Do I know you?” he asked.

“No, first time in Key West,” Bosch said. “Over at the police station, I was told that you were the man I needed to talk to.”

“About what?”

“The bar trade in Key West. I’m trying to locate a bar that closed down six, maybe seven years ago.”

“What was it called?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t have a name.”

“Seems kind of fuzzy. You a cop?”

“Used to be. Now I’m just trying to find a guy who came here from L.A., invested in a bar, and then lost it all. My name’s Harry, by the way.”

He offered his hand across the bar top. Tommy wiped his hand on a bar towel and shook it.

“How long you been here, Tommy?” Bosch asked.

“Put it this way: longer than anybody else,” Tommy said. “This guy you’re looking for—he’s got a name, right?”

“He does, but I don’t think he’s using it here. Finbar McShane. He’s Irish.”