Duma Key(164)

"If it's any consolation, it could have been a coincidence he was a hell of a nice guy, but he was also packing a lot of extra pounds. Anyone who looked at him could see that."

"You could be right." Although I knew she wasn't. "I'll talk to you soon."

"All right." She hesitated. "Take care of yourself, Eddie."

"You too. Lock your doors tonight, and set the alarm."

"I always do."

She broke the connection. On the other side of the house, the surf was disputing with the night. My right arm was itching. I thought: If I could get at you, I believe I'd cut you off all over again. Partly to stop the damage you can do, but mostly just to shut you up.

But of course it wasn't my gone arm, or the hand which had once lived at the end of it, that was the problem; the problem was the woman-thing in the red robe, using me like some kind of f**ked-up Ouija board.

"What?" Wireman asked. "Don't keep us in suspense, muchacho, what?"

"Kamen," I said. "Heart attack. Dead."

I thought of all the pictures stored at the Scoto, pictures that were sold. They'd be safe for a little while where they were, but in the end, money talks and bullshit walks. That wasn't even a man-law, it was the motherf*cking American way.

"Come on, Edgar," Jack said. "I'll run you to your place, then drive you back here."

xiv

I won't say our trip upstairs to Little Pink was exactly serene (I had the silver candlestick, and carried it at port arms all the time we were inside), but it was uneventful. The only spirits in the place were the agitated voices of the shells. I put the drawings back in the red picnic basket. Jack snagged the handles and carried it downstairs. I had his back the whole way, and locked Big Pink's door behind us. Much good that would do.

While we were riding back to El Palacio, a thought occurred to me... or recurred. I'd left my digital Nikon behind and didn't want to go back for it, but-

"Jack, do you have a Polaroid camera?"

"Sure," he said. "A One-Shot. It's what my Dad calls 'old but serviceable.' Why?"

"When you come tomorrow, I want you to stop for awhile on the Casey Key side of the drawbridge. Take a few Polaroids of the birds and the boats, okay?"

"Okay..."

"And sneak in a couple of the drawbridge itself, especially the lifting machinery."

"Why? What do you want them for?"

"I'm going to sketch the drawbridge with the machinery gone," I said. "And I'm going to do it when I hear the horn that means it's up to let a boat go through. I don't think the motor and the hydraulics will really disappear, but with luck I can f**k it up badly enough to keep everybody off for awhile. Car-traffic, anyway."

"Are you serious? You really think you can sabotage the bridge?"

"Given how often it breaks down on its own, that should be easy." I looked again at the dark water and thought of Tom Riley, who should have been fixed. Who had been fixed, dammit. "I only wish I could draw myself a good night's sleep."

How to Draw a Picture (IX)

Look for the picture inside the picture. It's not always easy to see, but it's always there. And if you miss it, you can miss the world. I know that better than anyone, because when I looked at the picture of Carson Jones and my daughter of Smiley and his Punkin I thought I knew what I was looking for and missed the truth. Because I didn't trust him? Yes, but that's almost funny. The truth was, I wouldn't have trusted any man who presumed to claim my darling, my favored one, my Ilse.

I found a picture of him alone before I found the one of them together, but I told myself I didn't want the solo shot, that one wouldn't do me any good, if I wanted to know his intentions toward my daughter I had to touch them as a couple with my magic hand.

I was already making assumptions, you see. Bad ones.

If I'd touched the first one, really searched the first one Carson Jones dressed in his Twins shirt, Carson alone things might have been different. I might have sensed his essential harmlessness. Almost certainly would have. But I ignored that one. And I never asked myself why, if he was a danger to her, I had then drawn her alone, looking out at all those floating tennis balls.

Because the little girl in the tennis dress was her, of course. Almost all the girls I drew and painted during my time on Duma Key were, even the ones that masqueraded as Reba, or Libbit, or in one case as Adriana.

There was only one female exception: the red-robe.

Her.

When I touched the photograph of Ilse and her boyfriend, I had sensed death I didn't admit it to myself at the time, but it was true. My missing hand sensed death, impending like rain in clouds.

I assumed Carson Jones meant my daughter harm, and that was why I wanted her to stay away from him. But he was never the problem. Perse wanted to make me stop was, I think, desperate to make me stop once I found Libbit's old drawings and pencils but Carson Jones was never Perse's weapon. Even poor Tom Riley was only a stopgap, a make-do.

The picture was there, but I made a wrong assumption, and missed the truth: the death I felt wasn't coming from him. It was hanging over her.

And part of me must have known I missed it.

Why else had I drawn those damned tennis balls?

Chapter 16 The End of the Game