Duma Key(179)

"It doesn't matter, muchacho, " Wireman said. "It's not real. That picnic basket, on the other hand, needs to be carried. So mush. On, you huskies."

"Just looking at it made me feel like I was losing my mind," Jack said. "Do you understand that, Edgar?"

"Of course. Libbit had a very powerful imagination, back in the day."

"What happened to it, then?"

"She forgot how to use it."

"Jesus," Jack said. "That's horrible."

"Yes. And I think that kind of forgetting is easy. Which is even more horrible."

Jack bent down, picked up the basket, then looked at Wireman. "What's in here? Gold bars?"

Wireman grabbed the bag of food and smiled serenely. "I packed a few extras."

We worked our way up the overgrown driveway, keeping an eye out for the lawn jockey. It did not return. At the top of the porch steps, Jack set the picnic basket down with a little sigh of relief. From behind us came a flurry and flutter of wings.

We turned and saw a heron alight on the driveway. It could have been the same one that had been giving me the cold-eye from El Palacio' s tennis court. Certainly the gaze was the same: blue and sharp and without an ounce of pity.

"Is that real?" Wireman asked. "What do you think, Edgar?"

"It's real," I said.

"How do you know?"

I could have pointed out that the heron was casting a shadow, but for all I knew, the lawn jockey had been casting one, as well; I had been too amazed to notice. "I just do. Come on, let's go inside. And don't bother knocking. This isn't a social call."

xiii

"Uh, this could be a problem," Jack said.

The veranda was deeply shadowed by mats of hanging Spanish Moss, but once our eyes had adjusted to the gloom, we could see a thick and rusty chain encircling the double doors. Not one but two padlocks hung down from it. The chain had been run through hooks on either jamb.

Wireman stepped forward for a closer look. "You know," he said, "Jack and I might be able to snap one or both of those hooks right off. They've seen better days."

"Better years, " Jack said.

"Maybe," I said, "but the doors themselves are almost certainly locked, and if you go rattling chains and snapping hooks, you're going to disturb the neighbors."

"Neighbors?" Wireman asked.

I pointed straight up. Wireman and Jack followed my finger and saw what I already had: a large colony of brown bats sleeping in what looked like a vast hanging cloud of cobweb. I glanced down and saw the porch was not just coated but plated with guano. It made me very glad I was wearing a hat.

When I looked up again, Jack Cantori was at the foot of the steps. "No way, baby," he said. "Call me a chicken, call me a candy-ass, call me any name in the book, I'm not going there. With Wireman it's snakes. With me it's bats. Once-" He looked like he had more to say, maybe a lot, but didn't know how to say it. He took another step back, instead. I had a moment to contemplate the eccentricity of fear: what the weird jockey hadn't been able to accomplish (close, but that only counts in horseshoes), a colony of sleeping brown bats had. For Jack, at least.

Wireman said, "They can carry rabies, muchacho did you know that?"

I nodded. "I think we should look for the tradesman's entrance."

xiv

We made our way slowly along the side of the house, Jack in the lead and carrying the red picnic basket. His shirt was dark with sweat, but he no longer showed the slightest sign of nausea. He should have; probably we all should have. The stench from the pool was nearly overpowering. Thigh-high grass whickered against our pants; stiff fiddlewood stems poked at our ankles. There were windows, but unless Jack wanted to try standing on Wireman's shoulders, they were all too high.

"What time is it?" Jack puffed.

"Time for you to move a little faster, mi amigo, " Wireman said. "You want me to spell you on that basket?"

"Sure," Jack said, sounding really out of temper for the first time since I'd met him. "Then you can have a heart attack and me and the boss can try out our CPR technique."

"Are you suggesting I'm not in shape?"

"In shape, but I still put you fifty pounds into the cardiac danger zone."

"Quit it," I said. "Both of you."

"Put it down, son," Wireman said. "Put that cesto de puta madre down and I'll carry it the rest of the way."

"No. Forget it."

Something black moved in the corner of my eye. I almost didn't look. I thought it was the lawn jockey again, this time darting alongside the pool. Or skimming its buggy, smelly surface. Thank God I decided to make sure.

Wireman, meanwhile, was glowering at Jack. His manhood had been impugned. "I want to spell you."

A piece of the pool's turgid nastiness had come alive. It detached itself from the blackness and flopped onto the cracked, weed-sprouting concrete lip, splattering muck about itself in a dirty starburst.

"No, Wireman, I got it."

A piece of nastiness with eyes.

"Jack, I'm telling you for the last time."

Then I saw the tail, and realized what I was looking at.

"And I'm telling you -"