Duma Key(87)

Only it was. There was Tina, dressed in jeans and a clean pink tee-shirt, with her pack on her back. There was Candy Brown, also dressed in jeans, with his hand upon her wrist. Her eyes were turned up to his and her mouth was slightly open, as if to ask a question What do you want, mister? being the most likely. His eyes were looking down at her, and they were full of dark intent, but the rest of his face showed nothing at all, because the rest of his face wasn't there. I hadn't painted his mouth and nose.

Below the eyes, my version of Candy Brown was a perfect blank.

Chapter 10 The Bubble Reputation

i

I got on the plane that brought me to Florida wearing a heavy duffle coat, and I wore it that morning when I limped down the beach from Big Pink to El Palacio de Asesinos. It was cold, with a stiff wind blowing in from the Gulf, where the water looked like broken steel under an empty sky. If I had known that was to be the last cold day I'd ever experience on Duma Key, I might have relished it... but probably not. I had lost my knack for suffering the cold gladly.

In any case, I hardly knew where I was. I had my canvas collection pouch slung over my shoulder, because carrying it when I was on the beach was now second nature, but I never put a single shell or bit of flotsam in it. I just plodded along, swinging my bad leg without really feeling it, listening to the wind whistle past my ears without really hearing it, and watching the peeps scurry in and out of the surf without really seeing them.

I thought: I killed him just as surely as I killed Monica Goldstein's dog. I know that sounds like bullshit, but -

Only it didn't sound like bullshit. It wasn't bullshit.

I had stopped his breath.

ii

There was a glassed-in sunporch on the south side of El Palacio. It looked toward the tangles of tropical overgrowth in one direction and out at the metallic blue of the Gulf in the other. Elizabeth was seated there in her wheelchair, with a breakfast tray attached to the arms. For the first time since I'd met her, she was strapped in. The tray, littered with curds of scrambled egg and pieces of toast, looked like the aftermath of a toddler's meal. Wireman had even been feeding her juice from a sippy cup. The small table-model television in the corner was tuned to Channel 6. It was still All Candy, All of the Time. He was dead and Channel 6 was beating off on the body. He undoubtedly deserved no better, but it was still gruesome.

"I think she's finished," Wireman said, "but maybe you'd sit with her while I scramble you a couple and burn the toast."

"Happy to, but you don't have to go to any trouble on my part. I worked late and had a bite afterward." A bite. Sure. I'd spied the empty mixing bowl in the kitchen sink on my way out.

"It's no trouble. How's your leg this morning?"

"Not bad." It was the truth. " Et tu, Brute? "

"I'm all right, thanks." But he looked tired; his left eye was still red and drippy. "This won't take five minutes."

Elizabeth was almost completely AWOL. When I offered her the sippy cup, she took a little and then turned her head away. Her face looked ancient and bewildered in the unforgiving winterlight. I thought that we made quite a trio: the senile woman, the ex-lawyer with the slug in his brain, and the amputee ex-contractor. All with battle-scars on the right side of our heads. On TV, Candy Brown's lawyer now ex-lawyer, I guess was calling for a full investigation. Elizabeth perhaps spoke for all of Sarasota County on this issue by closing her eyes, slumping down against the restraining strap so that her considerable breastworks pushed up, and going to sleep.

Wireman came back in with eggs enough for both of us, and I ate with surprising gusto. Elizabeth began to snore. One thing was certain; if she had sleep apnea, she wouldn't die young.

"Missed a spot on your ear, muchacho, " Wireman said, and tapped the lobe of his own with his fork.

"Huh?"

"Paint. On your buggerlug."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll be scrubbing it off everywhere for a couple of days. I splashed it around pretty good."

"What were you painting in the middle of the night?"

"I don't want to talk about it right now."

He shrugged and nodded. "You're getting that artist thang going. That groove."

"Don't start with me."

"Matters have come to a sad pass when I offer respect and you hear sarcasm."

"Sorry."

He waved it away. "Eat your huevos. Grow up big and strong like Wireman."

I ate my huevos. Elizabeth snored. The TV chattered. Now it was Tina Garibaldi's aunt in the electronic center ring, a girl not much older than my daughter Melinda. She was saying that God had decided the State of Florida would be too slow and had punished "that monster" Himself. I thought, Got a point there, muchacha, only it wasn't God.

"Turn that shit-carnival off," I said.

He killed the tube, then turned to me attentively.

"Maybe you were right about the artist thang. I've decided to show my stuff at the Scoto, if that guy Nannuzzi still wants to show it."

Wireman smiled and patted his hands together softly, so as not to wake Elizabeth. "Excellent! Edgar seeks the bubble reputation! And why not? Just why the hell not?"

"I don't seek the bubble anything," I said, wondering if that were completely true. "But if they offer me a contract, would you come out of retirement long enough to look it over?"