Off the Chart

A couple of weeks ago Marty Messina had materialized again in Key Largo. Thorn had heard from one of his fishing guide buddies that Messina had been planting his butt on a stool at the bar of his old restaurant, running the place down to anyone who’d listen. Reminding everyone what a cutting-edge hot spot it had once been.

‘So you a Realtor now, Marty? Get your license in prison?’

‘Fuck you, Thorn.’

‘Seems reasonable,’ Thorn said. ‘Real estate’s the logical next career choice after apprenticing in crime.’

‘Hey, Thorn, come on, man, I don’t have all fucking day. Just say yes, and I’ll go back and draw up the papers and get your money bundled up.’

Marty gave him a cheerless grin.

‘My buyer will pay all cash,’ he said. ‘Two and a half mil.’

‘A minute ago you said two.’

‘I’m negotiating.’

‘Oh, is that how it’s done?’

‘Okay, three,’ Marty said. ‘Three million dollars, Thorn.’

Marty stood up and lumbered back over to the sawhorse.

‘You’re negotiating in a vacuum. I’m not selling.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I told him. You were a first-class knucklehead.’

Thorn glanced up, but Marty was looking out at the glassy bay.

‘Tell him to drop by. I’ll refuse him to his face.’

‘This guy doesn’t drop by, Thorn. He pays people to drop by.’

Marty turned and looked Thorn in the eyes and a smile spread slowly across his face as if he’d surprised himself with his own ominous wit.

‘What’s his name, Marty? The guy who wants this place so bad.’

‘Look, Thorn. If you fuck with me, you fuck with him. And believe me, buddy, you don’t want to fuck with him.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

Marty’s dark eyes held to Thorn’s and he clamped his lips together as if to keep from blurting out the name. The buyer could’ve been any of a hundred of Marty’s old associates, dope runners of an earlier era who’d stashed away enough to buy their way into legit businesses around the Keys. Thorn had nothing against their kind. He’d smoked his share of funny stuff back in his younger days before grass got all inbred and so full of hallucinogenic juice that one toke would give you the munchies for a month. He knew a ton of plumbers and electricians and roofers around the island who’d bought their first tools and panel trucks with the proceeds of one successful dope run. Most of them were upstanding citizens now. Churchgoers with a mortgage, kids in high school, a small fishing boat they took out weekend yellowtailing. But there were other guys he’d run into back in the good old dope days who’d gaffed and gutted one too many of their competitors, waded a little too deep into the dark sea of deadened senses. They were still around the island, but you didn’t see them out and about. They sent their lackeys, guys like Marty Messina, to do their bidding.

‘Okay,’ Thorn said. ‘So what exactly does he want to do with my land?’

‘Improve it,’ Marty said.

‘Ah, yes.’ Thorn lined up another slat of pine on the sawhorse and drew out the aluminum tape. ‘This land’s long overdue for improving.’

‘Don’t get funny with me, Thorn. I’m running low on patience.’

‘Hey, Marty. I have a tip. Tell your guy to swoop in and buy the tract where the Island House motel used to be. Back in March somebody knocked all the trees down, scraped the land bare, then left it sitting there. Guy must’ve run out of money. That’d be a nice spot to improve.’

‘He wants this land,’ Marty said.

‘You hit town one week, you’re out throwing around millions of dollars the next. How do I know you’re even legit? You know what I’m saying?’

‘This is for real, Thorn. A bona fide offer. Far as just getting into town, yeah, that’s true. But some people around here remember me, respect my abilities. I got excellent credentials.’

‘A stretch in jail being near the top of the list.’

‘I been out for a while, jerkhole. I been into some other things; now I’m into this. Not that it’s any of your fucking business.’

‘You’re standing here trying to buy my land. That sort of makes it my business, doesn’t it?’

Thorn took the pencil from behind his ear and marked the slat, then set the blade of the saw against the mark, drew it back an inch to score the spot. But before he could begin to saw, Marty stepped close to the horse, blocking his stroke.

‘Look, Thorn. You got a piece-of-shit car; it’s rusting through. Same fucking car you had before I went off to the joint.’

Thorn looked up at Marty. He held the saw in place.

‘You got this falling-down house, one good storm comes along, a puff of wind, trust me, Thorn, that shack’s gonna wash right into the bay.’

Marty made his eyes go droopy like he was bored with this, bored trying to reason with a knuckle-head, but still trying real hard to be decent.

‘Three million, you could buy any car you want. Buy ten cars. A house on the water anyplace in Florida. Put the rest in mutual funds, live off the interest. See what it feels like to be an adult for once in your life.’

Thorn looked over at Lawton stretching his arms, yawning, then rearranging himself in the hammock and easing back for the rest of his nap. Lately the old man had taken to dressing in Thorn’s clothes. Today he was wearing a baggy white T-shirt and khaki fishing shorts with flap pockets in the front, the exact same outfit Thorn had on. The official uniform for Camp Thorn.

‘I’ve already got a house on the water, Marty. I have the piece-of-shit car I want. So why don’t you go on back to Mr Hotshot’s office and tell him to find another plantation to sack and plunder.’

Marty peered into Thorn’s eyes for several seconds, then shook his head sadly as if about to deliver a fatal diagnosis.

‘I told my guy how you were. But he said to come anyway, ‘cause he believed I could talk you into selling. Man has that kind of confidence in me. Now I got to go back and tell him you blew me off. You’re going to make me look bad, Thorn. I don’t like looking bad.’

Thorn held the saw steady against the notch.

‘Seems like you’d be used to it by now, Marty.’

Overhead a warm breeze crackled through the brittle fronds. Marty’s eyes grew even droopier. He’d heard it all. Been there, pissed on that. He was too jaded to get riled by some amateur smart-ass. But all the same, Thorn could see the flush inching up his neck like the mercury on an August afternoon.

Marty held his stare, then shifted his gaze to the saw in Thorn’s hand. His dark eyes going flat.

‘You’re a crazy motherfucker, aren’t you, Thorn?’

‘So I’ve been told.’

‘I believe you’d use that, wouldn’t you? That saw. Take a swipe at me, try to saw my fucking head off if you could.’

‘You could stick around about two more minutes and find out.’

Thorn gave him an innocent smile.

‘Assholes like you, Thorn, they’re a dime a dozen in the joint. Thing is, they don’t last long with that hard-ass attitude. Sooner or later they smart off one too many times and wind up getting their fucking tongue cut out and handed to them on a clean white plate.’

Thorn looked down at the wood slat and nudged the saw back and forth across it, the blade missing Marty’s leg by half an inch. He spoke without looking up.

‘You might want to go home, Marty, stand in front of the mirror, work some more on that sales technique. ‘Cause it’s not working worth a damn.’

Marty took a few steps toward his car, then stopped and swung around.

‘He’s coming after you, Thorn. This guy doesn’t take no for an answer. He’s going to have this land one way or the other. That’s just fair warning.’

‘Bring him on,’ Thorn said. ‘Bring the fucker on.’

Just inside the front door of Tarpon’s, Marty snagged the portable phone off the podium and headed into the bar to use it. Tying up their only line right at early bird time. The old lady hostess came over and tapped on his shoulder and held out her hand, but Marty turned his back to her until she went away. What he needed was a damn cell phone, but he hadn’t put away enough cash yet.

He checked in with his boss, broke the bad news about Thorn, and his boss was pissed at the pigheaded asshole, but he wasn’t surprised.

Marty’s boss thought about it for a minute, humming to himself the whole time like he might be shaving or some damn thing; then he came back on and told Marty he could redeem himself by doing another job for him, one he could probably manage on the telephone. Marty got the details and hung up and about then the hostess came back, tapped on his shoulder again, but Marty ignored her and dialed the next number, hoping he’d catch the guy before he knocked off for the day, then had to wait another five minutes while the secretary who answered carried the phone outside to the guy on his forklift.

Marty didn’t even have to bully the forklift guy. Just used his boss’s name and offered him a foreman’s job at another marina, double what he was making, and the guy said hell, yes, he’d do fucking backflips for that kind of money. And after two more minutes on hold, listening to the background music at Morada Bay Marina, with the Tarpon’s hostess coming and going, pecking him on the shoulder to get the phone back, the forklift guy came back and said he had it. Five pages, the complete May calendar, the float plans for every boat in the marina. Marty gave him his boss’s fax number and the guy said he’d send it right over.

‘Fine,’ Marty said. ‘Come by on Monday morning, Paradise Boatyard, there’ll be a job with your name on it.’

‘Hey, thanks,’ the guy said.

Marty said, ‘Go fax the thing. And don’t go telling anybody what the fuck you’re doing, either, or your ass is chum.’

Two minutes later he called his boss again and the guy right away said, ‘Finally you did something right, Marty, I was beginning to wonder.’

‘You see anything there you can use?’ Marty ignored the put-down. He’d had enough of those for one day from Thorn.

‘Thursday night coming up. It’s perfect. Two birds, one stone. Thorn’s ass is mine.’

‘The guy’s a hardhead. I don’t know.’

‘I know all about this guy, Marty. I been making a little study of the asshole. And what I’ve decided, once I take this guy’s land, I’m going to cut off his balls and pickle them.’

‘I want to see that.’

His boss said, ‘The guy’s got a friend, Sugarman.’

‘Yeah,’ Marty said. ‘Used to be a cop, now he’s some kind of half-assed private eye.’

‘Way I hear it, these two guys are joined at the hip. Tickle Sugarman’s nose, Thorn sneezes.’

‘That’s about right.’

‘Well, I got a way to tickle the ever-loving shit out of Sugarman’s nose.’

‘So Thorn sneezes.’

‘That’s right, Marty. So Thorn sneezes his fucking brains out.’

A minute later when they were done Marty hung up and took the phone back over to the podium and set it down.

‘I believe this is yours.’

The old lady hostess blasted him with a glare, then turned and smiled at her next party and led them to their table.

6

By late afternoon Thorn was almost finished with the bench. Out in the western sky a few wispy cirrus clouds sprang from the horizon like the fine sprigs of hair curling off the neck of an elegant woman. The sun was brassy red and poised only minutes from another fiery crash into the Gulf. Already the western clouds were rimmed with gold and a gloss of crimson spread across the bay as if somewhere deep below the water’s surface the Earth had opened a vein.

While he rested his eyes on the showy sky, out of the dense woods that bordered his land a yellow Labrador puppy stumbled into the open lawn and halted beside the trunk of a giant sea grape tree. A mockingbird in the sea grape shrieked at the pup, then fluttered down and dive-bombed his head, but the Lab seemed oblivious.

After scanning the yard, the puppy spotted Lawton sleeping with one leg looped over the edge of the hammock. He ambled over and stopped below Lawton’s bare foot, cocked his head up, eyed the pale flesh, then washed his tongue across the old man’s sole. With a whoop, Lawton jerked awake.

Thorn smiled and picked up the handsaw and finished cutting the final slat of pine. While Lawton spoke to the puppy, Thorn carried the slat over to the bench and lined it up. When he was satisfied it was parallel, he screwed it into place and ran his eye along each of the slats to check its spacing. Then he turned and settled his rump on it and leaned back. Solid and secure. Maybe not the most comfortable bench, but good enough for what he had in mind.

Across the yard, Lawton rolled out of the hammock and tumbled into the tall grass and giggled like a child. The puppy staggered out of his way, then charged in to lap at the white grizzle on Lawton’s cheeks.

Thorn called over to see if Lawton was okay, and the old man gave a just-fine wave while the dog snuffled in close.

Thorn brushed some sawdust off the bench, then walked over for a better view of the wrestling match. He squatted in the grass as the puppy drew out of Lawton’s grasp, shook himself hard, then marched over to one of the old man’s leather sandals that lay in the grass. He plopped down and began to gnaw on his tail. His fur was matted and there were dark greasy streaks across his golden back. His ribs were showing through his scruffy coat.

‘Kind of mangy,’ said Thorn. ‘Looks like he’s been sleeping in a tar pit.’

‘He’s a survivor,’ Lawton said. ‘Been living off the fat of the land.’

‘And how do you know that?’

‘He just told me.’

Lawton wriggled his finger in a patch of grass and the dog paused midmunch and peered at this new quarry. Lawton wagged his finger again and the puppy dropped his tail, rose to a crouch, lowered his head an inch, focusing like a well-schooled bird dog. Lawton wiggled his finger again and the puppy leaped a few inches in the air and pounced on Lawton’s hand.

The old man laughed, turning his gray eyes on Thorn.

‘Goddamn it, I want this dog, and I’m going to have it, so don’t fuck with me, mister.’

Thorn drew a breath. In the last few months Lawton’s condition had suffered a series of small and quirky downturns. For one thing, there were these new flashes of irritability. Curses flared to the old man’s lips without warning or cause.

‘This puppy and me,’ Lawton said, ‘we’ve bonded. It’d be a goddamn criminal travesty to separate us.’

‘We’ll talk to Alex when she gets home. See what she says.’

‘I don’t give a shit what she says. If I want a dog, by God, I’ll have a dog. I’m too goddamn old to take orders anymore.’

The puppy fastened his teeth onto the tip of Lawton’s finger. But as Lawton stroked the Lab’s throat, the spiky puppy’s eyes closed and with a quiet groan he began to nurse on the old man’s crinkled fingertip.

‘I need a dog, goddamn it,’ Lawton said. ‘I need somebody to talk to.’

‘You can talk to me,’ said Thorn. ‘Anytime you want.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Lawton said. ‘Somebody on my own level.’

Thorn smiled.

‘How old am I anyway?’ Lawton said.

‘Not all that old.’

‘Am I still a boy?’

Thorn shook his head.

‘Older than a boy.’

‘Well, damn it, I feel like a boy,’ Lawton said. ‘I feel twelve. That’s all right, isn’t it? Feeling twelve? I mean, it’s not sick, is it, feeling that way?’

‘I’d say that’s fine. Twelve is a damn good age.’

‘Well, good, then I’m a boy,’ Lawton said. ‘And every boy needs a goddamn dog. So this one’s mine.’

As Lawton stroked the pup, Thorn leaned back, propped his elbows in the brittle grass. The sky had gone pink with honeyed whisks and spatters of color as bright and unnameable as the garish shades of reef fish. A school of cherry clouds cruised in formation a hundred miles aloft, and the entire bay had turned the hazy pink of brick dust.

As the final glint of sun disappeared, he heard the foghorn blare of a conch shell blown from a neighbor’s rooftop. A venerable Keys tradition still hanging on, a long single-noted salute to the dying day performed with the shell of the nearly extinct gastropod. The queen conch, official symbol of the Florida Keys, had almost vanished from her waters. Too many roadside stands, too many tourists looking for a cheap memento of their week in paradise, too many conch fritters and bowls of conch chowder. These days the roadside stands had to air-freight their conch shells from distant oceans where the locals still believed they were the keepers of a limitless supply.

While Lawton tussled with the puppy, Thorn got back up and went over to the shade of the gumbo-limbo. He opened a can of yellow paint, stirred it till it was oily thick, then began to spread it on the new bench.

As the first coat of paint dried, Thorn lit the charcoal in the grill and went back upstairs to marinate the fillet of a dolphin that he and Lawton had caught the day before out on the edge of the Gulf Stream. He set a pan of brown rice to boil on the stove and sliced up a fresh avocado, a portobello mushroom, and a meaty tomato, fresh produce Alexandra had selected last weekend at the farmer’s stall in the Key Largo flea market.

Thorn drew the cork on a bottle of wine she’d brought down from Miami and poured himself an inch in a squat highball glass. It was her favorite wine, a lush cabernet from Oregon. They’d been indulging themselves these last few months. Good wines, fresh fish, chocolates for dessert. A diet far richer than either of them was used to. He supposed it was the flush of love that gave them such indulgent appetites, as if their senses had become so inflamed from the constant sight and touch and smell of each other’s flesh that only the most luscious foods could compete.

When he was finished with the preparations he walked onto the porch. The sky was a dreary gray. Only a seam of red still burned along the horizon. Lawton was out by the dock, trying to teach the dog to sit. The puppy had no attention span and barked in protest each time Lawton set his rump back down in the grass and commanded him to stay put.

As Thorn was settling the mahimahi steaks and portobello onto the grill, Alex pulled in the gravel drive and parked her glossy blue Honda behind his rusty VW. Thorn pushed the steaks to the edge away from the fire. He walked over and met her at the car.

‘He’s got a dog,’ Thorn said.

Alexandra looked past him into the yard. ‘I see that.’

‘It just came wandering out of the woods and he adopted it.’

‘And you said he could keep it?’

‘I said we’d wait till you got home and talk about it then.’

‘So I get to be the bad guy.’

‘I’ll do it. If that’s what you decide.’

Thorn leaned in and gave her a kiss on the lips, which after a couple of seconds warmed to something more than a hello.

The tart scent of her long day’s work in Miami clung to her clothes and flesh. She averaged a half-dozen crime scenes on a typical shift, shooting several rolls of film on each one, using her video camera on the larger scenes. From what Thorn gathered, it was hardly glamorous, rarely more than routine. Women beaten to death by boyfriends, teenage boys shot down in their first drug deal, geriatric suicides, babies fatally shaken by mothers trying to keep the little brats quiet. Mainly Alexandra moved through small dismal rooms with peeling paint and furniture abandoned by long-departed occupants, one sprawling body after another, usually discarded hypodermics, baggies of crack somewhere nearby. In the years she’d been doing it, Alexandra had cataloged so much death and misery, made such a study of cruelty’s stark poses, it was a wonder the heavy shadows of her work didn’t mute her laughter or dim her nearly ceaseless smile.

Finally she drew out of the embrace and pressed a hand to his chest to hold him at bay, a not-now-but-definitely-later smile in her eyes.

‘So about this dog.’

‘Well, I tried to stay neutral because I thought it was your call.’

‘Because he’s my dad.’

‘I didn’t think it was my place to decide.’

‘Meanwhile, look at him.’

Lawton was lying in the grass near the dock, flat on his back, hands laced behind his head, with the Lab’s snout propped on Lawton’s chest.

‘A dog is a long-term commitment,’ she said. ‘You ready for that?’

She turned her head slowly and fixed her eyes on Thorn’s.

‘Never been readier.’

A ghost of skepticism hovered just below the surface of her smile.

‘So it just came walking out of the woods?’

‘Poof, like that.’

She lifted her hands and raked her fingers through her thick black hair as if unsnarling the thousand invisible knots from her long day. He heard what sounded like a quiet groan of pleasure escape from her throat. Then she tipped her head back and shook her hair so it rustled along the back of her white sleeveless blouse. Thorn looked at her neck, at her delicate ears, at the dusting of dark hair that formed her sideburns.

‘A boy and his dog,’ she said. ‘Oh, hell, why not?’

She put an arm around his waist and they walked down to the shoreline.

‘I’ve named him,’ Lawton said. ‘I’ve named the dog.’

‘Hello, Dad,’ she said.

‘I’m calling him Lawton.’

‘But that’s your name.’

The dog was staring up at Lawton as if waiting for the next command.

‘I know it’s my name. What do you think, I’m so far gone I don’t know my own name?’

‘You think that’s a good idea?’ Thorn said. ‘Two Lawtons, that might be one too many.’

‘Why not? It’s a good name,’ Lawton said. ‘It’s served me well.’

‘We might get you two confused. Lawton the dog, Lawton the dad.’

‘Get us confused? Now who’s losing their mind? I’m a man, this is a dog. How’re you going to get us confused?’

‘He’s got a point,’ Thorn said.

She looked at him and closed her eyes briefly.

‘Okay, okay,’ she said. ‘But you’re going to have to take care of him, Dad. That’s a big job. Are you ready for that? Bathing him, taking him to the vet. He’ll need shots.’

‘Watch,’ he said. ‘I’ve taught him to sit already. He’s a smart little fur ball.’

With an open hand Lawton motioned the dog down, and the puppy jumped up and tried to nip his fingers.

‘Down, Lawton. Sit.’

With a single bark of complaint, the puppy planted his rear on a sandy patch and stared up at Lawton, his tail brushing back and forth across the bare earth.

‘See,’ the old man said. ‘He’s a fast learner.’

‘That’s good, Dad. And you’re obviously a good teacher.’

‘He’d better be fast,’ Lawton said. ‘Because I don’t have much time left to teach him much.’

‘Oh, come on. Don’t say that.’

‘Where’d that guy Webster go? He offered me a job working undercover. I need to talk to him about when I’m going to start.’

‘That was months ago, Dad. That was March; this is May. He went away and he’s not coming back.’

‘Went away?’

‘Anyway, you’ve got this dog. You don’t need any more jobs.’

‘But Webster was counting on me. It was a national emergency. I could be putting us all in peril. This woman Anne Joy is at the root of it.’

‘Anne Joy?’

Alexandra stooped down beside the dog and scratched him beneath the throat. The puppy grew limp at her touch.

‘Her name came up,’ Thorn said.

‘First I’ve heard of that.’

‘Webster mentioned her. That’s when I shut him up and kicked him out.’

‘Oh, yeah, I feel it coming,’ Lawton said. ‘The end is definitely near. It won’t be long. This dog is going to have to be my legacy.’

‘Dad,’ Alex said. ‘Please stop.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Lawton said. ‘I’m ready. Now that you’re finally in good hands and there’s someone to carry on my name, it’s time for me to exit.’

Alexandra stood up, her mouth clamped tight.

‘It’s okay,’ Thorn said. ‘It’s just words.’

‘I know. I know. But still.’