Choke (23 page)

At police headquarters he asked for Tommy Sculley, and after a moment Tommy appeared.

“Tommy, this is Meg Hailey,” Chuck said.

“How do you do, Ms. Hailey,” Tommy said, then he turned back to Chuck questioningly.

“The young lady I told you about.”

Tommy looked at him blankly.

“I knew it,” Meg said. “This is some scam of yours.”

“Shut up, Meg. Tommy, this is the girl on the boat next to mine, the one you wanted to talk to.”

“Oh,
that
girl,” Tommy said. “Yes, Ms. Hailey, we would like to ask you some questions. Would you come with me, please?”

“I’ll wait,” Chuck said.

“Nah, we’ll be a while. Why don’t you go home, and I’ll call you when we’re done.”

“Okay,” Chuck said.

He drove back to Key West Bight, made some iced tea, and sat on the afterdeck next to the phone, waiting.

The sun was nearly down when Tommy Sculley and his partner pulled into the parking lot and got out, followed by Meg. The three walked toward the boat, and Chuck stood up to meet them.

“Here she is, Chuck,” Tommy said. “That’s quite a girl you’ve got there.”

“I’m afraid I don’t have her,” Chuck said. “I wish I did.”

“Oh,” Tommy said. “Well, we’ll be going. She was very helpful to your case, Chuck.” He walked away, followed by Daryl.

“Would you like some iced tea?” he asked.

“Was that you in the airplane this morning?”

“Yes, a friend flew me out to look for you.”

“Had you looked for me before?”

“I didn’t know where to look. Finally I got desperate, and my friend agreed to fly me up the Keys.”

“Desperate because you needed me to back up your story?”

“That too,” he said.

She placed a hand on his cheek. “You really have been in a lot of trouble, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

She reached up and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Don’t ever leave me again to spend a day with another woman,” she said.

“I won’t,” he replied. “I promise.” It occurred to him that he had never before promised anything like that to any woman.

T
ommy strode along the pontoons of the Treasure Island marina, looking idly around. “I don’t get it,” Daryl said, ambling alongside him. “Why are we looking at boats?”

“We’re not looking at boats,” Tommy replied. “We’re looking at hunks.”

“Tommy, is there something about your preferences you haven’t told me?”

Tommy looked at him. “Kid, I haven’t told you
anything
about my preferences. What we’re doing is trying to figure out Clare Carras’s preferences.”

“Her other guy? Gotcha.”

Tommy stopped. They were standing alongside Harry Carras’s yacht,
Fugitive,
and there were three young men aboard. One of them, a tall, blond beach bum type, hopped down to the pontoon and began undoing the yacht’s lines.

“Where you headed, guys?” Tommy called out.

Another suntanned boat bum on deck, who seemed to be giving the orders, looked down at Tommy and his street clothes, his leather shoes, with utter contempt. “The South Seas,
guy,”
he said witheringly.

Tommy held up his badge and grinned. “Permission to come aboard?”

The boat bum’s face fell. “Okay.” He turned to the man on the pontoon. “Make those lines fast again.”

Tommy and Daryl climbed aboard. “Who are you?” he asked, “and what are you doing aboard the Carras yacht?”

“I’m Jim Bowles; we’re moving the yacht to Fort Lauderdale to sell her. I do ferry work for the broker.”

“Mind if I have a look around?”

“Not at all,” the man said, anxious to be cooperative now.

Tommy walked down into the saloon and looked around him at the mahogany paneling and the expensive furniture. “This is some way to travel, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say,” Daryl replied.

“Follow me.” Tommy walked aft to the engine room and looked around.

“This is where the deed was done, huh?” Daryl asked.

“Yeah, it is.” He walked further aft to the rear of the engines. “And this is where the exhaust was connected to the diving tanks.”

“Tommy, would the exhaust from the engine have enough pressure to pack fumes into a tank of compressed air?”

“I don’t know,” Tommy said, “but look here.” He pointed to the compressor. “If he connected the exhaust hose directly to the compressor intake, the compressor would do the work. That’s how it had to be done.”

“Right,” Daryl said quietly. He placed a hand on the exhaust pipe. “So the tubing we’ve got would fit inside this hose, and the other end would go over the intake for the compressor?” He placed a hand on the compressor’s intake hose.

“That’s the drill.”

Daryl nodded. “Makes sense; I guess I was hoping to find something new about all this.”

“Well,” Tommy said, pointing to the two hose clips holding the exhaust tubing to the overboard pipe, “if all Chuck had to do was to put this back onto that exhaust pipe, it certainly couldn’t have taken him forty-five minutes to do the job, as Clare swore. It didn’t take that long to do the time when I was on board, and it didn’t the second time.”

“Anyway, the engine wouldn’t be running when he was making that kind of repair,” Daryl observed.

“Let’s take a look around this tub,” Tommy said.

The two detectives went forward again to the saloon.

“You guys going to be much longer?” the ferry skipper called from on deck.

“Yeah, we are,” Tommy called back. “We’ll let you know when we’re done.”

They went to the forward cabin and began a search, working aft, just as they had on Chuck Chandler’s boat. Half an hour later, Daryl called Tommy over to look at something in the aft owner’s cabin. “Look at this,” he said, pointing to what seemed to be a cupboard opening. “There’s no knob or pull on it.”

Tommy reached down and pushed the panel; it sprang open. There was nothing inside the exposed locker, but there were spring clips fixed to the inside of the cupboard door. “What do you make of that?” Tommy asked.

Daryl reached inside his jacket, produced his nine-millimeter automatic, and pressed the pistol into the spring clips. “I think that’s what it’s for,” he said.

Tommy looked at the king-size berth. “If Harry slept on this side, that would put a weapon right at hand for him, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, but where’s the weapon?” Daryl asked. “You see any when we searched the Carras house?”

“Nope.” Tommy began going through the lockers in the cabin, and he came across one containing wet suits and diving gear, including spare tanks of various sizes. “Guess Harry was an enthusiastic diver, huh? He was ready for anything, except breathing carbon monoxide.” He picked up a compressed-air spear gun and felt the tip. “I wouldn’t like to take one of these in the gut.”

“I get your point,” Daryl said.

Tommy groaned. “Let’s get out of here.”

Back in the car, Tommy said, “Let’s go down to the Olde Island Racquet Club. I’d like to talk to Victor.”

“How come?”

“Remember, when we were searching Chuck’s car, he said he’d left the trunk locked, but it had been unlocked?”

“Yeah.”

“I was just wondering how somebody else might have had access to Chuck’s car keys, and …”

“Chuck’s locker in the clubhouse, right?”

“Right.”

Victor finished a lesson, got a Coke from the machine, and headed to where Tommy and Daryl were sitting at a table at courtside.

“Let me talk to Victor alone, okay?” Tommy said.

“Sure; I’ll go over to the hotel and pick up a paper,” Daryl replied.

“Take your time.”

Victor sat down as Daryl left. “How’s it going, Tommy? Haven’t seen you on the courts lately; don’t want you to get rusty.”

“Been busy as hell, Victor, until this morning. Daryl wanted a paper, so I thought I’d take a load off for a few minutes. You teaching a lot lately?”

“Yeah, especially since Chuck has been taking some time off. I hope you guys are making some headway toward clearing him. I don’t believe for a minute he could have had anything to do with Harry’s death.”

“That’s good,” Tommy replied. “You know Chuck well?”

“Not intimately, but we have a beer now and then.”

“How about the Carrases?”

“I knew them from here.” He nodded toward the courts. “Chuck and I had dinner with them once, and of course, we were all out together snorkling that day.”

“Yeah, we were. What kind of a life do you have in Key West, Victor?”

“Not bad, I guess. Merk and I get the best of the weather here in winter, then we head to Santa Fe for the summers. It’s a nice combination.”

“Got a girl in Key West?”

“Nobody special. I sort of like cruising the tourists. You have a few nice nights together, then they’re gone until next year. I got a little black book that would stand me in good stead in just about any major city in the United States, I guess.”

“They come from all over, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Victor, did you ever see Clare Carras alone? Without Harry, I mean.”

“I gave her a couple of lessons, but when Chuck came he took over the better players.”

“No, I mean alone like at her house.”

“Nope.” He looked at Tommy appraisingly. “Hey, wait a minute, Tommy; she’s way out of my league. The Chuck Chandlers of this world service the Clare Carrases; ol’ Victor has to be content with the secretaries on vacation. That woman would chew me up and spit me out in five minutes.”

“You’re a good judge of character, Victor,” Tommy said.

“Once, in my youth, I got mixed up with somebody like that. It cost me a good job at a great tennis club. If I hadn’t blown that I’d be knocking down a hundred and fifty grand a year.”

“Do you regret that, Victor?”

Victor smiled. “Not really.” He waved a hand at the three courts. “This is more my speed.”

“No ambition?”

Victor shook his head. “Merk is the one with the ambition. He’s always dreaming about opening up a chain of these places—a hundred, hundred and fifty.”

Tommy looked at Victor with interest. “Merk’s ambitious, huh? Does he have any hope of pulling it off?”

“Not without a major investor, and so far, he hasn’t been able to come up with one. Tell you the truth, I keep hoping he’ll sell me this club. It would suit me, I think; keep me going in my old age, which ain’t all that far away.”

“Merk’s a good-looking guy; what sort of social life does he have?”

“Merk seems to read a lot,” Victor said. “We have a beer now and again, but he’s always home early.”

“Married?”

“Divorced. She took him pretty good, or he might have had that chain of tennis clubs by now.”

“Does he have any friends?”

“Just me, I guess. He’s the quiet type.”

“Yeah. How much time do you spend in the clubhouse, Victor?”

“Hardly any,” Victor replied. “I’m out here all day, then I head for home or the bars when the day’s over. Merk’s the office guy; he’s in there all day, keeping the books and selling equipment. Once in a while he’ll do a lesson, if we’re shorthanded, but mostly he’s in there bent over a desk.”

Tommy looked toward the club. “He in there now?”

“He went to the post office, I think. Oops, here comes my next lesson. See you later.”

“Victor,” Tommy said.

Victor stopped and turned. “You were smart to stay away from Clare Carras. Look what’s happened to Chuck.”

Victor grinned. “The secret to happiness, I think, is knowing your limitations.”

Tommy watched Victor trot on court to meet his client, an elderly man in whites, then got up and walked into the clubhouse. The place was deserted. He walked into Merk’s office and looked around. Nothing but a desk, a computer, and a telephone. He opened another door, and it led to the small locker room where he’d searched Chuck’s locker. On one wall of the office was a small key safe. Tommy opened it and browsed. He came up with one labeled “Master, lockers.” He put the key back and left the club. Daryl was waiting for him in the parking lot.

“What do you think?” Daryl asked. “Is Victor in this somehow?”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy said. “Like Chuck Chandler, he doesn’t strike me as the type. What do you know about Merk, the guy who runs the place?”

“Not much.”

“Neither does anybody else.”

D
aryl shifted his weight and switched radio stations for something that would keep him awake. He had followed Merk Connor home from the tennis club three hours before, and Merk was still inside. Daryl could see him occasionally as he moved around the little shotgun Conch house. A little legwork had told him that after his divorce, Merk had moved here from a larger house in a better neighborhood.

Daryl glanced at his watch; another forty-five minutes before he was relieved by Tommy. When he looked back at the house, all the lights were off. It was a little early for bedtime, he thought. Then, as he watched, there was the movement of a shadow behind the house, and a figure vaulting over a low fence and disappearing toward the next street. Daryl got the car started and quickly drove around the block. At the next intersection he got out of the car, ran to the corner, and looked around a building. The street was nearly deserted, but he saw a familiar figure turn another corner ahead, toward Duval Street.

Daryl got back into the car, drove straight ahead until he came to Duval, turned the corner, and pulled up at the curb, leaving the engine running. Half a minute later, Merk walked into Duval and started down the street at a rapid pace, headed toward the western end of the island. Daryl followed slowly, just close enough to see that sometime after arriving home from work, Merk had changed into fresh clothes.

Daryl was holding up traffic now, so he pulled over, flipped down the sun visor to expose the car’s ID to the foot patrolmen handing out parking tickets, and continued to follow Merk on foot. Merk never window-shopped or slowed down; he seemed to know exactly where he was going and was in a hurry to get there. He was getting closer and closer to Dey Street and Clare Carras.

From a block back, Daryl saw Merk suddenly turn into a building, and he resisted the temptation to run to catch up. It took him a full minute to make up the distance and find that Merk had turned into a bar. Daryl pushed open the door and walked in.