‘There’s the man you want to interview.’ She lifted a slender hand and pointed him out. ‘Right there. He saved dozens of lives. Far more than we managed to. He’s the hero of the hour.’
The cameraman swung around and spotlights glared in Thorn’s eyes.
The reporter took a step his way, lifting his mike.
‘Sir?’ he said. ‘Could we have a minute?’
Behind him the dark-haired woman motioned to someone in the crowd. And when she brought her pale blue eyes back to Thorn, a faint smile formed on her lips as if Thorn’s uneasiness amused her.
‘Sir? Sir?’
Thorn turned from the reporter and ducked into the shifting crowd.
As he emerged from the rear of the pack, a chunky man with stringy, shoulder-length blond hair blocked his way and pressed a cold can of Budweiser into his hand. Chubby cheeks, small gray eyes. He was in his mid-twenties and had on a fresh blue workshirt and white baggies and boat sandals. His flesh was stained the deep chestnut of someone who labored in the tropical sun.
‘Beer’s been at the bottom of the cooler all afternoon. Nice and icy.’
Thorn squinted out at the parking lot where the fire rescue vans were screaming away into the night. He fumbled with the tab on the beer can, got it at the wrong angle, and broke it off. He looked at the kid. A toothy grin flickered on the boy’s lips as if he were trying to decide whether to laugh or take a bite from Thorn’s neck.
‘That was you on the Maverick.’
‘Yeah? What if it was?’
The kid’s grin grew blurry. The whole goddamn night had turned blurry. Though not yet blurry enough.
‘And what’s your name?’
The kid thought about it for a moment.
‘“Don’t your nose get sore, sticking it all the time in other people’s business?”’ The young man grinned. ‘That’s George Raft, from Nocturne, 1946. With Virginia Huston and Myrna Dell.’
Thorn peered at the kid for a moment, then shrugged and brought his attention back to the beer can. He tried prying at the broken tab with his thumbnail, but got nowhere.
The kid reached in the pocket of his shorts and came out with a knife and flicked out the blade. He took the can from Thorn’s hand, dug the blade into the tab, and popped it open. The knife had holes in the grip and a blade that looked heavy enough to gut a moose.
‘You admiring my shiv?’
‘Not really.’
On the kid’s thumb was a bandage with blood seeping through the gauze.
Thorn took a slow pull on the beer. The kid held the knife at his side.
‘So how long were you out there?’ the kid said. ‘Before the crash.’
‘Why?’
‘Me and my sister were fishing over behind that island. We didn’t see you. You just kind of popped up out of nowhere.’
‘I didn’t see you either. Not till after the crash.’
The kid smirked as if he’d tricked some vital detail out of Thorn.
‘The three of you didn’t seem to be getting your hands real dirty.’
‘Two of us,’ the kid said. ‘Me and my sister.’
‘I saw three,’ Thorn said. ‘You and her and a guy in a cowboy hat.’
‘Yeah, well, I guess you’re mistaken, crabcake.’ The kid looked back toward the TV lights. ‘And we pulled in a few survivors. Maybe not as many as you, but who’s counting?’
‘That’s not how it looked from my seat.’
‘What’re you, the head Eagle Scout? Handing out the merit badges.’
‘Your cooler looked pretty full. Must’ve caught a ton of fish.’
‘We caught our share.’
‘But you still got the creases in your shirt.’
‘So?’
‘So you weren’t out there fishing. You weren’t out there doing anything. You haven’t broken a sweat.’
The boy’s smile went sour. He peered into Thorn’s eyes and his knife rose in what looked like a reflexive gesture. As if his first instinct was to slash the throat of anyone who called his bluff.
Then he halted and took a quick look around at all the potential witnesses and he lowered the blade. He stepped back and raked Thorn with a look.
‘If you weren’t fishing,’ Thorn said, ‘maybe you were bird-watching.’
A breeze drifted in off the bay, heavy with the sickening fumes. The kid snapped his knife shut and slid it into his pocket. He glanced toward the TV lights, then turned back to Thorn. His fingers toyed with the lump in his pocket.
‘You know what you need, asshole?’
‘A better haircut?’ Thorn said.
‘You need a little negative reinforcement, that’s what. Like maybe somebody should drop a tombstone on your head.’
The kid flashed Thorn an ugly sneer, then swung around and sauntered away into the bedlam.
Thorn drifted back to the docks and watched the Coast Guard and marine patrol bringing in the bodies on stretchers. Most of the living were already on their way to hospitals, and now it was time for the dead. The men worked quietly, with the grim efficiency of those who trained for just such disasters. For the next half hour Thorn nursed his beer and stayed in the shadows, watching the boats unload the charred and mangled remains. Getting glimpses of bodies so twisted and broken they might have been trampled by a stampede of buffalo.
When he could stomach it no more, he located the Heart Pounder, brought the skiff over, and lashed it to the cleats. He started the engine and headed out into the dark, staying away from the searchlights and rescue boats. He headed across the black bay, and when he was a half mile beyond the crash site, he opened up the engine, rising onto the smooth sea. Around him the moonlight coated the bay like a crisp film of ice.
With his running lights shut off, Thorn steered his phantom ship south, plowing across that murky void. A cold shiver whispered beneath his shirt. He took a last look behind him, north across the Everglades where the black sky pulsed with lightning. Then he turned his back on the mainland, gripped the wheel, and put his face in the wind, standing stiff and empty, blinded by starlight.
Thorn made it home by two that morning. Totally wiped out, but too wired to sleep, he sat out on the porch of his stilt-house and watched Blackwater Sound twinkle and listened to the distant rumbles of thunder. At dawn he went inside and took a shower. He got dressed and stood out on the porch for a while watching the water brighten. The mourning doves that roosted in the tamarind tree were coming and going in twos and threes, resettling briefly, then exploding from their perches in a panicked flailing of wings. A small boat muttered by and he watched the ripples work toward his coral and limestone dock.
He went back into the house, stared at his face in the bathroom mirror for a while, then stripped off his shorts and T-shirt and took another shower, scrubbing harder this time. His back muscles were sore. His fingers and arms ached. He toweled off, chose a fresh pair of shorts and another T-shirt, and put them on. Still, his skin felt strange. Too tight, too clammy.
At nine he was waiting outside the Key Largo Library when June Marcus, the tall, dark-haired librarian, unlocked the front door. She looked at him for a second or two as if she didn’t recognize him, then said an