“Stop!” I yelled. “It was my fault.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. I ran, and I didn’t stop until I reached the northern tip of the island.
Alex and Garrett stayed mad at each other the rest of the weekend. I refused to speak to either of them. I never explained to Garrett why Alex had pushed me overboard.
Neither Garrett nor Alex ever mentioned the incident again. As for me, I did not develop a lifelong fear of sharks or deep water. But I never forgot the shock of asking the wrong question of the wrong person and getting pitched headfirst into the warm sea with the blood and the sharks. For my last ten years as a private investigator, every time I interviewed someone or prodded for information, part of me was that twelve-year-old boy, and I imagined myself holding tight to the edge of the boat so I could not get surprised again.
“Señor?”
Jose was back, smiling blandly, holding the registration cards I’d asked him for. “You are fine, señor?”
“Yeah,” I managed. “Great.”
I took the cards and began flipping through them.
The first was in my handwriting: Mr. & Mrs. Navarre. I stared at it, marveling at the weirdness of there being a Mrs. Navarre.
I flipped through the other cards, went back to one of them, checked it against the phone records.
“Here,” I said.
“Señor?”
“Three calls to this number from the hotel. All in the last two weeks.”
“Is that bad, sir?”
“I don’t know.” I held up the registration card with a name, a Kingsville address and a phone number, all written in neat block letters. “But I think I should ask Benjamin Lindy.”
18
Garrett found Alex in the parlor, staring at the marlin above the fireplace.
“Yo, Huff.”
Alex’s shirt had a tear in the back, like it had snagged on a nail. Plaster and dust speckled his curly hair. “You sure you don’t want to buy this place?” he muttered. “Price is getting cheaper by the minute.”
His tone reminded Garrett of another friend—a fellow programmer who’d climbed out onto the tenth-story ledge of his Bee Cave Road office in Austin after the high-tech bubble burst. The guy’s voice had sounded just like that—fragile as glass—right before he jumped.
“You’re gonna get through this, man,” Garrett promised.
Alex turned. He was holding his old whittling knife—the knife his dad had given him for his thirteenth birthday. The blade was folded against the handle, but it still made Garrett uneasy.
“I was wrong to bring you all down here,” Alex said.
“You said you needed help. I’m telling you, man. Tres can help.”
“It’s too late. I’ve screwed up too much.”
Garrett remembered the body in the basement. A shiver ran up his back. Even so many years after he’d lost his legs, there were times he missed being able to run away. Down in the basement had been one of those moments. The way Tres had calmly shone a light over the dead man’s face, gone through his pockets and completely ignored the dried blood and the gunshot wound in the chest—how did little Tres, the annoying kid who used to complain to Mom whenever Garrett so much as touched him, grow up being able to examine dead bodies?
“Alex, if there’s something you ain’t told me—”
“Shit, Garrett. You couldn’t even start to guess.”
“That stuff about Calavera. If you had anything to do with that—I mean, you would tell me, right?”
Alex’s expression was hard to read—fear, maybe even shame. “You remember Mr. Eli’s funeral?”
Garrett nodded. It wasn’t one of the days he liked to remember. He’d come down to Corpus for the memorial, mostly to console Alex. There hadn’t been many people there, which had surprised Garrett. After all the people old Mr. Eli had helped, all the good things people said about him, Garrett figured there would be a mob scene. But it was just Garrett, Alex and a couple of ladies from the local Presbyterian church who seemed to have nothing better to do.
Afterward, Alex and he had gotten blind drunk at the Water Street Oyster Bar.
“You promised you’d be there at my funeral,” Alex reminded him.
“I was drunk, man. And you’re really starting to freak me out.”
Alex put the knife back in his pocket. “I’m going to get a drink.”
“Don’t think you need one, man.”
“This coming from you? Sorry, Garrett. I need a drink.”
“Alex,” Garrett called after him. “You didn’t kill anybody. You couldn’t do that, right?”
Alex’s eyes were as dead as the fish on the walls. “I’m sorry I got you here, Garrett. It’s gonna be just like Mr. Eli’s funeral. Nobody’s even gonna remember I did anything right.”
After he was gone, Garrett picked up a pillow and threw it at the wall. That didn’t make him feel better.
He thought about how long Alex and he had been friends. Seemed like forever. They’d gone to concerts together, howled at the moon from the roof of this old hotel. When Garrett had lost his legs, Alex was the first one to come find him in the hospital—one of the few friends that stuck with him and never made him feel like a freak. Garrett didn’t like what he was seeing tonight. He wanted Alex back the way he used to be—a pain in the ass sometimes, but fun. Admirable, even. Alex was the guy who always knew the right thing to do. Hearing him talking now about screwing up—no. That was Garrett’s job. Alex was supposed to be the smart one.
Suddenly Garrett wondered where Lane had gone.
They’d been apart like five minutes, and already he missed her. Alex, in the old days, would’ve had something to say about that. He would’ve warned Garrett against falling too hard. Garrett probably needed somebody to remind him of that. He had trouble thinking straight when it came to Lane.