Rebel Island

“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.

“Hell with it,” he muttered. Maybe he didn’t know Alex as well as he thought. And if you couldn’t know somebody after thirty damn years, who’s to say you couldn’t get to know somebody just as well in one day?

He wheeled himself out of the parlor and went to find Lane.

19

I finally located Mr. Lindy in a room I never knew existed—a small library on the third floor. Judging from the limestone fireplace, the place was directly above the parlor. The shelves were lined with tattered hardcover bestsellers from twenty or thirty years ago. Ludlum. Trevanian. Guy books.

Lindy sat in a leather recliner facing the door—a good defensive position. He still wore his dark suit, though he’d loosened his tie. His demeanor was so formal that even this small concession to comfort seemed like a shocking breach of decorum. He was flipping through a copy of Field & Stream, but I got the feeling he wasn’t paying it much attention. His cologne filled the air with a faint amber scent.

“Mr. Navarre,” he said.

“Mr. Lindy. We need to talk.”

“Then you might as well sit down.”

I sat across from him on the arm of the sofa. It was the only way I could have a height advantage.

Lindy set aside his magazine. That’s when I noticed his .45 in his lap.

“If the gun bothers you,” he said, “I can put it away.”

He sounded courteous, but I wondered if there was a veiled warning in the offer. As if: The gun is the least of your problems.

“What’s your interest in Calavera?” I asked.

“Aside from the fact that he may be a direct threat to our lives?”

“Aside from that.”

Lindy glanced at the ceiling. Even here, in the middle of the house, I could hear the storm blowing strong. Footsteps creaked above us. I wondered if Alex was up in the attic again, blocking off some section of the roof that had been torn away.

“I’m curious,” Lindy said. “What makes you believe I have a personal interest in this killer?”

“There it is again.”

“What?”

“The way you said personal. I didn’t say your interest was personal. Earlier, you said you’d retired before Calavera started murdering innocent people. Innocent people. Most of Calavera’s hits were Mafia men. Only his last hit, his big mistake, killed innocent people. You’ve got some personal stake in the Peter Brazos case, the murder of Brazos’s wife and daughters. You slipped that envelope under my door.”

Lindy studied me, his eyes as bright as broken glass. “If you were right, would it matter?”

“What do you mean?”

“We have a murderer in this hotel. If he’s allowed to leave the island, he will disappear. Now that you know who he is, you must agree he has to be caught. Given our circumstances, you may be the only one who can do that. Does it matter who gave you the information?”

His tone was calm and reasonable, but he said the word murderer with an intimate loathing, the way a preacher might say Satan.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why did someone at the hotel call you three times over the last week?”

“I came to fish.” Lindy pointed to the Field & Stream.

“For Calavera?”

“I’m an old man, Mr. Navarre. I’m in no shape to track down a murderer.”

Which, I noticed, was not exactly a denial. “Did you know Marshal Longoria?”

“Not well.”

“Which means you did.”

Lindy’s gaze wobbled, as if he were looking back through decades. “I once asked his advice on a personal matter. He counseled me as best he could. That was many years ago. I wouldn’t say we were friends.”

“What was the personal matter?”

“I don’t see that it is relevant.”

“Your family?”

The muscles in his jaw tightened. “My wife.”

I waited, but Lindy was not about to draw water from that well.

“You knew Longoria would be here this weekend,” I said. “He had reason to think Calavera would be on the island.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Chris Stowall’s business card and a candy skull were in Longoria’s suitcase. There was a note written on the back: June 5.”

“That seems slim evidence.”

“I also found an email stuck in Chris Stowall’s diary. Part of a correspondence between Calavera and a U.S. Marshal named Berry, Longoria’s boss.”

I couldn’t tell if that surprised Lindy or not, but he seemed to be composing his thoughts before he spoke again. “What was the nature of this correspondence?”

“I think Calavera was negotiating surrender. He wanted to offer testimony against his employers, probably in exchange for a new identity and federal protection.”

“And why would he make such a deal?”

“The Brazos hit at New Year’s might’ve shaken him up, made him remorseful.”

Lindy shook his head. “Mr. Navarre, an assassin like Calavera has no remorse. More likely his cartel employers were unhappy with his failure to kill Peter. Calavera was bargaining information to save his own worthless—”