“I consider all possibilities, Mr. Moana.”
“Well, consider this, then.” He took a step toward Collazo. “Seychelle Sullivan has devoted her life to saving people. She would no more hurt somebody than Mother Teresa would.” He moved in closer his nose not three inches from the detective’s. “There’s a real killer out there. I suggest you get out there and find out who really did this, and stop hassling Seychelle.”
The detective stood and adjusted his tie, never breaking eye contact with B.J. I could practically smell the testosterone in the air. Then Collazo smiled. It was the first time I had seen him smile, and I couldn’t help but notice the huge gap between his front teeth. He could have slid his gold pen in there without touching enamel.
“Oh, I’ll do that, all right.” He looked straight at me. “We will be waiting for your statement, Miss Sullivan. Tomorrow.” He picked up his jacket, turned, and walked out of the bar.
When the door closed behind him, Wally called over, “I think you scared him off, B.J.” All the guys, including Pete, laughed.
Jake said, “You beat the hell out of his karma there, man.”
“Yeah,” Nestor shouted, “I think you threatened to meditate him to death and scared the shit out of him.”
“Okay, guys, that’s enough.” I swiveled around on my barstool to face him. “I’m surprised at you, B.J. Bullying him like that.” I tried very hard to look stern, but my face broke into a grin. “Mother Teresa?”
He shrugged and smiled. “A much sexier version.”
I shook my head at him.
We moved to a booth along the back wall. B.J. ordered grilled dolphin with rice and vegetables, and he shook his head in disgust when I asked for a basket of fried shrimp and chips. Normally, he would have told me that I was going to die of a heart attack by the time I was forty because I lived on beer, fried food, and takeout, but after the day I’d had, apparently he was going to give me a break.
“I looked for you today before going out on this job,” I said. “I thought you were going to work on repairing that head. Where were you?”
“Jimmy St. Clair came by on the river in his Sea Ray. He asked me to go down with him to Bahia Mar to give him a price on a boat he’s rebuilding. He’s got a nice old Chris Craft right there on A dock. A classic. You can see her when you’re driving by on A1A. She’s got a bad case of dry rot—enough to keep me busy into the summer.” He unfolded his napkin and carefully spread it on his lap. “But I wish I had been at the estate today. Do you want to tell me about it?”
Pete brought a couple more beers over at that point, and as we drank, I told the story again. I was beginning to find it therapeutic to repeat the tale so many times.
“And then when I finally made it back to the cottage, I had a message on my machine from Maddy. He wants me to sell Gorda so he can get his money out of the boat.”
“Whoa! That’s kind of sudden, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. But Maddy can lose money fast. He used to be a regular at the track.”
I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until Lil set the plate down and I inhaled the tangy sea smell of the fried shrimp. B.J. wrinkled his nose when I drowned my fries in catsup, but he didn’t slow down his eating. He’d always been ultra picky about food. He insisted on healthy
food, but when it came time to eat, he was like a machine. He didn’t shovel it in or look gross, but he ate with an incredible economy of movement. I would look up and suddenly realize that he had cleaned his entire plate. I always had to concentrate to keep up with him. I didn’t dare try to talk while eating, and we’d been friends long enough that silence at the table didn’t feel uncomfortable to either one of us.
When he finished, he wiped his mouth with his napkin and leaned back, spreading his arms on the back of the booth. Unlike most Samoans, he didn’t have wavy hair. His was straight and shiny, nearly the same length as mine. Because of his hair, his lean, muscular build, and his almond-shaped brown eyes, I suspected there was some Chinese or Japanese somewhere in his family tree.
“I’d met her,” B.J. said.
For a minute I wasn’t sure who he was talking about. He must have seen the blank look on my face.
“The girl, Patty Krix. One night a couple of weeks ago, I came into the Downtowner, and she was here with Neal.”
I pushed away my basket of soggy fries. He’d conjured up that picture of her again, with the knife and the pool of congealing blood. I couldn’t face catsup anymore.
“Did you talk to her?”
He shrugged. “A little. She told me there was some girl at her other job that she would like to introduce me to.”
It was always that way with B.J. Women were drawn to him like flies to a bug zapper always flitting about him and trying to get closer to the source of the heat. Luckily, attraction to B.J. was never fatal. There were no broken hearts. In the years I’d known him there had
been lots of short-term girlfriends who became long-term friends. I’d never known one of them to go away bitter, but they always went away. They seemed to understand that they would never play a larger part in B.J.’s life.
I, too, was thankful for our friendship, but in a different way. Ever since I had shot up in height in the fifth grade, I’d felt awkward around incredibly handsome guys. This made it a challenge just talking to B.J. He worked for me as a handyman and mechanic, yet he had a couple of degrees in classical lit and Asian studies, so not only was he gorgeous, but he was damn smart. Being friends with B.J. put us on a different level; sometimes he made me feel like a complete idiot, but at least I didn’t need to play any boy/girl games with him.
Apparently, even though Patty Krix had already teamed up with Neal, she couldn’t let irresistible B.J. be. She figured she’d fix him up with her friend. I was beginning to get an idea of who Patty was.
“But I thought Pete said she used to work here.”
“That was just part-time. She was also a dancer at that Top Ten Club.” B.J. smiled. “I’d have liked to see that.”
I felt my jaw sag. “What? You’re kidding.”
“No. She was really built.”
I tapped my forehead with my fingertips and shook my head at him. “I mean, I had no idea she worked at the Top Ten Club. Don’t you think that’s kind of odd?”
“I’ve never understood why a woman would want to dance around naked for a lot of strange men.” I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes that he was teasing me, pretending not to understand. But it still made me mad.
“According to Pete,” I said, “the day she met Neal, it was almost as if she was looking for him. And she worked for the same outfit that used to own the boat she died on.”
“What, you mean you think she might have been some kind of Mata Hari or something?”
“I don’t know. Neal was the one who was more likely to see conspiracies everywhere, not me. You should have heard him carry on about that Crystal character he worked for. I’d mostly just tune it out, attribute it to too many years in the big-govemment machine. But now . . . I don’t know.”
It hurt to think about it. I wanted to talk about something else, anything—the weather, the sea conditions, the job B.J. was working on this week. But Neal’s absence loomed between us, and I could feel myself dancing around the periphery of this big dark place. Like a scuba diver’s blue hole, the depths gaped invitingly, taunting me with the unknown, daring my curiosity. It was too dark down there to see what lurked in the depths, but I knew somehow that I wasn’t ready to go there yet.
By the time we walked out to the parking lot together, it was nearly eight o’clock. The lot backed onto a street across from which rose the high, nearly windowless walls of the big new Broward County Jail. There were no lights working in the lot. B.J.’s perfectly restored jet- black El Camino was parked in the pale light that was cast by the restaurant’s bathroom windows. We stopped next to his truck, and he asked if I wanted him to follow me home.