“What for?”
“Cocaine,” Swann said.
“Christ, Andrew.”
Swann didn’t answer. He lowered himself to the sand; Louis sat down beside him. It was quiet for a long time, just the sound of the waves rolling in at their feet.
“I always thought I wanted to be a cop,” Swann said softly. “My mom died when I was three, and my dad raised me and my sisters. I was… in charge of the household, and every night when he came home, we had this ritual where I had to pass inspection.”
“Lot of responsibility,” Louis said.
Swann shrugged. “You know what I remember most? Standing at his bedroom door, watching him take his uniform off. He’d unpin each medal and lay them in a row on the dresser. His badge was always last. He put it on a folded handkerchief next to my mother’s picture.”
Swann wiped his eyes.
“From the time I was nine, I attended every ceremony,” he said. “Every police picnic, every funeral. I couldn’t wait until it was me standing in front of that mirror. But when I got to the academy, I hated it.”
“Everyone hates it,” Louis said.
But Swann wasn’t listening. “Freakin’ hours of memorizing meaningless statutes,” he said. “That stupid us-against-them mentality and that zombielike loyalty to complete fuckin’ strangers just because they wore the same fuckin’ uniform.”
“Andrew, take a breath.”
Swann lowered his head into his hands.
“Why didn’t you just quit?” Louis asked.
“It took me a while to figure that one out,” Swann said. “It was easier for me to get my ass fired than it was to tell my father that I hated doing the one thing he loved.”
Swann blinked. “I left Tallahassee three hours after he fired me. For the next two years, I just bounced around the beaches trying to figure out what I wanted to do.”
“How’d you end up here?”
Swann took a moment to answer. “Being a cop was the only thing I knew how to do,” he said. “And I realized that I still wanted that badge back on my chest.”
“You’re not making any sense, Andrew.”
“It… shit, this sounds corny as hell, but it gave me a sense of purpose and self-respect that nothing else ever could.”
“Even here in Palm Beach?”
Swann sighed deeply. “Even here.”
“How the hell did you get hired with your record?”
“My father sanitized my file,” Swann said. “So, all Palm Beach saw was an average police officer who’d resigned for personal reasons.”
Swann closed his eyes and leaned forward, elbows on knees. Louis had the thought that if the guy understood what a gift his father had given him, he didn’t seem ready to acknowledge it. But then he remembered that Swann had asked his father to expedite that computer search that turned up Paul Wyeth. Had they repaired the relationship?
“Andrew,” Louis said, “let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“Would you consider calling your father and asking him to intervene with the prosecutor on Kent’s behalf?”
Swann shook his head slowly, not looking up. “I haven’t talked to my father in eight years.”
“You said he helped you locate Wyeth.”
“No, I said I threw his name around to get someone to help me find Wyeth. Dad was never involved. And I don’t want him to be.”
“Not even to get a shot at getting Kent out of jail?”
Swann just shook his head slowly.
Louis decided to let it go. Maybe he could bring it up again when Swann wasn’t feeling so raw.
“You know, you shouldn’t let what Margery said bother you,” Louis said.
“Remember when you told me I wasn’t part of their world?” Swann let out a tired breath. “I thought you were just being an asshole. But you were right. These people don’t even see us.”
Swann lay back on the sand and closed his eyes. Now it was Louis’s turn to be quiet. Sam was suddenly there in his head. Margery had dismissed her as someone who dwelled on the same lower rung as Dickie Lyons. She was an outsider here, just as he himself was. But her snub of him still stung.
“Andrew, you awake?” Louis said.
“No.”
“You know the name Samantha Norris?”
“Sexy Sam. Everyone knows Sexy Sam.”
Louis was glad it was dark.
“What do you know about her?” Louis asked.
“Why do you want to know about her?”
“She was someone I met… the night Margery dragged us to the ballet. I thought she was interesting. Just wanted to know more about her.”
Swann propped himself up on his elbows. “She’s a climber,” he said.
“Climber?”
“Yeah, she started out working as a home-care nurse for Hap Norris after he had his first heart attack,” he said. “Then one night the starter wife, Bunny, caught them doing some physical therapy in the Jacuzzi, and all hell broke loose.”
Louis was quiet, remembering what Margery had said about a sordid divorce.
“Happens all the time here,” Swann said. “One minute they’re pushing a wheelchair, and the next they’re wearing diamonds.”
Louis looked out over the dark ocean. Other questions were burning in his brain, but he was afraid Swann would hear something in his voice that went beyond idle curiosity.
“Yeah, but in the end, it was Sam who got the short end of the stick,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Louis prodded.
“A couple years after they got married, Hap had a stroke. A really bad one.”
A stroke?
“I haven’t seen him in public since,” Swann said, “but I heard he’s pretty much… what do you call it when they can’t move their arms or legs but their brain’s still working?”
“I don’t know,” Louis said softly.
“Anyway, from what I hear, he’s got his own medical clinic up there on the second floor of that old house,” Swann said. “The best doctors, a steady supply of drugs, twenty-four-hour nurses to wipe his drool and change his diapers.”
Louis was quiet.
“And a pretty wife just sitting around and waiting for him to die,” Swann said. “Kind of sad, isn’t it?”
The tide was coming in, and Louis watched the ebb and flow of the water.
“Sad isn’t the word for it,” Louis said.
Chapter Twenty-eight
It was almost time.
Would she be ready? Her heart was beating fast, too fast. Could she stand it much longer? Of course she could. The moments just before were part of the experience. The tickle of palpitations in her breast, the shivers between her legs, the burn of her own skin when she touched herself. A lonely yet amazing kind of foreplay.
She moved across the room with a deliberate flourish, her steps soundless in the satin slippers, the brush of her white chiffon skirt like feathers against her thighs.
It was silly, she knew. The ruffles, the satin sashes, and the hours spent coiling her hair into sausage curls.
Oh, how long she had waited for this night. And this boy.
Bianca had promised he would be different from the last one. Bianca had promised he had learned the social graces, the art of a caress, and most important of all-and maybe as silly as the miniature bows but still important to her because it had never been important to Dickie-his breath would be sweet and clean.
Dickie… she wouldn’t have to worry about him tonight. She had been so happy when he told her he had been invited to some big real-estate party at Mar-a-Lago. He didn’t even care when she had begged off with a headache. She had sat at the window and watched him pull away in his ugly big Rolls, watched the parade of cars along the beach road going into Mar-a-Lago. And then, finally, she had gone to get her special room ready.
Tink turned on the small bedside lamp and admired her boudoir. The Hills of Provence vanity with its padded silk bench. The white antique iron canopy bed, draped in pink netting and covered by a satin comforter. And to complete the fantasy-and, of course, she understood that it was one-were her two beloved stuffed bears, Boo and Berri.