I’d better call the diner, she thought, tell Amos I’m gonna be a little late.
She went out of the bathroom and to the easy chair over which she had draped her clothes last night after the octopus had decided to leave. The phone rested on a battered end table alongside the easy chair, which was pretty battered itself, but which was as comfortable as an old shoe, if you enjoyed sitting in old shoes. She sat and felt one of the springs poking her in the behind (I wonder if I should have let him, she thought) and she adjusted her bottom and then pulled the phone to her and thought for a moment about the number of the diner, not having really forgotten it, but not remembering it offhand either. She puffed her cheeks out as she thought, letting her breath escape in a slow steady phwwwwh, and then nodded as the number came to mind. She dialed slowly, not wanting to make any mistakes; if there was one thing she hated it was dialing a number twice because she’d made a mistake the first time. She could have let him, she supposed, but what the hell was the percentage? He was a salesman on his way down to Key West. What was in it for her? What was she supposed to be, a free soup kitchen for every bum who staggered through? Yeah, well, never mind that jazz; she’d been had by enough salesmen all up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and there was no percentage in it, no percentage at all, half of them left you hanging anyway. The only decent one had been the guy in Richmond, and he turned out to be married, so what was the.
“Hello?” the voice said.
For a moment she thought she had dialed the wrong number. She looked at the dial and grimaced and then jerked the receiver away from her ear and studied it as though it had played a horrible trick on her.
“Hello,” the voice said again.
She put the phone back to her ear. “Who’s this?” she asked, frowning.
“Johnny,” the voice said.
“I must have the wrong number,” she said.
“What number did you want?”
“Listen, is this the diner?”
“That’s right.”
“The Ocho Puertos Diner?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, who are you?”
“You don’t know me.”
“Where’s Amos?”
“Out back.”
“Is Mr. Parch there?”
“No, he hasn’t come in yet.”
“Well, this is Ginny McNeil,” she said, and paused. “I work there.”
“Okay, Ginny.”
“My alarm didn’t go off this morning, so I’m gonna be a little late. Would you tell Amos to tell Mr. Parch?”
“What time did you plan on getting here, Ginny?”
“Well...” She looked across the room to where the clock was resting. “It’s almost eight-thirty. I guess I’ll be in around nine, okay? Would you tell Amos?”
“Sure, Ginny.”
“Or maybe a little later. Maybe nine-thirty. Yeah, I still have to get dressed and all. Nine-thirty, okay? Tell Amos.”
“I’ll tell him as soon as he gets back.”
“Thanks,” Ginny said, and hung up.
She was taking off her nightgown when she suddenly wondered how this Johnny guy, whoever he was, had managed to get into the diner when the diner didn’t open until nine o’clock on Sundays, and here it was only eight-thirty, not even.
Well, what the hell, she thought. One of life’s little mysteries. She shrugged, and then picked up her underclothing from the chair.
5
Luke Costigan’s pier came out of the Atlantic Ocean like the shaft of a primitive arrow, its triangular head formed by the three buildings of the marina — the storage locker, the shop, and the office. Of these three buildings, the office was the smallest and farthest inland, the tip of the arrow. On the left of the office, facing the ocean, was the windowless storage locker. On the right, also facing the ocean, was the repair shop.
The repair shop was built of plywood with a corrugated metal roof and two huge overhead doors on its seaward side. The building was some seventy-five feet long and forty feet wide, with a door at one end, just beyond the spar rack holding small masts and riggings. The door was marked NO ADMITTANCE, and it opened on the joiner’s shop where Luke and Bobby (and any extra help Luke hired from time to time) did their carpentry work. There was a keyboard just inside the door, containing tagged keys for all the boats in the marina and, to the right of that, shelves containing shafts, and rudders, and gaskets, and other boat parts. Scattered throughout the room were an electric saw, a planer, a sander, and a drill press. The room behind the joiner’s shop was called the engine room, and it was here that Luke and whatever local mechanics he could get worked on inboard engines needing repair. The room was lined with benches containing tools and parts. More often than not, an engine would be hanging from the chain hoist in the center of the room. Along one wall was a spark plug tester, an air compressor that belonged to a mechanic on Saddlebunch, and a part-washing tank.
A half wall, plywood, with wire mesh spreading from the top of it to a beam in the ceiling, divided this section of the shop from the larger section beyond. Luke called that area the paint shop, although more than painting was done there. The overhead doors opening into the paint shop admitted boats up to thirty feet in length, for repairs on their bottoms, for new shafts or propellers, for any job that could not be handled in the water. In addition, the shop doubled as a repair shop for outboard motors and contained a tank for testing. The area was usually cluttered with motors on racks or lying on the concrete floor, with sawhorses and cartons of empty oilcans, with paint cans and bottles of thinner on open shelves, with greasy coveralls hanging on pegs, with empty Coke bottles rolled under worktables, with idle cradles. The carpentry shop was certainly the cleaner of the two, with its smell of sawdust and its feeling of electrical efficiency.
There were eight people in the paint shop section of the building when Willy took Luke over there at rifle point.
Jason had made a call to Key West, first turning to Luke and saying, “You won’t mind if we make a long distance call, right?” and then immediately asking the operator for the number. When he reached his party, all he had said was “Arthur?” (Pause) “This is Jason.” (Pause) “We’ve got it. You can move out.” And hung up. Whoever Arthur was, Luke surmised he was (a) not overly talkative, and (b) capable of understanding the tersest sort of directions from his leader. Obviously, he was in Key West. Apparently, he was now about to move out of Key West. Seemingly, if Luke’s speculations were correct, he would be heading toward Ocho Puertos; otherwise, why had Benny and Jason been so concerned about not having control of the entire town before placing their call to him?
Jason, observing the furrow on Luke’s forehead, perhaps reasoning that Luke was doing a little too much reasoning of his own, had said to Willy, the one with the scraggly blond mustache, “Take Mr. Costigan over with the others, huh, Willy?”
Willy had grunted and shifted his rifle to a sort of overly smart military ready position and then said, “Yezgo, Costigan.”
Luke got to his feet and limped toward the door, and then stopped just before opening it and turned toward Jason and smiled and said, “Sure you can manage here without me?”