82 Desire

cake. She did exactly what Gilbert Angus suggested—looked in the Yellow Pages—and pretty quickly found the On Y Va at the Bahia Mar Marina. “Got it!”
    Steve was napping on the other of the two queen beds in their small beachside hotel. His eyes snapped open. “Got what?”
    “Found him. Be back in a while.” She checked her gun.
    “You’re going over there alone?” He lifted his head, looking alarmed.
    “Haven’t you heard? I’m a police officer.”
    “I don’t know. I don’t feel great about this.”
    She chuckled, giving him a wave as she left. “You’re so cute when you’re worried.”
    “Just be careful.” He lay down again and waved back. He’d long since given up putting up much resistance.
    The marina was bustling—it was a gorgeous Sunday, boats coming and going on innocent errands, no one, seemingly, with a thought in his head beyond a picnic or a pickup. And there was the Pearson 38, a blue sailboat floating merrily, like anyone’s weekend toy. She saw no sign it was occupied.
    She didn’t quite know what to do next—how did you knock on a boat? She ended up hollering: “Mr. Favret! Mr. Favret, are you there?”
    Evidently he wasn’t.
    Or maybe he was. Maybe he just hadn’t heard. She climbed aboard, still shouting. There was still no answer.
    She wondered if she was trespassing, concluded that she probably was, and decided not to go below. Not yet, anyway. She settled for looking in the windows of the low structure built on deck. At first she wasn’t sure what she was seeing. It looked as if Russell hadn’t been taught the word shipshape—cabinets were open and things were on the floor that she thought shouldn’t be, almost as if someone had gotten drunk and clumsy, knocked over one thing reaching for another.
    Slowly it dawned on her that the place had been rather gently tossed. It wasn’t the kind of thorough going-over in which pillows are pulled off and slashed, but someone had very definitely been looking for something. Perhaps for Russell.
    She went below, thinking he could be injured in there.
    In fact, nobody was aboard, and since she was already far, far over the line, she hadn’t the first qualm about looking around. There was a fascinating item in plain sight. Attached to the bathroom mirror was a Post-it that read, “Passport!”
    It was the sort of note she wrote to herself when she didn’t want to forget something. “P.U. cleaning” meant “pick up cleaning.” But “Cleaning!” meant “No margin for error here. Pick up cleaning or go naked.”
    A passport would be a very fine thing for the pseudo-Edward Favret to have—or for someone else now in the process of being invented.
    As she climbed back onto the dock, it occurred to her that this was an excellent place to disappear. She stared out to sea, out to where she knew the Caribbean was, with its hundreds of tiny cays and coves. It would be so easy to drop off the face of the earth … if you had papers. And something told her they wouldn’t be that hard to get down here.
    Maybe, she thought, it would be a good idea to go introduce herself to the Fort Lauderdale police. For one thing, she might need backup later. For another, they probably knew a few forgers.

Twenty-four
    OFFICER MARTINA RUDOLFO was a dark woman with pitted skin and long curly hair that didn’t quite go with her crisp shirt and creased trousers. She probably thought the hair was her best feature. And a little shorter, it would have been, Skip thought.
    She looked at Skip with evident curiosity. “I’ve heard of you, Langdon.”
    “You’ve heard of me?”
    Rudolfo nodded. “My sister lives in Louisiana—married a man who works on oil rigs. They’re always sending me clips from the New Orleans paper—about the police department. They’ve sent me two about you, with little notes saying, ‘Why can’t you do stuff like this?’ “
    “They’re kidding, of course. No one in their right mind …”
    Rudolfo cut her off with a laugh. “You’re right. You’re sure right about that. Now, what can I do for you?”
    “Well, I’ve only got today to find this guy—the one I mentioned on the phone. And I’m wondering if he’s got a new name. Could he get papers in Fort Lauderdale?”
    “Oh, sure. But my guess is, he’d go to Miami. Has he got any money?”
    “He must. He paid cash for a sailboat.”
    Rudolfo nodded. “There’s a couple of first-rate forgers down there, but I doubt they’ll reveal the names of