Rescue

has one.“
    “You sure?“
    “About what?“
    Another revolver. I mean, you do no have such good luck with the last one.“
    “Revolver, Pepe.“
    “Okay, okay. Hey, man, it’s pretty hard to break a gun no?“
    “But not impossible.“
    “When you was a kid, you this tough on toys, too?“
    “Pepe?“
    “Yeah?“
    “How do I get to the sports bar?“

21

    D riving south along the Florida Turnpike from Miami to the Keys, the new revolver—a snubby Colt—felt snug in its holster against my left calf. I thought about going to the hotel first to dean up. Then I decided it would be pretty late after that to find Dawna if she wasn’t at work, and I wanted to thank her for the lead to Mack Olsen and Zoe, however little help they’d been. Maybe she’d even have something else, or somebody else, I could try. I stayed on U.S. 1 through Key Largo down to Mercy and on to Pinky’s.
    Parking in the tree-ringed lot, I was relieved not to see Jay’s old car. Inside the door of the place, two of the blue-collar guys I remembered from my first visit were in the corner, the bald white one and the tall black one, sitting in the same chairs. They eyed me as I came in, the white guy even nodding in wary recognition. I nodded back, then walked up to the bar.
    A middle-aged man in shorts and a T-shirt was coming through the doorway to the kitchen with a towel over his shoulder. “Hi, what’ll you have?“
    “I was looking for Dawna.“
    A neutral expression. “Dawna?“
    I could understand that. “Dawna Adair. I met her here a couple of nights ago.“
    Before the keep could answer for himself, the bald white guy in the corner said, “That boy’s all right, Charley. He’s the one threw Jay out last Friday.“
    The keep looked to him, then back to me. “Dawna’s off tonight. Probably home, seeing it’s Sunday and all.“
    “Thanks.“
    As I left, the tall black guy burst out laughing in a locker-room way at something the bald white guy had muttered.

    Turning in at her driveway, there were no lights visible from the front of the cigar-maker’s house. However, there was a faint glow in the foliage at the back, probably from the loft window, and the Wrangler was parked at the edge of the driveway, the hood cool in the evening air. I walked around the house, stopping at the pocket door to the dining patio, which was open. I knocked on it anyway. Nothing.
    “Dawna?“
    No answer.
    “Dawna, it’s John Francis.“
    The same again.
    From the open door, I could see inside the house. Adair’s tote bag sat on the kitchen counter, a key ring next to it. A little louder, I said, “Dawna?“
    The house was quiet, except for the noises of insects, most outside the kitchen, but some buzzing around the fluorescent light on the range. Given the bugs, who would leave a dooi open at night down here?
    I moved through the kitchen into the living room area and stopped. Nothing. I crossed to the staircase, going up one step at a time and on the outside, so as not to make the floorboards creak. No worry there. The Dade County pine apparently didn’t warp, either.
    The bedroom loft was shadowed, the only light coming from the hurricane lamp on the small table at the window. I went to the window, the view overlooking the roof of the dining patio and the backyard. I didn’t see anything, the one sound beyond the insects that occasional drip you hear from an air conditioner.
    Then I remembered. Adair had said the Dade County pine was too hard to saw through, so Jay had given up trying to put in her air-conditioner. I turned toward the dripping sound and looked up. Into a nightmare.
    They’d crucified her.
    Dawna hung over the bed, her blood hitting the sheet the dripping sound I’d heard. Her wrists had been nailed to the collar ties near the roofline, another tie being used as the base for nailing her feet. The nails were three of the blackened railroad spikes, probably from some of the bookends. White adhesive tape was over her mouth, her eyes open, a deep stab wound on her right side that might have gotten a lung. She wore just a T-shirt and shorts, red drops also falling from her nostrils, as though she’d drowned, coughing up her own blood. Hours ago.
    Out loud, I said, “Dawna, I’m so sorry.“
    I caught myself about to gag, and stopped it. After swal lowing a few times, I thought about where this put me. I’d been seen minutes ago at Adair’s place of work, asking for her and being recognized as somebody she knew