Sole Survivor

shirt, was not in sight.
        The guy in the green shirt studiously avoided looking directly at Joe. He cupped one hand to his right ear, as if were wearing a bad hearing aid and needed to block the music from the sun-bathers' radios in order to focus on something else that he wanted to hear.
        At this distance, Joe could not be certain, but he thought the man's lips were moving. He appeared to be engaged in a conversation with his missing companion.
        Leaving his towel and cooler, Joe walked south toward the public restrooms. He didn't need to glance back to know that the guy in the green Hawaiian shirt was watching him.
        On reconsideration, he decided that getting soused on the sand probably was still against the law, even these days. After all, a society with such an enlightened tolerance of corruption and savagery needed to bear down hard on minor offences to convince itself that it still had standards.
        Nearer the pier, the crowds had grown since Joe's arrival. In the amusement centre, the roller coaster clattered. Riders squealed.
        He took off his sunglasses as he entered the busy public restrooms.
        The men's lavatory stank of urine and disinfectant. In the middle of the floor between the toilet stalls and the sinks, a large cockroach, half crushed but still alive, hitched around and around in a circle, having lost all sense of direction and purpose. Everyone avoided it-some with amusement, some with disgust or indifference.
        After he had used a urinal, as he washed his hands, Joe studied the other men in the mirror, seeking a conspirator. He settled on a long-haired fourteen-year-old in swim trunks and sandals.
        When the boy went to the paper-towel dispenser, Joe followed, took a few towels immediately after him, and said, “Outside, there might be a couple of cop types hanging out, waiting for me.”
        The boy met his eyes but didn't say anything, just kept drying his hands on the paper towels.
        Joe said, “I'll give you twenty bucks to reconnoitre for me, then come back and tell me where they are.”
        The kid's eyes were the purple-blue shade of a fresh bruise, and his stare was as direct as a punch. “Thirty bucks.”
        Joe could not remember having been able to look so boldly and challengingly into an adult's eyes when he himself had been fourteen. Approached by a stranger with an offer like this, he would have shaken his head and left quickly.
        “Fifteen now and fifteen when I come back,” said the kid.
        Wadding his paper towels and tossing them in the trash can, Joe said, “Ten now, twenty when you come back.”
        “Deal.”
        As he took his wallet from his pocket, Joe said, “One is about six two, tan, blond, in a green Hawaiian shirt. The other is maybe five ten, brown hair, balding, pale, in a red and orange Hawaiian.”
        The kid took the ten-dollar bill without breaking eye contact. “Maybe this is jive, there's nobody like that outside, and when I come back, you want me to go into one of those stalls with you to get the other twenty.”
        Joe was embarrassed, not for being suspected of paedophilia but for the kid, who had grown up in a time and a place that required him to be so knowledgeable and street smart at such a young age. “No jive.”
        “Cause I don't jump that way.”
        “Understood.”
        At least a few of the men present must have heard the exchange, but none appeared to be interested. This was a live and let live age.
        As the kid turned to leave, Joe said, “They won't be waiting right outside, easy to spot. They'll be at a distance, where they can see the place but aren't easily seen themselves.”
        Without responding, the boy went to the door, sandals clacking against the floor tiles.
        “You take my ten bucks and don't come back,” Joe warned, “I'll find you and kick your ass.”
        “Yeah, right,” the kid said scornfully, and then he was gone.
        Returning to one of the rust-stained sinks, Joe washed his hands again so he wouldn't appear to be loitering.
        Three men in their twenties had gathered to watch the crippled cockroach, which was still chasing itself around one small portion of the lavatory floor. The beetle's track was a circle twelve inches in diameter. It twitched brokenly along that circumference with such insectile single-mindedness that the men, hands full of dollar bills, were