Loitering with Intent

36

EVAN KEATING REGARDED the two men across the table calmly. “Charley Boggs is not dead,” he said. Rawlings looked at Stone. “For this we came? The guy is still alive?”

“Wait a minute,” Tommy Sculley said, “I have the feeling there’s more. Go on, Evan.”

“I’m Charley Boggs,” Evan said.

Tommy screwed up his face. “You’re Charley Boggs?”

“Yes.”

“Then who was the guy we found floating in Garrison Bight?”

“That was Evan Keating.”

Stone decided to keep his mouth shut, since he was as baffl ed as everybody else.

“Let’s see some I.D.,” Tommy said.

“My I.D. was in Evan’s pocket,” the new Charley Boggs said. “Do you still have it?”

“No,” Tommy said, “it was sent to his parents.”

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you with I.D.; I only have Evan’s.”

“Mr. Keating,” Rawlings said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Boggs. Who killed Char . . . Evan Keating?”

“I did,” Charley said.

“Why?”

“It was self-defense. I’m sorry, I mean it was in defense of another’s life.”

“Whose life?” Tommy asked.

“Gigi’s. Evan was about to kill her, and I shot him in the head. I was afraid that if I shot him anywhere else, his gun would go off.”

“We found Charley’s gun,” Tommy said. “I mean your gun. Whosever gun it was who lived in the boathouse. It hadn’t been fi red.”

“Evan’s gun,” Charley said. “He had two of them. I shot him with the other one.”

“And where is the other one?”

“I ditched it in the sea, off Key West.”

“Can you point out the spot?”

“I don’t think so; it was a dark night.”

“Why did . . . the other guy want to kill Gigi?”

“Because Gigi had stolen his drugs from a hiding place in the wheelhouse of his boat. Oh, and some from his motorcycle, too.”

“And what did Gigi do with the drugs?”

“I dropped them into the sea, along with Evan’s gun.”

“How much drugs?”

“I’m not sure; seven or eight bags, I think. I didn’t want to be involved in the drug business, so I got rid of the stuff.”

Tommy picked up a phone and dialed an extension. “Bring me a fingerprint kit,” he said.

A moment later a female officer came into the conference room and fingerprinted Charley, while the others watched silently. She finished, and Charley went into an adjoining bathroom to wash his hands.

“We have an earlier set of prints on Evan Keating,” Tommy said to the woman. “Bring them to me, please.”

She left, and Charley returned and sat down.

“Tell me how you got to be Charley and the other guy got to be Evan,” Tommy said.

“Evan and I traded places nearly a year ago. I knew my father would try to find me at some stage, and I didn’t want that to happen, and Evan didn’t want to hear from his father, either. We did it to confuse anybody who might be looking for us.”

Tommy seemed to run out of questions, then the woman returned with the two fingerprint cards. Tommy examined them both with a loupe. “These two sets of prints are identical,” Tommy said to Charley. “You’re Evan Keating.”

“No, I’m Charley Boggs; the card just has Evan’s name on it instead of mine. We did that when your people picked us up a couple of weeks ago.”

Tommy looked at the female officer. “Get me the prints of Charley Boggs we took from his corpse.”

She went away.

“Stone,” Tommy said, “do you have anything to say about this?”

“Not a thing,” Stone said. “This is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. Evan—sorry, Charley—refused to tell me anything he was going to say when we were on the way here, except that he was going to clear up the Charley Boggs homicide, and I guess he’s done that.”

The woman came back. “We didn’t take prints from the Boggs corpse,” she said. “The body was identified by two people.”

“Who?”

“The woman who lived on the houseboat next to Boggs’s.”

“And the other one?”

“That would be you.”

“Thanks, that’ll be all,” Tommy said. “Wait a minute, go pull the Florida driver’s license photos of Charley Boggs and Evan Keating.”

She left again.

“Lieutenant Sculley,” Charley said, “I think I should tell you that Evan and I strongly resembled each other, before he grew the beard. In school, most people thought we were brothers. Once, we even attended each other’s classes for a day, and nobody noticed.”

The woman came back with the two photos, and Tommy and Rawlings looked at them.

“May I see them?” Stone asked, and Tommy pushed them across the table. Stone looked at the two photos. “Damned if he isn’t right; I might be able to tell them apart if they were sitting next to each other, but not if I saw them in different places.”

Rawlings was shaking his head. “I don’t know what to make of this,” he said.

“Gentlemen,” Stone said, “it appears that no crime has been committed here, so will there be anything else?”

Tommy and Rawlings looked at each other, and Rawlings shook his head.

“I guess not,” Tommy said.

“Well, then,” Stone said, “if you’ll excuse us.” He stood up, and so did the new Charley Boggs. “Please send the completed immunity agreement to me at the Marquesa today.” Rawlings nodded. Stone half expected to be stopped, but he and Charley walked out of the building unmolested and got into Stone’s car.

“Well,” Stone said, “that was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my law practice.”

“I guess it was kind of strange,” Charley said. “Thanks for negotiating the immunity agreement. It’s a load off my mind, and it will be for Gigi, too.”

“I’m going to assume you told them the truth,” Stone said, “and if you didn’t, I don’t want to know.”

“Of course not,” Charley said, “you’re a lawyer.”

“Where to?”

“The Marquesa; I took your advice.”

Stone drove there and parked the car in the guest garage.

“Oh,” Charley said, “I almost forgot.”

“What?”

“Will you get word to Warren Keating that Evan is dead? I’d like his man to stop shooting at me.”