Tampa Bay Noir

The Guardian by Michael Connelly

Hyde Park

It had been almost twenty-five years. Years that had taken a toll on Bosch, both inside and out. He was hesitant and drove by the house twice, working a wide loop around it by taking Swann to Bayshore to Howard and then back to Swann. He knew he was invited. His presence was, in fact, requested. But he had never been in such a position; revealing himself to an old lover after so long. And she revealing herself to him.

But that wasn’t what this was about. They lived different lives now. And her request was not based on their past as lovers but on his past as a detective. Her call had gone to the detective bureau of the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department. It had been years since he had worked there but that was the number she had on an old business card he had given her on the first day they had met. The person at that number and Bosch’s old desk knew of Bosch and knew how to get in touch. And Bosch got the message: “Something has happened. I need a detective. I need you.”

Bosch would not have traveled from Los Angeles to Tampa on such a mysterious message from Jasmine Corian. He called and in the conversation the mystery deepened. So did the hook she had planted in him so long ago. A damaged woman and a damaged man longing for a connection. He had come to Florida on an investigation and had met her by happenstance. She was an artist and at first he was as equally enamored of her paintings as he was of her. Back then, she lived in the guest quarters above a garage behind a stately old house at the corner of Swann and Willow. They spent a weekend in her rooms, Bosch studying her work in the adjoining studio while she slept and he roamed about, firmly set on Pacific Standard Time. He then had to go back to his work and his home. He came back to Florida several more times and she came to LA once. She loved the light but didn’t like the city. The geographic distance ultimately put distance into their relationship. It was Jasmine who ended it, telling Bosch to stop coming unless it was to stay.

Now she needed him.

After his second loop he finally turned at Swann and stopped in front of the house. The neighborhood was called Hyde Park, close to downtown and one of the oldest in the city. The houses were built at a time when there was no air-conditioning. Large covered porches fronted most of them while up above there were screened porches for sleeping on warm summer nights. Her house was clad in yellow brick with large windows behind the full-length porch. She had told him she now owned the house. The garage apartment was still her studio.

Years earlier, when Bosch had first learned how to use the Internet to search for people, he had put her name into Google. Their relationship was long over but he thought about her often. He plugged in her name and found that she had become a successful artist both critically and commercially and her work was sold in galleries across the country, including New York, and she had her own gallery on MacDill Avenue in Tampa.

She had painted him once. He didn’t sit for it. It was a surprise he found on an easel in the studio. It was a dark, brooding painting, abstract and exacting about his character at the same time. She had depicted his eyes as piercing and haunting.

She had never sold the painting, nor had she given it to him. And now it was gone, stolen from a wall from inside her home. She had tried to explain to Bosch on the phone that the painting was vital to her, that she could not complete another painting until she had it back and knew it was safe.

Bosch parked at the curb in front and looked into the house through the windows. He could see an empty wall and could make out the nail and hook from which the stolen painting had hung.

He got out of the car and looked down the street, through a tunnel created by the canopy of the hundred-year-old live oak trees that lined the sidewalks. Down at the end he saw sparkling sunshine on the surface of the bay.

She answered the door before he could press the button below the brass No Solicitors sign and they engaged in an awkward hug. She was wearing a long white tunic over pale-green slacks. Like Bosch’s, her hair was gray with dark streaks through it. She kept it long and braided in a tail.

“Harry, I’m so glad you came,” she said.

“Not a problem,” he said. “It’s good to see you, Jasmine.”

She told him to come in. The entry area split a wide space with living room and grand fireplace to the left and a formal dining area to the right. Directly in front of Bosch was a curving staircase to the second floor.

“I know,” Jasmine said. “It’s a long way from when I lived in the back.”

Bosch nodded. “Congratulations. You deserve it.”

“I’m not so sure,” she said. “In the art world, it sometimes seems to be more about luck than craft or anything else.”

“Don’t kid yourself. From way back your paintings had a power. They held people. They held me.” He glanced at the blank wall where the missing painting had hung. She followed his gaze.

“It was the first thing I put up when I bought the house thirteen years ago.”

Bosch nodded and turned his eyes to the fireplace. Another painting with her distinctive style hung above it. He could tell that paintings on other walls in his view were not her work. That would have been too narcissistic. He looked back at the painting over the fireplace. It was of a man with a face turned away from the painter. He had a sharp jaw and an almost cruel look, as if he was almost intentionally holding something back from the painter.

“My father,” Jasmine said. “I worked on that one for twenty years before finishing.”

Bosch’s memory was fuzzy but he remembered her telling him something about her fraught relationship with her father. He had died just before Bosch had met her. “So,” he said, “why did they only take the one painting?” He pointed to the blank wall, and then to the painting of her father. “Isn’t that one just as valuable?”

“A painting is valued at what it sells for,” Jasmine said. “I never attempted to sell either painting. They were not for sale. The Guardian was one of my oldest pieces.”

“How much are we talking about here?”

“My more recent pieces sell in the twenty to thirty thousand range. My commission fee is twenty-five. My agent told me in the past that The Guardian could sell for as high as fifty but I said no. I did not want to part with it.”

Bosch glanced at her for a moment, then nodded and looked away. He didn’t know she called the painting The Guardian. “What did the Tampa police say?”

“That they’re investigating,” she said. “Detective Stone said they’re watching the art markets to see if someone tries to sell it.”

“That’s a long shot. Whoever stole it will know not to do that. Who else wanted the painting besides your agent?” Bosch knew that someone coming in and taking one of the paintings and not the other put this on a different path. He didn’t think it was a crime motivated by money.

“I can’t think of anyone,” Jasmine said. “Very few people have seen it. I don’t entertain very often. I keep to myself. I didn’t realize it was gone until someone came to the front door and when I turned I saw it was gone.”

“You’re saying you don’t know exactly when it was taken?”

“Right. I knew it was there and then it was just gone, you know? I don’t use the living room that often. I’m in the studio in the back and I use the kitchen here and then the upstairs. My bedroom.”

Bosch gestured to the grand staircase. “When you go upstairs to your bedroom, don’t you glance in here? Just to check things out?”

“I don’t use those stairs,” she said. “There is a set of back stairs off the kitchen. All of these old houses in the neighborhood have back stairs for the help.”

“Got it. What did Detective Stone say about when the burglary happened?”

“Nothing. They can’t pinpoint it either.”

“No sign of break-in?”

“Not that the police found. They think it’s my fault.”

“How so?”

“I go back and forth between the house and the studio. Sometimes several times a day. I don’t lock the back door every time. Sometimes I just don’t because I think I’ll be right back and then I get caught up in the studio. I sometimes work into the night. Anyway, the police said this may have been how the painting was taken. It was opportunistic. Somebody came off Swann, went through the gate into the yard, and found the back door unlocked. They went in and grabbed the painting.”

“You don’t keep the gate locked?”

“It’s locked from the outside but you can reach over and release the lock.”

Bosch took in the information but found himself disagreeing with the conclusions of the local police. The painting seemed targeted, not something that was grabbed in a random burglary of opportunity. “Nothing else was taken?” he asked.

“No. I mean, nothing that I’ve noticed missing.”

“Where do you leave your car keys and your purse on a regular day of work?”

“Well, the keys are in the purse and sometimes I leave it upstairs, sometimes in the kitchen. It all depends.”

“Do you take it with you to the studio?”

“No, almost never. I don’t need it. I don’t even take my cell phone to the studio.”

“And it wasn’t taken or touched.”

“No, only the painting.”

Bosch thought about that for a moment.

“Do you want to sit down, Harry?” Jasmine asked. “Or...”

“I want to see the backyard,” he said. “And the studio.”

Jasmine led the way. They walked down a hallway and through a kitchen to a back door. Outside, there was a stone path across a lush green lawn to a wooden staircase leading to the studio over the garage. Bosch paused and took in the yard. It was perfectly manicured and protected by a six-foot wall that ran the length of the property and connected to the walls of the garage. Bosch remembered that the garage was accessed by the alley behind it.

He stepped over to a wooden gate set in the wall. It had a flip latch located about six inches from the top on the inside of the door. Anybody who stood at least five and a half feet could easily reach over, flip the latch, and allow themselves entry. Besides that, the wall itself would be easy enough to scale. The security measures protecting the backyard were deterrents to entry, not denials.

“Let’s go up,” he said.

Once again Jasmine led the way. Bosch took the steps to the studio slowly, his knees extra sore from being cramped in the airline seat for the five-hour flight.

The place where Jasmine painted was much as Bosch remembered it. An apartment living room converted into an artist’s studio. With a workbench — Jasmine stretched her own canvas — and paint and brush station on the right, and her easel and painting area at the far end of the room where there were windows that allowed the morning light to hit the surface she was painting. There was a work underway on the easel. It was in the sketch stage and was clearly going to be a portrait of a child — a girl with dark circles under her eyes. Bosch recognized Jasmine as a child.

“Do you remember being here?” Jasmine asked.

“Of course,” Bosch said. “I remember everything.”

He looked at her and waited. This was the place where she created, where she felt safest. If she wanted to reveal something, it would be now. She looked at her work in progress for a moment and then back to him.

“You asked about the money — what the painting was worth,” she said. “It’s not about the money. It’s not even about the intruder. That piece... that painting is when everything changed for me. I found my art. I found the confidence in what I was doing with my life. It’s a portrait of you but it’s also of me. Coming out of darkness. I don’t know if that makes sense to you but it—”

“It does,” Bosch said. “I understand.”

“Then you see. I have to find it. I have to get it back. I’m not sure the local police understand that. That’s why I called you.” She was silhouetted by the light coming through the windows.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

“I believe you.” She came to him and put her arms around him and leaned her head against his chest. “You must be tired,” she said. “You took a red-eye. I have a room set up for you if you want to rest.”

“I just need some coffee and I’ll be fine,” he said. “I want to call Detective Stone and just tell him I’ll be poking around on this. I also thought maybe I should stay at a hotel or something. I don’t want to im—”

“Don’t be silly. I have a big house and you can have half of the top floor. You won’t be bothered... unless you want to be.” She landed the last line with a tilted smile Bosch remembered very well.

Back inside the main house, Jasmine made coffee while Bosch walked back to the living room, where he studied the wall on which the missing painting had hung. Up close he saw the smudges of fingerprint powder on the plaster. It was good to know the locals had tried but he also knew that a painting could be removed from a wall without having to touch the wall. He expected that the forensic effort had been for naught.

He turned away and looked out the large plate-glass window to the street. Anybody driving by could have seen the painting and become enthralled by it. Narrowing that down to a suspect list would be impossible. He called to Jasmine, who was still in the kitchen.

“Were there any cameras?”

“What?”

“Cameras. Here or at homes on the street. Did the police check?”

“They checked. Detective Stone said it was a bust. Cream and sugar?”

“Black is fine.”

She entered the room carrying a mug of steaming coffee. “I should’ve remembered. No cream, no sugar,” she said. “Let it cool.”

She carefully handed him the mug. He was tempted to take a gulp and get the caffeine working inside him, but he followed her directions and stood there awkwardly holding the mug. It said Girl Power on the side.

He turned and looked out the window again, his gaze carrying to the house across the street. It was another large craftsman-style house with a full porch. But he could tell it was empty. No curtains on any window. And empty rooms beyond the glass. There was a real estate sign on the lawn that said, FOR SALE.

“When did they move out?” he asked.

“A couple weeks ago,” Jasmine said.

“Did you know them?”

“Not that well. I keep to myself mostly. I know Pat and George next door. We have a drink at Christmas every year — we alternate porches. I have the odd years, they the even. But that’s about it.”

“Do Pat and George have a spare key to your house?”

“No.”

“Does anybody?”

“Just my manager.”

“I think I should talk to your manager. Where is he?”

“It’s a she. Monica Tate. She works out of the gallery on MacDill.”

Bosch took his first sip of coffee. It was good and fully charged and he thought he could feel the spark hitting his bloodstream, going to work. “This is good,” he said. “Will Monica be there today?”

“Yes. The gallery hours are eleven to three but she goes in earlier to handle the business end of it.”

“You don’t like the business end of it?”

“No, I don’t.”

Bosch took another hit of coffee. “I should go over there then,” he said. “Can I take this or do you have a to-go cup?”

“I have cups,” she said.

Bosch followed her into the kitchen and poured his coffee into a foam cup she got out of the pantry. “How long have you known Monica?” he asked.

“About fifteen years. She changed everything for me. Got my work in front of the right people, opened the gallery. This house, everything I have really, I owe it to her.”

Bosch knew that many successful artists had trouble accepting accolades and money. Many didn’t care about it and others craved it. He put Jasmine in the former category. When he thought about their past times together, he knew that all she wanted to do was be in a room by herself and paint.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said. “I’m sure Monica is good at what she does, but it starts with the art and that’s all you.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“What is Monica’s cut?”

“Do you really need to know that?”

“I need to know everything. Then I can tell what’s important.”

“She takes out the gallery expenses, all the shipping, and 25 percent for herself. It’s standard.”

“Do you know if Detective Stone spoke to Monica?”

“Yes, he had to speak to her so they could value the loss. The higher the loss, the higher the level of the crime, I guess.”

“Yeah, that’s how it works. What was the value?”

“Eighty thousand. But I have to tell you, I’ve never sold a painting for that much. Not even close. Monica said it was worth that because it was a seminal work and part of the artist’s personal collection.”

“Was it insured for that much?”

“I have a general policy on all my work. I won’t get that much unless I want to hire a lawyer. The insurance company is trying to say that because it was on a wall in my house, it doesn’t count under the policy for the studio. It’s part of the homeowner’s insurance and included in home furnishings. There’s a maximum payout of twenty-five thousand.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Tell it to them. I’m not going to fight it. I don’t care about the money. I just want my painting back. I haven’t been able to work since it was taken.”

Bosch nodded. He knew she wanted more assurance than I’ll do my best. She wanted a promise that he would find the painting and bring it back. But he never made promises like that. When he worked homicides in Los Angeles, he made too many promises like that, telling grieving parents he would find the killers who took their sons or daughters. He never made good on some of them and the promises kept him awake at night.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m going over there to see Monica. Do me a favor: don’t tell her I’m coming.”

“I won’t. But if you think she may be involved in this, you are wrong. Monica would not betray me like that.”

“It’s good that you have somebody like that. But I don’t think anything about anybody right now.”

Bosch took Swann to MacDill and turned south toward the air force base the street was named for. He knew from prior visits that Tampa didn’t rely solely on tourism like most of the cities that crowded Florida’s coastline or sat in the middle of the state where only an iconic mouse could draw people on humid summer days. Tampa was unique. It was a peninsula that had water views and beauty from almost all angles — he had been reminded of this as he drove along Bayshore while getting up the courage to knock on Jasmine’s door. It was also a military town. MacDill AFB was the location of CENTCOM, from which the country’s most recent wars were directed. The base took up the entire southern tip of the peninsula and it was not unusual to see fighter jets and huge Stratotanker refueling planes on maneuvers in the sky over Tampa Bay.

But long before MacDill Avenue reached the end of the peninsula, it moved through a small art district where there were a handful of galleries and frame shops. On his way, Bosch called the number Jasmine had given him for Detective Stone at the Tampa Police Department.

“Burglary, Stone. How can I help you?”

“Detective, my name is Harry Bosch. I got your number from Jasmine Corian. I’m a friend of—”

“Excuse me, who gave you this number?”

“Jasmine Corian.”

“And she is...?”

“The artist whose painting was stolen off the wall of her living room. I thought it was your—”

“Yes, yes, sorry — a lot going on here. I know who Jasmine Corian is. What can I do for you, Mr. Bush?”

“It’s Bosch. As I was saying, I’m a friend of hers and I’m retired LAPD and she asked me to come out and take a look at things regarding the theft.”

There was a long silence before Stone finally responded. “LAPD — what are we talking about here? Lake Alice Police Department?”

“No, Los Angeles.”

“Really. The LAPD. I’m honored.”

Bosch could hear the sarcasm clearly.

“How long have you been retired?”

“A few years.”

“And what did you do for LAPD?”

“I worked homicides for about thirty years.”

“Good for you, but this is not a homicide.”

“I know that, Detective. Ms. Corian and I have an acquaintance going back twenty-five years or so. She asked me to come out and take a look at this.”

“A look — what does that mean?”

“It means I am going to look into the theft of her painting. I just thought you should know and I wanted to see if you want to get together to discuss the investigation.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Look, I know what it’s like. Crime victims going to private investigators and all of that. You don’t want the headache and I promise you I won’t be a headache. If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. But I’m here and I’m working it. And if I find anything that you don’t have or know, then you will be the first person I call.”

“Mr. Bush, you already are a headache to me. This is a police matter and it’s under investigation. I respect that you were a police detective — at least you say you were — but stay away from this or you could get yourself into trouble.”

Now Bosch paused while he composed an answer. “What does that mean? Are you threatening me?”

“No, I am telling you that if you interfere with a police investigation, there are consequences. Now, I’m in the middle of things here. I have multiple cases and I need to go.”

Stone disconnected. Bosch held his phone to his ear for a few seconds before dropping it into the cup holder in the center console.

A few minutes later he pulled into a space in front of a gallery called Jazz, which was how Jasmine signed her work. It was just opening for the day. And as he stepped to the glass door, a woman appeared on the other side and unlocked it. She looked at him for a moment through the glass as though she knew him. She pulled the door open.

“You’re him,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re him. The one in the painting. I recognize you. Jasmine said you were real but she never told me about you.”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

She stepped back and he stepped in. It was not a large gallery. A square with a display wall running down the center. It allowed for four walls holding two paintings each. At the back was a desk in front of a doorway that led to what Bosch assumed was a storage and packaging area.

The paintings on display looked to be part of a linked series of studies of a woman. It took Bosch a moment before he realized they were self-portraits. Though each was unique in terms of pose and color — ranging from shades of black, gray, and red — the eyes in each painting were unmistakably Jasmine’s.

“Are you Monica Tate?” he asked.

“Yes. We haven’t met though. I would remember.”

“Harry Bosch. I’m here about the painting. The one that was stolen.”

“She told you.”

“Yes, she asked me to look for it. I’m a detective.”

“You mean like a private eye?”

“Yes. Who do you think would have wanted to steal it?”

Tate shook her head like it was stupid question. “Anybody who knows her work,” she said.

“But why that painting?” Bosch asked. “It’s never been for sale. How would people know about it?”

“It’s been in a few catalogs. Jasmine wasn’t happy about it, but I convinced her. The painting is powerful. I put it on the cover of one catalog. It drew people in. They would find out they couldn’t have it, but then they would pick something else. It’s also been on the website. It’s a sales tool. It has that rare thing. People who know true art want it.”

“Any customers who wouldn’t take no for an answer?”

“You mean who would then steal it? No, none. That’s insulting. I don’t deal with people like that.”

“Good to hear. Where is your key to Jasmine’s home?”

“Are you suggesting that I took the painting?”

“No. I just want to confirm that you still have the key. If you don’t, then we may have a clue to what happened. Because there was no sign of forced entry. Whoever took the painting either walked in through an unlocked door or had a key to unlock it.”

Tate turned with a huff and walked to the desk at the back of the gallery. She took a set of keys sitting on top of it and used one to unlock a drawer in the desk. She then opened the drawer, reached in, and held up a key.

“Happy?” she asked.

Bosch stepped over to the desk. “You keep it in the desk rather than on your own key chain,” he said.

“Yes, it’s not my key. I have it in case there’s an emergency or she locks herself out. I don’t carry it with me everywhere I go.”

“Have you ever used it? In a case of emergency or if Jasmine locked herself out?”

“No, never.”

“And you can’t think of anyone you’ve dealt with who might take it upon themselves to steal that painting after you told them it was not for sale?”

“No, no one.”

“Is there anyone who has bought more than one of her paintings? Anyone obsessive about her or her work?”

“I don’t know about obsessive, but it’s not unusual in the art world for collectors to have multiples of the artists they love. Sometimes it’s investment and sometimes it’s purely love of the art.”

“Who does Jasmine have that’s like that?”

“I would have to look through the books. I’ve been selling her paintings for fifteen years. There have been many people who have come back for more. One man on Davis Island has four or five paintings.”

She pointed past Bosch to the center wall. He turned and looked at a painting that depicted the artist sitting huddled over, cradling her face in her hands, one eye peeking between two splayed fingers. It was painted in black and gray gradations. It was haunting, as were all of the self-portraits.

“He just bought that one, in fact,” Tate said.

“Did he ever ask about The Guardian?”

“I’m sure he did but I don’t remember.”

“What’s his name?”

“I’m not going to give you his name. Not unless Jasmine tells me to.”

“She will. Thank you for your time.” Bosch headed toward the door.

In the living room at the house on Willow, Bosch reported to Jasmine that he had alienated both the detective assigned to the painting theft and her gallery manager. He also told her he wanted the name of the collector who had purchased multiple paintings by her.

“Can you call Monica?” he asked. “She said she’d give the name to you. He lives on Davis Island, wherever that is.”

“That would be Paul Danziger,” she said. “I don’t need to call her. I know him.”

“Where is Davis Island?”

“It’s right across the bay. You take the bridge by the hospital. It’s actually called Davis Islands — it’s three islands connected by small bridges.”

“You have his address?”

“Yes, but he didn’t steal the painting.”

“How do you know? I need to—”

“I know he didn’t. I know Paul very well. He didn’t take the painting.”

Bosch studied her. There was something else there. “How well do you know him?” he asked.

“We had a relationship. It ended five or six years ago.”

Bosch waited. Silence was often the best way to tease out information.

“Even though the relationship is over, he still buys my paintings to support me,” she finally said. “He would not steal from me.”

“Okay. Who ended the relationship?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“That has nothing to do with this. It’s private and painful and you don’t need to know.”

“Okay, then did you ever discuss the painting with him?” He pointed toward the empty wall.

“We might have,” Jasmine said. “I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do,” Bosch prompted.

“He liked the painting. But he liked all of my paintings and has bought several. For himself and as gifts to others.”

“Did he know who was in the painting? Did you tell him about me?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think you do.”

“Okay, yes, I probably told him the story, okay? I told him who it was a portrait of.”

Bosch stepped away and moved to the front window. He saw a white van pull into the driveway of the house across the street. On its side panel was a sign that identified it as part of a fleet from a commercial cleaning service. Two men in white overalls got out and started unloading equipment and supplies from the back of the van. Then a Range Rover SUV pulled in behind the van. A man got out of the car, acknowledged the other two, and walked to the front door. A key lockbox was attached to the knob on the front door. He started working the combination.

“Is that your old neighbor?” Bosch asked.

“No, that’s the realtor,” Jasmine said. “Charlie. I used him when I bought this place.”

Charlie opened the door with a key from the lockbox and went inside.

“Pat next door told me that they left the place a complete mess,” Jasmine said. “Food rotted in the refrigerator when they turned off the power. Holes punched in the walls. Toilets clogged, the whole nine yards.”

“Why would they do that if they’re trying to sell the place?” Bosch asked.

“They’re not. The bank is. It’s a foreclosure.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. It was a husband and wife, no kids. He had some sort of business that went under. Remember when the stock market dropped a thousand points on Christmas Eve? He had just made some kind of move with their investments and lost everything. His wife left him, he stopped paying the mortgage, the bank took the house.”

Bosch thought about that as he watched one of the cleaners carry a water vacuum into the house. He saw the realtor’s full name on the For Sale sign. Charlie Hounchell.

“Did Paul Danziger stay here at night?” he asked. “Or did you go to Davis Islands?”

“Harry, please. It’s none of your business.”

“Just tell me his address and I’ll stop asking questions.”

“You can’t go over there. If we falsely accuse him of this, he’ll be very hurt.”

“And what, stop buying your paintings? Look, if I have to call a friend and run his name through the police computer to get his address, it will leave a flag on his record. Would you rather me do that?” It was a lie but Bosch doubted she would know it.

“Fine,” Jasmine said. “He lives on Ladoga. I’ll have to look up his exact address because I don’t remember it.”

“Fine. Look it up. Then I want you to call Monica and tell her to pack up the painting she has at the gallery for Danziger. Tell her to call him and say it will be delivered today.”

“She won’t want to do that. It will break up the series she has on display. It may hurt her ability to sell through. She says that when people see that one painting is sold, it makes them feel better about buying their own.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of that. Just tell Monica to get it ready and I’ll deliver it. I’m going to sleep for an hour and then I’ll be by to pick it up. Can you show me to the guest room?”

Bosch drove over the curving bridge off Bayshore that took him past Tampa General and onto Davis Islands. He was following directions on his cell phone app. They took him down Davis Boulevard and then over another bridge, this one spanning a canal that apparently separated two of the Davis Islands. After the bridge there was a hard right onto Ladoga. Paul Danziger lived at 520 Ladoga. Bosch pulled into the driveway of a Gone with the Wind — style mansion that was fronted by six two-story pillars.

He arrived at a cobblestone parking circle in front of the door. He studied the facade of the house for a few moments before getting out.

He removed the painting from the backseat and lugged it toward the door. Its wooden crating — designed to keep the painting safe in transit — easily outweighed the painting twenty-five to one. Bosch was huffing when he got it to the door.

Danziger answered himself. A man nearing seventy with a completely shaved head to hide his baldness in plain sight. He looked surprised to see Bosch. “You’re not the usual guy,” he said.

“I’m filling in,” Bosch replied. “A favor to Monica.”

“Do you need help with that?”

“I can manage, thanks.”

“This way. Watch the walls.”

Danziger led Bosch into the house and to the left. They walked down a short hallway and through a living room where there were large paintings over a fireplace and a couch by the opposite wall. They did not appear to be from the brush of Jasmine Corian. It indicated to Bosch that Danziger might be a collector of many artists.

They went through a set of double French doors into what looked like a second living room, this one smaller but with a large fireplace with a seating arrangement in front of it. There was a desk table and chair at the far end of the room next to a window that looked out across the bay. Bosch could see cars moving on Bayshore Boulevard far on the other side.

Standing next to the table was an artist’s three-legged easel with nothing on it. Bosch put the heavy painting crate down on a rug but kept one hand on it to make sure the thin wooden package didn’t fall over. He pulled the screwdriver Monica had given him out of his pocket. He had to loosen two screws in the top wooden panel of the crate and then the painting could be carefully lifted up and out. He looked around as he worked the screwdriver. There were three paintings of the same size and equally spaced on the wall above the couch. All three were signed Jazz and seemed to be part of a study of a young man in a white shirt and tie. On the wall over the fireplace was a larger canvas that was a painting of Danziger that made him look strong and upright, peering off into the distance at something meaningful. The wall to Bosch’s left was covered by what looked like velvet floor-to-ceiling curtains.

“Looks like you’re out of wall space for this one,” he said.

“Just put it on the easel,” Danziger said. “When I’m ready I’ll find a place for it.”

Bosch moved to the second screw. He waited a beat before speaking again. “You used to go out with Jasmine, didn’t you?”

Danziger turned from looking at the painting of himself to stare at Bosch. “Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t mean to be rude. I saw the painting of you there and that made me remember you two had a relationship.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Who are you exactly?”

“A friend of Jasmine’s. That’s all.”

“Have we met? You look familiar.”

“That’s unlikely. I’m from Los Angeles.”

“Then you should mind your own business.”

“You’re right. I definitely should.”

Bosch felt the wooden plank release and he lifted it out by the two screws. He then reached into the crate and brought the bubble-wrapped painting up and out through the narrow opening. Leaning the package against his legs, he used a folding knife from his pocket to cut the tape that secured the wrapping and carefully unfolded it. Holding the painting between his palms in the way he had seen Monica handle it, he walked to the easel and placed the painting on display. From the canvas, Jasmine’s eye looked between her fingers at him.

Bosch stepped back and studied the work for a moment. “Twenty-two thousand bucks,” he said. “That’s a lot for something you just hang on the wall.”

“It’s an investment,” Danziger said. “Her work has appreciated markedly over time.”

“I heard her old stuff is really valuable. Wish I had invested way back when.” Bosch moved back to the crate and started gathering up the bubble wrap. “You want to keep the crate?” he asked. “In case you can’t find space for it and you just want to store your investment?”

“I told you, I’ll find a space for it,” Danziger responded. “A painting should be seen and appreciated, not put in a closet.”

“I totally agree. But if you think that, why do you have the curtain closed?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The curtain.”

Bosch dropped the bubble wrap to the floor and walked over to the velvet curtain. He reached behind the left edge and found the draw line. He started opening the curtain.

“Leave that alone!” Danziger cried.

“I studied your house before I came in. This room has no window on the front wall. I look familiar to you because...”

The curtain opened, revealing the missing painting hung on a windowless wall. The Guardian. Bosch stared for a moment at his own image of twenty-five years before.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Danziger said. “But I want you to get—”

“A man covets what he can’t have,” Bosch cut him off. “You couldn’t have Jasmine so you bought her paintings. She’d sell you anything but the one on her own wall. So you coveted it and you took it.”

Bosch reached up and took the painting off the wall. He judged that it was roughly the same size as the painting he had delivered. He took it to the crate and folded the bubble wrap around it before slipping it securely inside. Danziger just watched.

“What are you going to do?” he finally asked.

“I’m going to take it back to Jasmine,” Bosch said. “After that, she’s the one you should ask.”

Bosch screwed the top plank back into place. “I’m not a cop,” he said. “If I was, you’d be in cuffs.”

“Please, tell Jasmine, we can work something out,” Danziger said, a whine in his voice now. “The police don’t have to be involved.”

Bosch lifted the crate, ready to go. “Like I said, I just came for the painting. You can talk to her about the rest.”

Bosch put the crate into the backseat of the rental and drove away. In a few minutes he was on Bayshore. The sun was going down and the sky was orange and blue over the bay. He turned onto Willow and drove under the thick arms of the oak trees.

A few minutes later Bosch helped Jasmine hang her painting back on the wall.

“Thank you, Harry,” she said.

“You’re welcome, Jasmine,” he said.

Chum in the Water by Lori Roy

Tierra Verde

Dale pushes open the door to Smugglers and straightaway sees a new girl working behind the bar. As he walks inside Tierra Verde’s only real tavern, a place where a man can still smoke a cigar, the late-day sun follows him into the dark room and throws a glare. He leans to get a better look. The girl pushes off the bar when the sunlight falls across her, turns toward Dale, and smiles. He drops the door and as it falls closed, snapping off the stream of light and hot August air that followed him inside, she comes into focus. White teeth shining against bright-red lips. Pale-blue eyes that linger on him. Pulling a bar towel from her back pocket, the girl laughs at something, tips her face, arches her back, and blots her neck and chest. Dale drops into a chair at his usual table, or rather the sight of that girl knocks him from his feet, because, damn it all, walking in on something that inviting is almost painful. And then he sees Chum.

Sitting on his stool at the end of the bar, Chum is the one making the girl laugh. He’s telling her how he got his nickname some sixty years ago. He’s going on about sharks having a taste for him and ancient burial grounds just down the way that protected him. Protected this island from hurricanes too. Look it up, he’s telling her. Dale wants to turn and leave, but that would make Chum suspicious, and he’d come after Dale for sure. Or he could stay and hope the old man forgets he’s here, a possibility given the distraction behind the bar. Quietly, Dale scoots his chair until he’s out of Chum’s sight line.

The past year has been tough for Dale — lost his business, wife left him, got himself deep in debt to Chum, and he’s never felt so damn old — but he has good reason to believe things will start looking up in the next few weeks, and maybe the new girl is another sign of better days ahead. With a girl like that, Dale damn sure wouldn’t feel old anymore. Just the thought of what her hair would smell like when fanned across his pillow starts him feeling happy about the days ahead. Yes, he’ll stay and hope Chum forgets he’s here.

Most nights, Chum’s gone home by the time Dale gets to the bar, at least that’s how Dale’s tried to work it since he borrowed $150,000 from the old man.

Chum — real name Santo — is the last living Giordano brother. He’s no more than five foot four, wears black-rimmed glasses, is mostly bald, and has a round, doughy nose. There were four brothers at one time, and before that, two generations of Giordanos ran Tampa’s organized crime. One brother died in a plane crash over the gulf, another was shot in his Tampa driveway, and the third is rumored to be stashed in the fifty-gallon drum that sits outside Smugglers. And it’s rumored that Chum put him there.

The Giordano family’s days of running bolita and rum over in Tampa, and more recently drugs and women, are long over. Chum likes to say his people were cigar makers and that he’s retired, but he also likes to talk about all the shit he’s seen and how these Tierra Verde types in their cargo shorts and fishing shirts can’t begin to imagine. Mostly Dale has always figured Chum for a nobody who made a living by trading off his family’s history. Hell, Dale hadn’t even believed the rumors about the drum outside Smugglers or that Chum was loaning money for a living, at least not until he needed to borrow some for himself.

Dale never figured on being one of the guys who borrowed from Chum. But he also never imagined that one season of bad storms would stall the housing market and he’d get stuck upside down in so many condos. But those things did happen and when he needed money quick, borrowing from Chum meant no paperwork and no credit check. Dale’s wife didn’t even need to know. He sure never thought he’d end up having to sell his home of twenty years to pay Chum back, but in two weeks, that’s what’s happening. Two more weeks of keeping clear of the old man and then the sale will close. He’ll pay Chum back and Dale’s life can begin again. Maybe it’ll begin again with this new girl.

Even though from his table Dale can’t see Chum, he can still hear him.

“Was bit five times by the age of fifteen,” he is saying. His voice rattles in his throat, some say from having had a telephone cord wrapped around his neck, back when people still had telephone cords. “Right there in the channel running alongside Egmont Key. Most shark-infested water on the whole coast. I was like chum in the water.”

Dale stares hard at the Rays game playing on the big screen, so he doesn’t smile or laugh at hearing this story yet again. He isn’t as good at pretending as the other guys. He has pride, is the way he figures it. That’s been the hardest part of borrowing Chum’s money — having to tuck away the very thing that makes Dale a man.

“What’s her name?” Dale asks when Donna, the bar’s owner, slides a highball in front of him, the glass leaving a slippery trail on the table.

“Elise,” she says. The tendons under her wrinkled skin run like slender cables from her wrist to her elbow. Since her husband died last year, she’s been running the place alone and the strain is showing. “Elise from Birmingham. Doing my bookkeeping too.”

“Do any on the side?” Dale asks, taking a sip of whiskey and giving the new girl a nod to let her know she did good with his drink. “Bookkeeping, I mean. You know I’m needing someone part-time.”

“Couldn’t say. Worth asking, I guess.”

“Single?”

“Far as I know,” Donna says, and as she turns to walk away, she knocks one bony hip against his table. “But you ain’t. And don’t you forget it.”

Late in the fourth inning, though Chum still hasn’t left, Dale finishes his drink and when the new girl glances his way, he gives his empty glass a shake. Smiling with those bright-red lips, she nod and pulls the Woodford from the top shelf. He hasn’t even talked to the girl yet, but he already knows she’s something special. It isn’t just the lips shining like they’re wet or the bright eyes or the tiny waist that gives way to a full chest and round hips, it’s that she’s kind. She’s really laughing at the stories the guys are telling. Not just pretending for tips. That’s what makes her different from every other girl who’s passed through here.

As the girl, Elise, walks from behind the bar, Dale gets a good look at the rest of her. She wears tan shorts that hit midthigh and a white V-neck. Her skin, pale, almost pink, would be smooth to the touch, he’s sure of it. When she reaches his table, she rests a hand on his shoulder and stretches across him to set down the glass. Her chest brushes against his head. He closes his eyes and inhales. For the first time since he stopped being able to service his loans and his wife left him for borrowing from Chum, that thing that makes Dale a man, that searing thing that makes him want to attack the world for his share of it, is racing through his veins again.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” the girl calls out to Chum. She smells of lavender-scented lotion and Dale imagines her rubbing it on her arms and legs. “Sharks don’t have a taste for one man over another.” She squeezes Dale’s shoulder. “You believe that?” she says to him.

“Tell her it’s true, Dale.”

Dale looks to the bar at the sound of Chum saying his name, and the image of bare legs, one stretched out next to the other, disappears, and so does the girl as she picks up his empty and walks away.

“Sure is true,” Dale says, taking a long swallow that nearly chokes him. “He’s even got scars to prove it.”

“You know that spot I’m talking about, Dale?” Chum says, slapping a bill on the bar and walking toward Dale’s table. “You been to that channel? Been there at dusk, Dale? Damn good fishing.”

This is what Chum does when he’s honing in on a man — keeps repeating his name. Dale saw him do it to a dentist who lived on the island and who borrowed a quarter million to buy out his partner.

“Yep, that’s me,” Chum says, adjusting his thick glasses before resting both hands on Dale’s table. “Just an old man who likes to help out his friends on occasion. You think my friends appreciate an old man’s help, Dale?”

Taking another long swallow, Dale nods. “Course they do. I do too.”

Chum’s sour smell drowns the smell of sweet lotion rubbed on bare legs.

“I’m all set to close on the house,” Dale says, clearing his throat of the whiskey burn. “Did I tell you? Two weeks. I’ll have all your money wired the second the papers are signed.”

“I gave you cash in hand,” Chum says. “And that’s how I want it repaid. Cashier’s check will do.” He leans closer, his hot breath making Dale turn away. “Don’t usually see you in here, do I?” He pauses as Dale slowly shakes his head. “Myself, I promised Mrs. Giordano, God rest, I’d always get myself home in time for supper.” Another pause. “What about you? How late does your missus let you stay out?”

“She’s out of town,” Dale says, and takes another long drink because Chum wanting to know what time he’s leaving is not good. “Besides, got a nice-looking distraction here tonight. Hell, might stay until close. But don’t you worry, two weeks and we’ll be even.”

Chum slaps the table and pushes away, hobbling toward the door on mismatched legs.

“Just an old man,” he says, “with old stories.”

Ever since Dale listed the house for sale, which was his only hope of paying Chum back, a part of Dale has been wishing Chum would drop dead before the house closed. Surely the debt would disappear if Chum disappeared. Dale knows people. He could ask around, find a few guys who might take on the job. This is what meeting a girl like Elise will do for a man. She’s making Dale believe he can have the thing he’s been wishing for, making him realize he deserves it.

Pulling on the wooden door, Dale stumbles onto the boardwalk outside Smugglers. He draws in a deep breath. Island air. It’s salty and heavy, tinted with the smell of fish, too thick to go down easy. Behind him, the bar’s lights switch off. At some point during the evening it rained, but not enough to break the heat. The lights in the parking lot throw a glare on the damp concrete that stretches out below him. It shimmers like black ice.

Leaning heavy on the railing so he won’t fall, Dale pulls out his phone. The lights on it blur as he squints and holds it close. He sets an alarm for nine a.m. tomorrow morning, doing it now so he doesn’t forget. Elise is coming to the house at ten a.m. sharp. That’s what she said. Sharp. And she also said she was happy to help Dale with his bookkeeping and that she needs every extra penny she can get. Maybe, if the business bounces back, he can bring her on regular.

Every guy in the bar tonight saw Dale getting what they couldn’t. Elise. They’re all worn out, old guys, looking in from the outside, but Dale proved that even at fifty, he’s still on the inside. He’s still in decent shape, even has all his hair. And his bank account will bounce back. He’s nothing like all the others. Every one of them will want to hear the details of what happens between Dale and the girl tomorrow, but he won’t tell. She’s beautiful, sure. That’s all the other guys noticed. The lips and legs. The curves that spilled across the bar every time she reached out over it. But he saw her real beauty. She’s worth more than one night. She’s young and new and a fresh start on a tired life.

The pain in his upper arm is the first thing Dale feels. He swats at it and then he’s stumbling off to the side, struggling to keep his balance. Someone has grabbed him and he’s falling. But then someone grabs the other arm and he’s straight again and they’re dragging him toward the side of Smugglers where the lights from the parking lot don’t reach. His toes bounce over the curb and then over the rough ground.

There are two of them. They pull Dale by the arms, shove him so he’ll keep moving forward, don’t say who they are or what they want. They don’t have to. When they’re beyond the glow of the streetlights, they drop him. He hits the ground and they start kicking him. He curls up on himself, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his hands over his head. And then they’re gone. By the time he can stand, pressing one hand to his ribs and touching the other to his top lip, he knows this was Chum’s reminder that he doesn’t give a shit about stagnant real estate or foundation problems in one of Dale’s flips or a barrel-tile roof for his own house that cost him forty-five thousand dollars or a seawall he had to replace along eighty feet of frontage. Two weeks means two weeks, and Dale’s house better damn well close. Standing in a patch of St. Augustine left to grow too long and waiting for the ground to settle underfoot, Dale wonders if those two guys might be the right kind of guys, if they might be the kind Dale could hire to make sure Chum disappears along with Dale’s debt.

Elise shows up at Dale’s house right on time. She’s dressed in blue jeans and a loose-fitting polo, both meant to disguise her body, likely because she thinks she’ll be meeting Dale’s wife. Dale didn’t tell her that Patty left months ago when he finally confessed he had borrowed $150,000 from Santo “Chum” Giordano. Patty, like Dale, knew the name. She knew about the dentist too. According to her friends, the wife still lives in the house but her husband, the dentist, disappeared when he couldn’t pay Chum back.

“Beautiful place,” Elise says. The arched entry shades her from the morning sun, but even the short walk up the ten stairs that lead to the front door has caused sweat to break out across her upper lip. She rests a hand on the stucco siding. “Never been inside a house like this.“

“Me neither,” Dale says, moving aside to invite her in. “Until I bought one.”

Before closing the door, Dale steps outside and looks down onto the street. A dark-blue sedan sits in front of the house two doors down. It’s rusted around its front wheel basin, has the large, squared-off body of an older model, and has been parked there since Dale woke this morning. People on his street don’t drive cars like that, but men who work for Chum do.

“This is just beautiful,” Elise says, peering up at the ceiling that lifts two stories overhead, and then she notices Dale’s face. “Good lord, what happened to you?”

“I’ll give you a tour later,” he says, ignoring her question and waving her off like it’s nothing, though breathing still hurts and he’s been wondering all morning if he should go to the emergency room. Patty would probably come back if she knew he was in the emergency room, yet she’d also want to know how he ended up there.

In his office, he pulls out the leather chair from under his mahogany desk, and with a sweeping gesture, he helps Elise to sit. She slides in front of him and he can’t help but lay a hand on her waist.

“All this from flipping houses and condos?” she asks, glancing back at him with raised brows.

“Among other things,” he says, winking so she’ll think there’s more to the story. Once she sees Dale’s books, she’ll know he’s broke, and he wants her to think he has other deals going.

When she begins tapping on the keyboard, Dale leans close as best he can with the pain shooting through his right side. She smells of that lotion again. He tries to breathe it in deep.

“You don’t look so good,” Elise says, glancing up at Dale. Her hair brushes the side of his face. “You should go lie down. I’m fine here. I’ll let you know if I’m missing anything, and I can let myself out.”

Dale nods because he’s having trouble taking a full breath and a little rest will do him good.

“And I see here you’re only reconciled through February,” Elise says, continuing to tap on the keyboard as she talks. “Is that right?”

Dale shrugs. He used to have an accountant, back when he could afford one, who took care of everything.

“Just download your bank statements before I come back next time,” Elise says as he starts up the stairs to the bedroom that’s mostly empty because Patty keeps coming by and taking things when he isn’t home. “Don’t you worry. I’ll get you all straightened out.”

By the time Dale wakes again, he’s sweated through his T-shirt and the sheet is damp where his head is resting. Without moving, because he’s stiffened up while he slept and maybe all the sweating is a sign of infection or a fever, he reaches for his pillow. Not finding it, he sits up. Both pillows are gone, as well as the blue comforter Patty bought for them last Christmas. On Patty’s side of the bed, where her head used to rest, is one of her notes. She leaves them when she comes and goes with more of their belongings. This time, she’s taken the pillows right from under his head and the comforter from on top of him. She’s even taken the top sheet. He picks up the note and unfolds it. This is the last time. I won’t be back.

Downstairs, the house is somehow quieter than before, because Patty is finally gone for good. His office chair is pushed up tight under his desk, the keyboard is centered, and the lights are off. Walking across his office, he flips open the slats on the plantation shutters and looks down on the street. The squared-off car is still parked two doors down. Pulling back, he closes the slats because even the filtered light is hurting his eyes, which is probably a sign of a concussion, and the spot between his eyes is pounding and he’s still worried about the ache in his side. Not only is Patty gone for good, but it’s as if Elise was never here, which makes the quiet in the house heavier. And then he gets a whiff of her lavender-scented lotion and smiles.

At his desk, he signs into his bank account, the sound of his fingers on the keyboard echoing in the mostly empty house, and downloads the monthly statements Elise asked for. When he goes to the bar tonight, long after six so he doesn’t happen upon Chum again, he’ll be able to tell her she can come back anytime, tomorrow even, because he’s done what she asked. Just thinking about seeing her makes him feel better.

While he’s still able to smell Elise and feel her hair on the side of his face, Dale walks outside and down the stairs to his driveway. He’d never be able to do something like this if he was still with Patty, but Elise is different. A good woman will have this effect on a man. He’s always known that, and he can’t fault himself for making a mistake with Patty. Squinting and wishing he’d grabbed his sunglasses, he looks for any sign of neighbors. Overhead, the fronds of a coconut palm rattle with the breeze, but the street is otherwise quiet. Most of his neighbors have homes up north. When summer rolls around, they install their hurricane shutters, make sure their flood insurance is up-to-date, and flee the Florida heat and humidity.

Both guys startle when Dale knocks on the car window. They’d been asleep, which Dale is certain would upset Chum if he knew about it. That could be leverage if Dale ends up needing it. He’s already good at this, already thinking like he needs to. Even with all this pain fogging his head, he’s thinking clear, thinking a few steps ahead. This is the Dale he used to be.

“The hell you doing?” the driver says. He has black hair, slicked back so it shimmers. His smooth skin shines and a tan sleeveless shirt shows off slender arms and a sunken chest.

“You fellows work for money, yes?” Dale says, leaning against the doorframe in a casual sort of way and because it’s easier to breathe.

The men look at each other. The one in the passenger seat is broad through the chest and shoulders and wears a baseball cap over a head of stringy blond hair. He lets out a laugh and nods. Dale has asked a stupid question.

“Chum’s an old man too, ain’t he?” Dale says.

The driver dips his chin and looks out at Dale over the top of a pair of dark sunglasses. “Suppose he is.”

“And you know I’m selling my place,” Dale says. “That place right over there.”

The driver hangs one arm out of the car and looks toward Dale’s house.

“Well, here’s the deal. You two see to it that Chum doesn’t live past closing day,” Dale says, not able to stop himself from swallowing midsentence and giving away how nervous he’s feeling, “and there’s fifty thousand dollars in it for you.”

Dale’s new place is a two-bedroom on a slab with a flat roof and cinder-block walls. The marble windowsills are etched with water stains, and while the walls have been freshly painted in a pale gray, the air vents in the ceiling are trimmed with black mold. “The place’ll do well in a storm,” the leasing agent told him, “but if the flood insurance goes up, you should expect your rent to go up too.” Sitting at the small table off the kitchen, Dale flips open the lid on the rubbery eggs and cold sausage Elise brought him when she came by to set up his computer and finish the last of the accounting. Taking one bite and then pushing the food aside, he stares out at the browning backyard and the lone cabbage palm. No reclaimed water here. No green lawns trimmed weekly by a lawn service. No towering royal palms. No saltwater pools.

“Chum come into the bar last night?” Dale shouts over one shoulder so Elise will hear him in the back room.

Yesterday morning, his house closed as scheduled, and when he walked out of the title office, he texted Chum to say the funds would hit the bank no later than noon today and that Dale would hand Chum a cashier’s check at the bar when it opened at three. He stared hard at his phone while he waited for an answer. He never got one, and Dale has been hoping ever since that no text means the guys finally made good on their deal and that Chum Giordano is dead.

“Yes,” she calls back, “I saw him. Pretty sure I did.”

“What do you mean, you’re pretty sure?” he shouts, swinging around and almost tipping his chair. “Either you saw him or you didn’t!”

When Elise doesn’t answer, Dale leans forward, rests his elbows on his knees, and hides his face in his hands. Fifty years old and he’s going to have nothing. Chum is alive and Dale’s going to have to give him damn near every last cent he has. The roofer took what was owed him right off the top. Another chunk went to pay off the equity line and the seawall company. And once he pays off Chum, he’ll be wiped out. Hell, he isn’t even sure how he’ll make rent next month. At the sound of footsteps, he turns.

“Yes, he was there,” Elise says. “I remember because he told me you were having a rough go of it.” She presses up close behind Dale and works her hands and fingers along his neck muscles. “Said you’re a good guy too. That true?”

Dale closes his eyes. Her hands slip down his chest as she presses closer. He glances at the clock. He’s got plenty of time to get to the bank and then over to Smugglers, where he’ll meet Chum. From his old house, he could walk to Smugglers, but it’ll probably take him twenty minutes from here.

“Yes, that’s true,” Dale says. “I’m a good guy. The best.”

Elise must know he’s broke since he’s living in this shithole, and yet she doesn’t seem bothered by it. Dale leans his head back, resting it against her as she runs her fingers down one arm and takes his hand. She tugs so he’ll stand and then leads him to his bedroom.

Dale can still smell Elise on him as he stands at the counter and waits for the teller to pull up his account. His skin is damp from the late-day heat and the cold air blowing down from overhead makes him shiver, or maybe it’s the memory of Elise. As he waits for the teller to hand over the cashier’s check that will wipe him out, he closes his eyes, letting himself slip back to that first moment of seeing her and touching her.

“There’s a problem with your account, sir,” the woman sitting behind the computer says. Her short brown hair is cut at a sharp angle that makes her look older than she is. She taps the screen.

“How so?” Dale says, leaning to get a look.

“You don’t have the funds.”

“They were supposed to clear by noon.”

“Yes,” she says. “A deposit cleared late this morning.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“And a withdrawal was made at...” She pauses, tucks her angled hair behind one ear. “Twelve twenty-three. Yes, twelve twenty-three this afternoon.”

Outside the bank, Dale drops against the stucco siding. The ground underfoot tilts. He braces himself with one hand to the building. “Did you ever use a public computer to access your bank account?” the teller had asked him. A man joined them, asked if Dale needed to take a seat. “Who might have access to your accounts?” the man asked. No one, Dale kept telling them as the room began to spin. And then the man, the branch manager, had asked... “Who else might have access to your home computer?”

Three calls to Elise’s cell phone roll directly to voice mail. Inside his car, he tries to take slow, steady breaths so he might remember where she lives. Or if she ever told him. After she climbed out of his bed, she said she was headed to work. From the bank parking lot, within walking distance to the house he owned until about thirty-six hours ago, he can look across the street and see Smugglers. Leaving his car at the bank so Chum won’t see it parked outside the bar, Dale runs across four lanes of beach traffic, up onto the boardwalk, and yanks open the door to Smugglers.

“Good lord.” It’s Donna. She’s standing behind the bar, a paring knife in hand and an orange on the counter. “What’s got you in such a hurry?”

“Elise,” Dale says, scanning the room for Chum or his men. “Where is she?”

“Darned if I know. Supposed to be here to open things up. Thought I’d found some decent help, but...”

“Her address,” Dale says, swinging around at the sound of a car’s gears popping into park. “I got to know where she lives.”

The door opens and sunlight spills into the bar. Dale squints, and while he can’t make out the figure standing in the threshold, he can see the hand that waves him outside. His shoulders drop and he walks head-on into the stream of light falling across him. He’d left her in his office when he went upstairs to sleep. “When you get a chance, just download those couple of other bank statements,” she’d said. “I’ll take care of everything else.” And while he slept, she’d put something on his computer to capture his password. That’s what the bank manager said as he helped Dale to a seat and handed him a glass of water. It had to be Elise. It really was so easy.

At first Dale can’t be sure it’s Chum standing outside the bar, but as his eyes adjust, the old man turns from a fuzzy outline into a solid figure. He’s leaning there against the barrel that hasn’t moved in twenty years.

“It’s all gone, Chum,” Dale says. “That girl, the new girl, Elise, she took it all.”

The air blowing across his face is what wakes Dale. At first he thinks it’s the overhead fan in his bedroom and that Elise is lying next to him, naked, her slender legs tangled in his. But there’s a noise too and he’s bouncing. He’s on a boat. Warm saltwater sprays across his face, warm like bathwater. And the boat is slowing down.

The sun is low in the sky now. He must have been out a long time because it’s nearly dusk. His head is pounding and muffled voices come from nearby. He closes his eyes when everything comes back to him. The computer Elise used, the log-in information she stole, the money that’s gone. Hell, he’d even told her when the money was supposed to clear the bank, and while that was happening, she’d been leading him to his bedroom. Elise in bed with him. That meant someone else had to have been using the stolen log-in to clear out the account. His eyes fly open and he struggles to push himself up, not because he’s strapped down in any way, but because he’s dizzy and the motion of the boat is making his stomach swirl.

“She didn’t do it alone,” Dale says, but no one hears. Again, louder this time: “She didn’t do it alone. Donna. It had to be Donna.”

It’s the one with stringy hair. He tells Dale to shut the hell up and turns back to his work. He’s throwing something overboard. It splashes and then he throws something else. Dale has done enough fishing to recognize the smell. The guy is throwing buckets of fish guts into the water. He’s chumming.

“Did you hear?” Dale says. “The two of them, together. They stole everything.”

Someone cuts the motor but the boat continues to roll with the waves. Dale wraps one hand around the side that’s still aching.

“That’s a damn fool way to try to save your hide,” Chum says, stepping up to Dale and blocking the last bit of sun bouncing off the boat’s white deck. “I was betting you’d blame your wife.”

Dale shakes his head. “No,” he says, his chin puckering. Sweet Patty with the silky brown hair that fell past her shoulders and the hands that were always soft and warm. Patty who cooked yellow cornbread just the way he liked and was always there when he stumbled home from Smugglers. It had been her idea for Dale to sell the house to pay Chum back. She took what was in their savings and left the house to Dale and now she’s never coming back.

“She’d never hurt me like that,” Dale says, his voice breaking before he can say anything else.

Stretching out a hand, Chum helps Dale to his feet, but instead of letting go, Chum keeps hold of that hand and nudges the guy with the sunken chest.

“I’m telling you,” Dale says, “it was both of them. Donna, she told me the girl did bookkeeping. She knew I needed someone. Jesus, they played me. And Donna knew about my house being sold. She did it. Had to have. Both of them played me.”

The sunken-chest guy takes Dale’s wrist from Chum. He pulls so Dale’s arm is good and straight, and with a small knife and one smooth motion, he cuts Dale from wrist to elbow. Crying out, Dale tries to pull away, but the man holds tight. As if afraid his shoes will get stained, Chum steps back. Blood begins to drip onto the boat’s white deck.

“Not too deep,” Chum says, steadying himself with a hand to the railing. “Don’t want him bleeding out first.”

The same man grabs Dale’s other arm, cuts it in the same way, and then folds Dale’s arms to stem the bleeding.

“Legs too?” the man asks.

Chum nods, and as the man squats down, Dale stumbles backward but something stops him. It’s the stringy-haired guy. He wraps his arms around Dale’s chest and yells at him to stop moving.

“Go easier if you stay still,” the sunken-chest man says, and one at a time, he slices the inside of each of Dale’s thighs.

“We’re good to go!” Chum hollers, and sticks a cigar in his mouth.

Dale is kicking and punching as they lift him. They swing him twice and let go. Chum is laughing. That’s the last thing Dale hears when he hits the water. Coughing and choking, he pops back to the surface. Before he sees them, he feels them. First it’s a bump to his leg, a glancing blow that could have been an undercurrent. But then he feels another. And then another. Like chum in the water.

I Get the Same Old Feeling by Karen Brown

Davis Islands

They moved into the house in September. The last time they’d been there, following behind a real estate agent’s clicking heels, the rooms had seemed open and friendly. Now the walls were marked by tree shadows, an uneasy flickering of light off the canal. Eva told her husband it wasn’t the same and he said it was too late, and gave her that look: part caution, part dismay. Didn’t he always want to please her, and was she never happy? Eva crossed the terrazzo floor and opened the doors to the patio and let the breeze move through the rooms. Small insects came in, bobbing off the kitchen counter, hovering slow and dazed like bits of dark ash.

Her husband left for work, agreeing to drop the children at their new school. It was better if she didn’t take them at first — her littlest would cling to her and make a scene at the drop-off line. The doorbell signaled a delivery or another neighbor stopping to introduce herself bearing a willow basket of muffins or a box of locally confected toffee. They all said the same thing: “You didn’t tear it down!” Eva wasn’t sure whether they were pleased or disgruntled — the exclamation kept vague, waiting for her response. “Not yet,” she might say. Or, “Never!”

She opened the door to a man she knew she should remember. He stood on the front walkway bewildered, blinking, his hands stuffed into his pants pockets.

“Eva Langford?” he said.

Eva laughed, and his expression dulled. “Dr. Harcourt?”

Her old college professor. He was gray now, his same eyes peeking out of an aged face, the same clothing — jeans, corduroy jacket, Converse sneakers. He took a step back, as if finding her there was a trick of some sort. “What are you doing here?” he said.

They went back and forth this way, an awkward reunion. She explained they’d moved in last week, that her husband’s company had reassigned him to Tampa.

“Of all places,” she said. “It’s Eva Kinsey now.”

“This was my mother’s house,” Jim Harcourt said.

And Eva remembered a day she spent with him — sex at his condo and then the drive around town in his Alfa Romeo with the top down, drinking beer, winding through a suburban neighborhood — had it been this very Davis Islands neighborhood?

They’d driven curving roads under oaks and magnolias, seed pods fluttering into her hair, into her lap, and he’d pointed out houses of horrors.

A low-slung ranch, its lawn a swath of dead grass: “This is where my friend was run over and killed by his brother. High on cocaine. Family station wagon.”

A Spanish Mediterranean with green-striped awnings like a candy shop: “Allan Tinker, decapitated in a waterskiing accident.”

A two-story contemporary, its stucco crumbling: “There’s a plexiglass floor upstairs above the pool. One or two ODs at parties. Heard they took the bodies somewhere it would look like suicide. One of them even survived.”

A 1960s mid-century modern, all windows and architecturally sharp landscaping: “Speaking of suicide. Woman was found by the neighbor boy in the kitchen. Former beauty queen. Tampa’s Valley of the Dolls.”

Dr. Harcourt had grinned, pointed his long finger, his hair blown back by the wind. Eva had only half believed him. “Not really,” she said, enjoying the bubble of fear. “You’re making this up.”

He had Barry White’s Can’t Get Enough playing. The car’s leather seats were soft and sun-warmed. He’d given her a Valium earlier and she still felt the effects, the wind cottony in her mouth, her arms and legs leaden.

Like the insects bobbing now, just out of her line of sight.

“Jesus, how long has it been?” he said. He brushed an old man’s hand through his hair.

Eva said it was fifteen years at least. She’d been a freshman then. “I have two children now.”

At the time they’d known each other, Dr. Harcourt had children, a wife. Once, driving in the Alfa Romeo, he’d told her to duck, and she’d slid down in the narrow bucket seat and curled herself up below the glove box. “Look at you,” he’d said, surprised, her tiny body the provider of feats for him.

Eva sensed he’d come now to the door for her. Even though he claimed this was his mother’s house, she still doubted him after all these years.

“Did you want to see the house? I’m still unpacking.”

He put both of his hands up. “I wondered if the place was sold,” he said. “I couldn’t impose.”

But she insisted. “Did you grow up here?”

Dr. Harcourt stepped uneasily over the threshold. Eva led the way into the living room, but when she looked back he was still there in the entry. “I lived here for a little while,” he called to her. Slowly, he came forward and stood across from her. “This is—” He took in the boxes stacked against the wall, the shining floors, the new sofa still wrapped in its plastic.

Eva told him the former owner had taken up all the carpets and polished the terrazzo.

“They reconfigured it some,” he said, cautiously. “There used to be a wall there.”

Eva asked him if he wanted to look around. She remembered how it had ended with him — how cold and unthinking she’d been. She felt sorry for him now, and she reached out a hand to clasp his arm. But Dr. Harcourt’s shoulders tightened in his corduroy coat, and he told her it was nice to see her, welcome back, but he had to go.

That evening her boys had baseball practice. Eva took a photo of them in their too-large caps, the gloves grotesque claws at the ends of their small arms. She was going to unpack some more, she told her husband, set up the house. She watched them drive off, and then she went for a walk. Dr. Harcourt had told her the neighborhood was designed by a man named D.P. Davis in the 1920s as an exclusive resort with hotels and a golf course and luxury Mediterranean Revival — style residences. The islands were man-made, built on top of swamp and mudflats at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. The old stucco houses had been replaced here and there with mid-century ranches, but those were now being threatened by mansions — two- and three-story places, with three-car garages and paved driveways. Eva’s house was one of the remaining 1950s ranches — one that at the time of its construction would have signaled affluence, with its geometric iron gate, a courtyard, and walls of glass. Large birds of paradise filled the front beds, and banyan trees grew along the side of the house. “A tropical paradise,” the agent had said. “Room for a pool.”

The night was balmy, as if they might get a bit of fall weather — although she told her husband not to expect it. She’d only gone to college in Tampa for a year. Of her time here, she claimed dim memories. “My clothes stuck to my skin,” she said. “It always smelled of magnolia and river muck.” She never graduated. Her parents had made her come home, and she had no choice. She had no way to support herself in Tampa and wasn’t in the best shape at the time to find work.

Later, in bed, she told her husband funny stories about the neighbors that visited while she’d been unpacking. She didn’t tell him about Dr. Harcourt.

“Why did they all assume we planned to tear down the house?” she said.

Her husband, turned away from her in bed, was half-asleep, a signal for her to stop talking. He grunted. “It’s just what everyone is doing,” he said. “Tell them we like the house’s style.”

Eva got up from bed and went down the hallway. She stood in the place where Dr. Harcourt had stood that morning. Beyond the sliding glass doors, the sprinklers hissed. The canal seemed oily and dark. Dr. Harcourt had told her about a husband who’d accidentally killed his wife in an argument. He’d stood her in a galvanized bucket and poured in concrete and dumped her in the bay. He’d been caught, somehow. He’d served his time and gotten out of prison and spent his last years working as a salesman in the mall, selling men’s suits.

Maybe this had been a house on Dr. Harcourt’s tour and that was why everyone thought they’d tear it down. She returned to bed, but could not sleep for the bright slice of moonlight that cut the room in half, like a torn photograph.

Eva wanted the story of the house. She’d seen Dr. Harcourt’s haunted expression, his jittery movements when he stepped through the doorway onto the cool terrazzo. The way he fled — that was the only way to describe his leaving. If the house had ghosts she wanted to be prepared for them. If they were angry or distraught, if their lives had been cut short, if they’d been the victims of their own or others’ violence — surely these things would alter the atmosphere of the rooms.

She located his e-mail address at the college and sent him a note.

Two days later, Eva swatted at the small flies she’d let in. She followed through the motions of unpacking that her husband expected — stacking plates on cupboard shelves she’d wiped clean of dust, the bits of spices spilled from their jars, a piece of macaroni, dried and yellow like an old toenail. On one shelf, she’d encountered a small piece of broken glass, and it had imbedded itself in the pad of her middle finger and she could not remove it. Each time she touched anything, the glass announced itself there below the surface. That afternoon, for no reason at all, she felt trapped, held by the house, terror making her heart race. If only she knew what had sent Dr. Harcourt to her door, she might face it down. Maybe it was only a fleeting, sorrowful memory of a lost parent.

She didn’t want her husband to know about her past. That time in her life, the brief year of college — she’d kept that private all this time. She could not confess details that would surely alter his perception of her. The revelation might even cause a breach in their marriage. Too much time had passed, and she could not adequately account for her silence, her secrecy.

That had been one of the vows he’d written when they married: We will keep nothing from each other, no secrets between us, something, something. She could not remember it all now.

Time diffused some things. And others it highlighted, a spotlight cast about a dark room full of shelves disappearing into the rafters of an impossibly high ceiling, the memories stacked on the shelves in labeled boxes like a museum warehouse. She imagined her husband’s face crumpling with disappointment, but she could not predict what he might do or say after.

Later that morning, Dr. Harcourt returned. She found him at her door in his signature clothing — the jeans, the Converse, the corduroy jacket.

“Let’s start over,” he said. “I was incredibly rude running off the other day.”

Eva set down a basket of her sons’ dirty clothes. She said she understood. “It’s hard to go back to places from the past.”

Dr. Harcourt agreed, eagerly, his eyes brightening. “Some of it’s a blur, and then the rest is so real and vivid. For instance, I remember you so well.”

Eva crossed her arms over her chest. She wore her pajamas — a T-shirt and a pair of loose cotton pants. “And this house?” she said. “Is this part of the vivid past?”

She saw his smile falter, but his eyes stayed on hers. “The house.”

It was as if he did not want to look past her into its depths.

“Let’s go for coffee,” he said. “And then I promise you a tour. How’s that?”

When she was a college student it had been the Alfa Romeo he used to lure her in. She’d seen him getting into it one muggy afternoon as she crossed the faculty lot and called out to him asking for a ride. It had been a joke, but she knew now he’d seen her real desire to leave campus and its pressure of school and roommates behind, and he’d played along. Now, it was the house. As much as she tried to pretend the story of the house didn’t matter, somehow he knew it did.

His car, parked at the curb, was a silver Prius. She got in and tucked her skirt under her legs.

“This takes me back,” he said, turning the key in the ignition. She half expected the old R&B songs, but the radio was silent.

They didn’t drive far — just along one of the curving roads to the small shopping plaza. Eva and her husband had taken the boys to the nearby Mexican restaurant. The coffee bar had chairs set up outside, but Dr. Harcourt held the glass door for her, and she slipped into the dim interior.

“Coffee or beer?” he said, pulling out a chair for her.

Along the wall were bottles of wine, taps for beer behind a counter. “Beer, for old time’s sake,” she said.

Dr. Harcourt ordered two pilsners. It was ten a.m. Eva imagined her boys at their school tables, their pencils shaping letters on worksheets. Her husband downtown presiding over a meeting. She should have asked Dr. Harcourt about his wife and children, but she didn’t want to know. She drank the beer and said, “So?”

Dr. Harcourt took a long sip, set his glass on the tabletop. “Patience,” he said.

“Patient Griselda,” she said. They’d read Boccaccio’s awful story in his class.

Griselda’s husband saves her from poverty by marriage. He believes all women to be faithless and wicked and he tests her by taking her children away and claiming they are dead. He banishes her to her father’s small impoverished hut under the pretense of marrying another woman. Dr. Harcourt had been obsessed with the story. They’d even read Perrault’s fairy tale written about her. At the time, Eva had not cared about the story’s intent as a guide for young women and wives. She had not ever thought she’d be a wife, a mother.

She pressed her finger against the tabletop and felt the sting of the glass beneath the skin. The beer made her woozy.

“Do you think I’m not a faithful wife?”

“You are who you always were,” he said, cryptically.

A bell on the door rang and Eva glanced up. She didn’t know any of the neighbors yet — barely remembered their welcoming faces at her door — but this woman might have been one of them, the way she eyed Eva with a faint smile. Eva understood it mattered who she was seen with now.

Dr. Harcourt slipped from his chair and returned with two new glasses of beer. Eva tried to protest but he set the tall glass beside her, and she found herself finishing her first, reaching for the second. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his ankles.

“The house,” he said. “And my mother.”

He told her his mother was no Griselda. She was everything the husband in the tale feared — faithless and conniving. He ran his hand over his cheek as he talked, as if trying to rub off a smear of lipstick. She was a bank teller, or a receptionist, or a ladies clothing store clerk, he couldn’t remember which. “A lowly sort, when my father met her,” he said. “It was 1958.”

His father was bewitched by her and married her, believing that her gratitude for the marriage and everything it would bring her — the sprawling ranch house, the yacht club, the garden club — would be a guarantee of her love.

“But is it ever?” Dr. Harcourt said. He sat forward suddenly in his chair, and Eva, startled, leaned away. She remembered the way he would lecture, pacing the room, his Converse sneakers squeaking on the wood floors.

“For some women it might be,” Eva said.

He smiled and took a sip of his beer. “She met someone else and had an affair. My father heard rumors and hired a private detective who took photos of her at a motel with the man. Then he confronted her. I was ten or so. My brother was twelve.”

His father spoke to his lawyer about divorce, and his mother knew it was coming: the loss of everything she loved — the clothes, the jewelry. “According to our father, she never worried about losing us,” Dr. Harcourt said. “She worried about her Cadillac.”

Eva felt her apprehension beneath the effects of the beer. She wondered if she should offer some sympathetic comment, but she could not speak, waiting for the end of the story.

“Not many people acknowledge the other side of this grim tale,” Dr. Harcourt said.

“Her side,” Eva said, her voice an underwater sound. The barista steamed milk and roasted beans. Customers came in, and maybe they were Eva’s neighbors, or not.

“What she endured from him — this pillar of society, this much-loved man. Those nights he berated her, accused her of things she had yet to do, ripped her clothing from the closet and drove it in the car to Goodwill. Deprived her access to the bank account so we had no money for food. These things happened — I remember them happening. And still, she stayed.”

“Like Griselda?” Eva said, confused.

“I’m not sure what the breaking point was,” he responded, drumming his fingers on the table.

“Maybe the man she met was kind. Maybe she wanted a bit of happiness for herself.”

Dr. Harcourt drank his beer in one long swallow. Eva saw his throat move. His hands cradled the empty glass. “She hired some thug to kill him. He came into the house and waited for my father to return from work one evening and he bludgeoned him to death.”

Eva felt the cold of the glass move through her arm, down the length of her torso. “Is this all true, Dr. Harcourt?”

“It’s a notorious local story,” he said. “And please, call me James.”

He’d asked her to do that before, and she had, to please him. But to do so now would take her back to that time with him — the closeness they’d forged driving the grid of streets, having sex in the empty day-lit parks where at night students gathered, negotiating with their money and their fake IDs and pharmaceuticals. She knew it would not take much to close the gap the years had formed between them.

“I really couldn’t do that,” she said.

“It’s my name.” He set one empty glass inside the other. “Why would it be a problem?”

“It’s not who you are to me anymore,” she said. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“What if I called you Mrs. Kinsey? How would that feel?”

She turned in her chair, crossed her legs. “I don’t care how it feels. Call me whatever you want.”

“Whore,” he said, his face darkening, his voice low. “There’s something.”

She recoiled, the way you might if someone’s injury had bloomed with blood. Her limbs felt hung with weights. Still, she managed to stand. Another woman who might have been her neighbor waited at the counter for her coffee order as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

Eva left the coffee bar, the door’s bells jangling behind her, and began to walk toward her house. Other people were out walking, in groups or alone, with dogs on leashes or pushing strollers. The air blew, hot and thick, lifting her skirt. Oak trees swayed overhead, sending acorns down onto rooftops, onto car hoods. Dry leaves skittered across the sidewalk. The wind in the oaks was a sound like a hiss, a faucet left on, a leak in a gas line. She easily blended in — a resident out for a walk, not someone fleeing a man in a coffee bar.

She approached her house, its 1950s facade so benign, so unremarkable. When she’d been a college student seeing Dr. Harcourt she met another student and began to see him too. The boy knew about her affair with Dr. Harcourt, she told him everything — where they had sex, the positions Dr. Harcourt liked, the things he told her to say. The boy loved hearing the stories, and then he must have repeated them, and it was a small college and somehow Dr. Harcourt found out. He hadn’t retaliated overtly, but now Eva surmised he must have been instrumental in her failure at school, the reputation she’d acquired, the accusations, the meeting with the dean who asked about her drug use, her poor grades, and who would not entertain her confession.

“Jim Harcourt?” he had said, twinkly-eyed and paternal, his expression bemused. He didn’t need to say more. She would not be believed.

The Prius was there at the curb, and Dr. Harcourt waited at the gate to the front courtyard. She had cared for him in college. She’d had every intention of staying with him, assured his love for her was greater than that for his wife and it was only a matter of time before he divorced her. The other boy was just a boy, and she regretted ever spending time with him.

Eva edged past Dr. Harcourt, his coat’s corduroy fabric brushing her arm. She opened the door with her key and stepped into the house, moved down the terrazzo hall to the living room and the wall of glass that offered its view of the patio and lawn, the wind-scalloped canal. She heard Dr. Harcourt enter behind her. He stepped alongside her and took her hand, gently.

“Let’s not do this,” he said.

“You should leave,” she told him.

“You haven’t gotten the tour yet. I promised you that, and I won’t renege.” He walked to the center of the room, his hands on his hips. “The scene of countless drunken escapades. Parties, dancing.” He swiveled his hips, his hands holding invisible things: a cigarette, a drink. “Glass dish of peanuts.” He mimed taking a handful, popping them into his mouth.

He took her hands and tried to get her to dance. He sang part of an old Barry White song. She felt the sharp press of the glass in her finger, and she tugged her hands away. He had told her the story to remind her of their time together, but he told her to frighten her too, knowing that what they’d done together would get mixed up in the story, that she needed to hear it, wanted it, much as the college boy wanted her stories of sex with a professor. Eva knew they all needed the stories for something.

“He came in here,” Dr. Harcourt said, gesturing to the sliding glass doors. “It was wall-to-wall carpeting then. My mother favored white.” He crossed the room to a door that led into what Eva and her husband had designated as an office. “He hid in here, so when my father came in,” he walked down the hall to the foyer, “and set his keys down, he was in direct view.”

“Were they caught?” she asked.

“The body was found here,” Dr. Harcourt said, his mapping of the room ending, the foyer the X.

“Who found him?” Eva said, her voice small and soft. “Was it you?”

He stared at the spot on the floor. “We made a mess of things back then, didn’t we?” he said.

He stepped around the imaginary body and approached her, the soles of his Converse squeaking. He put his hand on her shoulder and slid it down her arm. They had a history together, he said. “There’s something really powerful in that.”

D.P. Davis, the developer of the Islands, had died mysteriously in 1926. He’d fallen from a porthole on a sea voyage to Paris with his mistress — a former Hollywood actress. There’d been questions about the night he died, Dr. Harcourt had said. The man was a drinker, but he was also in debt. “Did he fall, or did he leap?” he had said. “Or was he pushed?”

She imagined the dead man in the foyer, the white carpet stained with blood, these same tree shadows moving along the walls, the quiet of the neighborhood its own sound. And then a rattling of keys in the door and the door opening on the scene. It might be this scene, she and Dr. Harcourt together, and it might be her husband coming into the house, calling her name. Was it always clear? Victim or criminal?

The tree shadows rubbed the walls, a delicate, inaudible friction. Dr. Harcourt dipped his face toward hers. Eva thought she might cry out, though from fear or desire she could not ever say.

Triggerfish Lane by Tim Dorsey

Palma Ceia

They keep coming to Florida.

People who maintain such records report that every single day, a thousand new residents move into the state. The reasons are varied. Retirement, beaches, affordable housing, growing job base, tax relief, witness protection, fugitive warrants, forfeiture laws that shelter your house if you’re a Heisman Trophy winner who loses a civil suit in the stabbing death of your wife, and year-round golf.

On a typical spring morning, five of those thousand new people piled into a cobalt-blue Ford Aerostar in Logansport, Indiana. The Davenports — Jim, Martha, and their three children. They watched the moving van pull out of their driveway and followed it south.

A merging driver on the interstate ramp gave Jim the bird. He would have given Jim two birds, but he was on the phone. Jim grinned and waved and let the man pass.

Jim Davenport was like many of the other thousand people heading to Florida this day, except for one crucial difference. Of all of them, Jim was hands down the most nonconfrontational.

Jim avoided all disagreement and didn’t have the heart to say no. He loved his family and fellow man, never raised his voice or fists, and was rewarded with a lifelong, routine digestion of small doses of humiliation. The belligerent, boorish, and bombastic latched onto him like strangler figs.

He was utterly content.

Then Jim moved to Florida and something quite unnatural happened: he made strange new friends, got in disputes, and someone ended up dead.

But none of this was on the horizon as the Davenports entered the second day of their southern interstate migration. The road tar at the bottom of Georgia began to soften and smell in the afternoon sun. It was a Saturday, the traffic on I-75 thick and anxious. Hondas, Mercurys, Subarus, Chevy Blazers. A blue Aerostar with Indiana tags passed the exit for the town of Tifton, “Sod Capital of the USA,” and a billboard: Jesus Is Lord... at Buddy’s Catfish Emporium.

A sign marking the Florida state line stood in the distance, along with the sudden appearance of palm trees growing in a precise grid. The official state welcome center rose like a mirage through heat waves off the highway. Cars accelerated for the oasis with the runaway anticipation of traffic approaching a Kuwaiti checkpoint on the border with Iraq.

They pulled into the hospitality center’s angled parking slots; doors opened and children jumped out and ran around the grass in the aimless, energetic circles for which they are known. Parents stretched and rounded up staggering amounts of trash and headed for garbage bins. A large Wisconsin family in tank tops sat at a picnic table eating bologna sandwiches and generic cheese doodles so they could afford a thousand-dollar day at Disney. A crack team of state workers arrived at the curb in an unmarked van and began pressure-washing some kind of human fluid off the sidewalk. A stray ribbon of police tape blew across the pavement.

The Aerostar parked near the vending machines, in front of the No Nighttime Security sign.

“Who needs to go to the bathroom?” asked Jim.

Eight-year-old Melvin put down his mutant action figures and raised a hand.

Sitting next to him with folded arms and a dour outlook was Debbie Davenport, a month shy of sweet sixteen, totally disgusted to be in a minivan. She was also disgusted with the name Debbie. Prior to the trip she had informed her parents that from now on she would only go by “Drusilla.”

“Debbie, you need to use the restroom?”

No reply.

Martha got out a bottle for one-year-old Nicole, cooing in her safety seat, and Jim and little Melvin headed for the building.

Outside the restrooms, a restless crowd gathered in front of an eight-foot laminated map of Florida, unable to accept that they were still hundreds of miles from the nearest theme park. They would become even more bitter when they pulled away from the welcome center and the artificial grove of palms gave way to hours of scrubland and billboards for topless donut shops.

Jim bought newspapers and coffee. Martha took over the driving and pulled back on I-75. Jim unfolded one of the papers and read aloud: “Authorities have discovered a tourist from Finland who lost his luggage, passport, all his money and ID, and was stranded for eight weeks at Miami International Airport.”

“Eight weeks?” said Martha. “How did he take baths?”

“Wet paper towels in the restrooms.”

“Where did he sleep?”

“Chairs at different gates each night.”

“What did he eat?”

“Bagels from the American Airlines Admirals Club.”

“How did he get in the Admirals Club if he didn’t have ID?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“If he went to all that trouble, he probably could have gotten some kind of help from the airline. I can’t believe nobody noticed him.”

“I think that’s the point of the story.”

“What happened?”

“Kicked him out. He was last seen living at Fort Lauderdale International.”

The Aerostar passed a group of police officers on the side of the highway, slowly walking eight abreast looking for something in the weeds. Jim turned the page. “They’ve cleared the comedian Gallagher in the Tamiami Strangler case.”

“Is that a real newspaper?”

Jim turned back to the front page and pointed at the top. Tampa Tribune.

Martha rolled her eyes.

“Says they released an artist’s sketch. Bald with mustache and long hair on the sides. Police got hundreds of calls that it looked like Gallagher. But they checked his tour schedule — he was out of state the nights of the murders.”

“They actually checked him out?”

“They also checked out Gallagher’s brother.”

Martha looked at Jim, then back at the road.

“After clearing Gallagher, they got a tip that he has a brother who looks just like him and smashes watermelons on a circuit of low-grade comedy clubs under the name Gallagher II. But he was out of town as well.”

“I hope I don’t regret this move,” said Martha.

Jim put his hand on hers. “You’re going to love Tampa.”

Jim Davenport had never planned on moving to Tampa, or even Florida for that matter. Everything he knew about the state came from the Best Places to Live in America magazine that now sat on the Aerostar’s dashboard. Right there on page seventeen, across from the feature on the joy of Vermont’s covered bridges, was the now famous annual ranking of the finest cities in the US of A to raise a family. And coming in at number three with a bullet — just below Seattle and San Francisco — was the shocker on the list. Rocketing up from last year’s 497th position: Tampa, Florida. When the magazine hit the stands, champagne corks flew in the Chamber of Commerce. The mayor called a press conference, and the city quickly threw together a band and fireworks show at the riverfront park; the news was so big it even caused some people to get laid.

Nobody knew it was all a mistake. The magazine had recently been acquired by a German media conglomerate, which purchased the latest spelling and grammar — check software and dismissed its editors and writers, replacing them with distracted high school students listening to music on headphones. The tabular charts on the new software had baffled a student with green hair, who inadvertently moved all of Tampa’s crime statistics a decimal point to the left.

The Davenports got off the expressway and Jim threw a quarter in the automatic toll booth, but the red light didn’t change. He drove through. A wino scurried from the underbrush and pulled a quarter out of the plastic basket, where he’d stuffed a rag in the coin hole.

The family van headed into south Tampa. None of them had seen their new home yet, except in pictures. The deal was prearranged and underwritten by Jim’s company, an expanding Indiana consulting firm that had asked for volunteers to move to new branch offices in Phoenix, San Antonio, and Tampa. Long lines formed for Arizona and Texas. Jim wondered why he was all alone at the Florida desk.

Jim checked street signs as the van rolled down Dale Mabry Highway. “I think we’re getting close.”

Anticipation built. Everyone’s faces were at the windows. Antique malls, dry cleaners, Little League fields, 7-Elevens. Just like neighborhoods everywhere, but with lots of palm trees and azaleas.

Jim made a right. Almost there. Martha liked the sound of the street names. Barracuda Trail, Man O’War Terrace, Coral Circle. When they got to Triggerfish Lane, Jim made a left. Their mouths fell open.

Paradise.

The sun was high, the sky clear, and children played catch and rode bikes in the street. And the colors! Lush gardens and hedges, bright but tasteful pastel paint schemes. Teal, turquoise, pink, peach. The houses started at the bayfront and unfolded chronologically as development had pushed inland. Clapboard bungalows from the twenties, Mediterranean stuccos from the thirties and forties, classic ranch houses of the fifties and sixties. It used to be a consistent architectural flow, but real estate in south Tampa had become so white-hot that anything under two thousand square feet was bulldozed to make way for three-story trophy homes that now towered outside both windows of the Aerostar. Half the places had decorative silk flags hanging over the brass mailboxes. Florida Gators flags and FSU Seminole flags. Flags with sunflowers and golf clubs and sailfish and horses. Jim pointed ahead at a light-ochre bungalow with white trim. A restoration award flag hung from the wraparound porch.

“There she is.”

Martha’s eyes popped with elation, and she spontaneously hugged Jim.

The moving truck was already unloading in the driveway when they pulled up in front of 888 Triggerfish. A grinning realtor stepped down from the porch and walked to the van carrying a jumbo welcome basket of citrus jams, butters, marmalades, and chewies, wrapped up in green cellophane.

“Welcome! Welcome!” The realtor pumped Jim’s hand, then Martha’s. “Gonna love it here in Florida. Couldn’t live anywhere else!”

Jim went out on the lawn and triumphantly pulled up the For Sale / Sold! sign.

A boy on a skateboard stopped at the end of the driveway. “You bought a house on this street?”

The realtor grabbed Jim by the arm. “Let’s go inside.”

“What did that kid mean?”

“Guess what!” said the realtor. “The cable’s already hooked up!”

Despite the serene surface appearance of the street, there was an unexpected amount of drama on Triggerfish Lane. Much came from the juxtaposition of family homes with mortgages and rental houses with itinerants.

For instance, across the street from the Davenports, a rental sign had recently been pulled up from the lawn by a tall, wiry man accompanied by a shorter, plump companion. Serge and Coleman, the ultimate odd couple. And fugitives.

Coleman wasn’t the brightest bulb but was otherwise normal, except for his unabated substance intake that left him uniformly blunt and inert at all hours. Conversely, Serge was highly intelligent. And criminally insane. Part of his mental illness was the contradiction of possessing a rigid moral code, and some of his most heinous acts were the result of the noblest of intentions. Complicating matters was his consuming curiosity and savant penchant for improvised mechanics dating back to childhood. More than once, his elementary school science projects prompted responses from the local fire department. Psychiatrists believed Serge could lead a virtually normal existence with daily cocktails of mind-numbing medication, which he refused to take because it made him too foggy to seize every day for maximum value.

And there lay the pair’s combustible dynamic: Coleman wouldn’t stop taking drugs, and Serge wouldn’t start.

Weeks passed after they moved in, much of their time spent relaxing on the front porch, respectively consuming sparkling water and whiskey. And watching their neighbors across the street.

One evening the Davenports stepped onto their front porch and Jim cheerfully waved across the street.

“What are you doing?” asked Martha.

“Waving.”

“Why?”

“Because he waved at me,” said Jim. “It’s only neighborly.”

“Jim! There’s something seriously wrong with them!” said Martha. “The fat one is always wasted, and the other one is just weird!”

“You’re imagining things,” said her husband.

Across the street, Serge was showing Coleman a National Geographic article about a tribe in Africa. “Check out how they make their necks really long with metal neck coils.”

Coleman popped another beer. “We should get some neck coils.”

“I have an idea.”

They walked over to the hedge and Serge pulled out a long garden hose, the collapsible flat kind full of pinholes that inflates with water to irrigate flower beds. Serge started wrapping it around his neck. “Okay. When I give the signal, turn on the water, and I’ll have neck coils.”

“Right,” said Coleman, pushing his way through the hedge to the faucet.

“You’re overreacting,” Jim told Martha.

“Those men are deranged!”

“Maybe they’re just simple,” said Jim. “Wouldn’t you feel bad if you found out that was the case and you’d been talking like this?”

“They’re not retarded! They’re dangerous!”

Jim and Martha heard something across the street. Serge was flopping around the front yard, turning blue and fighting a garden hose wrapped around his throat like an anaconda. Coleman thrashed drunkenly in the bushes, trying to turn off the water.

Coleman finally cut the pressure, and the hose deflated. Serge unwrapped his neck and sat up, panting.

Jim turned to Martha. “I don’t think you’re supposed to use the word retarded anymore. It’s offensive or something.”

Coleman pointed across the street. “Are the Davenports looking at us?”

“Yeah, they are.” Serge smiled and waved again.

Jim waved back again.

“Will you stop that!” said Martha.

Serge rubbed his neck. “Another close call. I think God is trying to tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“I think I’m going to try going straight.”

“You?” Coleman laughed. “That’s a hoot!”

“I’m serious.”

“What brought this on?”

“We’ve been staying here a few weeks now, and I’ve been watching Jim over there. I’ve decided to pattern my life after him.”

“You mean that wimp who never does anything?”

“Don’t you dare call him a wimp!” said Serge. “His gig may look mild from our perspective, but talk about living on the edge. Guys like him never get any glory. They’ve just quietly put away childish things to face the relentless adult responsibility of taking care of their children. We’ve been in a lot of close scrapes over the years. Car chases, knives, gunfire. But I think I’d crack under the kind of pressure Jim deals with every day. He’s kind of become my hero.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

A week later, a ’76 Laguna with chrome hubs screeched up in front of the Davenport residence. A young Debbie Davenport and the shirtless driver got out and kissed.

“Hey,” Jim yelled at the driver, “I want to talk to you!”

Jim ran down from the porch as fast as he could, but the Laguna took off again. Jim stood in the middle of the street, in the middle of swirling worry.

Suddenly, a voice from behind: “You’re Jim, right?”

Jim spun around. “Uh, yeah.”

“We haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Serge.” He extended a hand to shake. “You’re like my hero.”

“What?”

Serge nodded hard. “The brutal stress you constantly face. And I think I just witnessed some of it. What’s going on?”

“Nothing.”

Serge wrapped a consoling arm around Jim’s shoulder. “Come on, you can tell me. We’re neighbors after all. It’s about the fabric of the community! So my new hero buddy, what’s burdening your soul?”

“It’s just my daughter Debbie.”

“Yeah, I saw her get out of the car and go in the house,” said Serge. “How old is she now? Sixteen?”

“Next month,” said Jim.

“Then that guy in the car is way too old for her.”

“I know. I’ve forbidden her to see him, but she’s rebelling. I need to strike the right balance of discipline or risk damaging our relationship.”

“Then attack the problem from the other end,” said Serge. “Just leave that guy to me. I have these friends and some baseball bats—”

“No. I have to handle it myself. I’m her father. I heard her talking on the phone with one of her friends. I think his name’s Scorpion. He’s twenty-two. And what was the deal with his underwear hanging out like that? Didn’t he realize it was showing?”

“I think that’s on purpose,” said Serge.

“Really? That’s what they’re doing these days?” Jim pointed toward Serge’s front yard, where Coleman was bending over to drink from the garden hose. “So your roommate does it on purpose too?”

Serge shook his head. “That’s not fashion. That’s congenital.”

Tires screeched in the distance. Serge and Coleman looked up the street. A ’76 Chevy Laguna tore around the corner and down Triggerfish Lane.

Serge stood up on the porch and yelled: “Hey! Slow down! Kids play around here!”

“He didn’t hear you,” said Coleman.

The driver pulled up in front of the Davenport residence and honked the horn.

Serge yelled again: “Go up to the door and knock like a human being!”

“Why are you so upset?” asked Coleman.

“That guy’s pushing my buttons. And he’s much too old to be going out with Debbie.”

“It’s Jim’s business.”

“I know,” Serge said with resignation. “I promised I wouldn’t interfere.”

Debbie never came out of the house, and the Laguna took off up the street.

“What I’d like to do to him!” said Serge.

“Remember, you’re going straight.”

“I know, I know. What would Jim do in a situation like this?”

“Look,” said Coleman. “He’s turning around.”

“I’ll have a talk with him. I think his name’s Scorpion.” Serge jumped off the porch and ran down to the corner. He waited at the stop sign.

The Laguna screeched to a halt.

“Hi,” said Serge. “Would you mind driving just a tad slower around here? We have a lot of children who play—”

The driver raised his middle finger. “Fuck off, pops!” He peeled out.

Serge walked back to his porch.

“Did you talk to him?” asked Coleman.

“Yep.”

“Well?”

“It’s a start. You have to begin the healing somewhere.”

Coleman pointed. “He’s coming back.”

Serge ran down to the corner again. “Excuse me, Mr. Scorpion,” he said, “I was trying to point out that we have a lot of little kids—”

The driver flicked a cigarette at Serge and sped off.

Serge returned to the porch.

“How’s it coming?” asked Coleman.

Serge was looking down at his chest. “He threw a cigarette at me.”

“It made a burn mark.”

Serge scratched the spot with his finger. “This was one of my favorite shirts.”

There were more tire sounds up the street. The two men turned and looked.

“I can’t believe it,” said Serge. “He’s coming back.”

“And look. There’s Jim’s car right behind him.”

“Maybe I can stop them both, and we can all sit down and have a civilized talk.”

Jim Davenport was heading home from the grocery store in the Aerostar when he pulled up at a stop sign behind a ’76 Chevy Laguna. The Laguna turned left onto Triggerfish, and Jim turned left behind him. In his stress, he accidentally honked the horn.

Jim saw brake lights on the Chevy. The driver got out and ran back to the SUV. “Don’t you ever blow your fucking horn at me!”

“I wasn’t—”

Before Jim could finish, the Laguna’s driver had opened the door and pulled Jim into the street.

Serge and Coleman jumped to their feet: “Road rage!” They sprinted for the corner.

The driver was sitting on Jim’s chest, delivering a flurry of punches.

“Hey! Get off him!”

Scorpion looked up and saw Serge and Coleman running down the street; he jumped in the Laguna and took off.

They got to Jim and sat him up. “Are you okay?”

He was far from okay. His shirt was torn. Gravel filled his hair, and blood and mucus ran down his neck. His lower lip was split and both eyes were starting to swell.

“Let’s get you back to your house,” said Serge.

They helped Jim up the porch and into the living room. Serge and Coleman ran around frantically for ice cubes, peroxide, and Band-Aids.

Jim stared at the floor. Serge returned with a washcloth full of ice.

“Look up,” said Serge.

Jim didn’t look up.

“You’ll have to look up.”

Jim was breathing hard. “I don’t want them to see me like this.”

“Nobody’s going to see you like anything,” said Serge. “I’m going to fix you up like new.”

“Are you kidding?” said Coleman. “With shiners like that?”

“Shut up, Coleman!” Serge turned back to Jim. “I have to see where to put the ice.”

Jim slowly raised his face. He looked worse than Serge had expected. He bundled up the ice and showed Jim how to hold it against his eyes.

Jim’s lower lip started to vibrate.

“No!” said Serge. “Don’t! You better not!”

The vibrations increased.

“Stop it! Stop it right now! Don’t you dare!”

Jim couldn’t stop.

“I’m warning you! Stop it this second!”

Jim leaned forward and put his forehead down on Serge’s shoulder and began shaking with quiet sobs.

Serge took a deep breath and put his arms around Jim’s back and began patting him lightly. “There, there. It’s going to be all right.”

The front door opened and Martha walked in. She screamed when she saw Jim’s face. She ran up to Serge and began pounding him on the chest with her fists. Serge let her.

“What have you done to my husband? Get out of our house! Get out! Get out!”

Serge opened his mouth to say something, but he changed his mind and left.

Two a.m.

Floor buffers hummed inside the local twenty-four-hour home-improvement store. Serge pushed his shopping cart down an empty aisle in the electrical department. He grabbed a box of security lights off the shelf.

A stock clerk came up. “Finding everything all right?”

“Got a question,” said Serge.

“Shoot.”

Serge held out the box. “Is this right? Only $19.95 for a motion-detector floodlight?”

“The bulbs are extra,” said the clerk.

Serge put two boxes in his shopping cart. “Where are the bulbs?”

“Aisle three.”

“Glass cutters?”

“Two kinds. What kind of glass are you looking to cut?”

“Floodlight bulbs.”

The clerk looked at Serge.

“Just tell me where both kinds are,” said Serge.

“Aisles seven and eight.”

“Gas cans?”

“Twelve.”

“Orange vests for highway construction sites? Reflective signs?”

“Thirteen and fifteen.”

Three a.m.

The driver of a Chevy Laguna flicked another cigarette out the window and bobbed his head to the stereo. A baffled expression appeared on his face. Something shiny in the road up ahead. He turned off the stereo and leaned over the steering wheel.

“What the hell?”

The driver hit his high beams. He thought he was seeing things. Someone was sitting in the middle of the road in a lawn chair. He wore an orange vest and held up a crossing-guard stop sign.

The Chevy rolled up slowly, and the man in the vest came around to the driver’s window.

“What are you, some kind of lunatic?” said Scorpion.

“Yes,” said Serge, sticking a .44 Magnum in his face. “Now tuck in your fucking underwear.”

Four a.m.

Scorpion was standing in the middle of an aluminum shed in a darkened backyard. It was the shed behind a college rental, used to store tools to take care of the yard. Nobody had been in it for months.

Scorpion’s wrists were bound tightly, and another rope stretched his arms up over his head and tied his wrists to an eyebolt in the shed’s ceiling. His mouth was duct-taped.

Serge sat cross-legged at the man’s feet, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth in concentration, wiring the motion detectors. He had one detector on each side of the man’s feet, eighteen inches away, facing outward.

Serge looked up at Scorpion and smiled. “These new low-watt bulbs are incredible. The filaments will burn almost forever in the inert gases inside...”

Serge continued scratching away with the glass cutter until he had made a complete circle. Then he held the bulb upside down over his head and tapped the circle lightly with the butt of the cutter. The round disk broke free.

“Of course, if the bulb’s filament is exposed to the oxygen in the atmosphere, it’ll sizzle and burn out in seconds.” He screwed the bulbs into the motion detectors. Then he unwound the security lights’ power cords and plugged them into the shed’s utility socket.

Serge reached behind some plywood and pulled out a Hula-Hoop. “You know who invented summer?”

Scorpion didn’t move a muscle.

“The Wham-O Corporation.” Serge held the Hula-Hoop in one hand and the gun in the other. “Step into this.”

Scorpion lifted one leg, then the other. Serge raised the hoop up to the man’s waist. He pressed the Magnum to his nose.

“If I give this thing a spin, do you think you can shoop-shoop Hula-Hoop?”

Scorpion nodded.

“Marvelous. You seem a lot more cooperative than when I talked to you before. I knew I had caught you on a bad night. That’s my motto: Don’t be quick to judge others.”

Serge gave the Hula-Hoop a healthy spin, and the man began moving his hips.

“Hey, you’re a natural! You should see some of the kids around here with these things. You’d think they had them in the womb... Oh, but I already told you about all the kids we have playing around here. Remember? When I was saying how cars really should go slow? And while we’re on the topic, Debbie’s way too young for you. What’s the matter with women your own age?”

The hoop continued rotating, and Serge continued pointing the gun.

“Let’s see how long you can keep that thing going. I remember when I was a kid, the neighborhood record was like two hours.”

Serge grabbed a metal five-gallon gas can and slowly poured the contents across the shed’s concrete floor.

“If the Hula-Hoop falls, the motion detector will pick it up and turn on the floodlights. But they’ll only be on a moment. That’s how long it’ll take for the filaments to ignite the gasoline vapor. It’s the vapor you gotta watch out for, you know. The stuff explodes like you wouldn’t believe.”

Serge sniffed the air.

“In fact, it’s starting to smell pretty powerful in here right now. I better get going. By the way, concrete is porous, so there’s a slight chance that if you can keep the hoop going long enough, the gasoline will seep in and the fumes will dissipate. It’ll take hours, but it’s theoretically possible. And I wouldn’t try to kick the detectors out of the way because that will set them off instantly... Well, toodles!”

Scorpion was young and fit. After the first hour, it looked like clear sailing, and he became almost cocky. Then something happened that he hadn’t counted on, though Serge had. Muscle cramps. Lactic acid was building up in the tissue. Try as a he might, the hoop rotated slower and slower, and his eyes grew wider and wider.

The plastic ring fell to the floor.