Southern Comfort - Fern Michaels [27]
Secretly, though, he admitted to a small thrill of excitement that perhaps something was going to go down that he would be privy to, at which point he would have to decide if he wanted to engage or to keep on pretending to be a full-time writer, when in truth he only wrote when the mood struck him. Oftentimes he didn’t write for months; and then, when his editor reminded him that his manuscript was due, he’d work around the clock.
The bottom line was, he was a cop.
Thirty minutes later, Tick shoved all his reveries to the back of his mind, cut back the engine, and the Miss Sally sailed up to the dock, where he tossed the mooring lines to a young boy who was brown as a berry and whose black hair shone like coal in the bright sun. He smiled, his teeth glistening in the noonday sun. “How long, Mr. Kelly?”
“Two hours. Three at the most. No joyriding, Tobias.”
“I hear you, Mr. Kelly.” The boy winked at Tick. “The narcs are out today. They were cruising all night. Must be something going on somewhere. They’re going to smell this little treasure a mile away.”
“Just don’t let them dirty up my boat. Tell them I kick ass and take names later.”
“I hear you, Mr. Kelly.” The boy laughed uproariously at Tick’s words.
Tick was grinning as he strode down the pier and onto dry land. Tobias would deliver his instructions verbatim if the narcs came around. He stopped a minute to get his bearings as he decided which way he wanted to go and what he wanted to buy.
Tobias settled himself in the cigarette boat, the engine idling as he tried to figure out just who Patrick Kelly was. The man had been the topic of many discussions at the marina, but so far only speculation reigned. He was some hotshot rich guy from up North pretending to be a beach bum. He was a drug runner who was too smart to get caught. And the one he liked the best was Kelly was running away from his wife, who was trying to steal all his money, and Mango Key was where he was hiding out.
Tobias knew Kelly had to be someone special to be living on Mango Key because everyone in Key West, probably the whole state of Florida, knew that the elders on Mango Key never let anyone on the Key who didn’t belong. To live on Mango Key you had to be Indian and part of the family. Patrick Kelly was not Indian; therefore, he did not belong. For sure he wasn’t part of the family. Tobias knew for a fact Kelly was Irish and Italian because he’d asked him one day. He tipped good, and that was all Tobias cared about. That and taking the Miss Sally for a bit of a spin before he docked her. He craned his neck now to see if Kelly was within eyesight. He wasn’t. He backed the boat out, hit the throttle full force, and off he went, flying over the water, the wake behind him three feet high. He didn’t care one bit that he would have to dry down the boat. These few minutes were like ecstasy to the young man.
On dry land and meandering down the road, Tick strained to see Tobias playing with his boat. He laughed to himself. When he was seventeen or eighteen, the age he figured Tobias to be, he would have done the exact same thing just for the thrill of it. “Get with the program here, Tick. You came here for a reason, so get to it,” he muttered to himself as he stepped up to an ATM, punched in his code, then the amount of money he wanted. He looked around to see if anyone was watching before he jammed the cash into the pocket of his cargo shorts and smoothed down the Velcro closure.
Five doors down, Tick stopped at a hole-in-the-wall store with massive iron gates that were lowered at night. He walked in, looked around as though he were in a supermarket choosing melons for the day. He picked up a knife that looked like it could skin a bear, a switchblade, night-vision goggles, and assorted other heat-sensing apparatuses that spies used in their trade. He carried all his purchases to the counter, which was filled with so much junk the clerk had to ring up each item as Tick handed it to him. When all his merchandise was tallied, he asked for two hundred