Trap Line - Carl Hiaasen [65]
“Miss Manning, I need a place to stay.”
“Please, it’s Christine. No man who’s used my bathtub has ever called me Miss Manning.”
“Christine, I can’t go back to the trailer. I’m sure they’re watching the trailer,” Albury said.
“The men who hurt your son?”
“Yes. They’re waiting for me to come back. They’ll be watching the trailer. The fish house, too. I only need a day or two.”
“It’s probably not a good idea,” Christine said. “How about some more tea?”
“Two days is all I need,” Albury said. “I’ll behave, counselor.”
Christine took her place across the table. Albury ate ravenously, rarely looking up, saying nothing. She watched his energy return and noticed something hard at work behind the deep green eyes.
“Consider my position down here,” she said. “It would hardly help the cause—mine or yours—if it became know that one of Key West’s celebrated dope smugglers was shacking up with the Governor’s special prosecutor.”
“No one will know,” Albury replied through a cheekful of tuna, “unless you’ve got a … friend. Someone who stays with you.”
“No,” Christine said. “That’s not it.”
“It’s all right, I don’t blame you,” he said. “I ought to be thanking you for letting me clean up. And the food, by the way, is very good.”
He certainly knew how to back off. “I couldn’t let you wander around the hospital looking like some kind of refugee,” she said.
Christine rose and began clearing the dinner dishes. She thought to herself: this man definitely is not an animal. A criminal? Probably so. But not a killer or a rapist. She remembered Veronica; Laurie and Peg Albury both had mentioned Veronica. Albury had been in prison when the girl had died. He had gotten out, gone back to the sea, and now stood an excellent chance of going to prison again. Another Conch success story.
Yet he was different from most of the Keys fishermen Christine had talked with. The gentleness was one thing, but it was the intellect behind the eyes that intrigued the lawyer. The first time they met she had longed to ask him: Captain Albury, why are you still here? Why haven’t you gone north, with the rest of the smart ones? You don’t sell seashells, peddle postcards with palm trees, or own one of the big beachfront hotels. Your heart obviously isn’t in the fishing anymore, and what you pay on that firetrap trailer each month could get you a sixty-foot lot in Ocala. With trees, no less, and shade. Why stay here? she had wanted to ask but had not. That first day, Breeze Albury had worn the ambivalent look of a big mutt that was either going to wag its tail or lunge for her throat.
“Let’s make an arrangement,” Christine said.
“Everyone wants to make a deal,” Albury grumbled.
“You can stay the night if you agree to talk to me about a few things.”
“You mean answer questions.”
“No, just talk. Tell me what you can about what’s happened. I know it’s bad. Chief Barnett is asking around about your boat, and I saw one of his men in the Cowrie talking to your girlfriend this afternoon. If you can tell me something about it, I might be able to help, captain.”
“Please quit calling me captain. I’m not a Pan Am pilot, I’m a goddamn fisherman. Can I have a beer? Do you have a beer?”
“Sure … Breeze.”
Later, sitting at opposite ends of a lumpy sofa, they talked. Two beers extracted Peg’s story. For Albury, that was the easiest: everybody sympathizes with a rotten marriage. Three more beers revived Veronica; he saw her with a can of orange spray paint, assailing the lobster buoys strung up behind the trailer in winter; and during the season, waiting in the dusk at Ming’s fish house for his boat, squealing when the rust-colored lobsters scrabbled and twitched on their way to the ice.
Albury was into a second six-pack by the time he began to recount Key Largo. The details of the killings were, he thought, unnecessary. He resolved also not to mention the Mayday, or the Diamond Cutter’s pathetic reply. What he did not mind discussing was the betrayal.
“Who ordered Oscar to kill you?” Christine asked.
“I don’t know, but his mind was