Her nails sunk deeper into my flesh.

"They're going to let him out, aren't they, Jack?" she said. "That's why you came here. They're going to let him out, and you wanted me to know so I could put extra locks on my apartment and buy a gun for when he comes tippy-toeing to my bedroom door."

I lowered my head. She'd hit the nail on the head. It was exactly why I'd come.

"I'm sorry, Melinda," I said.

She slapped my face. It stung, and I reflexively grabbed her arm before she could do it again. She let out a bloodcurdling scream.

A huge bouncer stepped into the lounge. He yanked me off the couch and hustled me through the club. I looked for Cheever at the bar, but he was gone.

As we went through the club's front door I expected the bouncer to stop, but he instead gave me a mighty shove. I flew forward with my arms flapping like a bird and hit the pavement hard.

"Stay out of here," the bouncer yelled.

I lay on the pavement and watched the rain come down in sheets. The knees of my pants were shredded, my jacket torn. I tried to find the bright side, only there was no bright side. I walked stiff-legged to my car.

As I got in, Buster cowered fearfully against the pa.s.senger door. Then the rancid smell hit me. My dog had puked Slim Jims on the floor.

"It's okay, boy," I told him. "It's okay."

The words seemed to rea.s.sure him, and Buster slithered into my lap. He stayed there all the way back to the Sunset.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The storm skirted south of Dania, and I reached the Sunset in blinding sunshine. I washed the floor mat in the ocean and placed it on the hood to dry. A few hours of daylight were left, and I went inside to change.

In my room I tugged on my Speedo bathing trunks. I'd lost twenty pounds in the past six months and acquired a flat stomach and deep tan. Although my hair has thinned, my friends said I looked younger than my forty years. Maybe I had found the fountain of youth. It was called hitting the skids.

I rolled my wet clothes into a ball and headed downstairs. At the bar, one of the Seven Dwarfs, Whitey, was doing a magic trick with a book of burning matches. The comic effect was great, only he was enough of a menace to burn the place down. I extinguished the matches in a gla.s.s of water, and he howled in protest.

I tried to catch Sonny's eye. He wouldn't meet my gaze, and I guessed he was still ticked off about the punch-in-the-face crack. I said, "Heads up," and tossed my clothes over the bar like a basketball. Sonny caught them with a puzzled look on his face.

"Throw those out for me, will you?" I said.

"Your suit?" Sonny asked.

"Yeah. I'm shedding my old skin. And while you're at it, give everybody a round of drinks, including yourself."

The Dwarfs gleefully pounded the bar. Sonny tossed the clothes into the trash with a grin on his face. All was forgiven.

"You want the drinks on the big tab, or the little tab?" Sonny asked.

"The little tab. I'm trying to balance them out."

"Little tab it is."

I lowered my voice. "I need a favor. You might get some calls from people looking for me. Reporters, police, that sort of thing.

Tell them I haven't been around, okay?"

"You in trouble?" Sonny asked.

Normally, I would have lied to him, but with my ever-dwindling pool of resources, I needed all the friends I could get. I nodded. Reaching into a cooler, Sonny removed a sixteen-ounce can of Budweiser, my signature drink, and stuck it into the ice chest.

"Have a nice swim," he said.

The day my wife walked out on me, I took a drive. I didn't know how I was going to cope with her being gone, and eventually I found myself parked on the northern tip of Dania Beach. Then, I'd done what any heartbroken male would do. I got naked and went for a swim. I don't know why I did this; it just seemed the right thing to do at the time. And when I stepped out of the water an hour later, I knew I was going to be all right.

I started swimming compet.i.tively when I was ten and was good enough to get my name engraved on a plaque at the Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale. My specialty was the backstroke. What started out as a sport had become my daily therapy. I made it a point to swim every day, rain or shine. When I didn't, I got grouchy as h.e.l.l.

The ocean was the temperature of bathwater, and I waded in with minnows darting between my legs. A hundred feet from sh.o.r.e I began my laps. I started with the crawl, then reverted to the backstroke. There was no lifeguard at this end of the beach, or other swimmers to call if I should need help. If I cramped and drowned, no one would know. I'd sink like a stone and get swept out to sea. Death scared me as much as the next guy, but the idea of drowning never had.

Perhaps it was because I was not truly alone. Lurking just beneath the water's surface were scores of stingrays, tiger sharks, and jellyfish. I supposed I should be wary of these creatures, but I wasn't. Not once had I been stung, nibbled on, or had my s.p.a.ce invaded. Someday I might get my arm chewed off, but until then, I was willing to take my chances.

I swam for an hour, then headed back to sh.o.r.e. I heard a siren coming over the bridge. Dania was G.o.d's waiting room, and I a.s.sumed it was an ambulance. But then the siren multiplied: two, three, four. Police cruisers, all in a line.

I hit the sh.o.r.e running. Sonny met me halfway, looking panicked.

"I blew it," he said.

"What happened?"

"I went to p.i.s.s, and the phone rang. Whitey grabbed it. Some cop asked if you were here. Whitey told them you'd gone swimming."

My feet took the stairs to my room three at a time. Banging open the door, I called for my faithful companion. Buster jumped off the bed and followed me downstairs. Sonny stood in the bar's entryway.

"Hold my calls," I said.

Beneath the Sunset was a shady s.p.a.ce where the sand and the wood meet that was impossible to see from the beach. I hid there with my dog and peered out through a decorative latticework nailed to the side of the building. Four wailing police cruisers pulled into the lot, and a gang in blue piled out. Russo was with them and looked mad as h.e.l.l. I guessed he'd already taken his Suburban to the shop.

The cops entered the Sunset, flat feet pounding hard boards.

"Where the h.e.l.l is Carpenter?" Russo roared.

"Swimming!" Whitey replied.

I listened to Russo walk out of the bar and climb the narrow stairwell. At the top he addressed the uniforms searching my room.

"It's clean," a cop said loudly.

"You couldn't have searched it that quickly," Russo said.

"There's nothing in it," the cop said.

"Search it again," Russo said. "Tear the place upside down, rip the mattress in half, I don't f.u.c.king care. That file has to be here."

I leaned back in the sand and shut my eyes. I'd forgotten all about the file.

The day I'd left my job with the sheriff 's department, I'd taken Simon Skell's case file with me, intent on poring over clues until I could unravel the mystery of how he'd made his victims vanish without a trace. I hadn't thought the file would be missed. So many things have vanished from the Broward County Sheriff Department's building, like bales of marijuana and thousands of rounds of ammunition, that one stinking file should have gone unnoticed. Stupid me.

Russo padded down the stairs and reentered the bar.

"That Acura parked in the lot. That's Carpenter's, isn't it?" he asked.

"That's his car," Sonny said.

"You got a key?"

"No, but he leaves it unlocked."

"I'm going to search it. I don't want any of you to move, understand?"

"No sir," the Seven Dwarfs replied in a drunken chorus.

"That goes for you, too," Russo said.

"I'm not going anywhere," Sonny said.

Russo left the building and shuffled through the sand to the lot. He was twenty feet from where I was hiding, and I could hear him muttering under his breath. He was going to have a stroke someday, I'd make book on it.

Russo searched my car and returned to the Sunset, muttering even louder than before. One of the boys in blue met him at the door.

"Carpenter's room is clean," the uniform said.

"f.u.c.k, s.h.i.t, p.i.s.s," Russo said, kicking the door. "Get the men out here. I want you to look up and down this stinking beach until you find him. We're not leaving here without that file, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

An incoming wave broke over me, and I spit out a mouthful of salt water. Russo needed the Skell file to make his case to the district attorney, who was breathing down Russo's throat about the body in Julie Lopez's backyard. Only I wasn't going to give Russo the file. It was my last tie to the case, and I wasn't ready to let go.

The cops. .h.i.t the beach and spread out. Because the tide was up, the team a.s.signed to search the north end walked around the Sunset instead of coming down to the sh.o.r.eline. It was the first break I'd caught all day.

Russo stayed behind and searched my car again, giving special attention to the cavity where the spare tire sat. Another wave broke over me. I realized that if I stayed here much longer, I was going to drown.

I slipped into the Sunset with my dog. As Buster raced up stairs I entered the bar. Sonny and the Dwarfs were watching old fight films on ESPN. I put my finger to my lips and shushed them, then took the lone stool at the bar.

My body temperature was dropping and I could not stop shivering. Sonny loaned me a spare T-shirt, one of the Dwarfs floppy fisherman's hat, and I was in business. Taking my beer out of the ice chest, Sonny filled a frosted mug.

"You really think this is going to work?" he asked.

"It beats drowning," I replied. "How about another round for my mates?"

"Big tab or little tab?"

"Little tab."

The Dwarfs' collective memory span was about five seconds, and they applauded my generosity. Through the window I saw Russo lift his head from the trunk of my car. His radar told him something wasn't right, and he made a beeline for the building.

I did what any self-respecting drunk would do and buried my face in my suds. Rus...o...b..rged into the room with flushed cheeks.

"What's with all the racket?" he demanded.

Sonny pointed at the TV. "Ali just knocked out Foreman."

"That's old news," Russo said.

"Not to these guys."

Russo glared at him. If he'd bothered to count heads when he'd come in the first time, he'd notice we'd multiplied. But he didn't, his mind wrapped up in other things. Like how he was going to tell the DA there was no file.

Muttering to himself, Russo went back outside. I continued to buy rounds while the cops conducted their snipe hunt. As the sun set they returned to their cruisers and drove away. Russo was the last to leave, the interior light of his car illuminating a solitary man wrestling with his situation.

Soon everything was back to normal. Sonny served me a bowl of house chili with some crackers. I ate quickly, then caught myself yawning and decided it was time for bed. As I rose from my stool the Dwarfs broke into a rousing rendition of "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." It was a fine way to end a lousy day. Returning the clothes I'd borrowed, I bid them all good night.

CHAPTER NINE.

Morning came hard and bright.

Lying in bed, I watched a seagull float outside my window while trying to make sense of what had happened last night. The cops had torn apart my room searching for the Skell file, but they'd managed to put everything back in its place. That wasn't normal behavior, and I supposed the special treatment came from having been one of them. Or maybe Russo told them to. I decided the latter was probably what happened, meaning Bobby didn't hate me as much as I thought he did.

An immovable object lay beside me: Buster was positioned so snugly against my body that I could not get out of bed. I grabbed a hind leg and pulled.

"Rise and shine."

We were both creatures of habit. Buster drank out of the toilet before I used it, then waited by the door. I washed up, threw on shorts and a long-sleeved running shirt, and took my dog outside for a run.

Breakfast awaited us at the bar upon our return. A bowl of table sc.r.a.ps for my dog, a cup of coffee and a copy of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel for me. It was part of my rent, and I thanked Sonny, who sat on a stool behind the bar, half asleep. for me. It was part of my rent, and I thanked Sonny, who sat on a stool behind the bar, half asleep.