Bone Deep by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online Page A

tone caused the churchgoer in her to add, “Not that I would do such a thing. Well . . . unless you were there . . . or . . . or maybe someone I felt safe with.”
    “That’s not exactly comforting,” I responded. “What time’s your charter in the morning?”
    Hannah yawned again, a neural reflex that signaled more than sleepiness. Then kicked the cover off her legs and lay naked. “I’ve got to be up at five, so you should probably go.” There was a pause. “But not just yet . . . okay?”
    Fingers slid from my hand, fumbled with the bedsheet, then began a gentle, probing search to confirm my answer. But I stopped her. I was annoyed by her scolding certainty and peeved at myself for feeling so spellbound in this woman’s presence.
    “You need your sleep,” I said.
    “You’re serious?”
    “Occasionally.”
    She sat up. “You
are
mad.”
    “Mad about
you
,” I corrected. Then kissed the lady good night, got in my boat, and ran backcountry to Dinkin’s Bay, where my dog was waiting, golden-eyed and alert.
    “It’s four in the morning,” I told him.
    The dog acknowledged me with an indifferent sniff, a single wag of its tail, and grunted for permission to swim.
    “Let’s go for a run first,” I said.

FIVE
    After two hours at a flea market off Englewood Road, and before we interrupted a burglary in progress, our cab abandoned us in downtown Venice because Tomlinson hollered, “Stop, Kato, stop!” as we passed a sno-cone vendor.
    At that moment, a man carrying bolt cutters and a gun was casing a house a few miles away. A glassy, summer Friday can drift us toward disaster as surely as a waterfall.
    “You scared the driver,” I told Tomlinson, pocketing my billfold.
    “Not if he waited to get paid,” he argued. “That’s
happened
, man. Cabbies hit the accelerator before my butt’s off the seat.” Yellow hibiscus shirt and thongs flapping, he went to get his sno-cone. I turned and walked the other way. Fallsdown, I assumed, would follow one of us.
    He didn’t. When I looked back, he was entering a shop that promised
Fine Shark Jewelry
. Not unusual in Venice, known as the “Shark Tooth Capital of the World,” but unexpected. At the flea market, Fallsdown had gotten a lead on an elderly antiquities dealer—just a name, not an address—but the man from Montanahad seemed intrigued. So I found a bench and waited. Watched the passing of pretty ladies, who scented the air with boutique incense. One after another, they reassured me that walking out on Captain Hannah Smith last night was the manly thing to do.
    Soon, while Tomlinson lapped at his sno-cone, Fallsdown reappeared. He was folding a piece of paper, his expression optimistic—or so I thought. But then said, “Nothing here. Might as well head back,” and asked me, “How far to the marina?”
    Osprey Nest Marina, where I had tied my boat, was about ten blocks north.
    “What about the old dude collector?” Tomlinson asked. We had been given the name Finn Tovar.
    Fallsdown, already walking—but in the wrong direction—said, “He died last week. The lady in the store’s been in business fifteen years and she knew the man. Didn’t like him, but she knew him.”
    “Has his collection already been sold?”
    Fallsdown held up the folded paper as if it were a prize. “That’s what we’re going to find out.” Then added,
“Perfect,”
as if the universe was unfolding as he’d expected.
    He knew what he was doing, apparently, so I fell in line, the three of us walking like ducks, east, for five hot blocks, before I finally asked, “Where are we going?”
    “I told you,” Fallsdown replied over his shoulder, “to the marina.”
    I stopped. “You’re going the wrong way.”
    “What?”
    I said it again.
    “What?”
    I waited until both men turned before asking, “Take another look at that paper. I thought the lady gave you an address.”
    “No, just a name. We’re looking for a tour guide, some local who hangs