“It’s the next key up,” Tommy explained. “Stock Island is sort of a suburb of Key West. It has all the stuff they can’t shoehorn onto this island—hospital, jail, trash dump, lower-cost housing and trailer parks, golf course—and a couple of marinas. It’s worth a shot; Peninsula is the big marina.”
“I think we’re wasting our time without the name of the boat,” Dino said. “It’s like looking for a visitor to New York without an address.”
“You got a point,” Tommy agreed.
“Also, Keating is shy,” Dino said. “He doesn’t want to be found.”
“Yeah,” Stone said, “a skip tracer found him in Miami, and he left town. He’s likelier to get shyer after his encounter with me.”
“Sounds like he’s on the lam,” Tommy said.
“From his father,” Stone replied. “Bad blood there.”
“Well,” Tommy said, “at least you know what he looks like. His girlfriend, too.”
“Not really,” Stone said. “I didn’t take a good look at her, and I’m not sure I’d recognize her on the street.”
“You can always sit down with the phone book and start calling hotels,” Tommy pointed out.
“That won’t help us if he’s living on a boat,” Stone said. “The desk clerk at his hotel said that a lot of boaters check in for a couple of nights to get a decent shower and have their laundry done.”
“We talked to Charley Boggs,” Dino said. “He denied all knowledge of Keating, said he’d never seen him until they were all busted.”
“How bad an actor is Boggs?” Stone asked.
“He’s got a couple of drug busts, but nothing ever came of them.”
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“And why would a clean-cut rich boy with a trust fund be hanging out with a drug dealer?”
“Thrills, maybe,” Tommy offered. “Do you know how big a trust fund?”
“The old man described it as ‘a nice little trust fund,’ but who knows what that means.”
“Maybe our boy Evan has dreams of bigger, easier money,” Dino said. “He wouldn’t be the first rich kid to go down for dealing.”
“Trouble his,” Stone said, “we don’t know anything about this kid—who his friends are, how he earned a living in the past.”
“His old man couldn’t help with that?” Tommy asked. Stone shook his head. “Apparently, they haven’t spoken since the guy was in college, and that was some years ago.”
Tommy sighed. “Dealing with criminals is a lot easier,” he said.
“They have accomplices and parole offi cers, people you can talk to when you’re looking for them. Rich kids just have drug dealers and maître d’s.” Tommy’s face brightened. “Wait a minute. Your boy had a table booked at Antonia’s, an Italian restaurant on Duval, the night we arrested him.”
“So?” Dino asked.
Tommy was already pushing buttons on his cell phone. “Hi, it’s Lieutenant Tommy Sculley, Key West PD. The night before last you had a reservation for an Evan Keating; did you get a phone number for him?” Tommy scribbled something in his notebook. “Thanks,” he said, then he hung up. He ripped the sheet from his notebook and handed it to Stone. “Your boy has a cell phone number, 917 area code.”
“Can your computers track cell phone numbers?” Stone asked.
“They can.”
“Do me a favor, Tommy. Ask your office to wait until late tonight and see if you can locate the phone. That might tell us where Evan Keating is laying his curly head at night.”