He was waiting for me to find him. And that meant that somehow, some way, he would have to let me know where he was. There would be a broad and obvious hint somewhere, an actual invitation to the dance. He would not want to wait too long, and he would not leave it to chance. I knew I was right. He had slapped me with a glove, and someplace near and obvious he had dropped it for me to find.
My phone rang, and I glanced at it; it was Rita. I almost answered it out of mere habit—but before I could push the button and speak, I heard a different, interior bell chime softly and I knew.
Of course. This whole thing had been centered around computers and Crowley’s conceited belief that he was King of the Internet. He would not just leave a hint somewhere—he would send it to me in an e-mail.
The phone was still ringing insistently, but now I had a much more important use for it than talking to Rita, and I hit the disconnect button. I tapped the icon to get to my e-mail and it seemed to take hours before the screen finally showed my in-box. But it did at last, and there, at the top, was a note from Shadowblog. I opened it.
Very good, it said. You finally found my real name and address.
Something bumped me and I flinched into alertness. A rowdy group of young men that looked like a fraternity party turned bad roiled past me, shouting and slopping beer from plastic cups. I pushed through them and sat down on the edge of a low wall in front of a restaurant, and went back to readin
g the e-mail.
You finally found my real name and address. Too bad it isn’t my real name and address. Did you really think it would be that easy? But thanks anyway—you solved a problem for me. The guy was my ex-boss, a real douche bag. And “Doug Crowley” is a lot safer to use now that there’s nobody to complain. I get to use his car now, too.
You and me are just about done. You have to know that. There’s just one last piece of work, and you know what that is, too.
You and me.
You have to pay for what you have done. I have to make you pay. There is no other way and you know you got it coming and you have to do this; I have your kids. I probably won’t hurt them, unless you don’t show up.
This time it’s on my terms. I get to set up and wait for you to walk right into it. I picked the place, and I picked a good one. Really witty, in a kind of dry way. Hurry down—don’t be a turtle.
They seem like really nice kids.
That was it. I read it again, but there was no more.
My jaw hurt. I wondered why. Nobody had actually hit me. Had I been grinding my teeth a lot lately? It seemed like I had. I was probably wearing all the enamel off. That wasn’t good. I would get cavities. I wondered if I would live long enough to get to the dentist. Or, if things went better than I thought they could possibly go, if the dental program would cover it in Raiford Prison.
Of course, if I stood here any longer thinking about my teeth, it would probably be best if I just pulled them all out myself.
Somewhere Crowley, or Bernie, or whatever name he liked, was waiting for me. But right here, in Key West? Unlikely; you didn’t play this game in Party Central. He would find someplace off the beaten path, even a little isolated—and he would tell me about it in some clever way, so I could figure it out eventually, but not too soon. But in his own way he was just as anxious to get it done as I was, so it had to be someplace that wasn’t too far away. He wouldn’t take them to Zanzibar, or even Cleveland.
I read the e-mail one more time, looking for my clue. It was all relatively straightforward—except at the end, where he said “witty, in a kind of dry way,” and then, “Don’t be a turtle.” That made no sense at all. It was a clunky way to say it, and it wasn’t his style. And how could a location be witty? Even if it was, why didn’t he just say, I think it’s funny; hurry? Nothing else in the note stuck out; these lines had to be telling me where to go. Perfect; if I could only think of a funny place and hurry there, I would almost certainly find him.
“Funny.” There were several cabarets in town, and a comedy club, all within walking distance, so I could get there quickly. But funny wasn’t really the same thing as witty—and why was it so important to hurry?
I realized I was grinding my teeth again. I stopped and took a deep breath. I reminded myself that I was really very clever, much smarter than him, and anything he came up with to taunt me I could certainly decode and shove down his throat. I just had to think positive thoughts and concentrate a little.
It made me feel a lot better. I started over from the top:
Witty. It did nothing for me.
Don’t be a turtle. Even worse. Nothing at all came to me. It was wonderful to see the power of positive thinking.
All right, I was missing something. Maybe it was the word “witty.” Perhaps some awful pun—there was a White Street only a few blocks away. But that was stretching it too far. Was there a Whitt Key? I’d never heard of it. What about “turtle” then? There was Turtle Kraals down by the water. But he said “don’t be a turtle,” so that didn’t make sense. That couldn’t be it, and I was clearly not as clever as I thought I was.
A trio of men walked past, arguing in Spanish. I made out the word pendejo, and I thought it was probably appropriate. I was a pendejo, a complete dolt, and I deserved to lose everything to an even bigger pendejo, whether in Spanish or English. Crowley probably couldn’t even speak Spanish. I could, and it hadn’t helped me find him so far. In fact, it had never helped me do anything except order lunch. It was a useless language, as useless as I was, and I should probably move away someplace where I would never hear it spoken again. Find a small island somewhere and just …
Far, far away, I heard crowd noise and music playing, and the clanging bell of the Conch Train as it rattled through the streets, and all the sounds of drunken, brainless revelry I had found so annoying only moments before. And somewhere up above me the July sun was still beating down without mercy and scorching everything under its glare. But Dexter was no longer hot and bothered; Dexter felt a cool and gentle breeze blowing, and Dexter heard only a soft and soothing melody, the delightful symphony of life as it played its stately and wonderful song. Key West really was an enchanted place, and Spanish was actually the emperor of all languages, and I blessed the day I had decided to learn it. Everything was new and marvelous and I was not a pendejo at all, because I had remembered one simple Spanish word and everything made sense.
The Spanish word for “turtle” is tortuga.
The cluster of islands sixty miles south of Key West was called the Tortugas—in fact, the Dry Tortugas, as in Crowley’s dry wit. There’s a park there, and an old fort, and several ferries every day to take you there, and I knew where Crowley had taken Cody and Astor.
There was a hotel across the street from where I sat. I ran across the street and into the lobby. Right inside the door, just where it should have been, stood a wooden rack stuffed with brochures for all the attractions in Key West. I scanned them rapidly, found one with a bright blue heading that said, CONCH LINE, and plucked it from the rack.
Our superfast, ultramodern fleet of high-tech catamarans, it read, make a high-speed run to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas twice a day!