Surface Tension Read online

  “What kind of girl was she?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” Her face seemed to close down, and she turned away from me to stare at the sea.

  The last of the sunlight was gone now. The sky inland had gone patchwork with swatches of pink and red and bronze, while the sea had already turned the blue-black color of a bruise.

  We walked together for quite a while without talking, enjoying the fresh, moist air as night closed in around us. In the past, I had found it useless to try to force Elysia to talk. So I just waited, watching the stars winking their way into the darkening sky, knowing that, like any seventeen-year-old, she would eventually fill the silence.

  “I can’t believe she’s dead,” Ely said at last. “I mean, she’s like the last one I would have expected.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Patty’s like, or was like, somebody who was always in charge. If you were going to go somewhere or do something with her, you’d always have to do it her way.”

  “Mmm,” I said, convinced that the less I said, the more she would explain.

  “I didn’t like her at all when she first came to the House. She’d been there less than a week, and she had everybody doing things for her, trying to be her friend. Even James fell for it.”

  “Who’s James?”

  “He’s the director at the House. You know him, don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I know that lady, the one who’s always at the front desk. Minerva’s her name, I think.”

  “Yeah, she really runs the place. James isn’t really there all that much. You don’t see him around too often, but he is the one who’s well known—he’s in the papers and on TV and stuff, he does all the charity events and fund-raisers, and he handles the money side, and, well, he’s just involved in lots of other things.” She turned away and shut down again. It was too dark now to see her face, but I knew the look by heart.

  “What do you mean, ‘James fell for it’?”

  She didn’t answer for a long time. I was afraid I had pushed her too far. But then her voice started again, with a higher-pitched, childlike quality to it. It sounded like she was afraid. “Patty was one of those kinds of people who just always thought she was right about everything. And she was wild; she always needed excitement. She wasn’t afraid to try anything ’cuz nothing scared her.” She paused for a moment, looking down at the sand. When she spoke again, I could barely make out the words. “There are things that go on there, Seychelle, things you don’t know anything about.”

  Before I could find out what she was talking about, a large hand appeared out of the semidarkness, grabbed my left arm just above the elbow, and jerked me back and sideways. I could tell from the little yelp that Elysia had been grabbed, too. My attacker was a big guy wearing a Florida Marlins baseball cap pulled down low on his forehead. He seemed to tower over me—he must have been at least six feet four, but it was too dark to make out any features on his face.

  “We just want to talk to you. Don’t scream.” His voice sounded Anglo, oddly high-pitched and gravelly, but I could barely hear him over the loud rasp of my own rapid breathing.

  “Where’s Garrett?”

  I stared at him openmouthed, frightened, but still not quite able to comprehend what was going on.

  He shook me, and I felt like a rag doll as I flopped around at the end of his arm. “Come on, where’s he at?”

  At first, it didn’t even register what he was asking me. I tried to twist around to see what was going on with Elysia. Another guy had her by the arm. He was much shorter, but extremely wide, undoubtedly a bodybuilder, and he wore a cap pulled down low over his face. He was holding his hand over Ely’s mouth.

  “Hey, bitch, talk to me. We ain’t gonna hurt ya.” Big Guy squeezed my arm tighter, and my fingers started tingling.

  “You’re already hurting me.”

  The shorter guy holding on to Elysia laughed at that, an incongruously deep chuckle given his height, which only seemed to make the big guy madder.

  “Shut up, man.”

  At that, Shorty took his hand from Ely’s face and pointed his index finger at Big Guy. He started to say, “You—” but then Ely screamed. He swung his arm, backhanding her in the face, and the force of the blow caused her head to snap back. Again he started cursing in that weird deep voice, and clamped his hand over her mouth.

  Big Guy turned back to me.

  “We ain’t gonna buy no bullshit disappearing act. We wanna have a little talk with him.” He tightened his grip, and I winced, my eyes damp from the pain. “Where the fuck is Garrett?” He twisted my arm, nearly lifting me off the ground.

  Until then, I’d felt afraid, and I’d been sucking for air as though there weren’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere. But between Ely’s slap and my arm nearly getting twisted off, my gut changed from Jell-O to fire.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, asshole. I don’t know anybody named Garrett,” I said as I dug the toes of my right foot deep into the sand.

  “I don’t have time for this shit.”

  “Ely, I think these guys have mistaken us for someone else. I think we’d better be leaving.”

  “You know who I’m talking about.”

  “I do?” I tried to look innocent as I loosened a mound of sand on top of my foot.

  “Garrett. Your boyfriend. We just want to ask him a few questions.”

  All at once I bent forward from the waist, pulling his upper body down with me. At the same time I flipped a footfull of sand right up into his face. I turned my face aside, avoiding getting any grit in my own eyes, but Big Guy let out a bellow, released my arm, and began pawing at his eyes. Straightening up, I glanced over at Ely in time to see her swing those spike-heeled sandals into the crotch of Shorty’s nylon board shorts, hook them, and then yank upward with all her might. He let out a noise that sounded inhuman, more like a cat losing a fight.

  We took off running as fast as we could toward the lights and crowds of A1A. Apparently we hadn’t done any permanent damage, as I could soon hear labored panting a distance behind us, mixed with assorted curse words. It seemed to take us forever to get to the highway. I could hear them coming, closer now.

  We ran between the rows of parked cars in the beach lot, but the cars soon ran out, and we were exposed.

  “Bahia Mar,” I gasped, and we took off running across the traffic, avoiding cars that cruised down the beach doing forty miles an hour. Seconds after we hit the sidewalk on the far side, I heard a horn and the screech of tires as Big Guy and Shorty crossed the street. The back of my throat burned, and I felt like I couldn’t get enough air, but my bare feet kept slapping the pavement. I didn’t know how Ely was keeping up with her short little legs. It probably helped being more than ten years younger than me.

  As I ran, I scanned the boats in the north basin through the chain-link fence. I was looking for a classic old Chris Craft, and if I was lucky, B.J. would be working late on his new job. My eyes teared from the wind and the strands of hair that whipped across my face. I blinked and squinted and searched the line of sport- fishermen. Finally I saw the varnished hull, the tarps, and the pile of raw lumber on the afterdeck. It was very clear from the padlock hanging on the companionway door that the boat was closed up for the day.

  “Shit!” I wheezed.

  I could see the security guard’s booth at the entrance to the Bahia Mar Hotel and Marina. He was really just a glorified parking attendant, and I didn’t even know if the guy carried a gun, but surely if we threw ourselves into his little guard hut, those assholes wouldn’t be able to drag us out of there. I didn’t know where else to turn. I knew I couldn’t keep up this pace any longer and Ely was falling farther and farther behind me.

  A vehicle pulled up on the outbound side of the guardhouse. The guard stepped out to the curb and leaned down to talk to the person in the car. Don’t leave, I thought, willing the guard to stay put. I couldn’t make out the whereabouts of the security man anymore
, but when the car nosed out to check on the traffic, I saw that it was a black El Camino.

  “B.J.!” I yelled. “Hey, B.J.! Hold up!” I leaped the center divider and rolled over the side and into the El Camino’s truck bed. B.J.’s face jerked around in the window, looking fierce, but he arched his eyebrows and shook his head when he saw me. He obviously thought it was all a big joke. I sat up in time to see Big Guy and Shorty no more than a hundred feet behind Ely, who was just crossing the grass divider. Then she jumped at the truck and crooked one leg up over the top.

  I banged on the roof of the cab. “Go, go, go. Move it. Go!”

  B.J. burned rubber taking off toward the north in front of the oncoming traffic, nearly getting in a wreck in the process. For the first fifty feet he drove on the wrong side of the road. Horns blared. I looked behind us and saw the broad backs and shoulders of Big Guy and Shorty. They both wore tank tops, and under the fluorescent streetlights, their enormous sculptured arms were pressed against their knees as they struggled to catch the only thing left to them: their breaths.

  VIII

  B.J. turned the El Camino inland at Sunrise Boulevard, and after crossing the Intracoastal Waterway, he pulled into the parking lot at the Galleria Mall. He stopped under a light, far from the boxy building, and parked amid the empty rows of painted white lines. When the engine stopped, he slowly opened his door and climbed out of the truck. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt tucked into navy cargo shorts. He leaned his back against the door and rested his head on the roof staring up at the stars.

  “I’ve never driven like that in my life.”

  “It showed,” I said.

  He lifted his head and looked at me, ready to be angry.

  I grinned at him, and he started laughing out loud. Then Elysia started laughing, too.

  “You should have seen your face when you turned around and looked through your window,” I said, gasping.

  He rested his arms on the top of the vehicle. “What about you? Flopping around in the back of my truck like a boated bass?”

  “Seychelle,” Ely said, “did you see the look on that guy’s face when I got him with my shoes?” She rolled onto her back in the truck bed and kicked her feet in the air laughing so hard she got the hiccups. And that set us all off again.

  “Whooee,” B.J. said finally, getting himself under control. He pressed his forehead against his bent arms for a few seconds, then looked straight at me. “What was that all about?”

  I ignored his question. “I was so glad you hadn’t left yet, B.J. I was looking for the Chris Craft, and when I saw she was all buttoned up, I thought you’d gone.”

  “Seychelle, are you ready to explain any of this to me?” he asked.

  I stood up, straddled the side of the truck, and sat just behind the cab. “Okay, okay. You know, I’m not sure I understand what happened myself.” At that moment, the full impact of what the two muscle men had been asking finally hit me. It sobered me up fast. “I came by the restaurant to see Elysia, and we went for a walk on the beach. And then when it got dark, these guys came up and grabbed us.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No. But this wasn’t just random violence, B.J. They started asking me where Neal is.”

  He didn’t say anything right away. “Those guys knew who you were?”

  “Apparently.”

  He rubbed his hand across his chin. “They must have been following you. You didn’t notice anything?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe they don’t know about what happened on the Top Ten. Maybe these guys just wanted Neal for something else,” he said.

  “I don’t think so. The big guy who had hold of me did most of the talking, and he said something about not believing in disappearing acts. They think he’s alive, B.J., and they seem to think I know where he is.”

  We all three crammed ourselves into the truck cab with me in the middle, Elysia by the window. I tucked my shoulder down so B.J. could reach over me to shift.

  “Where to?” he asked. His breath smelled like spearmint gum.

  “Let’s take Ely home. Harbor House.”

  We doubled back along Sunrise Boulevard to A1A and turned north at the beach. B.J. swung left on Bimini Lane, next to the Flamingo Motor Lodge. One block back from the ocean stood Harbor House. Once upon a time it had been a typical dumpy little beach hotel, but when they turned it into a house for runaway girls, they actually made it look better. There was an elegance to the place, with its whitewashed walls and teal trim. The windows were covered with heavy, wood Bahama shutters. The mirrored glass front door and the classy carved wood sign made the place look more like a high-tech firm than a halfway house for runaway teens.

  We dropped Elysia off at the curb out front.

  “God, I’m exhausted,” she said, opening the truck door. “At least I don’t have to work tomorrow. I’m going to sleep in till noon and then go apartment hunting.”

  “Some people have all the luck.” I reached around and gave her a swift hug. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m always fine, you know that.”

  “Ely, I know you’re tired, but I need to know anything more you can tell me about Patty.”

  She glanced over at the mirrored glass door. “Seychelle, don’t ask too many questions, okay? Take it from a survivor. Know when to leave things alone.”

  “Hey, worrying is my job. I’ll call you. Take care of yourself. Now”—I pointed to the house—“to bed.”

  “Bye,” she called. She waved goodbye, barefoot, swinging her sandals, then she turned and walked into the house. I watched through the back window as B.J. pulled away from the curb. Ely practically bounced up to the door. The buzzer sounded, and she passed inside. I saw her bending over talking to the person behind the counter as the door swung closed.

  I settled myself on the seat next to the door.

  We drove up Sunrise, past the strip malls and the fast-food joints. Groups of men loitered outside the convenience stores drinking out of paper bags in the glare of the fluorescent lights. Young women in skintight miniskirts stood talking in groups outside a package store. In the very next block, a brilliantly lit showroom displayed dozens of exotic Jaguars, Rolls-Royces, and Maseratis. I’d grown up in South Florida, and most of the time I loved my home, but there was a squalor, a tackiness that lived right next door to the palatial homes of the rich and famous. Just down the street from the oceanfront million-dollar condos we were passing prostitutes, drug dealers, adult bookstores. The neon lights bathed the street-level ugliness with a day-bright glow and lit the overhead tangle of telephone and electrical wires. I imagined for a moment that if alien spaceships ever hovered over this part of South Florida, they might think the earth’s inhabitants were a mutant form of spiders waiting to catch them in their wire webs.

  “Where’s your Jeep?”

  B.J. startled me with his question.

  “It’s still down by Bahia Cabana.”

  “Would you rather I take you back to pick up Lightnin’, or straight home?”

  I thought about the mess in my cottage, and I groaned. “Damn, I’d almost forgotten.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Somebody broke into the cottage last night while I was having dinner with you at the Downtowner. They really trashed the place. It’s still a mess. I didn’t feel like cleaning up, so I slept on the boat last night.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “Only my rainy-day fund—about two grand.”

  He let out a long, low whistle. “Would you feel more comfortable sleeping on the couch at my place tonight?”

  I didn’t want to explain to him that I thought Neal had tossed my place, and that he might have killed that girl, and that both thoughts scared the hell out of me. I needed a good night’s sleep. If Big Guy and Shorty knew who I was, then they could easily find out where I lived and come back at night. The thought of sleeping with B.J. just in the other room sounded mighty appealing.

&n
bsp; “I don’t want to put you to any kind of trouble.”

  “It’s no problem,” he said in the fake South Pacific accent he sometimes used. In a matter of seconds he could switch from Masterpiece Theatre to Hawaii 5-0.

  “I guess it would be better, then. Maybe you could run me over to pick up Lightnin’ in the morning?”

  “Sure, my pleasure.”

  B.J.’s apartment was a one-bedroom unit in a motel down near Dania Beach. A short section of the beach was backed with older vacation homes and run-down motels that had long been out of favor with any but the most tight-fisted tourists. Martha’s Restaurant and the Intracoastal Waterway were along one side of A1A, and the aging tourist traps were on the other. The older motels were slowly being bought up a few at a time, and the developers were building high-end townhouses or, more recently, posh beach condo towers. The Sands Motel (B.J. referred to the place as the “Shiftless Sands”) remained tucked back on a narrow street nestled in the shadows of the derricks building the high-rises. The bungalows were arranged around a sand and weed courtyard that harbored a motley collection of broken patio furniture and sun-bleached plastic toys. Several cement sea horses were stuck to the sides of buildings, and round concrete picnic tables were arranged around an old gas grill.

  B.J. jingled his keys as we crossed the dark courtyard, and a black cat streaked out from under an ixora bush. It threaded its way between B.J.’s legs, leaning against his ankle and purring loudly.

  “Okay, Savai’i, I know you’re hungry. You smell the moo shu pork.”

  “I don’t believe it, B.J. You have a cat?” I looked up at him over the top of the white bags in my arms. We had stopped at Chinese Moon for takeout. “You might end up with cat hair on your clothes.” He was always disgustedly picking Abaco’s black hairs off my clothes.

  Balancing the aluminum screen door open with his foot, he put the key in the lock. “She adopted me. I had no choice in the matter.”

  “Oh, brother, even female cats can’t resist you.”