Bone Key Read Online Free Page B

its original down-at-the-heels, Casablanca-like charm intact to beat the daylights out of a pleasure trip to Des Moines, or, worse, someplace like Orlando. In Orlando, they had pirate
shows
. In Key West, you could still find actual pirates.
    Russell, meantime, had wrenched his gaze from the tawny waitress and turned to Deal, mulling his lesson on corkage. “I hang around with you long enough,” he said, “I’ll learn all sorts of civilized stuff.”
    “Anything’s possible.” Deal shrugged. He’d shifted his gaze to something else.
    From where they sat, on the second floor of the upscale but aggressively laid-back hotel, there was a good view of the harbor channel and the sunset sky beyond. Cloud banks lit up in boiling pinks and shades of lavender and teal, shorebirds twisting and diving in the foreground, a couple of sailboats thrown in for good measure…poor Turner, who’d done so well with England’s sunsets…he’d just been born in the wrong place, Deal thought.
    “I never figured you for a wine drinker,” Russell persisted. It was easier to talk, now that the steel band on the open-air porch had packed it in. Their raucous syncopation had been replaced by piped-in piano Muzak. “Anybody’d look at you, they’d say there’s a beer drinker and a half.”
    Deal paused, his glass halfway to his mouth. In truth, he’d been at the checkout counter of Sunset Corners up in Miami, a case of light beer in his cart, when he’d started down this other path. Iron Mike, one of the owners of the package store, caught a glance at what Deal purported to buy and insisted there was a less painful way to drop a few pounds. Mike talked, Deal listened, and the light beer had gone back on the shelf, replaced by a case of Merlot and a pamphlet-sized book on how to shed a few pounds without losing your mind.
    The rest had been history, Deal mused, staring down at his glass. A more expensive history. He tasted the wine, then tried another sip. Maybe he
should
have asked for the cork, he thought. “I like beer,” he said to Russell. “But then I went on this diet.”
    “For what?” Russell said. “You’re not fat.”
    “Compared to whom?” Deal said, looking at Russell, who was wearing a T-shirt with a lifeguard emblem on its chest. He’d bought it earlier in the day at one of the tourist shops on Duval, an XXL that stretched over his massive chest and biceps like spandex.
    “Basically, you’re not supposed to drink,” Deal continued, “but the guy who wrote the book said you could have a glass of red wine once in a while.”
    “Once in a while?” Russell lifted an eyebrow. They’d been in town two days now, doing little besides wait. Then again, for the amount of money that might come the way of DealCo Construction, a bit of waiting behooved him.
    Deal shrugged again, a gesture he’d picked up from his erstwhile partner Vernon Driscoll. Driscoll, an ex-Miami homicide detective and now point man for D&D Investigative Services (Deal was the second D, an otherwise silent participant), could shrug in a hundred different ways, Deal had learned, each move with a slightly different meaning, everything from “Right you are,” to “You are a wiseass, but I am going to wait at least thirty seconds before I take you apart.” For the taciturn Driscoll, the shrug was a way of life. Deal was just beginning to appreciate the simple elegance of the gesture.
    “This guy say how big of a glass?” Russell asked.
    Deal shook his head. “Why do you think I went with his diet?”
    Russell nodded. “I was on a diet once,” he said, taking a swallow of his beer. His hand was so big you could hardly see the bottle.
    “Please,” Deal said. It was the kind of banter that seemed to spring up in Key West, born of tropical malaise, he supposed. What the hell, he thought. He’d been busting his buns in Miami—he deserved a bit of downtime in paradise.
    “The prison diet was what they called it,” Russell said, unfazed.