No one seemed to know. The waitress, a stout, broad-shouldered woman named Fern, said she thought Montaigne got its name way back in the nineteenth century when the Keys were a haven for pirates. So serious was the problem that a U.S. naval base was established in Key West to stop piracy. It was successful only up to a point. As to who named Key Montaigne’s population center Fishback, and why, Carver would have to ask somebody who knew about pirates, Fern said.
He was sitting in a window booth in the Key Lime Pie restaurant, eating the day’s special, broiled shrimp with salad and a baked potato. He’d driven through the town, consisting primarily of a main street, called Main Street, on which were lined weathered, low buildings housing bait shops, bars, a hardware store, Laundromat, barber shop, supermarket, and various other assuagers of needs and yearnings.
At the foot of Main was the town marina, where dozens of docked pleasure boats bobbed on the gentle waves, along with several commercial fishing boats and a lineup of charter boats for tourists to hire for deep sea fishing. There wasn’t a lot to do on Key Montaigne other than fish, eat, and drink, and the tourists the island attracted usually weren’t interested in theme parks and water slides. Plenty of tourists walked the streets, skin still pale from northern climes, sporting souvenir T-shirts with cameras slung around their necks, but there were few young children with them. The families with kids were farther north, seeing Disney World and Universal Studios and learning about the wonders of citrus.
Where Carver sat he could see a section of Main Street, the small, flat-roofed building that called itself Food Emporium Supermarket, and on the corner a freshly whitewashed service station with a single work bay and two pumps. NORTON’S GAS ’ N’ GO, read the sign over the pumps. Effie’s father’s place. It was a self-service station. A bearded man in a sleeveless gray shirt was pumping unleaded into a dusty black pickup truck, glaring at the pump’s price and gallon meters as if he held a grudge against them. There was a pyramid of Valvoline oil cans at a corner of the building, the kind of display you seldom saw anymore. The work bay’s overhead door was open, and a Ford Escort was up on the rack getting its oil changed. Carver was glad he hadn’t ordered anything fried.
Loud voices drew his attention back inside. The Key Lime Pie restaurant was long and narrow, with round tables on one side and a counter with red vinyl stools on the other. Struggling air-conditioning and half a dozen ceiling fans kept the temperature down and cast flitting shadows over the red-checkered tablecloths and green and brown tiled floor. Beyond the counter was an arch with a swordfish mounted above it. Through the arch Carver could see into the adjoining lounge, where several men sat or stood at the bar. Most of them were wearing jeans or shorts and T-shirts and had deep tans. One of them, a short, stocky guy with an oversized blond mustache that lent him a fierce expression, was arguing vehemently with a man wearing a loud red and yellow tropical shirt with a parrot pattern, who was slouched on a bar stool facing away from Carver. Yellow Mustache was getting madder and madder, while the man in the garish tropical shirt seemed to be ignoring him. Carver couldn’t understand what was being said. Something about shipwrecks, he thought. He popped his last broiled shrimp into his mouth and sat chewing, waiting to see what would happen.
The man on the stool slowly swiveled around and stood up. He was about average height, built blocky, and wore his hair shaved almost short enough to classify him as bald. His loud tropical shirt was untucked and might conceal a weapon. The thick, tan forearms that protruded from the wildly colored short sleeves were so covered with tattoos they almost looked like an extension of the busy-patterned shirt. A colorful snake coiled up one arm. The other arm sported what looked like an anchor and a topless hula dancer.
With the tattooed man standing staring at him, Mustache suddenly was quiet. The evening had turned serious. The guy with the tattoos grinned at him, then in a quick motion grabbed his belt buckle and lifted and twisted, drawing Mustache’s pants tight into his crotch. Mustache screeched in pain, and Tattoo snapped a thick-wristed forearm up below his chin and pressed. The screeching became a series of strangled pleas for mercy. Tattoo shoved Mustache out of sight, toward the street door, then swaggered after him with a deliberate bow-legged gait, as if he were on a ship in high seas. Carver could no longer see either man, but in a few seconds Mustache appeared out on Main, limping bent over and in obvious pain toward a parked four-wheel-drive Jeep. With a hand cupped to his crotch, he climbed into the Jeep and got the engine started. He glared angrily but with terror in the direction of the Key Lime Pie, then drove away, the Jeep’s knobby tires spinning and throwing gravel. The conversation and noise level of the bar increased to what it had been before the trouble started.
“The boys get frisky sometimes when the charters are back for the day,” Fern said, “’specially if the fishing ain’t been good.” She was standing near Carver with her order pad in one hand, yellow stub of a pencil in the other.
“Who’re the boys?” Carver asked.
“Some of ’em are commercial fishermen, others are charter boat captains and crew. You can always tell if it’s been a good day by the way they behave.”
The tattooed man had returned to his bar stool. “Who’s the guy in the parrot shirt?” Carver asked, figuring he knew the answer.
“Some of those are cockatoos.”
“Yeah, I can see that now you point it out.”
“Anyway, that’s Davy inside the shirt. He’s part of the crew of a yacht belongs to some rich fella out on Shoreline. That joker that was arguing with him I never seen before, and if he hadn’t been a stranger, he wouldn’t have crossed Davy. That Davy’ll argue anything from baseball to politics, but he won’t stand for no badgering. He just wants to be let alone, is all, but if people push him just a little bit, they pay. He’s the sort that likes to make ’em pay. That fella he shoved outa here’s lucky it didn’t get more serious.”
Carver watched Davy calmly drinking his beer. No one was talking to him, or near him. He didn’t seem to notice. “So Davy’s a bad boy?”
“I dunno for sure, as he never caused any real trouble in here. Or anyplace else, far as I know. But I been told he’s bad, all right.”
Carver thought the mustached man might regard what had happened as real trouble.
“Don’t repeat this,” Fern said, “but he gives me the creeps. Maybe it’s all those tattoos.” She gave a mock shiver, almost dropping her pencil. “They tell me you’re a private detective of some sort.”
“Who tells you?” Carver asked. He shoved away his plate so he’d no longer have to breathe in the shrimp smell of the leftovers. He wished Fern would clear the table.
Fern shrugged. “That’s one of them questions like why’s the town named Fishback. Word just gets around, is all. They say you’re staying up at the Tiller place. You here about whoever it was run over Henry Tiller?”
“That’s it,” Carver said.
“How is Henry?”
“I think he’ll be fine, but it’ll take some time.”
“Shame what happened. He’s a nice old bird. A little vague at times, but ain’t we all?”
Carver agreed we all were. “There anyone here you think might feel strongly enough about Henry to try running him down?” he asked.
Fern shook her head. “Everyone figures he’s harmless, you know? Ask me, I’d say he was just the victim of an accident. But I guess, with a hit and run like that, the law’s gotta investigate.”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Carver said. If she wanted to think of him as the law, that was okay. Even convenient.
“Get you anything else?” Fern asked.
“A refill on the coffee.” He swished around the mud-colored inch of liquid left in his cup to draw it to her attention.
“How about some dessert?”
He looked up at her. “What’s good here?”
She laughed. “You kidding? There’s only one item on the menu.”
“Then I’ll have it,” he said.
She licked the point of her stubby pencil, added the slice of key lime pie to his check, then scooped up his dirty dishes and ambled away toward the kitchen. A few minutes later she returned with the round glass coffeepot in one hand and the wedge of pie on a white china plate in the other. She refilled Carver’s cup, laid his check in a puddle on the table, then went around the restaurant topping off everyone’s coffee.
The pie was a delicate and delicious combination of sweetness and tartness. Carver ate it staring at the garish parrot-and-cockatoo pattern shirt stretched over Davy’s broad back, wondering if the wildly colored material concealed a steel cargo hook tucked in Davy’s belt.
One thing he did know, he shared Henry Tiller’s cop’s instincts about Davy. He was a bad one.