The Nomination Page 5

  Back on Route 1, from the parking lot of a Burger King this time, he was able to watch the end of Bunny Brubaker’s dead-end street. He ate a chicken sandwich, large fries, chocolate shake, and kept an eye out for a maroon VW with a plastic daisy on the antenna until one in the morning. Then he drove back to his motel.

  He followed the same routine the next day. Bunny left for the dolphin place at nine-fifteen in the morning. She got off work at seven-thirty in the evening, drove past the supermarket parking lot where Moran was parked, turned south onto Route 1, and went home.

  On the third evening, the maroon VW turned north onto Route 1. Tonight she wasn’t going straight home.

  Eddie kept a discreet distance—Larrigan’s favorite word, “discreet”—between them. Three or four miles north, she pulled into the gravel parking lot beside a low-slung rectangular building. The neon sign over the door identified it as Jake’s Conch Hut. From the street, Eddie could see that it had an outdoor bar with three open sides and a thatched roof. He turned into the lot and parked in the far corner. He waited ten minutes after Bunny went to the bar, then went over to the bar himself.

  The bar was shaped like a semicircle, and Bunny was seated at the far end. Two guys and a woman were at the near end. That was it. Jake’s Conch Hut did not appear to be Key Largo’s most popular hangout.

  Moran hitched himself onto a stool, leaving two empty ones between himself and Bunny Brubaker.

  The underside of the thatched roof was festooned with old fishing nets. A stuffed tarpon hung on the one wall behind the bar, and a television mounted on a bracket was showing a baseball game with the sound muted.

  The bartender, a kid in his twenties with a neatly trimmed black beard and hoops in both ears, swiped at the bar in front of him. “What’ll you have?” he said.

  “Bud in a bottle,” Moran answered.

  He took his pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, picked one out with his lips, and placed the pack on the bar in front of him. He fished his Zippo from his pants, lit up, and put the lighter on top of the cigarettes.

  He glanced over at Bunny. Up close, he could see the lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. But she still looked great. Nice skin, wide, sexy mouth, white even little teeth, and those big blue eyes. She could pass for about forty, Eddie thought. She was gazing up at the television and sipping from a glass of white wine. Christ, is that all women drank anymore? White wine?

  In the old days, Bunny drank beer from a bottle.

  A pack of cigarettes and a lighter sat by her elbow.

  The bartender slid a bottle of Bud and a frosted mug in front of him. “Wanna run a tab?” he said.

  Moran nodded.

  Out of the corner of his eye he sensed Bunny giving him the onceover. He poured beer into his mug, took a long draught, dragged on his cigarette, stubbed it out in an ashtray, gazed up at the television, sighed, took another drink, and casually glanced at her.

  Just in time to catch her hastily shifting her eyes up to the TV.

  A couple minutes later he tapped another cigarette from his pack, picked up the Zippo, flicked it a few times, tapped it on the bar, flicked it again, blew on it.

  He turned to her. “Excuse me, Miss. My lighter’s out of fluid. Do you mind . . .?”

  She smiled. A really great smile. “No problem,” she said.

  She slid her lighter across the polished top of the bar to him. It was one of those cheap plastic throwaways. He lit his cigarette with it, then leaned toward her, holding it in his palm. “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  She plucked the lighter gingerly from his hand, as if she was afraid to touch him. She was frowning, cocking her head, looking at him.

  He smiled. “My name’s Eddie,” he said.

  “Jesus,” she whispered. “It is you.”

  “Huh?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  He pretended to study her face. Then he started shaking his head. “Bunny? Holy shit. Bunny Brubaker? Is that really you?”

  “It’s been a long time, Eddie,” she said softly.

  “God,” he said. “You look terrific.” He picked up his cigarettes and beer and moved to the stool beside her. Up close, he could see the fine cross-hatching of lines around her mouth and the puckery softness of the flesh on her throat. But those tits still looked great, the way they pressed against the front of her white short-sleeved shirt. She was wearing the same khaki-colored shorts she’d worn when he’d listened to her dolphin speech, and her bare legs, wrapped around her barstool, were brown and smooth.

  “You look good, too,” she said.

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Small world, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I always say. Small world.”

  The bartender came by, and Moran ordered another Bud for himself and another glass of wine for the lady.

  She plucked a cigarette out of her pack with her long fingernails.

  Moran picked up her lighter, flicked it, and held the flame for her. She touched his hand, steadying it as she bent to the lighter, looking up at him, those nice blue eyes smiling at him, the front of her shirt opening, giving him a glimpse of cleavage.

  Her eyes flickered for an instant. Her hand dropped away from his and she straightened on her stool. She took a long drag from her cigarette, tilted her chin, blew a long plume of smoke at the ceiling. A little smile played on her lips. “Sergeant Eddie Moran,” she said. “So what brings you to Key Largo?”

  He shrugged. “Quick getaway. Little fishing, little diving. I’m headed back tomorrow. What’ve you been doing? Still with the Red Cross?”

  She shook her head. “I got my fill of that over there. When I got back I joined a band. Had some fun for a while.”

  “What kind of band?”

  “Oh, you know. Good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll. I played the guitar and sang. I had a good voice. Janis Joplin.”

  Moran nodded.

  “I was like her,” she said. “I could belt out a song, man. I had that Southern Comfort sound. Sexy, everybody said. I could give every guy in the place a hard-on, just singing ‘Summertime.’ I could play the guitar, too. I could really play.” She shook her head. “People used to say I even kinda looked like Janis.”

  “You were much prettier than her,” said Moran. “You still are.”

  “Well, that’s sweet.” She drained her wineglass in two gulps. “This is awfully weird, you know?”

  Moran nodded. “It is. Who’da thought, after twenty-something years . . . ?”

  “More like thirty.” She smashed her half-smoked cigarette into an ashtray and kept grinding it. “I got a divorce.”

  Moran nodded. “I kinda figured you would. It never really seemed real, though, did it?”

  She smiled quickly. “I need another drink.”

  Moran lifted a finger to the bartender, who brought a fresh glass of white wine for Bunny and another bottle of Budweiser for him.

  She picked up her glass and sipped. “So how about you? What’ve you been up to?”

  Moran waved his hand in the air. “I was a cop for a while. Up in Massachusetts. Now I’m . . . well, kinda freelancing. Security work, mostly.”

  “The old Marine training, huh?”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” he said. “Boring, safe stuff. Just trying to make a living, you know?”

  Bunny was staring off somewhere beyond Moran’s shoulder.

  He touched her arm. “Hey. Something the matter?”

  She shook her head. “No. Nothing’s the matter. I was just remembering . . .”

  “Remembering what?”

  She turned to look at him. “You know,” she said softly.

  “That was a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t think much about it anymore.”

  She looked up at the silent television for a moment, then glanced at her wristwatch. Abruptly, she picked up her cigarettes and lighter and shoved them into her purse, which had been lying on the bar. “I gotta get out of here,” she mumbled. “I get up earl
y for work.” She fumbled out a couple of bills and put them in front of her.

  “No,” said Moran. “I got it.”

  She looked at him evenly for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” She picked up the bills and stuffed them back into her purse.

  They sat there for a minute. He sipped his beer.

  Then Bunny swiveled off her barstool. “I really gotta go.”

  “Well,” said Moran, “it was nice seeing you again, huh?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Nice.” She shook her head. “You’re right, you know? All that was a long time ago.”

  Moran nodded. “Long time, Bunny. They were good times, though, huh?”

  She shrugged. “If you call war a good time, I guess we had a good time.”

  “Imagine,” said Moran, “bumping into each other like this.”

  “Like you say, small world.” She touched the back of Moran’s neck. “So you coming or what?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you want to come home with me?”

  He turned to look at her.

  “You married or something?” she said.

  He shook his head. “Nope. Not me.”

  “Doesn’t matter, anyway,” she said.

  “I gotta get a plane out of Miami tomorrow afternoon.”

  “So I won’t see you again, that what you’re saying?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So what?” she said.

  He shrugged.

  “Listen,” she said. “I never worry about tomorrow until it gets here. And by then it’s too late anyway.”

  “That’s how it was over there,” said Moran. “You never knew nothing.”

  “Live for today,” said Bunny. “That’s what we always said.”

  “It worked, didn’t it? I mean, it got us through.”

  “It still works,” she said. “It still gets me through.”

  “Okay,” said Moran. “I’d like to go home with you.”

  HE WOKE UP when she plopped down on the bed beside him. Her ass pressed against his hip, separated only by the sheet and the shorts she was wearing. “I gotta go to work,” she said. “There’s coffee in the kitchen. Be sure to turn off the pot when you leave.”

  She still looked good to him in the morning. That sleek auburn hair, still damp from her shower, those nice tits, those smooth muscular legs. He reached toward her, tangled his fingers in her hair.

  “Don’t,” she said, jerking her head back. “I can’t be late.”

  He moved his hand, trailing the backs of his fingers over her breast.

  She hunched her shoulders, twisting away from him. “Please,” she said softly.

  He let his hand fall onto the bed. “I’ll call you next time I come down,” he said.

  “Sure. That’d be nice.” She stood up, hesitated, then bent and kissed him on the cheek. “You still got it, Eddie Moran,” she said. “It was nice to see you again.” Then she quickly turned and left the room.

  A minute later he heard the VW chug out of the driveway.

  He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, and padded into the kitchen. He poured a mugful of coffee, took a sip, lit a cigarette.

  The previous night he’d followed her VW home from the bar at Jake’s Conch Hut. She drove too slow, the overly cautious way people drive when they’ve had two or three glasses of wine. She parked in front of the house. He pulled into the driveway, got out of his car. She came up to him in the dark, put her arm around his waist, leaned her hip against him. He slung his arm around her shoulders and she turned, moved against him, pressing her pelvis hard against his. She murmured something in her throat that he didn’t understand. Then she was kissing him, grinding at him, those nice tits soft and pillowy on his chest, her hips moving against him, her tongue in his mouth.

  After a minute, she kind of sighed and pulled back. She took his hand, led him into the carport, which reeked with the sweet rot of old garbage. The side door to the house opened from the carport into the kitchen.

  It was cool inside, blasted by the air conditioner that had been running all day. She didn’t bother turning on any lights. Just led him through the dark into the bedroom, pushed him onto the bed, knelt between his legs.

  He sat there on the edge of the bed, his pants down around his ankles, while she worked on him with her mouth and her fingers. He reached down, touched her hair, stroked her shoulders, remembering all those times half a lifetime ago, over there where you never knew if you were going to be alive the next morning, where it always felt like a one-night stand.

  Just about the time he thought he was going to explode she pulled away. She tugged his pants all the way off and helped him pull his jersey over his head. Then she stood up and undressed herself, and they crawled under the covers. Her skin was still smooth and youthful against his, and he ran his hand down her sleek back, from her neck to her butt, remembering the feel of her skin, and it almost seemed like he could remember thirty-five years ago through his fingertips.

  She pushed him flat onto his back, then slithered atop him, her favorite way, straddled him, put him inside her, and rode him until he couldn’t hold back.

  “Okay, oh fuck, okay, yeah,” she murmured when he came. “Oh-kay!”

  And about a minute later she was snoring beside him, bubbling quietly and rhythmically.

  He’d lain awake for a long time, listening to her breathe and wondering if he should tell Larrigan that he’d gone home with her, that she’d given him a great blowjob, that he’d spent the night with her, that she still had skin like a teenager and really nice tits, and that he thought they’d come at the same time, if she hadn’t been faking it.

  When he went to sleep, he still hadn’t decided what he should tell Larrigan. Hell, it was none of his business. Bunny had always been Eddie Moran’s girl.

  Now, the next morning, with her sober and maybe a little regretful or embarrassed or something and off to tell the tourists about dolphins, he went to work. Methodical, one room at a time. Desk drawers, kitchen drawers, bureau drawers, cabinets, closets, bookshelves.

  He found the shoebox behind a pile of sweaters on the shelf in her bedroom closet. A thick layer of dust covered it. Clearly the box had not been touched in a long time.

  He took it down, opened it, looked inside. It was a random jumble of old photographs, different sizes, some in color, some black and white, curled and creased, faded and discolored. Moran guessed there were a couple hundred photos in that shoebox.

  He dumped them out on the bed and sat there sipping his coffee, looking at the photos one at a time.

  She looked a hell of a lot better than Janis Joplin back then. Bunny Brubaker with her electric guitar, wearing very tight jeans and a T-shirt. A little heavier and curvier then, but always with those nice tits, the way he remembered her.

  Bunny stretched out on a blanket in a little bikini, leaving nothing to the imagination. Bunny at various ages with other people—a young teenager, before Moran knew her, with an older couple, Mom and Dad, maybe. With a serious young man with a receding hairline and rimless glasses. Bunny with a bunch of women about her age. Bunny holding an infant.

  Bunny’s life in a shoebox.

  And, yeah, there were some shots of Bunny and Eddie together. Her in her crisp Red Cross uniform, him in his camo pants, no shirt, both of them holding bottles of beer, grinning drunkenly into the camera. And the two of them in bathing suits on the beach, palm trees in the background.

  Looking terribly young, except for that weariness in their eyes. A long time ago.

  And photos of Bunny and Eddie with Larrigan and his girl, that scrawny Vietnamese chick, Larrigan’s little hooker. A child, really. Couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. No tits, hardly any hips on her. Looked malnourished. Eddie never really knew where Larrigan had found her. He liked ’em young, that was for sure. Li An. That was her name.

  Larrigan had a big bush of curly black hair in those old photos, and a floppy mustache and sideburns half way dow
n his face. Back then he still had two eyes. In several of the shots, he wore a drunken shit-eating grin and his arm was slung possessively around the shoulders of his little native chick, that Li An. A couple shots of Li An and the baby.

  Old Larrigan. Who’da thought he’d ever be nominated for the Supreme Court?

  Moran hadn’t gotten Bunny to say much. She didn’t want to talk about it, and he figured he better not push her. Last thing Larrigan would want was for Bunny Brubaker to suspect something.

  But there was no doubt she remembered all of it.

  He thought of taking the photos, then thought better of it. After seeing Eddie Moran, Bunny might decide to go to her shoebox, fish out the old pictures, and reminisce about the old days. Best for now if she found them right where she kept them. Best not to arouse any suspicions.

  So he put all the photos back into the shoebox and wiped all the dust off it. Bunny wouldn’t notice the absence of dust on the box if she happened to take it out of her closet. But she’d certainly notice finger smudges on a dust-covered box.

  He replaced the shoebox exactly where he’d found it on the closet shelf behind the pile of sweaters.

  Then he went through the dumpy little house again, to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Which he hadn’t. Eddie Moran was a pro.

  He ended up in the kitchen. He turned off the electric coffeepot. He thought of leaving Bunny a note but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  He went out through the side door, holding his breath as he hurried through the stinking carport, climbed into his rented gray Camry, and headed north on Route 1 for the airport in Miami.

  He’d have to give some thought to what he wanted to tell Larrigan before he called him.

  CHAPTER 4

  Simone Bonet sipped her herbal tea and gazed out through the big window at the bright rushing ribbon of water beyond the meadow at the foot of her hill. The afternoon sun was warm here in her glassed-in west-facing porch, and she had pushed the blanket off her legs. She had to be careful of overheating.