Page 127 of Desert Star

“So,” Bosch said. “How long has Henry been gone?”

“Almost a year, I guess,” the Deck Doctor said. “He supposedly took Byrne’s money and said, ‘See ya.’ He and the wife took off on a trip around the world and left Davy to run the boat, live on the floater, everything. A sweet deal, you ask me, but that’s none of my business.”

“What’s a floater?”

“Houseboat. On the other side of the causeway, there’s the marina on Garrison Bight. That’s where all the floaters are, including Henry’s. A lot of the guys with boats here live over there, get to walk to work.”

Bosch nodded.

“Sweet,” he said. “You don’t know which one is Henry’s floater, do you?”

“You mean the address? No,” the Deck Doctor said. “But his is the one with the smiley-face pirate on the roof.”

Bosch wasn’t sure what that meant but didn’t ask for clarification.

“You’ll know it when you see it,” the Deck Doctor said. “You some kind of cop or something?”

“Or something,” Bosch said. “How long have you been doing this, working on the boats?”

“The quick answer is all my life. But if you mean here on the charters, I’ve had my cleaning business about eight years.”

“How long has Davy Byrne been around?”

“Here? He definitely showed up after me. Maybe six years ago. I remember because old Henry was looking for a partner, and I was trying to scrape the cash together. But then Davy Byrne came along and beat me to it. To this day, I don’t know how. He supposedly lost his ass on that pub he ran before he showed up here.”

“I heard about that.”

“Yeah, he couldn’t run a bar right, then he shows up here and thinks he knows all about charters and catching fish.”

Bosch nodded. He now had a solid grasp on the Deck Doctor’s sour grapes.

“So, you said Henry’s been gone almost a year?” Bosch asked.

“I don’t know, at least eight or nine months,” the Deck Doctor said. “Supposedly they’re hitting all seven continents. But that’s according to Davy Byrne.”

“Listen, thanks for your help. Can you do me a favor? If you see Davy, don’t mention me.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t talk to that guy.”

Bosch walked back down the row to his car. He saw that the sun was riding low in the sky. It would be sunset soon. He had planned to be at the Mallory docks, Key West’s sunset mecca, for the island’s signature moment, but he was juiced by the idea that he might know where Finbar McShane was. There would be another sunset tomorrow. If he was still here to see it.

The parking lane was one-way. It took him on a swing under the causeway and then out at the entrance to another marina. He saw boat ramps and, beyond them, the houseboats grouped together on the water like a floating village. Most of them had smaller runabouts with outboards attached to back-door docks and decks. The houseboats were painted in pastels, two-story structures sitting on barges and lashed together to create a community.

From Bosch’s angle of view he counted eight houses extending out into Garrison Bight. The second-to-last house had a sloping gray roof with a large yellow smiley face painted on it. It had a black eye patch and a red bandanna with a skull-and-crossbones pattern. The siding of the house was a matching yellow, and a small outboard boat was tied up to its back porch.

The parking lot in front of the floaters was crowded. Bosch had to park in the next lot down and walk back. His knee was beginning to hurt again but he had left the bottle of Advil in thehotel room. By the time he got to the ramp down to the floaters, he was limping.

There was no security gate on the gangway leading down to the floaters. Bosch held the railing and carefully stepped down the steep ramp until he was on the wide and level concrete pier that connected all of the houseboats.

He casually walked down the pier like a tourist marveling at this floating neighborhood. He spent equal time checking out each residence on either side of the pier as he moved. When he came to the yellow house that was second from the end, he saw that the sliding door on a second-floor balcony was open with a screen pulled closed across it. He could hear music coming from inside—a reggae beat, but it wasn’t a song he could identify.

Bosch used his injury to his advantage here. He stopped and leaned against a light pole at the end of the pier. He raised his left leg, bringing his foot up and down as if working out a stiff joint. And he studied the yellow floater. He saw that the decking extended down the right side of the house, offering a narrow access to the back deck and the skiff tied up to it. He also noted the double locks on the front door.

Satisfied with the intel he had gathered, Bosch headed back to the gangway. He had seen enough. He believed that the man he had been chasing for many years was inside the yellow house. He needed to go back to his hotel room. He needed to take more Advil and work out the plan for when he would come back under the cover of night.

51

BALLARD HAD BEEN ten minutes late to her four o’clock appointment with Vickie Blodget, the prosecutor assigned to handle cases from the unit. Ballard had always had an easy and open relationship with Blodget, but she was off her game in giving the case overview, leaving out details and delivering them out of order. She had been in a fog since leaving the lab. The Olga Reyes case had been pushed out of her brain by Ballard’s need to find Harry Bosch.

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