“What do you mean by ‘we’? I don’t need to do anything about Dante.”
“He’s in our inner circle now. Dante comes with Benji. That’s the package. You don’t get one without the other eventually showing up.”
Tex scratches his beard. “In that case, I don’t know what we do about Dante. Because as we both know, there is absolutely nobody on the Florida Panhandle who can go head-to-head with that man. He is in a whole different league. He’s operating on a level that this coast has never seen. I don’t even know what category to put him in. My categories are biker, tourist, regular, and trouble. Dante is none of those things. Dante is a new category that I haven’t built a shelf for yet.”
“You’re right and that’s the issue.”
“Look at him down there though,” Tex says, nodding toward the water. “He just walked in like he’d been invited. Didn’t make a fuss. Didn’t crowd Stormy. Just showed up and fit.” He’s quiet for a second. “Most people don’t know how to be around Stormy. They try too hard or they don’t try at all. That one just walked in the water and stood there.”
“Benji’s like that too.”
“Yeah. But he’s had time to get used to Benji.” He looks at the crushed pork rind bag. “I should be nothing but happy about all of it. And I am. But there’s a small, stupid part of me that wanted to be the one who got him in that water. That’s not Stormy’s problem. That’s mine. Storm is having fun. He needs more of that in his life.”
Benji and Dante start packing the towels and the cooler. Stormy has already peeled off toward the building. Dante carries the cooler toward the parking lot. Benji hangs back and doesn’t follow.
He turns and looks up at my window. He stands there for five seconds, looking straight at the glass that he can’t see through but knows I’m behind. Then he picks up the last towel, shakes off the sand, and walks away.
Tex leaves for the bar. He squeezes my shoulder on the way to the elevator.
“Go tonight and fix this,” he says. “Don’t wait for morning. Don’t wait for his phone to turn on. Don’t wait for permission. Find out where he’s staying and go knock on the door.”
“His phone is off. Dante won’t tell me where he is.”
“Then figure it out. You’re a cop. You figure things out for a living. This is the most important case you’ve ever worked and the evidence is a man in coral trunks who just drove away. Do your job. Investigate.”
The doors close and he’s gone.
I take the elevator down. The bar is opening. Sheila is behind the taps. Stormy is at the end of the bar, hair still damp, back in his regular clothes, restocking glasses how he does every evening.
I wheel up beside him. “Stormy.”
He turns. His face is calm but his eyes are doing the quick Stormy scan, reading the room in two seconds.
“What did Benji say?”
“He said nobody puts Benji in a corner,” Stormy says. “I’m not sure what he meant by that. And he said that you’reashamed of him.” He pauses. “He said a lot of other things but that was the most important.”
Nobody puts Benji in a corner.
Stormy turns back to the glasses. He reaches for a pint glass, polishes it, sets it on the rack. He’s done. The information has been delivered and Stormy is finished. Then he stops and his hand rests on the glass. He turns back around.
“Oh,” he says. “And he said to tell you he should’ve left the first time Sheila asked him to.”
He walks away through the kitchen door and he’s gone. Stormy has no idea he just gutted me.
The first time Sheila asked him to leave was when the four men were getting rowdy, looking Benji’s way and he refused to leave.
He’s saying that everything since that moment — the hospital, the cream, the whole thing between us — was a mistake.
I need to talk to Benji. Maybe he’ll take my call now. I pick up my phone. I don’t call Dante. Dante already told me no once and he doesn’t change his mind.
I call Benji. It goes to voicemail. His voice, bright and fast, from a version of him that isn’t hurting. “Hey, it’s Benji! Leave me something interesting or don’t bother. Bye!”
I don’t leave a message. What I need to say doesn’t fit in a voicemail.
Instead, I sit at the bar and wait for morning. Not the way I waited last night. This time I’m working a case. Andwhen I find him, I’m not going to say the right thing. I’m going to do the right thing.
Words got me here. Words won’t get me out.
