Air Dance Iguana Read Online Free

won ten local-lingo points. It had been years since I’d heard the old nickname for the Seven Mile Bridge.
    “Could I get a more specific clue?”
    “All I got’s an address in Marathon,” he said. “The boss told you it’s another killing, didn’t he?”
    “In a roundabout way. Are we late on-scene?”
    “I don’t know about you,” he said. “I’m on the overtime clock.”
    He’d been on duty during the predawn hours? “I thought rookies drew the all-night shifts.”
    “Usually, yes,” he said, “but late hours don’t bother me. Once all the drunks get home, my workload drops big-time. Every so often I get a shot of spice.”
    “Like a murder?”
    “Or two.”
    “Dead people don’t get to you?” I said.
    “They kill the boredom. I hate risking my life for seat-belt citations.”
    With no traffic ahead, he goosed his Crown Vic up to sixty-five. We sped across Little Torch Key, and I caught an over-the-shoulder glimpse of the house on Keelhaul Lane where I would spend my next eight weeks. A few weeks ago Johnny Griffin, an old college friend, had asked to rent my Key West cottage for July and August. A man’s home is his castle, and I didn’t want the hassle. I tried to squelch his idea by quoting two grand a week, but he didn’t back off his request. I warned him that I still wanted to think about it. Then Al Manning, a watercolorist who had fled Key West for a stilt home on Little Torch, asked me to help him find a house sitter. Someone to water plants and pay utility bills for the summer while he prowled the museums of Europe. His mention of a motorboat and an outdoor shower convinced me to volunteer.
    I called Johnny Griffin and we cut a cash deal. By Labor Day I would hold sixteen grand in crisp hundreds. The money would help pay off my house by year’s end. With my money worries defused, I could have my own summer vacation, spend weeks paddling Manning’s kayak through mangrove channels, taking his outboard to Marvin Key, counting clouds above Picnic Island.
    On the flip side, being stuck in a cruiser with No Jokes offered nothing but crossfire.
    Liska had plugged me straight into it. He knew that Bohner and I had a history of pissing matches. Our spats weren’t so much bad blood as disregard for each other’s view of mankind. The deputy, because of his badge, always assumed an upper hand. He hated what he perceived as my useless calm. My advantage was not giving a shit. I could have told him that most inner peace was outer illusion, but I didn’t want to lose ground.
    Except for an oncoming speeder whom Bohner blue-lighted, then elected not to stop in the Key Deer zone, our ride was uneventful. He rolled a steady seventy over Bahia Honda. Then, with oncoming traffic, he fell behind slowpokes on Missouri Key. We paid the price for his being the fuzz. No one in front of us would dare blitz the limit. He regained lost time by kicking up to eighty and passing twelve cars on the Seven Mile Bridge. I sensed that the clear road ahead ticked down his anxiety a notch or two. He let his computer drift into sleep mode.
    Rolling across Knights Key into Marathon, Bohner threw me a curve. He shook a slim yellow box. “Gum?”
    I suspected only a power washer could get the marching soldiers out of my mouth. “I haven’t had Chiclets since I don’t know when.”
    “One or two?” he said.
    “Two, if that’s okay.”
    No Jokes Bohner civil and generous? Something read hinky.
    A quarter-mile farther we slowed quickly, skidded on gravel to go right on 10th Street South. A forest of signs greeted us: DEAD END, PRIVATE, KEEP OUT, DO NOT ENTER. The stained posts at the entrance to Florida Straits Estates were decorated with four-foot leaping dolphins in pale aqua. Someone had painted hot-pink lipstick on them. A shirtless big boy stood out front, a fortyish ex-linebacker type, square-jawed with shaved sides and a mullet cut gone ponytail. A tattooed panther crawled his shoulder. I didn’t guess he was