Trap Line Read Online Free Page B

He retrieved them and walked back to the Pontiac, the thief in tow.
    “You gonna call the cops?”
    “Where you from?”
    “Atlanta.” The young man began brushing off his jeans and picking the gravel off his shirt. He thought it was over.
    “What are you doing down here?” Albury asked evenly.
    “Visiting.” The young man used his hands like a comb, straightening his hair and sweeping it out of his face.
    “Visiting,” Albury repeated.
    The kid nodded. Albury wordlessly slammed him in the stomach with a straight right, then cracked him in the nose with an abbreviated left cross. The kid fell, blubbering, the dark blood shining in the pale lumination of the streelights.
    Albury locked the toolbox in the trunk of the Pontiac and hurried back to the ball park with the spikes. The game was already over. The Padres had won, 6-2.
    “Nice game, champ,” Albury said to Ricky as he came off the field.
    “Yeah. You see the slider I got Buddy with in the seventh?”
    “Naw, I missed it.”
    “So did Buddy.” It was Enos, laughing. “Breeze, I got worried about you, so I polished off the six-pack.”
    “Some dirtbag broke into the car. I caught him before he got away. Here.” Albury handed Ricky the spikes. “I should have brought ’em with me in the first place.”
    Ricky opened the box. Buddy Martin looked over Ricky’s shoulder as he inspected the new spikes.
    “Dad, these must have cost forty bucks.”
    “It’s OK,” Albury said. “Had a good catch today.”
    Enos gave him a doubting glance. Albury wondered, could he know about the traps already?
    “Get your jacket on, champ. Let’s get going before the whole car gets stolen. Enos, Buddy, we’ll see you.”
    It took Albury ten minutes to reach Whitehead Street, after dropping Ricky at the trailer with an injunction to let his arm dangle a long time in the hot shower. Albury was supposed to pick up Laurie in an hour. Time enough.
    IF THE GREEN LANTERN had any distinction at all, it was as the only bar in Key West that never claimed to have fueled Ernest Hemingway. The bar was a chintzy dive of plasterboard and shadows in what was supposed to be a nautical motif.
    It seemed like every time Albury went in, there was a different parrot harping in a bamboo cage over the cash register. The regulars would sometimes turn the nightly dart games on the birds, when things got loose.
    Albury nursed a beer and looked quietly around. “Have you seen Winnebago Tom?” he finally asked a bartender named Pete.
    “He was here. Probably out back.”
    “Out back” meant upstairs in a supposedly private room reached by a stairway guarded by a tough, tattooed young Cuban. People said he had once been a commando.
    Albury gestured toward the stairs with his head. The guard nodded slightly and let him pass without a word. Upstairs, about ten men formed a smoky circle on the linoleum floor, playing poker.
    Winnebago Tom leaned nonchalantly against the wall, watching the action with almost scornful disinterest. Albury knew he was the house. Tom was wiry, slick, one of those savvy Key West Cubans whose family had been around so long they had all but forgotten Spanish. Tom worked for the Machine. A linkman, they said.
    “Well, hey, bubba.” Tom prised himself off the wall. He gestured toward the knot of men on the floor around a nucleus of dirty ten-and twenty-dollar bills. “Looking for a game?”
    “Can we talk?”
    Tom shrugged. “These are my friends.”
    Albury lit a cigarette to camouflage his dislike. “It’s business,” he said.
    “Business!” Tom exclaimed with artificial brightness. “Why didn’t you say so? Why don’t you go down and wait for me in the camper? Help yourself to a drink. I won’t be long.”
    Parked behind the bar, Tom’s Winnebago was the most luxurious in all Monroe County. It was cool and quiet, the air conditioner barely audible. It smelled of wood and real leather. Albury counted eight stereo speakers inset into the walls. He poured