Matt Royal Mystery - 03 - Blood Island by H. Terrell Griffin

going to be a long hike. I couldn't afford to be seen
in a cab. A guy looking for work on the fishing boats wouldn't have the
cab fare.
    The elderly crowd exited the bus and began to fill up vans with the Hyatt Hotel logo on the doors. I'd started my walk toward town when one
of the vans pulled up beside me. Austin Dwyer stuck his head out of the
window and said, "Ben, you going downtown?"

    I nodded my head.
    "Get in. We're going to the Hyatt."
    It beat walking. I got in. The conversation was mostly about what
they were going to do over the next few days in Key West. When we pulled
into the Hyatt, I thanked the driver and Austin, hiked my backpack onto
my shoulders and started up Duval Street.
    I went several blocks and turned onto a side street near the Garrison
Bight. I entered a neighborhood that hadn't yet seen urban renewal. The
houses were old and dilapidated, and they wouldn't last long. The guys
with the money would tear them down and build monuments to themselves and their successes. They'd spend a few weeks each winter in their
new acquisitions and have the maids take care of it the rest of the year.
    I found the house I was looking for. One of Cracker's fisherman
friends from Cortez told him about this rooming house where nobody got
too nosey. It was bigger than the others in the block, but just as unprepossessing. It had once been painted white, but most of that had peeled off,
leaving bare clapboard. There was a large porch running along the front
of the house, with a few rocking chairs placed haphazardly. They were all
empty.
    A screen door with rusty hinges guarded the entrance. I opened it
and went in. In what had been the entrance hall in better days, there was
a desk piled high with newspapers. A bulletin board took up space along
one wall. It had newspaper clippings pinned to it, that I realized were help
wanted ads from the local mullet wrapper. Nobody was in evidence, but a
little round bell with a plunger on top sat on the desk. I hit the plunger, and
in a minute a stooped elderly woman came out of the back, wiping her
hands on a dishcloth.
    "Help you?" she said.
    "I need a room."
    "How long?"
    "I don't know. Can I get it from day to day?"

    "Yeah, but you got to let me know by ten every morning if you're
planning to stay another day."
    "That's fair. How much?"
    "Thirty a day. Share a bathroom."
    "Okay." I pulled two twenties from my pocket and set them on the
desk.
    "Got to register," she said. "City ordinance." She handed me a registration card and ten wrinkled one-dollar bills in change.
    I filled it out with Ben Joyce's name. "I don't have an address," I said,
putting the pen down.
    "Where did you come from?"
    "Tampa."
    "Put your last address in there. That'll do."
    I made up a street address and wrote it on the card.
    The old woman gave me a key. "Up the stairs, second door on your
right, room eight."
    I went to the room and called Logan to tell him where I was.

     

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
    The Sharkstooth Bar was without atmosphere. It was a dim and dirty place
where hard men came to drink themselves into oblivion. They came here
early, chased by the demons that infested their lives, bringing body odor
and a monumental thirst. They sat quietly, drinking their poison of choice,
occasionally acknowledging each other with a joke or an observation. This
was the bar from which the call to Jeff had originated the day before.
    The place was small. A chipped and scarred bar of some indeterminate wood took up one side of the room. A few tables were scattered about
a concrete floor. A single pool table sat across from the bar. Two men were
playing a desultory game, drinking from green bottles of beer, not talking.
A forlorn neon sign advertising a brand of beer I'd never heard of sputtered
over the lone window, its dirty panes diffusing the light from outside. A few
dim light fixtures hanging from the ceiling created a brownish glow in the
room. The smell of dead fish