Duma Key

I piloted the skiff out to the middle of Lake Phalen and killed the motor. We drifted toward the little orange marker I'd left there. A few pleasure boats buzzed back and forth on the glass-smooth surface, but no sailboats; the day was perfectly still. There were a few kids in the playground area, a few people in the picnic area, and a few on the nearest hiking trail skirting the water. On the whole, though, for a lake that's actually within the city limits, the area was almost empty.

Wireman - looking strangely un-Florida in a fisherman's hat and a Vikings pullover - commented on this.

"School's still in," I said. "Give it another couple of weeks and there'll be boats buzzing everywhere."

He looked uneasy. "Does that make this the right place for her, muchacho? I mean, if a fisherman should net her up-"

"No nets allowed on Lake Phalen," I said, "and there are few rods and reels. This lake is pretty much for pleasure-boaters. And swimmers, in close to shore." I bent and picked up the cylinder the Sarasota silversmith had made. It was three feet long, with a screw-down top at one end. It was filled with fresh water, and the water-filled flashlight was inside that. Perse was sealed in double darkness, and sleeping in a double blanket of fresh water. Soon she would be sleeping even deeper.

"This is a beautiful thing," I said.

"That it is," Wireman agreed, watching the afternoon sun flash from the cylinder as I turned it over in my hand. "And nothing on it to catch a hook. Although I'd still feel easier about dumping it in a lake up around the Canadian border."

"Where someone really might come along dragging a net," I said. "Hide in plain sight - it's not a bad policy."

Three young women in a sportabout went buzzing by. They waved. We waved back. One of them yelled, "We love cute guys!" and all three of them laughed.

Wireman tipped them a smiling salute, then turned back to me. "How deep is it out here? Do you know? That little orange flag suggests you do."

"Well, I'll tell you. I did a little research on Lake Phalen - probably overdue, since Pam and I have owned the place on Aster Lane going on twenty-five years. The average depth is ninety-one feet... except out here, where there's a fissure."

Wireman relaxed and pushed his cap back a little from his brow. "Ah, Edgar. Wireman thinks you're still el zorro - still the fox."

"Maybe s , maybe no, but there's three hundred and eighty feet of water under that little orange flag. Three hundred and eighty at least. A hell of a lot better than a twelve-foot cistern thumbed into a coral splinter on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico."

"Amen."

"You look well, Wireman. Rested."

He shrugged. "That Gulfstream's the way to fly. No standing in line at security, no one pawing through your carry-on to make sure you didn't turn your little shitass can of Foamy into a bomb. And for once in my life I managed to fly north without a stop at fucking Atlanta. Thanks... although I could have afforded it myself, it looks like."

"You settled with Elizabeth's relatives, I take it?"

"Yep. Took your suggestion. Offered them the house and the north end of the Key in exchange for the cash and securities. They thought that was a hell of a deal, and I could see their lawyers thinking, 'Wireman is a lawyer, and today he has a fool for a client.'"

"Guess I ain't the only zorro in this boat."

"I'll end up with over eighty million bucks in liquid assets. Plus various keepsakes from the house. Including Miss Eastlake's Sweet Owen cookie-tin. Think she was trying to tell me something with that, 'chacho?"

I thought of Elizabeth popping various china figures into the tin and then insisting Wireman throw it in the goldfish pond. Of course she had been trying to tell him something.

"The rels got the north end of Duma Key, development value... well, sky's the limit. Ninety million?"

"Or so they think."

"Yes," he agreed, turning somber. "So they think." We sat in silence for a little while. He took the cylinder from me. I could see my face in its side, but distorted by the curve. I didn't mind looking at it that way, but I very rarely look at myself in a mirror anymore. It's not that I've aged; I don't care for the Freemantle fellow's eyes these days. They have seen too much.

"How's your wife and daughter?"

"Pam's out in California with her mother. Melinda's back in France. She stayed with Pam for awhile after Illy's funeral, but then she went back. I think it was the right call. She's getting on with it."

"What about you, Edgar? Are you getting on with it?"

"I don't know. Didn't Scott Fitzgerald say there are no second acts in American life?"

"Yep, but he was a washed-up drunk when he said it." Wireman put the cylinder at his feet and leaned forward. "Listen to me, Edgar, and listen good. There are actually five acts, and not just in American lives - in every life that's fully lived. Same as in every Shakespearian play, tragedy and comedy alike. Because that's what our lives are made up of - comedy and tragedy."