The Key West P.D. informed me an hour ago that I was the last one to see Ken and Peggy Berger alive. They questioned me, searched my premises, then moved on to the cab. You see, I’m a self-employed cab driver based in Key Largo, but I run anywhere from Homestead to Key West, some one hundred odd something miles apart. Which happened to be my route the morning I picked up the Bergers. Their destination? The Key West Aquarium. That’s where they climbed out of my cab and disappeared into the thick Atlantic air.

    Apparently they weren’t my first customers to vanish. Last week, I dropped off a miniature blond—a reporter, the cops told me—at a Key West port where she was supposed to catch a two-day cruise to the Dry Tortugas. But that’s not how the cops put it. They just asked, "What’d you do with her?"

    My second customer to vaporize was a real estate agent. I couldn’t remember where I took him. In fact, I didn’t remember the person at all. And why should I? My cab happens to be a convenient mode of transportation for drunks, tourists, and locals with broken boats. I saw more people a day then most of the force did in a month. I remembered the reporter only because she bribed me with fifty extra bucks to carry her suitcase from the cab to the landing.

    "And fifty bucks wasn’t enough for you, Dick? You had to rob, then kill her?"

    "How are you going to do that?" Zee asked.

    "I have no idea."

    We sat in silence, looking out the window of my one bedroom version of a house. In the Keys, houses aren’t really houses. Most of the working class locals live in mobile homes or the equivalent of a shack, and that’s only if they live on land. Many live on their boats.

    "Dickie?" Zee asked. "Do you think you took him to Key West?"

    "The realtor? I have no idea. I don’t remember the guy. Why?"

    "Well, I was just thinking. Your other customers disappeared from there and if this one did too, then we have an M.O."

    "M.O.?"

    "Mode of operation, Dickie. We know what this person’s like. What kind of people he likes to take and from where."

    "We do? You can get all that on Key West?"

    Zee curled her lower lip over her top one. "Both places were tourist destinations. Doesn’t that help?"

    "Not really," I said. "Everything around here is."

    "Yeah, but a lot of your business comes from the locals. And most of them just want a ride home from the bar. How often do you take tourists places? Or locals to tourist places?"

    It took me a minute to sort out Zee’s question, but once I did, I realized that she was right. "Okay, I’ll give you that. So what do we do now?"

    "You have to remember what other fabulous attractions you’ve driven people to in Key West. The most southern point in the U.S.? The Hemingway House? Think, Dickie."

    For the next three hours, I thought back to every place I’d driven in the last week. By the time I couldn’t think of anymore, I had a list of four places in Key West. That’s it. Four places. Zee wanted to stake them out, but I convinced her it would take weeks, maybe even months. And that was time I didn’t have. The cops were busy trying to make a case against me, and even though they hadn’t come up with much yet, I knew they were still looking.

    Instead, I suggested that we find a picture of this guy, this Lewis Perkins, real estate agent. That way, I would have a face to put with the name. Maybe with both I’d remember where I took him.

    As soon as I suggested that Zee said, "Duh, Dickie. He’s a realtor. His face is all over those stupid brochures they give out for free at supermarkets."

    For that, I made Zee walk to the supermarket to get one. No way could she drive my cab, and after the "duh," I refused to drive her. Besides, it was only four blocks. She could do that without shoes.

    When Zee returned she opened the real estate brochure to a page she’d marked and held it out to me. "That’s your man right there."

    I took a good look at Lewis Perkins. I didn’t have to look twice to know I recognized him. And looking didn’t make it any easier to figure out where in the Keys I’d taken him.

    "You still don’t know, do you?" Zee asked.

    "Not a clue."

    "Think, Dickie."

    Thinking wasn’t getting me anywhere, and neither was Zee’s pestering. "Look," I told her, "I need to go somewhere. Stay here. I’ll be back in a while."

    "Stay here? Without you? What if the cops show up? What do I tell them? You can’t leave me here alone."

    I shook my head, grabbed my keys, and left through the screen door. On my way to the cab, I heard the jingle of the ice cream truck down the block and knew Zee would turn my place upside down looking for spare change. Zee was a straight Popsicle lady. Forget chocolate. Skip ice cream. She went straight for the sugar-water.

    I zipped out of the drive and hit Upper Key Realty where Lewis Perkins once worked. Bingo. I’d been there recently, that much I knew. But it wasn’t to drop Perkins off. I’d picked him up there and taken him... where? Home, maybe? I decided that was a good guess and went to dial information for an address, but I’d left my car phone, along with all the other junk the cops dug out of my car, sitting in a heap on my living room floor.

    The realty office was open, and I considered asking the receptionist for Perkins’ address, but with his disappearance... well, I’d probably get myself arrested on the spot. Instead, I sat in my cab and pounded on the steering wheel until it hit me—Lewis Perkins was a realtor. Realtors in the Keys made decent money. Enough to buy snazzy suits. Enough to buy a car. And that’s when I knew. I’d taken Perkins’ to pick up his car at the mechanic’s right there in Key Largo. M.O. blown. Link destroyed.

    I slipped the cab into drive and headed down the highway feeling the threat of arrest growing like a cancerous lump. Zee would panic when I told her the plan had failed, and a twitchy, screaming Zee wasn’t what I needed. Instead of telling her in person, I headed for the nearest pay phone. This time, I was taking the chicken shit route.

    The booth at the gas station was surrounded by a group of boys on bikes, and, as I thumbed the quarter in my pocket, I thought better of discussing my customers disappearances in public. Around the corner was Largo Dive and Fish. I knew the kid who worked the counter and figured he’d let me bum a call since he always bummed rides.

    "Yo, Dickie. What’s up?" Thomas said as I walked through the door. "You gonna stick around and give me a ride home?"

    "Are you going to pay me this time?"

    "Well, I’m short on cash. You know how it is, man." He flicked his bleached-blond bangs to the other side of his face.

    "Tell you what," I said. "You let me use the office phone, and I’ll give you a lift home."

    "Right on." He grabbed a key off a peg and tossed it to me. "White door in the back."

    I unlocked the door and looked around for the phone, finally finding it behind a stack of papers. I dialed my number. No answer. I dialed Zee’s number. No answer. After a moment of panic, I put myself in her state of mind, a state of mind where the jangle of the telephone meant cops. I sighed. The chicken shit route dead-ended with no detour.

    "Thanks, kid." I tossed the key back to Thomas. "What time do you get off?"

    "Now, I guess."

    "You guess?"

    "I just got fired."

    "What?" I asked.

    "They fired me."

    "Why’d they fire you?"

    "Said I couldn’t let anyone in the back room that wasn’t an employee."

    I banged my head against the counter. Thomas did me a favor and look where it landed him—unemployed. Now I had the burden of helping the kid find another job. "Come on," I said. "I need to run by my place and check on Zee, then I’ll drive you any place you want to fill out an application."

    Thomas shrugged, his lanky shoulders jutting through his thin tee-shirt. "Cool, I guess."

    From Largo Dive and Fish, I cut through the alley and got on a back road so I could get a better shot of my house—and any cop cars that might be waiting out front—from a distance. No threats to my freedom awaited me, however. In fact, nothing awaited me. Not even Zee. My house stood empty, front door ajar, with a still-wrapped Popsicle oozing sticky red on the driveway concrete.

***

    I stuck my finger in the melted sugar, rubbed it with my thumb. The ice cream truck’s soundtrack played in my head, and I pictured a barefoot and eager Zee running out my front door, waving the driver down with a fist full of quarters and dimes. She’d order a banana Popsicle then change her mind and ask for cherry instead. He’d hand it across to her and she’d tear off the wrapper and sink her teeth into the tip, preparing them to finish off the rest in three bites.

    Only this time, she never got to the wrapper.

    And the jingle-jangle of the ice cream truck continued.

    It’s too early to be selling ice cream, I remembered thinking as I idled in front of the Key West aquarium. My two passengers squinted into the morning sun as they said "thank you very much, sir," in unison. When they opened the back door, a gust of muggy air blew in and I thought, oh yeah, I have air conditioning. Right then I understood why people walked down the street licking cones and sucking shakes at a quarter past nine in the morning. And until now, squatting there in the noon sun with red syrup glued to my fingers and Thomas saying, "Hey, dude, what’s wrong?" I never thought such a moment would mean something to me. But it did. It meant everything.

    "Dude," Thomas repeated, "what’s gotten into you, man?"

    "Thomas," I asked, "how do you feel about ice cream?"

    "I can dig ice cream."

    "Good. Because we’re about to go find ourselves some."

***

    The years I’d spent driving a cab taught me things. How to get from mile marker 83.5 to mile marker 100 without hitting any lights. Why tourists want to look for Key Deer. Who spent more time in bars than at work. How to find places your customers don’t. And somewhere in the messy street education I carried a degree in, I’d learned where several obscure businesses were located, including Treats on Wheels.

    Treats on Wheels set up a drive-through booth at the southern end of Key Largo back in the eighties, adding mobile service a couple years ago. As far as I knew, they only had one truck, and I hoped whoever worked the booth could tell me that truck’s route. I hit Ocean Highway going south toward Islamorada. My fingers gripped the wheel at ten and two and a steady stream of sweat coursed my jawline.

    "Hey, dude? Are you paying for ice cream? ‘Cause I don’t have any money, man," Thomas said.

    "I’ll pay for all the ice cream you can eat, kid. Just do me a favor. Strap that belt across your lap and tell me you’re not afraid of high speed car chases or insane murderers."

    "Whoa. What about guns? Can I still be afraid of guns?" Thomas asked.

    "As long as you don’t pee in my cab if you see one."

    "Whoa. What’s going down, man?"

    "I don’t know, Thomas. I don’t know. But I have a feeling I’m about to owe you for the rest of my life."

    I slid to a stop at the light and swiped my hand across the black stubble sprouting from my chin. In my rearview, I spotted the rack of a cop car pulling into my lane. In my head, the jaunty tune of the ice cream truck played. The light hit green, and I turned the corner. The cop car flew past. The tune grew louder.

    "Cool," Thomas said. "Ice cream."

    "What?"

    Thomas pointed up ahead. "Ice cream, dude."

    The silver grill of the ice cream truck gleamed as it barreled toward us, its music blasting from the loudspeaker in fuzzy spurts.

    "Duck," I yelled. I grabbed the back of Thomas’ head and pushed it down as the truck’s impact crumpled the front end.

    "Holy crap, I’m dying," he yelled.

    "Keep quiet and stay put," I said, and waited for the screeching and hissing and popping to die down before wrenching the door open and rolling out. I hit the ground and heard laughter behind me.

    "Dick-head Crane. I’ve been waiting for you."

    I tilted my head up, shading my eyes against the blazing sun.

    "I knew you’d come after your girly-friend."

    "Where is she?" I asked.

    "Around." He laughed. "Boy, I thought you were toast this morning after the cops came a-knockin’. But I’m sure glad they gave us enough time to have this little adventure." He moved in front of the sunlight, blocking the glare, and took off his hat. A man with a body thicker than hundred proof humidity and enough hair to cover Texas stood before me. Russell Willow. Ex-cab runner who ran himself out of business and blamed me.

    "Recognize me, Dick-head? Took you long enough to catch on. I’ve been following you for the past week."

    I pushed myself to my feet and stood with my hands on my knees.

    "Do you know how annoying that music is?"

    "I’ve got some idea," I told him.

    "Eight hours a day of mind scrambling jingles. I think it drove me insane. What do you think, Dick-head?" Willow laughed. "This is your pay-back, Dick-head. You reduced me to the ice cream man, and you’re going to pay."

    Behind Willow, Thomas emerged from the back of the ice cream truck, a shivering Zee cradled in his arms and a chocolate pop stuck between his teeth. He plopped Zee on the sunlit curb and moved toward us. I shook my head, trying to warn Thomas to stay back.

    "Let me think," Willow said. "What should your punishment be?" He tapped his head. "Wait, I know. You’ll share the same fate as your girly-friend and the customers before her. You’ll spend the rest of the afternoon in my walk-in freezer. How does that sound, Dick-head? A nice cool spot on a hot afternoon? I’ll even let you pick your dump site. Quite a perk, wouldn’t you say? It’s something new I’m trying. Your customers all ended up in the Everglades, but for you and your girly here, I’ll give you options."

    I twisted right and tried to move around Willow. He caught my arm and pushed me back. In an attempt to regain balance, I stumbled and found myself staring at the ground. The pain in my head went into double time.

    "Dude," Thomas said, walking up behind Willow. "I got hungry so I helped myself"

    "Get out of here, Thomas," I said, but too late. Willow lumbered around and swung, landing a punch right across Thomas’ jaw. The kid thumped to the ground, the chocolate pop smeared over his cheek.

    "You’re girly-friend is going back where she came from," Willow said, pointing at Zee curled up on the side-walk. "And you’re going with her." His long arm swooped down for me. I rolled out of its grasp and planted a kick on his shin.

    "Run, Zee," I yelled.

    Sirens sounded in the distance, spurring Willow back into action. He lunged for me again. I caught his outstretched fingers and bent them backwards. Willow howled and crumpled over, clutching his fingers to his chest. I kicked him again. Then, finding enough strength to stand, I tackled the beast, pinning him underneath my own body as dizziness overcame me...

***

    I pulled my new cab into the drive where Zee and Thomas stood waiting, and flashed them a smile.

    Zee waved and said, "Wow, Dickie. You got a brand new cab and everything. It’s so pretty and sparkling clean and I’m so glad you had Thomas with you when you found that psycho and I’m so glad the cops showed up when they did and ..."

    "Zee!" Thomas and I both yelled.

    She clasped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry."

    I patted her on the back and said, "So, you ready to get back to work, Thomas?"

    "Sure, dude. You gonna drive me around to some places, or what?"

    "Nope," I said. "You’re going to drive yourself." I dropped a set of keys in his hand and pointed to the cab. "That’s your baby right there. I get mine tomorrow."