any. Then my name got linked to the crime. Mick had turned me in. I don’t really blame him. I might have done the same. And at least he never mentioned Alice. For that I will always be grateful to him. After just a few days on the road, she was done. She missed her parents, and the fear of getting caught had ruined all the fun for her. We were terribly naive.”
We sat for a moment, he lost in memory, me still trying to reconcile this story with the man I knew.
“What happened next?” I finally asked.
“I recall having a huge argument. She thought I should go stay on the island, and she’d take a bus back home. I wasn’t about to let her do that alone, so I drove her myself. That drive was miserable because we were so certain we’d get caught. And she was just as afraid of facing her parents as she was of facing the police. Even if they never realized she’d been involved in any burglaries, she’d still run away with me, an accused criminal on the lam. When we got to her house, her dad hauled me out of the car and punched me right in the face. He told me to never step foot near her again. I don’t blame him, either. If I had a daughter . . .”
He paused and I saw tears glistening in his eyes. He blinked them back and said, “Well, any father would have a right to beat the shit out of a kid who put his daughter in that kind of situation. I actually can’t believe he didn’t try to keep me there and call the police, but I think he was just so relieved to have Alice back. I took off like a coward, ditched my car, and stole another one. I’d never stolen a car before, but then again, I’d never been running from the law before, either. I guess I panicked. Looking back now, I realize the smartest thing to do would have been to just give back the jewelry, do my time, and start my life over, but I wasn’t thinking rationally. All I was thinking about was getting away.”
He got the lost look again.
“And a few days after that, I showed up here. By myself. I tried repeatedly to get in touch with Alice, but there were no cell phones in those days. I called their house about fifty times, but her father finally said if I called again, he’d make Alice confess to the police where I was hiding. Not sure if he was serious, but I couldn’t take that risk.”
“How did you come up with a new identity?”
“I figured if the police ever came here, they’d be looking for a Philly kid named Jimmy Novak, so taking a foreign-sounding name would throw off suspicion. I waited about a year and finally went to the secretary of state over in Manitou and managed to get a state ID. Not sure I’d be able to pull that off now, but record keeping was a little easier to manipulate back then.”
A sheepish expression passed over his face. “Did you ever wonder why I was such a gossip? Always telling stories about other people? It was just to keep people talking about other people, and not talking about me. I made up stories about anyone new to the island so they’d look suspicious. Hell, I made up that story about the housekeeper at the Imperial Hotel finding a bag of lockpicks and identification badges. Sorry about that.”
“You made that up?”
“Yes. I mean, I have slept with a few housekeepers at the Imperial, but the part about the bag of lockpicks was an embellishment. That’s also why I wear the hat.”
“The beekeeping hat?”
“Yes. I started wearing it ages ago so I couldn’t get caught in some tourist’s photograph. Probably a little paranoid of me. Now it’s just a habit.”
“You are making my head explode right now.” I should be angry, probably. Maybe insulted that he’d lied to me, to everyone, for all these years, but I was just drained, and fascinated. I was trying to sort through all the things I knew were true and figure out which things were false.
“The private detective from Florida said he’d talked to one of your associates who’d seen you within the last year or so. How is that possible?”
“I’ve mentioned my sister who lives in Pensacola, right?”