Washout

by Bill Noel

  Her monologue was interrupted by the arrival of our salad. I tried to tease her about how to divide the cucumbers and olives equally, but it didn’t help.

  She took a couple of bites and a large swig of wine. “Now it really gets difficult. I’ve told you how much I love Charleston and that I never wanted to leave. You know how much I hated when my ex kept moving us around the country.”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to interrupt, but I was getting more and more uneasy about the direction she was going.

  “Chris, I’ve been offered a fantastic job as metro editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. I have to let them know by next Monday.” She paused, took another sip of wine, then looked at the black-and-white photo of some Greek ruins on the wall. If I were less shallow, I would have read some symbolism into the photo and our relationship.

  “That’s great,” I said, mustering faux sincerity. “But, I thought you loved being a reporter. You wouldn’t be able to do that, would you?”

  “I’ve been a reporter for twenty years, off and on.” She looked back at me. “I can’t count how many horrific deaths I’ve covered. I’ve never gotten used to it. Do you know how many innocent children have been brutally killed in the last five years, including being thrown out of windows or drowned? Don’t even try to guess—it’s been seven. These are kids, not druggies killing each other just because they can, and not elderly citizens killed for their Social Security checks.” She paused to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “You know the worse part? I’ve had to stalk the next of kin for quotes, to get a grief-stricken mother to say something so I can fill some space in the paper. What the hell do you think the devastated parent will say? I can’t stay on the front lines any longer.”

  I reached across the table to take both of her hands. “Tammy, won’t there be any positions open at the Post and Courier?” I knew it was a selfish question.

  “I don’t think so. I’ve known about this for two weeks. I’ve been so scared to say anything, but knew I owed it to you, and to myself, to tell you. I don’t suppose you’re ready to open a gallery in sunny San Diego?” She laughed and said she knew that wasn’t a real option.

  It was clear why she’d been in a good mood when she asked me to meet her. Making a decision, even an unpopular one, was a relief.

  Regardless, it hurt.

  “Tammy, you’re a fantastic woman. You gave me a chance to love again, something I never thought I’d do. You’re the strongest person I know. I have no doubt you’ll make the right decision. I don’t want you to leave, but also I don’t want to be the reason for you not following your head and heart.”

  We sat without speaking, just short of an eternity. The waitress reappeared and asked if we were ready to order. Tammy looked at me, and I knew food wasn’t what she needed.

  “No, sorry—just the check please,” I said. We left the restaurant, and I walked Tammy seven blocks to her loft. We held hands the entire way but didn’t speak. We both knew what it meant.

  Chapter20

  No matter how dark and bleak things have been the night before, the stubborn sun always rears its bright, glowing head over the horizon to say, “All’s right with the world.”

  Monday was no exception. Dogs by the dozens walked their masters, and construction vehicles crossed the bridge from the mainland and scurried to their job sites, most along the beach. A few early risers sleepwalked though the aisles of Bert’s Market looking for food to start their day. As for me, I walked to the restaurant in the Holiday Inn.

  I wasn’t ready to see Amber, speak to Charles, or carry on a stilted conversation with Dude, but after skipping the entrée last night, I was starved. The Holiday Inn restaurant fit the bill. I’d arrived in time to beat the rush of vacationers who were upstairs sleeping in the luxury of their king-sized beds or fixing coffee in their in-room coffeepot and sitting on the balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Early morning was my favorite time of day, with the lack of crowds adding to my enjoyment. The relative anonymity of the Holiday Inn gave me what I needed—time alone.

  My table gave me a fantastic view of the recently renovated pier. The sun appeared above the elevated shelter on the ocean end of the massive structure. I ordered and was quickly served a Holiday Inn quality breakfast—predictable, tasty, and good value, but nothing extraordinary. If only life could work that way. The meal met my need for a full stomach, but there were far more important questions to grapple with.

  Would Tammy take the job and leave? Could I pack up and head to the West Coast to be near her? Where was I going with Amber? Did I want to go anywhere with her? How could a preteen fit into my life—my set-in-my-ways life? Who had such a grudge against Larry that he would kill to prove a point? Was Larry’s life really in danger? And, most of all, could I do anything to prevent something terrible from happening to my friend?

  My coffee turned from steaming to cold long before I had answers. But one did come to me: regardless of what my friend Brian had cautioned, I had to do something to help Larry. He was my friend, and if the situation were reversed, he would be there for me—no doubt.

  ***

  Charles and Larry sat across from me at the table in my office. They’d come at my urgent request with no questions asked. “Larry,” I said, “the other day, you eliminated two of your cell mates from the suspect list.”

  “Right. It didn’t help much, did it?”

  “Yeah, it did,” added Charles before I could respond. “It told us why two people on this planet couldn’t be guilty.” He pointed his cane at the computer sitting on the other side of the room, “I’m not a mathematician, but it looks like we’ll have to speed up the process to eliminate everyone else.”

  Charles’s contribution: a dollop of logic that’s hard to argue with, but useless.

  “Larry,” I said, “I know this is difficult and we’re asking you to tell us stuff you’d like to keep in the past. But, there’s a big problem—someone’s out to get you, someone who has already murdered one person, and it looks like you may be next.”

  “Inaction is the only action that’s totally unacceptable,” said Charles.

  “What president said that?” I asked.

  “Don’t know that any did. But I just said it—didn’t you hear me? We’ve got to do something.”

  “That’s why I called both of you, taking Larry away from his store on a busy day,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Larry told me. “Monday’s best seller is drain plungers and plumbing snakes to empty the lines of all the crap the vacationers clog them with over the weekend—not my favorite day. Brandon can take care of it.”

  I refilled Larry and Charles’s mugs. “Now that you mentioned your workers, I heard something Saturday we should talk about.” I returned to my chair and relayed my conversation with Amber about Tony something.

  “Yeah,” said Larry, “that’s Tony Anderson. I fired him in January. Don’t know why I hired him in the first place. Actually, I do—I was desperate. It was last spring, and I had more customers than I knew what to do with.”

  “What happened? What was wrong with Tony?” asked Charles.

  “Nothing at first.” Larry laughed. “Things were good for at least two days—how’s that for a track record? He’s a big bruiser, six foot plus, and looks like he could lift a Volvo. Unfortunately, he has just as big a temper, and he’s a serious washout. He thought customer service meant not cussing them out when taking their money.”

  “Why’d you keep him?” asked Charles.

  “I didn’t know how bad he was for the first few months, not until some of my regulars begin calling me to say how he’d treated them. Then, he started bad-mouthing me every chance he got. I got rid of him as soon as I found Brandon.”

  “So Tony didn’t win too many Employee-of-the-Month awards,” said Charles in a rare case of understatement.

>   Larry stood and walked around the room. “Now that I think about it, the last thing he said after I fired him was, ‘you’ll regret it.’”

  Charles grabbed the legal pad from the shelf behind the table and with great flourish announced, “Now we have a list.”

  He hit the pad with his left hand. The table shook.

  “Chris,” said Charles, “When are you going to fix that leg? I don’t want the table to fall over when I’m making this critical list.” He gave me an exasperated look.

  “Gosh, Charles,” I said, “Why don’t we fix it now? Who cares about Larry’s problems?”

  He glared at me and didn’t say any more. My wobbly table leg could wait.

  “Larry,” I said, “what about before you were in prison? You must have irritated someone.”

  Charles looked up from his extensive list of one with his pen poised to add other names.

  Larry moved back to the coffeepot and asked us if we wanted more before he answered. “Well, I suspect I pissed a bunch of folks off when they discovered that their jewelry, coin collections, and cash had been lifted from their house while they were snug in bed. That’d really gall me.”

  “Gee,” said Charles, “that narrows it down a bunch. Don’t have a computer printout of all those people, do you?”

  Larry laughed but ignored Charles’s question. “Come to think of it, you could add all the insurance companies that were out too. But seriously, I can’t think of any one person.”

  “What about pawn shops, fences, or any partners you may have had that got in trouble because of your career?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said. “They all treated me fair, except the two who turned on me to save their hides. I should be mad at them and not the other way around. I worked with one other guy occasionally, but I wouldn’t call him a partner.”

  “Tell us about him,” said Charles, distracted from his list.

  “His name’s Woody Wilson. We called him WW. This goes back more than twenty years. Every once in a while, one of us had a big job and needed a lookout or someone to help carry the stuff out. I knew WW since our day working in chop shops. He was great with the blowtorch. We had a big job in one of the ritzy parts of Atlanta.” He hesitated, then looked at the ceiling. “He did all the work. I was his lookout. Alarms were never his strength, and the big sucker of a house had one of the best; one of those unfair silent ones. They don’t make any noise to give a self-respecting burglar a chance to get away.”

  “And?” Charles prodded him.

  Larry gave Charles a dirty look before continuing, “It was the middle of the night in an isolated cul-de-sac. Big, expensive brick houses, huge trees everywhere. I remember the crickets were so loud, I couldn’t hear myself think. When I heard cars approaching, I knew it wasn’t the newspaper delivery boy. I skedaddled.”

  “I assume Mr. W got caught,” I said, stating the obvious. Charles had already written Woody Wilson on the list that had now doubled.

  “Yeah, we didn’t have cell phones, so I didn’t have any way to warn him without going into the house. I didn’t think that would have been a wise thing to do.” Another awkward pause. “He’s a sad story, really. WW was sent to prison a couple of years before the state of Georgia began paying my housing. He got out in two years. Married three or four times, to drug addicts I heard, had some kids, and then returned to a life of crime. He blamed me for everything that went wrong and even wrote me a few letters from jail. I didn’t reply after the first two, he was so bitter.”

  Larry had our undivided attention. “Sounds like someone we need to tell the chief about,” said Charles. “Why didn’t you think of him before?”

  “I guess,” said Larry, looking down at his hand, “because it was more than twenty years ago.”

  Charles threw the pen into the air and stared at his list of two. “Still, why didn’t you start with WW?”

  “Any idea where he is?” I asked.

  “No.” But Larry was slow with his reply. “No, not really. Like I said, I haven’t seen him for twenty years, and I just heard the other stuff through the grapevine. For all I know he may still be in prison.”

  Larry gave us the name of the prison and even the phone number for the former guard he knew. Scribe Charles wrote it all down. I had no idea how to find out about someone who was in prison twenty years ago, but said I’d try.

  “Moving right along.” Charles looked up from the paper. “Anybody else from your ancient past? Somebody’s got a mighty big grudge?”

  “Sorry, guys,” said Larry. He held out his hands, palms up.

  “Then how about now?” I asked. “Competitors? Anyone trying to get your business or shut you down?”

  “Yeah,” chimed in Charles, “Maybe nobody wants to hurt you—just run you out of business.”

  “Then why not kill me rather than some homeless guy?” asked Larry.

  Good question, I thought.

  “Heck if I know,” said Charles. “But let’s follow Chris’s line of thinking—competitors?”

  “Not really,” said Larry. “About the closest thing is Ben Malloy.”

  Charles looked at me. “Malloy owns that small engine repair shop just off the island on the right. It looks like a dump.”

  “It’s that faded concrete block building,” said Larry. “The auto parts store that had half the building moved in January, and Ben’s trying to expand into that space. I think he wants to get into selling tools and more of the stuff I carry.”

  “Any run-ins with him?” I asked.

  “Nah, he’s a good guy. Jolly, grossly overweight. He even rode with me to a hardware convention in Columbia last year. I don’t see him as a suspect.”

  “Sorry, Larry.” Charles started to write another name on his list—Ben Malloy, I’d bet. “It’s your job to give us the suspects. Chris and I’ll figure out who’s trying to do you in.”

  That didn’t have a pleasant ring to it.

  “One more question,” said Charles. “Did you give jolly-ole Ben a cap?”

  Larry hesitated, gazed at the ceiling, and then with a sheepish grin turned to Charles: “Yeah, I did.”

  “See,” said Charles. “The list expands.”

  Expanding the list further had to wait. The bell on the front door announced the arrival of someone. A young couple, I soon learned to be honeymooners from Boone, North Carolina, entered the gallery arm in arm. Charles took one look at them and decided they were here to stay for a while, so he said he’d walk over to the Dog and rustle us up some lunch. All I had to do was give him money. Larry said he would go with Charles. I wasn’t that hungry, but trying to dissuade Charles regarding his intended feast would have been futile.

  The bride of two days stopped at every framed work and asked where it had been taken, when it was taken, (and my favorite), why it was taken. Her spouse followed behind looking at the price tags. Once she’d checked out the walls, Mrs. Newlywed began thumbing through the images in the display bins. She picked out six prints and set them side by side on the floor, rearranging the order no fewer than five times. I could tell her husband would rather be anywhere than in Landrum Gallery as he kept staring out the window overlooking Center Street. After rearrangement number six, she asked if I would be here Friday. I assured her I would, and she said they needed to start working on their tan but would be back. Sure they would.

  Charles and Larry returned before the honeymooners had time to reach the natural tanning bed on the beach.

  “Ah, youth.” Charles set the Styrofoam clamshell containers on the table in the office. “I wouldn’t do it over if I had a chance.”

  “I would,” Larry said as he put the drinks by the food. “Yes, I would in a heartbeat change a bunch of things. Yep, I sure would.”

  I agreed with Charles.

  “So,” said
Charles, digging through the bag to find his plastic fork, “I’ve been good and let you two talk about everything you wanted to—now, can we talk about Larry’s loves? I’ve been waiting for days.”

  “Then you can wait a few more minutes,” I said. It was time to attack the food. “While you were gone, I thought of one other thing. Larry, can you think of any angry customers or others you’ve dealt with at the store?”

  Larry put down his Tasty Thai wrap and wiped his lips, “Angry customers? Sure, many of my customers come in angry. A toilet running over brings out the worst in even the kindest soul.” He paused, then took another bite of his wrap, and laughed. “I remember Old Mr. Martin coming in last month with a huge white bandage on his forehead. He was fuming. Wanted to buy a hardhat and a sledgehammer. He said he’d been trying to tear down an old storage building for four weeks. Actually, he called the building everything he could think of but a storage building—I’d never heard some of the words before. I was smart enough not to ask about the bandage. Yep, he was angry.”

  “Larry,” Charles asked between bites of his chicken salad croissant, “you didn’t hit him in the head, did you? He wasn’t angry with you. If that’s the best you can do, we’re wasting our time. Let’s talk about chicks.”

  Three more potential customers visited and frustrated Charles’s quest for the goods on Larry’s love life. I doubted that discussion would be fruitful, but Charles wasn’t to be denied. However, I didn’t help him. “I’m getting tired of sitting here,” I said. “Let’s get some air.”

  They were to the door before I finished suggesting a walk. Charles had grabbed the “Open When I’m Here” sign as Larry removed the trash from the table.

  It was a fantastic day, not quite as hot as the last few, and I wasn’t going to let the need for the dollar dissuade me from enjoying my semiretirement. I pushed thoughts of paying bills out of my mind and enjoyed the stroll to the pier. The streets were crowded but not unusually so for July. Charles stopped to pet each dog that had its leash tied to the miniature lighthouses conveniently placed along the street to accommodate the canine population. He knew most of them by name. Larry called Brandon to make sure nothing out of the ordinary had happened at the store.