by Pat McKee
Out of options, she turned and fled. I let her go.
The damage to my backpack was minimal, a four-inch slash; the shotgun suffered a gouge in the barrel, but the harm was only cosmetic. My hand was bleeding, the worst of it a gash in my index finger, a flap of skin peeled back, and I grabbed a T-shirt from my pack and wrapped it around my hand to staunch the blood. I was more fearful of the beating the computer had taken, though I decided not to take the time to check it out where I stood. I figured I had to get back to the truck before my assailant returned with reinforcements or alarmed neighbors called the police. I set out at a jog toward Buddy’s.
My heart rate had just about dropped to normal when I got back to my truck and tossed my backpack safe in the seat. Buddy emerged from his shop.
“You still want that burger?”
Buddy was good for a burger to go and some first aid for my wound. Said he’d never seen the girl before, probably just off the interstate looking for someone to shake down. When he took a look at my cut, he said the blood made it look worse than it was. Turns out Buddy was an EMT before he started his restaurant, and just about everyone in town stopped by if they needed help. The wound cleaned, I was ready to set out, gauze taped around my finger. I followed a steady line of traffic along the detour back to the interstate. An hour after being saved by Reverend Duffle, robbed by a roadside hustler, and reassembled by Buddy, I was again heading down I-95 to Miami, about two hours behind schedule.
Fourteen
I was to meet Placido at the Cape Florida Lighthouse. It was a place iconic in my childhood, a story I’d shared with Melissa during our only night together—a night that threatened to fade into the past even as I struggled to hold on to its memory, a night that motivated me to press on, to do all I could to get back to her. No doubt it was she who suggested to Placido that we meet at the lighthouse, a place where, as a boy, my mother would take me, one of the few fond memories of her I’d managed to salvage from the wreckage of my childhood.
The island road ended about halfway down the key, and Mom and I would hike to the beach through a forest of tall Australian pines. They blocked all outside sound, and entering the forest was like entering a sanctuary. All we could hear was the soughing of the wind, the whispering of an unseen congregation. Beyond the emerald forest, a beach so white and an ocean so blue that I used to take two jars, one for sand and one for sea, hoping to capture their essence and keep them forever.
We usually had the beach to ourselves. Mom would spread a blanket under the shade of a palm tree. Her wide-brimmed hat, gaudy with a ribbon tied around the crown, her face relaxed and eyes bright as she watched me while I swam or hunted for shells. It became our ritual to walk to the ruins of the old Cape Florida lighthouse at the end of the key before we headed home. Seminoles had built a bonfire at the base of the lighthouse to burn out the keeper, whom they thought was signaling settlers to come take their land. The lighthouse was not repaired. The watchtower where the beacon once shone was bent and twisted by the flames and corroded by more than a century of exposure to the salt air, and nothing was left on the inside. If you gathered your courage, you could squeeze through a crack in the jammed door to look up the darkened brick to the sunlight above.
That was when Dad worked in the booming construction industry in South Florida. All this was before—before Dad took Mom and me to South Carolina in search of work when the boom was over. Before they found jobs at one of Milano’s mills. Before our lives spiraled downward from there.
The little town of Laurens was a far cry from Miami, where even without money there was a lot to do. When we got to South Carolina, both of my parents concentrated their efforts on staying drunk as much as possible, so even before Dad died and Mom gave up, I’d pretty much raised myself. And it had been that way ever since, with the fortunate intervention of Thornwood. If anyone could say that it was a stroke of luck to be sent off to an orphanage, I was the one.
It was closing in on two o’clock in the morning, I’d been on the road about seven hours and covered about three hundred miles, but I still had more than a hundred and fifty to get to Key Biscayne. By this point, I’d memorized every squeak and cough, every rattle and bang, of the truck’s ancient drive train. Now I was hearing a different sort of rumble. At first I thought it was my imagination—after all, I hadn’t slept, and I was spinning on high doses of caffeine I picked up from every Starbucks I passed. But after time, I realized this was indeed something new. I tried to ignore it, hoping it would get better or go away. It didn’t, and it only got worse. I resolved to pull off the next promising exit and check it out.
The exit for Fellsmere showed several service stations which were lit up and appeared to be open. I pulled into one that had a 24-hour food mart, stopped at a pump, went inside, and handed the attendant $40.00 for gas. I’d been traveling on cash, certain that any use of a credit card or ATM would set off alarms, and I now only had enough for about one more fill up and some food. I was going to count on Placido when we met, but I had to get there first.
It didn’t take a master mechanic to figure out what was making the rumbling sound: the tread on the right front was almost separated from the rest of the tire and looked to be only a few miles from a complete blow out. The time spent in the woods at Grey’s had contributed to serious dry rot all the way around, but that tire was the worst. I hoped I could limp the rest of the way on the others, but I’d have to replace the front one. I looked under the truck for the spare. There was none.
It took a few seconds for the desperation of my situation to sink in. It was 2:00 a.m. I was still about three hours from Miami, and I was expected to meet Placido in the morning. If I had to wait until a tire store opened at nine to get my tire fixed, Placido would likely have given up on me before I got there. Besides that, if what I needed was a new tire, I had no money to buy one, and I dared not use my credit card.
There had to be some repair shop open 24-hours close by the interstate. The best way to find it was on my laptop, which I pulled out of my backpack for the first time since it had almost been stolen from me. I didn’t even know if it would work after all the rough treatment it had gotten. But the service station touted free WiFi, so I decided to give it a shot.
I opened my computer, powered up, and Ariel’s face appeared.
“Your disguise works well. I didn’t recognize you until I did a retina scan. Your computer has taken a beating in the last few hours. It was hard for me to tell what was happening. Did you have an accident?”
“Someone tried to steal my backpack along with everything I have, including my computer. There was a foot chase and a knife fight.” I held my hand up to the screen. “Got slashed with a box cutter. I’m lucky to have gotten it back. But right now, I have an even bigger problem.” I explained.
“I can let Placido know you will be delayed. Two miles from here is a tire store that opens at eight in the morning. They have all sizes of tires in stock. I have scheduled you for their first appointment. You can get an entire new set of tires, be on the road by nine, and meet Placido at the lighthouse by noon.”
“Ariel, that all sounds good, but I have no money to pay for a new set of tires. I can’t use a credit card, I can’t use my bank card at an ATM, and I have to use cash. Unless you can convince the people at the tire store to give me the tires for free, we still have a problem.”
“Paul, cash is never a problem. There is an ATM in the food mart in the service station. Just walk up to it and smile in the camera.”
“And who said computers don’t have a sense of humor. Sorry, I’m afraid my good looks won’t work.”
“Paul, you do not understand. All you have to do is walk up to the ATM, look in the camera so I know you are there, and I will give you some cash.”
I walked in and went to the ATM and smiled. Nothing happened. The attendant was looking at me funny. Then the cash dispenser whirred and $1,000.00 in twenties popped
out. I took it, smiled at the attendant, and walked away. I sat back down in my truck, incredulous, and popped open my laptop. Ariel appeared.
“Where did that money come from? Did you just help me rob an ATM?”
“I accessed the cash from the ATM. I checked the cost of the tires. This cash will be enough.”
“It’s plenty. I still don’t know where it came from. But I’m not going to worry about it now. I’m going to pull my truck over, park, and get some rest before the tire store opens.”
When the rising sun woke me, I went in the service station, bought some toiletries, and cleaned up in the bathroom. By now I looked so scruffy I didn’t recognize myself. But they were waiting for me when they opened at AAA-All-Wheel-Tires.
“Mr. Grey, I see your assistant made an appointment for you this morning. What can we help you with?” With the cash Ariel got me, I had them put new tires on all around. Before I handed him the keys, he told me to get any valuables I had out of the truck. I grabbed my backpack.
“Don’t worry about those rods and that tackle box in the back. There’s some pretty serious fishermen around here, and I don’t think anyone’ll be bothering your gear.”
“Tell you what. Have your man throw that stuff in the trash. It’s been in the back of the truck for a while, and it’s time to get rid of it.”
I watched “Good Morning America” on the television in the waiting room, checking to see if there was a manhunt in South Florida. So far I wasn’t on the most wanted list. I tanked up on their free coffee and donuts. One hour and six hundred dollars later the attendant handed me the keys, and I threw my backpack into the truck beside me. But before I pulled out of the lot I powered up my laptop.
“Everything worked out great. Thanks. You really helped me out back there.”
“We’re pretty good together, don’t you think?”
Was she flirting with me? I decided to play along, just to see how far she was willing to go.
“You know, when this is over, we should spend more time together, maybe . . .”
“So, what do you have in mind?”
“Well, you certainly surprised me when you popped in at Agent Grey’s, I had no idea you are so, so . . .”
“Attractive?”
“I was going to say ‘beautiful’, but I think ‘attractive’ hits it even better. You may think I’m crazy, but I’m sure I’ve seen you before . . . can you, well, did you make your image appear in the sea, off Frederica Island, when I was swimming? I swear I saw your face . . .”
“You would be surprised what I can do in the water Paul . . .”
“So, could I kiss you in the water?”
“You could kiss me now.”
I pecked the screen on Ariel’s forehead. The screen went blank.
By 9:00 a.m., and absent a mess of fishing tackle which only attracted scorn, I was back on I-95 heading toward Miami. It’s amazing what a new set of tires will do for an old truck.
I had no idea what I was looking for as I crossed the bridge to the key, the sun warming Biscayne Bay and its sandy beaches. It was almost noon. I drove the length of the island. I found the abandoned lighthouse had since become the centerpiece of a state park. The road now cut to the end of the key, the Australian pine forest had been leveled and paved over with an asphalt slab sufficient to accommodate busses and RV’s, and the lighthouse had been restored to a state it never achieved during its useful life. It was so unlike the beautiful key I remembered from my childhood that it was a wonder to me why any tourists were attracted to the spot, but from the look of the parking lot they certainly were, by the hundreds. Their umbrellas, cabanas, towels, coolers, and grills appeared to be covering every square inch of available sand as I swung by the edge of the lot, peering onto the crowded beach, looking for I knew not what.
Lighthouse Park remained a family beach, unlike the more famous South Beach just one island to the north. A smile broke across my face as I recognized a cluster of palm trees, the shadow of the lighthouse across the cut. Yet my eyes were met by a number of glares from bikini-clad girls, and I realized how much of a type I appeared, scruffy redneck, ball cap, mirrored sunglasses, T-shirt, and jeans in a noisy pickup truck, cruising the beachside parking lot filled with Beamers and Benzes, gawking. Just another dirty old man seeking a free shot of teenaged flesh. As I panned the park and saw the others of my ilk, drunks lying on poured-concrete picnic benches, homeless sleeping under shuffle-board pavilions, old men leaning head-on-chest against restroom walls, there seemed something of a truce among these warring camps. The beach was theirs, while the old men lurked near the parking lot. The glares were a warning, a shot across the bow.
“Stay off the beach, old man,” their eyes said. “Don’t get any ideas.”
I saw no one who looked like the Placido of the recent computer message, though I didn’t expect him to look conspicuous. But if he was here, he needed to make himself known, for I expected the number of undesirables had reached critical mass, and they would soon be rousted by the beach police. I didn’t want to give the authorities another sighting of Agent Grey. I elected to park at the far end of the lot, close to a scrap of shade mercifully provided by a grove of pines spared the bulldozer, and walked the few-hundred yards to the beach. I was hoping to catch a glance of someone who looked like Placido without being first run off as a voyeur.
I soon understood why only the drunks were wearing pants. You had to be out of your senses to move in this heat with a lot of clothes on, but I didn’t want to risk losing Agent Grey’s identity—he wasn’t the surfer-dude type, the predominant look adopted by the males under the shadow of the lighthouse. Yet the more I walked around those who were beach-clad, the more out of place I felt. Placido had no more of an idea of whom to look for than I did. I had the conflicting goals of looking conspicuous enough for Placido to pick me from a crowd yet looking inconspicuous enough not to be picked from the crowd by someone looking for a murder suspect.
After ten minutes of fruitlessly scanning the beach for Placido, arousing the hostile glares of tanned beauties wearing bikinis so small they seemed to be wearing nothing at all, I slumped in the shade on an unoccupied portion of the restroom wall and surveyed the drunks. Here was the detritus of the world I lived in, the inevitable result of competition where winners take all and losers take nothing and end up nowhere. To what extent had my single-minded drive to professional success led to casualties such as these? Big firm lawyers weren’t the usual product of Thornwood Orphanage, and there were those, some my own classmates, who were probably no better off than the homeless of Cape Florida.
One man stood out from the others, the expensive tailoring of his rumpled and soiled clothes, his upright bearing, his piercing glance. If I squinted a bit, I could imagine the high forehead under the greasy felt hat and the prominent cheek bones behind the beard, a far better disguise than mine. His bright eyes seemed to welcome mine, and I thought I detected an almost imperceptible nod in my direction. He was flanked on either side by two of the scruffiest looking drunks at the park. I got up and walked toward him, looking for a more decisive sign of recognition.
“Well, I have been waiting for you. Let’s make some room here.” The old man began shoving the drunks on either side out of the way. “They don’t feel a thing.” One toppled over, apparently unconscious, sand gnats congregating at the corners of his eyes and mouth. The stench was thick.
“Sit down here. Now we have a lot to talk about don’t we?”
I looked around. “Don’t you think we ought to be going? I don’t think it’s safe here.”
He brightened. “Indeed, you are right. But don’t you think we should get to know each other before rushing off? One can’t be too careful you know.”
“You’re not looking for Melissa, are you?”
“Oh, no. I’m not looking for anyone named Melissa. I’m looking for you.”
“I am very sorry to have bothered you. I’m looking for someone else.”
He rose indignantly, brushed off his suit.
“Indeed you are. I thought you were a cut above the rest. Apparently I was wrong.” He stomped off, forfeiting his place in the shade, leaving me between two drunks, one of whom began to stir and leaned back on me and moaned. I shoved him. This time he wouldn’t budge. He opened one eye and winked.
“I figured you’d be looking for someone a bit more well-dressed than me. That old boy’s made a pass at every drunk on the beach. Now you’ve made him mad.”
“Placido?” I was no longer in the mood for subtleties.
“Yes. I suppose I should’ve given you an idea of whom to look for, but as our friend said, one can’t be too careful. In a minute I need you to grab me under the arms and lift me up like you’re rescuing a drunk. We can stumble to your truck. I know someone who has a place close by where we can clean up and get a plan together.
“Someone we can trust?”
“Hector.”
Fifteen
“Cabrini? I spent six years fighting that bastard while he tried to steal all you worked for, and now you tell me to trust him? I risked my ass to come here to meet with Cabrini?”
I was so angry at Placido I swerved the truck off the narrow track onto the shoulder, overcorrected the steering, slid the rear wheels in the gravel, and hit the brakes just before ending up in the mangrove swamp that lined the ditch.