“Simon is no friend of mine,” Pilate said.
“I’m hurt,” Simon said from his perch in Pilate’s mind.
“Perhaps not a friend, but a constant companion,” Sandburg said. “Who do you think he represents?”
“A rat.”
“Simon the rat,” he mused for a moment, tapping his pen to his teeth. “Considering your literary ambitions, I would have thought you would have called him Ben or Willard,” Sandburg said.
Pilate shrugged. “Simon Templar was the name an orphan chose,” Pilate said.
“You consider yourself an orphan?”
“I don’t know,” Pilate said. “In some ways, yes. I don’t think I was ever fully part of the family, though I’m not sure why.”
“Let’s table that for now. Back to Simon. Perhaps Simon is negative when he speaks to you because you want to keep yourself clean and clear of negative thoughts,” he said. “Perhaps John Pilate wishes to reclaim that innocent little boy who took the rat’s tooth for his trouble. Simon is what you invest your negativity, cynicism, and anger in.”
“I don’t know,” Pilate said.
“What does Simon say to that?” Sandburg said.
“How should I know? It’s not like I conjure him up at will—at least not consciously.”
“Okay,” Sandburg said, looking at the clock.
“Simon says this is all the most exquisite bullshit he’s ever heard.”
“Time up?” Pilate said, sitting on the edge of the sofa.
“For today,” Sandburg said. “Can you come back next week?”
“We’ll see,” Pilate said. “I have to get this book done. Therapy’s a luxury.”
“How long you here?” Sandburg said, opening his calendar.
“A few more weeks,” Pilate said.
“Come back same time next week,” he said. “I’d like to circle back to what happened to you at Cross College…and perhaps we can talk about your family.”
“Okay, Doc,” Pilate said, taking the appointment card. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER THREE
The water held little interest—just a cursory walk through the waves that reached up to his knees—but the rented beach chair, beaming sun, and half-full bottle of rum (or half-empty, depending on how one looked at it) carelessly hidden in a ditty bag did. He dozed off and on, and dried strands of seaweed clung to his sandy feet.
“Did you get shot?”
Pilate opened his eyes, squinting at a boy of about ten. He had large brown eyes and a shock of unruly, dark hair. His wide eyes took in the sight of buckshot scars in Pilate’s shoulder. Those scars would forever be with him—a reminder that poking his nose into other people’s business could prove fatal. “What?”
The boy pointed at the red spots on his sunburned skin.
“Nah,” he said, squinting at the boy. “Just some pimples.”
“Oh,” the boy said, deflated. “Well, it looks cool.”
“Thanks, kid,” Pilate said. “Don’t you have some sandcastles to build or something?”
“Travis and Kirk always kick them down anyway,” he said, looking to the horizon.
“Who are they? Your brothers?”
“No way! They’re turds that floated in from Miami, or at least that’s what Daddy says about them.”
“Well, the best way to handle turds is to flush ‘em,” Pilate said.
“Yeah. I wish I could.”
Pilate blinked and sat up. “Where’s your dad?”
The boy pointed to a tall, beet-red man sleeping on a towel thirty yards away.
“Hmm. Well, you probably ought to make sure he isn’t getting a sunburn,” Pilate said.
“Okay. Thanks, Mr..”
“Anytime,” Pilate said, reaching for the rum that was so discreetly tucked in the ditty bag.
“My name’s Finn,” said the boy.
“Like a shark fin?” Pilate pointed out at the sea.
The boy looked puzzled, and then his eyes flashed in recognition. He laughed. “No. Mine has two Ns in it, like a Finnegan!”
“My name’s John, Finn. Nice to meet you.”
“Okay. I better go now.” Finn trudged through the sand to his lobster-skinned father.
Pilate sipped the rum and checked his watch: three o’clock. He could get back to Trevathan’s place and work on the book for a few hours before he hit Duval Street for dinner.
A brunette woman with porcelain skin, probably on the early side of her forties, claimed a beach chair under a striped umbrella just six feet away. A black tankini and red sarong complemented her curves. She had a public radio tote bag slung over one shoulder and large red sunglasses on her face, conjuring up thoughts of a mature Lolita in Pilate’s mind.
She sat, flipped her sunglasses on top of her head, and unpacked two paperbacks, a bottle of sunscreen, an insulated water bottle, and a cell phone. Pilate found it strangely fascinating the way she situated herself, the meticulous way she positioned her things just so. She sipped from her bottle, checked her cell phone, smiled with a pixie grin, and picked up a book, thumbing the pages open to a point midway through.
She had a face and body that would warrant a double-take from most men; at the very least, they’d call that curvy, small stature of hers cute. Her face was pretty; her tiny nose and bee-stung lips gave Pilate cause to surmise she had enjoyed a mischievous youth. She had a way about her—something he recognized.
“Relief and contentment,” Pilate said.
“Excuse me?” the woman said.
Startled, Pilate looked around, assuming she had to be talking to someone other than him.
“Yes, you—with the mouth like a trout,” she said, flashing that pixie grin again.
“Oh, yes. Sorry,” he said. “Accidently talking to myself, I suppose.”
“Accidentally? And you said, ‘relief’?” she queried.
“Well, yeah—that and ‘contentment.’ You…uh, pardon me for staring, but you just look so relieved and content to be sitting on the beach.”
“That’s because I am,” she said. “I have a job, a husband, three kids, two dogs, a cat, and an asthmatic gerbil named Larry, and they consume almost every moment of my day—every day.”
“I see,” Pilate said, trying to picture what an asthmatic rodent might look like.
“I hit my wall a few days ago—just had enough. I told the whole family to stuff it, said, ‘Mommy needs a vacation’,” she said with a proud-of-herself grin spreading across her face. “Just me and Robert Parker,” she said, holding up a Jesse Stone novel.
“Good for you,” he said. “Anyway, I didn’t want anything, and I’m sorry if I disturbed you from your reading and relaxing.”
She looked him over and laid the book in her lap. “It’s okay. It’s nice to be noticed by somebody who doesn’t want anything from me for a change,” she said, adding a sarcastic “I guess.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, if I wanted something, I’d definitely want it from someone like you—”
“Keep talking like that, and you’re going to make me swoon,” she said, sipping from her insulated bottle, her eyes brilliant.
“I’m an idiot. Sorry,” he said, turning away.
“Well, that may be, but you’re kind of a cute idiot,” she said, bringing the book up to eye level, as if she was going back to her reading.
“As are you,” Pilate said. “Well, I mean, you’re not an idiot but you’re… Anyway, what are you drinking?”
“Vodka and juice,” she said.
“Rum,” he said, holding up his poorly disguised bottle.
“I never would have known. Astrid,” she said, dropping the book again, revealing a mouthful of straight, brilliant white teeth.
Cheerleader. In school, she was a cheerleader, albeit not the stereotypical, brainless variety, Pilate decided. Pilate had dated a cheerleader in high school, and that one went on to Harvard Law. This woman was that type of cheerleader.
“My name’s Astrid
. Columbus, Ohio.”
“Hi, Astrid, from Columbus, Ohio,” he said. “John. John Pilate from the great state of—”
The ring of Astrid’s cell phone interrupted him. Her pixie smile fell away; a mask of responsibility and fatigue fell over her features as she picked it up.
Making an apologetic face, she closed her book, turned away from Pilate, and entered into a discussion with someone he figured was either the husband, the job, the kids, or possibly Larry the asthmatic gerbil—obviously one of the culprits accused of always wanting something from her.
Pilate smiled, lay on his back, and ran his own book through his mind. Skeleton’s finished, he thought. Just need to add some meat and sinew—maybe even a little fat to get that word count up.
Astrid began arguing with whoever was calling.
What I really need is a hot streak, where the muse stops in, drops her clothes, and stays a while to screw with my brain. During his average hot streak, he’d start writing in the morning and forget to eat, piss, or look up for eight or nine hours. The problem is, that muse could be a fickle, independent bitch at times, and she never seemed to show up when he most needed her to.
He saw spots before his eyes as he gathered his sandy towel, sunscreen, t-shirt, and rum and shoved them into a beat-up backpack. Rum and sun. He gave Astrid a little wave.
She offered a little wave of her own, along with a wink as she covered the phone with her hand. “If I were a little more courageous…” she whispered.
“And if I was a lot more lucky…” he whispered back.
With that, her brilliant pixie smile returned. Astrid continued her conversation as Pilate walked back up the beach. The boy Finn piled sand on his sleeping father’s ankles. Yep, Finn’s Daddy’s a lobster, and boy, is that going to be a misery in the morning.
Pilate’s eyes adjusted from the sun to the relative gloom inside the house as he dropped his sandy beach gear near the door. He went upstairs, turned on the shower, and stripped down to his birthday suit.
The phone rang, and he left the shower, running to answer it in the nude. “Hello?”
“John?” The familiar gruffness of Dean Trevathan filled the earpiece.
“Yep. What’s up?”
“Well, John, I just thought you’d want to know that Jack Lindstrom is dead.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“No,” Trevathan said. “Blew his own face off with a 12 gauge.”
“Christ,” Pilate said, sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I assume it was…on purpose?”
“Yeah,” Trevathan answered. “At least it looks like it.”
Lindstrom, the conniving former president of Cross College, was out on bond, but there was no doubt he’d be doing hard time for his role in the chain of events that had led to the deaths of several people, not to mention Pilate’s near-murder.
“John?”
“I’m here—just processing.” Pilate heard the shower; steam escaped the bathroom. “You figure it was just because he couldn’t face going to prison?”
“Well, yes and no. Apparently, Jack had a lot going on.” Trevathan cleared his throat. “Beyond what even we knew about.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say his wife was willing to stay by his side until he got released on bond. No idea why she decided that was the time to make her move. Next day, Jack broke the terms of his bail and flew the coop, right out to his summer home in Naples.”
“He had a summer home in Italy? No way!”
“No, John. Florida—Naples, Florida—just a few hundred miles from where you are now actually.”
Suddenly, Pilate’s skin was pimpled with goosebumps, though he was sure the temperature in the room had less to do with it than this breaking news. “I was just getting into the shower,” he said. “Let me put on a robe.” While Trevathan waited, Pilate turned off the water, slipped into a robe, and poured the last drops of rum. He picked up the phone. “Now, tell me more,” he said.
Trevathan related the rest of the story: Lindstrom was up on charges of fraud, accessory to murder, conspiracy, embezzlement, and perjury. “I just can’t figure why they let him out on bail,” Trevathan said. “I mean his actions—however indirect—clearly led to people’s deaths.”
“Well, I’m sure they were framing it as a white-collar thing. It seems crimes committed in the name of commerce are treated differently than others,” Pilate said. “Justice, huh? In any case, Olafson was the real psycho behind the whole thing.”
Trevathan grunted. “I think Lindstrom’s wife leaving him was the last straw,” he said. “He got to Naples and went to his summer home on the harbor. He was there a couple of days before he downed an entire bottle of Scotch, wrote a note saying he couldn’t go to prison, and unlocked his front door.”
“He was there a couple of days before that though? Doing what?” Pilate inquired, sipping a drink of his own.
“Dunno. Probably squirreling up the balls to pull the trigger. Nobody saw him there,” Trevathan said, coughing.
“Sounds like him,” Pilate said. “He was pretty calculating, almost conniving.”
“Well, after the note was placed and the door was unlocked, our calculating former boss sat in the bathtub and blew his face off,” Trevathan said. “Neighbors heard the blast.”
Pilate reeled at this detail, touching his own face where shotgun pellets had been removed after his altercation with Cross Township Mayor Ollie Olafson.
“Funny,” Trevathan said. “He never struck me as the kind of guy who’d shoot himself.”
“Yeah. He was so meticulous about his appearance,” Pilate said, recalling the always-crisp Lands’ End wardrobe and manicured hands.
“Of course it figures he would leave a bloody fucking mess for somebody else to clean up, the bastard.”
“True,” Pilate said. “Typical. In any event, I hope his wife’s okay.”
“Yeah, she’s always been a nice lady. He sure as hell didn’t deserve her,” Trevathan said. “But anyway, I suppose that’s neither here nor there now,” Trevathan said. “He’s gone—just like Olafson and his nitwit son and all the rest of ‘em.”
“Kate know?”
Trevathan paused a moment, and Pilate surmised he was taking a drink, too, before he answered, “Yep. I told her.”
“She okay?”
“Yeah. You know Kate—she’s made of tough stuff,” he said, coughing again.
“Yeah,” Pilate said. “You still have that nasty cough?”
“You got it. Can’t shake this cold I guess.” He cleared his throat again. “John?”
“Uh-huh?”
“She needs you right about now, don’t you think?”
“Thanks for calling,” Pilate said. “You coming out here soon?”
“Just as soon as finals are over. I’ll show you how to fish.”
“Looking forward to it,” he said. “And I’ll call Kate.”
Pilate said goodbye and drank his drink. He picked up the phone and dialed. “Hi,” he said.
“I just heard,” she said.
“News travels fast,” Pilate said.
“You know what they say about Cross,” she said mirthlessly.
“What’s that?”
“You can’t fart on one side of town without the other side knowing about it.”
He smiled. “That old chestnut.”
A pause.
“I guess nobody in this town ever dreamt that another Cross College president would get shot in the face,” Kate said.
“Holy shit,” Pilate said. “I hadn’t even thought of that.” The root of Pilate’s involvement in solving the mystery of Cross Township, where he had met Kate and fallen in love with her, was the murder of the college president in November of 1963. “That is just…ironic.”
“Yes, it really is,” Kate said, sighing. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. Just up here trying to make the words come out in the right order so I can finish the book.�
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“Well, it would seem you have a new chapter to write,” Kate said.
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that either,” he said, looking at his empty glass.
“Better call your agent,” she said.
“Yeah, you’re right. I better. How’s Kara?”
“Oh fine. She misses her ‘pilot’ friend,” Kate said, her voice brightening, “and so do I.”
“I miss you too.”
“So when will you be back?” she said.
“Well, I’m thinking as soon as I finish this first draft. At this rate, though, it’ll be right on time for Kara’s high school graduation.”
“Funny guy,” Kate said.
“Kate, I’ll be back in three more weeks. Trevathan and I are going to do a little fishing, and then I’m back…promise.”
“Hold you to it,” she said.
“You better, you better, you bet.”
Pilate called his agent and broke the news. She was excited, inappropriately so in Pilate’s opinion.
“Oh my God, sassy cat! Another bizarre twist,” she said. “I love it.”
“Angie? What the hell?”
“Well, I mean, it’s very sad.” Her voice lowered, and she paused two seconds. “But let me just say I think you may have an even better shot at the bestseller list now.”
“Great. Well, I may need you to work on this deadline for me then. I’m going to need a little extra time.”
Angie sighed. “John, I’ll try, but we honestly can’t be messing around with this one. You know how publishing is. We have to strike while the iron’s hot on this thing, okay?”
“Yup. Just get me another month or so if you can,” he said. “Gotta go. Call me when you know more.”
“All right, John, but in the meantime, get those fingers on the keys—”
Click.
He hung up. She was right, but the latest wrinkle was just a little too much drama on top of everything else. He needed a night to let it all sink in.
Tonight, I’ll be back on Duval Street.
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