by Jim Markson
He bought some surf shorts and a T-shirt at the gift shop, then showered and changed. The van arrived at 10:00 am Wednesday morning. He loaded the boat in the back and pulled down the door. The drive back to Tampa took seven hours.
XVI
Mike wondered if his townhouse had stunk this bad before he left. He had noticed it immediately upon entering last night but was too tired to do anything about it. With the morning, it seemed even worse. After dropping off the van, he started to look for the source, but there didn’t seem to be anything specific—the place just stank. He wasn’t due back at the office until the following Monday and, although he had intended to go in earlier, he decided to do some cleaning first. What he thought would take a couple of hours landed up taking two days. It was still March, and the weather was good, so he started by opening every window in the house. There was an immediate improvement. He washed and vacuumed, he scrubbed and scoured. He got distracted from one job and started another but, after two days, he declared the place shipshape.
He scrubbed the boat inside and out, running his hands along her paint, looking for scratches or cracks; she had come through with no serious damage. He pulled her back to his shed, tilted her on end, and walked her inside. “I know it ain’t as good as when you stayed with John, but it’s all we got now. I promise I’ll take you out as soon I get caught up at work.” He put his hand on her side, patting her gently, and whispered “thank you” before he closed the shed door.
Monday morning came and Mike returned to the real world in the form of his job with Hillsborough Sheriff’s Department. He had lasted two years as a Special Agent with the FBI. Worked at the Joint Terrorist Task Force, or JTTF, in Atlanta, handling counter-terrorist investigations. At first, he was excited at the thought of working against terrorists; the idea of preventing a terrorist attack incorporated the sum of all his professional hopes. But it took him less than six weeks to realize that every case he had been assigned was complete bullshit. They had all been thoroughly investigated, the suspects weren’t terrorists, but you could never prove a negative, and rare was the supervisor willing to risk closing a case that somehow, no matter how remote the potential, might turn up having terrorist connections in the future. So the cases stayed open in perpetuity, handed down from one Agent to the next, the newest Agent getting the worst of the deal. The whole squad had only one case with any significant potential, but it would be years before he would be able to work on it, and he prayed hard that the country’s premier law enforcement agency would be capable enough to wrap it up before then.
And it wasn’t just that the cases remained open, but you had to come up with new and creative ways to make it look like you were making progress. Electronic surveillance taskings were initiated and then had to be justified every three months. It was more paperwork than Mike could have ever imagined, and no one had been arrested on genuine terrorist charges in Atlanta since the events of 9/11.
He had tried to transfer to another squad, but every Agent worth his salt was doing the same thing and he was at the bottom of the list. He took cyber courses, hoping to leverage a request for transfer to the squad that chased pedophiles on the Internet, but even though this was one of the least popular assignments, he was told he had to finish his time on the JTTF.
After eighteen months, he assessed that the entire Bureau had lost a sense of mission. Subsequent to 9/11, the focus on counterterrorism and associated domestic intelligence capabilities had become paramount, and the mission of catching the bad guys that state and local cops couldn’t, fell by the side. Three months before John had been killed, Mike realized he had done more real work in one month as a deputy sheriff than he had in almost two years with the Bureau. With his state and federal experience, Hillsborough had welcomed him back at the rank of detective. He resigned from the Bureau with no fanfare and moved back to Tampa.
He enjoyed the work, especially the variety of his cases. There had been discussions of assigning him to the prestigious Major Violators squad, but it was agreed that this would cause dissension among the detectives who had worked their whole career within the Department. Instead, he had been happy with an assignment on the sleazier Vice/Morals squad, primarily trying to keep a lid on prostitution activity. His particular focus were teams that used prostitutes to target businessmen in town for conventions, but instead of getting laid, the men were robbed, extorted, and sometimes beaten. He had inherited cases on three prostitution teams upon arrival and had already arrested and filed multiple hard-sentence charges against the leader of one team, and developed an excellent source into one of the two other teams.
The work was rewarding. The businessmen weren’t innocents, but neither did they deserve to be beaten and robbed for their indiscretions. The prostitutes were really the biggest victims, also frequently beaten by the gang leader if the plans didn’t work out. Arresting one of the team leaders had genuine impact; it was good for the girls, good for the visiting businessmen, and good for the community.
But something big was missing, and it had made everything disoriented. All his life he had struggled to attain the “next level,” to find that sweet spot where things worked like they were supposed to, where results corresponded to effort, where decisions bore consequences. He had moved from the County, to the State, to the premier law enforcement in the nation … only to find it was all screwed up, no matter where you went. If anything, it got worse the farther you went up the line.
It was the goal, the next objective, the thing to strive for, that had been lost and left a big hole in his life. He had surrendered and accepted the fact that he had been pursuing something that was not attainable, that didn’t exist. Maybe it was his surrender, which could perhaps be more candidly viewed as failure, that left the empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. In his need, he had considered returning to school and pursuing a PhD, but decided that this would only be a continuation of his folly. This is all there was … it didn’t get any better; get used to it.
And he was adjusting, was happy in the new job, finding satisfaction in his work, seeing his efforts resulting in bad guys being locked up and relatively honest folks being protected. It was all relative in the end; there was no state of ideal. Find your joy in what is, he had told himself, not what should be.
And then, on October 18th, almost six months ago, he had watched as his only brother, a better man in every regard than Mike could ever be, was slowly lowered into a hole. When they had taken the flag off the coffin and presented it to him, an irony so sad, so defiant of reason or meaning, everything he thought he knew came screaming apart, defying gravity and spinning off into dark spaces, raging against the very essence of life.
The drinking brought some solace, a dark numbness, but then he would wake up. His coworkers at the Department were sympathetic and covered his deteriorating performance. He somehow put one foot in front of the other … but he wanted the misery to end.
XVII
Two weeks after finishing the EcoLoco challenge, returning home from work on a Thursday evening, Mike retrieved his mail from the community mailbox down the street from his townhouse. He didn’t get many personal letters, and the handwritten address on one of the envelopes immediately caught his attention. He opened it as soon as walked in the door.
Mike,
Thank you again. Enclosed is a check for $7,842 to cover the charges I made on your credit card. Have also enclosed the credit card but, as you can see, I cut it in half because I don’t trust our postal service. Actually, I have trust issues in general :)
I have bought a small marina down in Key Largo that needs a lot of work. If you need some exercise to get you in shape for next year’s “challenge,” I could use some help and have a free room.
Hope you are doing OK.
Erin
The check was drawn on a Key Largo bank, was in the name of Obduro Enterprises LLC, and was signed by Erin Shaw. From the check number, Mike figured it was the second check written on the account. He laughed as he loo
ked at the cut-up credit card. He hadn’t even received the bill yet. He wondered how she had gotten his home address, smiling at her resourcefulness.
Friday morning, he asked one of the clerks to run Erin’s name through NCIC, the main national repository for criminal records. He doubted Erin had any criminal record, but you could never be too sure. If she did, he didn’t want his name associated with the inquiry and had thus asked the clerk to make the inquiry, and he was going to have to pay a lot of attention to the charges made when his credit card bill arrived. A few hours later the clerk casually advised Mike that the query had come back negative. A review of the State’s assets and property records confirmed that Erin had recently made a significant business purchase down in Key Largo.
Saturday morning 11 am Mike turned off U.S. 1 into a dusty gravel parking lot. There were two trucks in front of what appeared to be an old general store. To the left of the store was a typical Keys-style bungalow, so old that it still had individual air-conditioning units hanging from some of the windows, but with a large, newer, shaded deck on at least two sides. He parked next to the trucks and walked between the general store and the bungalow, and the marina immediately came into view. It was small, a covered open-air repair facility with a tin roof sitting directly behind the bungalow, and two wooden docks that could accommodate maybe two dozen boats behind the general store. Off to the right was a boat ramp and a wooden deck with a small Tiki hut that he presumed served as a bar.
He spotted Erin in the repair facility, talking to a man and pointing to various locations in the facility, the man taking notes as she talked. She was wearing cutoffs, and he wondered if she ever wore anything else. He watched for a minute, observing her comfortable but confident body language, the way she stood straight, feet firm, one hand on her hip and the other now pointing to the roof. She waited while the man took more notes, slightly pulling her ball cap up and wiping the sweat off her brow with the sleeve of her shirt.
He approached softly, but she turned quickly at the sound of footsteps on the gravel. She said nothing, but smiled and stared as he approached.
“Mango, this is Mike Kelly … from Tampa,” she said, as always choosing her words with care. “Mike, this is Billy Thompson, better known as Mango; he’ll be overseeing some of the work I’m having done on the place.” The two men shook hands and Mango turned to Erin, suggested that he had more than enough to start, and would have a crew at her site early Monday morning.
“You going to be with ’em, Mango?” she asked. “I don’t like island time as much when I’m footing the bill.”
“Yes ma’am, I’ll be here. And you’ll be happy with the work.” Mango shook hands with Erin, nodded at Mike, and left in his truck.
“I’m gonna have a lift put in right here, and we’ll have two dry stations right up there,” Erin started explaining to Mike. “Two big ass fans up there,” she said as she pointed at the far end of the tin roof, “so I don’t stroke out in this friggin’ heat.” She wiped the sweat off her brow again.
She walked toward the docks and Mike followed. “The pilings are all good, but almost all of the lumber has to be replaced. Total of twenty slips if we don’t crowd the entry to the repair shed.”
She turned toward the general store. “Structure is fine; she could open for business tomorrow, but needs a lot of cleaning and prettying up, and some bait bins.” Turning her gaze to the bungalow, she continued, “And that’s my humble abode; not much to look at, but it’s comfortable.”
Mike nodded in appreciation. “Nice, but kind of a step down from the digs I last saw you in.”
“Yeah, well … you know … you can’t live like that for long; it’ll make you soft,” she said, smiling and dodging the issue. “Take care of this place and she’ll take care of you for the rest of your life.”
“You said you could use some help, what can I do?”
“You bring any tools, got any skills?” Erin asked.
Mike grinned sheepishly. “You didn’t say anything about skills …”
Erin laughed and waved him to a closet at the front of the repair shed. “I still need to get my big tools down here from the panhandle, but I’ve got a few hand tools we can work with.”
They carried the tools down to the far end of the southern dock in a wheelbarrow. Without saying anything, Erin jumped in the water and, one at a time, they replaced the stringers connecting one piling with the next, Mike working the high side, and Erin giving directions from down below. When they were done, she climbed up the dock ladder, sat on the dock and said, “I gotta get in better swimming shape if I’m gonna do much more of that.”
She was looking off at the side of the property, still catching her breath, lacking any self-consciousness, unaware Mike was now staring and had stopped breathing. The wet T-shirt clung to her, and it was the first time he had seen the form and curves of her body. Her short hair, barely long enough to be pulled back behind her head in a bungee, was made darker by the moisture. Each droplet of water appeared reluctant to leave her skin; it seemed to Mike like something right out of a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. But it wasn’t; she could bash your head in with a fire extinguisher, fix your dock, and leave you breathless without ever realizing it.
“I hope Mango is good to his word on those fans—this is a new type of hot down here,” she said, now looking at the repair shed. Standing up, water still dripping off her, she walked over to the wheelbarrow. “I think the headers are good, but if we can pull the deck boards off today, hopefully we can get the composite down Monday.”
She looked over at Mike, who was still staring. “You okay? Wanna take a water break?” He said he was fine, and they proceeded to strip the dock of the deck boards sitting on top of the headers. They finally took the water break when they finished the first dock, and then repeated the same process on the second dock.
By 6:00 pm they were done and sitting on her porch drinking cold Yuengling beer. Erin had shown him around the inside of the house, pointing out his bedroom and hers. While he went to get his overnight bag out of his jeep, she started her shower. After he had showered, he came out of the house buttoning his shirt and asking about where they were going for dinner. He looked up and it happened again. She was standing there in a white sundress with some type of light blue and yellow flower design, big brown eyes, sandals, a small purse in her hand, watching the sunset. She was beauty simplified to its core essence.
“Whoa, handsome … I said I’d buy dinner, but we aren’t going to Mortons.” She laughed. He was wearing jeans and a black shirt and was embarrassed by his own appearance and the fact that he had no idea what to say.
They ate dinner at a place called Flamingos, which, of course, led Mike to recount his brief visit to the ass-end of the Everglades of the same name. She asked about how the trip had gone after their last meeting, but there was really nothing worth recounting, according to Mike. They danced around issues as skillfully as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, both having history they were not ready to discuss, and neither wanting to break the mood.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Mike said. “I have your GPS in my glove compartment, wanted to make sure I got it back to you. I didn’t really use it that much, but it was weird how much difference it made just having it…”
“Yeah, kind of nice to be able to figure out where you are when you’re all alone on the ocean. I gave it to you as a gift. I hope you’ll keep it—you never know when you’re gonna need it again.”
It was like she knew things about him that he had never shared with anyone. “Thanks,” he said.
The conversation stalled, and Mike was not as comfortable with the silence as Erin. “You said you were in the Navy?” he asked.
She hesitated, and he silently cursed himself for asking the question. “Shortly after high school,” she said. “Was only in a few years but got some certifications and experience on big power plants that have really helped me a lot since then.”
“Like it?” he asked, hoping th
is was more benign.
“Like the commercial said, it wasn’t just a job … it was an adventure.” She was looking at him, wondering where he was going, considering whether she should start knocking on his closet doors.
“You want to talk about your invisible friend?” she asked, immediately sorry at the harshness of her tone.
“Nope,” Mike immediately responded. He had tried too hard. The mood was broken. He really liked her, but he was just no good at this. “I’m sorry,” he added.
She looked him in the eyes, assessing him and thinking. “Okay,” she finally said. “Like the Arabs say, shwaya-shwaya, a little at a time.” She continued, “The military can be a tough place for a woman; more so if you’re arrogant enough to think you’re the best engineman in the fleet. I can have a bit of an attitude, and I brought a lot of heat on myself for no good reason. Well, there’s a lot of dark corners on a ship where you can get taught a lot of hard lessons. I learned my share—had to do it the hard way—but I struggled through and survived.”
She took a deep breath. “And then I was below deck on the Cole when she was attacked. Not a scratch on me, but I was useless. Navy let me hang on for three months so I could get an honorable rather than general discharge. The psych issues were buried. Kind of a mixed bag, but that’s the education of life.”