Sweet Paradise

by Gene Desrochers

  He tried to act nonchalant, but I could sense a simmering cauldron under his coolness. I was pissed too, with myself. His father was dead. I was the closest thing he had.

  “I’m ... I’m sorry, Elias. It’s not cool. Not at all. I was just, I don’t know, trying to give you space.”

  “No, yeah. Space. Yup, I need space, you right.”

  Running my fingers over my two-day stubble, I winced at him. “Let’s set a meet before we part, all right?”

  Another nonchalant single-shoulder shrug. “Whatever, man.” He looked at his phone. “I gotta go.”

  “Did you know a kid in school named Junior Bacon?”

  “Herbert? Rich kid from up the way? Why? He do something? That kid weird. Always standing still and staring at people. Weird. He was friends with one kid who was mean. M.S.D.”

  “M.S.D.?”

  “Marjory Stoneman Douglas.”

  Who’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas?

  Elias read the lost look on my face and sucked his teeth. “You grown-ups, always think you know so much, but you don’t know M.S.D. What about Columbine? You heard of that?”

  I nodded, realizing Marjory Stoneman Douglas was a more recent school shooting. The shootings flooded off the news feeds so rapidly these days, I’d stopped paying attention to the names and numbers a while ago.

  “We used to worry about some of the kids, you know, like that. Herbert was one of them types. Why? What’s this about? Come on, Boise, you gotta spill.”

  Confidentiality. I wasn’t always good at it, but in this case, I didn’t have to be since Elias was like an assistant, or so I reasoned.

  “He came by to see me about a missing family member a few days ago. The person turned up dead and when he came to see me a guy got shot with an arrow in my office.”

  “What the fuck, man? When were you gonna tell me this? You mean that reporter? Your office?”

  The Daily News article Walter had run the day after the murder. He must have left out that it was my office. Probably just said it was in The Daily News building or something equally vague.

  “You know, we agreed that we’d let each other know about anything big happening,” he reminded me.

  “I didn’t want to distract you,” I replied hollowly. “Besides, my line of work ... ”

  “Fuck your line of work! Are we friends?”

  “Of course!”

  “Then act like it.” He stormed off then had to come back awkwardly. “Forgot this. Asshole.” He jerked his backpack off the ground and slung it over his shoulder.

  My phone buzzed. It was Dana, texting me that I was an asshole. She wanted to know why I hadn’t called yet to explain about this shit that went down in my office. Her gruff attitude shined through even when texting. She wasn’t much help lately; too many bad politicians to chase down and expose in The Daily News.

  “Winning friends and influencing people,” I muttered to myself. “The Montague way.”

  Chapter 15

  My brains primal-oozed out of my ears. A pizza box lay on the floor next to my bed. Six Guinness empties crowded my bedside table. The smell of rum made me gag. I capped the half-empty flatty of Bacon rum that I’d somehow managed not to knock over. I’d bought it to punish myself and do research. One headache with two alcohols, so to speak.

  As I reached for my phone to check the time, two empty bottles tumbled to the carpet. The stale smell of warm beer wafted up as some trickled out of one bottle.

  “Shoot!”

  I scurried down the hall, washcloth in hand, wet it and dabbed at the carpet. My phone buzzed.

  “What the hell’s going on over there?” Dana asked.

  I croaked out, “Morning.”

  “It’s almost noon, Jabuti.”

  “Shit, Dana, I gotta go.”

  “I’m picking you up. You think I wouldn’t come back for my colleague’s memorial? Thirty minutes.”

  Advil. I popped two and my colitis meds. Five minutes, just need five minutes to gather.

  More pounding. My eyes fluttered open. Crushing the pizza box with my foot, I stumbled to the door. Woman with black hair. I stared a long moment, then realized it was Dana. The whole time I’d known her, she’d had red hair. I decided it was probably a bad time to ask her what her natural color was.

  She held her hand over her eyes like she was staring into the sun. “Jesus, Boise, must we repeat this all the time. Put some clothes on. Do you drink alone in the nude? Have you been to a meeting yet?”

  “What happened to your hair?” I asked. Behind her the giant print of Christina’s World in its cherry frame whisked me away to a vast mid-western expanse.

  “The best hair colorist in the Caribbean works out of her house in Tortola. Got tired of the faded red.”

  “Weird,” I muttered as I turned back toward my bed. “Why’re you here already?”

  Dana shook her head. “You’re like a goddamned teen. Get dressed and brush your teeth. It’s been forty minutes. I got caught up talking to Lucy downstairs. She’s worried about you.”

  I shrugged into a t-shirt, boxers, and jeans.

  “No,” Dana said, wagging her finger like a schoolmarm. “You ever been to a memorial?”

  Instead of her usual ensemble of casual clothes and her red Carnegie Mellon cap, she looked, well, elegant and put-together.

  “Yeah, but it’s in a bar.”

  Then I remembered promising Walter to wear something nice if he invited me. While Dana jabbed at her phone, I changed. The Advil was slowly unscrewing the vise.

  “What’s up in Tortola?” The inside of my dressy shirt collar had a ring of dirt. The armpit smelled. It needed a trip to the dry cleaners, but I kept forgetting because months would pass between wearings.

  One good thing about murder: my wardrobe would get more use and, of course, people with dead relatives were potential clients. Highly motivated, money-is-no-issue kind of people. The lawyers in Los Angeles had clients like that as well. Like those on trial for murder. When your eternal freedom is on the line, saving money becomes a distant secondary objective. Murder puts things into perspective. And from that perspective, money don’t mean shit.

  Finally, Dana looked up from her phone. She tilted her head, assessing my duds. I started to pull on socks. “Jabuti! What the hell, m-f? My granny takes less time to curl her hair than you do to pull on a decent outfit. Let’s go, put the shoes on in the car.”

  We headed out the door, then she seemed to recall my Tortola inquiry as she pulled her keys out of her cavernous straw purse. “Same shit, different rock. Pick one, the U.S., Korea, St. Thomas, or Tortola. Corrupt politicians. They’ve got some British thing called a Deputy Premier, who does something, I’m not sure what. The ass has been taking bribes and gave himself some crazy salary.”

  It was one of those oppressive, tropical days with no breeze. The sun cooked me like a roasted chicken in a bad suit. At some point, a nice linen outfit in beige would do better than the stifling charcoal grey bag I currently wore.

  At a no-name bar, evidently a favorite amongst reporters, we jostled through the front door. Pickering ignored us as he patted shoulders and exchanged somber nods. Soft calypso music hummed over the festivities. The smell of rum and sweet syrup permeated the bar area as we sidled up.

  “What it be?” asked the bartender.

  We got drinks, I with the usual Guinness, and Dana had vodka on the rocks. Two other reporters came over and hugged Dana, then acknowledged me politely.

  I’d never officially met either, but they had the look: eager and haggard. Reporters always needed another story or were cursing the deadline for the current one. A world of pressure that in recent years had become more convoluted by the proliferation of free news. Pickering made it over to us.

  “So, Boise, what do you have?”

  I filled him in on my notions about the family and my reparations findings. In s
hort, I suspected everyone and trusted no one, except Junior. He didn’t set off my radar.

  “Reparations.” He gave Dana and me a sideways glance. “The two of you know anything about that? It was a pet project of Kendal’s.”

  Walter Pickering was calling into question whether two people, who did not appear to be of African heritage, living in a nation full of citizens of African descent, should be the ones on a case about reparations for slavery. Dana was white and my quadroon heritage not obvious enough for the optics. If your blackness wasn’t self-evident, then you might as well not be black. He had a point, but optics weren’t everything.

  “Boise, Dana’s back because I want her on this. She’s my most relentless and you’re not moving fast enough for my tastes. Dana, you need to kick this into high gear. Whatever it takes. I want every goddamn detail about Kendal, and I want a clean copy in a week.”

  “Walter ... ” I started to protest, but he cut me off.

  “I’m not done. The Tortola matter can wait, right?”

  Dana gave a non-committal nod. “Whatever you want, Walter.” Even the feisty Dana could see her boss was in no mood for push-back on finding Kendal’s killer.

  I understood, I really did. I’d already been down this road on our last Marvel Team-Up, and I didn’t intend to be split like a coconut again.

  “No, not whatever you want, Walter.”

  Walter’s face rotated toward me as he did a slow burn. “What? How dare you!”

  “No, Walter, you know I usually do what you all want, even though I don’t work for the News. In fact, I pay for advertising in your paper, so far from being on your payroll, I’m a bonafide customer. I have a client who hired me to solve Francine Bacon’s murder.”

  My big mouth. I’d never excelled at keeping things under wraps. I took a deep breath and jabbed a finger at each reporter. “That’s not for print. Shit.”

  For a moment we all stood like points on a triangle, the sounds of steel drums from the overhead stereo system intensifying the tension. Suddenly, Dana burst into laughter. Walter and I tried to contain it, but we couldn’t. Laughter burst from each of us in spits and starts. Some of the others stared.

  As we gripped our knees and caught our breath, Walter excused himself. Clinked glasses sounded. He gave his usual politically correct speech about the great career and even greater integrity of Kendal. He thanked Kendal’s wife, Savannah, for being there. She graciously accepted his words through a veil of grief.

  When he finished, Walter walked the widow to the exit. She apparently had had enough for one night. I turned to Dana, who looked puzzled as she watched Walter hug, then usher Savannah Kendal into a cab.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She kept watching them. “I’m not sure,” she said haltingly. Her squinty gaze followed Walter back to his staked-out spot at the bar, where he went back to conversing with the associate editor whose name always escaped me.

  Dana swallowed her vodka and doubled back for more. Three drinks later, she called her belle, an aging debutante from an island family who owned a thriving crystal shop called Little Switzerland, as well as tracts of commercial real estate throughout the Caribbean. Annie was a stretched-out Dane with perfect, chrome-white skin. Sometimes, I wondered how people like her and Hillary Bacon didn’t liquify south of the Tropic of Cancer.

  Annie and Dana were alternately fondling each other and kissing while Walter continued down the same road to intoxication Dana was travelling today. I acted the prude, suckling my second pint fearfully.

  The afternoon eased into night. Dana kept on with Annie and Walter’s eyes turned a shade of devil red. A steel-drum band was setting up on the tiny stage.

  Walter wandered over, sloshing a bit of his drink en route.

  “Do you know what they call a steel drum musician?” Walter asked. He had a habit of quizzing you on inane facts when he drank.

  Dana and I looked at each other, then at Annie. No one had a clue.

  “Pianists,” Walter said triumphantly.

  “They call them the same as piano players? That doesn’t seem right,” Dana said, raising her eyebrows.

  “You sure they aren’t percussionists?” I asked.

  Walter threw an annoyed, tired stare at each of us in turn, then said, “Not pianists. That’s not what I said, Dana. You got to pay better attention to details, Dana. And you,” He pointed at me with a slightly bent finger. “‘Percussionist’ is a general term, Boise. I’m being spec-sif-ic. Pannists. They’re called, pannists, Dana and Boise and nice Danish lady.”

  “Her name’s Annie,” Dana said with flaring annoyance.

  Walter plowed on. “Maybe ‘cause the, the thing looks like a frying pan.” He gestured at one of the silvery drums on stage. “Heat that boy up and fry some johnny cakes right up.”

  “Sure, Walter, that sounds about right,” I remarked.

  “Hey, Boise, I was pondering about what you said earlier.”

  “What was that, Walter?” I asked, going along with his constant use of everyone’s name.

  “I’m going to hire you for Kendal. I’ll hire you. The paper,” he pointed out the front door. “They won’t pay for shit. But, I can do it. I can hire you. Tell you what, I’ll pay you eight-five per hour plus up to five-hundred a week in expenses. But here’s the kicker. If you get this bad boy solved in a week, I’ll throw in a nice bonus.”

  I held up my hand. “Hold on, Walter, where’d you get eight-five?”

  “It’s what my golf coach charges. I figured it was the going rate for private lessons of the investigative type, also.”

  “You figured you’d pay me the same as a golf pro? Is your golf pro dealing with murder?”

  He laughed. “You haven’t seen me hook a seven.”

  “I work for one-fifty.” Really, I didn’t, but it seemed insulting that I was making the same as a golf pro who spent his days on manicured grass yelling “Fore!”

  “One-hundred. Final offer. Oh, and I’m dropping the weekly expenses max to three-fifty. Besides, let me finish.” Walter paused

  I waited.

  He tilted his glass, and the ice cascaded into his face, crackling on the floor. “I’m em’py. Hang on.”

  I grabbed his shoulder. “No, Walter, finish your offer. I want to know.”

  He pulled away. Dana and Annie were caught up in their own little world. The live music had started, hypnotic drumming and a soft crooning by a woman with a gravelly voice. Walter returned.

  “So, if I figure out what happened in the next week, yes?”

  “I’ll throw in a thousand-dollar bonus. Cash bucks.” He pulled out his wallet and opened the flap showing four twenties and a five.

  I stuck out my hand. He shook, a more watery shake than his usual manly pump. I tugged him close enough to smell his stale breath. “Are you going to remember this deal tomorrow?”

  His eyes were sleepy as he muttered, “I’m drunk, but mind’s-till sharp.”

  I held up my phone and hit record, holding it close to his mouth. “Repeat the deal.”

  He did.

  Walter left right after that. So did Annie and Dana.

  Chapter 16

  I‘d done it again. Somehow, despite swearing up and down I would not split my attention onto another case, Walter suckered me into it. The difference this time, I had a deadline to get that extra cash, which I needed. Despite two paying clients, I’d be back to zero before long. I was certain of it.

  Dana called. She wanted to meet at my office.

  “What’s with the door?” she asked.

  After letting her in, I shut the door and joined her at my desk.

  I started to sit but paused half-way down when she said, “Walter’s sleeping with the widow.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You followed him last night?”

  “Yup,” she said
, a shit-eating grin breaking on her face. She loved digging dirt. Not gossip, but real, case-altering dirt.

  “Were you even drinking?”

  “I stopped after my third. That’s the beauty of vodka, no one can tell if it’s water and the smell is light, so if I really am plastered, the cops can’t tell when they pull me over.” She winked at me. “Show some leg or boob,” she shifted her blouse slightly to the side, “and they give up fast. Too many sexual harassment lawsuits in the last ten years.”

  “Back to Walter,” I said.

  “Riiiiight. He’s banging the Widow Kendal. How very boss-like of him.”

  “Does that feel like motive?”

  “Motive? Hells, no! Walter? Come on, Jabuti. You think our Walter ... I was just ... well, shit, who knows. I didn’t think he slept with the employee’s wives, so what do I know?”

  Dana rubbed her nose a few times. The tip was as red as her Carnegie Mellon cap, which was back in its proper place.

  “Allergies?”

  She blinked and curled her lips. “I guess. Anyways, old Walter must think he’s hiding things well, ‘cause he went straight to Kendal’s house after the memorial. For a newspaper man, he’s not keen on keeping his affairs secret.”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t care if we know. Isn’t he single now?”

  “Yup, but I doubt last night was their first time. He’s been banging her for a while. Did you see them at the bar?”

  “I saw, but didn’t seem that obvious to me.”

  She shook her head. “You men. What’s obvious, him rubbing his cock on her hip?”

  “Sure, that’d do it,” I said grinning. “Really, though, you’re probably right. What’s this prove? Walter makes questionable life decisions and he got unlucky, probably. In that case, lock us all up. Really, this is just gossip for Robin to hash out in the ‘Island Waves’ column.”

  “Right.”

  The word hung there in the air between us. We were both thinking it. Sleeping with someone’s spouse was always, always, always a strong motive for murder. Did I stress always?