Sixteen Sunsets

by Mark Gardner

  Grunting to himself, Detective Frank Massey peered at a yacht through binoculars. It was a pristine white three-mast schooner with a fresh white paint job. All three masts were naked while both the yacht and the pier were vacant. He set the binoculars on the seat beside him and leaned back in the chair of his company car.

  Company car, he thought as he stared at a passenger seat empty except for the binoculars he placed there. I could go for some company right now. He thought to call his daughter and even pulled his phone from his shirt pocket. She’s likely busy, he thought, and a heavy sigh escaped his lips. Be careful what you wish for, he thought. You just may end up staring at a drug runner’s empty yacht through binoculars.

  “Alleged drug runners,” he corrected himself out loud. His phone chimed indicating a text message, so he flipped his phone open.

  Hey, Daddy! I’ve got to stay at work late today, so I’ll miss our dinner date. I luv U! The rest of the text was a series of question marks and hollow squares.

  Massey smiled at the text. He had to inform his adult daughter, again, that his ancient flip phone couldn’t do those little smiley faces. She calls them emoticons, he thought. She had pressured him into adding text to his phone. He supposed it didn’t matter; he paid his daughter a twenty-dollar note each month to cover his portion of the phone contract. He had to admit he was slowly getting used to texting, but her attempts to give him her old smartphone had failed, but not for a lack of trying.

  “Once you start using it, you’ll wonder why you held out for so long,” she had whined. She’d never gotten her way by whining her entire life, and he wondered why she continued to try it.

  Massey fingered the crisp twenty-dollar note in his breast pocket. He glanced at his wristwatch. Another trinket from yesteryear Denisha wouldn’t own, he thought. He logged the end of the day on the computer screen, closed the laptop and made a note to himself in a notebook. Massey knew Denisha didn’t care for greasy spoon joints, so he turned over the engine and drove to his favorite bar that still made a decent steak. Being a bar, he knew whatever the rest of the night brought, it would be infinitely more interesting than the day thus far.

  Denisha tucked her smartphone into her rear pocket. Whoever had designed the jeans she wore had apparently considered the pockets fashionable rather than functional. Her phone peeked out from her pocket, and she thanked the stars she had invested in a rugged case. It tripled the thickness of the phone, but it had ended up on the floor too many times. Her father, while not a technophobe in the strictest sense of the word, he was still slow to adopt any new technology. He had a closet with two or three spare videocassette recorders and a considerable VHS tape collection. He displayed them proudly in modular wooden shelves that would have been stylish twenty years ago. He had at least joined a DVD delivery program when the local VHS rental store had closed, but not before he purchased their entire stock. He didn’t even know how to log into his DVD queue, he phoned her, and she added and removed movies from his list. She knew he wouldn’t respond to her text – he just didn’t understand texting etiquette. She would call him, to verify he knew she wouldn’t be meeting him as it got closer to their appointed date time.

  “Denisha?”

  Denisha looked up. “Yes, Doctor Globe?”

  “Did you liaison with the R-C-M-P on our sighting of subject three-one-six?”

  “Yes, Doctor. You’re on a helicopter heading north in...” She checked her computer terminal, “fifteen minutes. You’ll be in the air for approximately forty-two minutes.”

  Globe nodded. “Thank you for staying late tonight, Denisha.” Globe pulled on his uniform jacket. “After I land, you can hand off the operation to logistics and call it a day, but leave the end time open on your time card.”

  Denisha smiled and nodded at her boss. I just might be able to meet up with my Dad, after all, she thought as Globe walked out the office.

  Detective Frank Massey laid his jacket on the seat next to him and saddled up to the bar. The barstools swiveled, and the back of each chair was painted to resemble the bottom half of a woman in a swimsuit. The single stanchion on each stool was painted to resemble a pair of shapely legs. The bar was decorated with other whimsy, but the stools were the draw. Several photos of celebrities looking over their shoulders doing their best diva poses were plastered on one of the walls.

  “Hey, Frank,” the bartender greeted him, “the usual?”

  “Sure thing Tony, but let us skip the coffee; we’ve had unseasonably warm weather lately.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Tony replied and motioned to his tattooed arms. “I’ve been running around in short sleeves. Wouldn’t’ve been able to do that thirty years ago.” Tony wrote something on a pad and tore off the top sheet. “Pop, then?”

  Massey nodded, and Tony plucked down a glass and filled it from the soda hose dispenser. He slid a bowl of peanuts toward Frank and turned to lay the paper on the grill counter. “Joe!” he called out. “It’s Frank’s so burn the shit outta it.” The clang of an entry bell stole Tony’s attention. “Oh, um, sorry, Ma’am.”

  “That’s okay,” a woman dressed in a knee-length red petticoat said. “I’ve heard worse.”

  Tony nodded, and Massey followed suit. The woman unbuttoned her petticoat to reveal a red dress underneath. She draped the petticoat over her arm and looked around the bar.

  “If you’re looking for a coat rack, you’re out of luck in this joint.” Massey raised his voice and grinned at Tony. “These bums wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway.”

  The woman smiled and laid her petticoat across her lap. She turned on her stool to face Massey. “Do they water down the drinks here?”

  Massey raised his cup in a mock salute to Tony. “They do not,” he declared.

  She turned to Tony, who was listening attentively. “Malibu and Cherry Coke, please.”

  “You okay with regular coke and cherry syrup?”

  The woman shrugged, but nodded in the affirmative. Tony had his orders. “So, Frank,” she paused allowing for Massey to correct her presumption. “What’s good here?”

  Massey slid the bowl of mixed nuts toward her. “Nothing,” he said emphatically.

  Tony scowled as he placed the mixed drink in front of the woman. “Don’t listen to this clown, honey, he couldn’t get a clue in a field of clues during clue mating season, wearing clue musk oil.”

  Massey raised his soda in another salute before taking a sip. He placed the glass back on the napkin and turned to the woman. “You better tell us your name, or he’s gonna call you ‘honey’ all night.” Massey smiled. “I’m sure that’s against some sort of feminist code, right?”

  The woman smiled and extended her hand to Massey. “Anne,” she breathed in a husky voice. “Anne Henderson.”

  Massey pumped her hand once. “You better order, the grill closes soon.”

  “I’ll take a steak, bloody.” She picked up and shook the half full bowl of mixed nuts, and started separating the pistachios from the chaff. “You better top these off, too.”

  Massey’s steak was dumped on the counter, and Anne looked at it. “It’s a crime to do that to a steak, you know.”

  “I’m ex-military,” Massey revealed, “I lost my sense of taste many years ago.”

  Anne popped a few pistachios into her mouth. Cheek bulging, she replied, “That’s a shame, plenty of tasty noms out there.”

  “Yes, Sir.” The pilot looked over his shoulder at Major Globe in the jump seat. “We apprehended him trying to organize a cigarette smuggling ring.”

  Globe shook his head and raised his voice over the cockpit noise, replying into the microphone. “Doesn’t sound like this Jules character is very smart.”

  “No, Sir. We leaned on him, and he admitted it wasn’t even his idea. We pulled surveillance and the guy he was talking to never made it back on the bus. We ran facial recognition, and the hit was flagged.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There was one more passenger u
naccounted for on the bus. He matched a wanted poster out of Seattle. The bus minus our three guys crossed the border about ninety minutes ago.”

  “We landing at the R-C-M-P post?”

  “No, Sir. We’re landing at the border where the bus stopped.” The man talking motioned to the co-pilot. “We were led to believe that time was of the essence.”

  “It is indeed.”

  The co-pilot nodded and spoke into his microphone. “We’re descending, Sir. Wheels down in seven minutes.”

  Globe grinned and looked out the open window at the Washington landscape below. I’m not letting this guy get away, he thought. “Not again,” he said out loud.

  “Say again, Sir?”

  “Nothing, just thinking out loud.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  If he thinks he can escape my jurisdiction, Globe thought, he’s in for a surprise.

  Anne attacked her steak with malevolence, fork and knife. She admitted to herself that the steak was pretty good. She wouldn’t have discovered this place if she hadn’t had business there. She knew she’d never come back to this place, but still...

  It’s refreshing to be surprised every once and a while, she thought.

  Anne dabbed her lips with a napkin. The steak stained her lips red, which was a comical change from her red lipstick. She swallowed and took a long pull on the bottle of Dubbel Entendre, a local chocolate malt ale, to wash it down. She let out a belch and feigned embarrassment.

  Massey laughed. “You’re starting to fit right in here, Miss.”

  Anne turned to Massey, a modest piece of steak impaled on her fork. “You know my name, Frank. Do I need to get rough with you?” She made a stabbing gesture with her fork and impaled steak.

  “Sorry,” he replied and looked down at his cleared plate. “Hazard of the job, I guess.”

  Anne stuffed the fork in her mouth. The piece of steak caused her cheek to bulge. She continued, “And what is it you do, Frank Massey?”

  Tony took that moment to interject himself. “Frank here’s the local lawman,” he said with his best southern drawl.

  Anne raised her eyebrows, and Frank gave Tony a look only friends of indeterminate length could manage.

  “I’m a detective with S.P.D,” he replied. “And you, Anne Henderson?”

  Anne swallowed, drank another mouthful of her ale and cleared her throat. “Acquisitions, mostly.”

  “Acquisitions?” Frank asked before looking up at Tony, who had suddenly busied himself with another patron who was working on his seventh cup of coffee.

  “Yep,” she smiled. “Things, people or information. I acquire them all.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I always get what I want.”

  Is she flirting with me? he thought. He gauged her to be the same age as his daughter, and he admitted to himself his perception of such things had gotten rusty from lack of use. “And what is it you want, Anne?” he coughed.

  Anne smiled again. This time, it wasn’t a smile of benevolence, but the smile of a predator. “I told you, ‘information.’” She looked over her shoulder at the coffee patron. “For example,” she brought an intense gaze to bear on the Detective. “How about you tell me where Joaquin is?”

  Joaquin hid behind a tree. He kept a small distance away from Kristof. What the hell is this guy doing? he thought as he watched Kristof examine moss on a tree. Joaquin shivered and rubbed his arms. There wasn’t any snow on the ground, but it was still cold enough to see his breath.

  Joaquin was concerned that Kristof would see him and run away faster than he could keep up. Traipsing through the woods was not in his skill set. Born and raised in a city that contrary to beliefs held by those three thousand miles away, Seattle was the city that never slept. Concrete and blacktop were what was supposed to be under his feet.

  Kristof, after appearing to have satisfied whatever curiosity the moss held, had moved on to another item of fascination. Joaquin rolled his eyes and stepped squarely on a branch. A resounding snap echoed off the canopy, and the forest suddenly became quiet.

  Joaquin froze, fearing he would be noticed. Kristof seemed unfazed by the sudden change in his environment, his focus on a flowering plant. This dude’s in his little world, Joaquin thought as the sounds of the forest slowly returned.

  “I told you, buddy, I don’t know nothing’ about nobody named Peter, or Nadine.”

  Globe nodded, Jules’ fear of him was genuine. “I believe you, Jules.”

  Jules cringed. “You’re not gonna kill me are you?”

  Globe leaned forward. “I don’t know, Jules. Do I need to kill you?”

  “No, buddy.” The words fell out of Jules’ mouth as if talking would somehow make Globe’s missive go away. “I didn’t see anything. I don’t know anything. In fact, buddy, I think this is all a dream.” Jules licked his lips. “Maybe one of those blackout things from drinkin’ too much.”

  Globe nodded. “Perhaps,” he said and reached into his overcoat.

  “Aww, man...” Jules whimpered.

  Globe pulled a cellular telephone out of his overcoat. After a moment, he replied to someone on the other end of the line. “I want satellite reconnaissance over British Columbia.”

  After listening, he continued. “Boundary Road to the One. East to Cultus Lake.”

  More listening, followed by, “keep me advised.”

  Globe looked to a visibly relieved Jules. “Looks like I have some time on my hands, let us spend it talking about Kristof and his mysterious tail.”

  “So, bus sixteen into Canada?”

  “What? No! I uh...” Massey stammered. He felt distracted, out of sorts. He looked at the clock behind the bar. An hour had elapsed, but he had a hard time remembering the passage of time. It was as if he was waking from being frozen in a soupy fog.

  Anne gathered her petticoat and stood to leave. “Thank you for your time, Detective Massey.”

  “Wait a minute.” He felt his hackles rise. Massey stood and faced Anne. “What the hell’s goin’ on here?”

  Anne smiled the same predatory smile from before. “It’s been a lovely evening, Frank, let’s not ruin it with a lengthy goodbye.” Anne buttoned up her petticoat and brushed away an errant peanut shell.

  “Hold it right there,” Massey said in a raised voice and reached for his service weapon.

  “Oh, Frank,” she replied. “You already told me you saw my handiwork at the warehouse.” She pulled a one hundred dollar note from her purse and laid it on the bar. “Poor Joaquin saw what I’m capable of.” She walked toward the coffee patron. “Let’s go,” she said, and he followed her to the door.

  “I said, ‘don’t move,’” Massey snarled from clenched teeth.

  She turned to the coffee patron. “Jerry, let’s be on our way.” She turned to face Massey. “Jerry, we were never here.”

  Jerry nodded and covered his eyes with his hands.

  Massey sat back down at the bar. “Another beer, Tony,” he said and tapped the counter with his empty glass. The evening has been as dull as the rest of my day, he thought.

  Confluence

  Peter’s eyes snapped open. He looked around his cabin and let out a sigh. Another day, he thought and stared across his cabin to the window to the world outside. He preferred the desolation that the Canadian wilderness provided, but sometimes... Sometimes I miss my old life, he thought, a life from so many years ago. It wasn’t just the desolation that weighed heavily on his mind, but the anonymity the vast frontier offered. More than once during Peter’s exile, he thought of returning to the life he left behind. “What life?” he asked the chill morning air.

  Peter climbed out if his bed, the weariness that his life had become showing on his face and movement. He methodically straightened the layers of blankets and animal furs. One errant corner refused to heed to his demands.

  “To hell with it!” he mumbled. He did, however, take the time to straighten the most recent addition to his collection of furs: a wolf pelt. He ran his fingers through t
he coarse fur and closed his eyes for a silent word or two.

  The fireplace that both warmed his home and provided a lazily wafting beacon had burnt down to embers. The embers were enough to stay the cold, and the beacon wasn’t needed when he remained in the cabin, but, as always, he used a handful of tinder to coax a flame from the blurry coals.

  Blurry coals? he thought, that’s different.

  Peter reached up to his face and felt dampness. He scoffed and wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. He held out his hands and examined them. More than two decades of work provided a crisscrossing roadmap of lines. Calluses formed the cities. Wrinkles, cuts, and scrapes formed the roads and other cartographer’s marks.

  Peter closed his eyes again and imagined the life he had. He could see the Victorian-era building that housed his place of employment. The ornate stone latticework that surrounded the roof would have marred his delicate hands back then... Now, they’d hardly detect the imperfections in the carven stone.

  I’ve sacrificed so much, he thought. He looked at the wolf pelf, and spoke in a sad, almost regretful voice, “But, we know sacrifice.”

  Peter continued with his morning rituals and ate his bowl of cereal with milk at the only table he owned. His thoughts, usually on the task at hand, drifted to a life lived in Victorian-era banks and row houses. A life of eating breakfast with his wife and son: Dishes were clattering into the sink; arguments and negotiations on loading and emptying the dishwasher.

  After Peter had finished his cereal, he cleaned up promptly and reached for a cabinet that hadn’t existed for decades. He sighed and returned his spoon and bowl to their proper place at the edge of the sink. Ghostly footfalls thundered up and down steps that existed the same as the cabinet he and his family stored their flatware.

  Peter looked at a calendar on a wall. “Damn it,” he said out loud. His voice hung in the slowly warming air. The echo of his voice regularly put him at ease, but today... I don’t even know what day it is! he thought as he walked to the calendar and changed it from the previous month to the current. He looked at a pile of newspapers bundled with twine. Five days of newspapers. Five days of information missed. Five days of a life not lived.