Only this time I wasn’t gonna resist. I could feel him starting to come through me ’cause my stomach was starting to churn. My right hand was shakin’ worse than ever. But I didn’t care. I’d just relax and go along for the ride. Hell I needed his help if I was ever gonna figure the shit out. So I closed my eyes and let him materialize his past before my eyes.
I heard the sound of drumming, like some kind of African drumming. And I felt the sensation of being on a beach somewhere. The sand was hot, it was burning my feet. And the drumming just kept up, getting louder and louder as I walked down the beach.
I realized I was following a woman, a beautiful tanned woman wearing one of those skimpy g-string kind of bathing suits. She knew that I was following her, but she didn’t look back. Then I realized that she was actually leading me somewhere. We passed through small knots of people on the beach. I didn’t know anyone. Except for this woman, but for some reason, I had to pretend like I didn’t know her.
She ducked into one of those grass huts on the beach. I was hot as hell and thirsty. But I knew that I had to wait there outside until she came out. The ocean was light blue, crystal clear. Not grey and churning like the Atlantic, but pearly blue. She came back out and motioned for me to follow her in. The place was small but smelled sweet, like tropical flowers. A thin athletic middle-aged guy was propped up against the wall. The woman left us alone. I knew this man. I’d known him for a long time.
“Sit down, Clive.”
“Thanks.”
“So are you enjoying your vacation?”
I shrugged. “It’s been fine. Quiet.”
“Is your wife here?”
“Yeah.”
“Well that’s why it’s been quiet.”
I wiped the sweat from my brow. It was hotter in here than on the beach. I just wanted to get this over with, small talk was meaningless to me. But he kept on talking. “The next time you come to Jamaica, come alone. I know people. Janie has friends.”
I wanted to say I could get my own fuck if I wanted it, but I just smiled. “I’ll have to do that.”
He sipped on his drink, and then put it down. “When you told me you were going to be down here, I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to talk away from New York and all the curious ears there.”
“I’m always willing to talk, Jack.”
“I’ve heard, shall we say on the street, not to coin a bad joke, but I’ve heard that you might be looking for some new business. In particular, business that’s willing to go into some of the high-risk securities that pay so very well.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d learned years ago it was better not to affirm or deny with him.
“I have some clients who are looking for a small shop like yours to execute some trades for them. We’d do it at Bender, but they prefer the anonymity of a smaller place like yours.”
“What kind of clients?”
“International.”
“Businessmen?”
He drained his drink, then smiled. “You could say that.”
“So I assume that these aren’t the kind of clients that I can put on my open list.”
“You do as you like. But if I were you, I’d keep these accounts confidential. On a need-to-know basis only.”
“What kind of commissions are we talking about?”
“You pick a number that you think is fair, and they’ll pay it.”
This was beginning to sound better and better. “Any number?”
“Any number.”
“So what if I were to say…oh thirty percent…would that be fair?” A smile was beginning to play at the corners of my mouth. I knew the game that he was playing.
“For the type of returns that they’re looking for, it might be.”
My throat was so dry I could barely swallow. I don’t know if it was the heat or the prospect of the money that I could potentially make, but I needed a drink badly. “Do you have any more of that?” I pointed to his empty glass of rum.
He nodded. “So you want to talk a little longer?”
“Jack, you know I always enjoy talking to you…especially when it’s about making money.”
He untangled himself from the cushion where he was seated and ambled over to the doorway. “Janie, darling…get my friend a rum.” He turned to me. “Straight on the rocks?”
“You remember my drink.”
Janie appeared almost instantly with my drink, bending over me so closely that I could literally see her heart beating under her enormous breasts. Making me think of how one of her friends might not be all that bad after all.
Jack interrupted my thoughts. “So we were talking about making money.”
“Right.” I knocked back the rum gratefully, like liquid gold going down. “My favorite subject.”
“That’s why I like you, Clive. I could see the potential even when you were still in the training program at Bender.”
I put down my drink. Suddenly, I wasn’t thirsty anymore. Remembering those days. The first day of the training program, going with Red. A wave of sadness hit me every time I thought of him. His face was still clear as a bell in my mind.
Knock, knock.
“You ready?” I could hear Red’s voice outside the door.
“Hold on, man.” I yanked opened the door to my tiny apartment. Red was clean: suit, tie, hair cut, slicked back.
Seeing me half dressed, he threw up his hands. “You’re not even ready, man. We’re gonna be late. First day at Bender we gotta be on it, man.”
“Don’t you think I know? I can’t get this damn thing tied.”
“Is that all…here.” He walked over to me and expertly tied the tie.
I looked at him in amazement. “Where’d you learn to do that so fast?”
He grinned in a weird kind of way. “Lots of funerals…my dad’s business.”
“Well it looks good.” I checked myself out in the mirror. Not bad for somebody who never wore suits. “Ready to roll?”
He buttoned his jacket. “Bender & Grace, watch the hell out!”
I cradled my drink in my hand, feeling Red’s presence drain away from my memory.
“How’s your drink?” Jack knocked me back to the present.
The heat…the drums, I could still hear them in the distance. I swallowed the rest quickly. “Good. I always did like Island rum.”
“So am I to assume that you’re interested in pursuing these clients?”
“Yes, in theory, but you still haven’t told me who they are.”
He took out a small note pad and wrote something on it. He handed me the paper. I looked at it. “JANUARY 6, 1986” was written on it. “Call me on that date, not before, and not after, and I’ll fill you in on the rest of the details.”
I folded the paper in half and stuffed it in my shirt pocket. I was about to get up. I needed the sea air after an hour in that close hot bungalow, but he stopped me.
“Oh there is one more thing.”
“Yes.”
“My fee.”
I should have known that Jack did nothing for free.
“What were you thinking about?”
“My standard cut for business referral.”
“And that is?”
“Fifty percent.”
I swallowed hard, but I knew with Jack it was better to never let him know what you’re thinking. “Seems a little high.”
“Not for this kind of business.”
I knew he wanted an answer now, but I was determined to string him along as long as possible. “I’ll let you know on January 6th.”
He wasn’t smiling as he said tersely, “No, Clive, that’s not how it works. You’ll let me know now, or we can just forget that we ran into each other down here.”
The air was close and a fly was buzzing around my head. I wanted to scream, fuck you bastard…but I knew and Jack knew that I needed the business, and if I said no, he’d just go someplace else. There were plenty of small boutiques like mine on Wall Street ready to suck
up the business if I so much as sneezed the wrong way. “It’s a deal. Fifty percent.”
He smiled the way he always did when he’d won a major coup. “Good, then I’ll talk to you on the sixth.” He stuck his hand out to shake my hand.
I nodded as I walked out the door, leaving him standing there. “I’ll see you on the sixth. “
The clouds parted and the faces disappeared. I felt tired and weak, the way I always did after Clive had come through me, but this time I was getting key information I needed to piece the crazy jigsaw puzzle of this case together.
I took out my pen, smiling. January 6, 1986. Now I knew what that meant. But I still didn’t know exactly who these mysterious clients were. I jotted down all the information that I did have…International…European? Arab? Asian? could be just about anybody who didn’t want their money traced, arms dealers, drug kingpins, smuggling, high tech pirating, shit the list was so long of likely criminal types I could be writing from now to kingdom come…Jack…a top cat at Bender & Grace, somebody Clive had worked for. That should be easy enough to trace. I pulled out the plane phone in front of me, slipped in my credit card and dialed.
“Yeah…it’s Greene, put Scoffo on…Scoffo…yeah I’m on the plane…right anyway I don’t have time to chat…but I got another lead in the January case…find out everything you can on a guy named Jack, a partner or some kind of bigwig at Bender & Grace. Yeah, I should be back tomorrow if everything goes as planned.” I was about to hang up when I thought of something else. “Did you ever find out the deal on that guy Sean Callahan?”
I heard him on the other end shuffling some papers. “Yeah I did…Gimme a sec…Okay here it is…Sean Callahan… He was the mob’s bag guy in Boston for years. Died about fifteen years ago, a couple of months after his only son got killed on the street in ’75, case was never solved, but by all indications it was a mob hit. And get this, the only witness to the hit was your boy…Clive January.”
I nodded my head, remembering the vision…Red’s comment about his father’s business made sense now. “Thanks, Scoffo…I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” I settled back in my seat, reviewing all the information in my head. This Jack guy at Bender & Grace, Andy Haven, Laurel Davenport, still some question about the wife. The list was starting to shape up, and as far as I was concerned, I was anything but sure of how it was going to turn out, or even if I’d have enough concrete suspects to show the captain before he shuttled me off the case.
But one thing was sure, I couldn’t let Laurel slip out of my hands again. This time she was going back with me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Laurel
Everything on my body ached: my legs, my arms, my back, but most of all my soul. A dark pit where my soul had been and now it was empty. I was running, but I didn’t know where or for how long I could keep it up. Trees were around me. Safety was in the woods; no inquisitive faces, matching mine with the bad photocopy floating around the entire country it seemed.
For some reason I was heading south as far down as I could go. In my heart I knew that I was trying to get to Hendersonville. In some sad sort of way, I felt that if I could get back to where it started, I could erase the inevitability of what had happened.
I was stumbling forward toward a light, hoping that whomever lived out this far wouldn’t know my face, wouldn’t be able to send me back. I walked hesitantly up to the small trailer. I could hear a television blaring through the tin walls. Inside an old man was eating out of a rusty can of beans. Hunger collapsed my stomach, even the hard moldy beans looked tempting.
Standing at the slimy window of a broken down trailer, envying an old man eating out of a can of beans, I knew that I had truly fallen, and any vestiges of dignity that I had at one time, had seeped away like Clive’s dark blood.
A dog came racing out of the woods toward me, yipping furiously.
“Who’s that?” The old man turned down the TV and put his can down suspiciously and grabbed a shotgun.
I tried to run, but I was paralyzed by fright, or with hunger. I just stood there as the dog snapped at my worn shoes.
The door swung open, and the old man shoved a shotgun in my face.
I wished that he’d pull the trigger and relieve me from this misery.
“Who the hell is you?”
No sounds would come out of me, and I just dropped down at his feet, all the life gone from my body.
* * *
Detective Bob
“Okay, where did you last see her?”
The good old boy, ’cause I’ll be damned if that’s not just what he looked like, something out of Smokey and the Bandit, anyway, he answered in that broad drawl, “My deputy said somebody saw a black woman meeting your description heading over by Yawling’s end.”
“How far is that?”
“Oh not too far.”
“Well what exactly is not too far?”
The cop took off his glasses, blew off a speck of dust and put them back on. “Oh, not too far…’bout two or three miles.”
I couldn’t believe we were sitting here talking when my prime suspect was only two miles away. These guys were as bad as the cops in New York. “Well let’s go!”
“Now wait just a minute. It’s more than a notion to go knocking around in those woods. I think we better get the dogs. Otherwise, we’d split up and never find her.”
“Well fine, then get the dogs if that’s what you need.”
He took out his walkie-talkie. “Yeah…Jim. It’s the sheriff…Get the dogs out by Yawling’s end. I’ll meet you there in about ten minutes…Right, ten-four.”
“Will he be able to get there in time?”
He got in the car, calling back over his shoulder, “Now why would I have told him to meet me there in ten minutes if I didn’t think that he could get there?”
What could I say? Maybe he just sounded dumb.
* * *
Laurel
The man shoved the gun barrel in my face. Hissing angrily. “You get away from here. I don’t know who you is, or why you is here…but get away from my place.” He nudged me with the tip of the gun. “Go on. I ain’t got all day. Go on!”
And I ran and ran…stumbling over twigs and leaves. Something was guiding me in a crazy quilt kind of pattern through the trees. I heard voices and I kept running. I could hear water rushing, maybe a stream, in the distance. Jagged rocks were pushing through the paper thin soles of my shoes, and I knew that my feet must be bleeding, but I had to keep running. Something was pushing me, whispering in my ear an invisible chorus…Run, run…Faster. Run!
* * *
Detective Bob
“Okay, let the dogs out here.”
I watched as two bloodhounds bounded out of the truck, howling and slobbering in anticipation. Reminded me of some old movie about the South where angry dogs pursued some fugitive from justice through the woods, and then tore him to shreds.
“They won’t hurt her, will they?”
The sheriff looked at me like I was totally fuckin’ crazy. “Not these dogs. Naw, they’s trained to track, that’s all. Once they pick up the scent and find her, they’ll pin her in and howl ’til we get there.” He tossed a piece of trash on the ground. “They only attack if they’re provoked. You know what I mean? You got that scarf of hers?”
I nodded and tossed him a light blue silk scarf that the local police had picked up at the last place where she was living. He grabbed the scarf, and then ducked back in the truck real fast, picking up the walkie talkie. “Yeah this is the sheriff. We’re letting the dogs out now…Yeah I’ll let you know when we get her…ten-four.” He turned back to the dogs waving the scarf under their noses. They sniffed it eagerly, straining at their leashes. “Okay, now Gooone!” Free from their restraints, they blazed out into the woods.
* * *
Laurel
I could hear dogs now, sending vicious sounds into the air. My heart was beating so hard I thought that it would explode in my ears. And it seemed that no matt
er how fast I ran, the sound of the dogs got closer and closer. I could hear the crunching of leaves and dirt being pounded under by their feet. Closer…Closer…I wanted to cry and scream and yell, but I couldn’t. I could only run.
* * *
Detective Bob
“Should we go out there?” I was anxious, this was taking longer than I thought it would, but the sheriff didn’t seem to be the least bit bothered.
“Jus’ relax okay. We’ll know when they find her. We’ll—”
A shrieking sound from the woods cut him off. The sheriff grabbed his gun. “C’mon, they found her!”
We ran through the woods, dodging trees, fallen logs, following the sounds coming from the dogs. Then, out of nowhere, the sounds stopped and there was only a whimpering.
* * *
Laurel
I knew that they were going to lunge at me, sucking the flesh from my bones, with mouths dripping with dirty foam and bloody teeth. A sweeping of wind came between the trees and a vague vapor descended around me. Through the mist I saw his eyes: dark, searching, protecting. The dogs had stopped yelping. They saw him, too. Now they backed away from me…whimpering, whining as he got closer to them, covering me in his strength.
Rivers of tears bathed my face, and I could feel his kiss, covering my lips. The wind swept around us, whipping up leaves and branches and sticks and pushing the dogs further and further away. Clive stood between me and them like a shield of love that nothing could penetrate. As he got closer to me the wind became stronger until it felt like the Furies had been unleashed, eating away at the dogs, lashing them with rocks and sticks until they ran shooting back into the woods.
* * *
Detective Bob
The dogs dashed back to us, trembling, whimpering. The sheriff looked stunned. “What the hell?” The dogs circled around his feet, panting tongues hanging out.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They musta picked up her scent, ’cause we heard ’em but…Shit, I don’t know.”
A Dead Man Speaks Page 24