by Jude Hardin
“You were a daddy before. Why not again?”
“Let’s not get into it, Jules.”
“Never say never,” she said.
“I am saying never. Trust me, I’m never going to be a father again. Never in a million years.”
She left it alone. “Well, I still think you should move out of that camper. Couldn’t you at least rent a decent apartment somewhere?”
“Are you ashamed of where I live?” I said.
Juliet frowned. “Sometimes people at work ask me, ‘What part of town does your boyfriend stay at?’ I don’t know what to tell—”
“Tell them I’m on waterfront property in Clay County. That should shut their nosy asses up. Listen, if you’re ashamed of me—”
“I’m not. That’s not what I’m saying. I just wish you had a better house.”
“I’ll get something better when I can afford it. In the meantime, it’s not all that bad. I have enough room to eat and sleep and run my business, and I can go fishing anytime I feel like it. I stopped worrying about keeping up with the Joneses a long time ago. I’d rather live life on my own terms. Make sense?”
“I guess. When you do meet my mother—”
“Is that what this is all about? Shit. I should have known. You’re going to be embarrassed for your mom to find out how I live. Is that it? You’re afraid your mother will think you’re dating a loser? I think I need to go now.” I got up and put my shirt on, started buttoning it.
“Please don’t go, Nicholas. I’m sorry. It’s just that my mother, well, she’s very conservative and—you know how mothers are. They want the best for their little girls. I think you are the best, but I just don’t want to hear a bunch of crap from her.”
“Maybe it’s best that I never meet her. What do you want me to do, lie to her about where I live?”
“Would that be so bad? She’s only going to be here for a few weeks, until Abby gets settled in with her new baby. Then she’ll be going back to the Philippines.”
I looked out the window. A gray rabbit, looking very content, was munching on one of Juliet’s tomato plants. The dirt bike was still doing donuts in my skull.
“Sorry, Jules. I’m not going to lie to anybody about where I live, what I think, or anything else. If you can’t accept me as I am—”
“Please come back to bed. I love you today.”
It was something we said to each other often, I love you today, knowing that relationships have to be taken one day at a time. We both knew that forever was a myth. As long as we loved each other today, tomorrow would take care of itself.
I took my shirt off and climbed back in bed with her. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, absently fingering the smooth and hairless scar tissue on my lower right abdomen, debating whether or not to make the compromise, to let Juliet’s mother think I had more than I really did.
“Jules,” I said.
“Yes?”
“I would do anything for you. I’d die for you. But like the sailor said, ‘I yam what I yam.’ I’m not going to pretend to be anything else.”
“I can respect that,” she said.
She kissed my chest, made a trail with her tongue down to my belly and rested her head there. What she did next made me think hard about going out and buying that ring she wanted.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leitha Ryan lived in a Craftsman-style bungalow painted yellow with white trim. The yard had recently been mowed, and the St. Augustine grass was thick, lush, and deep green. Baptized in the morning dew, it smelled green. I’m always impressed with anyone who can make grass grow in this part of the country. I was never very good at it myself.
She had wicker furniture on the porch and some hanging plants and a copper mailbox. I rang the bell and she let me in.
“Nice,” I said. “How many bedrooms?”
“Just two.” Leitha’s hospital scrubs swallowed her tiny frame, and the circles under her eyes announced the hangdog look of someone who’d either missed way too much sleep or had a serious illness. I remembered working the night shift at a warehouse before I got my PI license. Your body never gets used to that schedule.
The house reminded me of a place I lived when I was a kid. Hardwood floors, built-in bookcases, wainscoting you won’t find at Home Depot. It was the kind of house you used to be able to buy cheap, but since Springfield had been designated a historic district a few years ago prices had swollen. I figured it set her back two-fifty, maybe more. A mortgage is something I’ll never have again. Been there, done that, bought the whole rack of chips. They tell you it’s a good investment, but when you’re in your forties and take on a big heavy debt like that your options are suddenly limited. You have to keep working at a job you hate until you’re practically dead, and then you get to sit around and watch TV with an oxygen canister beside you in the house you worked half your life to pay for until you’re really dead. Then the lawyers and the government take their fat share and your family is left to fight over the rest and take all your measly shit to Goodwill. Some investment. Errol Flynn got it right. Any man who dies with more than ten thousand dollars in the bank is a failure.
The living room was furnished with modern junk, buy-now-pay-later garbage that ends up costing ten times more than what it’s worth. A red denim sofa and matching love seat with chrome legs invaded the bulk of the space, along with some chrome and glass tables, and a pair of stainless steel lamps. The only thing halfway genuine was a stained-glass window in an oak frame serving as a mantle decoration. A big yellow rose bloomed from its center, each petal a separate cut.
Leitha led me into a short hallway. “This is Brittney’s room,” she said. “Sorry about the mess.”
I looked in the closet first. The hundred-year-old cedar still smelled like cedar. You couldn’t have slid a piece of paper between the clothes on hangers. A red Wilson tennis bag, a backpack, and a set of leather-bound Harvard Classics were arranged neatly on the overhead shelf. One of the books had been pulled out, and lay separate from the others. It was something called Two Years Before The Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. A playing card—the seven of clubs—had been used as a bookmark, and “the latitude of Point Conception” was highlighted in yellow at the bottom of page 54. The paragraphs were dense and unbroken by dialogue.
“She reads this stuff?” I said.
“We found those at a thrift store. Got the whole set for thirty dollars. I was going to sell them on eBay, but then Brittney said she wanted them. Yes, she’s read them all. Like I said, she’s very bright.”
“I’ll say.” I saw titles from Cervantes, Dante, Darwin, Shakespeare, Locke, and some I’d never heard of. Give me James Patterson and a six-pack and I’m set for the evening.
“Is this her school backpack?” I said
“That’s her old one. I bought her a new one and filled it with supplies from a list Stanton gave us. She must have taken it when she left.”
“What color was it? The backpack.”
“Red.”
“I’ll need a recent photograph of Brittney,” I said. “One with a good shot of her face.”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
Leitha left the room. A few seconds later, I heard some drawers being yanked open across the hall.
A couple dozen pairs of shoes, looking as though they’d been thrown off in a hurry, littered the closet floor. A dusty bowling ball bag and a set of blue and white cheerleader pompoms had been abandoned in one corner. I saw no remnants of kiddy toys like you see in some teenagers’ closets. Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels, board games, and whatnot. No boxes of family photos. No evidence of a childhood, happy or otherwise.
Leitha came back and handed me a nice five-by-seven of Brittney in her tennis outfit.
“You didn’t tell me she was a cheerleader,” I said, pointing toward the pompoms.
“She tried it for a while in eighth grade, but didn’t like it very much,” Leitha said. “She’s athletic, just not very outgoing. You know?”
; I nodded. “You mind if I look around by myself in here for a few minutes?” People always get nervous when you go through underwear drawers and everything, but I needed to find out if Brittney had any secrets or bad habits she’d been keeping from her sister.
“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” she said. Her nurse shoes squeaked on the wood floor as she walked away.
In one corner of Brittney’s room stood a wooden desk painted blue. In the drawers I found the usual assortment of office supplies, along with a stack of index cards she had used for a research paper on autism. The cards were secured with a rubber band. I picked them up and flipped through them. I liked the feel and smell. I wondered if a teacher had mandated the cards, or if Brittney had been kicking it old-school on her own.
A newer-model HP Pavilion computer and monitor, and a ceramic frog with pens and pencils sticking out of its mouth, graced the desktop. Brittney’s bed was next to the desk and had been left unmade. It had pink sheets with tiny white polka dots and a poster of the rock group KISS on the wall behind the headboard. I had to respect someone who reads Shakespeare and listens to KISS at the same time. I got on my knees, lifted the mattress and felt under it. Nothing.
I went through her dresser drawers. Everything had been folded and put away neatly, which somewhat astounded me. The socks had been arranged in rows by color. I was impressed. Most teenagers have trouble even keeping the dirty separated from the clean. I went back to the closet and opened the bowling ball satchel and the tennis bag and the backpack, and found a bowling ball and two tennis racquets and some eraser dust respectively. Next I started feeling through the tightly packed clothes on hangers. There was a Stanton letterman jacket sandwiched a foot or so left of center, with something hard and rectangular near the snaps on front. I pulled the jacket off the hanger, unzipped the lining, and found half a pack of menthol cigarettes, two condoms in a box made for three, and an unmarked VHS-C videotape. I slid the tape and the condoms into one of the side flap pockets of my shorts and left the cigarettes where they were. I went through the rest of the clothes, but didn’t find any other secret hiding places.
I walked out and took a quick look in the bedroom across the hall, Leitha’s room. She had an Arts and Crafts oak bed, very sturdy looking, and a matching dresser and mirror. An old steamer trunk, padlocked, with an embroidered pillow and floppy straw hat on top, anchored the foot of the bed. Everything waxed and shiny. No dust bunnies under the bed. On top of the dresser was a bill from the electric company and a pay stub from the hospital where Leitha worked. I assumed she got paid every other week, and some quick math put her at about sixty grand a year. Better than average— especially for a young single person—and enough to afford the house she was in and the new Bic in her driveway. A framed photograph of a school-aged girl sitting next to a toddler hung on the wall beside the dresser. It was a little crooked, so I straightened it.
I walked to the kitchen. Leitha was busy unloading the dishwasher.
“Did you know she’s sexually active?” I said. I tossed the condom box onto the countertop.
Leitha dropped a glass, a stemmed red goblet textured with grape bunches that everyone’s grandmother had a set of at one time. It didn’t break. She picked it up and set it in the sink. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle containing some kind of sports drink the exact same color as Windex.
“Can I get you something?” she said.
“I’m good.”
“I have beer.”
Breakfast of champions. “Okay, I’ll take a beer.”
She handed me a bottle of one of those ultralight brews that are supposed to make you young and slim and sexy. I twisted off the cap, watched the vapors rise, and swallowed about half of it. It didn’t taste very good, but at least I was watching my carb count.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the VHS-C tape. “Any idea what’s on this?”
“No.”
“Can we watch it?”
“I don’t even have a VCR. Everything’s on DVD or the computer now.”
“Mind if I take it with me?”
“Of course. Take anything you need.” She paused, glancing back at the condoms. “I hope she’s not pregnant. Hope that’s not the real reason she ran away.”
“Did she give you any reason to think she might be?”
“No. I work nights—” Leitha capped her drink and pressed the bottle against her chin. She couldn’t finish what she was about to say.
“It’ll be all right,” I said. I always say something stupid when a woman cries. Odds were that it wouldn’t be all right. I had a hunch something had set Brittney off, something other than the threat of being grounded for a week. Maybe she was pregnant; maybe it was something else.
I drained the last of the watered-down beer. I wanted a cigarette, but Leitha’s house smelled like you weren’t supposed to smoke there.
“Since I’m already here in Springfield, I’m going to talk with Mark Toohey first,” I said. “If I don’t have any luck, I’ll drive up to Ponte Vedre and check out the Spiveys and Kent Clark.”
Leitha nodded, and I left her house while she was still crying.
CHAPTER FIVE
I call my GMC Jimmy Jimmy. He’s like a trusted old friend, a partner. We’ve been through a lot together—167,000 miles worth. I take care of him, and he takes care of me. That’s the way it always works with partners. On the way to Toohey’s, I cashed Leitha’s check, secured the bills in my gold fishhook money clip, and put the wad in my pocket. I stopped at the Shell station on the corner of 8th and Boulevard, examined the oil level and tire pressure, and topped off the gas tank. I bought a fried cherry turnover and a cup of Bean Street for myself, and a pint of STP for Jimmy. Later I planned to go by the title loan place and pay what I owed.
Mark Toohey lived on the third floor of a Victorian converted to rentals. The Painted Lady, glorious I’m sure in her prime, was now plagued with peeling paint, curling shingles, rotting wood. I climbed the stairway, its varnish black with age, the smell of incense hovering like a sickly sweet ghost. I knocked on Toohey’s door. Waited. Knocked again.
I called Domino’s Pizza, but the manager said Toohey had the day off. So much for wrapping this up in two hours.
I moved Jimmy to a shady spot across from the house and waited.
I carry a Smith and Wesson model 640 .38-caliber revolver. Stainless finish, hardwood grips, two-inch barrel. It’s a lovely gun. I own several handguns, none of them automatics. A very expensive nine jammed on me at the firing range one time. If the target had been shooting back, I’d be dead right now. Revolvers don’t hold as many rounds, but as long as there’s a bullet in the chamber, every time you pull the trigger it will come out. Rule #7 from Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: if you pull a trigger, it’s always best if a bullet comes out. I call my .38 Little Bill, for no good reason. Little Bill lives in a little holster that slides onto my belt. The tails of my Hawaiian shirts keep Bill out of sight. I also keep a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun strapped to the back of Jimmy’s passenger seat. The shotgun has no name.
I sat there for a long time. Waiting, sweating, chewing toothpicks, and trying not to smoke. The exciting, pushing-the-envelope, living-on-the-edge life of a private investigator.
At 7:30, I drove three blocks down 8th Street to McDonald’s, got two Big Macs, a large order of fries, and a large black coffee. Every time I go to McDonald’s I want a McDLT, which they haven’t made in about twenty years. It came in a Styrofoam container that kept the cheeseburger part warm and the lettuce and tomato part cool. Brilliant design for a burger to go. The reason they stopped selling it had something to do with Styrofoam vs. The Environment. I drove back to Toohey’s, parked in the same spot, thought about how biodegradable the Big Mac boxes and I were.
At 8:37 the streetlights came on. At 8:38 a black Mustang pulled to the curb. A man I figured was Mark Toohey got out the driver’s side. He had a high-and-tight Marine haircut, silver hoops dan
gling from both ears, ballooned biceps from six months of nothing to do but pump iron. He walked around and opened the passenger’s door and a girl got out who wasn’t Brittney. She was tall and blonde with cleavage like a cartoon. Toohey gave her a slap on the butt as they approached the threshold. I gave them enough time to get upstairs and into the apartment and then waited ten more minutes so it wouldn’t appear as though I’d been waiting for them.
The stairwell still smelled like incense, this time mixed with the distinctive aroma of cannabis. A rap song blared from the second floor apartment, the bass so loud it made my teeth hurt.
I knocked. Toohey’s girl, who looked to be in her mid-twenties and stoned, answered. She had on a white terrycloth bathrobe monogrammed MT, long blonde hair, heavy makeup, black baggage under her eyes. Perfume that screamed, “Smell me, everybody. Smell me.”
“Can I help you?” she said.
“I doubt it. But maybe your boyfriend can.” I flashed a counterfeit smile, showed her my ID.
“Mark. There’s a private dick at the door.” She emphasized dick, and giggled. Charming as bubble wrap, Toohey’s girl.
Toohey came to the door in Tommy Hilfiger boxers, the leafy stench of marijuana oozing from every pore. He had prison ink on his right arm, an immature goatee on his chin, a torso sculpted from marble.
I showed him my ID. “I need to talk with you for a few minutes,” I said. “I’m looking for a girl named Brittney Ryan.”
“Can’t you see I’m busy? Can’t you see I got a date, man?”
“It’ll only take a few minutes. Can we talk in private?”
The blonde wasn’t giggling anymore. She stood by the fireplace, arms folded over her chest, glaring at me.
“Fuck,” Toohey said. “Hold on.”
He closed the door. A few minutes later, he came out wearing baggy shorts, a wife-beater T, and sandals.
“Let’s walk outside,” I said. The rap music and the smell of the place gave me a headache. I let Toohey take the lead down the stairs.