“He even stopped the card games though he was the big winner. It was like he’d found Jesus or something.”
“Not being able to sell out here would be a problem. All of your customers must be here.”
He frowned.
“Come on. I work in a bar remember? I know the score.”
“It’s only small time. Just to keep the members happy.” He smirked, sure of himself, sure he was irresistible. “I like making people happy. I’m good at making people happy.”
He moved towards me, his eyes telling me he’d like to make me happy and he knew just how to do it.
I reached out and took the trophy from him. He didn’t resist. I eased away from him saying, “I bet you’re real good at making people happy.” The back of my legs butted up against a pile of boxes. “Right now, I’m still dealing with Jimmy.” I had a real good grip on the trophy, ready to use it on his head if he got too close.
His eyes rose from my chest and he gave me a weak smile. “Yeah, sure, I understand. But soon. We’ll get together, won’t we?”
“Sure. Did Jimmy have any special friends?” He smirked and I said, “I didn’t mean women necessarily, there were always women. I was wondering if there was anybody he was really close to, played golf with, holidayed with, like that. For the funeral. People I should notify.” Lots of the people playing out here would have more than one home. An empty house up in Ohio or Michigan would make a good place to hide out for a few months. Or maybe the person on the Suncoaster when it blew up was a member who was using Jimmy’s boat for a little on the side. “Tell me about Jimmy’s friends.”
He shrugged my question off. “I don’t know of anyone special. He pretty much got along with everyone.”
“Except Dr. Zampa.”
“You know about that? He was trying to get Jimmy fired.”
“Because of Mrs. Zampa?”
“Yeah, but Zampa hadn’t a prayer. Jimmy was really popular. He was going to be the pro for as long as he wanted.”
His thoughts took a u-turn. “Look there’s lots of Jimmy’s things around. The cops went through the drawers here but there’s a locker of Jimmy’s and his golf bag. I didn’t think about those ’til after they left.”
His memory had likely been hindered by a need to clear out anything incriminating. “Why don’t I help you load them up?” he offered.
“Great idea.” I wanted to see anything connected with Jimmy. There had to be something to tell me what he was up to and where to find him.
Tony started peeling the photos of Jimmy from the walls. “It’ll be good to get these down and start fresh. No use clinging to what’s over.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “I’ve put in for Jimmy’s job.”
“Of course.” One more reason to play mechanic. “You’ll be able to run things the way you like.” I dropped the trophy I held onto the desk and picked the nameplate up off the floor.
“I’ve got some ideas.” He dumped a box of golf shirts still in their plastic sleeves on the desk chair and piled everything of Jimmy’s into the box. Then he carried Jimmy’s stuff out to the truck.
Beyond the small pools of light dotting the parking light it was midnight black and with the sun gone it had turned cold. I shivered.
“I’ll stop by the Sunset and see you,” Tony promised as he closed the cap on Jimmy’s truck. He moved in close, near enough to me so I could feel his warm breath on my cheek. I got a strong impression that Tony Rollins might be one of those guys who didn’t really get the word no.
“And anytime you want to play here, just call me.” His voice promised more than eighteen holes of golf. He brushed up against me, touched me, not even subtle. “Jimmy said you were real good.”
“Sure,” I said, sliding backwards, opening the door to the crew cab. “Don’t forget the shoes.” I held the crew door open, keeping it between us and asked, “Do you know Andy Crown?”
“Yeah.” He reached in and started taking out the boxes, piling them on the ground at his feet. “He came out with Jimmy sometimes to hit balls. Not much of a golfer.”
“Has he been around the last few days?” As he took out the last armload of boxes, I hopped in the cab, my hand on the door, ready to slam it shut. “Nope.” He closed the crew door.
“Has there been anyone else here looking for Jimmy?”
“Just that guy from the newspaper.”
“What guy?”
“Evan Beckworth.”
Chapter 17
At the Tropicana the air held the smell of a distant barbecue, reminding me I hadn’t eaten, but I wanted to go through Jimmy’s things first, so I humped everything up the stairs. I spread the contents over my living-room floor. It wasn’t a lot.
I opened every zippered pocket on the golf bag, dumped out the clubs and then chased the balls that ran away across the concrete floor. Nothing. There wasn’t anything unusual in the cardboard box either, just memories. I stacked the pictures and trophies back in the box.
Now I had to decide what to do with his nice set of graphite Pings. I ran my hands lightly over the leather head covers. Jimmy was a freak about equipment, always buying the newest and best, always looking for that one special club that would take his game to a new level. Should I drop them off at Indian Mound? I’d rather eat shit and die than give anything up to that bitch. They were going back into the truck.
But first I called Evan. Why had Evan gone out to see Jimmy? Evan’s recorded voice urged me to leave a message.
“Hi. It’s me. Call.”
How do you leave a message like, “Did you blow my godawful husband to Kingdom Come?”
I stood by the truck, keys in my hand, trying to decide what to do next. Staying home alone wasn’t an option—I was too juiced for that. I headed for Hess Street to see if I could find Andy.
Andy wasn’t home, but then if this were my place I wouldn’t be either.
At the takeout window at Hog Heaven Barbecue I ordered pulled pork on a bun with a side of slaw. As I handed over my money, Eddy Ortiz’s cab pulled into line right behind me.
We’d gone to high school together. Actually, Eddy was the only reason I’d passed Spanish, correcting my homework, or more often, doing it on the bus going to school in the morning.
Jacaranda High had fewer than five hundred students, so you pretty much knew everyone. Those few who stayed in Jacaranda after school had a special bond. That feeling of belonging was one of the things that I missed when I went away and I’d slipped back into the comfort of it like a pair of worn jeans when I came home. Seeing Eddy now gave me the warm feeling I needed.
I got out of the truck and went back to talk to Eddy while I waited for my order.
“Que pasa, calabaza? ” he asked with a big smile. And then he remembered Jimmy and his face fell. “Sorry, Sherri.”
This was generous of him. Eddy’s father was a migrant worker from Mexico, so Eddy spent the first ten years of his life drifting from farm to farm following the harvest with different schools and new kids every month or so. While Eddy was in high school, his father had found permanent work with one of the landscapers in Jacaranda, and nine of the Ortiz family moved into a two-bedroom, metal-clad mobile home at the edge of a field where nursery stock grew. There was no protection from the sun and the yard was trampled down to sand. The whole structure could have easily fit into the Crowns’ caged pool, but it was the Ortizes’ first real home.
Living out in the back of beyond, east of I-75, even if they had a permanent residence, did little to make Eddy’s life better. The off-island kids, driven in over the north bridge every day in a big yellow school bus with the roof painted white to try to keep it cool in the broiling sun, were dirt to the townies, no matter what their family circumstances. In a way, I was a rare exception. While not exactly accepted, I crossed the invisible line, carried first by my looks and nasty attitude and then by Jimmy’s popularity. I was the token white trash that all the girls wanted to emulate and the boys wanted to shag. A li
ttle danger in their white bread lives. Eddy and I still shared this bond of outsiders. But Eddy had had it worse than the rest of us. Older then the others in his junior year, he sat like a Mayan warrior in a sea of creamy complexions. Eduardo Ortiz lived in a have not world surrounded by have-everythings. Graduating grade twelve had been an act of rugged determination on his part.
“It was a terrible accident,” Eddy said. “A terrible thing.” Eddy genuinely felt sorry for the golden boy who’d thrown it all away. Everything had come easy to Jimmy. Nature had blessed him with good looks, charm, brains and a physical ability to do all the things so highly prized in our world. And his daddy was rich. Life, and all its bounty, was handed to Jimmy on a golden platter for him to take, and he’d screwed it all up. Less of a man than Eddy would feel a little joy at someone like Jimmy losing big.
“Thanks Eddy, but Jimmy and I were no longer together.”
“I know, Sherri, but all those years . . . since you were kids really, all that just doesn’t go away.” I swallowed hard and nodded.
“It’s gonna take you a little time, calabaza.”
“Your order’s up—” a voice called me back to the window. A server in her forties, looking dog-tired and wearing a nametag that said Helen, offered me a paper bag and a weary smile.
I pulled into a parking spot and went back to talk to Eddy while he waited for his order.
He leaned out the window as I came towards his cab. “You’re still the prettiest cheerleader Jacaranda ever had.”
“Are you flirting with me, Eduardo?” I asked, leaning on the door of his cab.
He shook his head and flashed his white teeth at me. “Know better. I’m just stating a fact.”
“You should know better. Melly would kill you.” The smile got even bigger. His beautiful dark-skinned wife was a spitfire.
“Eddy, I want to find Andy Crown. I don’t think he knows about Jimmy. It’s going to be hell for him.”
He scratched his head. “I saw him . . . probably a week, ten days ago, walking over North Bridge, talking to himself and waving his arms around. He isn’t in good shape.”
“You haven’t seen him since?”
“Nope.”
“Keep an eye out, will you? I really need to find him.” I wrote out my number for Eddy while he paid for his food.
He took it and said, “I’ll tell the other guys. If I hear anything I’ll swing by the Sunset to let you know. And I’ll give Clint Longo a call. He’s in the sheriff’s department and patrols the area along Tamiami. We’ll find him for you.”
When I got to Marley’s apartment she was already in her pj’s.
“Bad day?” I asked.
“Bad night. I can’t keep up with you and the margarita nights anymore. I’m going to crash. Are you staying?”
“Nope. Just came by to bum a cigarette.”
“They still sell these things, you know,” she told me, picking up the pack from the table and handing it to me, along with a blue plastic lighter.
“If I buy them, I smoke them.” I lit the cigarette and tossed the pack back onto the table, setting the lighter down beside it.
“And if you don’t buy them, you still smoke them.”
“Not as much.”
She shook her head at my logic. “Listen, Styles came by the office today.” “To see you?”
“No. Why would he want to see me? To see Dr. John. I came back after lunch and heard them in the office. The door wasn’t quite closed.” “And you listened?”
She gave me a look. “Styles seemed to be trying Dr. John out for size as the guy who made the Suncoaster go bang.”
“Why?”
“I told you . . . Mrs. John. Maybe he thought he was going to lose his sweetie along with her daddy’s money.”
“At least they’re looking at someone besides me.”
“Well, my money’s still on you,” she said and handed me the rest of the pack of cigarettes. “Here, enjoy, knock yourself out. I’m going to bed.”
“Sweet. Your kindness is only exceeded by your thoughtfulness.” I headed for the door. “And I just want you to know I’ve been kicked out of better joints.”
The smell of lilies was strong. The reminders of death weren’t doing anything but depressing me and I promised myself that I’d take them to a local nursing home first thing in the morning. But perhaps the aged were the last people who wanted to see flowers of condolences. Another of life’s little conundrums, but the flowers had to go.
Mr. McGoo was sitting on the bar. His left ear and one eye were missing, sacrificed in a war with my cousin Emily. I picked him up and hugged him to me. The light on the answering machine was still dancing.
“It’s nice to be popular, but hell to be the rage,” I told Mr. McGoo as I hit the rewind button. I went to the fridge while the messages began replaying. I poked through the limited possibilities for food and a cold drink. “What will it be, McGoo, water, orange juice or water?”
The first message was from Ruth Ann. “Oh god.” I hadn’t thought to call her back. I really am the world’s worst daughter. Ruth Ann’s wandering message was from before the world crashed. She told me she’d been given lots of oranges so she was making marmalade; she told me the news from Sarah and Julie, my sisters in North Carolina . . . the normal sort of thing, while country music played in the background.
Ruth Ann’s life was the epitome of the country and western songs that twanged from her radio from the moment she woke until long after she was asleep. In that occasional brief space when there was no man in her life to be disturbed by the noise, her radio played all night, probably to cover the fact there wasn’t anyone snoring on the pillow beside her.
Country music was the background to every conversation we’d ever had, every meal and every argument. I only had to hear certain songs to have those times and emotions come rushing back. Mostly these memories didn’t make me happy. They just made me remember the men in my mom’s life, men with names like Buck or Junior or some double-barreled name like Ray-John.
Next came a message from a lovely-sounding lady at MasterCard, asking me to call. Last November, ten of us had gone off to the Bahamas on a four-day junket. I had no idea how much I’d enjoyed myself until the bills came in. On top of that was the shopping I ’d done getting ready for the trip; then there was my cold, which made me miss about four shifts in December; and then Christmas and a new battery . . . yes, I am sure MasterCard would like to speak to me. I needed speaking to.
The next call was from Jimmy.
Chapter 18
His voice could always seduce me. Even as my brain was cursing, “You son of a bitch! You can’t even die straight,” my body was reacting in the same old way to that smooth drawl.
“Hi, Babe. Go out and look under the dead fern on the deck. There’s a videotape out there. Bring it in before you water the fern. I know you’ll water it, dead or not. Put the tape somewhere safe for me and forget about it. Why don’t you just give me a key so I won’t have to climb the balcony next time? Better yet, why don’t I just move in? Love ya!”
I stood there staring at the answering machine on my kitchen counter, diamond shards of broken glass around my bare feet. The next message played. Ruth Ann again, telling me she’d heard about Jimmy. “Are you all right, honey?” “Yes, Mom, I’m friggin’ wonderful.”
The messages droned on, several from friends and one from an insurance man, but still I stood there, hugging McGoo and rubbing his remaining ear back and forth between my fingers. When the tape ran out, I reached over and pushed the rewind, hunting for Jimmy’s message and played it through again. Then I took a giant step over the broken glass and went to retrieve the video.
The black plastic tape had a label on it saying “Holy Grail” in Jimmy’s bold handwriting. I remembered watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail with Jimmy and Andy. The three of us had watched hundreds of old movies. Long nights spent drinking beer with Jimmy and me making out in the flickering light as Andy went on and
on about what made the movie we were watching so wonderful. Sometimes we would watch two or three in a night. Later on it was just Andy and me watching them as Jimmy chased his dream.
Andy had been a film major in New York when the schizophrenia finally swamped him. That September he’d left Florida looking forward to living in New York but by Christmas his parents had flown up to drive him back.
Hallucinations had taken over his life.
Looking back, we all knew something was wrong long before his disease was full-blown. We made excuses, like he had things on his mind or he was artistic. We even worried about substance abuse, but we never once thought it was all in his head. At one point I was totally convinced that he had fallen into some giant conspiracy and no one was listening to Andy. Jimmy had been the most clear-eyed and the first to realize that Andy needed more help than we could give him.
I switched on the television and slipped the tape into the VCR. There wasn’t much on it. I watched about twenty minutes of guys hitting golf balls at what looked to be the driving range out at Windimere. Jimmy taped the swings of people he gave lessons to so he could replay them and show them what they were doing wrong. He was a natural teacher; never losing his temper or thinking someone was stupid if they couldn’t do what was so easy for him. He just went over and over and over it as if it was the first time he’d ever talked to someone about swing plane or weight shift. That’s why I’d become such a good golfer. It wouldn’t have worked if he’d been too critical; I don’t take too well to criticism.
All of a sudden the tape went wacky and then there was a shot of parked cars before it went crazy again. After a few minutes of up and down stuff—what looked like a metal ceiling and parts of golf carts—there was a clear shot of cars, of a guy putting a package into another guy’s golf bag and then a closeup of the two guys. One was sideways to the camera so you couldn’t see him very well but the other, a white, middle-aged guy, looked directly at the camera. I didn’t know him. Then there was a close-up of an SUV and the license and then the camera went funny again. After this there was a good shot of the two guys shaking hands.
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