by Robert Lane
“You met him, what do you—”
“I’m asking you.”
“With your life.”
We disconnected.
I took a long draw on the cigar and blew out the smoke. It stalled in the air and then, like a balloon with too little helium in it, sank under the weight of the humidity.
A dolphin blew off to my right, followed by another. Hadley III jerked her head toward the sound. I didn’t even know she had followed me. Probably hanging around to see if I was mortally wounded.
I called Rondo. We traded apologies for not returning calls in a timely manner.
“Did you hear from her?” I asked.
“I did. You posted that you were interested in her story and the story of the man she was with that evening. Is that the right song?”
“That’s the gist of it.” I couldn’t imagine that Paretsky would infiltrate WAP and post a reply just to create the appearance that Renée Lambert was still alive. If she replied, she was alive. I waited, but Rondo needed coaxing. “What did she say?” I took another drag from the cigar and flicked the ashes into the water, where they met their fate with a subdued hiss.
“Hold on, I wrote it down.” The canvas that covers the twelve-by-twelve deck at the end of the dock rustled in the sea breeze. “Here we go. She said, ‘I don’t know what man you are referring to.’”
“That’s it?”
“Pretty much.”
“Either there’s more or there isn’t. What—”
“There’s one more line. She wrote, ‘Who are you?’”
Renée wasn’t going to reveal herself. After all, I might be the Guardian or Paretsky trying to flush her out. I needed to drop her a serious clue.
“Tell her,” I started in. “You ready?”
“Locked and loaded.”
“Tell her that I’m Renée Sutherland.” My hope was that by mentioning the deceased friend from her mother’s childhood, her namesake, I could convince Renée Lambert that I was close to her family. There was always the risk that she would think Paretsky or the Guardian would have come across that information, or that she had previously told either of them herself, but it was a long stretch.
“I don’t get it,” Rondo replied.
“I’m trying to gain her confidence,” I told him. “Can you enter it now, tonight?” My phone indicated an incoming call.
“Sutherland, right?”
“Right. Give her my number again, and tell her it’s secure.”
We disconnected. Renée knew her life was in danger. She didn’t come forth to claim her father’s body, yet she cautiously replied to my posting. The Guardian was likely seeking her. Meanwhile, Alexander Paretsky was as far away from me as he’d ever been.
I went back to the screened porch. Garrett sat next to Morgan. I hadn’t heard them arrive. Dusty Springfield came from the Magnavox. I took a seat next to Morgan, who hummed along with the song. I checked my phone for the missed call and saw I had a voice mail. It was the number for the furniture delivery. I deleted the message without retrieving it. Like a new bed would make a difference in my life. I took Wayne’s badge out of my pocket and tossed it on the table.
“You’ve been deputized?” Garrett said.
“Souvenir from a cowboy. Where’d you boys ride in from?” The table lamp was on low and cast a soft light on his dark face. He held a bottle of water, and Morgan cradled a glass of port with both hands.
“We were at Mangroves,” Morgan replied, “having dinner with Kathleen.”
“She ready to apologize?”
Garrett snorted, and Morgan said, “You didn’t even come up.”
I couldn’t imagine a world where I didn’t even come up. What a sad, desolate, ice-capped place. I reviewed my message to Rondo and my conversation with Wayne. Then I reversed and gave a synopsis of my encounters in England.
“Two Renées,” Morgan said, after I’d exhausted my interest in rehashing my trip.
“McKenzie,” Garrett cut in. “He knows more than he shared.”
“I agree. Cynthia confirmed his lie, but there wasn’t much I could do. I’d already given him my name and, considering what I committed in that country, I’d—”
“You’d have been a fool to press him. But we need to make him come clean.”
Morgan shifted his weight. “Is that necessary?”
“We’ll be polite.” Garrett stood, pulled out his phone, and walked out the door toward the dock.
Dusty sang that life is like a wheel within a wheel. I’d recently purchased Dusty in Memphis. I’d gotten interested in her work after hearing her at Raydel Escobar’s house before I helped put him behind bars. He was a sixties aficionado, and his wife, Sophia, quickly became a friend of Kathleen’s. They were probably talking about me right now. Laughing, joking, sipping cocktails, and—
“Did you know she was instrumental in signing Led Zeppelin?” Morgan interrupted my thoughts.
“Who?”
“Dusty. During the recording session for this album, she told Atlantic Records to sign them. They did so without seeing the group.”
“And you know this why?”
“My father told me a few nights ago.”
Morgan’s father died of alcoholism—the previously mentioned Caribbean flu—over ten years ago. Morgan was a major fan of dreams and had on more than one occasion, when parting for bed, said he was going to visit his father.
“It’s knowledge you already knew,” I countered. “Your brain put it in your father’s words while you slept.”
“Probably right.” He glanced at me and brushed his hair behind his head. He took a sip of port. He and Kathleen—Garrett didn’t partake—had likely conquered two bottles. And now tawny port.
“But that doesn’t make the conversation any less real,” he continued. “No more than you or me repeating something to each other that we previously had stated. It was just a conversation we had the other night.”
“You’d think he’d impart more knowledge from the great beyond other than Atlantic Records signed Led Zeppelin without seeing them.”
“Might be all there is. Besides,” Morgan said as he gazed out to the water, “no one dies until the last memory of that person has been swept away. As long as I live, my father lives. We talk and walk, as real as we ever did.”
“A real tent revival. You and my ex found the truth at the bottom of the second bottle, didn’t you?”
The hell is my problem? Morgan was—is—close to his father, and me taking that away from him, in whatever form he still held the man, was a senseless thing to do.
The bad speaker went out, and Dusty went down a notch at the song’s climactic moment.
“Just a conversation with my father.” He plunked down his glass of port and stood up. “Catch you in the morning.” He strode out the side door, and it bounced open behind him.
Garrett returned and stood on the other side of the screen. “We’ll know tomorrow what Father McKenzie really knows. Why’d Morgan leave?”
“Got me.”
We reviewed our lack of progress, and he headed over to Morgan’s.
My legs ached from lack of sleep. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten more than three hours the previous night. Maybe eight in the last forty-eight. I often feel at the end of a day as if that day was a whole life.
That night it was Kathleen and not the cardinal. She was a small, black-and-white head shot, like a sixth-grade picture from the sixties, and it floated under the bottom of a dirigible tethered by a purple string. I tried to catch the photograph, but my legs were heavy, like I was running in waist-deep water. As slow as the dirigible was, I was even slower. There was another small photograph I wanted to see, but I couldn’t remember it.
- - -
It was light when I awoke, and that nearly put me in cardiac arrest.
Morgan sat at the end of his dock, doing his meditation thing. I’d learned to never interrupt him during his ritual. Nonetheless, I jumped around the fence and marched out to him.
He did not turn. I stood behind him and delivered a few sentences that are nobody’s damn business except his and mine.
I tailgated an electric utility truck to the hotel. I swam fast. Ran faster. Afterward, Eddie, the pool man, interrupted my buzzing mind with a tale of a man who’d jumped his fence and sat on his patio furniture. After the third time, the neighbors called the police. I listened patiently, a far more difficult thing to do than either the swim or the run, but I liked Eddie; he’d been spreading towels and raising umbrellas for guests for over two decades, and I still felt bad for being a jerk to Morgan the night before. As if listening to the pool man would absolve me of last night’s thoughtless remarks, but that’s how we operate, isn’t it? I finally broke away, thinking what a tadpole brain I had for considering a moment of genuine concern to be an admirable achievement and personal sacrifice.
I drove to Lambert’s house. Breakfast could wait. Wayne’s parting comment to me yesterday had been gaining steam. His words had been with me every stroke of my swim, every step of my run. May not even be in his house. I had a good idea of where the flash drive might be, or at least where I would have hidden it. Assuming the Guardian hadn’t found it. I walked around to the dock. The great white egret stood by the bait bucket.
“Listen, fellow, you need to move on. Your time here is done.” It moved a step closer.
Lambert’s voice in my head. Got some good blues in it, some other gems as well. It’ll hold about anything you want. The comment was during my second visit. During my first visit he had turned his back to me when he leaned over the side of the dock and checked the bucket.
I squatted down on my knees and pulled the bucket out of the canal. Water poured out through the holes. I placed it on the dock, opened the lid, and took out a Ziploc bag. Inside the bag was a watertight plastic capsule with a marina’s name on it and a small chain. I have a similar one; they’re used for boat keys. Mine also holds my boat registration.
I opened it and took out a USB flash drive.
I tossed a pinfish to the bird. He caught it in his mouth.
CHAPTER 28
Garrett ran it over to SOCom at MacDill. I doubted I would ever know the full contents of that flash drive. I was curious to know if it held the names of special ops personnel scattered throughout the world and if we had effectively shut Paretsky down. Not that I would rest on that—I had my own score, like a wheel within a wheel, to settle with Paretsky.
I was also anxious as to whether Garrett’s and my name were on the flash drive. If my name was on the list, was Kathleen’s as well? The only way anyone would know of her was if there was a leak in the colonel’s department. The colonel, when he’d sat on my dock, had evaded that question. With luck, the flash drive would not only reveal information about Paretsky, but also provide a clue as to his source of information.
I was riding high and channeled my momentum into calling Kathleen.
“Hello, stranger,” she answered, and my heart flipped like a dolphin coming out of the water.
“Lunch?” I said.
“Can’t. Sophia’s got that slot.”
“Dinner? Whatever you say, do not say no. No is not an—”
“I—”
“I’ll sit up straight. Won’t pinch the hostess. Refrain from polio jokes.”
“I—”
“Just say yes, Kathleen.”
“I was trying to say I’ll be ready at seven.”
“Really?”
“Against my better judgment.”
“You know, don’t you?”
“What?”
“I’m spectacularly in love with you.”
I hung up before she had a chance to reply. Hello, stranger—that was a zinger from the old days. The days before I killed a cardinal, lied to her, and told her (for the second time, as she reminded me) to go dwell in her books.
Morgan dropped in with his can of beer and took a seat. “Eat yet?”
“No.”
He sprang out of the chair he had just landed in and bolted to the kitchen. I went to the Magnavox, opened the lid, flipped the two albums that were on it, and joined him. Within a minute Bryan Lee timidly entered the sound waves of the house. His blues exploded when the tubes warmed up. Morgan and I threw together the usual combo of eggs, bell peppers, and onions. I rubbed a bulging potato with olive oil and punctured it repeatedly with the tines of a fork. After microwaving it, I sliced it lengthwise and placed the slices into a hot pan of oil. I sprinkled the pan liberally with ground pepper and salt. Morgan opened a plastic container of mole sauce left over from a week ago and heated it in a saucepan. We didn’t have any fish to add, so I panfried thick strips of applewood bacon. We took our usual seats. We dosed the eggs and potatoes with the spicy sauce. We ate like dogs.
I tried to ignore Kathleen’s empty chair, but, like on the plane, I felt her absence more than I’d ever felt her presence. I wondered if that was something that wore off or if some people lived their lives like that, sitting in a familiar chair with the empty universe next to them.
Garrett called and said they hoped to break the encryption today. He planned to camp out at the base. The bacon was good, but it’s too hard to make the thick stuff crispy. As I chewed, I wondered what Kathleen was doing.
“Seeing her today?” Morgan said. I swear the man owned my mind.
“Dinner. That your Lee album?” He’d been starting to bring his vinyl over to play on the Magnavox.
“My father always played blues on Sunday mornings.”
“Honoring the tradition.”
“I am.”
“Does he still listen to it on Sundays?”
He turned to me and smiled. “He does.”
I fetched a bottle of Taittinger and two crystal champagne flutes. On Sundays Morgan broke his ritual, and he, Kathleen, and I split a bottle—sometimes two. Maybe what I missed was the booze and not the woman. There’s a thought.
“To your father.”
We clinked glasses as an osprey flew over with a large sheepshead clamped in its talons. The fish, as if swimming at fifty feet above sea level, waved its tail, frantically trying to free itself. I put my flute down and called Rondo.
He picked up on the third ring. “Send another message,” I commanded.
“Travis?”
“Tell her I found the SunDisk that her father hid and to call me ASAP.”
“I don’t—”
“Just do it.” I ended the call.
“Think that’s wise?” Morgan said, after I explained the recent developments. “What if Paretsky or the Guardian is on those pages? You just let them—”
“They don’t know whether I’m bluffing, and no way are they on Words Against People’s message board. I don’t even know what I’m doing on it. Besides,” I said, as I turned to him, “I’ve got to flush him out, or the next sister, mom, or girlfriend to take a bullet’s going to be on me.”
After breakfast Morgan grabbed some rods and took off on Impulse. I would have loved to join him but didn’t dare be on the water in the event we got a break. I pestered Rondo, and he confirmed that Renée had not responded to the message board. I staked out Lambert’s house to see if Wayne or anyone else came by. I called Adam, the bartender at the Valencia. I reacquainted myself with him, although he cut me off halfway through, aghast at the mere thought that he might not remember me. He had not seen the man I referred to as the Guardian who had been with Renée Lambert that night.
I texted Garrett, but still no break on the encryption. I organized notes that didn’t need organizing. I checked my watch every hour. Every half hour. I shaved. I changed shirts three times. Midway through taking the second one off, impatient with my girlish behavior, I ripped off the last four buttons. I avoided alcohol.
I was at her building at half past six.
CHAPTER 29
Her private elevator was still roped off, so I headed for the public one. As I waited, an athletic man in a cream, silk sport coat, a blossoming head of hair, and George
Burns glasses came up beside me. He looked sharp. A real dandy. Ready for a night on Beach Drive.
“Be happy when they fix our private elevators.” He cleared his throat. “It’s been a while.”
“You’d think it would be a simple job.”
“That’s what they told us. Can’t imagine what the issue is.” His neck was the width of a piling, and his shoulders threatened the seams of his jacket. The door opened, and a lady in black spandex shorts and a dog on a leash exited, the mutt forging ahead. I stepped into the elevator and punched the number nine. Paul McCartney’s voice dropped from the ceiling speakers. “All My Loving.” A great jingle that was never released as a single. My phone rang in my pocket. The elevator door closed.
“What floor?” I asked as I fronted the only bank of buttons in the elevator.
“Nine.”
I hit the button again. I recalled Morgan’s comment that when he and Garrett had had dinner with Kathleen, I hadn’t even come up.
I’m coming up now, baby.
I took my phone out. Garrett. The phone had died in the elevator. I’d call him at Kathleen’s. I stared down at my feet. I nodded my head to the gentle beat of the song. It was the first song that Paul wrote the lyrics to, but that wasn’t what struck me; it was the opening song they played on their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, and it floated over the hospital speakers sixteen years later when Lennon’s body was rolled in on a gurney after Chapman shot him. Heavy satanic symmetry.
I’m coming up now, baby.
I wouldn’t blow it tonight.
Bringing all my loving.
I stared at the digital readout of the number nine. It had seven separate lines that—
Kathleen’s words flooded my head, drowning out my Beatles trivia and penchant for counting. I’m the only one here right now. Other two units are empty.
I wore glasses and a ponytail when—
Cough drops.
I collapsed to the floor as his fist exploded into the panel where my head had been. My face planted hard on the phone box handle, and it cut into my skin. PHONE was spelled out vertically, and the E, no more than an inch from my right eye, had nearly worn away.