Blackwater Sound

by James W. Hall

  The manager of the Palm Air Towers was a twenty-something guy with purple hair the texture of straw. There were enough baubles hanging from the kid’s right ear to start his own pawn shop. On his flat chest somebody had tattooed a butterfly that looked like it was only half finished. For good measure his right nipple was lanced by half a dozen silver studs. The guy wore black running shorts and quilted silver booties. Cold feet on an eighty-five-degree tropical night—some kind of health warning there.

  Across the room the TV was tuned to a professional wrestling match, and when the kid came to the apartment door to speak to Sugarman, his eyes never left the action.

  “Peretti died. He drowned or something. It was in the paper.”

  “I know that,” Sugarman said. “I just wanted to see if he had any friends around here, people I might be able to ask a few questions.”

  “Friends?”

  It sounded like an alien concept to the kid.

  The boy fingered one of his nipple studs while he stared at the TV. A blond muscleman bounced around the ring ranting at the audience and pounding on his chest like a chimp.

  Sugarman considered trying the finger-across-the-throat thing to get the kid’s attention, but he doubted it would achieve the right reaction. One good threat and this boy looked like he might swoon right into Sugarman’s arms.

  “Did Peretti hang out with anyone around here? You got any names?”

  “Not around here, no.”

  The blond wrestler was flanked by six bikini girls. Rough-looking ladies, the kind who grind up biker chicks and sprinkle them on their breakfast cereal.

  “Hey, kid. You think you could give this your undivided for about ten seconds,” Sugar said. “It might be important.”

  A big, dark-haired man climbed into the ring and snuck up behind the blond guy and whacked him over the head with a folding chair. The apartment manager chuckled.

  “His daughter lives in Palm Beach. Some rich bitch.”

  “Peretti’s daughter?”

  “That’s who we were talking about, right? Arnold Peretti, the dead guy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “She came and took away all his stuff.”

  “You have her address?”

  The boy chuckled again as more men wielding folding chairs piled into the ring.

  Sugarman reached out and put a finger on the boy’s chin and steered his face around.

  “You got the daughter’s address?”

  The boy looked at Sugar as if he’d just raised a folding chair over his head.

  “Yeah, yeah,” the kid said. “It’s around here somewhere.”

  Sugarman called Angela Peretti from a booth on Collins Avenue, apologized for bothering her so late, and asked if she’d talk to him. She didn’t mind. He could come on. She didn’t sleep that much, not at night anyway. There was something weird about her voice, something a little drifty and unfocused, like maybe she was absorbed in the same wrestling match as the kid.

  It took him an hour and a half to get to her place, a two-story French provincial house a block from the ocean. The street was lit by dozens of security lights. Two in the morning and hardly a shadow to be seen.

  She met him at the front door in her pajamas. V-neck top with red-and-green flower print, shorty bottoms that matched. She didn’t seem particularly shy, standing barefoot out on the porch. She was in her early- to mid-forties, with straight brown hair and gray eyes and a little ski jump nose. A tricky way of looking at you, quick, darty glances, then looking away at the trees or shrubs or dark sky. Like a plane strafing a target, zooming in, shooting a look, then gone.

  “I’m sorry to bother you at such a late hour. Thanks for seeing me.”

  “You’re a shamus?”

  “Not many people call me that, but yeah, I guess I am.”

  She strafed him with another look, then fixed her eyes on the trunk of the oak in her front yard. The pleasant smell of the ocean was stronger up there than on Miami Beach. A lush, doughy aroma that, together with the untamable rumble of the surf, must have been a constant reminder of how precarious their perch on the edge of the continent was.

  Angela stood beneath a set of halogen security lights and stared out at her broad front lawn. She had freckles on her face and arms and more freckles in the V of her pajamas. Sugar was fairly certain freckles covered the entire surface of Angela Peretti. Not that he particularly wanted to find out. It was just idle speculation, something to do during the long pauses in their conversation.

  “I’m sorry about your father’s death.”

  “He was an old man,” she said. “Old men die. He was also a career criminal. In the kind of business he was in, he was lucky to have lived so long.”

  “Still…”

  “Are you working for the Braswells?”

  She skimmed her eyes across his face, saw his surprise.

  “I didn’t think so. You don’t look like the kind of people they hire.”

  “And what do they look like?”

  “Seedy,” she said. “Lower life forms.”

  She looked across the street at her neighbor, who had come out to stand on the front porch of his three-story Tudor mansion. The portly, white-haired man was staring openly at Sugarman. Probably the first time he’d ever seen an African American in his part of town. In Palm Beach the guys they brought in to polish their brass and pressure-clean the mildew off their imported tile had graduate degrees and all their shots and all their boosters and at least three ancestors from the Mayflower. Around there even the ivy got a background check before it was allowed to twine.

  “You okay, Angela?” he called.

  “Just fine, Vincent,” she called back.

  “I heard voices,” he said. “My bedroom, it’s right here in front.”

  “We’ll try to keep it down,” Sugarman called to him.

  He gave Sugarman a hard look, then about-faced and marched back inside, probably to call the riot squad.

  “So you’re a private dick, huh?”

  Sugarman made himself breathe.

  “I am.”

  “You don’t act like one. You act like a regular guy.”

  “I’m one of those, too.”

  She squinted at him, blinked, then looked back at her expensive landscaping.

  “So who are you working for?”

  “Good question. I guess I’m working for an old guy named Lawton Collins.”

  “I know Lawton. You’re a friend of his?”

  “I met him once,” Sugarman said. “But he makes a strong impression.”

  “He has a debilitating memory impairment,” Angela said. “Second stage, it could last for five, six more years just like that, or he could take a quick dive tomorrow, not be able to tie his shoes or feed himself.”

  Sugarman nodded.

  “He seemed fairly lucid to me. Half the time anyway.”

  “Lawton and my dad were friends. My dad liked to spend time with Lawton. He said it was inspiring.”

  “Well, he’s run off somewhere,” Sugarman said. “He’s trying to track down Arnold’s killer.”

  “And you’re trying to track him down.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Is someone paying your fee?”

  “This one’s off the books,” Sugarman said.

  “The police think Dad’s death was accidental. But I don’t buy that.”

  “Lawton’s convinced it was a murder. And he was there, an eyewitness.”

  “What’s your rate?”

  Sugarman told her.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll triple that, and I’ll pay you a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus if you see to it that the entire Braswell family winds up in jail.”

  Sugarman smiled.

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t do that.”

  “My father provided very well for me. I’ve got a bundle.” She was speaking to the eastern quadrant of the sky.

  “I’m sure you do, but I can’t take your money.”

 
“Well, then I won’t tell you anything. I’ll just shut the door and leave you standing out here. See how long you last in the wilds of Palm Beach.”

  Sugarman smiled. The woman had her chin in the air, showing the freckles on her throat, eyes on the sky like she was consulting the Big Dipper.

  “You drive a hard bargain.”

  “So are you in my employ now? You’ll find out who killed my father?”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sure, why not? I’ll try. But I can’t promise who’ll go to jail.”

  “Okay, then. I guess the first order of business is to grill me.”

  “I don’t usually grill my clients. I reserve that for my suspects.”

  “Don’t you want to ask me anything?”

  “All right,” Sugarman said. He was smiling. He couldn’t help himself. This woman had an elfin mischief about her. “Why do you think your father was murdered?”

  “That’s pretty general,” she said.

  “I like to start general and work toward the specific.”

  “Okay,” Angela said. She gave him a fleeting glance, then her eyes sailed away to the stars again. “My dad knew something was very wrong in the Braswell family. And what he knew got him killed. If Lawton Collins knows the same thing my dad knew, then it could get him killed, too.”

  “You know what that thing is?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I certainly do.”

  “Is it about a ray gun?” Sugarman said. “Airplane crashes?”

  The woman stopped breathing and brought her eyes back from the heavens and gave Sugarman her full attention.

  “You know about MicroDyne?”

  “MicroDyne,” Sugarman said. “I heard a little about it.”

  “A. J. Braswell’s company,” she said. “He was the founder. They have a plant out near the turnpike, west of town. They process computer parts. Coat microprocessors and chips and things like that with a special material A. J.’s son invented. It’s a complicated process called spark plasma sintering. But A. J. doesn’t run the company anymore. His daughter runs it now. Morgan Braswell. She’s an evil bitch.”

  She looked at him straight on.

  “An evil, evil bitch,” Angela said.

  She lifted her head a little as if overcome with pride for getting the awful truth out into the open.

  “There’s a man you should talk to. He’s A. J.’s partner. His name is Jeb Shine.”

  “What’s he going to tell me?”

  She took a breath. Sent her gaze out into the galaxies.

  A shirtless man with a bald head and long fringe hair stepped out from behind the door. He had a long, pale face and brown eyes and a mournful mouth. He was wearing blue-and-white seersucker shorts and red tennis shoes with the laces undone. His chest was shapeless and his belly swelled over the waistband of his shorts. Angela looped an arm around his and tugged him out onto the porch.

  “Jeb’s been eavesdropping, haven’t you, sweet pea?”

  Jeb gave a curt nod.

  “Jeb and I are engaged, Mr. Sugarman. We met at a party a year ago and started talking and found out we had a lot in common. Isn’t that right, Jeb?”

  Jeb nodded again, his eyes on Sugarman’s. Sugar feeling a sag of disappointment; this woman, a complete stranger, lifting his spirits with her flirty looks, then out walks the slob boyfriend.

  “You have something you want to tell me, Jeb?”

  “Angela’s doing a pretty good job. If she needs me to fill in any blanks, okay, I’m ready to do that.”

  Angela Peretti blushed and lowered her eyes and peered out into the dark neighborhood, searching for eavesdroppers.

  “What is it, Angela? If you have something to say, now’s the time.”

  She made several quick nods as if she’d consulted with the heavens and they’d given their approval.

  “Jeb and I think they’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing.”

  “What things?”

  She inhaled through her nose and shook her head.

  “Maybe I should come inside,” Sugar said.

  “I called the Miami Police Department but they weren’t interested. They said they’d send someone out to talk to me, but no one ever came.”

  “Weren’t interested in what?”

  “The blueprints, schematic drawings. There’s a whole box of stuff I found in Dad’s apartment.”

  “Blueprints of the ray gun?”

  “Calling it a ray gun,” Angela said, “that makes it sound like something from a cartoon show. But it’s not. It’s very real. Isn’t it, Jeb?”

  He nodded.

  “And these blueprints, where did your father get them? From the Braswells?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How’d he manage that? Something so valuable.”

  “He had free passage on and off their boat. That’s where he found them, on their fishing yacht.”

  “What’s the connection between your father and these people? Was he A. J.’s bookie or something? A fishing buddy?”

  “The connection between my father and A. J. is blood.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  Jeb shifted beside her. A housefly was tracking up his cheek but he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Blood,” she said. “As in family.”

  “You’re related to the Braswells?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “But my older sister Darlene was married to A. J. Braswell.”

  She fixed her eyes on a neatly pruned hibiscus bush.

  “You and your sister, are you close?”

  “Darlene’s dead, Mr. Sugarman. Ten years ago she hung herself in the attic of her house. She was one of them for seventeen years. That’s what killed her. Being a Braswell.”

  Sugarman looked at the same hibiscus bush that Angela was so absorbed in. It was a well-pruned bush. Healthy, with lots of double-wide blooms. A bush worth studying.

  “Lawton described one of the guys on the boat,” said Sugar. “He said he was a blond kid with a sombrero. Is that anyone you’re familiar with?”

  Jeb muttered something under his breath.

  “That’s Johnny,” Angela said. “Johnny Braswell, the baby of the family. All the Braswell IQ was siphoned off by the time Johnny was born.”

  “Lawton said it was this Johnny character who cut Arnold’s hand.”

  She shut her eyes hard and bowed her head.

  “Nice family,” Sugarman said. “Kid slashes his own granddaddy.”

  She wet her lips and looked directly at Sugarman.

  “Know what’s even more screwed up?”

  “What?”

  She let him have a long look at her eyes. Pretty and wide-set, long lashes and a sassy twinkle in there.

  “My father,” she said, “Mr. Arnold Peretti, big-time underworld figure, bookie for the stars, he was also a doting grandfather. You should’ve seen him down on the floor at the Braswells’ house, every Christmas, every birthday. Little Andy, and Morgan, and Johnny. He loved those kids. He loved them so much he could never see how totally fucked up they were. The most fucked-up little brats that ever slithered out from under a rock. That’s who my father squandered his love on. Little shits like that.”

  Thorn waited till Alex had settled in her bunk, pulled the blanket to her chin, said good night. He waited a little longer, staring up into the dark, listening to her breathing deepen, the first throaty flutters of sleep. Then he rose and tiptoed out onto the deck. It was well after midnight and the bar was closed, just a few late-night diners in their flowered clothes and deep tans stumbling back from the local restaurants.

  He went for a walk across the grounds. A strong wind was whistling around the buildings and bending the palms. Fronds rattled and the smaller boats jostled in their slips.

  He had noticed the dinghy earlier in the evening. It was a white rowboat, used to ferry hotel guests across the harbor to the isolated beach. It was knotted to a cleat near the dockmaster’s shed. The shed was dark now, the dock empty. Throughout the ma
rina men were dreaming of blue marlin rising to their lures.

  Thorn stepped down into the dinghy and unlashed the line and pushed off. He banged the oars a little as he learned the right rhythm. By the time he was at the far end of the marina he was moving along nicely, a good even stroke, as stealthy as a dark wind.

  He kept just beyond the halo of the marina lights, rowing out into the harbor, the black water glistening with gold. When he was past the final slip, he put the oars in the oarlocks and drifted thirty yards beyond the Braswells’ yacht. He had an unobstructed view of it, sleek and white with a ghostly glow.

  Lights burned in the narrow skylights of the two starboard cabins. He saw no one out on deck, no one moving behind the salon curtains. The current sloshed against the boulders on the far side of the harbor. Charcoal smoke was drifting in from one of the boats anchored beyond the mouth of the harbor. Someone having a late-night barbecue.

  He was unarmed and undermanned. No way he could stage a successful raid on their boat. And not much chance he could sneak aboard unnoticed. There was a pistol-packing guard parked in the shadows. Though Thorn couldn’t see him from his dinghy, he knew he was there. There was no way to tell what weapons the Braswells might have aboard.

  It was foolish. It was absurd and risky to all involved. There were a hundred rational reasons why he should go back to the Heart Pounder and concentrate on Alexandra Collins’s breathing, fall into the rhythms of her sleep. But he kept thinking of that airplane passenger in the track suit who’d had a seizure on the deck of the skiff. And the large woman who’d scooped him up and held him while he died, giving him some last comfort, some final moments of human contact. All of them had been safe and comfortable in their padded seats one minute, and tumbling from the sky the next. He kept seeing Lawton Collins, his wry, off-center smile.