‘Yeah, I thought you’d probably get to that once you start poking around.’ She gave me a big grin and headed for the door. ‘But you’re right. Ellen Greenberg’s my older sister.’
And then Lena was bay fog on a bright morning: gone.
Me? I went back to sleep.
The next thing I remember is Maggie Redhawk’s big face so close to mine that it scared me.
Maggie Redhawk was a fifty-year-old nurse, a woman of what she called ‘mixed ethnicity.’ All that really meant was that she couldn’t decide whether to write ‘African-American’ or ‘Native American’ on her employment form, because she was both.
She always told me that I looked more like a Seminole than she did. Maybe that’s why she was always willing to help me when I needed it; why her brother had been so swell to me and Lena.
I stared into her eyes. ‘What? Are you trying to kiss me?’
She grinned. ‘If I wanted to kiss you, big boy, I wouldn’t have to try.’
I looked around. We were alone.
‘Where’s Philip?’ I asked. ‘He was here a minute ago.’
She straightened up.
‘A minute ago,’ she repeated. ‘I see.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘You’ve been in a coma, genius,’ she sighed. ‘This is the first time you’ve opened your eyes in almost a week. And Philip’s been here every day. I just sent him out for dinner.’
I tried to sit up. ‘A week?’
‘You were almost dead, kiddo.’ She checked some tube or other and shook her head.
‘And Lena’s gone.’
‘The kid from the place? Yeah, like, since the night you got here.’
‘OK.’ I struggled a little more to get up. ‘When do I get out of here?’
‘You don’t, Foggy. Not anytime soon. Look.’ She sighed and sat on the bed. ‘You got shot through the heart. It wrecked one of your valves. You’re lucky to be talking, now. Doesn’t it hurt?’
‘Now that you mention it,’ I said.
‘So you have to stay right here, get all knitted up.’
‘No. I have to find Ellen Greenberg. And then I have to take care of her kid. And then I have to find Lena. I’ve got a full datebook. So give me a pill or something and get my suit.’
‘No, Foggy,’ Maggie said, a little irritated. ‘You wrecked a heart valve! A whole entire heart valve!’
‘OK, but I got three more, right? I once boosted a Dodge Dart that only had two cylinders working. Sounded like a sewing machine, but it got me all over Brooklyn.’
‘Before it died,’ she said.
‘Well, yeah,’ I admitted, ‘but I got three!’
‘You’re not a car! Damn. Anything more strenuous than a jog to the beach and you’re done.’
‘I know you’re exaggerating,’ I told her, ‘because you care about me.’
‘I’m not exaggerating, and I don’t care about you at all,’ she countered. ‘I just don’t want to lose my job. I got benefits.’
‘Bullshit,’ I snapped. ‘You get more benefit out of being a Seminole than you do being a nurse. And letting me die wouldn’t kick you out of the tribe.’
‘If you think that there’s anything to be gained by being a Seminole woman in Florida, think again.’
‘And if you think I’m going to lie here in bed while Ironstone’s gang figures out what to do with Ellen Greenberg and her kid, you’d better think again! I got a job too, you understand!’
She stood. ‘Yeah, about that. Child Protective Services shut down your office.’
I blinked. ‘What?’
‘You were in a coma, Foggy. And it was pretty much a one-man office since all that business this past February. So …’
‘OK, but I’m going to reopen it now. First, there’s a fourteen-year-old kid who needs my help, whether she knows it or not. And there’s another kid somewhere around here who’s about to be put on ice just for being the daughter of David Waters. So either tell me where my suit is, or have a look at my ass through the back of this gown as I exit the establishment.’
Maggie folded her arms.
‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘I’m going to give you a couple of bottles of pills. Whenever you get a certain feeling in your chest like that Dodge Dart, which will happen on a regular basis, you take the blue one. And if you can’t breathe and your left arm goes numb, take the other one. And if neither one of them works, there’s a third procedure.’
I sat all the way up. ‘Such as?’
‘Such as kiss your ass goodbye,’ she said, ‘because you’re about to be dead.’
I shrugged. ‘OK, good – long as there’s a procedure. Now can you help me out of all these tubes?’
And then I fell right back to sleep.
That happened a lot for a few days – waking up and going right back to sleep – before I finally slipped out when no one was looking.
I think it was a Tuesday night. I was out on the street, headed for my office. I felt like I had the worst hangover in history and also like King Kong had done a Gene Kelly on my chest. To make matters worse, my suit was all rumpled.
I was lucky it was nighttime, late. Most of the citizens of Fry’s Bay were home in bed. I didn’t really feel like running into anyone. And it took a little longer for the old office building to come into view.
It was a cinderblock piece of crap with salt-air-peeled paint, pink. It was a two-story box with windows and a flat roof that leaked. My joint was on the second floor. The sign out front said, ‘Child Protective ervices.’ The S was missing.
Up the stairs and headed toward the office door, I actually started feeling better. I thought the walk was doing me good. I’d been in bed for a month, no wonder I was a little stiff. But the feeling didn’t last.
The door was open. I could see that the place had been wrecked; most of the furniture was gone. And there was someone sitting at my desk going through my drawers.
I slowed down, stuck to the shadows, trying to see who was pilfering, but it was too dark.
If I’d had any sense, I would have backed away and gone to get Baxter or somebody, but apparently when you get shot, your brain takes a holiday. Instead, I stepped into the light.
‘If you find my IRS form in there would you give it to me?’ I sang out. ‘I don’t want to get in Dutch with the Feds. I got enough trouble.’
The man was startled but only enough to stop moving for a minute. I kept walking, headed right for him. Once I got a little closer, I could see that the man at my desk was one of the guys I’d seen at Ironstone’s house.
He was up in the next second, gun in hand.
I stopped walking.
‘I, like, just got out of the hospital,’ I said to the guy. ‘I really don’t want to get shot again. I have no gun, no energy, and no malice, so there’s absolutely no reason to shoot me.’
He lowered his gun.
‘How’d you get out of the hospital?’ he asked. ‘They said you were in a coma.’
‘I woke up. What are you doing in my office?’
‘Ironstone Waters wants to find his grandchild.’
‘Did you look in the left-hand drawer?’ I said brightly.
The guy stood up and rounded the desk. He had on a shiny black suit with wide lapels, and a gray shirt with a lavender tie. The Natty Gangster look that was popular with a certain set.
‘He knows that Lena gave you a key,’ he told me. ‘A key to a safe deposit box where all the information is. So just give me the key, and everything’ll be all right.’
‘I been in a coma, Igmo,’ I said gently. ‘I got no key.’
In fact, I really didn’t have a key. I vaguely remembered Lena mentioning it, but she’d left town and I’d gone dark and no key had been proffered.
He kept coming anyway. I was just waiting until he got a little closer.
‘It’s not in your desk,’ he went on. ‘So I figure you got it on you.’
‘I really don’t,’ I promised h
im, ‘but you’re welcome to look.’
I spread my arms wide. He got close enough that the tip of his pistol touched my lapel.
So I dropped, took a hold of his left ankle with both hands, and stood up again very suddenly. His foot came up, his head flew back, the gun went off, and he was down on his back in the next second.
I dropped his foot and went to grab his gun. I twisted it and it came loose right away. He was gasping, had the wind knocked out of him. I thought about jumping up and down on him a few times, just to teach him a lesson, but I had my heart to think about. Best not get too excited.
Instead I pointed the gun at his face.
‘I’m going to shoot you in the eyeball now,’ I told him, ‘and explain to Officer Baxter how you were an intruder that shot at me first. You’ll be dead, and he’ll take me out to dinner.’
‘Ironstone just wants to help the kid, his granddaughter,’ the poor guy moaned.
‘Well, he disowned his son, chased a perfectly nice florist out of town, and he shot me, so I’m not inclined to help him out.’
‘You’re not really going to shoot me in the eyeball.’ He blinked.
‘I’m not?’
‘Not if I promise not to kill you – although, Ironstone wouldn’t mind doing it.’
‘Why?’ I whined. ‘What did I ever do to him?’
The guy shrugged. ‘He just doesn’t like you, I guess.’
I nodded. Most people took to me right away, but there was the occasional citizen who was immune to my charm.
‘What happened to all of my furniture?’ I asked him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, getting his breath back, ‘I wondered about that myself.’
I reached out my hand and helped him up.
‘Which one are you?’ I asked him.
‘What?’ He was still a little dazed.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Oh. Herbert.’
‘Herbert is a Seminole name?’
He sighed. ‘My mother was from London. I hate it.’
‘What does it mean?’
I knew that Seminole names were supposed to mean something, and that my friend Philip hated his name because it meant ‘lover of horses’ and all the kids had made rude jokes about his sexual practices when he was little.
He hung his head. ‘It’s supposed to mean “bright army,” but it’s British slang for a dull, uninteresting person.’
‘Did your mother know that?’
He nodded. ‘She didn’t like me very much. She got knocked up by a guy from our tribe out in the swamp.’
‘That doesn’t mean she didn’t like you.’
‘She used to say, “You’re my little Herbert, aren’t you, you bleeding bastard.”’
I nodded. ‘Sorry, kid. That’s rough.’
Then I shoved his gun into my outside coat pocket, and when I did I felt something there that gave me pause. It felt very much like a key – say, the sort of key that might open a safe deposit box.
SIX
So nine o’clock the next morning I was standing at the front door of the Fry’s Bay Savings and Loan, waiting for Sybil to let me in.
Sybil Blessing was thirty-two going on eighty, hair piled high, over-rouged cheeks, and a skirt one size smaller than comfortable. Eventually she clacked toward the big glass door on her wobbly high heels and winked at me.
‘Hey, Foggy. Ain’t seen you in a while. They said you was dead.’
‘Yeah, I just been busy. Look what I got.’
I held up the key.
‘Safe deposit.’ She stared. ‘Whose is it?’
‘How do you know it’s not mine?’
‘Because you ain’t got a box here is why,’ she laughed.
‘Well, as it happens,’ I explained, slipping into the air conditioning, ‘it belongs to a client.’
‘Some kid?’
‘That’s right,’ I assured her. ‘She handed it over to me so I could help her out, you understand.’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t understand nothing these days, pal. But you got the key, I’ll give you the box.’
I followed after her as she shambled toward the vault.
‘This has to do with David Waters getting shot up over at Mary’s, right?’ she asked me, not turning around.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘They say it was a kid who shot him,’ she said. ‘Not that he didn’t deserve it. What? Was he trying to get next to a little kid? Disgusting. I’m glad she shot him.’
We arrived at the vault and she had it open in no time. The inside was about the size of my living room, and there was a metal table with a single chair close to a floor-to-ceiling array of safe deposit boxes.
She went to the wall of boxes and held her hand out. I laid the key in it. She looked at the number, nodded, and worked her magic.
She drew out Lena’s box and set it on the table. ‘There you go. I got to leave you some privacy, see? So I’ll be out there. You just holler when you’re done.’
I nodded and sat in the chair. She clicked her way out. I opened the box.
There were two photos, one of Lena when she was a little bit younger, and another one of Lena much older, which I realized after a second was probably her sister, Ellen Greenberg. There were also three letters, some cash, several documents rolled up and tied with a blue ribbon, and a single spent bullet.
I pocketed everything except the cash and closed up the box.
‘Sybil!’
‘Already?’ she sang back. ‘I’ll be right there.’
She appeared in the doorway to the vault.
‘Got what I needed,’ I told her.
‘I doubt that,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘What you need is a shave and a meal and a little sun. You look like a vagrant.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘now that you mention it, I am a little hungry.’
She shook her head disapprovingly as I walked by, headed for the door.
‘I’m going to Yudda’s,’ I said without looking back, ‘if anybody wants to know where I am.’
‘Who’s going to want to know?’ she called after me.
‘Baxter, Redhawk, and Ironstone Waters,’ I told her.
She said something, but I was already through the door, so I was spared her critique of my situation.
Yudda was a sizeable Cajun, mid-forties, ridiculously misappropriated by Florida. It was a rare day when he didn’t talk about how much he missed New Orleans – just not enough to go back and face his ex-wife.
He was also the best cook in the county: creative, daring, and not afraid of the occasional spectacular failure. On the creative side: gumbo fritters. No idea what was in them, except I could see the okra, but it was like you were eating a hush puppy and fiery gumbo at the same time. On the wrong side: monkfish crepes. Maybe it was bad monkfish, but it tasted like sulfur and week-old garbage.
As his place came into view, I felt my stomach leap up. If I’d really been out for a week or so, I probably had lost a little weight, and my stomach had shrunk. Better play it safe, I thought. Stick with a nice calm soup.
Yudda’s was a shack, really, about the size of a railroad car. Tin roof, peeling paint, the smell of wood smoke, and way too hot inside, even in the cold months.
He wouldn’t be open yet; it was too early in the morning. But I knew he’d be there, cooking, or thinking about cooking.
‘Hey!’ I called out. ‘Yudda!’
There was a short moment of silence and then the great man appeared in his doorway.
‘Foggy?’ He stared. ‘They said you was dead.’
‘I been in the hospital.’
He stepped aside. ‘Well I’m glad you ain’t dead. Come on in. What can I do?’
‘What’s the soup?’
‘I got a bouillabaisse that would kill your mother,’ he said. ‘Best I ever done.’
I shoved past him on my way to the last of three booths. ‘Then I’d better have it.’
‘What else?’ He lowered his voice.
‘I got some great Scotch.’
‘Just water for me,’ I said, ‘and a little privacy. I got some stuff to look over.’
He shook his head. ‘Work?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just got out of the hospital,’ he said to himself, ‘and already working too hard.’
‘Thanks, Yudda,’ I called.
I sat in the booth facing the door and took out the rolled up documents. I untied the blue ribbon, but they stayed curled up, like they’d been in that position for a while. I flattened out the first one, it was a birth certificate: Baby Girl Ellen, March 23, 1958. The one under that belonged to Baby Girl Elena, September 27, 1961. The third one was a life insurance policy for a million dollars. The beneficiary was someone named Ester Greenberg Waters. I figured that was David’s daughter.
The photo of Ellen would be helpful, but she looked so much like Lena that she wouldn’t be hard to spot. The mystery was why I’d never seen her if she’d lived around Fry’s Bay. Ironstone had done something to get rid of her. Lena said that David hadn’t been able to find her for three years. Still, the photo would help when I was out and about.
All three letters were written on the same floral stationery – Chalet Suzanne in Lake Wales. I knew it. It was in the exact middle of Florida, if such a thing was possible. It had been called the Carleton Club, invented by James Kraft, the cheese man. It burned down in 1943, but they built it back using stuff from the horse stables and the chicken house, so it was a little odd.
Still, it had a modicum of swank, and the stationery was impressive.
All three letters were from Ellen to David. Love letters. Undated. Really sugary. I was a little embarrassed to read them, and I was about to stop when I got to the third paragraph of the first one. It began like this: ‘The three of us, we make three. Telephones. Pens. How can they communicate how much I love you, in the same place?’ Each of the three letters had that exact phrasing in the third paragraph. I considered myself as romantic as the next guy, but I had to observe that the diction left a little to be desired.
By the time Yudda brought me my silverware, I had concluded that at least part of each love letter was a code. I folded them back into their respective envelopes. I was in no condition to crack cypher.
Three Shot Burst Page 4