‘She was hiding out from Ironstone Waters,’ he said, ‘but you already knew that.’
‘Yes.’ The less I said, the more he’d think I knew.
‘You came here to get her,’ he went on.
‘I did.’
He flashed that corpse-like smile again. ‘But you had bad information. She hasn’t been here in six months.’
‘Where is she now?’ I asked before I thought better of it.
‘How should I know? Another beer.’
I stared at him for a minute, and then reached over to get him another bottle.
That was my mistake. My eyes only looked away for a second, but in that second he grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and pulled it out of my hands. He jumped backward off the barstool, flipped the gun around, and blasted it in my direction.
I barely had time to duck behind the bar, and even at that, some of the shot did damage to my suit at the shoulder.
I heard him throw away the empty shotgun and scurry for his pistol. I knew I had to move fast. I grabbed two of his favorite beer bottles, nearly frozen in their ice bath. I threw myself a couple of feet to the right behind the bar. Then I stood and heaved one of the bottles as hard as I could at his head.
It hit, and he staggered. He hadn’t retrieved his pistol yet.
I fell back behind the bar, moved all the way to the left, and stood again. He was trying to see straight, but I tossed the second bottle. I was a little amped up, so I threw it really hard. It smashed against his skull and he went down.
I took that moment to roll over the top of the bar and land on the floor right beside him. I kicked his head as hard as I could, but he refused to become unconscious.
He turned over onto his back, lying there on the floor, with his pistol in both hands.
I jumped sideways. The gun went off. I turned and kicked his arms. The gun went flying against the wall and went off again. Hair trigger.
He was scrambling to get up. I got a hold of him from behind, my arm around his neck. I squeezed. He elbowed. We were the worst dancing partners in history, turning, rolling onto the floor, biting, scratching.
Before I knew it, we were nearly to the front door, and neither one of us could find the pistol.
He let out an animal-like scream and belted me right in the stomach with both hands. I doubled over, lost my breath for a couple of seconds, and when I opened my eyes, he was gone.
I sat down on the floor. I felt like a train had run over me. Twice.
On the other hand, a whole lot of things were beginning to make more sense to me. For instance, the old guy was right. I was in way over my head.
I had stumbled right into the middle of the Florida Cocaine Wars.
THIRTEEN
That’s what the papers called it, ‘The Florida Cocaine Wars.’ And in all fairness, ‘The Black Tuna Gang’ was something of a media appellation as well. I was familiar with the way that worked. My own dear Pops had been a card-carrying member of a group he called the Combination, an organization insultingly dubbed ‘Murder, Inc.’ by an overly-dramatic press.
But it didn’t matter what you called these Columbians, they were seriously wrong guys. They weighed the money instead of counting it; they also measured their progress in blood. I had no idea how things were in Columbia, but in certain parts of Florida, it was a war zone like Poland after Hitler.
I sat there on the floor of the Cherry Pocket bar and tried to think my way through all the landmines. If Ironstone Waters, and, by association, David, had anything to do with Black Tuna, I wasn’t remotely equipped to soldier on with my little escapade. My best bet was to find Lena, try to get her into a good school and out of the killing game, then go back to my little office and pretend that the previous several weeks had never happened.
Except that I’d promised Lena I’d find her sister. And since I’d turned over a new leaf a few years back, I wouldn’t allow myself to break a promise. Ever.
So, step one: I stood up. Step two: I counted my blessings (such as the fact that the old guy hadn’t kill me, and I finally knew what I was really up against.) Step three: call home. Home in Brooklyn.
I wasn’t going to call my mother or my Aunt Shayna. I was calling Pan Pan Washington. For one thing, he was an artist with a blowtorch. He could make a VW bug look like a Jaguar XKE if he wanted to. But that wasn’t why I needed to call him.
In my raucous youth, only a few years previous, I had been, shall we say, an aficionado of the coca plant. I was pretty sure that one week I single-handedly cleared out the entire coke reserves of my hometown borough. I could never be sure, because it was all kind of blurry, but I was told that I boosted thirty-five high-end cars that week, also won a mountain of cash on the ponies, and wrecked two perfectly good friendships. Regardless, I was familiar with the milieu.
And Pan Pan had been my supplier. If I wanted information about the coke business in general, he would be the guy to call, because he was very thorough, very knowledgeable, and one of the guys I hadn’t pissed off before I left Brooklyn.
Finding Lena wouldn’t be that hard either, really. Ironstone’s men had taken her, so all I had to do was go to Ironstone – the guy who shot me.
As for Ellen Greenberg, or whatever her name was, that would have to wait. Clearly she was clever and good at hiding. She’d keep, at least for a while. I’d eventually ask Maggie Redhawk about her, and get somewhere, but for now: homeward bound.
So despite my aches and pains, I moved carefully out the front door of the dingy bar. I had to be certain that the Cuban codger wasn’t out there waiting for me, even though I was pretty sure that he would be trying to get as far away from me as he possibly could. I thought about getting the shotgun, reloading, and sticking it out in front of me, just to see what would happen. But after considering how it had gone the last time I’d pointed a gun at the guy, I decided that I would employ stealth instead.
I crouched low when I nudged the door open with the tip of my Florsheim.
Nothing.
I poked my head out, very low to the ground.
Nothing.
Then I felt a little stupid, so I stood up. I gave the outside a good look. The sun was slanting through the trees, made a lot of shadows, places to hide. My car was pretty visible, but he could have been hiding behind it.
I stepped through the doorway, trying to remember that stupid poem I had to memorize in elementary school: ‘Into the valley of death rode the something-or-other.’ A clear rip-off of Mizmor Kaf Gimmel in the book of Tehillim, the Twenty-third Psalm. I actually did know that one by heart: ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.’
Neither quote was very comforting to me. I moved very stiffly toward my T-Bird.
As luck or God or poetry would have it: the guy was gone. I slid into the driver’s seat, cranked the car, and backed it out fast, like I was stealing it. Once I was on the main road, the accelerator went to the floor. After a while I glanced down at the speedometer. It said I was going 102 miles an hour, but it was an old car and I was sure that was wrong.
I felt like I was crawling and might not ever make it back to Fry’s Bay.
The sun was high by the time I parked in front of my apartment. Given recent events, I was wary of just walking in, so I slipped around back, beachside, and managed a peek through the sliding glass doors.
My place seemed empty.
I fished in my pocket for the back door key, clicked the lock, and oozed in as quietly as I could. I was relieved to discover that I was alone in the apartment. I was still sore from my tussle, and sitting in the car for a while, tense and speeding, had only made it worse.
I took off my coat, worried that it was permanently ruined, and made it to the bathroom for aspirin. I thought six or eight might do the trick – as long as I chased it with single malt Scotch and heroin, neither of which I had, alas.
Still, down went the aspirin, and then I sat on the bed going over all the plans I’d made on the drive back to Fry’s Bay.
I would, in order, shower, put on a new suit, drive to the big old Ironstone Waters mansion, stroll in, and probably get shot dead. The end.
But in the unlikely event that I wasn’t dead, I would lay down a little mixture of truth and invention for Ironstone to consider. I would tell him that I knew all about his involvement in Black Tuna, the cocaine wars, and the real reason his son David had been killed.
That was a little something I’d been pondering the entire drive. Why had Ironstone been so against his son’s involvement with Ellen Greenberg? Sure, some of it was racism – he didn’t want David marrying an inferior Caucasian. But why remove the girl from town altogether? It seemed like an emotional overreaction from a very calculating man. I had no idea what was really going on with David and Ellen. Maybe it was love, maybe it was something even more treacherous. But my play was to tell Ironstone that I knew the real reason his son had been killed and then watch to see what he’d do or say. And then he’d shoot me dead.
But if that didn’t happen, I would use whatever did happen to leverage Lena’s liberation. If Lena wasn’t dead already.
As I pondered, sitting there on my bed, it occurred to me that a lot of my predictions about the future ended with people getting dead.
Lost in such thoughts, I almost didn’t hear the gentle tapping at my front door. It was so timid, in fact, that I considered for a second that no one was really there at all. Still, caution was my friend. I slipped out the back sliding doors and inched around the side of the building to get a gander at my visitor. And what I saw popped my eyes.
My new girlfriend Hachi was there, holding some kind of package in her hand. And there beside her: none other than John Horse.
I stepped out into the open, headed toward them.
‘Nobody home,’ I called.
Hachi turned my way. John Horse didn’t bother looking, but he smiled.
‘There you are,’ Hachi said. ‘We brought you something for the aches and pains.’
I stopped.
‘What makes you think I got aches and pains?’ I asked.
John Horse laughed. ‘You got shot. You were in a coma. Then you got hit on the head. Then you wrestled with an alligator and a black tuna. I saw it all.’
He looked exactly like he did the first time I saw him. There were wrinkles in his wrinkles. He was dressed in a red flannel shirt, clean jeans, and ornate cowboy boots. His hair was white smoke all around his head. Everything about him was the oldest thing I’d ever seen, and then he turned my way. He had the eyes of a very young child, and they were smiling even though the rest of his face wasn’t.
In short, I was glad to see him.
‘Hello, John Horse,’ I said. ‘You saw me wrestle two animals?’
He nodded.
‘Let’s go inside,’ Hachi urged.
She looked around. She was nervous.
‘OK,’ I agreed.
I went to the front door, unlocked it, and let them go in first.
John Horse went immediately to the sofa. Hachi went into the kitchen and unwrapped her package, set three bottles on the counter. One was small, filled with some kind of powder. One had pills in it. The third was a bottle of Bowmore 25-year-old single malt Scotch. For my money it was the best in the world, even though I didn’t actually have the money, because it was also one of the most expensive spirits around.
‘I suggest a combination of all three,’ John Horse said, nodding toward the bottles.
‘Where did you get the dough for the scotch?’ I had to know.
John Horse smiled. ‘I didn’t buy it. I took it from Ironstone Waters. He had a lot of bottles. I don’t think he’ll miss one.’
‘This particular one,’ I explained, ‘he might. It’s very expensive.’
John Horse just stared.
‘And besides,’ I went on, ‘the last time I drank something you gave me, I was in an altered state for a couple of days, if I remember correctly.’
The first time I met John Horse, on tribal land in the middle of the swamp, he’d dosed me with some sort of hallucinogenic tea and I’d visited a couple of other realities, none of which had a street address.
‘That was so that I could know who you were,’ he said calmly. ‘I know that now, even if you don’t.’
‘Yeah,’ I countered, ‘I know who I am just fine. It’s you I’m worried about. Sending Hachi to fill my head with all kinds of distractions, that’s about your speed. But showing up here knowing that I had an encounter with Holata, one of Ironstone’s men, and some guy from the Black Tuna gang? That smacks of involvement.’
‘I don’t know what you mean when you say involvement.’ He had no expression in his voice or on his face.
‘Well we could go on like this all day,’ I snapped, ‘but I’m really not in great shape, so excuse me if I’m rude: what do you want?’
‘I want to help.’ He stared.
I looked at Hachi and she smiled.
‘What do you want, then?’ I asked her.
‘I want to help John Horse,’ she answered.
‘Hachi is kind of a protégé of mine,’ John Horse said. ‘I’m teaching her a few things, and she’s teaching me a few things.’
That was the kind of thing John Horse said that was more than the sum of its words. I don’t know how he managed it, but he could say things a certain way that implied a larger picture.
I gave up trying to figure him out, for the moment, and sat down in my big comfortable chair.
‘I think I’ll skip the beverage for the time being,’ I told him, ‘and just listen to what you came to say. You say you want to help me.’
‘Yes.’
‘So help me.’
Hachi came into the room and sat on the sofa beside John Horse.
‘There are a few things you need to know.’ He leaned forward. ‘First, Ellen Greenberg doesn’t exist. She’s a figment of someone’s imagination.’
It was such a strange thing to say that it didn’t have any effect on me for a second. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
‘What do you mean?’ I finally managed to ask.
‘She’s made up,’ John Horse said.
‘No.’ I jutted my chin in his direction. ‘First, I trust Lena. She wouldn’t make up a sister. Second, Hachi said that Maggie Redhawk knew her. Third, I found a tent near Lake Wales where she used to stay and confirmation of her visit there from the Black Tuna guy. So, no – she’s not made up.’
‘Lena probably has a sister,’ he answered. ‘And there was a woman who was working at the hospital with Maggie; she probably did spend some time at the Cherry Pocket. But those are two different people. I have no idea about Lena’s sister, but the woman we’re talking about was an agent of Nixon’s new Drug Enforcement Agency. She was here in Fry’s Bay to arrest David Waters and to try to get the goods on Ironstone.’
That made me feel a little dizzy.
‘Are you trying to tell me that a federal agent had a child with David Waters?’
‘Oh, no,’ he answered, ‘I think that the child might be made up too. Or, actually, Hachi thinks that David made her up and started rumors about her so that he could go on molesting little children in the park. But I’m not sure about that.’
I sat back and rubbed my eyes. ‘No. David Waters asked Lena to kill him so that he could get insurance money to his child.’
‘Does that sound at all plausible,’ John Horse asked softly, ‘when you say it out loud like that?’
I had to admit that it didn’t, but any other explanation of David’s murder was just as impossible to swallow.
Still, I had to ask, ‘Then why did Lena kill him?’
John Horse looked at Hachi and then back at me. ‘We’d like to know that too.’
‘So, in essence,’ I said slowly, ‘everything I know is wrong.’
‘Not everything,’ Hachi said.
‘Look,’ I explained, ‘I like Lena. I don’t think she’d make all this up.’
‘No,’ John Horse agreed,
‘as I was saying, she probably does have a sister. And that sister may somehow be involved in all this. But the woman known to her as Ellen Greenberg was a federal agent.’
‘No,’ I protested, ‘what about the love letters and the photographs I found in the safe deposit box?’
‘When you showed that picture all over town,’ John Horse answered, ‘did anyone recognize it?’
‘No.’
‘Then maybe that photograph is of Lena’s real sister and not the agent.’
‘Doesn’t resolve the love letters,’ I insisted.
‘How did Lena get them?’
‘She said that David Waters gave them to her,’ I told him, ‘but I guess you’re going to tell me that they were all a part of some grand plan on David’s part, or Ironstone’s drug cartel.’
‘I haven’t seen the letters.’ He shrugged.
I heaved a sigh the size of New Jersey, hoisted myself out of my chair, and went to my ruined suit coat to retrieve the letters in question.
Twenty minutes later John Horse made his pronouncement. ‘Fake.’
He tossed them onto the coffee table between us.
‘There’s more to it than that,’ I said, knowing that he had something else to say.
‘The child-like code encouraging you to go to the Three Tee Pees campground.’
‘What about it?’ I asked, not even bothering to marvel at how quickly he’d solved that particular riddle.
He ignored me. ‘And the handwriting. Hachi?’
She nodded. ‘A man wrote those letters.’
‘Probably David Waters,’ John Horse agreed.
I shook my head. ‘Why in the world would he make up these letters?’
‘To confuse Lena.’
‘And why would he want to do that?’ I went on.
‘So she wouldn’t kill him.’ John Horse closed his eyes. ‘Lena is a strange child.’
‘Agreed,’ I told him, ‘but if David Waters didn’t hire her to kill him, what’s her motive?’
‘Her sister, maybe? This supposed Ellen Greenberg?’ He shrugged.
I slumped down even farther into my chair. ‘Look, I know it’s your way to dazzle people with confusion in the guise of the artful lie, but I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me.’
Three Shot Burst Page 10