by Gregg Loomis
This time it was Phil who anticipated his enemy’s next move.
As a foot drew back for another kick, he snatched the ankle of the other with both hands. The natural imbalance of one foot off the ground and the other being pulled in the same direction had the desired effect: The man stumbled. Before he could catch his balance, Phil delivered his own kick. From a prone position, the effort was not all he could wish but it was well aimed.
There was an expulsion of breath as the man doubled over to grasp his crotch.
Phil was on his feet. He lunged forward and there was a sound like metal hitting wood and he felt as if his skull had spilt. His knees would no longer hold him and he almost dispassionately watched the grounds rise to meet him.
9.
472 Lafayette Drive
Atlanta, Georgia
4:27 am the Next Morning
A ringing phone in the wee hours rarely heralds good news. It was, then, with some trepidation Lang Reilly reached for the opening chords of Glen Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo, the ring tone of his iPhone.
“Umph?”
Gurt rolled over, covering her head with the pillow.
“Lang, is that you?”
“That part of me that’s awake at this hour. Who’s this?”
“It’s Phil, Phil McGrath.”
Lang sat up. “Doesn’t sound like Phil McGrath.”
“That’s because my lips area little swollen where I had a tooth knocked out.”
“Tooth knocked out?”
“Yeah. Goes right along with a couple of broken ribs, twenty four stitches in my scalp, a concussion and the meanest fucker of a headache you can imagine.”
“Phil, I wanted you to find a girl, not take on whoever beat the shit out of you.”
“Wasn’t my idea, believe me.”
“So, where are you now?”
“Doctors Hospital, Nassau. They say they’ll let me go if I’m non symptomatic in twenty-four hours. Don’t intend to wait that long.”
By now Lang was fully awake. His feet searched the floor for his slippers, found them and he padded out of the room in case Gurt was able to go back to sleep. “Tell me what happened.”
Phil did, finishing with, “. . .And that’s why I have no intent of hanging around here in the hospital, waiting for the bastards to finish the job.”
“Sounds like they were trying to scare you off, not kill you.”
A hollow laugh. “Swell! You can bet your ass on that, not mine.”
“I suppose the police are involved?”
“’Involved?’ That would be a stretch. They’ve been trying to convince me the couple of Martinis I had with dinner made me so drunk I fell. Hell, I could’ve fallen off a two-story house and not gotten banged up this bad. But, you know, attacks on Americans are bad for the tourist trade.”
“The guys took your wallet?”
“Nah. They wanted to be sure I got the message.”
“And that is?”
“Be on the next stage outta Dodge.”
Lang thought for a minute. “Any idea why?”
“Theory, not fact.”
“And that is?”
“The woman, Livia, disappeared after seeing that exhibit at the library. We visited the place ths afternoon. The old biddy, the librarian, was terrified when the subject came up. I’d say Livia did or said something related to that exhibit that set somebody off.”
“But the thing was open to the public. God only knows how many people saw it. I haven’t read about masses vanishing from Nassau.”
“That’s one of the things I don’t get, either.”
“The exhibit, what did Celeste say about it?”
“Old photos and stuff about a murder that happened here in the 1940’s. Doesn’t sound like something to get worked up about.”
“OK, Phil, get on the next flight out. See if you can get Celeste to join you. You’re being paid to dig up facts, not risk your life.”
“Lang, I know you too well to believe you are just going to walk away from this.”
“Never said I was. Get on back here before they kill you next time.”
Lang ended the call and stood in the hallway. He turned to go back into the bedroom, changed his mind and went downstairs. In the kitchen, he loaded up the Mr. Coffee before moving to the tiny former broom closet under the stairs where he booted up the computer that occupied a small table. A chair was the only other furniture the space could accommodate.
He called up Google.
10.
Nassau Guardian
The Bahamas Oldest Newspaper
WOMAN’S BODY FOUND NEAR ADELAID
The body of an American woman identified as Livia Haynesworth, 32, was found on the rocks of South West Bay near Adeliade yesterday.
Ms. Haynesworth was vacationing at Atlantis and reported missing two days ago. What took her so far from the Paradise Island resort is unknown.
“I have no idea why she was there,” said her distraught traveling companion, Celeste Harper, 40, of Atlanta , Georgia. “She was just going out shopping and I never heard from her again. The police were less than helpful.”
South West Bay has no beach and is not a place regularly visited by tourists.
The body was found by 14 year old Rihinna Newsome who was attempting to salvage a fishing net that had washed ashore. Ms. Haynesworth was not wearing swimming attire but was identified by the wallet she had in the pocket of her shorts.
BP Lieutenant Lemual Goodlow said, “There were no obvious signs of foul play but the medical examiner’s office will determine the cause of death in the next few days.”
He was also quoted as saying the body did not appear to have been in the water more than 24 hours.
Should it be determined Ms. Haynesworth perished from other than naturalcauses, it would be the island’s two hundred twentieth homicide since 2009.
11.
85 Albert Embankment
London
14:22 Local Time
The Next Day
The futuristic pile that is home to England’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, is familiar to fans of James Bond films, having been featured in over half a dozen of them.
On the sixth floor with a view of the Thames through a single bullet proof window, Alred James sucked contemplatively on the pipe he was no longer allowed to smoke inside the building. He looked longingly at the others in the rack: Two ornately carved meerschaums, several briars and a calabash. He was particularly fond of the latter. It conjured up images of the world’s greatest (if fictional) detective: Sherlock Holmes.
James had been with MI6 since his Oxford days, nearly forty years past. Retirement and a civil service pension seemed to be coming on with increasing speed daily.
Retirement.
He could devote more time to the prize winning roses that grew around the cottage on Kiln Lane in Betchwort, Surrey. Wobbly brick floor that had seen the feet of three centuries, smoke blackened beams, inglenook fireplace, sharply slanted tile roof that had replaced thatch only a decade ago. Once there, carbon emissions, clogged streets and crowded tube seemed a world rather than just a border away.
Retirement.
He looked forward to it but there was a final task he owed his country before he swapped his Bond Street suits for cardies and Wellies, a task the hierarchy of MI6 knew nothing about. It was, as they say, “off the books.” Only he and a handful of other employees of the agency were in on it, only those who were members of the highly secret St. George Society.
The society espoused and practiced patriotism, the kind that had gone out of style as the British Empire shrunk and then morphed into the absurd commonwealth, a group of nations whose only real tie to England was that they had been former colonies. Although the queen appeared on many of their stamps and currency, they bore no real loyalty to her. Not unless you considered as loyalty the constant stream of illiterate, crime-prone, poverty ridden immigrants who lived off the dole in counsel housing.
As for the Queen. . . who really showed respect for the royals anymore? Not since Dianna, Fergie and the lot of them had revealed themselves as so much Euro-trash.
The Society had put paid to that or at least part of it in the Pont de l’Alma underpass in Paris. Oh, there had been a the few loose ends, the burst of bright light a couple of witnesses reported, witnesses easily discredited. And the white Fiat Uno whose paint matched that left on the Mercedes. The owner, photo journalist James Anderson, had been found dead in a burned and locked BMW. The keys were never located.
Loose ends or not, the possibility of the future King of England having a Moslem for a half sibling, of WOGs running around Buckingham Palace, no longer existed.
Service to the crown frequently went unrecognized or appreciated.
There was a tap at the door and a white fringed head poked in. “Sorry I’m a bit late.”
Alred beckoned. “Come in, Nigel, come in!”
Nigel Smythe’s appearance might tend toward the elfin with barely five feet in height, tiny hands and feet and a perpetual smile that seemed to say he knew a secret. As indeed he did. Quite a number of them but they were hardly the stuff of fairy tales unless one includes the Brothers Grimm.
Nigel had a long and storied history with MI6, including his most recent project, discovery of the hiding place of former Lybian strong man, Muammar Gaddaffi, and turning that bit of information over to the rebels who had just toppled his government, the botched attempt on the life of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic in 1992 And the more recent assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostfa Ahmed. Paradoxically, his “face” job, the one MI6 showed him as holding, was head of I/Ops, the office that seeks to make publicity favorable to the agency available to the press.
Nigel crossed the room and helped himself to a selection of tea bags and a cup that he filled from a pot on an electric ring. The MI6 building might be ultramodern but there were some of the old amenities Alred refused to surrender. Like one’s one personal tea making equipment.
Tea cup in one hand, Nigel produced a device resembling one of the older cell phones, a black box slightly larger than a pack of cigarettes with a stubby antenna. A series of four red lights lit in sequence as he turned slowly.
Alred shook his head. “You know very well this office is swept for bugs daily.”
Unabashed, Nigel completed his 360 degree circle and sat in a worn leather wing chair. “Quite true, old chappie but who might bug the debuggers, eh?”
Alred nodded his consent if not approval. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently. “What news from across the sea?”
“Our friend met with an unfortunate accident. He has a ticket home later today.”
“And the source of the problem?”
“Even more unfortunate accident but it appears the problem is solved.”
“Permantly?”
“We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
12.
All Saints Episcopal Church
634 West Peachtree Street
Atlanta, Georgia
Two days Later
All Saints was established in 1901 at the northern edge of a city still struggling to rebuild from its total incineration in 1864. Even Washington DC had its private buildings spared by the British in 1814 but not Atlanta. Up to and during the mid- 1950’s the congregation was white, upper middle to upper class and well to do, including many of the City’s more prominent citizens.
Today the red stone, semi-Romanesque structure is in Atlanta’s eclectic Mid-Town. On Sunday mornings it is filled, not with ladies in hats and gloves escorted by men in suits but by same sex couples who tend to hold hands during the service and are dressed more for the golf course than for an ecclesiastical service. The gay, lesbian and just plain outré are joined by a smattering of Georgia Tech students from the campus two blocks away who come to hear the magnificent organ and enjoy an interior reflective of Medieval times with its bright red ceiling dotted with religious iconography.
The present parishioners had earned the once staid old church the sobriquet of All Sorts.
This was not a Sunday but the sanctuary was filled with those who looked like they might belong, absent the Tech students. Lang Reilly drew a gentle poke in the ribs as he shifted in the hard wooden pew for perhaps the twentieth time since the clerical-garbed minister started reading from the Book of Common Prayer, commending the soul of Livia Haynesworth to a Merciful Savior.
He gave Gurt an “I can’t help it” shrug and turned his attention to the elaborate floral displays that graced the altar and choir stalls. The attendees kept him from total boredom. Hair colors were every shade of the rainbow and a lot that weren’t. Body piercing and visible tattoos were the norm not the exception for both sexes. He speculated that, in ten or fifteen years, about the time the youngest of this avante-guard crowd started to seek serious employment, removal of body art would be a thriving business.
Mercifully, the service ended and Lang and Gurt filed out, going from vestibule into the narrow porte-cochere, so narrow only the smallest of contemporary cars could have driven through were the old driveway still there.
“There’s a reception in the parish house,” Gurt reminded him.
Lang inhaled deeply. “Smell those onions? How ‘bout lunch at the Varsity?”
One block west and just across the expressway from Tech, The Varsity had been around almost as long as All Saints. A true 1950’s style drive in, it advertised itself as the largest in the world as well as the largest single seller of the famous local product, Coca-Cola and serving the world’s best hot dogs. Lang was unsure of the first two but, like most native Atlantans, had no doubt about the third.
“It might be best to at least sign in.”
Lang acknowledged the wisdom of getting credit for attending the service by taking her arm and leading her across a putting green of a lawn.
Inside, Celeste and a couple Lang guessed were Livia’s parents formed a brief line meeting the guests much like a reception line at a wedding. Lang was reminded of the similarity of the two services, the major difference being this one was by far more likely to be permanent.
A soon as Celeste spied Lang, she broke ranks to embrace him in a smothering bear hug. “Lang, I haven’t had the chance to thank you for referring me to Phil McGrath. What with Livia. . .”
She broke into tears. “I don’t think I can go on!”
Lang somehow slid loose, all too aware of the debilitating nature of grief. As his first wife had slipped further into the grips of incurable cancer, he had realized the promises they made to each other as to the good times they would share once she was well were little more than lies in the form of placebos. When she had finally succumbed, the relief he experienced that she suffered no more made him feel guilty. The moment he returned from the funeral to the small cottage in the Virginia-Highlands area of Atlanta, the starkness of the empty house had all but crushed him. His best friend was gone, the woman who worked two jobs to help send him through law school. She would never enjoy the benefits of practice that seemed to grow daily. As he had stared at the pictures on the walls she had selected, the fabric she had picked out for the sofa one rainy afternoon she had succeeded in dragging him along, the chair in the bedroom worn from her head as she read her romance novels, he had, for the first and only time, given serious consideration to a voluntary departure from a life both cruel and unfair.
Lang Reilly knew grief.
It was a place as much as an emotion. One rarely visited voluntarily but departed by sheer strength of will coupled with a healing process not unlike recovery from a physical wound.
Lang Reilly knew grief.
He had found himself there again when his only living relative, his sister Janet, and her adopted son and Lang’s best ten-year-old buddy, Jeff, had died in Paris. This time he had not heard the siren song of self-destruction but he had still grieved as he had for his wife.
Gently holding Celeste at arm’s length lest she envelope him again, he
spoke with sincerity. “Believe me, I know what you’re going through, Celeste. I also know you’ll get through it. I’m not saying it will be easy or there won’t be ups and downs but you will get through it.”
She swallowed hard as though trying to choke down a bite too large before extending a hand toward the couple behind her. “Excuse me, I’m forgetting my manners. This is Jean and Claude Haynesworth, Livia’s parents.” He turned. “Claude, Jean, this is Lang Reilly, the man who recommended the private investigator I told you about.”
The woman, eyes red rimmed, extended a hand. Her face was an older version of her daughter’s. “Happy to meet you, Mr. Reilly. I really want to thank you.”
Her hand was dry and felt fragile, like holding a small bird. “You are quite welcome. But I really didn’t do anything, just suggested. . .”
Jean’s eyebrows arched. “Oh, no. I meant, thank you for agreeing to go to Nassau and find out who killed our daughter.”
Lang was too stunned to say anything for a full second. Then he daggered a glare at Celeste. “I, I. . .I think there’s been some sort of . . .”
Gurt spoke for the first time, accusation in her tone. “Lang, when did you agree. . .?”
“I didn’t. This is the first time I’ve heard anything about it.”
Claude and Jean’s stares at Celeste were as damning as an indictment.
A moment before Lang filled a very awkward void. “Mr. and Mrs. Haynesworth, I don’t know who said what but I’m a lawyer, not a detective. I do know from experience that local law enforcement usually resents intrusion into their turf. It’s quite possible sending someone else down there could hinder, more than help, the investigation.”
“If you really believe in those cops in comic opera uniforms who couldn’t solve the death of Humpty Dumpty, Lang, you are more optimist than realist.”
He had never heard Celeste speak with an undertone of anger.