by Ang Pompano
Well, that opened up a whole new set of possibilities to explain what was going on. The notes, Andy Keller’s murder, Hick’s assassination—Batshit could have been involved in all of them. So far, I had nothing to connect him with Keller’s murder, but Hicks’ was a different story. Assuming Batshit was the one leaving the notes, I couldn’t overlook the fact that the note on my truck proved that Batshit was in Hilton Head when Hicks ended up dead. For all I knew, he could have even somehow aligned himself with Tanner. On the other hand, he could have simply been playing some kind of mind game with me. If he was, the drug dealer was smarter than I had given him credit for because he was getting to me. Or, he could have been exactly what his name implied: batshit crazy.
39
SEEING BATSHIT THREW ME even more off my game. The last I knew, he was on vacation courtesy of the Connecticut State Prison System. So how could he have been watching my place?
I gave Charlie Moss a call. He must have seen my name on the caller ID because he knew it was me.
“Al, how’s it going, man? I know you didn’t call me to rub in how nice the weather is down there in Georgia.”
Charlie is always upbeat. It may be because he’s from the Midwest.
“You’re right. But since you brought it up, it’s 79 and sunny here today; and every day.”
“Loser.”
Charlie was breaking balls but little did he know that I was feeling a bit like a loser.
“Up yours,” I said. “Talking about losers, what can you give me on our friend Batshit?”
“Funny you should ask. He was released from Enfield two weeks ago. Some lawyer got him out on a technicality. The asshole actually said right on the news that even though Batshit was most likely guilty, upholding the law was more important.”
I didn’t have to guess. “The attorney is from Yale Law School.”
“You must be a genius, Bro. You want a good laugh? Listen to this. Batshit’s real name is Poindexter Cockburn.”
Imagine Charlie making fun of the guy’s name. I guess even happy people from the Midwest are politically incorrect at times.
“Well, I’ll let you go,” I said.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Me? No. Why?”
“It took him all of three days before he violated his parole by not checking in.”
Was Charlie surprised by that? “Maybe he’ll get off on a technicality for that one, too,” I said.
“Why are you asking about Batshit anyway?”
“I was thinking of life up in the frozen north and he popped into my mind. I thought I’d ask. Hey, someone is at the door. Peace, man. Keep in touch.”
I hung up. I knew that if I told Charlie that Batshit was on Ava Island he would contact the police department and things would get complicated. I didn’t need cops coming around mucking things up when I had to find Big Al. Things were already complicated enough.
Charlie confirmed what I wanted to know. Batshit was out of jail so that could possibly have been him that I saw watching the place.
If it was, what the hell did he want? It wasn’t an accident that he was parked across the street from the agency. It could be that he had dropped by to satisfy his curiosity. Fine. Now get lost. One thing was certain, if he was here to get even with me for Psycho’s death, he was messing with the wrong guy. Whichever the case, I had too much on my mind to waste time on that dickwad.
*****
I started looking at the files Greenleaf gave me, even though I couldn’t see how looking at old cases would help. Still, Greenleaf seemed to think that doing so would allow me to see things more clearly. I slid the stack of folders closer. It wouldn’t hurt to give it a try.
The first file was the back injury case that I had just worked on. I knew more than I wanted to know about that case. No sense in looking at that one. I picked up the second folder, a divorce case my father worked on ten years before. It involved two couples who split and then traded spouses in a double wedding. Interesting but I’d seen that situation before.
I had the feeling eyes were on me. Every once in a while, I’d look up and catch Greenleaf glancing toward me through the open door.
“Thanks.” I yelled.
“There’s no reason why you should shout,” she called out.
“But then you’d have nothing to complain about.”
The third file caught my attention. The thick packet was yellowed and had coffee rings and frayed edges from years of handling. I read the label on the tab: Granville. Random, my ass. It was obvious that she wanted me to familiarize myself with my father’s magnum opus because she thought it had something to do with Keller’s murder. If she knew something helpful about the case, which I was sure that she did, I wished that she would come out and tell me.
“Granville?”
“Are you reading it?” she said from the other room.
“No.”
When I looked up, Greenleaf was standing in my door. “Do you know anything about the case?” she asked.
Greenleaf tended to repeat stories, not because she was senile, but because she wanted to drum them into your brain.
“You told me about it, remember? I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” I said.
Other than what she had told me, I had not been interested in finding out much more about Granville. Maybe it was time that I became familiar with what the old man did back in the day.
At first, I thumbed through the pages, then I began carefully reading every word.
I knew that there was something in that file that she wanted me to find for myself because, in her opinion, I was stubborn and that I most likely would ignore anything that she told me. That wasn’t necessarily correct. On the other hand, it wasn’t necessarily incorrect.
I perused my father’s long-closed case wondering what Greenleaf thought I could learn and how it would help me locate my father. I wasn’t getting a damned thing out of the exercise.
I tossed the file aside and reviewed the fourth folder in the pile—a background check on a chemist who was going to do some sensitive work for a local company. Tedious stuff. Every once in a while, when my eyes grew tired, I’d catch myself glancing at the Granville file that I had thrown aside.
Screw it. I decided to take another quick peek to see what was so damned special about Granville. An hour and a half later, I was still reading. Finally, I put the file down and rested my neck on the back of the couch. As I stared at the ceiling, I asked myself what the hell I was doing. It was an interesting case without a doubt—a small child kidnapped from the home of a local racecar driver. So what? I had once helped find the missing wife of Yale University’s president. It turned out she wasn’t actually kidnapped. She was having an affair with the president of Harvard. Still, I did find her on a private island in Long Island Sound. Of course, that story never hit the papers and I never got a citation.
I was wasting my time. No more. I gathered the pages of the file together and as I tapped them on the table to put them back into the file, a napkin from Old Salty’s, a restaurant in the village, fell out. Written in a distinct block letter script that I had seen on other papers my father had written was “A.K. with D.G, 4:00.” If A.K. stood for Andy Keller, it could be that my father had a connection with him after all.
“Greenleaf!” I called.
She was in the doorway in seconds. “If you insist on working back there, maybe you should invest in an intercom.”
“We’re closing up. Remember? No sense in investing in hardware now.”
She scoffed. “So, what is it then?”
“Did my father know Andy Keller?”
“Not that I know of. But I don’t know everyone he is acquainted with.”
“Could you look through his appointment book to see if he ever had a 4:00 with Andy Keller.”
“What date
?”
“That’s what I want to know. Go back as far as you have to. You only need to look at 4:00 p.m. appointments.”
She sighed and walked back to her desk.
“Greenleaf.” I called after her.
“What?”
“Thank you.”
I heard a distinct mumble which I didn’t care to have her repeat.
An hour later, Blue Palmetto’s indispensable administrative assistant was back at my door.
“I didn’t exactly find Andy Keller’s name, but your father had a four o’clock with an A.K. a little over a month ago. In fact, it was on the 16th, the day before he signed himself into The Palms. I didn’t find it in the appointment book. If it had been in there, I would have put it in and I would have used the full name. I found the initials penciled in on his desktop calendar. If they met here at 4:00, I would have been gone for the day.”
“Al wrote the note on a napkin and again on his calendar. It must have been important.”
“Don’t talk of him as if he’s dead. Al realized, and still does, that his short-term memory isn’t good, so he writes everything down sometimes in multiple places so that he won’t forget. My guess is that Big Al was at Old Salty’s when he made an appointment with Andy Keller for 4:00. He wrote it on the napkin and then came back here and put it on the calendar to double insure that he would remember.”
“I don’t remember mentioning Old Salty’s. You knew the napkin was in that file, didn’t you?”
Her face grew red but she held her ground and looked me square in the face. “Maybe.”
I stood up. “Come on. I’m taking you to Old Salty’s for lunch.”
I could tell that she was wondering if I was kidding.
“I’m not paying,” she said.
40
AVA ISLAND VILLAGE WAS HOPPING with tourists and there was hardly a parking space to be had. Not good news for the residents of the island but damned good news for the business owners. The few off-street spaces directly in front of Old Salty’s Bar and Grill were filled, as I had expected. As I drove past, I glanced at the parking lot at the Village Plaza. There might be a few spaces there due to Demarco’s diligent eyeballing of who parked in the lot, but I knew that our new-found friendship did not come with parking privileges. I hung a right to get to the town parking lot—full to capacity. I turned and drove along a residential street a block behind the business district and found a place to park along the street.
“I guess I could park here and hope I don’t get a ticket.”
Of course, that wasn’t good enough for Greenleaf.
“I’m not walking all the way back to the restaurant. It’s too hot. Can’t you drop me off?”
It’s not like she was out of shape or too feeble. She rode that Schwinn of hers all over the island every day. I inhaled deeply and counted to five. The space would probably be gone when I returned, but she was right, it was a walk. I drove back to Ocean Boulevard, this time approaching Old Salty’s from the opposite side of the road. Demarco spied me as we drove past “his” lot and gave me a tip of his hat but didn’t motion for me to drive into it.
“Stop!” Greenleaf practically jumped out of her seat belt as she screamed out.
Tourists are always crossing outside of the crosswalks. I hit the brake looking for someone in the street. “What?”
“Some people are going to their car.”
I spotted an older couple walking down the steps from the deck of the restaurant, the woman carrying a doggie bag. “You don’t expect me to hold up traffic until they get ready to leave, do you?”
“Why not? It will give the cars behind us a chance to look around at the stores instead of zipping down the street. You’ll be helping business.”
I don’t know if the old guy was being territorial or not but he was taking his sweet time about getting out of the parking space. Meanwhile, the guy behind us in a white BMW convertible was honking his horn.
“Let me pull up to the crosswalk and let you out, then I’ll find a spot.”
As I pulled ahead a few feet, the geezer pulled out of the space in front of the restaurant and the white BMW behind me took the parking space.
“See,” Greenleaf said.
Frustrated and eager to see if anyone in Old Salty’s remembered Keller and my father being there, I pulled into the parking lot at the real estate office next to the restaurant and parked. I’d keep an eye on the truck while we ate and if they called a tow truck, as the sign threatened, I’d run over and move it. Even if I had to pay the tow charge, it would be worth it if only not to hear Greenleaf complain.
We chose to sit at the picnic tables on the deck. As luck would have it, the hostess sat us across from the Beemer Guy who was soon joined by a woman half his age. He glanced toward our table and smirked at us.
I turned toward Greenleaf. “I’m having the grouper sandwich.”
“I don’t eat endangered fish,” she said.
“If this was an endangered variety, it wouldn’t be on the menu. But don’t let me force you. What would you like?”
“I’ll take the alligator,” she said with a straight face that quickly broke into a smile. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m kidding. I’ll have the catfish and chips.”
Who would have guessed that Greenleaf had a sense of humor?
The waiter came and she gave him our order before I could open my mouth. I didn’t expect anything less from someone who ran the office with the efficiency that she did. “He’ll pick up the check.” She pointed to me.
When the waiter left, she leaned in to whisper to me. “Do you mean you came here just for lunch? I thought you’d ask about your father.”
“I was going to.” I should have told her that she never gave me a chance, but she was actually pleasant to be around when she was in a good mood. I didn’t want to break that spell.
The waiter brought us two beers. I grabbed mine and took a swallow.
“We didn’t do cheers,” she said and held up her glass. “To Blue Palmetto!”
“To Blue Palmetto.” As we clinked glasses I silently amended the toast. To closing Blue Palmetto.
“Eye contact!” she yelled. “If you don’t make eye contact, it’s seven years’ bad luck.” She made her eyes big and stuck her face in mine. “You like Max?”
She caught me off guard. “Yeah. Why?”
“I mean do you l-i-i-i-k-e her?”
“I don’t know.” I gave my shoulders a quick shrug. I knew Greenleaf thought that I meant I didn’t know if I cared for Max or not. But what I meant was that of course I liked her, but what I didn’t know was how everything fell apart between us.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You’re acting like a teenager. Either you do or you don’t.”
No. I was definitely not a teenager and I didn’t like being treated like one. I was a grown man with grown man problems.
“It’s not a good idea for me to get involved with Max.”
“Why not? For heaven’s sake? You enjoy being around her. I can see it.”
“When it’s time for leaving, what then?”
I had no idea how much I inherited from my father. I cared too much for Max to someday just up and leave her, either aggressively by walking away or passively by losing my memory.
“You’ll figure it out.”
I hoped Greenleaf didn’t think that now we were best pals and that I was going to share my sex life with her. She had already goaded me into saying too much. I was about to ask her why she wanted to know when the waiter arrived with our order.
He was about Keller’s age and dressed in a pirate outfit.
“Do you remember serving a young dude with blond dreadlocks and an older man who wore a khaki bush hat? Say about three weeks ago?” I asked.
“Man, you don’t realize how many people come in h
ere every day. Three weeks ago may as well be three months ago.”
Greenleaf took the waiter by the arm and pulled him close to her. “The guy with the bush hat probably asked for a special order: grouper head stew. With the eyes. You remember now?”
“I’d remember that if it were three years ago. Sorry.”
I took out a $20 bill and handed it to him.
“I didn’t give you the check yet.”
“It’s an extra tip. Ask some of the other wait staff if they remember. If I get what I’m looking for, you’ll get another one.”
Greenleaf was tackling her catfish and chips like she hadn’t eaten in a month. In between bites, she kept looking in my eyes as if she were going to hypnotize me so I would spill to her how I felt about Max. I wasn’t going to tell her that it didn’t matter since Max had other interests.
I was getting creeped out by Greenleaf’s behavior, so I was relieved when the waiter came back with a co-worker, a twenty-something in a lady pirate outfit who could fire a cannon ball across my bow any day.
“Phil says you’re looking for someone who remembers the old gent in the khaki bush hat.”
“Do you?”
“For sure. He ordered the grouper stew and paid for it with a hundred-dollar bill. He told me to keep the change. It had to be my biggest tip ever.”
Yeah, my father the big spender. You would have thought that he could have sent some money when I was a kid. Or did he? I was going to have to reevaluate what I knew about our “relationship” during that time of my life.
“What about the guy he was with?”
“You mean Andy? I knew him from the beach.” Her face tightened. “He’s dead, you know. I saw on Twitter that someone killed him.”