by Robert Lane
“I will ride a broom up your ass and pin you to the moon if any harm comes to that girl,” I said, glaring down at Randall. I turned to Zach. “Tell me everything about your Tampa connection.”
He gave a club address in downtown St. Pete and the physical description of two men. Randall, in an extra-inning effort to raise his standing, added a few details to Zach’s story. We gave them our plan and left fifteen minutes later, after Zach reached into the back of a blue van and handed me what I wanted. We rendezvoused with PC and Boyd and told them to head home. Garrett and I settled in for our second trip back to the island that day. I was beat.
“Think the Colemans spilled it straight?” he asked.
“Zach, maybe. Wouldn’t bet alongside Randall.”
“Their Tampa partners got anxious and decided to grab her themselves and see what they could find out.” He let it out as a declarative review.
“That might be their play. If nothing else, they get a runaway to feed into their system. Meanwhile, neither party trusts the other, and they hold Jenny in hopes that she can lead them to the money. But we’ve got another issue.”
“Zach’s call to Jenny.”
“Rutledge should have known about that,” I said. “He would have seen it on her cell.”
“McGlashan said there was nothing of interest on it. Either Rutledge didn’t bother to check, or McGlashan isn’t being straight with you.”
“Let’s find out.”
I took out Rutledge’s card and hit his numbers. He picked up on the third ring. I let him know that Jenny, depending on how reliable the Colemans’ information was, may have mentioned that Billy Ray had a car stuffed with cash. He cursed and quickly recovered. “She certainly never mentioned it to me,” he said then accelerated his tempo. “That’s why we conduct follow-up interviews. Maybe she would have mentioned it the second time around, or maybe not. She’d been through a lot that night, despite her ulterior coolness. After an experience like she had, it can be very difficult to recall exactly what transpired.”
“But,” I said as I gunned past a yellow Ford Explorer with a dent in the driver’s door and cigarette smoke trailing out of a cracked window, “someone going for the money would explain why no prints were found on the car.”
“Perhaps. Keep me posted.”
“Zach said he called her. You found nothing on her phone?”
“Jenny’s?”
“We working another case together?”
“We are not doing anything together,” Rutledge said.
“You checked her phone, right?”
“What about it?”
“Zach Coleman said he called Jenny to lure her out of her house. His number would be on her phone under recent calls.” Actually, Randall spilled that bit of information, but Zach didn’t deny it.
“And we would have seen it,” he shot back. “Nothing there but a dump truck load of texts, none of which have anything to do with her disappearance. Come by and look if you want to burn time, but it’s clean.”
“Why would Zach tell me that?”
“Hell, I don’t know, Travis. Why don’t you ask the meth dealer himself? If I kidnapped someone, my story would also be that I called and that they came voluntarily. Take a look at Zach Coleman’s phone. You ain’t going find what you’re looking for.”
I decided that how Zach had lured Jenny out of the house was of little meaning. Rutledge and I disconnected. Something about his reply had struck me as odd, but I couldn’t recall what it was; the thought hit my mind but never took hold. I placed my phone on the center console on top of Jenny’s T-shirt, which is what Zach had handed me from the back of their van. I considered turning some music on, but all I did was count crosses on the side of the road.
CHAPTER 23
I had been up since predawn, had spent eight hours yo-yoing up and down the interstate, and was eagerly anticipating a good night’s sleep. Not that I have much experience in that area.
At the peak of the bridge, the pink hotel looked like it was in a snow globe as it radiated against the black Gulf. Kathleen had called and said she was at my house, since she wanted to read Maugham in the morning at the end of my dock. That girl was on a mission.
I parked in my driveway. The truck barely fit in the garage and left no room for my drop-down punching bag with the pink, smiling face. Garrett split next door to Morgan’s. Before I entered, I tossed a shredded gecko into the trash that Hadley III had left for me next to my running shoes. One morning I had put my foot in a shoe only to find she had deposited a present. The half-living lizard had crawled into the toe of the shoe. I now check my shoes before I run. Minor adjustments are necessary to cohabitate with a feline hunter.
Kathleen stood in front of the Magnavox with a Bobby Darin album in her hand. I focus on vertical collections and had just completed Bobby Darin’s covers. Darin—who, at age thirty-two, discovered that his parents were really his grandparents and that his sister was actually his mother—was also a chess nut. His cover of Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter” works for me every time. That neither Darin nor Hardin lived to see forty is one of those things I wish I didn’t know.
It wasn’t Darin’s voice in the room, but Nat King Cole’s.
“I’m trying to decide what to put on next,” Kathleen said as a greeting. She showed me the Darin album. “Is this the latest one you bought?”
It had been a long day. I was too tired for words, and life is too short for sleep. I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. She lobbed a few questions, but when she realized conversation wasn’t on the menu, she gave into the moment. Afterward, we lay beside each other as Cole’s smooth, wide voice, coupled with Johnny Mercer’s classic lyrics, forever married a song with a season that Florida would never know.
We lay facing each other, our heads resting on propped elbows. Our standard postcoital position. “Tell me, stranger,” she said as she ran a finger along the scar on my left shoulder, “have we met before?”
“Autumn in London. Disraeli had just been elected prime minister. Across the fields of Kensington Gardens, I saw you high on your white stallion. I—”
“No Great War poetry tonight?”
“I’m going further back.”
“Do you think things were better then?”
“No doubt. I always thought”—I took her finger off my shoulder and laced her fingers with mine—“that I’d be a sucker for a hearty nineteenth-century girl. A plumb maiden who never saw a dentist, applied skin cream; who couldn’t imagine daily hot showers or a life with—”
“Antibiotics,” Kathleen cut in.
I brought our hands up and graced the edge of her smile with my finger. “Internet porn,” I said.
“Air conditioning.”
“Internet porn.”
“Smartphones, and you need to move on.”
“Thongs.”
“That doesn’t count.”
“Pizza delivery.”
“Oh, my God. Can we?” She broke away and pushed up on both hands.
“Whatever raises your flag.” I was no longer tired, as my reserve battery had kicked in. I haven’t a clue what its source is.
I grabbed two champagne flutes and filled them two-thirds of the way with Taittinger. She poured herself a soft drink. Thirty minutes later, we sat on the screen porch and opened a box of pepperoni pizza with pimento-stuffed olives that had been delivered to our door. It is a wonderful world.
Kathleen lit a solitary candle, and on the bay, the red channel marker blinked. She consumed her first piece without engaging customary civilized chewing techniques. “To what shall we toast?” she asked.
“To Kensington Gardens,” I said, tilting my flute toward hers.
“Kensington Gardens.”
I glanced up again at the red channel marker, and my mind flashed to the drops of blood from my elbow earlier that day. I wondered where Jenny was sleeping that night. I again thought of Kathleen challenging me as to why I risked us for causes that
had been thrust upon me. Without risk, there is quiet desperation. Without risk, we take our songs to the ground. Like schussing down a Colorado slope, you need to relinquish control and momentarily trust your instincts. Push the envelope; trust your cape.
“You there? I said the crust is crispier this time.” Kathleen interrupted my traversing thoughts, and I lost the thread. Something about skiing with a cape, which I’d done before on Mardi Gras, but why was I thinking of Mardi Gras? Whatever. My reserve battery must have been faltering.
“Just staring at the marker.” I reached for another slice. I was glad we’d opted for pepperoni. I’d been falling behind on my goal to eat more fatty foods.
“Take me there, will you?” Kathleen asked. “To Kensington. I haven’t traveled nearly as much as I want.” Hadley III jumped onto her lap. Kathleen stroked the back of the cat’s neck, and Hadley III fired up her purr engine.
“Travel’s overrated,” I said. “Fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
“Twain?”
“It is.”
“I thought he burned out on traveling later in life,” Kathleen offered. “Said something about the only places he hadn’t been to were heaven and hell, and he had only a passing interest in one of those.”
“What a marvelous thing to say as they close the curtain.”
“I suppose so. Certainly beats the tired muse about what might have been.” Her chewing had slowed to a more reasonable, civil pace. “How’s your search coming?”
“We came up empty today. We talked to the brothers who abducted Jenny, but someone swiped her from under their nose.”
“Why?”
“She apparently told them that Billy Ray said he had two hundred eighty-four thousand dollars in his car. But she never mentioned it in her police interview, so who knows? The Colemans owe half, and we believe the party who lays claim to the other half snatched her. I have a few places—and faces—to check out tomorrow, but my forward progress has stalled like a Sherman tank in the mud.”
“Twain and Sherman. Contemporaries, I believe.” Kathleen pretended not to stare at the pizza box, where one lone piece awaited its fate.
I thought of Jenny’s cryptic exchange with Rutledge over General William Tecumseh Sherman. He had burned Atlanta. Sherman was born less than a half-hour drive from Greenwood, Ohio. That might have accounted for her knowledge; maybe she’d paid attention during a sixth-grade field trip. Sherman attended a Catholic church until the outbreak of the Civil War, and then, despite his devout wife and son, supposedly never again set foot in a church. The realities of war trumped the illusions of religion. I doubt they covered that in a sixth-grade field trip.
I wanted to listen to Jenny’s interview again. Maybe if I heard it repeatedly, something would come forth. I didn’t really believe that, but to claim that I was stuck in the mud was to put an optimistic bent on my forward progress.
“Did you know Twain came in and left with Halley’s Comet?” Kathleen asked, and shifted her weight forward. An aggressive, well-plotted move. Like I didn’t know who I was up against? Like she didn’t know my capabilities? I can see the board a dozen pieces ahead. I shifted my own weight to my left leg in the event the situation escalated to arms.
“I do,” I said hurriedly, fully aware that every second counted. “He even predicted he would die at the comet’s return, but I think he was off a day. Do not even think of touching that last slice.”
“Fine.” The word exploded out, as if her lower lip sprung our from under her upper teeth. The letter ‘f’ never had received, or warranted, such attention, let alone such a muscular effort. She curled into the chair like a wounded animal and took a sip of Taittinger. She followed it with a gulp of sugar water. Strange bedfellows. I claimed the prize and returned to the blinking red light. I recalled my conversation with Rutledge earlier in the day. Kathleen said something about the strength of the heart versus that of death. Some mumbo jumbo about Churchill also predicting his own death, which corresponded with the date of his father’s death. Day out days. Chatty Patty’s contribution to my nomenclature.
“What was that?” I asked, as I consumed the last bite.
“Were you listening at all?”
“No. I really wasn’t. Once I’ve done my reproductive act for the day, I pretty much punch the clock.”
“Truer words never spoken.” There was a genuine bite in her voice. I wasn’t surprised; we’d been down this path before. When there was a solitary piece left in the pizza box, words flew. Feelings suffered. Bridges burned.
I closed the lid, and we hit the bed for the second time.
Later that night, when sleep dumped me like an unsatisfied lover, I left Kathleen under a sheet and a blanket—we had a running disagreement over the thermostat setting—and returned to the porch. I stared at the channel marker. Hadley III pounced on top of the grill and did the same. She was fond of staring at the night. I kept waiting for something to come to me, but it never did. It was just a stupid, blinking, red light. Garrett and I planned to force the action tomorrow, and the sun couldn’t come up soon enough. Before I returned to bed, I cleaned the fluted glasses. I don’t like days encumbered with the previous night.
CHAPTER 24
“We’re not wasting any time in there,” Garrett said.
“You got the lead.”
We were parked on Sixth Avenue North, a block from the rear of the Palladium Theatre in downtown St. Pete. We were four blocks off Beach Drive and in a transitional part of the city. The single-story building where Zach told us they’d met their contacts had barred windows so dark that I wondered why they didn’t just board them. A sign said, WINKING LIZARD, and under that were the words FOOD and LIQUOR. A blinking three-foot neon martini glass was tilted to the left side of the sign. It labored to emit a dirty pink through years of grime. It looked original; it would have looked nice in my garage.
We stepped inside. It was like walking into night. A few hunched figures were already entrenched on their stools. It smelled like smoke. Must not have caught that law. The walls held crooked pictures of NASCAR drivers; check your football memorabilia at the door. Pairings of ceiling fans battled the heavy air. There were a few pool tables, and men with long sticks circled the flattops. All but one looked up when we came in, but their heads soon sunk back to their game with apparent disinterest. Garrett and I claimed two wood-backed stools, and I ordered a Kona Longboard. Garrett asked for iced tea. The bartender, a lumbering creature with a Shakespearean beard, said, “We don’t have no ice tea.” Garrett requested water. The beard eyed him then casually rotated. He took down a glass from a shelf, ran it under the chrome spigot, and then dropped it in front of Garrett.
“May I please, sir, have some ice?” Garrett asked.
Here we go. At least he could have waited until I got a couple of long runs in. Our mark, as far as I could tell, was the man in the Captain Tony’s T-shirt who was shooting pool. He looked as if he might match one of the descriptions Zach had given us, but it was too dark, and I wasn’t going to stare. He was the only player who hadn’t looked up when we’d entered. He was the only one who didn’t glance up now.
“I beg your pardon?” Falstaff asked.
“I said, ‘May I please, sir, have some ice?’ Does that pose a problem for you?”
“Might I suggest that next time you remember to order ice water. That pose a problem for you, bud?” He didn’t move. I took the opportunity to suck a deep draw from my bottle. Tinker Bell would never know.
“I’ll remember that,” Garrett said. “And you should remember to serve ice with water. While not expected in Europe, it is customary in the States, even in NASCAR country.”
Falstaff kept his eyes on Garrett, reached under the bar, and came up with a fistful of ice cubes. He dropped them into the water glass. Several cubes missed and bounced off the bar’s surface. I took a quick gulp from my bottle and glanced up at a security camera.
Garrett said, “See? That wasn’t hard, w
as it? You don’t have any soap, do you?”
“Soap?”
“To go with your shower.”
Garrett rose leisurely with his glass in his hand. He poured the water, in a distinct circular motion, over the man’s head. A few chuckles came from down the bar. One cube got hung up in his beard. Falstaff took his right fist back in a circular motion that started out on an oilrig off New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico. It came in so slow that I had time to get in another swig before his fist entered the proximity of Garrett’s airspace. Garrett dodged to his left, and the big man’s fist kept going out toward Tampa Bay. With nothing to meet its force, it carried his body halfway across the bar. Garrett, with speed that humbled me every time I witnessed it, yanked the man’s head, and the body followed. Falstaff went down with an audible thud. The man covered a chunk of the floor; he’d need a double plot some day.
I had seen him approach, and now the man in the Captain Tony’s shirt stood over the bartender. Another man stood a pace behind him. He still held his cue stick, and it was a toss-up which was taller—the stick or him. The little fellow made up for his lack of height with muscles grossly disproportionate to his frame. He fit one of the descriptions Randall had given. “Tall as the stick, wide as the table,” he’d said. Captain Tony, especially compared to the lump on the floor, was a slight man. His arms were solid ink. He wore a headband that only partially covered a white gauze bandage a few inches above his left eye. Did Jenny’s club find its mark? When Falstaff struggled to his feet, Captain Tony flashed the whitest smile I’d ever seen. That confirmed these were Randall’s contacts. “I’m telling you, man,” Randall had tacked on to Zach’s description, “absolutely supernova teeth—they just blaze.”
Captain Tony said to the floor, “Let it go, Special.”
“Why the hell would I—”
“He’s fast and you’re slow. Go catch some fresh air.”