Suitcase City

by Watson, Sterling

  The silence of the house told him Dean had gone to school. He wondered if she had checked in on him before leaving. Her whiskey-reeking father lying in his study, his face tortured by evil dreams. His night hadn’t been all cringing self-accusation. In the lucid hour before first light, he had done some clear thinking. Bloodworth Naylor had to be the man behind all his trouble. He had been Thalia’s lover. He had killed her in jealous revenge to destroy James Teach. And he had arranged her apartment so that Aimes would find the napkin and the photograph.

  My God, Teach thought, that paper Delbert left the interrogation room to get. It must hold more of what Naylor gave them.

  He sat up carefully, waiting for the nausea to pass and the headache to sink its grim talons deeper into his brain. The phone rang. Teach walked to it unsteadily and snatched it from its cradle. He would talk to the man, talk to him before the message played (“You don’t remember me, but I remember you . . .”). He would tell Naylor he did remember. Say he knew more than Naylor could ever imagine, and he was ready to deal with it now.

  Walter Demarest said, “Teach, old buddy, I’ve got the information you asked for. And a little bonus for you . . . Anybody home?”

  Teach’s hands were trembling, his head throbbed like some demon homunculus was jackhammering rocks inside it. “Sorry, Walter. Go ahead. I’m all ears.”

  Walter Demarest gave him the name and address of the man who owned the white Bronco. Teach knew the name already, but not that the Bronco was registered to a business: Naylor’s Rent-to-Own in Suitcase City. Walter said, “Our investigator threw in some extras for us. He’s a zealous fellow. It seems that your Mr. Naylor is a convicted felon. Two prison terms, the last one at Raiford for aggravated battery on a prostitute and living from the earnings of prostitutes. Not a nice man, apparently.” There was a pause, then Walter said, “In keeping with our usual drill, I’m not asking why you want to know about this lowlife.”

  Lying for a good cause had always come easily to Teach. “Some guy ran into Dean’s car. He took off, but she got his tag number. I just wanted to find out who he is, see if it’s worth pursuing. Sounds like the scumbag is better left alone.”

  “Sounds like that to me.”

  Teach could hear the office business humming behind Walter. Walter’s billable time ticking on the clock. “Thanks, Walt. I owe you one.”

  “You owe me a round of golf. How ’bout Saturday morning, bright and early?”

  “I’ll have to call you back on that one, Walt.”

  “All right, buddy.”

  When Teach hung up, the doorbell rang. He wanted badly to go upstairs and sleep for an hour, ignore the bell. Ordinarily, he endured his hangover headaches until the dinner hour when he gentled them with a little wine. This one needed aspirin and rest.

  The bell rang again, and Teach went quietly to the dining room window. A young man in a cheap sport coat stood on the front porch. Teach didn’t recognize him, but his military bearing and the white Crown Victoria in the driveway told him the man was of a tribe he had seen too often lately. A policeman.

  Teach wondered if you could just ignore a cop. Go upstairs and take that nap. If he had not looked out the window, he would not know who was there. The bell rang again and the man called out, “Mr. Teach, it’s the police. Open the door, please.”

  Suddenly, Teach’s ears became those of his neighbors, and he moved quickly. Mrs. Carlson next door was often in her yard at this time of the morning, fussing with her daylilies. He imagined her saucer-eyed look as she struggled up, dirt falling from her fat knees, craning to hear the young cop call out Teach’s name. He opened the door six inches and peeked out, shading his bleeding eyes from the sunlight.

  “Are you James Teach?”

  What could he say? He admitted it.

  “Detective Aimes would like you to come downtown.”

  “What for?”

  “Just an interview.” The cop smiled, but it was the smile of a man approaching a child with a needle. This won’t hurt much.

  “An interview?” Teach opened the door a little more. The policeman looked at the clothes Teach had slept in, his unshaven face. The man’s eyes said that his words had been perfectly clear. An interview was an interview. Teach looked at the City of Tampa car in his driveway. Mrs. Carlson was not, blessedly, rooting in her yard. Across the street, one of the idiot sons of a neighbor was mowing the lawn. The boy wore earphones, jiving as he followed the mower. Teach was not sure why he said, “Wait a minute. I have to leave a message for my daughter.”

  He closed the door just as the cop stepped forward, apparently expecting to wait inside. Teach stood behind the closed door waiting to see if the man would demand to be let in. Nothing. He felt panic rising from his stomach. He tried to push it back down. Tried to remember those Saturday afternoons when the job of football was before him, and his head was as clear as a hawk’s, flying high above a field with prey in its eyes. Standing, waiting, Teach felt some of the calm come back. Enough of it.

  He picked up his wallet from the table in the foyer and found his shoes where he had stepped out of them the night before at the foot of the stairs. In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and grabbed a half-eaten turkey sandwich wrapped in cellophane. He put it in his pocket, drank some milk from the gallon jug, and went to the bay window that let onto the backyard. Gently, he lifted one of the miniblinds and looked out.

  A second policeman stood by the back door. He looked and dressed like the first, a young man with short blond hair and a tough, cool face. He rocked on his heels, his right hand resting on the pistol clipped to his belt. He checked his watch, looked up at the hot sun, and tugged at his collar.

  Jesus, thought Teach. Jesus Christ. This is it. He went to the garage, to the darkroom. He found the photos where he had hidden them and tucked the manila envelope under his shirt. The garage had a side door that opened to a narrow passage between Teach’s house and the Chelms’s place next door. As Teach put his hand on the doorknob, he remembered that the door was rarely used, that it might groan when he opened it. It did.

  And Teach was out in the hot morning, running.

  He had no idea where he was going, knew little of why he was running. He just knew he had to. Had to stay free for a while longer. And if he were to lose his freedom, then it would have to be on his own terms, whatever those might be. He ran between the houses, toward the backyard. He heard the cop from the front yard shout, “Look out, Ray!” Heard the running footsteps of the cop in the backyard.

  Teach lowered his shoulder as the blond cop loomed in front of him, the man going into a crouch, sweeping his jacket aside to expose his service revolver. Teach hit the man at midchest and went up the middle of his face. Two more strides and a leap at the stuccoed wall that enclosed Paige’s garden, and Teach was dropping down onto the pool deck of the Hollingsworths, an old couple recently retired from Maryland. They had a rottweiler, a beast whose deep, angry voice Teach had often heard beyond the wall. He crossed the deck, dancing to miss a fall into their blue pool. He skirted the lanai and ran for the space between the Hollingsworths and the Dyes. Behind him the dog growled then barked, and Teach heard, “Ray!” shouted twice more, but there was no sound from the wall he had just scaled. Apparently the shoulder Teach had learned to use during his year on the Atlanta special teams had laid Ray down.

  Running, a good sweat breaking on his face, his headache loosening its hot ring around his skull, Teach hoped he had not hurt the man seriously. He broke into the open, angling across the Dyes’ front yard just as the rambling wreck of Angel Morales’s yard-work truck and trailer pulled out of the driveway across the street. Teach did not know who owned the house. Many people in the neighborhood employed Angel Morales. The trailer, half a pickup truck divided from its cab and fitted with a wagon tongue, was piled with royal palm fronds, their long green tails trailing ten feet behind. Angel Morales and his son, Romero, were inside the cab of the old Ford pickup and probably, Teach thought, sharing
the six-pack of malt liquor Angel brought with him every day.

  Teach heard running feet on the Hollingsworths’ deck, then a bark, a shout, and a splash. He dove for the bed of palm fronds in the makeshift trailer.

  He landed soft and burrowed hard. He did not stop worming and digging until his hands hit the rusted metal of the truck bed. He lay there panting, feeling the trailer rocking on its old leaf springs, feeling the cool wet of the palm fronds which had been cut and stacked when the dew was heavy. Teach held his breath, waiting for the truck to stop, to hear the cop’s order: All right, Mr. Teach, you can come out of there now. Teach imagining himself crawling out from under the pile of cuttings, his clothing soaked with dew and palm sap, his face covered with sawdust and the embarrassed expression of a feckless ass.

  All he heard was the song of the tires on the asphalt, the crank-clank of Angel double-clutching as the truck accelerated. Teach tensed when it stopped a moment later, but he heard the whistling of traffic and knew they were at the intersection of Sunset and Westshore. And he knew that if the cops were going to stop Angel they would have done it by now. Teach lay happy in the cool and dark of getting away with it. Of running and breaking out. He lay as the miles rolled under the trailer, wondering where Angel would dump the cuttings. He lay in the cool, the rumbling, the engine sound, wondering what he was going to do now. Now that James Teach was a fugitive from justice.

  THIRTY-NINE

  When Angel Morales stopped his truck at the Manhattan Avenue yard-waste dump, Teach scrambled out and hid in a stand of Brazilian peppertrees. Angel and his son unloaded and left. Teach watched from hiding as the commercial yard-work rigs came and went. Finally, he caught a ride in the back of an empty one with a Pinellas County tag. At the traffic light on the Gandy Causeway by the Derby Lane greyhound race track, he jumped out and waved to the surprised driver. “Thanks, Bobby. See you at Susie’s wedding.” A little method acting for the commuters waiting at the light.

  Teach called Bama Boyd from a phone booth in front of an adult bookstore. He was exhausted and dirty and every car that passed made him turn his face away as men did in the movies. Men on the run. Men who might be recognized and ratted out by decent citizens.

  The receptionist at the Isla del Sol Yacht and Country Club told Teach she’d have to page Ms. Boyd. Teach waited, exposure cold on his hunched back, listening for the crunch of tires, the crackle of a police radio.

  “Samantha Boyd. How can I help you?”

  Bama’s voice was good to hear. “Hey, Bama, it’s Teach. Whaddya say, darlin’?” He waited.

  He needed a friend. Right now, all he had were the few dollars in his wallet, half a sandwich, and a soggy envelope full of photographs. And an old friend, Bama Boyd.

  Finally, Bama said, “Hey, how’s it going?” Her voice was professionally warm. Golf-professionally so. People were listening.

  Teach looked out at Gandy Boulevard. The stream of cars, and beyond, a couple of shabby seafood restaurants and a bedraggled driving range. He had never phoned that apology to her. “Look, Bama, I’m . . . I’m in a bit of a tight. I need your help.”

  Again the quiet. A murmur of talk in the background. The pro shop? Bama standing there trying to sell the latest driver to some fool who didn’t know a tee box from a pot bunker.

  “Hey, Bama, you there?”

  “I’m here, Jimmy. Where were you?”

  “Darlin’, I’m feeling kind of . . . exposed where I am right now. Can you come get me? I need a ride.”

  “Get you? Right now? Hey, buddy, I’m in the middle of—”

  “Bama!” Teach said it too loud. A man had stepped out of the adult bookstore with an unsatisfied expression on his face. He looked at Teach. The guy wondering if Teach was, well, fun. Teach gave the guy a fuck-off look, dug his face farther into the plastic cube of the phone booth, and whispered, “Look, Bama, I’m in trouble. I know you’re pissed at me. You’ve got every right to be. I’ll apologize for a long time somewhere else. You pick the place.”

  Bama sighed into the phone. “Sorry, Jimmy. If you’re in trouble, I’m there for you. Just like you always were for me.”

  Teach gave her his location and went inside to hide among the rubber penises, vibrators, and a very large selection of movies. He eyed the merchandise and not the people, and they, kindly, did not look at him. Where better to hide a fugitive face than a porn shop?

  * * *

  On the twenty-minute ride from Tampa to St. Petersburg, Teach apologized for stranding Bama and her two friends at the Terra Ceia Country Club. He explained his trouble as best he could and asked again for help. “I need a place to stay for a while. I need to use a phone. I need to borrow your car if you can let me do that. And Bama, more than anything else, I need you to be—” Teach quit. He was about to say, quiet, discreet, trustworthy. All insults to the past they shared.

  He looked at Bama’s pretty, earnest face, permanently blushing from hours on practice tees. Her strong, slender hands guiding the ancient Alfa Romeo along Interstate 275. She had bought the car with money from her first WPGA victory, and she had never won again. She had not become the next Nancy Lopez, or the next anything but a club pro, a woman in a man’s profession. Teach knew she would never give up the car, and that she would give him what she could and more.

  She looked at him with those wide, bright blue eyes. “Hey, Jimmy, maybe they weren’t going to arrest you. Maybe they really did just want to talk.”

  Teach took the half sandwich out of his pocket, ate it with the hunger of fear and exhaustion. Maybe she was right. Aimes just wanted to sweat him again with pictures from Thalia’s apartment. Maybe he and Delbert would do another charade with a knock at the door, Delbert coming back like a good dog with a mysterious paper in his paw. Teach didn’t want to sweat for them anymore.

  “If they just wanted to talk, why’d they put a cop at the back door?”

  Bama thought about it, squinting into the sun. “Maybe the guy was just checking things out back there?” She laughed. “Then you come through like Mike Alstott and the guy just reacts.” She looked over at Teach. “You really go up the middle of that cop’s face?”

  Teach nodded. “And then some. The other one fell in the neighbor’s pool. Or jumped in to avoid the rottweiler.”

  “You’re a piece of work, Jimmy. Always were.”

  “Christ, maybe you’re right. Maybe they just wanted to talk.” But he didn’t think so, and he had a promise to keep. Justice for Thalia. He had promised Mary Lena Liston. His own justice, not the state’s.

  Bama parked in the lot between the golf course and the marina. They waited until a foursome teed off and a big Bayliner pulled away from the dock hauling a party of retired inebriates. Bama hustled Teach along the dock and aboard a Morgan 45.

  Below deck, she said, “The owner’s gone till November. I’ve got maintenance contracts on a lot of these boats. I keep the ACs running, start the engines once a week, and get the bottoms cleaned when they need it. The extra money comes in handy.” She looked at Teach and pinched her nose. “Man, you need some maintenance. There’s a shower in the head. I’ll bring you some clothes from the pro shop.”

  Reflexively, Teach reached out to hug her.

  She stepped back. “Don’t go there. That would confuse both of us.”

  Teach showered. Bama returned briefly with clothes and the promise of food at nightfall. He found a couple of bottles of Pilsner Urquell in the galley refrigerator, crawled into the V-berth in the bow, and lay there listening. The air conditioner hummed along, fed by a cable from the marina. Boats passed on Boca Ciega Bay to the north. He heard voices from the marina, hands who worked for the dockmaster, an occasional owner checking his boat. Cars came and went in the parking lot by the first tee. But mostly he heard his own heart beating and what he imagined to be the fuddled sound of his brain trying to think.

  He watched the falling sun through the frosted glass of the hatch above his face and listened for the first cop’s f
oot to hit the deck. He tried to think about his problems, tried to make a plan, but the more he tried to think the more he remembered. Thalia, the spicy scent of her cinnamon skin, the way he’d let himself plan a life with her. Paige and the love they’d made, the daughter they’d made, and the slow increments by which a good life had begun to slip away. And lying in the V-berth with only a few feet of space between his body and the hatch, he remembered the shrimper Santa Maria and the fetid few inches of bilge where he had hidden three bodies.

  Teach had left Cedar Key the morning after sinking the Santa Maria. He had gone back to Atlanta and lived rough, worked landscaping, worked off the books when he could, never staying in a job long. He’d changed addresses when he’d changed jobs, and he’d kept a packed suitcase by the door of his motel room or trailer or apartment. He’d planned to live as a permanent transient for six months. If nobody showed up at his door in a tight suit speaking Spanglish through a smoke-stained smile, he would go back home, dig up his money, and start thinking about real life again.

  On the thirtieth day of the sixth month, the FBI showed up at his door. The suits were from Brooks Brothers and the smiles were brief and very white. Bloodworth Naylor had been busted wholesaling weed. In Naylor’s car, the government had found an envelope with Teach’s name written on it. The envelope was full of money. The agents were clear about what they wanted from him. They wanted the story of Naylor’s life. If Teach gave it to them, the money was just money. Or it was Teach’s, and they might let him keep it. Yes, they might even do that. When he refused to give them the story, the money became drug-related activity.

  “All you’ve got is money,” Teach told the government. “In an envelope with my name on it.” He thought a smart lawyer might argue the separation of the money and the envelope. Somebody had put money in an envelope with Teach’s name on it, but that didn’t mean the money was intended for or belonged to Teach. “Maybe the envelope with my name on it was just lying around and somebody needed an envelope.”