Suitcase City

by Watson, Sterling

  “That’s all we need,” the government said. “An envelope.”

  Teach was charged, and on the advice of a public defender opted for a trial by judge alone. His lawyer figured that a sophisticated legal mind might see Teach’s argument about the envelope better than a jury who might remember Nate Means. The judge convicted Teach and sentenced him to two years in the Federal Prison Camp at Eglin Air Force Base. He never forgot the moment after the verdict, when the bailiff walked over to him and put his hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go, bud.” The man led Teach to a holding cell and ordered him to remove his tie, belt, and shoelaces. For a long time, Teach surrendered things to the state, but he never gave up Bloodworth Naylor. There were items in a few newspapers about Teach’s fall, but only a few. He was football trash, and trash was discarded.

  His first day in the general population at Eglin, in the cafeteria line, Teach was approached by a big man with a whore’s smile. The man’s body was hard but his eyes held something soft, and Teach could see it. It was the thing he’d seen in the eyes of Carlos, the gangster who had loved boats. The man put one hand on Teach’s tray and the other on Teach’s ass. He said, “Both of these are mine. Now come on over and sit with me, sweet baby.” Slowly, Teach lifted the man’s hand from his tray, kissed it, and tore the forefinger from its socket. The man stumbled back, his eyes howling but his mouth closed.

  Teach said, “Put some ice on that. To control the swelling.”

  It wasn’t so much the finger as it was the kiss. After that, Teach was considered crazy, a bug. He chose his own friends and did his time as quietly as he could. With gain time for good behavior, he walked out of Eglin eleven months later. He was twenty-six years old. He’d done a lot of reading, some vocational rehabilitation, and a lot of thinking. He’d met a lot of men like him, men who’d suffered reverses and convinced themselves that evil luck was an entitlement to someone else’s money, some woman’s body, something in a bottle or a capsule, something at the other end of a fist or a gun. They were men who’d never read the maps of a moral landscape, or who, for one sorry reason or another, had decided to leave the maps behind on their way to money, women, or revenge. Teach believed he was the second kind, a man who knew the maps but had strayed from them.

  Like an addict, he admitted to himself that he had loved being lost in the secrets. That he could relapse if he was not very careful. He decided to find the maps and follow them, never stray from the lines they gave him. And he knew what he wanted from life: to be a good man again. To make the good man as simple as he could be: a husband and a father.

  Teach drifted down to Tampa and took the first job he could get, humping boxes on the loading dock at Meador Pharmaceuticals. When he had saved some money, he hired a lawyer.

  At Eglin, in the jailhouse law school, he had learned about the Florida statute that allowed a man to expunge a criminal record. The lawyer did his job, took cash for the work, and after a year on the loading dock Teach was promoted to forklift operator, then warehouse manager, and then he moved to sales. His boss, Mabry Meador, took him out to dinner one night not long after Teach began selling. “Jim,” Meador told him, “you’ve risen fast in this company, and I think the sky’s the limit for you. I think you exemplify everything that’s right and decent about the free-enterprise system.”

  The night before, Paige had accepted Teach’s proposal of marriage, and she sat across the table from Meador giving them both her cool, ironic smile. Where Paige came from, money was not discussed at the table. Teach knew that much. And he knew she was running from that place, and maybe even then he knew she would go back to it. He wanted to go with her.

  Later that night, Teach took her home to his apartment and undressed her in the dark bedroom. He traced the hollow of her long, perfect neck with his lips, and told her he loved her. A tipsy Paige giggled and said, “Oh yes. The sky’s the limit, Jim.”

  * * *

  The sun was setting when a foot hit the deck and roused Teach from a half-sleep of dreams and memories. He lurched out of the berth and stumbled across the dark saloon feeling for a way out.

  “Hey, turn on a light.”

  Christ, it was Bama. Teach remembered now. Bama Boyd bringing food and friendship. Teach found a light switch. Bama’s sunburned face was worried in the sixty-watt glow. From an L.L.Bean canvas bag she pulled out two cheeseburgers and a six-pack of beer. Teach stripped off a beer, opened it, and took a long, cold pull.

  Bama said, “There’s nothing about you on the radio or TV. If the cops want you, they ain’t telling the media. What do you plan to do? Just wait here till they catch the guy?” Her eyes said she didn’t like the wait-here scenario.

  “Did you bring the phone?”

  From the bag, Bama retrieved a satellite phone she’d taken from one of her boats, handed it to him. “Can they trace these things?”

  Teach tried to smile. “I don’t know. I’ll keep it brief.”

  “Who you gonna call?”

  “Hey, girl, it’s better if you don’t know.”

  Bama stiffened with hurt, then thought it over. “Sure,” she said, “you need anything else?”

  Teach thinking: A lot of luck, more brains than we’ve got between us, and friends in high places. “Just the keys to your car.”

  Bama looked at her watch, reached into her pocket for the keys. Teach opened the paper bag, pulled out a cheeseburger, and took half of it in one bite.

  Bama stretched, yawned, and bumped her head on the saloon roof. Rubbing it, she said, “I left the car in the lot out there. I can walk to my condo.” Teach nodded. She turned away, but he called her back.

  “I owe you, darlin’.”

  “No you don’t,” she said. “We’re buddies.”

  When Teach could no longer hear Bama’s footsteps on the dock, he dialed his home number. His message played, invited him to record something. Then Dean said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, baby. How you doing?”

  “Dad, where are you?”

  “I can’t tell you that, honey.”

  She sighed. “Are you all right? You’re not hurt, are you?” Something strange in her voice. A quiet, cautious thing Teach had never heard before.

  “I’m tired and a little scratched up for reasons I’ll explain later, but otherwise I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I’m worried . . . about you.”

  He waited. She waited. Something was wrong with her. Teach wondered if somewhere, someone possessing marvelous technology he did not understand was monitoring this call, homing in on this sailboat thirty miles from the house where Dean stood holding a telephone.

  Finally, she said, “Dad, the police want to talk to you about a . . . a prostitute. What’s going on?”

  Teach said, “I didn’t kill anyone, Dean. You have to believe that. I’m going to find out who did.”

  “Dad, why don’t you come home and talk to them? They won’t hurt you. They just want to hear your side of it. This is all a big mistake and . . . it can be worked out.”

  “How?”

  “How? What do you mean? I—”

  “How, Dean? Did they tell you how it can be worked out?”

  “No, Dad, but—”

  “Listen, Dean . . .”

  “Dad, there’s . . .”

  Teach was about to tell her she could contact him through an old friend named Bama Boyd, but he had heard the strange thing again in her voice. He waited.

  “Mr. Teach, how are you, sir?”

  There was no mistaking Aimes’s voice, that low, musical rumble. Teach remembered thinking it was a voice for hymn-singing in a country church. He felt an unchurchly anger rising in his chest. What do you say to a cop who has hounded you out of house and home, run you through a truckload of palm fronds to a porn shop, then to this hideout in some rich man’s sailboat? Well, Aimes had asked how Teach was doing.

  “Better than I’d be in your damned jail, Aimes. That’s how I am.”

  “Mr. Teach, the young man I s
ent to your house told you I only wanted another interview. I don’t know why you had to run like that.”

  “And I don’t know why you put a policeman at my back door if the one at the front only wanted an interview.”

  “And I don’t know why you had to knock that young fellow down and break his collarbone. That’s a painful injury, Mr. Teach. I know because it’s one I’ve had myself. We have a law against assaulting police officers in the City of Tampa. Did you know that?”

  “Are you tracing this call?”

  Aimes laughed, a raspy baritone. “No, no sir, Mr. Teach. The paperwork on a thing like that would take me a week. If you were as important as you think you are, maybe I’d be doing that, but the truth is, I just wanted to talk to you. Why don’t you come on in and talk?”

  “I’ll think about it. I really will. In the meantime, I want you to talk to somebody. His name is Bloodworth Naylor. Look him up in the phone book. Hell, you can look up his criminal record if you want to.”

  “Mr. Teach, I don’t want you to hang up. I want you to keep talking to me. I think you might do something you’ll regret. You might be getting into a mean frame of mind, and—”

  Teach said, “I’ll be in touch,” and pushed the off button, imagining the evil demons of technology sniffing out his location on a sailboat in Boca Ciega Bay.

  FORTY

  Aimes handed the phone back to Dean Teach, a rich girl whose dead mother had been what Aimes’s own mother had called “a society lady.” Aimes knew he had to be careful with this girl, at least for the time being. And with her friend too. Tawnya Battles sat on the sofa in the living room watching Aimes, Delbert, and young Dean Teach with a somber, speculative expression that reminded Aimes of her father. She was a pretty girl whose ways of moving and speaking were beyond her age. So far she hadn’t said anything, and he wondered if there’d be any profit in asking her some questions. And he wondered how much of what was happening in the Teach house today would go straight to Thurman Battles.

  Delbert was at the bookcase in the foyer, pretending to inspect the titles, running his finger along the spines like he might ask to borrow a volume. Aimes felt uncomfortable in this house, sorry for the girl caught between her father and the police. The part of him that was not a cop was glad she had a friend with her today.

  Tawnya Battles got up from the sofa, walked past Delbert without a glance, and stood next to Dean Teach. Aimes knew her from the family gatherings he attended, had watched her grow up from that distance, always noticing how she observed people, how her eyes knew things she didn’t say. She’d seen him eating barbecue in Bermuda shorts. Now she looked at him like she wondered who this big man was with the badge and the gun.

  Aimes decided not to ask these girls what they knew about Bloodworth Naylor. Not yet. Of course he knew the name. When a prostitute was murdered, the computer coughed up a list of local men who had been convicted of violent crimes against working girls. Bloodworth Naylor had done time on pandering and aggravated battery charges. He had been a seriously bad man, but had come out of prison and, apparently, turned himself into a citizen. The guy running some rent-to-own furniture outlet over in Suitcase City. There was only so much time in a day, so Aimes and Delbert had crossed taxpayer Naylor off their list. But how did James Teach know the guy? What connected them? Was it Thalia Speaks? Aimes decided he would have to visit Mr. Naylor.

  Aimes said, “Ms. Teach, are you sure you don’t know where your father is right now? We’d sure like to talk to him.”

  The girl shook her head.

  Apparently, James Teach kept his child in the dark about a lot of things. Among them, his affair with Thalia Speaks. To Aimes, the loyalty of a daughter was a beautiful thing.

  He offered the girl his card. “If you think of anything, will you let us know?”

  She took the card, read it. Tawnya looked at it too. Dean Teach said, “Detective Aimes, what do you think my dad did . . . to this woman?”

  “We don’t know if he did anything, Ms. Teach. She worked at the country club a while. He knew her there. Of course, that was before she got into the life. Excuse me. I mean before she became a prostitute. Maybe your father knows something that will help us find the man who murdered her.”

  Suddenly the girl’s face resembled faces Aimes had seen in the cancer ward where his wife had spent her last days. Her skin turned a blue-white, and her eyes seemed to look through him to some faraway place. The girl must have spent time at the club, seen Thalia Speaks there. Maybe she had her own suspicions about her father and the waitress.

  Aimes said, “Ms. Teach, we have other leads. Your father’s connection to the case is just one of the things we’re interested in.”

  At the word connection, the pretty daughter winced as though something sharp had gone in deep. Her eyes opened wide, then tightened to a darker blue. Aimes could see she loved Teach and she didn’t want a policeman to see it. Like an animal, she hid what made her vulnerable. But she didn’t hide anything from Tawnya Battles. The two girls shared a long, searching look.

  Mr. Teach had been stupid to step out on the mother of this child. And now Mr. Teach was getting smart in a very bad way. Smart enough to outrun two cops half his age and disappear into thin air, or so they had said. Smart enough to hide where Aimes couldn’t find him, to have a plan that included Bloodworth Naylor.

  The two girls watched from the front porch as Aimes and Delbert drove away. Tawnya Battles put her arm around Dean Teach’s shoulder and guided her back into the house.

  * * *

  Aimes pulled the Crown Vic out onto Rome, turning toward the Old Hyde Park shopping district. Fashionable Junior Leaguers and young lawyers in love strolling under the oaks and royal palms, past the shops—Godiva Chocolatier, Banana Republic, Laura Ashley. White men with pink sweaters thrown over their polo shirts; white women in plaid shorts and leather flip-flops. Uniforms, Aimes thought.

  His wife had started her career in a starched white nurse’s dress and a funny white cap with a badge, those crepe-soled white shoes. Later, they’d let her wear green scrubs, even jeans and running shoes.

  This was the time when Aimes missed her most. When he’d given the city more than it deserved, and other men were going home to drinks and dinner with women whose eyes had held the secret of their yearning all day long. Aimes turned to Delbert. “I guess we don’t find Mr. Teach today.”

  “Naw, not today.” Delbert gave a quiet sigh. “Some house that guy has.” He meant the antiques, the books, that wealth and culture.

  Aimes and Delbert were separated by a lot—skin color to begin with, and a long history of people hanging other people in trees, putting signs around their necks that said, Nigger Beware—but they both lived a long way from Mr. Teach. He was from the top of life’s money mountain.

  It was painful to see the girl hurting, but hurting was Aimes’s job, stopping it for the good people and starting it for the bad ones. Healing had been his wife’s job, and she had done it well until the cancer had tripped her, laid her down with the awful hurt inside her and no one to stop it. For a while after her death, Aimes had been the kind of cop no cop wanted to become. He had worked like a man possessed, then begged other cops, men who still had lives, to go out and drink with him. He had sat with them in bars and talked shop, a wild man with eyes full of a lost wife and a head full of cop knowledge he could talk about only with other cops. It had finally ended one midnight when Aimes had looked at his Glock nine-millimeter and wondered what it would feel like to put the barrel into his mouth. What it would feel like to sit in his favorite chair, the one his wife had given him for his fortieth birthday, and suck first from a bottle of vodka and then from the barrel of the Glock, one and the other, until he was so numb he didn’t know which was which. And then just see what happened.

  Aimes never put the pistol in his mouth. He never got that low. He bought the treadmill and got demonic with it, and started a relationship with the main branch of the Tampa Public Library. They had
hundreds of books on topics of interest to him. It would take the rest of his life to read them all.

  He stopped at the signal at Howard and Kennedy. He and Delbert had gone to talk to the girl, tell her that her father was hiding out, that they only wanted to talk to him. Tell her they knew Teach would contact her. When he did, she should let them know. Some kind of luck, Aimes and Delbert being there when he called.

  Aimes turned onto Howard, heading toward Kennedy. “How you see it now?”

  Delbert said, “Vice presidents and scumbags don’t usually know each other. Maybe they were all involved—Thalia Speaks, Teach, and Naylor. Teach did drug-related activity, and Naylor beat up a prostitute. Teach gave us Naylor, so he knows the guy from somewhere.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Delbert looked at Aimes like it was too late in the day for another question.

  Aimes smiled, thinking of going home to his treadmill, two shots of Stolichnaya, and then his biography of Hap Arnold, of Delbert going out on the never-ending quest for the perfect barmaid. “Humor me,” he said.

  Delbert listed the possibilities for a day’s work: “Watch Teach’s house, see if he visits the daughter, see if she goes to meet him somewhere. Find Teach and he tells us what he knows about Naylor. Check Naylor’s prints against anything found in the woman’s house. Go see Naylor.” He cleared his throat. “You think the other girl’s in this some way?”

  “Tawnya?” Aimes kept his voice neutral, but some combination of laughter and sadness was mixing in his chest. “Naw. That’s . . . that’s a little far-fetched, my friend.” He could almost hear Delbert telling himself to back off from Tawnya Battles. “Tomorrow we go see Naylor.”

  “Tomorrow’s another day,” Delbert said.

  FORTY-ONE

  When Teach called Missy Pace’s house and she answered, he heard music and the languid chirping of teenage girls. They were practicing cheerleading. He asked to speak to Dean.