Michael Lister - Soldier 01 - The Big Goodbye

by Michael Lister

  “He’s covering it up,” I said. “Means he’s got a lot to hide.”

  He nodded.

  “Election’s soon,” he said. “Whatever’s going on is tied to that.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s not over,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “We’ve had this conversation, but I didn’t like your answer,” he said. “Would you let me handle it for you?”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “But thanks,” I said.

  He stood. “If there’s anything I can do to help,” he said, “let me know. I’m headed to court.”

  Without waiting for my response, he turned and walked out, pausing to speak to July in the reception area.

  A call came in, and July answered it. I could tell by her voice it was Lauren. “For you,” she yelled.

  Chapter 23

  I picked up the receiver, wishing my door was closed.

  “Did you get my message?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I thought you said all you had to say last night.”

  “Oh.”

  We were both silent an awkward moment and I started to say something, but didn’t want to make this any easier on her. It was as if we hadn’t seen each other since our affair ended.

  “I’m sorry for the way I acted last night,” she said. “I was upset and undone by everything. And it’s always confusing for me to be around you.”

  “You know, I don’t think July wrote down a number for you,” I said.

  “She doesn’t like me.”

  “Is it the same?”

  “No, actually,” she said. “I gave her the new number, but …”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  After she gave it to me, she said, “I was wondering …”

  “Yeah?”

  “If we might have lunch,” she said slowly, “perhaps tomorrow.”

  I hesitated before answering. “Actually, I’m in the middle of a big case right now. Could we make it for later in the week?”

  “Oh, ah, sure,” she said as if she weren’t.

  “Thursday?”

  “Okay.”

  “Carson’s? Mattie’s? Where?” I asked.

  “How about the Cove?” she asked.

  That would put us having lunch just a few feet away from my room. Is that what she intended?

  “Do you get tired of eating there?” she added.

  “No,” I said. “The Cove is fine.”

  “Thanks for being willing to meet me,” she said.

  “Oh, I eat lunch everyday,” I said. “It’s no bother.”

  I sat there, the sound of my pounding heart in my head, moist palm gripping the receiver.

  Finally, I slammed it down, then picked it up again and punched in the number she had just given me.

  “Lauren,” I said when she answered. “Things have changed.”

  She was quiet for a long moment before softly saying, “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  “Thank you, Jimmy.”

  Hearing her say my name brought back the stirring inside I’d felt before. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but maybe it was. Was it just in my mind or was something happening? Perhaps we would go to my room tomorrow after lunch and find out.

  Long after she had hung up, I sat there holding the phone to my ear, straining to remember how my name had sounded in her mouth. Knowing all the while that she was going to be the end of me, but unable to care.

  “What’d that phone ever do to you?” July asked.

  I turned to look at her, slowly coming out of my trance. Realizing I still clutched the receiver in my hand, I gently replaced it in the cradle.

  “Huh?”

  “Someone to see you,” she said.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “A guy,” she said. “Kinda handsome.”

  “Send him in.”

  She did.

  Cliff Walton, Harry Lewis’s head of security, walked in and sat down across from me.

  Without preamble, he withdrew an envelope from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me. I took it. It felt heavy, like corruption. I handed it back to him.

  “Mr. Lewis is very pleased with your work on the safe return of his wife,” he said. “He wishes to thank you.”

  “Tell him he’s welcome,” I said.

  “He wishes to pay you.”

  “Just give me a little information and we’ll call it squared.”

  He put the envelope back in his pocket, probably planning to keep it for himself. “Information concerning what exactly?”

  “The whole thing,” I said. “Mrs. Lewis, the election, everything.”

  “What do you wish to know?”

  “I wish to know what the hell is going on,” I said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Start with Mrs. Lewis,” I said. “What’s she mixed up in?”

  “You know more about it than I do,” he said.

  “If you weren’t gonna tell me anything you should have just said so.”

  “I don’t know anything to tell.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Play it that way, but there’s a string of dead bodies lined up after the lady, and I ain’t takin’ the fall for them.”

  “Are you sure they’re lined up after the lady?” he said. “I understood from the police that they were left behind everywhere you’d been.”

  Chapter 24

  I was sitting at a table near the front trying not to look up too anxiously every time the door opened. Hoping to arrive after her, I had come a full ten minutes late, something that took restraint, but I had still managed to arrive well ahead of her.

  I could feel myself beginning to break apart inside. I did okay when I was with her for the most part, but when we weren’t together I felt weak with wanting her, my mind unable to fight off the taunts and questions, the accusations, the depression.

  I glanced around the room, attempting to settle myself, but everywhere I looked I was reminded of her, of our many times together here. We would often meet here for lunch, say our public goodbyes, then walk separately to my room.

  Who was she doing that with now? And where? How many other men had there been since me? How many of them thought of her as theirs? How many of them had a regular meeting place and cooks and waiters and maids who unwittingly became co-conspirators in their duplicity?

  Business men, tourists, and men on leave kept the door opening, my head bobbing. They came in small groups, usually no more than four, but never alone.

  I thought about how many meals I ate alone—not because I had to, but because if I couldn’t be with her it really didn’t matter.

  I could feel the muscles in my neck and shoulders tensing as anger rose from the pit of me up through them, and then …

  The scent of Paris and the gentle touch of an elegant hand on my arm.

  I turned to see her standing there behind me in a short, straight black dress and mules, the burns on her bare arms and legs more visible than I had ever seen them in public.

  I stood.

  Unable to avert my eyes from her body, unsuccessful at suppressing my attraction in spite of my best efforts—after all she had left me, lied to me repeatedly, put me and my friends in danger—desire gripped me like fear. I was drunk with it. It mixed with my rage and resentment and I felt clumsy and sluggish as I stumbled self-consciously to pull out her chair.

  “I’ve missed this,” she said when we were seated across from one another at the table. “I didn’t realize just how much until now.”

  I nodded, looking around the room and then out the window.

  The molten gold glow of the midday sun covering the water made the bay shine and sparkle, its reflection forming a haze that surrounded a small sailboat in the distance as if a poorly developed picture on overexposed film.

  “Well,” our waitress said as she reached the table, “there’s two faces I haven’t seen tog
ether in a while.”

  “Too long,” Lauren said.

  After telling us what we wanted, the waitress went off to brighten someone else’s day, and we were alone again.

  “Thanks again for coming,” she said. “After the way I’ve acted lately, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t.”

  I left that alone and we made awkward small talk until our food came. We ate in silence, and though I was happy just to be with her, I was experiencing conflicting emotions, and I couldn’t help but feel like a fool.

  As we finished eating, I said, “Are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “It’s over,” she said. “Thanks to you. I’m free of that awful sanatorium and I’m not going back.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Just all the pressure of public life and the campaign,” she said. “I needed a little break, but the timing was bad.”

  “Lauren,” I said. “That’s not even halfway convincing.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What does Rainer have on you? Or Harry? What did you pay Freddy for?”

  “That was nothing,” she said. “Unrelated to anything else.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “You’re trying to make something where there is nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s going on.”

  “All the dead bodies contradict you,” I said.

  “I’m very sorry about them, but I didn’t have anything to do with them, don’t know anything about them.”

  “If you were just going to continue to lie to me, why ask to see me at all?”

  “I didn’t want things between us to end the way they did.”

  She still wants us to have something we never will—a good ending.

  “I asked you here,” she continued, “to apologize and—”

  “You already did that,” I said.

  “And to ask you to help Harry.”

  “Help Harry?”

  “I know he’s going to ask you to protect him,” she continued. “I just didn’t want anything I had done to stop you from—”

  “Nothing you’ve done would stop me from anything,” I said. “I wouldn’t lose a job for revenge.”

  “If you knew how little you had to revenge …”

  I didn’t say anything and we fell silent a moment.

  “Harry’s a good man and he’ll make a great mayor, but there are—”

  “Don’t appeal to me on politics,” I said. “I’m sure mine and Harry’s aren’t the same.”

  “You’d be surprised,” she said. “You should talk to him.”

  I nodded. “You’re right,” I said. “I should. We could compare wounds and war stories.”

  “You don’t have to be cruel,” she said. “Everything’s not as it seems.”

  I considered her. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  She looked down into her empty glass.

  “Was that all you wanted to see me about?” I asked. “Helping Harry?”

  She started to say something, hesitated, then swallowed hard and nodded.

  “Well, we may or may not take the job,” I said. “It’s really up to Ray, but you don’t have to worry about anything you’ve done stopping me from taking money from a rich politician. And, as you already know, I have no problem taking anything that belongs to Harry.”

  Chapter 25

  When I got back to the office, July was frantic.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asked.

  “What is it?”

  “Ray,” she said. “He’s been arrested.”

  “For what?” I asked. “By who?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Some big mean guy I didn’t recognize. He came here about an hour ago. Ray had just gotten back from the courthouse. He had just enough time to return a few calls and eat a sandwich and this guy comes in with a gun, flashes his badge, tells him he’s under arrest, cuffs him, and takes him out.”

  I thought about it.

  “Was the guy older, dark complexion, nose been broken, looked like a fighter?”

  She was nodding before I finished. “Who is he?”

  “Name’s Butch,” I said. “He’s Pete’s new partner. Was he alone?”

  She nodded. “I called the station, but he hasn’t been booked yet.”

  “That’s because he’s not going to be,” I said. “He’s not really being arrested. Butch is trying to square something with him. It’s personal.”

  “What’s he gonna do?”

  I shrugged. “Beat him up or kill him,” I said.

  “What’re you gonna do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Hi ya, Jimmy,” Pete said.

  “Where’s your partner, Pete?” I asked.

  He was having a late lunch at Carson’s, his plate piled high with fried seafood. He was sitting alone and had just gotten his food when I walked up.

  “What?” he asked, his fork full of fish and cheese grits poised in front of his mouth.

  “Where’s Butch?”

  He shrugged to give himself time to chew and swallow. “No idea,” he said, talking around the food still in his mouth. “He’s off today. Why?”

  “He just arrested Ray.”

  “For what?”

  “Revenge,” I said.

  “He’s got to have a charge, Jimmy,” he said. “You know—”

  “Not if he’s not taking him to jail.”

  His eyes widened and he dropped his fork on his plate, knocking a hush puppy on the table. Jumping up, he all but ran out to his car. I followed him.

  Leaving his door open, Pete sat in the driver’s side, feet on the ground, radio in hand. I stood over him, my left hand gripping the top of his door.

  Radioing headquarters, he quickly confirmed that Butch had not taken Ray there. He then asked the dispatcher to radio Butch and have him contact his partner immediately. When he signed off, he tried repeatedly to reach Butch. There was no response.

  “Where would he take him?” I asked.

  He looked up at me, helplessness in his eyes. “I have no idea. He’s new. We just—”

  “Think, Pete,” I said. “For your partner as much as Ray. This could end his career or worse. Where would he take him?”

  Pete looked up and narrowed his eyes, his forehead wrinkling, bright red lines against his pale skin.

  “It’d have to be somewhere secluded,” I said. “Where does he live?”

  “Boarding house in Lynn Haven,” he said.

  “What does he do?” I asked. “Any hobbies? Does he hunt? Fish? What?”

  My voice was loud and intense, and several customers entering and exiting Carson’s stopped to look, catching Pete’s eye to make sure everything was okay, continuing after he nodded to them.

  “I just don’t know, Jimmy. I’d tell you if I did. You know that.”

  “You wanna go ahead and arrest me now?” I said.

  “What?” he asked, his voice high and surprised. “For what?”

  “Whatever he does to Ray I’m gonna square,” I said.

  “You ain’t a cop, Jimmy.”

  “Neither is he,” I said. “He’s off the book on this one, Pete, and you know it.”

  “Wait,” Pete said suddenly, standing up only to sit back down. “Get in,” he added, and slammed his door.

  Less than two weeks ago, Butch had been part of a group of cops who discovered and busted up a moonshine still in the pinewoods near Sandy Creek. Since moonshine had soared from eight to fifty dollars for a five-gallon jug, stills had sprouted up all over the Panhandle. Even employees of Wainwright Shipyard with good jobs were quitting to become ridge runners instead. Shootings, stabbings, and instances of lead poisoning had dramatically increased.

  We raced down Highway 22 toward Wewahitchka, taking a left on Sandy Creek Road, then another left on a twin path logging trail.

  “How we gonna play this, Pete?” I asked.

  “Just like old times,” he said. “We’re gonna stop him
all peaceful-like if we can.”

  “And if we can’t?” I asked.

  “He’s my partner, Jimmy,” he said. “Let’s try not to shoot him.”

  “That’s totally up to him.”

  As we reached the small clearing that held the hand-operated pitcher pump connected to the shallow well, the various metal vats and buckets, the hoses and hardware, and what was left of the overturned and smashed barrels, we saw Butch’s car. It was parked at an angle that partially blocked our view.

  I jumped out before Pete had fully stopped the car.

  Pulling my gun out of my shoulder holster as I ran, I came around Butch’s car to find Ray kneeling down in front of an open well, his hands cuffed behind him, Butch standing over him, his gun pointed at the back of Ray’s head.

  “Drop the gun,” I said.

  Without moving the gun, Butch turned slightly and looked at me, shaking his head as he did.

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Drop the gun.”

  He shook his head. “How good a shot are you with your left hand?” he asked.

  “Be easier for me to show you than tell you,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “I don’t think you could hit me from there,” he said.

  “Fail to drop your gun, you’ll find out.”

  I was beginning to wonder where Pete was until I saw him step out of the woods on the other side of Butch with his gun drawn.

  “We got the drop on you, Partner,” he said. “Put your gun down now so nobody gets hurt.”

  Butch slowly turned to look at Pete, and I edged closer to him. He was right about my left-handed shooting skills—even after nearly a year of practice.

  “How the hell can you call me partner?” Butch asked. “You’re pointing a gun at me, and you brought the one-armed dick over there to—what? Take me out?”

  “I’m doin’ my best to help you, Partner,” Pete said. “Jimmy’s here for his new partner and I’m here for mine. You don’t want to do this. It’s not too late. Just drop your weapon.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Butch said. “I just can’t let a civilian put his paws on me and not …”

  “I know,” Pete said. “But this isn’t the way.”

  “I just wanted to scare him,” Butch said. “I wasn’t gonna really hurt him.”