Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  Passengers from my airplane began walking by the shop toward the baggage carousel. Western-style straw hats teetered in misshapen stacks on the shelf to my right. I grabbed one and plopped it on my head with the brim low over my eyes. Someone patted me lightly on the back. “What?” I asked and turned around—nobody there, but I got tapped again. I reached behind my head and found a fake ponytail sewn to the headband. Through the glass wall, I saw my bearded traveling companion coming down the hall.

  I turned my head back and forth, and the ponytail brushed my back and shoulders as it wagged from side to side. The clerk flashed a bonded denture smile.

  “Cool hat,” I said. “I’ll take it. Got a bag?”

  “Are you hiding from someone?” she asked. Her smile melted. I made quick glances to the left and right and leaned forward, beckoning her with a finger. She leaned toward me and turned her ear in my direction. I whispered, “I’m a secret agent, Darlin.’”

  “Betty,” she whispered. She straightened up and studied me, her face blank. I gave her a wink and one sly nod of my head. She smiled again. I could see Fidel approaching the crowd collecting at the baggage claim area.

  She asked, “Is this like one of those murder mystery tours?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I went on one of those, too,” she said, “but it was a train ride.”

  “Really? Where’s it out of?”

  “Ashland,” she said. “They do them after the fall color tours.” She swiped the Light and Energy card through the reader. “I know just what you need,” she said, and produced a pair of clip-on sunglasses from under the counter.

  “I’ll take ’em,” I said. I snapped them onto my wire-rimmed glasses and everything got dim and green.

  “Oh, dear,” she said studying the credit card reader, “it says your card’s invalid.”

  “Swipe it again,” I said. “It’s a brand-new card.”

  She swiped. We waited. Fidel stood with his back to me, watching baggage swirl past him. My baggage was up, but no green suitcase yet.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry.” She handed the card back. “It says, ‘Try another tender.’ Perhaps you have another card.”

  “How much is this?”

  “Forty-two eighty-seven.”

  “You’re putting me on!”

  She shrugged. “This is an airport. It’s like buying candy at the movies.”

  “Disposable razors?”

  “A dollar-ninety-nine.”

  “I’ll take it.” I put the card in my wallet, pulled my money clip out of my pocket, and peeled off two twenties and a five. I thumbed what I had left. Seven bucks. I picked my suit coat, shirt, and tie off the floor and folded them on the counter. Betty gave me my change and stashed my stuff in a big brown plastic bag. I departed, leaving my bearded friend watching the baggage swirl.

  In the restroom I wet down my moustache and shaved it off. My upper lip looked as big as a billboard. Wendy would be thrilled. She never liked my cookie duster—said it was too bristly. The T-shirt had “QUAD CITIES” emblazoned in white over a stern-wheel riverboat.

  Back in the concourse Fidel loitered near the baggage carousel and pretended to ignore my luggage—which still did not include the green suitcase. I returned to the shop. Betty said, “You look younger.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Got one of those disposable cameras?”

  “Do you have a computer?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ve got just the thing,” she said, excitement in her voice. She took a carton the size of a pack of cigarettes from under the counter. “It’s digital and a bargain too. They make them up in Madison. That’s in Wisconsin, but not all that far from here. A good thing, too, because we sell them as fast as we get them in.”

  She opened the end of the carton and pulled out a foil-wrapped object with rounded edges. Her fingers seized upon a red pull tab, but she stopped and looked up to me from the object. “I love to do this,” she said. “Are you going to buy it?”

  “Is it a camera?”

  “Oh, yes, and lots more. It has a clock with a travel alarm, an AM–FM radio, and it’s a flashlight.”

  “Sort of a Swiss Army camera?”

  Betty grinned and said, “Since it doesn’t need batteries there’s room for the rest, and it’s light as a feather, too.”

  “How does it work without batteries?”

  “That’s the neat part. Are you sure you want to buy this? I can’t open it unless it’s sold. Once you open it, it’s too big to go back in the box.”

  “How much is it?”

  “Nineteen ninety-five.”

  A man walked up and stood behind me. His reflection was faint in the glass wall behind Betty—male, white, heavyset, and wearing a windbreaker unzipped over a shirt and tie. He had a magazine and candy bar in his hand.

  I gave her my debit card from my wallet. “I’ll take it,” I said.

  She swiped it through the reader and smiled when the cash register spit out a receipt.

  “This is the fun part,” she said and pulled the tab with all the glee and wonder of a child opening a birthday present. Lying open, the flaps of the wrapper revealed what appeared to be a black bar of soap with a lens and shutter device stuck in it.

  “That’s a camera?”

  “Wait,” she said. “It charges up on the light—has a little computer chip to tell it what to do.”

  The black blob took on a gray patina and began to swell. I thought of the “monster eggs” I’d bought my grandchildren—drop them in water and they expanded into sponge dinosaurs. This thing rose like a muffin in the oven until it was twice the original size and took on a flat blue cast.

  “Now watch,” she said. The man behind me moved to look over my shoulder. “It goes real fast outside but in here you can watch it happen.” A spider web of yellow lines appeared on the camera. The lines widened until the camera was entirely yellow. Luminescent green letters developed forming the message, “SUN POWER DIGITAL and LIGHT AND ENERGY APPLICATIONS, patent pending.”

  I shot a glance from the camera to Betty.

  “Like magic,” she said. “The salesman told me the company recruited blind workers because these have to be assembled in complete darkness.”

  She picked the camera up, turned it over and glanced up at the back wall. I turned to see what had caught her interest, and so did the man behind me. She was studying a clock above the door next to the exit sign. When I turned back, Betty showed me she had set the clock on the back of the camera which shared the same liquid crystal display as the radio tuner.

  “The buttons on the back are for the radio and travel alarm. The big one on the top is for the shutter. Isn’t that just the neatest thing?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said and picked up my purchase. It had a strange feel: almost no heft, and the texture of a clay pot. “Betty, would you keep my briefcase behind the counter for a couple of minutes while I go try my camera?”

  “Sure,” she said. “You can leave your bag, too, but I go off shift in an hour. Oh, and don’t drop the camera. If it chips or cracks, it doesn’t work anymore. You can send it back to the manufacturer, but they just send you a new one and your pictures are lost.”

  “Plenty of time,” I said. “Thanks a ton.” I put it all on the counter. She tore the receipt off the cash register, put it in the bag, and then set the rest of my stuff on the floor by her feet. I turned and walked out.

  “Gimme one of those cameras,” said the man who had been standing behind me.

  Fidel junior—he had no gray in his beard and a full head of dark brown hair—picked a single black athletic-style duffle bag off the baggage carousel. It was small enough to have been carried onto the airplane.

  In the middle of the terminal floor red velvet theater ropes guarded a stark white Lexus convertible. A placard on the roof of the car announced the name of a local car agency.

  I lifted the camera to my face, swallowed some air, and framed up the Lexus in th
e viewfinder. As my bearded buddy stepped into the frame I belched, Fidel snapped his face toward me, and I touched off the shutter. The flash caused Fidel to make an ugly face. He started toward me with long quick steps.

  I leaned to the side as if to shoot around him, but kept him centered in the viewfinder. I got a good three-quarter shot before he planted his hand on his face, pretending to rub his eye.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he said in a ripe baritone and midwestern accent. His eyebrows were holding hands.

  “Howdy,” I said. “Don’t it beat all what folks will pay for half an automobile?” I stuck my hand out. “Jubal Jackson, Toop’lo, Miss’sippy.”

  “What?” he said, his face growing red.

  “Well, I sure am sorry if I give y’all a start—just wanted a pitcher of this here car.”

  Junior stopped short. He looked at the car and then back at me. “Lexus is a fine automobile,” he said. “Maybe you ought to rent one and give it a try.”

  “Sure don’t have the money fur that, but it’d be right neighborly for y’all to take my pitcher by it.”

  “Sure,” he said. He put out his right hand palm up.

  I snatched his right hand into mine. “What’d y’all say your name wuz?”

  “Andy,” he said. His eyes narrowed and his grip tightened.

  I squeezed back until his eyes widened. “That’s what I like,” I said, “a feller with a man’s grip.”

  “You wanted a picture?” he asked. The question sounded a little urgent.

  I released my grip, planted the camera in his hand, and walked over by the automobile. When I turned around he snapped the shot, lobbed the camera toward me in a high arc, and walked off. I snatched my new straw hat off by the brim and caught the camera in the hat.

  “Hey, Andy,” I called after him, “d’ever anybody say as how y’all look like that there Castro feller?” Good old Andy made a dismissive wave without looking back.

  “Andy,” I said to myself and looked at the camera in the hat. “A lot of Andys. Can’t tell the players without a program.”

  I watched Fidel, a.k.a. Andy, wander out the door and walk down the outside of the building to where he could watch the baggage return through the front window. He set his bag on the ground.

  I sat at a bank of telephones where I could watch him, set the hat with the camera in it on my lap, and dialed up Wendy, collect. She had it in two rings and said she would accept the charges.

  “Hi, Hon,” I said.

  “Now what?”

  “I’m in Brandonport, at the airport.”

  “Oh, I thought … ”

  “No, I haven’t been arrested, not yet. I’m calling because I need to sit here and watch a fellow I saw at Yesterdog when I met with Scott. Now he’s in Brandonport. He took the same flight I did.”

  “Grand Rapids is a small town,” said Wendy. “Maybe he wanted a hot dog.”

  “I thought of that.”

  “You are supposed to be looking for Jack Anders.”

  “There’s a little glitch here,” I said. “Your pal Dunphy gave me a credit card for expenses but didn’t authorize the bank to let me use it.”

  “I’ve never met Dunphy.”

  “Don’t you report to him?”

  “He doesn’t know we have people in.”

  “Ho-lee shit!”

  “You didn’t tell him, did you?” Wendy’s voice took on the edge of panic.

  “No! But I could have. How on earth did you get your people in?”

  “Through the temp service they use. Scott told me what kind of experience to have them write on their applications. The temp company never does backgrounds.”

  Alias Andy knelt by his bag. He was still watching the baggage claim area through the window. He unzipped his bag and took out a pack of cigarettes.

  “Call Lambert and tell him I’ve run aground here.”

  “I left a message at his hotel this morning, but so far he hasn’t called back.”

  “How much money is in our checking account?”

  “Around eight hundred, but we have to keep a minimum balance of five hundred to keep our free checking.”

  Alias Andy shook out a cigarette and stuck it in his face, then dropped the pack back into his bag and extracted a cell phone.

  “That’ll be enough to hole up, but I don’t think that they’ll rent me a car on the debit card. Call Marg in the morning and have her deposit something in our personal account.”

  “How much?”

  “Tell her I need a grand; that way I’ll get at least five hundred.”

  “Try the card again in the morning,” said Wendy. “Could be that your authorization just hasn’t been posted yet. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll put the money in from Silk City. It’s our case anyway.”

  The unlit cigarette in Alias Andy’s face levered up and down in spurts as he spoke into the cellphone. He dipped a wind-proof lighter out of his bag.

  “Listen, I’m going to call Dunphy,” I said. “I’ll let you go.” Wendy hung up. I watched Alias Andy, Alias Andy watched the baggage, and Dunphy’s secretary wouldn’t accept a collect call. I tried to charge the call to my office telephone, but the answering machine picked up. At that point I remembered my calling card and got through to Dunphy’s secretary. She said that he was out and not expected to return. I told her I’d call back when I had a local number where I could be reached.

  Mine was the only baggage left on the carousel—still no green suitcase. Across the lobby an electronic bank teller advertised one of the wire services that my bank used. I rummaged a used, mostly dry, soft drink cup from the waste can next to the line of telephones, tipped the camera out of my hat into the cup, and snapped on a lid. With my hat back on my head I walked over to the ATM and popped my card into the machine. Alias Andy was at long last lighting his smoke. I punched up three hundred dollars. I could hear the machine cycling my cash when the building heaved a sigh and went dark.

  9

  “IT’S LIKE I TOLD YOU, OFFICER! The lights went out. I was trying to get my debit card out of the teller machine. I looked up and saw this guy running toward the door with my luggage.”

  Deputy Fairchild wore a brown Smokey Bear hat and a khaki uniform. He kept his head tipped down so that I couldn’t see his eyes—just a nose nested in a bushy guardsmen’s moustache.

  “Then what happened?” he asked, his pen poised above his pocket-sized notepad. He’d already written down my name and address and summarized my statement in a sentence or two. This was our third trip through the story.

  I rested my butt against the rear bumper of the brown and gold patrol car and folded my arms against the evening chill. “I tried to catch up to him.” An ambulance pulled out with its lights rolling and another one backed in to take its place.

  “So what did you do when you caught up with him?” asked the deputy.

  “That’s when someone yelled ‘Fire!’ The crowd at the door swallowed him up. In the panic and the crush of people I never got near him. I had to struggle to keep my feet while I backed out of the crowd.”

  “Why didn’t you try to get out?”

  “I didn’t smell any smoke or see any fire. Where’s my luggage?”

  “Lieutenant Ross took it downtown.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  Deputy Fairchild snapped his notepad shut and raised his head to look at me while he clicked his ballpoint pen and put it away. He wore the smug smile of a man who had just filled an inside straight. “As it happens,” he said, “that’s exactly where I’m going. You can ride with me if you like.” He opened the back door of the cruiser.

  “If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’d rather ride in the front.”

  “Policy,” he said.

  I climbed in. The car had those hard plastic seats that are cast to look like upholstery, but handy to hose out in the case of a sloppy drunk. The deputy had nothing to say on the way into Brandonport. As we parked he got on the radio and asked the disp
atcher to tell Lieutenant Ross that we had arrived. He parked and let me out of the back seat.

  “Wait,” he said, then he searched the rear compartment of the cruiser.

  “Policy?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said and pointed at the side of the car. “Lean on it.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No.”

  “Then you lean on it.”

  Fairchild shrugged, but his eyes gave away a little heat. “Policy,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, “I have a policy too. It’s called the Fourth Amendment.”

  “The Lieutenant wants to talk to you.”

  “Fine,” I said and looked around. The gray dog station was across the street. “Tell him I’ll be at the bus terminal at the lunch counter. I need a cup of coffee.”

  “Don’t you want your luggage?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll send my attorney to pick it up.” I hadn’t taken a step when the deputy clamped a hand on my shoulder. I looked from the hand to the glower on his face.

  “Deputy Fairchild,” I said, “that much alone is misdemeanor assault.”

  “The Lieutenant just wants to talk to you.”

  “That’s not what’s at question here, Deputy.” I looked back at his hand. “What’s at question here is US 42.”

  “You some kind of lawyer?”

  “No, I’m some kind of detective.”

  “Then as a professional courtesy?” He made the question sound like a statement and let go of my shoulder.

  “I’ll be having a cup of coffee across the street here,” I said and walked off. I went all the way to the corner and crossed at the light.

  I can remember when bus terminals had grand diners—no chandeliers, but lots of chrome and Naugahyde, and the menu featured a daily special like open-faced roast beef or meatloaf sandwiches with loads of mashed potatoes and gravy. This one had a row of pick-your-poison vending machines guarded by a phalanx of sticky benches.

  Next to the coffee machine stood a row of gray coin-operated lockers. I fished out a quarter and deposited my cupful of camera. I had to pump in another quarter before the lock would release the key.