Mangrove Bayou

by Stephen Morrill

  “Right now I have a day-sailor, a twenty-one-foot Sea Pearl, that funny open whaleboat with two masts and leeboards. Perfect for gunkholing these shallow back bays. Any of you want to go out in it, give me a call at the station. Use the regular number, not the nine-one-one. June Dundee, our dispatcher, has heart failure every time that emergency line rings.” More laughter. “I expect I’ll see a lot of you out on the water.” His voice sharpened. “Or in the club dining room, where I will be eating at least once a month. Thanks, one and all, for the generous welcome. You don’t know what it means to me.” There was scattered applause as he walked back to the bar. He didn’t think he had won, but maybe he had broken even.

  Chapter 26

  Friday, July 26

  The crowd was toasting the members who had departed, most by moving away. Troy dutifully hoisted his glass at each name even though he didn’t know any of them. John Barrymore came last, with a short explanation for those who hadn’t heard the news.

  A woman’s voice at his elbow said, “Isn’t this dreary?” Troy turned to see the pale-skinned, striking redhead from the airfield. She was nearly as tall as he was but thinner. She had a thin nose and thin lips with no lipstick, and if she wore any makeup, Troy couldn’t see it. Her hair was cut square around her face and was shoulder-length and straight, as if she didn’t want to bother too much with it. She wore a green man’s dress shirt with high collars with long points, the shirt tucked into white jeans. Large green eyes looked him up and down speculatively. “How did you get in here?” she asked.

  “Honorary member. I did have to talk my way past the Young Aryan Nation, the dock boys and a girl at the front door. I’m Troy Adam.” He put out a hand. “You would be Lee Bell.”

  Her handshake was hard and firm. “How on earth did you know that?”

  “I’m the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything. Also, yesterday you blew past me on Airfield Road in that red Corvette. Only reason I didn’t give you a ticket was that I didn’t have a ticket book.”

  “I do tend to drive fast. But, then, what’s a Corvette for?”

  “Beats me.”

  She looked at him a moment. “You ran my license plate.”

  “I did. Seeing this attractive woman get out of her car and go inside that hangar, I hot-footed it back to my office and looked you up.”

  “Isn’t looking at police records for personal use against some law?”

  “I believe so.”

  “So you find me attractive?”

  “I find you breathtaking.”

  “Pretty cute yourself.” She looked at the room. “There would be more people in here,” she said, “but the members who actually own boats are outside getting them tied down for the hurricane. Most of these here,” she waved a highball glass, “are the people who join yacht clubs for the prestige but don’t actually own boats.”

  “She seems to be bearing up under the weight of fathomless grief,” Troy said, waving his glass in Katie Barrymore’s direction.

  “Humm. If she is wearing anything under that tiny dress,” Lee Bell said, “that thing must be a very thin thing. Why, are you interested?”

  “Only part of me. I don’t think I fit the demographic profile for her.”

  “Ah. Rich, old and foolish. Life is good sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “Not for John Barrymore.”

  “Well, that’s true. But it was just an accident. Right?”

  “Do you own a boat?”

  She shook her head. “I own an airplane. As you may have guessed. A Cessna Grand Caravan. Multipurpose. I fly tourists out over the Everglades National Park and the Ten Thousand Islands, well-to-do locals wanting to go shopping somewhere, urgent packages all around Florida, light cargo, that sort of thing. Do runs every week to Key West, Tampa, Orlando, Miami or elsewhere on the east coast.”

  “Aha. Only this afternoon I was explaining good police work to my dispatcher. I was looking for the woman who regularly flew John Barrymore from our airport up to Atlanta. Are you that person?”

  “I am. I confess. You got me.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. You’ve lost a customer. So tell me about him.”

  “Not that much to tell. I flew him up to Charlie Brown Field, that’s just west of downtown Atlanta. He would take a cab and go downtown. He was regular, the third Thursday of each month. He always stayed overnight someplace there.”

  “There’s an airport named for a Peanuts cartoon character?”

  She laughed. “I think it’s a nickname for some local politician. It’s technically the Fulton County Airport.”

  “Did John Barrymore have some nookie on the side up there? Why stay overnight?”

  “I don’t think so. I think he did his board meeting and then took in a show or even went shopping. He’d sometimes come back in the morning with packages, clothes, books. I think he wanted a night away from Mangrove Bayou and away from her.”

  “Did you stay there all that time?”

  “Unless there was something urgent back here. I have an air mattress and sleeping bag in the rear storage bin of the plane. Some canned food and water too. Lots of pilots sleep in their aircraft. The terminal has bathrooms and a shower. In fact, I have a porta-pottie right on the aircraft.”

  “When was the last time you flew him up there?”

  Lee pulled an iPad out of her purse. She paged through some sort of appointments app. Troy looked around the room and Cilla Dowling was staring in his direction. He canted his head toward Lee Bell and raised an eyebrow. Dowling smiled, nodded, and gave him two thumbs up.

  “Got it,” Lee said. She held the iPad for him to see.

  “I got to get me one of those,” Troy said. He bent to look. The most recent date corresponded to the last time Katie and Tats had shared a motel room on Marco Island. “Can I get a list of all the dates for the past eighteen months?”

  “I suppose. But it was always third Thursdays. I have the flight logs back on the aircraft. I’ll make a list and email it to you.”

  “Thanks. That would be great. Glad I ran into you.”

  “You didn’t run into me. I picked you out. You looked lonely standing here being ignored.” She looked at Troy’s glass on the bar. “So what are you drinking, Chief?”

  “Ice tea.”

  She took a sip. “For heaven’s sake! It’s ice tea! There’s no booze in it. Not even sugar.”

  “I’m on duty.”

  “You’re at a party.”

  “Still on duty. Actually, I don’t drink anyway.”

  “You a ‘Friend of Bill’?”

  “No. I used to drink. Never cared for what it did to my brain. One day I decided I’d done enough of that. Nothing dramatic. Just a change of habit.”

  “I like scotch,” she said, looking at her glass. “But no seconds, I’m afraid. And, anyway, there are rules about waiting to fly after drinking.”

  “Careful.”

  “Can’t be too careful with airplanes. Make a mistake up there and you can’t call Triple-A.”

  “You do your own maintenance too.”

  She stared at him. “I take it to a place in Naples mostly, but I do some. How do you know that?”

  “I’m the police chief of Mangrove Bayou. I know everything.”

  “No you don’t. Tell me.”

  He picked up her right hand. “Short nails and a trace of grease under the fingernails.” He turned her hand over and pulled her wrist toward him. “Small mark, probably a burn. Got too close to a hot manifold.”

  “Exhaust, actually. You see things. Most men don’t.”

  “I’m not most men.”

  Bell laughed. “You can say that again. Especially in this room.” She looked around a moment. She hadn’t pulled her hand back. Troy let go of it.

  “So, are you a legitimate member or a mere honorary annoyance like me?” he asked. “Do they let in the Irish here?”

  Bell laughed. Troy liked her laugh. “They let in people with
money. I have money. Do you have money, Chief Adam?”

  Troy grinned. “I have yet to get a first paycheck but I suspect—I’m afraid to run the actual figures for fear I’ll find I’m right—that I made more money, per hour, in college when I worked at a burger joint. So, Lee Bell, are you married? Dating some plutocrat yachtsman?” She had no wedding band and he had seen her property record, but Troy knew not to go by those alone.

  She shook her head. “No plutocrats, and divorced. He was a stock speculator who knew how to do it. I caught the bastard with his secretary. The usual story. He bought me out rather than pay alimony all his life. I invested wisely and picked out a career that seemed fun.”

  “Well, hello. I’m Troy Adam.”

  “You said that. What’s your story?”

  “Never married. And not even dating since I came to Mangrove Bayou. I guess I’m sort of a hermit.”

  “You could go blind being a hermit,” Lee Bell said. “Tell you what. Let’s go have a look at your hermitage.”

  Troy thought a moment. “Let’s go have dinner some place,” he said. “Get to know one another better.”

  “Sort of like a date.”

  “Sort of like a first date, yes.”

  “Oh, poo.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  Her eyes widened. If possible, Troy thought, they turned more green. “Masterful,” Lee Bell said. “I like that in a man. But what about the second date?”

  “I was thinking tomorrow night. There’s only so long I can stand to be a gentleman.”

  “Like that too. Where shall we go for dinner tonight? The dining room right here?”

  “Bert’s Crab Shack. It’s about as far as I can think of from here, both geographically and gustatorily.”

  “You use big words for a southern redneck cop.”

  “I’ll try to live up to them. Tomorrow night. Assuming, of course, our first date goes well.”

  “Well, if I must, I suppose I must.”

  “And besides, you come highly recommended.”

  “You’re joking. Who recommended me?”

  “A friend.”

  “How did your friend know I would even be here?”

  “I’m the police chief of…”

  “You said that before too. Let’s get out of here before I turn Republican.”

  Troy waved an arm and she led the way to the front door of the club. The blonde girl still sat at her desk, hands folded in front, staring at the front door in a small room. “It could not have been easy getting into those jeans,” Troy said as Lee Bell strode across the parking lot to her Corvette.

  “Easier getting out of them,” she said. “Where’s your car.”

  “That Forester over there.”

  Lee laughed. “A nunmobile?”

  “Hey! I like my Forester. It can pull my boat, carry my canoe, and transport myself and my gear and in all-wheel drive with a solid engine. Can your Corvette do that?”

  “Why would I want it to? Don’t you at least have a chief car? With a siren?”

  “It’s a small department. Do you know where Bert’s is? South end of 7th Street.”

  “I’ll find it. I’m a professional pilot.”

  Chapter 27

  Saturday, July 27

  Troy tried to eat in different restaurants for breakfast and lunch. Show the flag, meet the people. On Saturday morning he did his morning run out to Government Key and back and showered and dressed. But he didn’t feel up to exploring and ate in, alone on his balcony table, looking out at some people splashing in the water below him and at the Gulf of Mexico beyond them and the offshore islands.

  Troy and Lee had eaten the crab cakes at Bert’s—probably actual crab cakes—and had then sat on Bert’s rickety dock and talked until past midnight. Troy could not recall the last time he had talked so much, and so much about himself. Lee Bell proved to be educated, intelligent, funny in her own way, and a delight to be with. Troy had considered, a half-dozen times that evening, inviting her back to his condo. But, each time, he tamped down the desire and reminded himself that some things were better done slowly. Just not too slow; he was already looking forward to tonight.

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Lee had asked. “It’s the weekend.”

  “Meeting a couple of my officers out at our new gun range. Got a meeting with the town council and department heads later, about the storm. You?”

  “Trying to decide what to do with my aircraft. Can’t leave it here. Wish that storm would make up its mind where it wants to go. I need to fly my plane out and park it someplace safe, but I need to reserve a tie-down slot wherever I go. And I don’t yet know where to go. You could come along and we could just fly over to St. Louis or someplace. Storm’s not going there, for sure.”

  “I don’t think the director of public safety is allowed to leave town during a hurricane.”

  “I suppose not. It will probably go someplace else anyway.”

  At two in the afternoon Troy unlocked the gate in the fence alongside Barron Road where it crossed over Government Key. The island, in the middle of Oyster Bay, hosted a water tower, sewage treatment plant, town backup generator and other mysterious sheds, all fenced off from the road.

  The new gun range was as minimal as it could be. There was a ten-foot berm, pushed up with the town public works bulldozer. In front of that were some wood realtor yard signposts but with hangers for targets in place of the usual signs. Metal stakes pounded into the ground marked off ten, twenty-five and fifty-yard distances for the pistol shooters to stand. Another stake was planted at one hundred yards, for the rifles, and was across the small parking area. Troy wondered if he was expected to not park between that stake and the targets when using a rifle, or just roll his windows down first. He took some targets out of the back of the car and was clipping those to the signposts when Juan Valdez and Bubba Johns, in Juan’s car, pulled in to park next to Troy.

  Juan and Bubba had department Glock Model 22s in .40-caliber. Troy had his usual Colt .45 but had also brought his .22 target pistol with a Nikon holographic sight.

  “Toy gun,” Bubba said, looking at the .22. “And barrel as long as my forearm.”

  Troy smiled. “Volquartsen version of a Ruger target gun. The barrel is eight inches, counting the compensator. See that one target sheet with the little circles?” He was standing at the ten-yard stake. He raised the gun, took three slow, deep breaths to get the carbon dioxide out of his bloodstream, let out the last breath and held, centered the tiny red dot, visible only inside the sight, on the lower left circle, and slowly squeezed off five rounds. He took three more breaths and repeated this on a second circle. The circles were the size of quarters, 20 to an 8x11 sheet of paper. Two circles were entirely blown out.

  “Toy gun, fancy sight,” Bubba sniffed.

  “Maybe. But I could not only shoot you in the heart, I could choose which ventricle. Shooting target .22s, there was one guy better than me in Tampa and he went to the Olympics. But this is just a hobby. The ammo is cheap.”

  “Lemme try,” Juan said. Troy handed him the pistol and the extra magazine. Juan swapped out the empty magazine for a full one.

  “Ten rounds in that magazine,” Troy said.

  “No problem,” Juan said. He pointed the gun at the target and it went off. Juan jumped. The bullet sailed away into the salt marsh beyond the island. “Jesus!”

  “Oh. And also a two-pound trigger pull,” Troy said. “Goes off if you think real hard.” Bubba grinned. Most semiautomatic pistols had five-pound pulls or slightly more.

  Juan steadied the gun and squeezed off nine more shots. His pattern was the size of a saucer. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I can see the little dot inside the sight, no problem. Your pattern is one hole. What’s the secret?”

  “You know the joke about the tourist in New York City who jumped into a taxi and said to the driver, ‘Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall?’”

  “No. Never heard that.”

 
“Ah. Well the cabbie turns to him and says, ‘Practice, practice, practice.’ Now, let’s go shoot some more manly guns. Grab your .40s.”

  Bubba and Juan shot first at life-size silhouettes from ten yards. Bubba stood stock-still and put fifteen rounds in a saucer-size pattern in the center of the target.

  “Good,” Troy said. “Middle of mass. Textbook.”

  Juan tried to move around between shots and his were more scattered. They hung new targets.

  “New rule,” Troy said. “Anyone shoots up the four-by-fours holding up the targets has to find replacements.”

  “No problem,” Juan said. “Find a house for sale and have the night shift yank a sign out of the yard at three a.m.”

  “I did not hear that.” Troy pulled out his stainless steel Colt Commander .45-caliber. Bubba shook his head. “Hundred-year-old gun. And stainless is shiny at night.”

  “It’s Parkerized. Doesn’t reflect much.”

  “Is that true?” Juan said. “That gun is a hundred years old? Looks new to me.”

  “The design is old, in fact more than a hundred years,” Troy said. “They’re all called ‘1911s’ and the original .45-caliber 1911 is a real hogleg. This is a cut-down version with an inch off the barrel, intended for concealed carry.”

  “Damn antique,” Bubba said.

  Troy removed the magazine, handed the gun to Bubba, and thumbed out the cartridges into his left hand. He got a box of standard ball ammo from the back of his car and loaded eight of those. The Federal Hydra-Shoks he normally carried cost more than a dollar apiece. Even the standard ball he used for practice was fifty cents a round and Troy had to buy his own ammo; the department’s pistol ammo was all .40-caliber.

  “I like my Colt Commander. It’s all real steel, not plastic like those Glocks. I’m old-fashioned.”

  “Too much bullet, too small a gun,” Bubba said, handing the gun back. “We use .40s ’cause the recoil is less. And we can have fifteen rounds to your seven.”