Hawk Channel Chase

by Tom Corcoran

  “Do I have to beg you to stay?” I said.

  “I have no choice, Alex, although my love life could use a change of venue. I’d need transfer approval from the Postal Service and two of my fellow workers have already applied for Ocala. I’d be so low on the list, I might have to wait for two or three years.”

  “Your longevity’s worth sticking with the post office?”

  “The way I hear it, every decent job in Ocala’s already gone. Most have been taken by people who’ve already left the Keys. Anyway, there’s a house for sale near Carol Anne, like a block away. If it checks out okay, we can buy it and they’ll be close to her. That’s a huge relief.”

  Not for my selfish self, I thought.

  “Thanks for letting me weep on your shoulder at noon.” Carmen turned to her daughter. “I wasn’t really crying, honey. Figure of speech.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Mom, you never cry. Your eyes perspire. Can we go now?”

  I was two steps into my house when the phone rang. Bobbi Lewis, contrite. “Sorry I was short at lunchtime,” she said. “I spent the morning with Chicken Neck and two big-shot out-of-town cops. They treated me like a servant, and Liska put up with it.”

  “That doesn’t sound like our sheriff. He sees ‘suits’ as leaches programmed to steal cases. Or the limelight. He hates to cooperate.”

  “Well he was kissing ass with this pair, but they were in Hawaiian shirts instead of spiffed up like bankers. It’s only taken about thirty years for non-locals to learn the value of blending in.”

  “What was the occasion?” I said.

  “If I knew, I couldn’t tell you.”

  Translation: she knew but wasn’t going to blab.

  “When did Liska phase himself back into disco style?”

  “Never happen, Alex. This morning he looked like a model from a Brooks Brothers catalog. Button-down blue oxford cloth, Italian loafers, pressed khakis. His dance fever days are behind him.”

  That didn’t square with his attire at Louie’s. He must have gone home to change before meeting Wonsetler for their liquid lunch. Maybe he felt dirty in his office clothes, soiled by the silence imposed upon his whole department.

  “Can I make up for my rudeness?” said Lewis. “You want to do something tonight?”

  “What, walk downtown and chase the music?” It would have to be after my scheduled rendezvous with Lisa Cormier.

  “I meant earlier, like dinner on me,” she said. “I was thinking of splurging, going to Michaels.”

  What would it be, the showdown, the breakup? The sweet, romantic meal when she offers the age-old words, “It’s nothing you did or didn’t do, Alex. It’s all my fault, this need for a change.”

  “How about a glass of wine at my house first?” I said.

  “The restaurant has wine,” she said. “See you at six-thirty?”

  “I did a late lunch, Bobbi. How about eight-thirty?”

  “Okay, seven-thirty.” She hung up.

  The caller ID window told me I’d had another call. I hit the speed button for message retrieval and punched my code.

  Catherman: “Rutledge, I’m sorry I barked. I was way out of line. I’m asking you to reconsider. You probably tossed my business card, and I don’t blame you. Here’s where to reach me.” He reeled off seven digits then added, “That or call Cecil Colding. He owns the grocery where Sally works. He’s going to bat for us.”

  Bat?

  Us?

  I still had his card in my wallet. I sent the message to oblivion and tapped out Sam and Marnie’s home number.

  “I have to admit,” said Marnie, “I drove over the Bight bridge. No skiff, no car. Is it raining at your house?”

  “Beautiful sunny day.”

  “It’s pouring here,” she said.

  “I hope you mean actual wetness and not poetic metaphor.”

  “I don’t have frigging time for pain poems, Alex. No haikus of the broken-hearted.”

  “Why don’t we talk over a couple beers,” I said, “share a few laughs with Vicki?”

  “Well, I’m not…”

  “Great. See you there.” I hung up and pulled the plug from the wall.

  I might have the makings of a successful spy. An eavesdropper on my phone line would have to know Vicki to understand where we were headed. I pocketed Catherman’s card before I started walking down Grinnell.

  Some veterans came out of Vietnam damaged; all of them came out changed. Sam Wheeler had never discussed his experiences beyond the one-liners; battlefield words of wisdom, quick praise or disdain for books and movies about the war. I knew no details on the action he had seen, the peace of mind it had cost him to bring home a Silver Star. He once said, “If you fight crazy people with crazy logic, you force the other guy to share your fear. The more he has, the better your shot.” Several years ago he volunteered to counsel Desert Storm and Iraq vets. It took him too far into his memories. He quit before it tilted his mental balance.

  Sam and I had taken turns over the years owing each other for lunches, pep talks, physical labor, and arrest avoidance. He had saved my life twice, debts he wouldn’t let me discuss. We’d reached a point of trust where odd requests went unquestioned, occasional peril was taken for granted. While certain aspects of our mutual respect came off as foolhardy to outsiders, to Bobbi and especially to Marnie, they felt natural to me, as opposed to macho, and as simple as foxhole dependability. We had become each other’s back-facing eyes. It sounded like Sam was up to his ass in this operation. If he needed a hand, I’d be there with an arm.

  The Schooner Wharf crowd was packed in for music and sunset. Sheltered from a brisk southeast wind, the leeward calm in the bar was thick with smoke and chatter. I signaled Vicki for a beer. She handed over an Amstel Light with a shrug; there were no seats in sight. I took my beer to the boardwalk where gas and oil fumes from the dinghy corral still had a fighting chance, as did grilled fish from somewhere upwind. Tarpon splashed under the decking and dock lines creaked as sailboats’ high rigging swayed.

  Also swaying but counter to the wind and the world about him, my old friend Dubbie Tanner. He had made an art form out of false homelessness, living for years out of the trunk of a Chevy four-door, sleeping under bridges, hustling shots and beers from tourists who thought him quaint, a true island character. I happened to know that he earned a solid income from an old venture. He now owned a slum-on-stilts on Rockland Key where he showered and did laundry. His drinks-for-the-needy act remained active.

  “Spare change, mate?” he said.

  “What’s new, Dubbie? What are the street secrets known only to you?”

  “If you feel rich enough for the full list, here goes. Little Feat are recording at Shrimpboat Sound. They rented a house on Margaret and hired a healthy-food chef. Someone in the city planner’s office might have taken a bribe. It might have been precisely fifty-two hundred, but you never heard that. Someone found a body, maybe two, on the beach at Bay Point yesterday morning. And my brewski is empty from now until midnight.”

  “I heard none of it,” I said. “Can I ask your source on Bay Point?”

  He up-ended his beer. “Not while I’m drinking.”

  Marnie appeared. I gave Dubbie a twenty to go away.

  “Have you talked to Sam?” she said.

  “No, but I know that he’s fine and there’s been no one else.”

  “Sounds like hearsay. Were you trying to talk in code, or what?”

  “Your presence is proof that I succeeded.”

  “My obvious next question,” she said. “Why code?”

  “Here’s where you have to trust us both,” I said. “And please don’t decide that you need a drink to make the jump.”

  “What am I supposed to do, Alex? Chug a fucking Dr. Pepper and cheer for my missing lover?”

  “All I can say is that he’s in a slight jam and, as I suggested this morning, he’s being true to his character.”

  “A slight jam as in life or death, or me
rely serious?”

  “In the big picture we might call it turbulence,” I said. “But you might want to treat your home phone like a party line.”

  Her face went to instant disgust. “Is the damned Pentagon interested in my hair appointments? My pizza orders? Is there an extra topping profile that will turn me into a ‘person of interest?’”

  I couldn’t answer without saying too much. After a half-minute of silence I said, “Anything more on your no-content news story?”

  Marnie mulled my words, stared up at the mast lights of the tall schooner Hindu. “The paper got an email, a Citizens Voice blast. It questioned a police blockade on Bay Point yesterday, so we know it wasn’t Sugarloaf.”

  “It wasn’t just a blockade,” I said. “I heard some maniac bitching at Liska this afternoon on the Afterdeck at Louie’s. They evacuated homes along one stretch. He saw it going down and pretended not to be home. The deputies had helpers in unmarked vehicles. I’m guessing they maybe found a body.”

  “I demand the maniac’s name,” she said.

  “Don’t know it.”

  “How did Liska react?”

  “He didn’t say squat. His mood could’ve darkened a coal mine.”

  “You know more than you’re letting on,” she said.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “When I saw you at the library, you had something on your mind. I could tell by the lines in your face.”

  “Always the reporter,” I said, “sussing out her sources.”

  “Anything you need to unload?”

  “I didn’t think so until I got back to my house and talked to Carmen,” I said. “A slick fellow in his mid-forties came by Monday, tried to feel me out on selling my cottage. I sent him away. He showed again this morning, looking like forty miles of bad road, and tried to hire me as a private eye. He said I had a reputation for crime solutions. He knew about Little Torch, even knew about Avery Hatch, back in the Stone Age. His nineteen-year-old daughter works at a grocery on Summerland but she’s been missing for two days.”

  “At Murray’s?”

  “No, Colding’s, the one farther up, where Monte’s Restaurant used to be. I told him I made my living taking pictures, so he tried to pay me a tall stack of cash to take her picture.”

  “All you had to do was find her first?”

  “I sent him away again. But that’s not the punch line. He’s also made offers to buy Carmen’s cottage and her parents’ house. Do you know what time it is?”

  “Two minutes to seven. I want his number and the daughter’s name.”

  I gave her the info and said, “Go slowly with this guy. This mess has him shook. He was a pompous dick, but his sanity was barely along for the ride.”

  Five minutes after counseling Marnie not to drink, I grabbed another beer and a roadie cup before hiking over to meet Lisa Cormier. If I ran through the humid October evening, hustled three hundred yards to the restaurant, I’d be a one-man sweatshop and five minutes late. If I walked and sipped warming Amstel and watched the evening sun fade from the tops of palm trees and utility poles, I might be ten minutes late.

  Damn, I like easy decisions.

  It would be my last for a few days.

  I chugged my beer and ditched the cup in a trash bin before entering Prime 951. I didn’t want to look low-rent on my arrival to secretly meet a glamorous society dame from Atlanta. I found six empty bar stools within four steps of the door. A sign of good planning for the chronically thirsty and weary of leg. I sensed Mrs. Cormier about fifteen feet away, the only person at the bar, but didn’t look at her.

  I pointed to a stool to inform the woman at the podium that I didn’t need a dinner table, then dutifully kept my eyes on the bartender as he delivered a drink napkin and a wine list.

  For some reason, at that moment, I wondered if everything Copeland Cormier had told me in church was bullshit. I tempered the thought with the fact that Sam Wheeler had vouched for him. I then sharpened the notion. Sam’s assurance had arrived by an indirect path.

  I would have to be extra-cautious until I could talk to Sam. Starting with staying alert and not sitting with my back to the door.

  “What choices do I have in the Merlot column?” I said.

  The bartender waggled his finger at a list of by-the-glass pours. “Lady behind me wants to know if you’re Alex Rutledge, famous photographer.”

  “That’s my name. I’m not so sure about the rest.”

  “Run with it, guy. She’s got your drink, and you’re welcome to join her.”

  “Can you pick a red for me?”

  “How about a head start,” said the bartender, “like a favorite.”

  “There’s a permanent soft spot in my heart for Gallo Hearty Burgundy. What does she do, sit there every night and wait for her dream date to show up?”

  Too late I saw the warning in the man’s eyes.

  I felt her close behind me: “Call it what you want, handsome. My name is Lisa. Can I join you?”

  “Where were you sitting?”

  She sashayed and I followed to the far side of the bar, finally noticing the music that had played since I entered. Frank Sinatra singing a duet with Carly Simon. I chose the farthest bar stool, next to the server station, too late realizing that we now faced an enormous television. I swiveled to face Lisa Cormier.

  “More comfortable facing the door?” she said.

  “Like the boss in a gangster film.”

  “It’s also positive feng shui. What do you see when you look around the restaurant?”

  Was I supposed to spot surveillance or a sniper? “Can I have a category?”

  “I mean, with your photographer’s eye.”

  I turned my head to scan the room. “Thick steaks and atmosphere battling for dominance, each side armed with large knives.”

  “More details, please.”

  “Ten-pound butcher blocks masquerading as supper plates, bourbon-soaked mahogany paneling and barrel-aged candles in sconces. An abundance of wide, dark wood window blinds. Exposed yet attractive air conditioning ducts. This may be more than you want to know, but the Kelvin temperature of the room’s indirect lighting is flattering to skin tones.”

  She looked around, slowly nodding. “More yellows than blues, I get it. What do you see when you look at me?”

  If I wanted to be a wiseass, I could describe the TV show reflected on her face by the marble bar top. I took a sip from the huge wine glass that had appeared before me. Without looking at her I said, “I see a woman comfortable with her loveliness, in no danger of having to wrestle the chub demons.”

  “What’s lovely about me, in order of importance?”

  Eyes front. “Your smile, eyes, face, hair, figure… and your confidence.”

  “You fired that back pretty quickly,” she said. “One of your tried-and-true lines?”

  “Did we come here for this discussion?”

  She smiled. “The floor is wide open.”

  I looked at her face, noticed imperfections I hadn’t seen at Louie’s Backyard. Her eyes a touch too close together, an off-kilter dimple low on her right cheek that made her more attractive.

  “You’re acting a shade nervous, Lisa, like a lonely housewife here to pick me up. Is that part of the act, for observers we can’t identify or who may not even be here?”

  The smile froze, faded to anger. “Fuck part of the act and fuck observers,” she said. “My husband dreamed up an altruistic nightmare. You think I don’t worry my ass off? Every day I worry my heart out.”

  “Copeland said five people are involved. Are they all in the Keys?”

  “He also forgets, there are six involved. I am not the frigging wallpaper.”

  “If you’re looking to recruit a seventh,” I said, “I doubt that my skills match the job requirements. Or that my commitment even comes close.”

  “Is that wine okay, or would you rather have ‘Ocho’ on the rocks, Bacardi 8, like mine?”

  “Very good wine. If
anything, I’m a bit hungry… oh, shit.” I looked at my wrist. No watch, as usual. I pulled my cell phone out of the fisherman’s knife pocket on my hip. It told me I’d missed a call before 7:00, probably while I was talking with Marnie at Schooner Wharf. I had turned off the ringtone going into St. Paul’s chapel. I had forgotten to reset it.

  I pressed a button, read the clock. “I have to be somewhere in eight minutes. It’s a ten-minute walk.”

  Lisa Cormier looked at me like I was dumb as toast. “Half the time I use my cell, it’s to warn somebody I’m going to be late.”

  “Your husband suggested I use it sparingly.”

  “Yes,” she said. “If it wasn’t for his paranoia, he’d be fearless.”

  I borrowed the bar’s phone and white pages directory. Michaels’ listing, with its clip-art palm tree, was easy to find in dim light. A woman answered.

  “This is Alex Rutledge calling about a 7:30 reservation…”

  “Sir, Ms. Lewis called about twenty minutes ago. She changed your reservation to seven o’clock tomorrow evening. She said, in case you didn’t get her message before you arrived, she apologizes. It couldn’t be helped.”

  “Thank you. See you tomorrow.” I hung up the phone as the bartender placed two appetizer plates in front of us. They must have been ordered before I arrived. Lisa was baiting her trap with every conceivable treat. Next up, she’d hand me a motel room key, two condoms, and her panties.

  “Why am I here?”

  Lisa studied the rum in her glass, took a deep breath. “We haven’t been able to reach Sam since you and my husband spoke in the chapel. We want you, and we believe Sam would want you, to pursue this search for the man’s daughter. It may carry some relevance to our situation.”

  “I’d become one more person to worry about. Or don’t I count?”

  “We’re not asking you to volunteer your skills, Alex. You take the man’s money and give him a time limit. Three days ought to cover it, from our side of things. You do whatever you do, and we debrief once a day. By the third day, from our questions, you’ll have an idea what this is all about. It’s something we’re prepared to trust you with.”