by Danny Lopez
I took my shoes and socks off, rolled my pant hems up to my calves, and walked in the soft hot sand to the small drum circle. Only three hippies were waling on their instruments while two girls danced, skipping and fluttering their arms like they’d just dropped acid. In the periphery, a handful of curious older people paused to check out the show, then moved on.
Jaybird wasn’t there.
I made my way behind the drummers hoping I might find him lying in the sand, sleeping. The soft smell of patchouli and marijuana waved over me. Past the drummers and to the side of the dancers, I recognized the girl from the night before. She was wearing a pink bikini and was twirling a hoola hoop with her arm.
I walked over. “How’s it going?”
She looked me up and down, suspiciously. No smile. No hippie love. Just a defensive stance. I guess she felt I was invading her space.
“I’m a friend of Jaybird’s. We met yesterday.”
She moved her long wavy hair away from her sweaty face and frowned. “No, we didn’t.”
I pointed to the side of the circle. “We were over there. You pointed out Jaybird for me.”
No reaction. She was either on something, or had been so high yesterday that now she didn’t remember me.
“Never mind,” I said. “Is Jaybird around?”
She shook her head and looked at the drummers.
I followed her gaze. Long shadows stretched across the sand.
She moved her arm in a long arch. “They’re drumming for Neptune, man.”
“Cool.”
She curled her upper lip—a look I’d seen many times—and rolled her eyes like a disgruntled teenager. She probably thought I was trying to pick her up. I just smiled and walked away, sat on the sand in the periphery, and watched the show.
The inconsistent rhythm of the drummers reminded me of an event when Zoe was four years old. My ex, Nancy, and I were already suffering our troubles. I was pretty sure we were headed for divorce. We attended a show at Zoe’s day care. Each kid had made a homemade instrument. Zoe used a large aluminum pot and a wooden spoon because Nancy and I had been too busy, too focused on our own bullshit that we hadn’t been involved. Most of the other kids had made string instruments out of boxes and horns out of tubes, decorated with tempera paint and papier maché. Some of them looked real nice with straps and ribbons hanging from them like festival decorations.
The concert was a beautiful disaster—an all-out free-for-all cacophony that stabbed at the eardrums. But the faces on those little kids were priceless. They loved every second of their jam. Every single one of them was a John Coltrane or a John Bonham or an Angus Young. And Zoe was right there with them, crouched over that pot in the corner waling on it as though life itself depended on how hard and fast she could hit the damn thing.
I wondered what she would make of the drum circle.
* * *
The dense tropical clouds floating over the horizon made for a long and spectacular sunset. When the sky turned red and the clouds glowed orange, the drummers went nuts, reaching an intense crescendo. The dancers hopped and waved and cried out with joy. I could only imagine Neptune having a laugh somewhere under the sea.
When things finally slowed, and two of the drummers paused and lit up cigarettes or joints and drank water or beer or whatever they found in a big red cooler, I approached.
“Hey, man,” I said turning on my best hipster. “You seen Jaybird?”
“Not today, dude.”
“Any idea where he might be?”
He laughed. “Probably getting high somewhere.”
The other drummer who was standing to the side said, “You check out Turtle Beach?”
“Yeah, I just came from there.”
The other drummer glanced at his friend. “Maybe he’s up by the pier on Beach Road.”
“Nah,” the first one said shaking his head. “Dude’s probably at work.”
It was a long hot walk back to the parking lot. I sat in my car for a moment, cranked the AC while I put on my socks and shoes. The clouds to the east, somewhere where the swamp turned to suburbs, were dark and heavy with the occasional flash of lightning.
I drove north on Beach Road, turned at the curve where the road changed to Ocean Boulevard, and entered the Village. The whole business district was lit up like a party despite it being just an average weekday in July. The Siesta Key Oyster Bar was packed. Even with my windows up I could hear the musician on the little stage on the porch of the restaurant strumming his guitar and singing “Margaritaville.” A big sign attached to the railing read: Keep Beach Road Public. Next to it on a black board, it said: Tonight: Live Music by Cap’n Cody.
I got lucky and found a parking spot right in front of the Old Salty Dog. The restaurant was a Siesta Key institution. It had been there since forever, but really, it was pretty much like the other restaurants in the key: outside seating on wooden picnic tables, a palm thatch roof, flat-screen TVs. But inside it was dark and a little funky. Like a little pub in Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
I walked past the hostess, turned left and up a couple of steps to the bar. It had a long wooden counter and stools where three scruffy older men sat drinking together. They looked like fishermen without a boat. At a small table, two red-faced tourists drank tall, fancy colorful drinks. They were still wearing bathing suits, flip-flops, and pastel Florida t-shirts.
I took a stool. The bartender had her back to me. I was tracing the outline of her bare shoulder when she turned around, caught my eye, and smiled. Then her eyes grew wide and she pushed her head forward as if to get a better look at me. “Dexter?”
I smiled, but for the life of me, I couldn’t place her. She was young, late twenties, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. And pretty. Very.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” She leaned forward on the counter. “Tessa Davidson. From the Sarasota Herald. I was the education reporter for like six months. They sent me home with the first round of layoffs. That weekend a big group of us went out for drinks at the Gator Club with the photographers.”
Nope. I didn’t remember her. But I had a vague memory of a drunken night at the Gator Club. We were all angry. Most of the photo staff had been canned. We knew it was the beginning of the end, yet none of us wanted to admit it. We just got drunk and complained. I was still married. I remembered calling my wife and arguing. She wasn’t happy that I was out after work, drunk, commiserating with my newspaper friends. She never liked them—probably because she wasn’t one of them.
But what mattered now was Tessa. Jaybird had said she’d dated Liam. She could help me with the case. I nodded like a sappy old friend and said, “Yeah, that was one crazy night.”
She laughed, then crinkled her nose. “We got pretty hammered, huh?”
“Looks like you’ve moved up in the world.”
She glanced up and down the bar and shrugged. “It’s okay. It helps pay the bills. I also freelance on the side. Mostly blogs, you know?”
“I hear you.”
“So what can I get you?”
I leaned forward and studied the drafts at the end of the bar. I recognized a Cigar City tap. “Is that the Maduro or Tocobaga?”
“Maduro,” she said, “a nice brown ale.”
I nodded. She smiled at me and went to pour.
I hadn’t been to a bar in Siesta Village in ages. It was refreshing to be out in a different place. And the vibe at the bar of the Salty Dog was totally different than at the outside tables. The walls were a deep blood-red, and the tables polished wood. I figured most people who came to the Village didn’t come to sit in a dark bar. They wanted the palm-thatched roof, the salt and humidity of the beach, big colorful fruity drinks. They wanted Margaritaville.
Tessa came back and set the glass of Maduro in front of me. “It’s on me,” she said.
“Really?”
“Yeah, for old times. You want a food menu?”
I glanced at the entrance to the bar area. On the wall by the steps were old pho
tos of the restaurant when Siesta was low key and funky. There were no palm-thatched roofs then. Beyond the steps, past another section of the dining room, was the kitchen. “Is Jaybird working tonight?”
“You know Jaybird?”
“Yeah.”
She leaned forward. “He was supposed to come in at eleven and work a double, but never showed. The manager’s pretty pissed.”
“We are talking about Jaybird, right?”
She laughed. “He’s actually pretty good about coming to work.”
I took a long sip of the ale. Pretty powerful stuff. Those Ybor City folks knew how to brew a good beer. “He told me about an after-work party last night. Maybe he had a little too much.”
Tessa tilted her head to the side. “That was at my place,” she said. “But he was only there for an hour.”
“He told me he was there until four.”
“Right. I was asleep by three.”
A man walked up to the bar, looked left and right, then took a seat a couple of places from me. Tessa looked at him and back at me. “Be right back.”
I watched her work, taking the man’s order, handing him a food menu, then popping open a Corona and topping it with a lime wedge before setting it in front of him. I glanced at the entrance and tried to imagine the kitchen where Jaybird was supposed to be.
Tessa came back. “So how do you know Jaybird?”
“From around the beach.” I had to tread carefully.
“He’s a character, huh?”
I nodded. “He was helping me with something.”
She laughed. “Help from Jaybird?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s usually the other way around,” she said. “Everyone’s always helping Jaybird out. He’s gotta owe me at least five hundred bucks by now. Not to mention all the nights he’s crashed at my place or the rides I’ve given him to the south end of the key.”
That was my cue. “To Liam’s place?”
Tessa’s expression fell. Her smile turned into a taught line. “Yeah,” she said quickly, her eyes dancing around me. “You knew Liam?”
“Not really,” I said, “but I’m trying to find out more about him.”
“Order,” a waitress called from the end of the bar, leaned forward on the counter, and looked our way.
Tessa grinned, pushed herself away from the bar, and proceeded to take care of business. She looked at the drink order and poured two Budweisers, pulled out a container of something bluish from under the counter, and poured it into the blender. She moved quickly, taking long sure steps back and forth along the bar as she added rum and another liquor from a bottle I didn’t recognize, ice and orange juice. The blender made a racket as the blades crushed the ice. The scruffy fishermen on the other side of the bar looked over for a second, then went back to the basketball game on TV.
Tessa prepped two tall goblets with a sliver of pineapple, a red maraschino cherry, and a little paper umbrella. Then she turned off the blender and poured the frothy blue drink into the glasses and placed them on the tray.
When the waitress left with her order, Tessa came back to where I sat—only she didn’t lean in all friendly like before. She just stood squarely in front of me and crossed her arms over her chest and said, “So what about Liam?”
It was time to go fishing. “You knew him?”
“Everyone on the key knew him.”
“Weird, because I’m trying to find out about him and no one seems to know anything.”
“Anything about what?” she said.
“About him. About his business. About what exactly happened the night he died.”
“You working on a story?”
I grinned. “Laid off.”
“So you’re a cop now?”
I laughed. “Far from it. But the cops did close the case. Said it was an accident.”
She leaned forward, her hands resting on the bar. “So why are you looking into it then?”
“Liam’s dad.”
“What about him?”
“He thinks it wasn’t an accident.”
She drew back. “Oh?”
I took a sip of my Maduro. “You seem defensive,” I said.
She stole a quick glance toward the scruffy fishermen at the end of the bar and then fixed her big brown eyes on mine. “I dated Liam for a while. We were together for almost a year. But this thing … him dying. It really … it’s really messed up. I still can’t believe it happened. I keep thinking he’s going to walk up those steps with his charming smile and say, ‘Hey, Tessa, how about a Pony Ride Margarita?’”
“What’s that?”
“One of our silly fruity drinks.”
“He drank that?”
“No. It was our ongoing joke.”
I could see the hurt in her eyes. She’d gone from happy bartender to take-no-bullshit woman in less than a second. “His dad doesn’t believe there was an accident,” I said.
“His dad,” she said mockingly. “I can only imagine he’d be happy to see him gone.”
“You can’t be serious. It’s his father.”
“Those two hated each other.”
“Yeah, Jaybird said something about that. But then the old man is paying me good money to find out who might be behind his death. If—and this is a big if—indeed there was foul play—”
“Miss.” The man of the tourist couple at the table behind me held up his empty glass. “Please?”
Tessa forced a quick smile and went to work the blender and make another one of those colorful drinks. When she came back, she whispered, “So what do you think happened?”
“I have no idea.” I drained the rest of my Maduro. “But something’s going on. The cops never found the kayak. They said they talked to a witness who saw Liam kayaking that night but then kept it out of the report.”
“Order.” A waitress was at the station. She didn’t look happy that Tessa wasn’t hustling. During the summer, when things were slow, you had to do the best you could with the few customers you had. Every tip mattered.
An older couple walked in. They were drenched, laughing. The woman took a napkin from the bar and wiped her face. The man pulled out the two stools to my left and sat, then leaned to the side and elbowed me. “Two blocks, and we got soaked,” he said in a light British accent.
“It’s coming down hard, eh?”
“Unbelievable,” he said. “It’s like a bloody typhoon.”
Tessa came back to the bar and took their order. She gave me a look and pointed to my glass.
“Sure.” I looked sideways at the couple and back at Tessa. Maybe this was not the place to talk about Liam’s case. But the time was right.
She went off to the far side of the bar to make the drinks. A small group of young people came in, laughing, all of them drenched. They stood around looking at the room. One of the men pointed to the bar and they all came and crowded the area between the British couple and the old fishermen.
They ordered drinks. One of the men kissed one of the women. They were all dressed for the sun—shorts and t-shirts and tiny dresses, flip-flops and hats.
When Tessa came back to me, she apologized and winked. “So, where were we?”
“The cops never found a kayak. I was wondering—”
“Miss,” one of the young men said and held up his hand like he was in school. “Can we get another round?”
Tessa looked at me. “They drink fast.”
I grabbed my beer and made my way to the terrace. The rain was coming down hard, a typical summer storm. Across Ocean Boulevard, and a little to the east away from the beach, a Sheriff’s deputy cruiser was parked. No lights.
I walked back into the bar and took my place. A couple of minutes later, Tessa came back.
“I’m going to take off,” I said. “But you and I need to talk.”
“Sure.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yeah, but not too early. I’m here until one, and I have a piece I’m working on that’s on dea
dline.”
“Really?”
“It’s just for a blog.”
“But it pays?”
She shrugged. “A little.”
“Good for you,” I said hoping my tone did not betray my jealousy.
Tessa wrote down her address and phone number on a napkin and handed it to me. The couple next to me watched us intently. They probably thought I was picking her up.
“Does Jaybird have a phone number?”
“Please.” She laughed and shook her head. “The guy lives in the Stone Age.”
I folded the napkin and placed it in my shirt breast pocket. “If you get any news on him, let me know, okay?”
I gave her my business card and walked out to the front of the restaurant. The cop car was gone. Somehow it made me feel at ease. Those two Maduros had me buzzing just enough that maybe I would fail a breathalyzer.
I got soaked running to my car. I started up on Ocean Boulevard. The rain was coming down hard. I drove leaning forward, squinting at the road. As I came to the stop on Higel Avenue, a car came up behind me, high beams burning the inside of my car like the sun. I turned on Higel and sped up just a little over the speed limit, trying to get a bit of distance from the asshole that stayed on my tail. Higel is a narrow two-lane road. Traffic was light. But the lights and the torrential rain were blinding.
I slowed down hoping the tailgater would pass.
He just stayed on my ass as we crossed the north bridge. Normally, I would take a left on South Osprey Avenue, but that’s a two-lane road. I stayed on Siesta Drive to Tamiami Trail where I got the red light. The rain let up some, and with the streetlights and the illuminated signs from the bank and business, I could tell it was a cop car behind me. The traffic signal turned green, and I turned left on the Trail, heading north toward downtown. The cop car stuck to my rear.
I got into the middle lane. A few seconds later, blue and red flashed, lighting up the inside of my car and turning the rain to glitter.