The Long Gray Goodbye: A Seth Halliday Novel

by Bobby Underwood

  As Krista stood beneath the bright floodlights of her fiancé’s front porch, I suddenly remembered her smile as we lay in bed talking after making love. I remembered every moment of every intimate coupling. I recalled the fruity scent of her blonde hair, so bright it couldn’t be natural but was; I had discovered the first time we loved that she was a natural blonde, her hair as soft and beautiful even in that most feminine of places. Krista’s skin was white and smooth, her contours as spectacular as her smile, her blue eyes as lovely as her light pink lips. She had been Barbie come to life, or perhaps Barbie’s younger sister, Kelly, since she was shorter.

  Krista had been an achingly beautiful college girl on vacation, a ray of sunshine to anyone in her sphere. Her conservative southern values and her unwillingness to compromise them had set her apart from those who surrounded her, just as her beauty had. She would not have been with me, shared that magical part of herself so freely and wonderfully, had she not felt something. She was that kind of girl.

  I had felt it, too, but we had been at different seasons in our lives. I remembered thinking how lucky I was to have this moment in time with someone who by all rights, should have been with a younger man, one much less seasoned and jaded.

  As she stood there years later in her short, striped blue dress with red edging, her gorgeous white cleavage revealed by its deep circular neckline, and long legs so smooth and white they must lead to heaven, I experienced a brief but intense moment of melancholy. I loved Caroline, but was struck by the irony that she, in fact, was probably a year or two younger than Krista. Timing is everything in love.

  Vlad whistled softly as he turned off the headlights. “I had seen her photograph, comrade, but it did not do her justice.”

  “It hardly could,” I said. “She’s how we get Russkies to defect.”

  He smiled. “A quite effective ploy, I’m sure.”

  We got out and began walking toward her. She stared, curious to see who had come to visit her fiancé. I saw her face change from curiosity to joy as we got close, and she broke out in a run. I had not expected such a reaction, but perhaps she felt many of the same things I had upon seeing her years later. She threw herself in my arms and I had to spin her around to prevent being knocked down as she shouted my name in disbelief and pleasure, in her lovely southern drawl.

  “Oh, my God! Seth! I can’t believe it’s you! It’s been so long! God, you look amazing! Come on up, both of you. Jim went out for drinks with his friends after dinner.” She did not sound happy at this turn of events.

  She laughed. “Gosh, I haven’t even let you talk or introduce your friend.” She got a twinkle in her eye. “If you’re here to change my mind about getting married, you might be able to persuade me otherwise, especially tonight.”

  “You always were a terrible liar,” I said, but sensed we’d walked in on an old argument. I noticed she wasn’t wearing her engagement ring. I nodded to Vlad. “This is a friend of mine, Vlad. Vlad, this is Krista Wallace, the loveliest peach in all the South.”

  “Of that, I have no doubt,” he said more softly than I’d ever heard him speak. He held out his hand and she shook it. She said, “Come on up and we’ll sit and catch up. And then you can tell me why you really looked me up.” She smiled. “Not that I’m not grateful. God, it brings back so many memories seeing you, Seth. Every time I think of college I don’t think of the University, but of South America, and Ecuador. I really mean that.” I knew she did and it was more than a little touching.

  On the walk up she noticed my ring, and her blue eyes, already shiny in the floodlights, got brighter. “Oh my God, you’re married! Tell me all about her!” So once we sat down, I told her about Caroline. By proxy, Vlad was hearing about Caroline as well. When I finished, Krista leaned over and gave me a huge hug and said how glad she was for me. Then I said, “Your turn,” and that was all the coaxing she needed. Thirty minutes later Vlad and I had a condensed history of the last several years in her life. It didn’t escape my notice or Vlad’s that she had not mentioned the engagement.

  There were some questions, some straggling bits of information we filled in for each other, before she finally nodded to the file in my hand. I slid it over to her.

  I told her everything, and pulled no punches. She deserved to know what she was handing over and what she was getting into. Vlad and I had talked it over on the way and agreed. She looked through the file as I spoke, occasionally looking up at Vlad. Her Barbie looks, her niceness, and her southern drawl were deceptive. She had a keen, intelligent mind. When I finished talking she closed the file and set it gently down on the table. She punched a number on a cell phone she pulled from her pocket. Whoever she’d called, picked up almost immediately.

  “Daddy? I’m glad you’re up. I’ll be there in a couple of hours or so. I have a file with me you need to see.” She listened. “No, I don’t want to say on the phone. But you’ll need to take care of it immediately, and there have to be no leaks.” Another pause. “Seth Halliday. You remember, I told you about him.” She turned to me and winked. “He is with another man, the man who is mentioned in the file, Vlad. You’ll understand how delicate it is once you see it. It involves terrorism.” She held the phone away from her ear for a solid three seconds. “Yes, Daddy, I know, he can’t even utter the words, Islamic Radical Terrorist. I know, that’s why they’re giving the file to you. You have a reputation in his country of being fair and honest. Obviously they’ve not seen you cheat at Monopoly.” She laughed. “Yes, Daddy, unlike that piece of garbage in the White House.” She smiled. “I love you too, Daddy.” She frowned, listening. “Don’t worry, I’ll be safe. I’ll have Seth and Vlad escort me to the jet.” She looked at us for verification and we both nodded. “Alright, Bye, Daddy.”

  “He’ll meet me at the airport when I land, and he knows a couple of ex-Secret Service Agents who will come with him, just in case. She made a face. “Now I just have to tell Jim.”

  She left us momentarily and went inside for the private call.

  “Mind if I ask you something?”

  Vlad frowned, wondering what was on my mind.

  “Were you and Katarina ever involved?”

  His expression told me it wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. He smiled.

  “No, not in the sense that you mean. We have worked together before. We are friends, I would say. Which is why she covered for me. It is my fault, this mess. I should have anticipated her loyalty.”

  “You might want to let Sonny know, so he doesn’t have to ask her, or wonder forever because he doesn’t want to ask her.”

  He nodded, understanding. “Katarina seems happier as of late. We must grab it while it is within our grasp, eh, my friend?”

  As Krista stepped out from the sliding door he made a sound which prompted her to stop in her tracks. If it had been anyone else but Vlad, I’d have called the sound a sigh. He hadn’t heard her return, and had his back to the patio door.

  “I look at your Krista, so lovely and bright and special, and it makes me a little sad, my friend.” He sounded tired, and it was more than physical. “What a magnificent girl. She is spring, in all its glory.” He shook his head. “I have seen and done so much, my friend, I wonder if I will ever experience spring again. Perhaps I am too far into autumn and only winter remains for me.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say. Vlad and I had a working relationship going back to some tankers off the coast of Miami many years ago, when a couple of his country’s operatives had gone capitalist rogue. We weren’t friends in the sense that Sonny and I were, or even Sanchez and I. We were friends of a sort, however, and in that moment I felt quite sorry for him. Perhaps when I had shot and killed Escobar, I had killed my spring as well, and hastened the approach of winter. But Caroline had ended my accelerated passage through the seasons, giving me what I hoped would be a long, sweet summer. If I was lucky, perhaps an Indian summer would follow it, before we shared our autumn, and finally winter, together.

 
I could see Krista over Vlad’s shoulder and knew Vlad’s words had touched her deeply. I also had the feeling that her conversation inside had not gone well. She reached back and jiggled the sliding door, as though she’d just come out. It saved me from having to say something feeble in response to Vlad’s sudden melancholy. She scooped up the file off the table and said, “I’m ready when you boys are.”

  We followed the lights of her blue Mustang convertible through nighttime Miami to the airport where her father’s jet had already fired up its engines.

  It had begun to occur to me as we made the long walk to the tarmac that I might not need to call Fernandez. As Krista hugged me at the bottom of the ramp, I said, “I have another favor to ask, if it isn’t too much.”

  She feigned exasperation. “Not another favor.” Then she laughed and said, very softly. “What is it, Seth?”

  “Over a year ago, a couple of American teenagers, an older boy and his younger sister, ran away. Somehow they ended up in Ecuador. Someone over here has been putting a lot of political pressure on that country to find them. Perhaps the family has influence here, I don’t know. But recently, the young girl was murdered, I believe. Whether the parents know, or our people here know, I’m not certain. I think a cop in Ecuador knows, but suspect he’s keeping it quiet because he’s after bigger fish. If your father knows about the case, it would be helpful to know the names of the two kids and any other information that might be available. Photos, especially.”

  “That doesn’t sound like its related to this business,” she said, giving the file in her hand a little back and forth motion.

  “It isn’t. Totally separate. I’m looking into the young girl’s death. I need to verify that it’s her. It might help me find her killer.”

  “Okay. Dad should know if it’s a big enough deal that someone’s putting pressure on Ecuador to find them. I’ll get back to you. Except…”

  I laughed. “Caroline has a cell phone.” I didn’t tell her she’d only just got it. I gave her the number.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.” She glanced at Vlad and smiled. “On both deals.”

  And then she walked over to Vlad and took his rugged face in her delicate white hands with fingernails painted the same light shade of pink as her lips, and she kissed him, open mouthed and sweet. I hadn’t seen that coming by a long stretch. Vlad, always prepared for any contingency, for once looked helpless. She waited until he placed his hands on her small waist before ending the kiss. She whispered, “No one’s ever said anything as lovely about me as you did on that patio. Spring is on that plane, with me, if you want it, Vlad. And if it carries us through the seasons, we’ll still have Christmas when it’s winter.”

  And then she turned and began walking up the steps, in all her blonde, sweet glory. Vlad glanced at me. It was the only time I’d ever seen him uncertain. I said, “She’s a heck of a girl.”

  She turned at the top step to see if she’d just made a fool of herself. I said, “If this works like you say it will, I guess we won’t need you for anything.”

  He placed a big hand on my shoulder and squeezed, and began walking toward spring.

  Twenty-Three

  All Caroline could see through the hotel door’s peephole were the flowers I’d picked up for her from an all-night florist next to the hospital. She quickly opened the door.

  “How’d you know it was me?” I asked. “It could have been one of your other admirers.”

  “They all have a secret signal,” she whispered, taking the flowers as she kissed me. “So I knew it had to be my honey.” She glanced over my shoulder. “Where’s Vlad?”

  “He had to go find spring,” I said cryptically with a smile. I whispered, “Is the door locked?” I cast my head toward the connecting door to the suites. She nodded.

  She was wearing a retro Joe Montana 49er Jersey she’d picked up at the mall. Unless her underthings were pulled up high, it appeared to be all she had on. She looked wonderful, and as she held her flowers, I knew that summer, for me, was better than spring ever could have been. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. The flowers are pretty. Where’d you find them this time of night?”

  “It’s Miami. Open all night.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed her. When I stopped kissing her I said, “Wanna have some fun?”

  “I guess it’s okay, we are married.”

  “No, a different kind of fun. Then I’ll let you have your way with me.”

  She threw her arms around my neck. “What’d ya have in mind, Mister?”

  I placed my finger to my lips and walked her over to the bed. Then I climbed up on it and stood, holding out my hand to help her up. She looked puzzled but she was game. In a second, we were both standing on the bed. I pushed a lovely bundle of sandy blonde hair away from her face and whispered in her ear what we were going to do. I felt her face contract against my cheek as she smiled. When I finished telling her, she was flush, but still smiling. I grabbed her face and kissed her, then started jumping up and down. She joined me, trying not to laugh.

  “Oh, Caroline! You’re going to kill me!”

  Caroline’s lovely blue eyes were about to pop out of her head as she hollered, “Oh, Seth! It feels so wonderful! It’s so beautiful!”

  Our jumping was becoming frantic. And loud. Caroline was holding her hand over her mouth now so she wouldn’t burst out in laughter. Her face was redder than a beet and her eyes were watering. She looked beautiful.

  I hollered, “I’m almost there!”

  There came three bangs on the wall on the other side of the wall. Sonny hollered, “We know you guys are jumping up and down on the bed, man. Our flight leaves at four, you kids better get some rest.” We heard he and Katarina laughing their asses off.

  Caroline couldn’t hold it any longer. She burst out laughing so loud I thought the entire hotel might hear her. She crumbled to the mattress in a heap and I dropped beside her. I started kissing her neck while she was still laughing. As I began kissing other lovely parts she hollered, “Oh Seth! It feels so wonderful!”

  She was still giggling when I pulled the covers over us and we reveled in our summer love.

  Twenty-Four

  Laura Garner had wasted no time. The papers at the airport were plastered with accounts of a news conference she’d held last night around the time Vlad and I were handing over the file to Krista. In front of a gazillion microphones Laura stated she had hired a private investigator to look into the disappearance of her sister, Susan, who had gone missing over a decade ago. She had done so based on new information that Susan’s disappearance might be connected with the suicide around the same time of jazz singer Holly Carmichael. She was quoted:

  “I plead with French authorities to cooperate fully in any way they can with my investigator, who is a retired Miami detective. He will need access to all information they may have garnered in their own exhaustive search for Susan, and also allow us to look at any and all evidence they have surrounding Holly Carmichael’s suicide.”

  The quote was perfect, putting French authorities on the spot. Laura Garner was big. Her television program was shown worldwide, including France, and she was extremely popular. It would be very bad press for them if she held another news conference, stating that French authorities were not cooperating. By mentioning their “exhaustive” search for her sister, and the investigation being based on new evidence not available at the time of the original search, she both exonerated them from looking sloppy if something was found, and gave them credit in advance for cooperating. It was a win-win for them if they opened their files, and a lose-lose if they didn’t. Who said blondes weren’t smart?

  I took the paper onto the plane and we took turns reading the article, which chronicled the disappearance of Susan Garner, the fire which destroyed her office, and the sad death of Holly Carmichael, who did not live to see her first and only jazz album released. The article mentioned that while the album had garnered only modest sal
es, it had been well-received by critics, who found her voice and her throwback style refreshing.

  It’s a straight shot over the North Atlantic to Paris, but it takes about eight or nine hours. Normally unable to sleep on a plane, I was exhausted, and found myself dozing on and off. I woke up once and heard Sonny snoring next to me. Katarina was the only one among us who had been to Paris, so we had switched seats so that she could tell Caroline about it. Caroline had almost a child’s wonder about new places and people. And it was Paris, after all. Even I was a bit excited. Not about the food I’d have to eat, or the French, but I mean, hell, it was Paris!

  We’d left on an early morning flight from Miami because the next one would have had us arriving at midnight. This one had us arriving about seven in the evening. We’d have time to check in at the hotel, shower, and maybe even see a bit of the City of Lights after a nice dinner. Well, it would be nice for Caroline and Katarina, I wasn’t certain Sonny and I would find anything we wanted to eat. I like my snails hidden in my ivy, not buttered and seasoned with garlic. I could not imagine the first guy — or gal, since crazy was universal, and not limited to gender — who saw a snail inching its way along a green leaf and thought to himself, I’ll bet that would taste good if you took the shell off and seasoned it.

  We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport about when we were supposed to. I felt a rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins at the sight of Paris on our approach. I spotted the Eiffel Tower off to the left as we touched down. I glanced behind me and Caroline was looking out the window and smiling. She turned to look at me, sensing my gaze. Her eyes were bright and alive. This was Paris, where she had never been, and we were together.