Powerboat Racer (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 3)

by Thomas Hollyday

  He knew from experience that good news stories usually provoked this kind of opposition, fear, desire to keep facts hidden, that type of thing. The note proved that someone or some group was worried about what he might find out. He had received many threats during his news career but he smiled as he realized that he had not expected this kind of thing here in the hamlet of River Sunday. He had a momentary thought to report this note to Sheriff Good but decided against it. The last thing he needed now was to get the sheriff to think that he was scared, especially when he had to be able to stand up to the big man, so he’d open up with all the facts of the case.

  Shrugging, he got into the van and drove off, heading south of town. After passing a scrap yard filled with junked cars, he spotted the landmark he was heading towards, a great neon sign, bright in the black night. The sign was mounted high up on steel posts, big as the one story white concrete block building with no windows that it advertised below. On the sign in red light was the outline of a racing boat like the one Douglas had built with the engine foreword of a small hull and the driver behind. Below it in script were the neon words “Lulu’s Motorboat Lounge.” The sign was large enough to attract the visitors from Baltimore to the north or the travelers coming from Ocean City and Norfolk to the south. The renovation was not old but a foundation had been there a long time. It had not always been named Lulu’s. Many proprietors had run a bar on this spot under other names and in earlier buildings, during Prohibition and some said even back in stagecoach days after the Revolution. While in many places this kind of establishment might have been a source of embarrassment, in River Sunday it was pointed to with the kind of pride that comes with showing off a place that is a landmark, known far and wide. Indeed, Harry had heard of Lulu’s even when he was a reporter in New York, heard of that place with the nude showgirls located on the way to Ocean City, Maryland.

  Inside was a large room with a bar along the far wall and countless round tables circling a dance floor. On the walls were large photographs of racing boats from the early Twenties, the big high speed boats and the smaller more modern craft that raced when Black Duck was designed. Behind the bar was a huge painting of the Mahoney race boat, a long decked mahogany boat with six huge exhausts at an angle and spitting fire toward the sky, the driver and mechanic bent forward intent and small in the stern. Mahoney was the patron saint of the races, the lone entrepreneur who had come to River Sunday and died in a crash that served to dedicate the annual race classic.

  The room was noisy and clouded with cigarette and cigar smoke. In the distance Harry saw a young stripper dancing on a special platform at one end of the bar, her white skin lit in patches by beams from the ceiling lights which whitened and darkened in time to the music. He nodded to the bouncer, a muscular black man with an open front shirt and big smile who waved back in recognition. The man had stopped him one night to inform Harry that he had tried out for the Patriot football team in Boston and afterward they, as a fan club of two, talked from time to time about the Patriot’s chances next fall.

  Harry walked to a closed door on his right, opened it and entered a smaller room with a round stained wooden table in the center surrounded by several men playing poker. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the bar noise. Charleston Grow smiled up at him and then returned to shuffling a deck of worn red and white playing cards. Each man had a pile of dollar bills and coins on the table and long neck bottles of inexpensive Maryland beer in front of him.

  “I heard about some excitement up to the Wilderness today,” he said to Harry, without stopping his shuffling, his lawyer’s voice matter of fact. A little more exciting that the annual trash fire.” He was referring to the traditional fire set by pranksters every year before the regatta, a smoky barrel of paper and oil that made the town police roar up and down the streets looking for the pranksters who set it. This had been going on for the last decade and no one had ever been caught.

  “Sheriff Good hauled out a sunken boat,” said Harry quickly and sat down at one of the empty chairs.

  “Cheeks made a big deal out of it. I heard he woke up Barney with his barge and some state cops too,” said Charleston.

  “Harry isn’t going to tell you nothing. He’s saving it so you’ll buy the paper,” said Senator, dressed in a worn summer suit, his face half-smiling, unworried and non-committed.

  Harry heard the comment and thought quickly how prevalent that kind of thinking was about the press. Something to get money. He felt tired. He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

  “You know all about it too,” replied Charleston, preempting an argument with Senator, as if he wanted to exercise his courtroom banter the way a weightlifter adds a few pounds to his bar.

  Senator didn’t answer.

  Harry sat down. “I was looking at Lloyd’s notes on Walker John.”

  Senator laughed, “I bet he was bleeding all over. Lloyd was a closet liberal. I always thought he and Lyndon Johnson had something going.”

  Senator wore his yellow and red tie loosely about his open white shirt and no jacket. Like his father before him, Senator had been in politics all his life and now was one of the County Commissioners, having won the last election by his usual plurality. Senator had, however, with all his elective offices, never been elected to any office outside the county and the town of River Sunday. He admitted his father had actually been elected to the Maryland House of Representatives for two terms, but stated that his father had warned him that the trip across the Bay to Annapolis for the Legislature was not worth the bother. In his father’s view, a view often quoted by Senator, nothing could be changed among that goose gaggle of politicians across the Bay that had not better be accomplished here in River Sunday by careful planning and good defensive tactics. So, in lieu of the time and money required to gain a seat in higher office, Senator had spent his life satisfied with the posts he could get locally and in maximizing the return from those posts. He was an honest man as local politicians go, but he knew how to make a deal and how to survive. Charleston described him as the kind of man who could get his hands dirty, wash them off and figure out how to convince everyone they had never been dirty. Even though the two with their different personalities were destined to argue about most things, Charleston with his plain speaking and Senator with his evasive political nature, Charleston didn’t turn down his fair share of legal referrals from Senator. Yet, Charleston had felt it necessary to warn Harry, in a casual way, to watch his back around the man. Harry thought at the time that Charleston might have given the same warning about everyone in town, even himself.

  “Cheeks will have to come to me about anything he finds about Walker,” said Charleston.

  Harry’s eyes raised in question and Charleston said, “Walker’s mother. She hired me a long time ago. Paid me in advance to be around whenever the police start asking about her son. The daughter kept me on now that the mother’s dead.”

  “What are you worried about? You’ve made enough money,” grinned Senator.

  “Senator, as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know everything about that dead fugitive. Besides, daughter’s a waitress over at the Chesapeake, “Charleston said. “She doesn’t have any money, that’s what he’s saying. Senator, I took the case because of the principle of the thing. Man needed a lawyer, that’s all.”

  “I’d like to know what about Walker John Douglas I don’t know. What are you referring to?” asked Senator, staring at Charleston. “Far as I know, when he killed those women, he’d about done all he could to hurt this town.”

  “Maybe one of these days I’ll educate you about what’s really at stake,” Charleston said.

  Harry looked up and started to ask Charleston what he was talking about, but Senator tapped the table nervously. “We’re here to play cards,” he said.

  The moment was gone. Charleston was close- mouthed again, looking at his cards, apparently no longer interested in talking about Douglas. Besides, Marty Sol had come in.
He was a black man, close to sixty and looking the part of a retired policeman spending most of his time fishing. He was hired by the sheriff because his backers were persuaded by some of the more prominent black businessmen in town that he should have a black on his team. Marty, for his part, not being from the local community, kept himself separate from Mulberry, and many times had told Harry that he didn’t know any of the locals and they didn’t spend much time with him either.

  He was as much an outsider as Harry, both of them having been in town less than two years, but he, like Harry, had quickly established a reputation as a good and readily available poker hand. Whether that had prompted him to help Harry out with courthouse news, Harry did not know, but he was glad for the man’s interest in him and the paper. The Windsor chair squeaked as Marty pressed himself in between the thin arm spokes.

  Marty said, “You boys going to play poker?”

  Harry nodded and looked at his cards. He found peace in playing poker. A game was always going on somewhere and he had managed to find his share all over the world. Not just with the other reporters too. Most of them were broke and didn’t have table stakes or played poorly.

  He remembered the big Irish policeman who had taught him, sitting together at the New York city station where Harry was posted by his editor on his first assignment, covering crime. One night he asked the man why he was helping Harry learn poker. He grinned at Harry and said, in his brogue, “Harry, my boy, you’re the first reporter they sent down here who looks like he could fight his way out of a room full of bad guys. Why, I’m just getting me points in case you got to help me out of a fight.” The opportunity to prove the cop right never came while he was working in New York, but he had made a good friend, had found a trustworthy source of inside stories, and got a good teacher of poker. During the long night hours he and the cop would play cards with the other men on duty. He learned about counting cards, about playing simple chance games like five card and staying away from sucker games. He watched the big Irishman smile his way through bluffs and learned to smile too rather than try to keep a straight and suspicious face. He learned to make money and fed himself during those early lean years when his news reporter salaries were low.

  “Harry just found out about the great River Sunday crime, the Walker John Douglas case,” said Charleston, with a smile.

  “You going to give me some decent cards?” Marty asked. Charleston looked down, concentrating on his shuffling.

  “Reverend Blue sure lit up his cross tonight,” Marty observed with a sigh.

  “He looked angry out there on the street,” said Harry.

  “Marshalling his people, that’s the word. He treats them like his church goers were his private army,” said Senator, arranging his hand.

  The door opened again and the bank manager came in. The heavy country music flooded in and hit Harry’s ears hard.

  “Where’s your coat and tie?” Marty kidded him. The manager, balding, glasses over his nose, very white skin, stopped, pushed his glasses back and looked down at his neat tie and coat. In a few seconds he realized the joke. He lived in River Sunday during the week, commuting from Baltimore to be manager of the bank, the brick building halfway down the main street. Marty Sol cracked at the poker table one night that the manager probably wore a suit to bed with his wife.

  Lulu, the owner and manager, came in with drinks. Lulu was in tight slacks, her bleach blonde hair carefully brushed back, the kind of woman who pushed away men every day. She was about thirty five and very attractive. She and her husband had owned the bar and when the man was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago, she took over. Lulu stood behind Harry and said, “I brought the drinks myself. Figured you guys couldn’t wait.”

  “How’s your day been?” Lulu murmured to Harry as she leaned over and picked the drinks off the tray. Her breasts pushed against the buttons of her blouse.

  Marty tapped Harry‘s arm and nodded toward the banker. The banker’s eyes were moving up and down with the naked dancer on the bar. He watched like a randy tomcat observing a wild bird too far away for it to eat.

  The banker suddenly realized the others were watching him. “Hi, Lulu,” he said as he quickly turned to the menu in front of him.

  “I’ll tell Francine you like her,” said Lulu, winking at the banker as she left the room.

  “Leave the door open. Keep him enthralled and maybe I can get some of his money,” said Senator. Lulu smiled over her shoulder.

  The bank manager shook his head. “Hell of a business plan. Lulu has the girl working at the lunch hour for the business crowd. On Thursday she has several girls dancing, on Tuesday it’s several men. When my wife comes over from Baltimore, she goes with her girlfriends to watch the male dancers.”

  “You’re telling us that all you think about when you come here is Lulu’s business plan?” asked Charlie.

  The manager replied, “A good business plan is a good business plan. Lulu’s smart. Take couples night, for example. That took brains.”

  “She has a male stripper at one end of the bar and a girl stripper at the other end,” said Marty Sol.

  “Which do you like best, the boy or the girl?” Charleston asked Marty, with a straight face.

  Harry added. “Me, I like Reverend Blue’s bingo parties.”

  “Shit, Harry,” said Senator. “I know you better than that. You haven’t been anywhere near those bingo sessions. You wouldn’t be caught dead around the holy people.”

  Harry nodded, a big smile on his face. “Just kidding,” he said. They were referring to the Reverend’s use of Lulu’s bar on Sunday nights for bingo, a practice he used to raise money from highway traffic as well as his own parish.

  “Lulu covers up the whiskey, gives the strippers a day off and Blue stands right up there calling his numbers where Francine is now,” said the banker. “Lulu told me she wants to get some slots in here too, if the legislature will just change the rules. She said she might just get a gambling boat out in the Chesapeake if they don’t hurry up.”

  “Sure seems like money to be made,” said Harry, still smiling.

  Lulu came back and said, “Anything else I can do for you boys?” She stood behind Harry, her hands on the wide back of his chair.

  Outside, at the bar, a man reached up and gave Francine a ten dollar bill. She bent low over him, her large bare breasts surging toward his face, and as he watched, she slowly folded the bill and even more slowly stroked it across her brightly painted toenails before pushing it under the tiny strap of her high heeled sandal. Harry and everyone else in the bar had stopped what they were doing, drinks halfway to their mouths, and watched her do this.

  “She hasn’t got much place to put that money,” said the banker as the dancer straightened up and resumed her undulations.

  “So you’re going to go out there and tell her how to open an account at your bank,” chuckled Senator.

  Catch and Sheriff Good came into the bar, Catch drunk and abruptly pushing some of the dancing couples out of the way as he and the sheriff walked through the crowd. They reached a table just outside the poker room and noisily pulled out chairs.

  As he sat down, Catch looked in the open door of the poker room. He noticed Harry and said, “Well, look here. It’s the reporter still sneaking around.”

  Harry played his cards, ignoring him.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” said Catch.

  The sheriff sat back in his chair, a smile on his face, watching the stripper.

  When Harry didn’t answer Catch looked around and called to the dancer, “Hey, honey, you come over here and do us a table dance.” He waved a twenty dollar bill.

  Lulu approached Catch’s table. Catch did not see her come up behind him as he was waving the twenty. She grabbed the money, and Catch, taken by surprise, almost lost his balance as he tried to hold on to the bill.

  “Watch this girl, Kirby,” said the sheriff, nodding at Francine.

  Catch stood up and brushed off his shirt
where some beer had spilled. His face was flushed. The sheriff stopped laughing and grabbed Catch’s arm. “That’s all, Catch. Sit down.”

  Catch looked at Lulu. Harry watched as her silent face made it plain to Catch that he was too drunk to have Francine dance at his table. As she folded the twenty and put it into her pocket, it was obvious that the mechanic wasn’t getting his money back either.

  Charleston whispered to Harry, “He’ll shut up now. His mother will get after him for starting trouble out here.”

  “Why?” asked Harry.

  “She’s been trying to buy this place for a long time. Lulu won’t sell,” he replied.

  Catch turned to Harry again. “Look, reporter,” he called out, “You forget writing about Walker John. Killer like that don’t deserve nothing.” His voice stumbled.

  “I heard that Walker John said he had a faster boat than your father,” goaded Charleston, his voice raised enough to be heard by Catch, his eyes on arranging the cards in his hand.

  “They never had a chance to race, did they?” smiled Lulu.

  Catch said, slurring his words, “That murderer was scared to meet my father out on the water.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Lulu.

  Catch hunched over his beer and mumbled, “He set the fire so he could stop the race, is all.”

  “Harry,” said the bank manager, leaning over the table and speaking to him in a low voice, “Way I see it, except for those women dying in the fire, the people around here should be grateful to Walker John.”

  “Why’s that?” asked Harry, smiling at the banker.

  “With all those old buildings burned down, Terment might have taken a loss but the fire insurance was still enough to pay for a whole new town,” the banker said, his face self-assured as though he had finished totaling a bank account.