by Robert Lane
Angelo went out the back door with the envelope, and she appraised herself in front of the living room mirror. She noticed wrinkles around her mouth and wasn’t sure if some of them weren’t new in just the past few days. Really, she thought. That fast? She took consolation in what she did have some control over wasn’t half bad. Not a new pound in forty years, still a slim waist, bright eyes, and erect shoulders. Flat-out impressive. I don’t know about the new style, she thought, recalling the cover of Vogue. Not right for me. She adjusted the collar of her shirt and pretended it had not been crooked while Ted was there. Then her shoulders gave an involuntary slump at the same time her chest let out her breath. What can it all possibly matter, she thought. As if anyone will ever remember, will ever know.
The question from the song, though, really boils it down. There will never be any doubts. Not even when the sand renders it all boundless and bare. I will love you until I have no more tomorrows.
That evening, as she often did, she took a swim just as darkness came, and the glow from the pink hotel softened the bottom of the night. The water was the one place where time’s lost days were returned. She imagined Jim, her lifeline, being the water itself and wrapping himself around her.
She wondered if Ted had held back at the end. Was the letter about Jim? So silly to think so. He had died in a CIA plane crash. The driver told her that the shroud that covered his mission forbade any detailed information, but it seemed such an empty ending to such a full life. What had Ted said? He always chose his words so carefully. Such a meticulous man.
Matters not to me, only to you.
Only to you.
Only to me.
CHAPTER 2
Present Day
Kathleen’s arm was draped over my chest and her head rested against my shoulder. For a half hour, I had been awake and holding that position. I gently unraveled myself and left her in the previous night, tangled in white sheets with her blonde hair tossed on the pillow. I needed to run. I laced my shoes tight and set out to pound the packed sand beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.
I locked the door behind me. Not everyone in the world is as fond of me as I am.
I ran thinking of the two weeks in the Keys that we had just returned from, living aboard Moon Child, my neighbor Morgan’s forty-two-foot Beneteau. I ran until the Florida heat jolted me from my trance, my body’s temperature rising, my muscles breaking free, my lungs screaming at me. My world back in order. Running is one of two things I know in which I can so effortlessly push myself to dangerous extremes. The other is drinking. I need both to live. One nearly killed me.
I sprinted the last hundred yards to my house and doubled over, hands on my hips, and wondered what the hell was chasing me. I thought of rinsing myself under the outdoor shower, but decided to hit the back screened porch and see if she had crossed over to the new day.
She sat in a brown-cushioned chair and wore tan shorts, no shoes, and a white silk T-shirt with a deep V neck. Her thick hair rested on slender shoulders. The steam from her cup of coffee wasn’t that much different from the muggy air into which it dissipated. Bryan Lee came through my floor speakers telling me it hurt him too. It put me in the mood for Taittinger Champagne in the morning, which is one of my favorite things. I make damn certain I rarely indulge.
“I’ve got to remember to keep shoes and shorts here so I can run in the morning,” she said when I lowered the blind to block the sun that assaulted our bodies like white bread in a toaster. “I had way too many rum runners and buttered lobster the last couple of weeks, and it’s time to start burning it off.”
I sat next to her and propped my feet on the glass table where her pale pink toes rested against my calves. A twin engine Edgewater with a hardtop and double antennas rocketed across the bay at the end of my dock and out toward the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“I thought we decided that we could never have too much moonshine,” I said while I scanned the bay’s surface searching for dolphins. I took a deep drink from my bottled water. I had consumed a whole bottle prior to the five miles.
“You weren’t paying attention. We did muse whether we could live without it or not.”
“Apparently I misunderstood that whole conversation.”
“I think you’re selective on what you understand.”
“I struggle with musing.”
That earned a slight smile. “I see. By the way, Garrett called.”
“Key West to Cleveland a little more than he could handle?” I glanced at her. Her bright gaze awaited me. And I had been dolphin hunting. Incredible.
“I think he can handle all he wants. He said to give him a ring.”
“Would you like breakfast?” I asked.
“No.”
“A hug?”
She glanced at me. “You’re a sweaty mess. Not even suitable to be around people after you run.”
“Then I’ll start running twice a day.”
“Take me home, James.”
“It’s Jake, and we’ve been over that a dozen times.”
“Really,” she drew the word out until it became stuck in the thick air. “I don’t know why I keep missing that.”
Despite her breakfast denial, I scrambled eggs with diced onion and tomato. A few minutes later I placed the eggs, toast, and grapefruit in front of her on the glass table on the porch. I ate all the eggs and toast. Half the grapefruit. We got into my truck and crossed three bridges—I live on an island off another island—and arrived at her house on the island across the bay. When you live on an island, you cross a lot of bridges.
While I atrophied in traffic on my return trip—they were building a higher bridge that would irritate the hell out of me for at least two years—I dialed Garrett’s office phone instead of his cell. I wanted to see if I could get Mary Evelyn, his middle-aged, devout Irish Catholic secretary, to address me by my first name. It was our special time together. Talking with her is as close as I ever get to a church.
“Good morning, Mr. Travis,” she answered. Bright and cheerful. Always. Some people are like that. Maybe I should consider being a nonspecific-aged Midwest female Irish Catholic secretary. Maybe the whole world should. Wonder how that would fly in Sandland?
“I know you can do it. I feel it within you.”
“I understand you all had a very enjoyable time in the Keys, Mr. Travis.”
“What if it was my last wish, like one of those wish foundations, would you then, could you?”
“Mr. Travis—”
“Jake on three. Ready? One, two—”
“It’s such a relief when you call. I do tire of talking to adults all day.”
“And I look forward to the voice of an angel.” But she was gone, and I don’t know how much of that she got. Three seconds later Garrett’s voice filled the air in my truck.
“Colonel called, he wants you to go to church,” Garrett said. Not bright and cheerful. Not Irish. I already missed Mary Evelyn.
Garrett and I had left Special Forces after five years, and Colonel Janssen had retained us to perform contract work. Key West was nice, but on one level, it was boring as hell. Garrett’s cover job was being an attorney in Cleveland. The one on Erie’s shore. I don’t know how he did it. Janssen certainly hadn’t dialed Garrett’s cell. He either utilized a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility) or a multifunctional phone where both ends followed procedures to ensure a secure connection.
“You tell him I’m busy?”
“He knew we were sailing.”
“Perhaps he needs a reminder that I have his address.”
While Janssen tried to recruit me after I left the army, I’d come home one day and his ass was planted at the end of my dock. Sipping my last Heineken. I didn’t mind him helping himself to the bottle, but I did mind his unannounced presence. To reciprocate, I had Mary Evelyn track down his unlisted home address. I sent him a Christmas card of an olive-tone Jesus, Asian angels, white sheep, and black wise men all on recycled paper with a por
tion of its cost going to charity. It declared that the prince of peace had arrived.
I thought that was important information considering the line of work he was in.
“He was just showing off,” Garrett said.
“What’d he really want?”
“Wants you to go to church.”
That caught me.
Garrett said, “There’s a museum in your neighborhood that used to be an old church.”
“I know it. A bike ride from my house.”
“Someone recently hacked the outer walls and dislodged some stones.”
“Tell him to call a mason, they’re free.”
“He wants us to retrieve a letter that they believe, but aren’t positive, was held in those stone walls.”
“It’s in my neighborhood and he’s going through you?”
“I think the event pushed him to the limit. Probably be best if you two don’t communicate for a while.”
The colonel had granted me a personal favor a few months back. Kathleen’s wealthy womanizing husband had ties to the Outfit in Chicago. The Cook County DA was prepping him to sing, and the Outfit caught wind and buried him. They decided that she might know too much and thereby constitute a threat.
They dispatched four guns with the intent to kidnap and kill her. They went one for two, which is not bad at Fenway, but fatal that night. We located her, and Garrett and I dropped four hit men on a not too distant beach. We were lucky; a bullet passed clean through Kathleen’s left shoulder. It left a scar, a reminder that some things never heal. Janssen orchestrated the cover-up. A Jane Doe was dropped on the beach, given Kathleen’s identity, and Lauren Cunningham became Kathleen Rowe in hopes that the Outfit would cease their relentless pursuit. Her parents were early cancer victims—not the big door prize they hoped for—and only a few friends and her investment-banking brother in New York knew the truth. Janssen didn’t tolerate loose ends and even sanctioned a headstone for Lauren Cunningham.
I never told her about the marble. But I knew how it all ended, what that last chapter looked like. It was a cold stone above Lake Michigan where even the wind ran from winter.
“Tell him I swung by, asked around, and nobody saw the perp,” I said. “What else do we need to discuss or muse upon? I understand I need to work on musing.”
“That’s doesn’t even break the top hundred. Mary Evelyn’s sending you a file. The letter was never supposed to be there, although someone certainly knew of it. Janssen says it’s imperative that we recover it.”
“Always is.”
“He sounded even more.”
“Someone could make copies,” I said.
“They couldn’t be authenticated. The real deal is damaging,” Garrett said. “Raydel Escobar, a carpet guy that runs skin joints and lives on the island across from you, contacted the government. He’s suggesting a quid pro quo arrangement while maintaining that he came across the letter purely by luck.”
“What would he like in return?”
“Forgiveness.”
“His transgression?”
“A sizeable bill with the IRS.”
“We both know there are more pleasurable sins than screwing the IRS,” I said. “Let’s broker a deal and be done with it.”
“We don’t negotiate.”
“We certainly encourage others to.”
“When instructed to return the letter, he claimed, despite his previous assertion, that he didn’t have it. Check the e-mail and let me know what you think.”
“That’s not on the agenda today,” I said.
“Or any day. If you need me—”
“I need you like I need a new—”
He hung up.
I didn’t feel like looking at an e-mail that particular moment. Besides, it took eternity to go through the encryption process. I parked my truck in the driveway, pumped my bike tires until they were hard with air, and headed down the street.
The old stone church was on a side street under large Australian pines with a prominent sign proclaiming it the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum. I wondered if you could have a museum that wasn’t historical. Natural history, perhaps. The side yard was a carpet of coarse hard sand and pine needles. Small tables with metal chairs looked out toward the tropical green park across the street. A white picket fence with small gray dolphins on it outlined the front and side yards and an old man was picking up twigs. I got off my bike and realized that I could see both the Gulf and the bay. It was a hell of a spot.
I couldn’t imagine what I was doing there.
CHAPTER 3
“We think it happened three nights ago,” said the man who served as the museum’s volunteer docent for the day. “I opened up at noon; we’re closed Monday through Wednesday. Elissa came and told me.”
“Who’s Elissa?” I asked.
I had asked him one question and received four answers. He wore wire glasses, a green vest over a short-sleeved white shirt, flowered shorts, and sandals. He was pushing eighty. It was as if his top half was still up north and his bottom half had migrated to Florida.
I took that all in before I realized he was missing his right arm.
“She’s an older lady who lives behind the museum. Said when she got up a few mornings ago she noticed the stones were scattered all around. She never heard a thing, though, but she doesn’t hear much of anything anymore. Says she doesn’t mind—not too interested in all the noise.”
“Missing anything?” Besides your arm?
“Well, I suppose. But that’s her intent, isn’t it?”
“I mean in the museum.”
“Oh. No, not that I know.”
“Any damage done inside?”
“What’s your interest again?” It came out pretty gutsy for a one-armed old docent.
We were the only people in the museum. There was a large black-and-white photograph on the wall to my right of the pink hotel when it was an army hospital during the war. About a quarter of Florida’s hotels had been confiscated by the government during World War Two to serve as administrative and convalescent centers. There were pictures of men in long pants holding lines of fish and pictures of old buildings that might not have been so old at the time. I recognized some of the buildings as still being upright, but others were long gone. That’s a better deal than the men received.
The middle of the room held glass cases that housed a hodgepodge of mementos. By virtue of being placed under glass, however, they gained a new life and historical standing. The old church had a high ceiling above a stained-glass window—damn thing looked like a map of Ohio with a pirate’s X in the middle—and off to my left, an alcove with a clear window revealed an untrimmed hibiscus bush on the other side. I stood next to a display rack that held pamphlets on area attractions as well as several self-published books about the history of the small community in which I lived. I picked up a card that listed various levels of donations to keep the museum operable. The top level was $25. They don’t aim high. There was also a line thanking the “anonymous donors who make a difference.” A sign advertised an annual fund-raiser to be held at the museum next week.
“I’ve been meaning to come here for some time. I heard someone vandalized it. Can’t imagine why. What do you think they got?” I asked.
“Why do you keep insisting something’s gone? Just some old stones knocked off the exterior. Don’t know why anyone would even bother. Probably just some kids.”
A couple with all their limbs came in and he greeted them. They said they were down from Maryville, Tennessee, south of Knoxville. They commenced a peripheral self-guided tour.
“How long’s it been a museum?” I asked. I had faded over to the alcove to allow him some room when the Volunteers arrived.
“Little over twenty years.” He adjusted the guest book. I wondered if he was a natural southpaw or he had lost his good arm. He joined me in the alcove.
“Did the church relocate then?” I asked.
“Heavens no. The church was long gone. T
his was Dorothy Harrison’s house.” He proclaimed it as if it was the most apparent fact in the world and my lack of knowledge was inexcusable.
“Of course. Begging your pardon, but who is Miss Harrison?”
“Was.” He blew out his breath. It’s not easy dealing with the ignorant public. “She died in ’89 when she was ninety-two, just like the song.”
“The song?”
“You know, ‘The Christmas Song,’ kids from one to ninety-two; no reason to live past ninety-two if you can’t celebrate Christmas. Supposedly she always said she wanted to go at ninety-two.”
“A goal to die?”
“Well, you could say her goal was to live to ninety-two.”
“I like that better.”
“She bequeathed her home to the town, and it became a museum a year after her death. You’re standing in what was her bedroom. Take a look around, son, and meet her.” He pointed with his one hand toward the display case. Then he said, “But she’s been watching you the whole time.” He moved away from me.
He said with his back to me, “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ Not ‘Miss.’”
I glanced up, and centered high on the opposite wall from the front door and cluttered on both sides with black-and-white photographs, hung a color portrait of a lady. She gazed straight ahead, south, and wore a soft red dress. Her blonde hair was pulled back behind her neck. Her warm smile and confident eyes seemed unaffected by the exposure of light and age that washed the painting. I wondered what shade of red the dress originally was, but I couldn’t imagine her eyes or smile ever looked any different than they did in her portrait.
I peered into the display’s case glass, tried to recall the last time I’d heard someone say “bequeath,” and sank in time as the items in the case pulled me in. There was a picture of Dorothy as a young woman. Another black-and-white photograph showed President Harding’s swearing-in ceremony, with the same striking lady three people to his right and beaming at the president. Another picture was of her and a stud, her husband, the cutline indicated. An article about Jim Harrison indicated that he was in charge of Secret Service presidential protection. I knew the service had started in 1865 to combat counterfeiting and at the designation of Congress after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, it was charged with full-time protection of presidents. McKinley was the third president to be assassinated in a thirty-six-year period.