Most of the guys in the group were dressed like hip-hop singers—white and Latin guys with unlaced high-top athletic shoes and droopy, baggy denim shorts that reached to just above their ankles. They favored wife-beaters and gold chains and wore their Yankees caps like Rootie Kazootie, with the visors off to the side. When the women weren’t sitting on their hands or biting their nails, they were clasping their knees like they were about to stand and bolt for the door.
As a group, the addicts seemed chastened but smug and were all adept at saying what they knew the counselors wanted them to say. Or maybe I’m just being cynical, Bay said. There were thirty or so addicts at the meeting, many there with a parent, a sibling, or a spouse. The addicts knew how badly their families wanted them to heal themselves and knew how easily such hunger could be sated. Someone would say, “Now that I’m an adult, I’ve put away my childish things,” and humbled heads would nod. Someone else would lean forward and stare at his folded hands and say, “The difference this time is that I know I have to surrender my life to a higher power.” Blame was always on the table. Parents and spouses were asked if they understood how their own behaviors were enabling little Joey’s addiction, as if they were somehow responsible for their addict’s self-destruction, self-absorption, and baffling unconcern for others.
When one of the dads asked for clarification on that point, he was told that his letting his daughter stay at home rather than on the street had made it easier for her to be a junkie. The dad said, “So I should let her fend for herself?” The impassioned counselor, an ex-addict himself, said yes, he should. The dad stood up and said, “Fine, give me back my twelve grand, motherfucker,” and then he turned to his daughter and told her to get her ass out on the street.
Bay said, “What’s scary is how readily they’ve surrendered their free will and how pleased they are to hear that relapse is a part of recovery.”
Just then the Statue of Liberty walked into the bar, shook the ash from his drape and gown, brushed a mantle of white ash from his shoulders, and stomped his feet.
Bay said, “And then at the end of the session we all pray for serenity, but only the addicts know where to find it.”
The Statue of Liberty put his plastic torch on the bar and ordered a Jack and Coke. Helen said, Jack and Pepsi okay? I recognized him as the Statue who stands out on Main waving to passing motorists, trying to drum up business for the income tax preparation service in the strip mall behind him. I heard Helen ask him if he’d had a rough day, and I thought any day you have to dress up as an inanimate object has to be rough. I heard him say that it might only be a costume, but it stood for something nonetheless. The Statue took off his foam headpiece and set it next to the torch. He told Helen that he was being paid under the counter.
She said, “Under the table, you mean.”
“Say again.”
“Money under the table; drugs over the counter.”
“Bottom dollar: I don’t have to declare it.”
Bay said, “Are you listening to a word I say?”
“Sorry, eavesdropping.”
“I said maybe your dad is beyond your ability to help.”
“He’s not.”
“Maybe you’re doing more harm than god … good.”
“Why are you saying that?”
“I thought you might want to hear it.”
Bay told me he’d won a couple of hundred at the poker table the previous night, but should have won a lot more. The casino was packed with tourists and the picking was easy. One guy, Bay said, wore a neck pillow the whole night, so he could nap when he mucked his hand, Bay guessed.
Bay said that the big winner was an attractive, middle-aged LPN named Claire, who favored turquoise and silver jewelry and drank great quantities of Mountain Dew. While they played, Claire told the table about the last job she’d found on Craigslist. She was hired to diaper a man who had multiple sclerosis. She was paid six hundred bucks a week, cash, to go to his house at nine A.M. and seven P.M. to clean, powder, and swaddle-in-cotton Mr. Buzzy Meltzer’s bum. So imagine her surprise when she found out at an LPN website that the healthy Mr. Meltzer was a chronic abuser of nursing services who had been busted wearing Dr. Dentons and sucking on a pacifier at an S&M hospitality room at the Ambassador Hotel. Claire told the cardplayers what she did next. She showed up for her usual seven P.M. visit, removed the soiled diapers, and slammed Buzzy’s own cell phone up his filthy ass and then dialed his number and left a message.
“Did you believe her story?”
“I enjoyed it.”
I smelled patchouli and found myself carried away—back to the Halliday house on the night of the killings, in the boys’ room where I had first caught the scent. I could find no incense cones or sticks, no bowl or holder, no evident source of the fragrance. I smelled it again when I was speaking with Carlos in the living room.
I looked up and saw the newcomer wearing patchouli walk toward the bar. He wore a very white T-shirt, pressed jeans, and black loafers. His gelled brown hair was receding, stylishly short, and flipped into a Kewpie-doll curl up front. He had a gold loop in the ear I could see and stored his cell phone in a holster on his belt. He sat at the bar, took a plug of chewing gum out of his mouth, wrapped it in a cocktail napkin, and dropped it in an ashtray. He ordered what looked to be whiskey and soda. I thought about the other smells in the Halliday house—the pine resin from the Christmas tree, the redolence of baked cookies from the kitchen, the lavender in the bathroom coming from a plug-in air freshener. Brianna’s room smelled bleachy and clean, like freshly laundered linen. Only the patchouli seemed imported.
I said, “I thought Carlos had no reason to lie to me about the absence of photographs in the house. So I didn’t bother looking very hard.”
“Why would he have wanted you there if you wouldn’t have access to everything?”
“I should have been more diligent.”
Bay held up a finger. “Don’t look now, but our friend at the bar is watching us in the mirror. Excuse me a moment.” Bay walked to the bar and stood between the Statue of Liberty and Kewpie. He ordered our drinks and said something to Helen about the arrest this morning of the undocumented Honduran farmworkers picked up in the Redlands. Kewpie turned his head like he might have something to add but then went back to staring at his straw. The Statue of Liberty said without a shred of irony that the illegals should all be sent back to where they come from. Bay paid Helen for the drinks.
Bay sat down; the Statue of Liberty sneezed three times; Kewpie walked to the men’s room. Bay said, “Hold the fort,” and got up and headed for the men’s room. He bumped into the returning Kewpie on his way, apologized, squeezed past him, and went on down the hall.
My phone vibrated and I saw Bay’s name. He told me to keep talking into the phone after he hung up and to make like I was losing the call and get up and sidle my way toward the door. He’d meet me outside in two minutes.
He hung up. I pretended I was speaking to my new psychiatrist, Dr. Conrad Wondolowski, who didn’t exist. “What is it I’d like to work on? Well, let’s start with my self-esteem, shall we? In short supply. Guilt; depression; commitment, or lack thereof; shame; regret; paranoia; aimlessness; meaninglessness; dullness; delusions; claustrophobia; fear of dying too soon; fear of living too long. You’re breaking up, Doctor. Hold on.” I walked to the center of the bar. “That’s better. Where were we? Did I mention guilt? Anger. Anxiety. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of intimacy, fear of nonchalance.” I looked over at Kewpie, who was now being regaled by the Statue of Liberty. “I’ve only got the one bar right now.” I stepped to the door. “There we go. Can you hear me? Okay. My life is in turmoil. We could start there. That should keep us busy.” I stepped out of the bar. “No, that’s Friday the thirteenth, and I don’t plan to go out of the house. Can we meet on Thursday?” I saw that Dusty had made it as far as the mailbox. He was staring up into the night sky.
A cab pulled up in front, the back window opened, a
nd Bay waved me over. “Let’s go!”
I got in and off we went. I said, “Why are we in a cab when my car’s at the bar?”
“Our nosy friend back there is a cop.”
“Are you sure?”
“I had the opportunity to examine his wallet.”
“You stole a cop’s wallet.”
“I borrowed it.”
Our driver turned on the wipers and cleaned the ash from the windshield.
Bay said, “Detective Ernest Kind.”
I said, “I bet he’s neither.”
“EPD. He’s thirty-four, five-eight, one-forty, hazel eyes. He is not an organ donor. He shops at Winn-Dixie, flies Delta, has just one more hot dog to buy at Wiener Takes All before he gets a free one. He left home today with eighty dollars in cash and a Kimono micro-thin large condom. He may be in the market for a house in Palmetto according to the address scribbled on the back of an L. D. Nash Realty business card. Everything I Touch Turns to Sold!”
“Why would he be spying on us?”
“I suspect he was told to catch you at something illegal, like drinking and driving. Followed you from your office. As soon as you got behind the wheel, he’d phone it in, finish his unpalatable drink, and then cruise by Bartram and Main where Officer Barleycorn would be giving you a sobriety test, which you fail, and you spend the night in jail and the next several weeks in court. And you lose your license, et cetera.”
Bay checked his watch and said, “Right about now Detective Kind is wondering where you are—he knows where I am—and so he peeks outside, sees you’ve vanished, and wonders if he’s been hoodwinked, and runs back in to settle with Helen, which is when he realizes his wallet is gone, so he backtracks to the head and finds the wallet but not me. He opens the wallet and counts the money. It’s all there but he already knows he’s reporting it stolen in the morning at the station. He runs out of the bar. Dusty will tell him, sure, he’s seen two guys matching that description running like mad, and he’ll say, They went that-a-way! And he’ll point toward the IHOP, the way I paid him to, and Detective Kind will drive a few blocks west until he stops and calls his overseer and reports his failure.
A metal tree frog, about six inches long and bright yellow, adorned with painted hibiscus flowers, was attached to the back of the driver’s seat and seemed to be climbing to the cabbie’s permit. Our driver was Cajuste Marcelin, and he was speaking with a friend on his Bluetooth. “De kriminèl isit la nan taksi mwen!”
I reassured Cajuste that we were not criminals. We went to Bay’s house. We ordered jerked pork and oxtail from Irie Isle, ate at the dining room table while Charlie Haden played on the sound system. Bay wondered what had caused this latest escalation of harassment, if that’s what it was. What had I done to piss off whoever-it-was? Could I think of anything? I couldn’t. And where the hell was Kevin Shanks? Bay noticed that his Howard Finster angel was gone from its spot on the bookcase. Marlena must have taken it. It was unlikely a pawnshop would be interested in outsider art, but a collector or a gallery might be. Goddammit! Bay wondered if this meant she had left rehab and let herself in or if she’d taken it weeks ago, and he just hadn’t noticed. I told him to take an inventory.
We talked about the late Mickey Pfeiffer, of course. The story was all over the news. What those last few minutes of his life must have been like. Christ! The Feds had taken over the investigation of the Ponzi scheme and the murder/kidnap. I didn’t want to think that the people after me were the people after Mickey. Bay said he thought Mickey was a simple man despite his audacious opulence. He wanted what we all want: respect, attention, affection, security, and control. He figured the surest way to get all that was to buy it. And the surest way to get the money to buy it was to steal it. And all that wealth brought out the child in Mickey, and the child liked cars and watches and ladies and friends in high places and boats and gaudy clothes.
While I cleaned up, Bay went to his utility closet and got out two flashlights and a box of latex gloves. I said, We’re not playing doctor, are we?
“We’re going to the Hallidays’.”
We parked a block away from the house, slipped our flashlights into our pockets, and snapped on our latex gloves. By then it was just past eleven. The Halliday house was already on the market. This would be a tough sell. You’d need to bury a few statues of Saint Joseph in this front lawn. An L. D. Nash Realty sign was affixed to a vinyl yard post out front, as were three deflated open-house balloons. There was a photo of L. D. himself on the sign looking confident and honorable. We turned the corner and walked around back and saw that someone had staked a makeshift cross into the lawn and left a bouquet of now-desiccated cut flowers. Something was different about the yard, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Something missing. When I saw the dying lantana, I remembered the Everglades Home Security sign. I told Bay about the sign and said it was curious that I’d seen no evidence of security systems on Christmas Eve. He said some people just put out those signs. Bay fiddled with the back door and opened it. I told him that breaking and entering would earn me more than a night in jail. He said, “Are you sure that sign was really there?” and, of course, I now was not.
Some previous intruder had spray-painted an Old Testament quote on the wall: Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds. The house had been meticulously scrubbed. There was not a pine needle left in the den, not a trace of the slaughter anywhere. The house smelled of Lysol and citrus floor wax. The drawers had all been emptied, the medicine cabinets removed from the walls and left on bathroom floors. Light fixtures and wall plates had been removed. The toilets had been unseated. The only carpet in the house, in the master bedroom, had been untacked, lifted, and hauled away. The stove was gone and so was the water heater in the garage. The intruder needed appliances?
I said, “How do you sneak a water heater out of a house?”
Bay said, “You don’t sneak. You act with impunity. If anyone sees you, you say you were installing a new water heater, and that’s what they’ll remember.”
I said, “We’re not going to learn anything new here.”
Bay dropped me at the Wayside, and I got in my car and headed home. I hoped Django’s bowl wasn’t empty. I decided to stop at Walgreens for surgical masks and Visine. I figured Red would need to move inside until the fires died out. I drove toward the glow in the western sky and then turned south on Main. The car behind me flashed its brights and then bumped me when I slowed. I thought the guy must be drunk, and I should just pull over and let him pass. And then he bumped me again, a little harder this time. So I stopped, got out of the car, raised my arms like, What the hell are you doing? As I walked toward the car, a dark green Ford, the driver kept backing away, keeping about twenty feet between us. When I stopped, he stopped; when I approached, he retreated. And then I got nervous about my car, back there in the middle of the road, running, door open and lights on, so I hurried back, hopped in, and drove on, the Ford once again on my ass. And that’s all I could remember that made any sense until I woke up the next morning in a semiprivate room at Memorial Hospital with an Eden cop and Venise at my bedside. Apparently I drove another two blocks on Main and was driving through the intersection at Oleander Road when a stolen white Escalade blew through the red light and T-boned my car dead-on. The driver got out of the car and ran, and no one stopped him. He got into a car in the IHOP parking lot and drove away. For some reason the cop at my bedside kept calling it an accident.
None of my bones was broken. I wasn’t hurt, thanks to the airbag, but everything felt loosened. Carlos came by with a book from Inez, said he couldn’t stay. The End of the Affair. I asked Carlos if he knew Officer Kind. He did, but Kind didn’t work undercover. He drove a bike on the Boardwalk—a cushy detail. I asked him if he thought someone was trying to kill me. He told me not to be so melodramatic. I asked him who bit my finger and broke my phone. That’s been handled, he said. Have they been arrested? I said. He said, I’ve got to go.
Venise assur
ed me that Red was taking care of Django and was sleeping in the Florida room. The papers were saying this was already the worst fire season in history. There was no chance of getting the fires under control. They’d have to consume themselves. Alligator Alley would remain closed until that time.
Bay picked me up in a gold Studebaker Lark Wagonaire that he’d won in a card game. It was mine as long as I needed it. It had a sliding roof above the rear cargo compartment. The Pope could stand in the back and wave while I drove to PetSmart.
I said, “The crash. What do you think?”
“I think you need to find out why it happened.”
18
It smelled like the house was on fire. I had all the windows closed and the ceiling fans on. Red stood at the stove scrambling eggs, wearing a surgical mask and dark glasses. Django was asleep in a potted bromeliad. I told him he was a bad boy. He yawned and rolled on his back. I turned on the radio news and learned that several homes out on 27 had been destroyed by flames. People in west Everglades County were reporting pythons in their yards and alligators on their streets. What we needed was a prolonged soaking rain in the Everglades, but the rainy season was still months away. A shift in the wind to the west would offer some relief, but that seemed unlikely anytime soon. In the meantime, we were to stay indoors if possible. Hospitals were full. The Red Cross was setting up emergency shelters; the fires were creeping closer to heavily populated areas. People with respiratory problems were urged to evacuate.
Red lifted his mask and said, “This is what happens when you divert most of the water from the Everglades so the wealthy can float their boats in Palm Beach.” He stirred the eggs and lifted the mask again. “This is what happens when you let engineers run the show.”
No Regrets, Coyote Page 18