by Ron Base
“No one is more surprised than me.”
“I suppose the world needs more people like you, Mr. Callister, people whose grasp occasionally exceeds their reach—and they get a nice write-up in the local paper.”
“So how are you holding up, Mrs. Traven?”
She turned her face toward the sea. “Trouble and more trouble; my husband’s fight to get out of prison; this last bit of nonsense; unhappy bankers; avaricious real estate agents. Lawyers added to lawyers; platoons of them. I can’t keep their names straight. I have no idea how we’re going to pay for them. But they don’t seem to worry so why should I?”
She gave him sidelong glance. “The little bit of good news, at least from my perspective, they’ve decided not to prosecute me.”
Jorge returned with a silver coffee service. They were silent while he went through the ritual of asking Tree what he wanted in his coffee, and then pouring milk, adding sugar for Elizabeth, leaving them both staring at china cups they did not touch.
“The only thing that keeps me from getting really, really pissed at you, Mrs. Traven, is knowing why you did all this.” He nodded in Hillary’s direction. “That whatever you did, you did for her.”
“Yes,” she said, delivering another of her trademark rueful smiles. “Sometimes, like you, I surprise myself.”
“It’s just that you have a funny way of going about helping.”
“We didn’t think we had a lot of choice. Hillary has a rare liver disease. Biliary atresia. When she was a child they treated it with an operation called the Kasai procedure. It worked, but then eighty-five per cent of children with the disease need a liver transplant within the next twenty years. So sure enough, by the time Hillary turned twelve, she was in a terrible state and in urgent need of a transplant.”
“But the right liver was not available,” Tree said.
“What’s more there was a very long waiting list. Hillary couldn’t wait. We had to do something.”
“By now your husband was in prison. I thought that’s where he would have met Dwayne Crowley. But they were in separate facilities.”
“That’s right.”
“It was you, Mrs. Traven.”
She looked at him without comment.
“Maybe you were feeling lonely and miserable, I don’t know, but you found your soul mate in Dwayne Crowley at Prisonlife.com.”
Her face darkened. She kept her eyes firmly on Hillary, down on her haunches, intently watching the birds as they fed along the shore. When Elizabeth spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can’t believe just how stupid I acted. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. But you’re right. I was lonely and frustrated and angry. I was rummaging around various prison websites, trying to come to terms with where my husband was and what it meant. I stumbled across Prisonlife.com quite by accident. Dwayne struck just the right chord in the state I was in—a strong, reassuring voice in the night. Just what I needed—or thought I needed.”
“Dwayne put you on to his wife, Michelle.”
Elizabeth nodded. “Mickey introduced me to Reno O’Hara and Dara Rait, body parts dealers in South Florida. Illegal but reliable. The way of the world these days. If you want something, you have to be willing to pay for it.”
“They had the perfect donor, a boy your niece’s age.”
“They would even provide the Mexican doctors willing to perform the operation for a price. One-stop shopping. We were desperate. Hillary was going to die if we didn’t do something.”
“Marcello, however, didn’t want to go along. He didn’t want to have a scary operation and so he ran away. He was determined to find the mother who had been writing, promising to come for him.”
“Unexpectedly resourceful. Somewhat like yourself, Mr. Callister.”
“No, Marcello is much better than me, better than I could ever imagine being,” Tree said. “To do what he did, to survive the way he survived. He’s an amazing kid.”
She lowered her eyes and said, “Yes.” The only intimation of guilt or remorse she allowed herself.
“Anyway,” Tree continued. “Reno murdered Dara and that threw a wrench into everyone’s best laid plans. Something had to be done. Reno had to be removed.”
“Dwayne?”
Tree shook his head. “It looks as though Detective Mel Scott did the honors, revenge, I suppose, for what Reno did to Dara, the woman he’d fallen in love with.”
“All of a sudden there are bodies turning up everywhere,” Elizabeth said. “I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’m in the middle of some sort of inter-gang feud.”
“That’s when you should have pulled out,” Tree said.
“I didn’t feel I could. I felt I had to make the best of a dreadful situation.”
“So you helped them out by coming to me. You became a client hoping to get to Marcello.”
“As I said Mr. Callister, I didn’t have a lot of choice.”
He stared at the white china cups on the white table. The coffee remained untouched. The spoonbills had deserted the tidal basin. A breeze played with the tendrils of Elizabeth’s hair. A beautiful, troubled woman, he thought, whose difficulties were far from over.
It was as though she read his mind. “I don’t need your sympathy,” she snapped.
“I know you don’t,” he said, standing. “But you’ve got it, anyway. And Marcello’s too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He wants to donate part of his liver to Hillary. That’s what you need, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, not able to keep the surprise out of her voice. “I guess the question is why?”
“Now that he knows about your niece, that a liver transplant will save her life, he wants to help.”
Momentarily, she was at a loss for words. “Marcello would do that? He would give Hillary part of his liver.”
“Yes.”
“That’s astonishing,” she said. “What made him change his mind?”
“He didn’t know what was happening. Everyone was angry and threatening. He thought his mother was coming. All sorts of things were swirling around. If someone had taken the time to speak to the boy calmly and reasonably, explain the circumstances, simply love him, all this might have been avoided. Instead, bad people scared him, and so he ran away.”
She stood up, emotions playing on her perfect features that included vulnerability—but mostly relief.
“We will pay him, of course.”
“You probably don’t have the money,” Tree said.
“We will find it. Maybe we won’t pay a couple of rich lawyers but somehow we’ll find it.”
“Marcello doesn’t want your money. He has no real concept of it, anyway. He just wants to help.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“The next time you see Marcello, just say ‘thank you.’”
They stood looking at one another, exhausted fighters who had punched each other to a standstill.
Hillary Traven, shimmering among the spoonbills, waved at him as he left.
Tommy Dobbs waited behind the wheel of his car as Tree came down the steps. He reached over and opened the passenger door and Tree slid inside.
“Thanks for waiting,” Tree said.
“No problem, Mr. Callister. No problem at all. Where to now?”
“Drop me over at Lighthouse Beach.”
41
When they got to the beach, Tree said, “Let me off in the parking lot, Tommy.”
“No problem, Mr. Callister. Anything I can do for you. That’s fine.”
He pulled the car to the stop. Tree looked at him. The car idled. Tommy stared ahead, swallowing hard, Adam’s Apple bobbing.
“What’s wrong?”
Tommy glanced at Tree. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Tommy.”
“Why does anything have to be wrong?”
“You’re being too nice. You’re not asking questions. You’re not tweeting. Y
ou’re not on Facebook. You haven’t videoed me. What’s going on?”
“I’ve been downsized, okay?” His Adam’s Apple moved faster.
“Downsized?”
“Yeah, downsized. Let go. Whatever you want to call it. I’m out of a job.”
“Why? What happened?”
“They’re ‘restructuring,’ they said. They’ve got to make cuts. Necessary to keep the business viable. I’m the last man in so I’m first out.”
“But you’ve done such a good job for them.”
“They don’t care. What do they care?”
Tommy lowered his head. Tree didn’t know what to do except wrap his arm around him. He sank against Tree’s shoulder, knocking off his Ray-Bans. Tree was conscious of sitting in a parking lot adjacent to Lighthouse Beach holding an unemployed newspaper reporter. He reached down and picked the sunglasses off the floor. “You’ve got two eyes.”
Tommy looked at him. “What?”
“You said you wear sunglasses because you’ve only got one eye. You’ve got two.”
“Oh.”
Tree handed him the Ray-Bans. Tommy said, “I’ve got a funny eye.”
“What’s funny about it?”
“It wanders. I look straight at you, I’m not actually looking straight at you.”
Tommy demonstrated. Tree said, “You look all right to me.”
“It’s not right.”
“I think you’re going to do fine, Tommy.”
Tommy cleared his throat and replaced the Ray-Bans. “You better get out of here, Mr. Callister. You’ll be late.”
“What are your plans?”
“Stay with my folks in Tampa till I get back on my feet. That’ll be okay, I guess. My father and I, we don’t get along so that makes things kind of tense. But it’ll be all right. It’ll be fine.”
“Listen, keep in touch. I’m not sure I can do anything, but I’ll make a couple of phone calls, see what’s around.”
“That would be great, Mr. Callister. I sure will stay in touch, don’t you worry about that.”
Tree groaned inwardly.
____
A beach sky, blue and cloudless, brought out the tourists. Tree marveled at the numbers of people baking beneath the unrelenting sun. That lucky old sun could kill you, could it not? But then so could pump-action shotguns and women with Beretta Tomcats.
Marcello, on his knees, maneuvered a big yellow sand shovel near the lapping surf. Freddie, spectacular in her orange one-piece, sat not far away, reading the one love letter Tree ever received. The duck’s beak of a baseball cap shaded her face. The sunglasses made her look like Jackie Onassis. He knelt and kissed her mouth. Marcello beamed happily at him and then went back to his sand shovel.
“How did it go?” Freddie folded the letter, and removed her glasses.
“It went fine,” he said.
She handed him the letter. “Written by a woman in love.”
“I don’t think so,” Tree said.
“I do. Women know about these things. She was in love with you.”
“No, Freddie, you’re in love with me. That comes out in a hundred different small but telling ways every single day. We’re in love with each other. We don’t write letters and then go off with other people. It’s straight and true and simple. This—” He waved the letter. “This is so many words on paper. They don’t mean anything unless you back them up, and Savannah didn’t do that. You know what? She didn’t even remember writing it.”
“Marcello says he would like to go to Savannah’s funeral or whatever kind of service they’re holding for her.”
“I’ve talked to the police,” Tree said. “They’ve been in touch with Savannah’s parents in Chicago. They’re going to let me know what they decide. I suspect FBI agent Sean Lazenby will want to be there, too.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Pretty broken up, and in trouble with his bosses for taking unauthorized leave so he could come here with Savannah. Crazy, but he was in love with her, like everyone else.”
“You included?”
“Whatever it was with her was a long time ago. Lost to the mists of time.”
“Lost to the mists of time? Good grief.”
“The best I can do on short notice.”
Marcello came over. Tree said, “Mrs. Traven can’t believe you want to help her niece. She’s thrilled and very thankful.”
“What’s her name?”
“The niece? Hillary. Her name is Hillary. She’s about the same age as you.”
“As long as they don’t hurt me,” he said.
“They won’t hurt you. No one’s ever going to hurt you again.” The sentence came out with a lot more emotion than he intended.
Freddie laid her hand on his arm gently. “We said we’d meet them at two thirty.”
“Can’t we stay here a little longer?” A pleading note in Marcello’s voice.
“We’ll do this again very soon,” Freddie said. “But right now we want you to meet the people who are going to take care of you.”
“All right,” Marcello said.
“Incidentally,” Tree said to Freddie. “The Ray Man wants me to go fishing with him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He was in the parking lot at the office.”
“He’s crazy.”
“He also wants you back at work.”
“You’re not going fishing with him, are you?”
“He wasn’t in Vietnam.”
“He wasn’t?”
“He ran a supply chain in the Philippines.”
“He fed people?”
“They couldn’t have fought the war without him.”
They collected towels and sunscreen and flip-flops and Marcello’s sun hat and his sand shovel, packed everything up and started off the beach.
“Are you going back to work?” Tree asked.
“Are you going fishing?”
They looked at each other and laughed. Marcello reached up and took Tree’s hand. Tree found himself swallowing hard. Freddie slipped beside him and leaned against him as they walked, squeezing his arm.
“The detective from Sanibel Sunset Detective,” she murmured.
“What about him?”
“He’s a cry-baby.”
“What a thing to say to a hardbitten hombre like myself. I’ve been shot, you know.”
“Why do I suspect I’m never going to hear the end of this,” she said.
____
They drove across the causeway off the island, along Summerlin Road to McGregor Boulevard until they turned onto Cypress Lake Drive and found the address they were looking for—a pleasant one-story stucco house with a red tile roof. It was occupied by an equally pleasant-looking couple, Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Lake, a forty-something black man and his wife with a shy daughter, Carmine, age eleven. She hugged against her mother until ordered to take Marcello inside and show him his bedroom.
Immediately, she darted forward and grabbed Marcello’s hand, grinning broadly. “Come on,” she said, pulling him toward the house.
They got as far as the stoop. Marcello stopped and broke free of Carmine’s hand and ran back to embrace Tree with all his might. The tears rolled freely down Tree’s cheeks as he hugged Marcello. Freddie brushed away her own tears.
Then Marcello was gone, following Carmine into the house. Tree clumsily cleared his throat. Freddie extracted more promises from the Lakes. They had spent their lives raising foster children, they said. They weren’t perfect but they were pretty darned good. They knew what Marcello had been through.
Tree and Freddie walked hand in hand back to their car. They got inside, Freddie behind the wheel, and they sat there until the Lakes disappeared inside and their world altered perceptibly because it no longer contained Marcello. He was, finally, safe.
Neither of them spoke on the drive home, enjoying the silence and the closeness of each other. They were back on the causeway, its sweep captured in the afternoon sunlight glinting on the
choppy tips of the waves in San Carlos Pass.
“It’s funny,” Tree finally said. “I see the island and I feel like we’re going home.”
“We are going home,” she said. “This is home.”
She glanced over at him. “You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. I’m a hero or haven’t you read the newspapers?”
“Oh, Lord,” she said.
“I don’t know whether I mentioned it. Did I tell you I’ve been shot?”
A rogue tear tumbled down his cheek.
“What is it, my love?”
“Just now. I was overwhelmed by this terrible feeling of sadness,” he said.
“Because you have to put up with me for the next fifty years?”
“No, because we have passed things that we will never come back to again,” he said. “Because we are closer to the end than we are to the beginning.”
“But we go on anyway,” Freddie said. “On and on together.”
He reached for her hand and she reached for his, and they drove along like that, holding hands, the Florida sun shining over their island, going home.
Acknowledgements
In the late 70s, working as a magazine writer, I went down to Murrell’s Inlet, South Carolina, to interview the mystery writer Mickey Spillane. Spillane had created private detective Mike Hammer in the 1950s, setting off something of a firestorm with such hardboiled classics as I, the Jury, My Gun Is Quick, and Vengeance is Mine.
The novels were full of sex and violence, or so my parents thought. I could not be exposed to such things—so, of course, I secretly devoured the paperbacks, reading under the covers by flashlight late at night, enthralled.
I had met Spillane a few years before in Toronto and we got along, so he insisted I stay in his rambling oceanfront house. He was single at the time and had plenty of room. Mickey introduced me to two things that have stuck with me my entire life. He was the first person I knew who had CNN, the new twenty-four hour cable news network, and he kept it on all the time. I thought that was pretty nifty—TV news any time you wanted it.
He also introduced me to catfish at a local restaurant. When he initially suggested it, I was horrified. “Just try it,” he ordered. “I swear you’ll love it.” He was right, and I’ve eaten catfish ever since. Every time I do, I think of Mickey.