Bullet Beach

by Ronald Tierney

  ‘What do you mean “we might have time?”’

  ‘I have to meet a guy at a strip club later.’

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘I think it’s the guy you’ve been following.’

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ she said.

  ‘What? And blow your cover. No such thing.’

  She gave him the look.

  Shanahan came out of the bathroom, saw his beloved conked out on the bed. He looked down. An angel. Maureen’s auburn hair splayed across the blanket. Dinner and a couple of drinks did her in. He was happy for her – and a little jealous. He too was tired. He had not had so much physical activity in one day, had not had such emotional upheaval since Maureen was taken from him before. He wanted sleep too.

  He put a blanket from the closet over her. It may be hot and humid outside. Inside, the rattling air conditioner evened things out. He wrote her a note. He nodded to the guard who stood on the stairs and punched in the elevator button. In the lobby, he stopped at a little stand where he bought a thin, plastic poncho. Last night the rain came with the unexpected suddenness of a home invasion and he wasn’t sure how late he would be out.

  After bargaining with the driver, they tuk-tuk’d the relatively short distance to Soi Cowboy. He had left early enough to ensure he’d get there in plenty of time to keep the appointment and to wander around, get the lay of the land, before the meeting. He wanted to know about back doors and what else was going on in the neighborhood. Were there police around? Were there gangs? There weren’t. Mostly tourists. Mostly male tourists.

  He went into the bar early as well to see what was going on, get a good sense of the space, upstairs, downstairs, if there were little corridors leading off to who knows where. These kinds of places hadn’t changed much since he wandered about Southeast Asia and Indonesia so many years ago. Girls dancing. Girls at the bar. Girls wanting drinks bought for them. Prettier girls than he remembered in his now slip-sliding past. And if they weren’t girls, acknowledging the doubt Channarong planted in his brain, they were doing a great job of being girls.

  It mattered little to Shanahan. He wasn’t in the market for the goods being sold, except for a glass of whiskey with a beer chaser. He went to the bar, squeezed in, tried not to look at the scantily clad women who might take the glance as encouragement. Busy place. Older men, some Asian, some not. The only women were the bar girls, not as scantily clad as those on stage. He thought of Harry’s bar. Maybe he should suggest Harry change the ambience. A couple of these lovelies – and all it would take is a couple – would definitely liven the place up.

  All right, he said to himself. He noted the door in the back covered in red leather. He noticed a hallway that probably led to rest rooms. He’d check that out. There was a stairway that wound back behind the bar and to a second floor. If there was a downstairs, which he doubted because of the heavy rains, he didn’t see the way there from the bar itself.

  After finding out the hallway to the lavatories went only to the lavatories, he came back into the main room, watched the girls on stage shed more garments, leaning against a back wall. So young. So young. At eleven twenty-five, he saw Channarong come in the front door. His friend went to the bar as if he knew the place, blended in perfectly.

  At eleven thirty precisely, Shanahan went through the red leather door.

  TEN

  Cross loaded some clothing, a camera, binoculars and tools into the Trooper. With the dog, Casey, as his co-pilot, the two of them set out for Eaton, a few miles north of Muncie and in the general direction of Lake Wawasee. Kowalski had agreed to look in on Einstein, but at his age the elderly cat – as long as he had some water and food – was perfectly happy to be left alone.

  The plan was to get to his parents’ farm early to pick everyone up for a day at the lake. Once Kowalski learned that Taupin had property at the lake, he used the county land office to locate the parcel. Cross downloaded a Google map of the area and specifically the lake itself, with Taupin’s home marked. As they boated the large lake, Cross would take a look at the Taupin home, hopefully identified by the satellite photo Google provided. What he thought he’d find he wasn’t sure. But this is how he did his work. Just gather as much information as you can and see where it leads.

  The sky was clear and blue. So was the lake. Maya, at six, was happy. Even Cross’s father and mother seemed to enjoy the break in their routines. Mom had fixed fried chicken, baked beans, and potato salad. His father had packed another cooler with beer and soda. The rented speedboat cut through the water easily, gliding past homes that opened out and down to the lake. Most of the properties had piers that extended from their back lawns out into the water. Barbeques were fired up and badminton and volleyball games were underway on the shore. There were sailboats and pontoons and fishing boats moving about on a glistening surface that extended for miles.

  Cross, who received general directions from the boat rental operator, was heading toward the area where the Taupins had their summer cottage.

  ‘When can I go swimming?’ Maya asked.

  ‘When we get to the swimming area.’

  ‘There’s water here,’ she insisted.

  ‘It’s illegal to swim here. And it’s too deep.’

  Maya shook her head. The expression on her face asked the question, ‘Why am I surrounded by fools?’

  Cross’s father laughed. ‘All that time in Hawaii, she’s practically a mermaid.’

  ‘Mermaiden,’ Cross corrected.

  ‘We’ll stop by the park, have a little picnic and then after a little wait, we’ll go for a dip in the lake,’ his mother told Maya. ‘OK?’

  Casey, who had been extremely nervous about floating around on the water, eventually found a spot, and clunked his bones down.

  Cross worried about his mother. They had applied spf fifty sun block. She nonetheless looked as if she had either just heard a dirty joke or was getting more sun than she should. A few more minutes. No street numbers on the lake, but Cross was pretty sure the three-story home, nearly all windows on this side, was the Taupins. It was the biggest on this part of the lake and it had an extra-long pier in order to accommodate a yacht of ocean-going proportions and a seaplane. Nothing was going on outside but the gentle bobbing of the sea craft. Cross smiled. The multi-millionaire known for his cheap ways had a few luxury items.

  The sky was blue. The sunlight bounced off the caps of the gentle waves. The clouds were storybook white and fluffy. It was an American Kodak moment – happy and golden. Cross took his camera from the bag and, while it looked like he was taking a typical family photograph – Dad, the kid, the grandparents and family dog – he was also recording the numbers on the plane and the name of the boat: Ruby Tuesday.

  Cross didn’t know whether any of this mattered, whether in this wholesome scene there was some level of evil or not, but the trip was worthwhile. What did surprise him was the seaplane gently rising and falling on the tiniest of tides. There weren’t many of them on the lake, but it made sense. It was more than two or three hours to Indianapolis by car, nearly all of it on slow-going secondary roads. If Cross wasn’t mistaken, there was a small airport in Fishers, near the low-profile tycoon’s city home. Home to home in what? Half an hour?

  ‘Who wants fried chicken?’ Cross asked happily as he cut left, or port as some more experienced seafarers might say.

  The sign on the red leather door said: EMPLOYEES ONLY.

  On the other side was a long, dark hallway with double-door wide openings along the way. Each was draped with muslin. Soft light and muffled voices spilled through the pleasantly shrouded doorways. Shanahan walked slowly, waiting to be intercepted or to find a doorway open and inviting.

  At the end of the hall was an elevator. One button. Shanahan pushed it. He hesitated for a moment before stepping in. He’d come this far. Inside there were two buttons. One was lit – the floor he was on. He pushed the other. The door closed and Shanahan found himself in a softly lit space that moved smoo
thly. When the doors opened, he stepped into what appeared to be immaculate space. White walls, pale gray carpeting, a white sofa with matching chairs. There was a sense of style. But the style was sterile. It was a clear contrast to the bar below, where the walls, and tables, and floor had a sensuous, perhaps living patina.

  A woman in white clothing appeared and pointed toward Shanahan’s shoes. He took them off while she pulled some blue-green paper slippers from a box. He slipped them on and she nodded for him to follow. The air was cool, but there was no sound of air conditioning. The air was clean as well. Filtered.

  They turned, went through an arched doorway and into a larger room, though of the same coloration and purity. The man, slender as a reed and ageless, sat on a large upholstered silver gray chair. He wore a white robe, trimmed in gold. A second look and Shanahan could pick up a few more details. The skin was a little too tight at the neck. The flesh was a little too tight on the bone. Before him on a small table was what Shanahan thought to be a glass of iced tea.

  The man looked up. His eyes were bright. This wasn’t the man who sat beside him on the bench in the park.

  ‘Why are you here?’ the man asked with a mix of impatience and confusion.

  ‘I was told to come here.’

  ‘I meant why are you here? In Thailand. I would have thought you were long gone by now. You should be you know.’

  ‘I’m looking for Fritz Shanahan.’

  The man had a wide smile. His face crinkled in amusement.

  ‘How very poetic,’ the man said, nodding toward a chair that was a match to his own.

  ‘Why is that poetic?’ Shanahan asked, sitting.

  ‘Though it’s a little adolescent, there’s something poetic about a man looking for himself. There is something profoundly sad, though. You, a man of such experience approaching the endgame of his life without the knowledge he was born with.’

  ‘Looking for myself?’ Shanahan decided it might be wiser to let this man do all the talking.

  ‘It is what you said. You think a beard makes you a different man than you were before you grew it?’

  Shanahan shook his head ‘no.’

  ‘It’s very brave and perhaps a little adolescent as well,’ the man smiled again, ‘to come back here.’ The man reached for his glass. His fingers were long and narrow, bony and old.

  Shanahan thought the man and his apartment were pretentious, affected. Then again, he reminded himself, he thought his own beard was an affectation. He would shave it when he returned home.

  ‘I am not Fritz Shanahan looking for myself,’ Shanahan said, though he had given thought to the idea of keeping the lie alive. But, given what he’d learned so far, being Fritz might be more dangerous than being Dietrich. ‘I’m his brother, Dietrich.’

  Shanahan wasn’t sure he’d ever really seen anyone demonstrate the expression ‘taken aback’ so well. It was as if the little man had received some sort of tiny slap from an invisible villain. Recovering, he smiled as broadly as he done before.

  ‘You are a rogue, Fritz,’ the man said. ‘You almost convinced me for a split second. Interesting dodge. But you won’t pull it off. You’ll have to do something better than that. A little cosmetic surgery, perhaps. In the interim, no doubt a very short one, you have places to go and promises to keep.’

  Thai though the man was, his English was without accent. The words ‘rogue’ and ‘dodge,’ were interesting choices.

  ‘You know,’ the man continued, ‘that I’ve always given you more room than anyone else, but there are limits to my patience even for someone as charming as you.’

  ‘Charming?’ Shanahan asked. It wasn’t a word usually used to describe his personality. ‘Perhaps Fritz got a bit more of the Blarney Stone than I did,’ Shanahan said. ‘I assure you I’m not charming and I’m not Fritz.’

  The man got up from his chair, plucking a pair of glasses from his robe pocket, and walked toward Shanahan and examined his face. He reached down and lifted up Shanahan’s left hand. He stepped back.

  ‘You seem to have grown your pinkie back,’ he said as he went back to his chair.

  ‘It’s from the lizard side of the family.’

  ‘Fritz would smile when he said something like that,’ the man said.

  ‘You are beginning to get the picture.’

  ‘You don’t fall down on the floor and kick and bite and generally scare off the clientele do you?’

  ‘Not recently. Why do you ask?’

  The man smiled. ‘You brother has these fits from time to time. Some people are frightened of him. They think he is possessed.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think we’re all possessed.’ The man smiled again, shook his head. ‘What brought you to me?’

  ‘A man told me to come here and ask for Moran?’

  ‘Who is Moran?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Shanahan said. ‘Aren’t you Moran?’

  The man laughed. ‘No, and you aren’t Fritz. Am I asleep or in a silly play?’

  ‘All I know is I’m Dietrich Shanahan and I was told to come here to find my brother.’

  ‘What are we going to do with two of you? One was more than enough.’

  ‘You have any idea where he is?’

  He stood. ‘I thought I did. But it is you instead. Happy hunting, Mr Shanahan.’

  The elevator brought Shanahan back to the hallway as half a dozen young, slender half-naked girls, having finished a shift, came back giggling, slipping behind the translucent drapery. He passed unnoticed until the red door. A few in the bar looked his way as he came from a ‘no admittance’ door. He glanced at the bar. Channarong was still there. The number of customers had increased. The girls on the stage looked as if they were doing the ‘Dance of the Seven Veils,’ bringing back a long-ago memory just as odd as the last few minutes.

  Outside, the neon lights from the cluster of clubs in the soi bounced around the wet streets and walls. People moved about, many of them in deep, but slightly drunken lust. He slipped on his plastic poncho and headed in the drizzle for the hotel. He would ask Channarong to do what he could to find out the name of the man in the white room and in what businesses, besides girls, he was engaged.

  On the way back to the hotel, Shanahan tried to figure out what he learned from the meeting. It appeared that Fritz would be even harder to locate than he thought. He wasn’t just hiding from the police as Shanahan had suspected, but also from folks he worked with. He found out that his brother looked a lot like him. They bore a striking resemblance when they were young, he remembered, but time and trouble can play havoc with the genes. On the other hand, Shanahan was aware that the man in the white room might be playing him. He reminded himself he was a stranger in a strange land and what appeared to be to a mind like his, might not be.

  Maureen was awake, wrapped in a blanket, sitting in a chair with a rum and tonic.

  ‘You left me behind,’ she said.

  ‘I did.’

  She nodded, smiled. She wasn’t going to make anything of it. It was one of the many reasons he loved her. She never pouted. Get even, maybe. But she didn’t pout.

  ‘What did you find out?’

  He told her.

  ‘Hmmnn, two Shanahans? This I have to see. Perhaps these people out to find your brother won’t have to worry. There’s a very good chance you’ll kill each other.’

  Shanahan smiled.

  ‘What?’ she said, eyes wide, mouth open. ‘You smiled. Do you realize this is the fifth time in all our time together I’ve seen you smile.’

  ‘You’re counting them?’

  ‘Five is not a hard number to keep track of. The point is: you smiled.’

  ‘I promise, I’ll be more careful in the future.’

  Cross took Casey out for a walk in the dewy morning. He had the old Catahoula hound on a leash because he had the genes of a pig-herder and tended to have an attitude toward the farm animals, particularly Maya’s goat.

  Breakfast awaited hi
m. A big breakfast. His normal pot of coffee and maybe a piece of toast would be replaced with a three-egg omelet, roasted potatoes and sausage. It was a farmer’s breakfast, but on this occasion it would not go to waste or waist. He had determined that Sunday’s chore would be to fix the roof. He had purchased the shingles that last time he was up.

  Once he got into it, he didn’t mind this kind of work. Manual labor, especially the simple kind, meant he could think more clearly about other things. He worked until the August noon sun made it torture. He gave in to an old Adirondack chair facing a field of corn, a bottle of cold beer, and his thoughts.

  Who was the man who held the shotgun? Not Taupin. And the girl in the trunk? Had the police an identity yet? The son-in-law lived in Woodruff Place on Middle Drive. Woodruff place was composed of three wide streets, each with a grass median and fountains at the mid-street turnarounds. Once an expensive neighborhood, it fell on hard times. Many of the old Victorians were subdivided into cheap apartments. Now on its way back, it still seemed to attract the more adventurous of the city’s citizens – not something he thought Mr Taupin would appreciate. Was young Marshall Talbot a rebel? That was a reach, but he should spend some time on the lives of the victims. Marshall Talbot shouldn’t be too difficult.

  He took a sip of beer and looked out over the field. This might have been his life. Probably wouldn’t have worked. The days of the family farm were receding. This one was merely a token. A couple of cows in the barn. Two dozen chickens or so, a young goat, and a large garden. Fields of corn and soybeans, along with an orchard on one side, surrounded the farm. None belonged to his parents. They had sold them off, one parcel at a time, just to stay alive. But they knew no other way to live.

  People do what they have to do to survive, Cross thought. Whose survival depended on the deaths of the two people he was suspected of killing? And Edelman?

  If he had stayed here, Cross thought, shaking off the images of the dead, would he have married a local girl, settled down, raised a family?