by Jane Heller
Mike Cook sounded like a man who loved his wife and missed her now that she was gone. I wondered how his son got to be such a womanizer, flitting from one tramp to another, never being able to commit.
“Hey, there’s Jeremy now,” said Mike, shielding his eyes from the late afternoon sun.
I turned to look and could see the Devil-May-Care pulling into the slip. Jeremy was standing at the steering wheel, barking orders at the two teenage boys who were lowering the fender boards and readying the dock lines.
“Do you and Jeremy still fish together?” I asked Mike Cook as Jeremy gave his crew instructions.
“Once in a while,” he said. “When he’s got a free day. I retired in ’86 and handed the charter business over to him. I help him keep track of the bookings but he’s the captain now and he’s done a good job of it. Got a couple more hotels onboard, done some promotion. ’Course the fact that he sings in that rock ’n’ roll band doesn’t hurt. He gets up on stage wearing the Cook’s Charters T-shirts. It brings people in, ya know?”
“I’m sure it does. Tell me, did he always sing as well as he does now? I mean, is that something new?” Something brought about by the devil?
Mike regarded me as he lit up another cigarette. “You here to interview Jeremy or somethin’? For the local paper? You never did say what you came to see him about.”
“No, I guess I didn’t.” I paused to think. “It’s about Benjamin,” I said.
“Benny?” he asked with concern.
I nodded. “He’s—”
“Hey, that can’t be BS, can it?” Jeremy yelled when he stepped off the boat and saw me talking to his father.
He had a big smile on his face as he strutted along the dock, his cheeks and nose rosy with sunburn. He looked awfully cheerful for a person who had the devil living inside him.
The devil, I thought, my heart beating wildly. This wasn’t Jeremy Cook walking toward me, I reminded myself. This was Satan. The Force of Darkness. The Evil One. The guy that made me a darksider and expected me to produce more darksiders. The guy that was responsible for plague and pestilence and, whether Mike Cook knew it or not, the pollution of his beloved river. After days of wondering how it would feel to be face-to-face with him, to actually speak to him, it was finally going to happen. The adrenaline was pumping, let me tell you.
“Would’ya look at this. BS has gone slumming two days in a row,” said Jeremy when he reached us. He patted his father on the back and then focused on me. “First, The Hellhole. Now, Eddie’s Marina. What’s the world coming to?”
“If it were up to you, the world would be teeming with darksiders,” I said, speaking louder than normal, so the devil would be sure to hear me in there.
“Teeming with what?” said Jeremy, looking perplexed. God, the devil was such a phony, pretending not to understand.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” I said.
I couldn’t get over it. The person standing next to me looked like Jeremy, talked like Jeremy, even smelled of beer like Jeremy. And yet…he wasn’t Jeremy. Not really. As David explained it, the person whose body the devil chose to hide in no longer existed. Which meant that Jeremy no longer existed. I was speaking directly to Satan, even though he was playing dumb, perhaps because we were not alone.
“So what are you doin’ here, BS?” he said, ignoring my odd behavior. “I see you’ve met my dad.”
His dad. I bit my lip. It was sad, really. Mike Cook seemed like such a nice man. He’d already had his wife taken away from him, and now his only son had been taken away, too. At least, for the time being.
“Sure, Barbara and I are old friends now,” Mike volunteered. “But it was you she came to see. About her brother, she said.”
“Is Ben sick or somethin’?” Jeremy asked.
No, it’s you who’s sick, I thought with revulsion as I tried to look through Jeremy, into the eyes of the evil one.
“What’s the matter with Ben?” Jeremy asked again when I didn’t answer.
“I don’t want to bother your father with my family problems,” I said. “It’s something I should discuss with you alone, if possible.”
Jeremy licked his lips lasciviously. “Sounds like she wants me, Dad. I think all this stuff about Ben is a cover.”
“You ought to know about covers,” I said, hoping the devil would realize that I was not a person to be toyed with, not a person to let him parade around in the body of my brother’s best friend.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said Jeremy.
“As if you didn’t know,” I said.
He shrugged. “Obviously, I’m not followin’ you, sweetheart, but I can see that somethin’s got you all upset. Why don’t we go back to my place and you can tell me all about it?”
He threw his sweaty arm around my shoulder but I moved away.
“Fine. Don’t,” he said, then proceeded to talk to his father about the day’s adventures on the high seas.
As the two of them engaged in a lively debate on the issue of whether it was better to fish after a storm than during one, I tried to figure out what to do next. The thought of being alone with Jeremy at his house, wherever that was, was frightening. Who knew what the devil might do to me when there was no one else around? On the other hand, going home with Jeremy would give me just the opportunity I was looking for—a chance to sit down with Satan and speak my piece, maybe even convince him to leave my town and me alone.
“Jeremy,” I interrupted just as they were moving on to a discussion of rods or rigs or some such thing, “I would like to talk to you. At your house, if I wouldn’t be imposing.”
“Sure,” he said, looking utterly confused, as if he didn’t know what was going on. The devil was such a snake. “Dad? You gonna go on home now?”
“Pretty soon,” said Mike Cook. “I like to wait for all the guys to come in. Tell ’em good night. The way I always do.”
Jeremy nodded. “Then I’ll see you in the morning. We got that group from Hutchinson Island tomorrow, right?”
Mike regarded the clipboard on his lap. “Yup, four of ’em. At eight o’clock.”
Jeremy nodded. “Have a good one,” he said, patting his father on the back once again and motioning for me to follow him down the dock to the parking lot.
Chapter 16
Jeremy got into his pickup truck, bellowed for me to follow him in my car, and then drove off in a cloud of dust.
When we reached the first traffic light, I leaned out the window of my Lexus and yelled, “How far are we going?” I knew he lived somewhere near me but had no idea where.
“How far do you wanna go, sweetheart?” he yelled back. “There won’t be anyone around to chaperone us.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” I muttered, wondering exactly what would happen once I was alone with Jeremy.
We drove toward the beach, toward “Millionaires’ Row,” as we realtors call the rarefied strip of oceanfront property on which palatial, multimillion-dollar houses and condominiums had been erected on once-deserted sand. Seacrest Way, where I lived, occupied a more modest section of beachfront—a cul-de-sac for wanna-bes. That’s what Mitchell Chessner was: a wanna-be. Actually, to be more precise, he was a look-at-me. While I was pathologically obsessed with people liking me, with their thinking I was a nice person, Mitchell was pathologically obsessed with people envying him, with their thinking he was a rich person. When I had showed him the house at 666 Seacrest Way, he’d insisted that we make an offer on it, not because it was on the ocean—Mitchell never set foot in the water, claiming he had too much salt in his diet as it was. No, his explanation for wanting to buy the house was: “It makes a statement.”
Ah, Mitchell, I sighed as I recalled our life together. What could I have been thinking when I hitched my wagon to yours? Was I so hell-bent on pleasing my parents that I’d sell myself out by marrying a fool like you?
Sell myself out, I thought as I drove. Wasn’t that what I had done the night Mitchell left me?
Hadn’t I stepped outside in that thunderstorm and cried that I would do anything for a five-hundred-thousand-dollar customer, a better body, a man to love? Hadn’t I sold myself out yet again, this time to the devil? Was I thoroughly incapable of figuring out what I really wanted out of life and then getting it for myself? Was I so passive that I had to depend, first on Mitchell, then on some supernatural force, to fulfill my dreams for me? Was I?
No, I decided. This time it’s different. That’s why I’m risking everything and going after the devil. This time I’m not taking the easy way out.
We passed my street and continued along Ocean Avenue until we came to a series of narrow side roads, each named for a tropical flower and each leading down to the water. Jeremy’s blinker indicated that we would be turning left onto one of these roads, Hibiscus Street.
So that’s where he lives, I mused, remembering a house I had listed there several years before. It was an area of older homes—beach shacks, really, with spectacular views and unspectacular everything else. Many of the houses were rental properties that had been abused by college kids and surfers and people who were more interested in having a good time than in getting written up in Architectural Digest. Some of the houses belonged to old-timers who didn’t have the money or the inclination to fix them up. Nearly all the houses were without air-conditioning and cable TV and three-car garages, the sort of amenities that were absolute necessities everywhere else. (Actually, three-and-a-half-car garages were all the rage with the moneyed set, the “half” representing the space reserved especially for their golf cart.) Leave it to Jeremy Cook to live in one of these shanties, I thought, as we drove by Number 3, Number 4, Number 5, and so on.
When we got to the end of the street, to Number 8, Jeremy signaled that we’d be turning into the driveway, which was unpaved and ungraveled—a dirt path with a line of grass growing up the middle.
I braced myself for a hopeless dump, given the neighborhood—and the fact that Jeremy had never exhibited even the slightest interest in his own appearance, nor had he struck me as the type who would be home enough to care about his living quarters.
I was, therefore, shocked when the driveway meandered down to a small but strikingly charming house—a weathered shingled cottage surrounded by a profusion of hibiscus plants, as well as bushes of brilliantly colored bougainvillea. Aside from the tropical flowers, it had the romantic, beachy feel of a house in Cape Cod, not in South Florida. Moreover, it looked neat and tidy, so unlike Jeremy.
But then what did I really know about Jeremy anyway? I realized as I sat in my car and watched him walk up to his front door. I mean, I knew him, had known him, since I was a kid. He’d been in my life for as long as I could remember. Not in an important way, of course. Just tangentially. In the background. A vague but chronic irritant. My image of him was shaped by my childhood memories of him, by his friendship with my brother, by the stories I’d heard about him. And yet, it had been years since I’d actually spent any real time with him. He and Mitchell had despised each other ever since high school, so I wasn’t about to invite him to dinner. And then there was the thoroughly obnoxious manner in which he always treated me. So crude, so cocky, so determined to shock me or piss me off. In the past, I’d never had any reason for getting to know the man behind the image. But now, I did. Now, I needed to know as much as I could about Jeremy. Now, my life depended on it.
“What’s the matter?” he asked as he waited for me to get out of my car.
“I…well I didn’t expect this,” I said, walking over to him. “Is this place really yours?”
“No, it’s the devil’s,” he said sarcastically.
I stared at him, stared into his eyes. So Satan has decided to show himself to me, I thought with a mixture of fear and excitement. He realizes that we’re finally alone and he’s going to let me see him.
“Now what is it?” asked Jeremy as he looked at me quizzically.
“There’s no need to play games,” I said, keeping my voice steady and my eyes glued to his face. “Not anymore.”
“Games? What are you talkin’ about, BS? You’ve gotta start makin’ sense or it’s gonna be a long night. Now come inside.”
Fine, I thought. If the devil wants to show himself to me one minute and run for cover the next, I’ll just play along. I’ll act as if I’m simply having a casual visit with Jeremy, as if he’s an old friend I haven’t seen in a while. I’ll bide my time. See what happens.
He went into the house and I followed him, continuing to observe him but at the same time stealing glances at my surroundings. The entire house couldn’t have been more than a thousand square feet, I saw, and consisted of only two rooms: the room in which we stood—an open, airy living room/dining room/kitchen with beamed ceiling, hardwood flooring, stone fireplace, and breathtaking ocean view—and a small bedroom around the corner. It wasn’t fancy, by any means, but spare, simple, cozy, livable, the only “artwork” being the grainy, black-and-white photographs of men in fishing boats that hung on the walls.
“Want a beer?” Jeremy asked, still looking at me with curiosity. He was standing in the small, jalousie-windowed kitchen, a dated but nevertheless spotless area.
“No,” I said. Then on second thought, figuring that beer was probably all Jeremy had in the way of alcoholic beverages and feeling the need for some fortification, I changed my mind. “Yes, I’ll have one.”
He shook his head at me, then reached into the refrigerator and got us each a can of Bud Lite.
“Have you lived here long?” I asked him, trying to be chatty.
“Fifteen years,” he said, opening his can of beer and taking a swig.
Hmmm, I thought. According to David, the devil had only been in Florida for ten years.
“It’s really nice. Did you have to fix it up or did you buy it like this?” I asked.
“The place belonged to my aunt. When she went to live with her sister in Ocala, I bought it from her, then did the floors, replaced the windows, painted, stuff like that.”
He walked over to the stereo system on the other side of the living room, where there were scores of CDs and tapes, plus a cabinet full of albums. He searched the cabinet and eventually removed one of the albums from its sleeve.
“You like the Stones?” he asked, holding up an old vinyl record.
“Sure. Whatever,” I said.
He placed the record on the turntable, and seconds later, the sounds of the Rolling Stones filled the large space. But was it just any Rolling Stones song that Jeremy played? Nooooo. It was “Sympathy for the Devil.” From the Beggar’s Banquet album. Obviously, Satan was intent on having a little fun with me. First, he’d have Jeremy act as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on; then, he’d play “Peekaboo!” with me, showing himself to me through song lyrics. It was maddening.
“You don’t deserve anybody’s sympathy,” I snapped when Jeremy rejoined me in the kitchen.
“What are you talking about now?” he said.
“Never mind.” Snapping at Satan wasn’t going to get me anywhere. I had to stick to my strategy. Pretend that Jeremy was still Jeremy instead of the empty shell he’d become. “Why don’t we sit down?” I suggested.
Jeremy scratched his beard in frustration and led me to the chairs facing the water. They were framed in pine and upholstered in a heavy white canvas. Like the rest of the house, they were simple and comfortable.
“So,” I said as we sat. “You were saying that you fixed the house up yourself.”
“And you were sayin’ that you wanted to talk to me about Ben,” he said. “Is somethin’ wrong with him, BS?”
“No, he’s fine as far as I know,” I said. “I only told your father it was about Ben because I didn’t want to tell him the real reason I needed to speak to you.”
“And that reason is?”
“Real estate.”
“Give me a break.”
“No, really. I didn’t want to say anything to your father because he seems to have a
low opinion of real estate agents.” I was winging this, obviously. “Here’s the thing. I have this customer who’s ninety-nine percent sure he’s going to buy a place in Banyan Beach, but he wants to know about the fishing here. He’s a fishing nut, I guess.” And I’m not a bad liar, I thought.
“If he’s such a fishing nut, how come he doesn’t already know about the fishing here?”
“Because he’s only fished up north. He doesn’t know about the fishing in Florida. I’m not knowledgeable enough to answer his questions, so I thought maybe you could tell me a few—”
“That’s it? That’s the reason you came over here?” Jeremy cut me off.
I nodded.
He looked disappointed.
“Have the guy call me,” he said abruptly.
“That’s nice of you, but I’d rather you talked to me about the fishing and then I’ll talk to him. That way I can seem like the authority. The object is to convince him to buy property from me, Jeremy.”
“Anything to sell a house, huh?”
“It’s not a house he wants to buy. It’s a condo. In a very exclusive new building,” I said, keeping my little charade going.
“You’re not talkin’ about the River Princess, that fancy high-rise they’re puttin’ up on the river?”
“As a matter of fact I am,” I lied. Well, actually, that part wasn’t a lie. I did have a customer who was ninety-nine percent sure he was going to buy a condo in the River Princess, but the man wasn’t the least bit interested in fishing. Polo was his sport.
“Then you oughta be ashamed of yourself,” said Jeremy. “The River Princess is the worst thing to happen to this town in years.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked. The twenty-eight-story River Princess was the latest real estate venture of a group of very successful developers from Miami. It was being promoted as Banyan Beach’s most luxurious waterfront condominium, complete with twenty-four-hour security, heated pool and spa, marina, tennis, riverside clubhouse, and apartments that were dripping in marble. Preconstruction prices had started at $750,000 for a one-bedroom unit, and went as high as $2,500,000, for a three-bedroom apartment. Occupancy was scheduled for August 15, with the gala opening celebration only a week away. I was very familiar with the building because Home Sweet Home was the listing agent on the property—or, more specifically, Frances Lutz was. Suzanne had remarked that Frances, the self-proclaimed “ranch specialist,” was an unlikely listing agent for a building with twenty-eight floors, but I reminded her that the River Princess had two banks of elevators. Frances wouldn’t even have to look at a flight of stairs.