A Firing Offense (20 page)

“Good year?”

He nodded. “Steady rain last spring, hot and wet all summer. Great for tomatoes. I’ve cleared out most of the vine vegetables—squash and cucumbers and that sort of thing. Melons were no good this year—went rotten before I got ’em on the tiles.” He waved his hand around the expanse of greenery. “Still pulling carrots and onions.”

“Kim told me about this garden,” I said, realizing how stupid it sounded as the words were coming from my mouth.

“She did, huh?” That mocking tone again. He squinted up at me. “Funny. She never took a bit of interest in it all the time she grew up here.”

“Sorry I missed her. Was she alone?”

“No,” he said, tired of the game. “She wasn’t alone.” He rose from his knees and stood to face me. “Why don’t we set up on the porch and knock down these beers?”

ON THE BACK PORCH
T. J. Lazarus moved two garden chairs together and pulled the remaining beers from my hand, setting them on a low aluminum table between us. He pulled a fresh one off the ring and popped it.

“Who
are
you, son?” he said. “You sure as hell didn’t come here to see my garden, and I don’t believe you’re a friend of my daughter’s. Now I don’t appreciate the company of a liar, especially in my own house. But if she’s in some kind of trouble, I want to know. You a cop?”

“Private cop,” I said, my own words sounding unreal. I was getting tired of telling lies to honest people. Nevertheless, I handed him my phony ID.

He inspected it. “I didn’t think you were a cop. Cops don’t get beat up.”

“So I’ve been told. I apologize for not being honest with you. But I’m not looking for Kim. I’m after one of the boys she was with. She
was
with two boys, wasn’t she?”

“That’s right. What’s going on?”

“I was hired by the grandfather of one of the boys to find him.”

He studied me. “Where you from, Nick?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Murder Capitol, huh?” I didn’t answer. “You just get into town?”

“Yessir.”

“Hungry?”

“I could use something to eat,” I admitted. “I really could.”

“
LIKE IT
?”

“I like it fine.”

We were sitting at his kitchen table, eating an early supper of grilled chops, fresh corn, and a tomato and onion salad. The late afternoon sun came in through the west window, brightening the colors on my plate. Lazarus brought a glass out of the cupboard and placed it next to my can.

“Here,” he said. “Drink it like a white man.”

I poured the beer into the glass. “What did you think of the boys Kim was with?”

“They only spent the night. The one boy said his name was Eddie, but the younger one called him Red.”

“Redman,” I said.

“That’s right. This Redman was the tougher of the two, a brawler from the looks of him. And cocky, like everything was a joke.”

“What about Jimmy, the other one?”

“He was trying to be tough, but it wasn’t in him. You know what I mean.”

“Where did Kim fit in with the two of them?”

“My daughter was way too old for both of them,” he said bluntly. “This Redman character clearly thought he had a shot at her. Maybe something was going on between ’em, I don’t know. But like everything else, she didn’t seem to be too serious about the situation.”

“What do you mean?”

He stared into his beer can. “Ruth and me had Kimmy late in life. That’s not an excuse, but we were a little old to be raising a girl in these times. When she was in her teens, we thought her wildness was just something she’d grow out of, but she went through her twenties the same damn way. After Ruth passed on, I lost touch with her. She sends me expensive gifts on holidays now, but to me it doesn’t mean much.”

“Do you have any idea where they’ve gone?”

“They were headed to the Banks, I think.”

“They tell you that?”

“I heard them talking about it.”

“Where? Nags Head?”

“That would be a start,” he said.

“She have friends there?”

“She worked there years ago, in restaurants. Worked in beaches all along the coast for a while, from Nags Head down to Cape Fear. Yeah, I suppose she’s still got some friends on the coast.”

“Where did she work in Nags Head? Specifically.”

He tapped his empty can on the table while he thought. “It was a Mex place or Spanish. That’s all I can remember. It’s been a long time.”

“That’s plenty of information,” I said, exaggerating. “Thanks.” There couldn’t be too many Mexican joints on the Outer Banks. I was beginning to get a picture of a smalltown girl, attracted to the resort towns by the money and drugs that came with northern tourists, elements that fed her natural wild streak.

“You like what you do, son?” Lazarus asked.

“I don’t know yet. It’s my first time out. I’m really just bulling my way through it right now. Anyway, it’s not like you see on TV or in the movies, I can tell you that.”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t watched either for years. But a man ought to like what he does.”

We polished off the six, and Lazarus walked me to the door. On the way I stopped at a picture of Kim that was, from the looks of her hairstyle, probably ten years old. Lazarus caught my look.

“She got her beauty from my wife,” he explained.

He shook my hand and wished me luck. I thanked him, feeling almost reluctant to leave. I stepped out into his yard. The dog followed me halfway to my car, where he turned and loped back up the porch steps. His tail was still wagging as he watched me drive off.

MCGINNES WAS GONE WHEN
I returned to our room. I washed up and put on a black sweatshirt over my T-shirt. Then I read the note that he had taped to the phone:

Nick—

Behind our room are some woods. Walk straight in and down the ridge until you come to a clearing. I’ll be by the tracks.

Johnny

T
HE RIDGE DROPPED
gradually and was dense with pine and the occasional cedar. The ground beneath my feet was soft, in some places almost muddy.

At the bottom of the incline were a clearing and railroad tracks, just as McGinnes had described. A narrow drainage ditch ran along both sides of the track. The clearing looked to be only fifty yards in length. Then it ended and the tracks continued into the forest.

McGinnes was standing at the edge of the clearing, backlit by the sun, which was large and red and dropping quickly below the treeline. He was holding a pint bottle.

“Did you bring any beer?” he asked as I approached him. One of his eyes was covered by a wild strand of hair and the other one told me he was stoned.

I let the knapsack off my shoulder, opened the main flap, and pulled out a cold sixpack. McGinnes reached for one and popped the top. I did the same.

“You’ve been out here all afternoon?”

“Fuckin’ aye,” he said, waving his arm 180 degrees. “This is great. I haven’t had a vacation in years. Here’s to Ric Brandon.” He saluted and took a swig from the bottle, then handed it to me. I hit it lightly, tasted peach brandy, and chased it with some beer.

“Where’d you get that?”

“I hitched to the ABC store,” he said. “Any luck today?”

“A little. I’ll tell you later.”

We had a seat on the tracks. I listened as McGinnes described his day. Occasionally he would stand to illustrate a point, center stage as always.

Twilight came and with it bugs and the sounds of bats and small feet scampering through leaves and brush. I felt warm and relaxed.

A small sound like the ocean increased from a faint to audible rumble. McGinnes put his hand on the rail and led me back to the rightmost edge of the clearing.

“You ready?”

“For what?”

“A ride!”

“No way, Johnny.”

“Why not?”

“It’s stupid, that’s why not.”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” he said as the sound of the train grew louder. “You never did this before?”

“No.”

“All right, listen up. All you do, you pick out a boxcar, an open one if you can, or a flatcar. Then you run alongside it, fast, and grab hold of the ladder or door. Swing up with it, don’t try to let it pull you up. Otherwise, you’ll go down. This run here is only forty, fifty yards before you hit the trees, so you’ve gotta be quick.”

“I’m not doing this, man.”

“Okay,” he said. “Then watch me.”

The train sounded loud enough to be upon us. But a half
minute went by before the lead car emerged from the pines and passed. McGinnes dashed out as the lead car vanished into the woods at the other end of the clearing.

He reached it quickly, up the ditch and sprinting alongside the train. He grabbed the ladder of a boxcar and swung up, dragging a foot out first, then putting that foot on the edge of the open car and looking back in my direction. After that he put both feet on the ladder, held an arm out for balance, and let go, running alongside the train and slowing to a walk just as he reached the trees.

He spun like a dancer and bowed. As he swaggered towards me, he bent down once to pick up and toss a rock. I could see that he was stoked.

“Easy, huh?” he said. “Goddamn, that brings back some memories.”

“You do that often?”

“I did,” he said. When the caboose passed, we walked back on the high side of the ditch and took a seat on the tracks. “I rode trains all over this state when I was a kid. You had to be careful, though, even then. This was the early sixties. You’d hear stories how these tough-ass railroad men would beat up tramps trying to catch trains out of the yards. Of course, in my old man’s day, they’d throw you right in the chain gang if they caught you.”

“You like growing up down here?”

“It was all right,” he said, and passed me the brandy. “I lived in quite a few places, but I was a teenager in Carolina.” He stared ahead and absently reached back for the bottle, a grin on his face. “I did some crazy shit, like any kid I guess.”

But I had a feeling that he had been a little more out there than most. He had once shown me a photo of himself as a young man, standing balanced atop a split-rail fence, shirt off and arms crossed and flexed, with one eyebrow devilishly raised below a DI brushcut.

Time passed and the night was uncommonly bright. Black
woods surrounded the moonlit clearing. As we killed the last of our beer and brandy, I felt a slight vibration beneath me and heard the low rumble begin.

“Come on,” McGinnes said, and I followed him to the edge of the woods where there was no light.

He pushed down on my shoulder and we crouched in some leaves and soft earth. The rumble increased in volume. A swift wind rushed behind and through us, and I felt my adrenalin pick up.

“Talk to me, man.” I was anxious and a little pickled from the booze.

“All right, Jim,” he said, his hand on my arm. “When that first car passes and hits the trees, get out of here fast and run to the right side of the clearing, up the ditch and sharp left so you’re parallel to the train. I’ll be ahead of you. Just watch what I do. Remember, swing up that ladder, don’t let it drag you.”

I could barely hear him between the crush of sound that was on us now and the wind that had picked up and was blowing leaves past us into the clearing. My fists were tight as the first car came suddenly out of the trees. I remember feeling that I only wanted to be up and moving away from the blackness around me, up and out and into the light.

“Book!” he shouted, and we were in the clearing and sprinting towards the train, down and up the ditch where I stumbled, then regained my momentum, then alongside it, feeling its power and thinking it was much stronger than I had imagined. McGinnes was in front of me and moving his head back and forth from the train to the trees ahead, then quickly and fluidly grabbing the rung of a boxcar ladder and rising up upon it. He yelled back at me and I saw that the clearing was running out, and I grabbed, white-knuckled the ladder of the car behind him, and ran as he yelled again, and I put one foot on the bottom rung and pushed upward with my shoulders and I was on the machine, tight against the ladder, as the clearing ended and we all roared into the woods together.

I looked behind and the clearing was gone. Around us were only dark forms, and, ahead, the engine cutting a path through the trees. The cars were rocking wildly, and I kept a tight grip on the ladder.

McGinnes was silhouetted against the moonlight and climbing up the side of his car, which was swaying in an irregular pattern to mine. When he reached the top, he let go one arm and one leg, and released a yell and burst of laughter. His hair blew wildly about his head.

“This is great!” he screamed back at me. “Isn’t this fucking great?”

“It is,” I said, and realized I was smiling. My grip loosened and I took a deep breath. The time between the clanging of the rails shortened as we picked up speed.