Big Goodbye, The (9 page)

Off the lobby in opposite directions, two corridors extended about a hundred feet with doors on each side.

“We just gonna bang on every door until we find her?” he said.

Lightening flashed outside and for a moment the entire room was bright and well lit. A few seconds later thunder rolled in the distance. Another storm was moving in off the Gulf.

I shook my head. “I’m gonna quietly look for her. You’re gonna stay here and keep an eye on things.”

The hallway was dim, lit only by intermittent fancy fixtures with low-watt bulbs inside them. Several rooms were empty, the beds made, the doors open. I tried the handle of the first closed door I came to. It was unlocked. I opened it. Inside, I found a tall man with a long white beard sleeping on his side. I closed it and tried the next one. This time I found a rotund woman lying on her back, a small dog asleep on her slowly rising and falling chest.

I had gone through a handful of rooms when I found Lauren’s. She was fully dressed, sitting on her bed, crying.

“Jimmy,” she said, as she jumped off the bed, rushed over, and hugged me.

“You okay?” I asked.

“What are you doing here?”

“Came for treatment,” I said. “Whatta you think?”

“I can’t go,” she said.

“I’m not giving you a choice.”

Lightening flashed outside, illuminating the raindrops on her window.

“You don’t understand,” she said.

“Well, you can explain it to me or keep me in the dark,” I said. “Either way you’re coming with me.”

She didn’t say anything.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” I asked. “What does Rainer have on you?”

“Nothing,” she said.

I shook my head. “There was a time when you told me everything,” I said. “At least I thought you did. Was I wrong about that, too?”

The wind picked up and pelted the window with a volley of raindrops. Through the rain-spattered glass pane I could see the leaves of banana trees and palm fronds waving in the wind.

I could tell she wanted to change the subject. She said. “If you’re forcing me to go, we better get going.”

Chapter 17

“Clipper?” Lauren asked. “What’re
you
doin’ here?”

“Ever since your soldier here done got hisself shot up, he can’t do shit by hisself.”

I laughed, but only so they wouldn’t see the sick look on my face. He was right. There were many aspects of my job and my life I could no longer do, and though there wasn’t anything I could do about it, I wasn’t about to get used to it.

“Would you please tell him I need to stay here,” she said.

He looked confused. “You don’t want to go?”

“No,” she said. “I can’t.”

Lightening flashed and lit up the room, Lauren’s eyes growing wide at the sight of the bound and gagged nurse and unconscious security guard.

“You don’t have a choice,” I said. “Let’s go.”

“You heard the man,” Clip said. “He da one puttin’ money in my pocket tonight.”

As we walked out, Lauren looked back at the night nurse with an expression of helplessness and apology. “Tell Dr. Rainer I was forced to leave against my will. I’ll be back. And I’ll pay him every penny. Okay? Got that? Be sure to tell him.”

The nurse nodded.

We continued moving, Lauren leading, and I realized Clip had stopped. I turned to make sure he wasn’t about to shoot the nurse or night watchman, and found him leaning over saying something to the nurse.

When he reached me, I asked him what he had said to her.

“That I put the key to the cuffs in fat boy’s shirt pocket so he can free her when he wake up.”

“That was nice,” I said.

“She ain’t bad lookin’,” he said. “Still want a white woman—least once.”

“Oh,” I said, with a big smile. “So you were being romantic.”

“Well, I can’t just break in and kidnap a dame,” he said. “I ain’t that romantic, but—”

Lauren had already stepped out of the back door and she was now coming through it again, a gun held to her head by the small gray-tinted man who had been in my office earlier in the day. He was standing behind her, using her body as a shield. The big man was behind him. I could see his upper body and head over Lauren and the little guy. He had to duck to walk through the door.

Through the door behind them, I could see that the rain was coming hard now, slanting in the wind, visible in the light mounted beside the door.

When I looked back at Clip, he was pointing his gun at them.

“Tell the nigger to drop the heater, soldier,” the little gray man said to me.

They were inside now. The big man had his gun out too, pointing it at me.

I looked at Lauren, trying to reassure her, to let her know everything was okay, though clearly it was not.

She said, “Looks like you showed up for a gun fight with only your fists.”

“One fist at that,” Clip said. “Ain’t that some kind of shit.”

“I said tell your nigger to drop his gun,” the small man said.

Lightning flashed, followed fast by a sharp clap of thunder. The storm was on top of us now.

“He think you pay me enough for me to be your nigger?” Clip asked.

“I do pay you a lot,” I said.

“Not enough to be your nigger,” he said. “Nobody got
that
much money.”

“Okay, fellas,” the little man said, “I’ve let you have your fun. Now drop the gun or Mrs. Lewis here’s gonna have something even Dr. Rainer can’t help her with.”

“I ain’t never put down my gun for no man,” Clip said. “Never goin’ to neither.”

I knew that was the case, which was why I had been stalling. Clip would die before he’d relinquish his weapon. It was a matter of pride, a defiance that preferred death to dishonor, which was how he viewed surrendering in any form. It was what made him so dangerous, but in this instance he was endangering Lauren’s life, and I was the one who had set it up.

“You better talk to him, soldier,” the little man said to me. “He’s gonna get the lady killed.”

“He won’t put down his gun,” I said. “Not for any reason. He’ll die first. Let us all die.”

“You be the first one I shoot,” Clip said to the little man.

“So we know Mrs. Lewis will die and we think perhaps I will,” the little man said. “Wonder who else will? Mountain, who you gonna shoot first?”

“Got my gun on the cripple, Cab,” Mountain said.

“He’s got no gun and one arm, Mount,” Cab said. “Why don’t you point it at the jig.”

As Mountain moved his gun off me, Clip shot him in the face. He dropped his gun as he was falling and I picked it up.

“Look like the crip and jig got the drop on you,” Clip said.

The thunder and lightening were happening nearly simultaneously now, the flashes of light and cracks of sound so often as to be almost continuous.

“I’ve still got the girl,” Cab said.

His voice was much softer now and not nearly as confident. He hadn’t expected what had just happened, and wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“Mrs. Lewis and I are going to back out of here,” he said, “and you two are going to let us. I know you’ll shoot me now, so I won’t hesitate to shoot her.”

He began backing out, dragging Lauren with him. Clip and I began to follow.

“Stop right where you are,” he said. “Or I’ll shoot her right now.”

“Then get shot yourself,” Clip said.

“I don’t mind dying so much,” he said.

When they reached the back door and he had stepped through it, Lauren’s heel got caught on the threshold and she tripped and fell. As she was going down, Cab released her, fired off a few rounds at us and disappeared into the rainy night.

I ran over to Lauren. Clip ran past us out into the storm in search of Cab.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

The security guard was beginning to stir and the doors of patients’ rooms were opening. In another moment we’d have a crowd of eyewitnesses.

“I’m better than Mountain,” she said, nodding to the large man lying on the floor, an expanding pool of blood beneath his head.

“I’m glad,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”

I helped her up, then checked outside. Clip ran up just then. He was soaked through, his face and hair dripping.

“I missed him,” he said. “He’s gone.”

“We’ll deal with him later,” I said. “Let’s get Lauren home.”

“Whatta you mean
we’ll
?” he asked.

“That I’ll—”

“That cracker’s all mine,” he said.

Chapter 18

“What are you mixed up in, Lauren?” I asked.

She didn’t say anything.

I took my time driving Lauren home, using the hard slanting rain and wet streets as an excuse, but it didn’t do any good. Every attempt I made to start a conversation failed. I was trying to remind her of how good it had been between us, convince her she could still trust me, but she just wouldn’t respond.

I changed my approach.

“Does Harry know?”

“No,” she said. “He has nothing to do with this.”

Still protective over Harry.

“It’s a private matter,” she said.

“Not any more it’s not,” I said. “People are dying. That kind of thing always draws attention. Pesky cops and reporters are gonna keep at it until they have something.”

“But it was self-defense,” she said, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest. “I’ll swear to it. Nobody’s gonna—”

“Who was self-defense, Lauren?”

“The big guy Clipper shot tonight,” she said. “He won’t get in any trouble for that, will he? Even if he does, I’ll testify my life was in danger and he saved me. It’ll just have to be after the election is over.”

The storm was continuing to move past us, the thunder and lightning nearly gone now, only the rain remained. The rain reflected the lights of downtown as it sluiced down rooftops and the sides of buildings and ran in gutters toward drainage ditches.

“What about the others?” I asked.

“What others?”

“You don’t know of any other murders that happened recently?”

She shook her head. I wasn’t sure I believed her.

“The boy who sold you the file out on the beach,” I said. “Freddy.”

“He’s dead?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been locked up in a room. How would I—I can’t believe he’s dead. He was such a sweet kid. He was just trying to help me. Who would kill him?”

“You tell me,” I said. “Who would beat him to death?”

“He was beaten to death?” she asked, her voice breaking.

She began to sniffle a little, and I looked over to see a tear rolling down her cheek.

I still couldn’t be sure if she were faking or not, so I decided to hit her with the death of her friend and see what happened.

“Lauren,” I said. “Margie’s dead too.”

“No,” she said. “Oh God, no.”

“Beaten to death just like Freddy.”

She began to cry harder. She seemed genuinely upset, but I still couldn’t be sure. After all, she had been convincing when she told me she’d love me for the rest of her life too.

“Lauren, what’s going on?” I asked. “What are you involved in? It can’t just be one of your extramarital indiscretions.”

Her head was bowed forward, her face in her hands, little moans escaping periodically.

I pulled up in front of her house on Beach Drive overlooking the bay and parked next to the curb. The rain was only a light drizzle now, more mist than anything else, and the land and water, even the houses and cars, seemed clean and fresh.

“Let me help you,” I said. “I can—”

“You’re the last person who could help me,” she said, opening her door. “All you can do is make things worse. Please, if you ever loved me, stay away from me.”

Chapter 19

Too wound up after dropping Lauren off to even think about sleeping, I bought a bottle of Cobbs Creek and drove to the Dixie Sherman.

When Jan Christie opened the door of the small wooden lookout shack on the roof and saw me standing there agitated and holding a brown paper bag, she shook her head.

“Not tonight, soldier,” she said. “We got a live one.”

One of nearly ninety volunteers known as spotters, Jan spent several hours each night watching the sky for enemy aircraft. Her station was a small wooden enclosure on top of the Dixie Sherman. Like the other volunteers, she had been trained to identify aircraft—both ours and theirs—by sight and sound.

I wasn’t sure if the “live one” she had tonight was one of theirs or one of ours.

The flyers of Tyndall Field were bad about buzzing the beaches and bridges, and our spotters spent most of their time “spotting” them instead of the Japs or Germans. Though the base had issued explicit orders that no planes were to be flown beneath 1,000 feet and north of Highway 98, there was still the occasional pilot who had to test his wings.

“I brought your favorite,” I said, holding up the whiskey.

“Every time she’s close enough to get her poison in you,” she said, “you show up here wantin’ me to cut the wound open and suck out the venom.”

Not nearly as beautiful or regal as Lauren, there was something about Jan that made me think of her. It was in her attitude, her posture, the hunger beneath her plaid skirt and white blouse. She was right. I only used her, treating her the way Lauren had treated me, and finding temporary relief. Very temporary. And not just because I was so limited in what I could do. The next morning I would always feel far worse than Lauren ever made me feel, my self-inflicted sickness and inexcusable cruelty toward a girl whose only sin was letting me, making me hate myself more even than Lauren.

“Can I just sit here and drink?” I asked.

Before she could answer, her radio sounded and she stepped back inside her station.

Folding up my raincoat, I spread it out on the top of two wet wooden steps, sat down, and leaned on the door she had just closed. Holding the bottle between my legs, I broke the seal and unscrewed the cap with my hand. Dropping the cap and pushing back the paper bag, I turned up the bottle and took a long swig, letting the alcohol tingle my mouth and burn my throat.

Through the thin wooden door, I could hear the details of the situation they were dealing with. A flyer from Tyndall Field had already zoomed down beneath the Hathaway Bridge when it was open for boat traffic, and now that it was closed again, looked to be planning to fly beneath its span with vehicles on top of it.