Bullet Beach

THE STONE VEIL

THE STEEL WEB

THE IRON GLOVE

THE CONCRETE PILLOW

NICKEL-PLATED SOUL
^*

PLATINUM CANARY
^*

GLASS CHAMELEON
^*

ASPHALT MOON
^*

BLOODY PALMS
^*

BULLET BEACH
^*

DEATH IN PACIFIC HEIGHTS
^*

DEATH IN NORTH BEACH
^*

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Sincere appreciation for the contributions from my brothers Richard and Ryan and from David Anderson, Jovanne Reilly and Karen Watt.

‘I live my life as if every moment precedes my death by seconds.'

— Fritz Shanahan

ONE

If Dietrich Shanahan didn't make the trip now, odds were diminishing that he ever would. For a man of seventy-two, he was in pretty fair condition. His organs worked – most of them, most of the time. He was agile enough to putter in the garden and had enough endurance to take his dog Casey on long, brisk walks. He could make the overseas trip pretty easily, but who knows how much longer that would be the case. True, his mind was slipping a bit. That particular facet of aging seemed to accelerate after a bullet made its way through his thick skull not that long ago.

The incident had him clinging to life, something he hadn't had that much affection for until, in his late sixties, he met Maureen and living became meaningful. Though he would never tell anyone this – he wasn't given to sentimentality – she made life worthwhile. Only she. If she were gone there would be no point.

Maureen, a couple of decades younger, was beautiful, smart, fearless, funny and hungry. Almost always hungry. Hagan Daz Swiss Almond Vanilla was a better gift than diamonds. Dinner at a nice restaurant and she was happy for a week. He had no idea what she was doing with him. While he considered himself unfairly fortunate, he wasn't about to ask her why. That would only screw it up.

From the bathroom, even with the door closed, he could hear her doing her morning routine, slippered feet padding about the hallway's hardwood floor, then hushing away in the distance as she went to the kitchen. He'd been up for a while, long before she climbed out of bed. He had his own routine. He'd fed the ancient, bony cat, Einstein, and let his sixty-pound, spotted and speckled Catahoula hound out the back for his morning constitutional. A little breakfast and coffee as he read the morning paper.

He dropped his razor and in his search noticed the cap of the toothpaste further over by the bathtub. He kicked the razor toward the cap so that he'd have to bend over just once. What laziness he thought. He noticed his embarrassment as he glanced at his own image in the mirror.

Shanahan was feeling a little self-conscious, a new and foreign feeling. He'd decided to grow a beard for the first time in his long life. He'd always thought them pretentious, but he was going where no one knew him – another continent altogether. And in some way he didn't quite understand he wanted to see without being seen.

Maureen was coming with him on the trip. He knew the reason she was coming with him. She wanted to make sure he was all right. She wouldn't admit it because if she did he wouldn't allow her to come along. And he wouldn't ask her if that was the reason because he didn't like the idea of her lying. It was one of those compromises he learned to make late in life.

On the other hand, she was the one who suggested he go. It was her idea to exorcise – out of the many he had been forced to confront – the remaining ghost in his life.

‘Did you sleep well?' Shanahan asked Maureen as he came into the kitchen. She washed some blueberries to put into her yogurt.

‘I always sleep well,' she said, grinning. ‘A guiltless conscience.'

‘That's telling.'

‘Telling what?' She had that look.

Perhaps he could pull it back.

‘That you are an angel.'

‘Ah,' she smiled, ‘very good.' She wore tan slacks and one of Shanahan's old, white shirts, open two buttons at the collar. Her auburn hair caught a bit of morning light that angled through the window. ‘You are much more agile in the word department than you were when I first met you,' she said.

That was true. And to further show what he'd learned, he kept quiet.

She looked down, stepped over the sleeping cat, and headed toward the coffee maker. Einstein had found the sunlight as well and sprawled in the warm spot it made on the floor. If cat years were the same as dog years, Einstein was one hundred and twenty-six. The vet called him an ‘elderly gentleman.' Though he moved slowly and his bones sometimes made him look like a walking tent, there was an enduring elegance to the old tom.

‘We should get to the airport by ten thirty. The plane leaves at midnight,' she said.

Shanahan went outside. In a few hours, the air would thicken and the temperature would climb. It was best to get the watering in early. Otherwise, he'd have to wait until evening. August was to summer as March was to spring – ugly months. Were there the Ides of August? It wasn't all that much better in Thailand in August. He and Maureen could expect hot, humid days in between the monsoons, he thought.

He unwound the hose and pulled it toward the big beds of lilies and iris. Both the irises and the peonies, down a slight embankment, were on their last legs. The growing season for most of the plants in the garden was over. Maintenance seemed to be the challenge – prolonging life, he thought as his thumb on the nozzle produced a fine spray that danced a bit in the air before falling toward the ground.

No dreams of Fritz last night. But his brother permeated his thoughts. Sometimes it was hard to tell which thoughts came from actual memories and which were dreams. Could be both, entangled somewhere in the complex circuits of the brain. But the dreams of Fritz vexed him, resurrected a tremendous guilt. He wasn't one, he thought, to dwell in the past. But here it was. Whatever madness possessed him to find out about his brother after sixty years was intensifying. And there was a race now – to find Fritz Shanahan before one of them died.

He moved the spray, the low sun creating various rainbows in the mist. The air was heavy and made the morning quiet and still. The quiet was eventually breached. A wife shouted something to her husband. Shanahan looked down the slope of the slight hill his home rested upon, through a break in the scraggly trees and across the creek to the street on the other side. A man in a gray suit climbed into a late model Hyundai. The man yelled back. Casey, nearly as old as Einstein, was awakened by the noise and noticed a trespasser. He made a half-hearted effort to catch the squirrel, turning the event into more of a scolding than a murder attempt. Quiet, still again except for the sound of the water coming out of the hose.

It was a long shot, Shanahan believed, trying to find his brother. The news article in an English-language Thai newspaper was two years old. Maureen found it on the Internet. The paragraph was just one item in a compilation of recent crimes.

Two years ago. That would make this seventy-year-old Fritz Shanahan the right age. Could there be two seventy-year-old Fritz Shanahans in the world? After days of searching Maureen could find nothing more of old Fritz. Yet it was enough for a plan. A silly plan Shanahan was inclined to think. Even if Fritz was still alive and still in Bangkok, finding him wouldn't be easy.

Maureen tapped the horn lightly as she backed her Toyota down the driveway. He turned, waved. She was off to pick up some things for the trip and she would stop by the realtor's office to make sure her clients were being covered in her absence. She was gone for the day. He was on his own.

The bar was empty. Harry, the owner, sat at the far end, face in his hands. He looked up as Shanahan approached. He shook his head and was quiet for a moment.

‘Growin' a soup catcher, Jesus Christ, Deets, what in the hell is wrong with you?'

‘Thought I'd see what it looks like.'

‘Looks like hell, that's what it looks like. You get yourself a grocery cart too? I got a razor around here somewhere. You can shave it off in the men's room.'

‘Now that I've got your opinion, I guess I'll keep it.'

‘You know, you've been actin' strange for awhile now. Sixty years drinkin' the same beer and then you just change to Guinness. Just like that.'

‘Sixty years?'

‘What?'

‘You saying I started drinking at twelve?'

Harry laughed. ‘Look at this, will you? Just look around. You know what happened to my customers?'

Shanahan shook his head ‘no', pulled up a stool a couple down from Harry. Harry got up, ducked under the bar and found a bottle of Guinness for Shanahan.