Hawk Channel Chase (15 page)

“In another life,” I said.

“Can you give me a date that’s less metaphysical?”

“Never met my neighbor.”

“He worked at the post office,” she said. “Everybody knew him.”

“That’s what I hear. How could I possibly know more than Carmen? You’re here for today’s Sam Report.”

“Spill.”

“I saw him on Sugarloaf. He was driving a borrowed car. I don’t know what kind of jam he’s in or how he’s thinking, but the wheels are turning. He knows there’s a problem and he doesn’t want to drag you into it.”

“Bullshit in every breath you take.”

“Marnie, it’s me. We both know that if, two days from now, everything turns out fine, an explanation, an apology, all that, you’ll still kick my ass. Literally karate-kick my ass if I’m bullshitting you right now.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Damn it.” She pondered it all for about ten seconds. “So what are you doing? Why were you on Sugarloaf, for instance? Where is Sam staying?”

“Every time I’ve asked you not to put something in the newspaper, two things have happened, right?

“Well, I’ve waited until you gave me the green light.”

“And you’ve gotten a big scoop out of the deal.”

She pushed the shift lever into reverse, started the Jeep. “Don’t even tell me. That way I won’t have to kick your ass no matter what. Because you’d know for months that I had done it.” She backed out of the lane onto Fleming without looking first.

I went inside to change my shorts, and my shirt for the fourth time that day.

Sam hadn’t radioed in?

10

Blue dusk cooled the Fleming sidewalk. I walked toward Margaret, toward the restaurant under purple thunderheads haloed by orange and yellow vapor. Why, after several years, was I always surprised to see Cobo Pharmacy gone? So many homes in renovation, a dawn-to-dusk percussion of power nailers, saws, portable drills. The island’s constant soundtrack. Rhoda Baker’s Electric Kitchen, where Hemingway took his 1930s fishing “Mob” to breakfast, was now a private home. At least the building was intact. I knew its owner, knew she appreciated the history.

Bobbi and I had walked this way to dinner, library events, friends’ parties. A few times, on cool evenings, we invented reasons to hike to Fausto’s or the bookstore, or to stroll around, chat and take pictures. This time I felt uneasy, as if I had been naughty, was being summoned to present myself for punishment.

How, on short notice, could our love affair be so close to teetering? Certain things had changed. The fun quotient was down. Support had displaced laughter. She needed a shoulder to cry on more often than an ass to grab, a smile to share. What had begun so well now felt habitual, draining. I wanted to yank her away from routine, put spark in our time together. But there was a new complication, according to Liska. An old friend had reentered her life.

I wasn’t ready to quit. I didn’t want to be another lover-gone-sour on her life list.

The people I had seen waiting for tables at Michaels in recent months, sipping wine outside at twilight, wore tropical formal. Men in pressed trousers, exotic-print silk shirts, shoes a step above casual. Women in designer sundresses and tasteful, abundant jewelry. I entered in my usual fishing shorts, frayed polo shirt and beat up deck shoes. I love this island. The woman at the podium told me that our table was ready but my date had phoned. Bobbi would be ten minutes late. She seated me under a canvas umbrella, gave me a wine list and hurried off before I could order one of each.

I let my brain drift, ignored other diners on the patio, and began to feel what Sam calls short guilt. My first mission was to make it work, to figure how to salvage my relationship with Bobbi. I also wanted to see what she knew about the roadblock at Bay Point, details of circumstance, victims and on-scene teams. I wanted to help Sam Wheeler, but I couldn’t push too hard. Keeping secrets was part of her job. I didn’t want to shaft her work ethic.

A server whom I knew as Suzette appeared, snapped me out of my dream state. “Mr. Rutledge…” She touched the wine list.

Bobbi enjoyed white wine with dinner while I preferred reds, a problem solved easily at home by opening one of each. I decided to let her order a full bottle if she wanted volume. I pointed at the “by-the-glass” list, picked a cabernet at random.

“The Beaulieu Latour,” said Suzette. “A fine choice.”

A cynic’s translation: my snap selection would hurt my wallet.

I felt myself deflating, releasing wire ropes that had been muscles and tendons that morning. The past ten hours had been an ugly run. Beth Watkins and Julio Alonzo at the door. Catherman in the post office. Cecil blithering in his nasty office. Frank Polan in his Speedo. Sam Wheeler on Sugarloaf, battle-alert in spite of his carefree tone, his turmoil, perhaps even fear, locked up for the sake of clear thought. Copeland Cormier’s performance at Virgilio’s. He would pay the devil at dawn, no doubt. I hoped he wouldn’t chase me down to explain himself. Exhale new flavors of bad fumes while promoting his mission.

When Suzette returned with my glass of red, she also carried a bottle of white. “We got another call. Your friend will be another fifteen minutes. I was asked to have this Chalk Hill Pinot Gris ready for instant consumption.”

“It might be gone by the time my date arrives,” I said. “What are we hearing?”

“Sirius Real Jazz. I think it’s Channel 67.”

“I wish all restaurants…”

“I’m glad this one does. You okay with the cabernet?”

I was so okay that I may have dozed though I can’t recall. I remember hearing “Take Ten,” by Paul Desmond, something by Miles Davis, then Bud Shank and “Little Girl Blue” by Chet Baker. And a breeze that rattled the tree tops but no longer threatened rain.

Forty minutes later I was okay with my second glass of cabernet when Bobbi arrived. She looked tired and smelled of cologne and conditioner, her hair still damp from showering. She angled her shoulder for a no-wrinkle hug, then sat and mimed a frantic expression. Cast an admiring glance at the Pinot Gris.

I poured.

She took a substantial sip and held out her glass for more. “You don’t want to know.” She faked a laugh. “It was a bullshit day.”

She was right and I knew the second part.

Suzette appeared to offer appetizers. She did not mention that I had already eaten and paid for an order of scallops and brie. Bobbi picked onion soup; I chose shrimp with mango sauce.

Then it became the two of us. I let Bobbi shoot first.

“It started yesterday,” she said. “Some rich pest reported his daughter missing. Today he downgraded his problem to a stolen car. He came to me first and I blew him off. Then he suckered a rookie at the Freeman Substation into believing him. It cycled back to my desk, so I made a call. Sure as hell, Storms Tow Jobs had it in their No Name impound lot. I think the car broke down and the complainer wanted us to pay for the tow truck. He’ll get a knock on the door tomorrow. He can learn all about false reports of missing persons.”

“Why did you say ‘liaison’ when you answered your phone today?”

“My ever-expanding job description. The glamour of coordination, the thrill of reports, the invigorating meetings. The chain between my ankle and my desk gets shorter by the week.”

“You signed up to fight crime,” I said, “and you’re good at it. All this chicken shit, it sounds like they’re buying your soul, whether you want to sell it or not.”

“I never looked it at that way, but they are. They’re chipping away. I know it probably impacts you once in a while.”

“We live with each other’s flaws and joys and jobs,” I said.

“And celebrations and pain. Meanwhile, you’ve been gallivanting around the Caribbean. Who hired you?”

“An ad agency in Clearwater. I wasn’t in the Caribbean.”
 

“Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I pictured you cavorting around with every spinnaker bunny southeast of Cuba. You went to which Bimini, the one in Lake Erie?”

“Bimini is fifty miles east of Lauderdale. The people who don’t have satellite watch Miami TV stations with old-fashioned rabbit-ear antennas. It’s no farther away than West Palm Beach.”

“Okay,” she said, unsure. “Why Bimini?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t argue and I ate great food, drank Kalik, and put about fifteen miles on a rented bicycle. On an island with one road, that’s yo-yoing, but the scenery came to me differently each trip up and down the island.”

“Lovely.”

“It wasn’t all roses. There’s still a sense of gloom over there. The islanders suffered back-to-back tragedies in 2005. A Chalk’s seaplane crashed and killed eleven locals, then The Compleat Angler Hotel burned down.”

“Bad news happens around the globe, Alex.”

“Bimini’s small, like an extended family. It hit them hard.”

“I stand by my first view.”

And those six words are a clue, I thought, that she’s treating our quiet meal as she would a departmental meeting. Some habits become ingrained.

Our food arrived. We agreed that it looked great, that it tasted just as good. I waited until her spoon had done a few round-trips to the onion soup. She sampled the bread and drank more wine. I should have waited longer.

“Did you connect the names,” I said, “the guy wanting the free tow and the girl that may have been harmed at Bay Point?”

Bobbi’s face froze. She stared at me and chewed her soup. Her face became harder as five or six seconds ticked by. “You had an agenda for this meal?”

“Not at all, Bobbi, and you invited me here. All I had was that question, but fair enough. Here’s where it came from. On Monday a Mr. Catherman offered to buy my house for an exorbitant sum. On Tuesday I saw the squib in the
Citizen
about the roadblock and all. Also on Tuesday Bob Catherman showed up again at my door and told me his daughter was missing.”

“That makes it your business?” she said.

I reminded myself to tread easy. “Okay, here’s another one. Did anyone in the office suggest that the car at Storms Tow Jobs might belong to a crime victim?”

The hint of a pause made me glad I hadn’t pointed my finger.

“Alex, if it was an official case I could tell you. I
would
tell you. Maybe this will answer your question about liaison. I was specifically asked not to reveal any aspect of the joint investigation, including agencies’ names. Are you through with your questions?”

“Bobbi, do we have a romance or not?”

Her face kept its toughness. “Don’t forget, Alex, we’re trained in interrogation techniques. I’ve been sent to schools in Miami. I learned how to be on both sides of the table. And you, you’re not a stupid man, wouldn’t ask that question if you didn’t already know the answer. That makes it fair play for me to ask you the same thing. And none of this ‘I asked first’ business. What’s on your mind, since you just took me by surprise?”

“I want us to work,” I said. “Walking from the house I felt alone without you. I’d rather not feel that way going home. Did the feds ask you to shut down your private life, too?”

“This is bullshit I don’t need right now.”

“Look, Bobbi. If you want to take a break from the relationship, if you want to call a ‘time-out,’ please say so.”

“You’re the one taking breaks, rambling around the Caribbean, or the Bahamas, whatever.”

“We both work for a living. I may have a few more enjoyable moments in my job, but…”

“Right,” she said. “My work doesn’t offer built-in vacations.”

“Does it make any difference that I thought about you in Bimini, when I saw things that I knew you would enjoy?”

“It’s a good line,” she said.

“I didn’t intend to deliver a ‘line.’ I meant to suggest that my feelings haven’t changed since…”

“I think I’ll skip dinner.” She stood. “If you’ll put this on your card, I’ll pay you back this weekend.”

“What happened to your rule, one-drink, no-drive?”

“I shouldn’t stay over. I would have to leave at 5:45.”

“Never bothered me before,” I said.

“I might get a phone call during the night.”

She walked.

I said, “Work or personal?” but doubted that she heard.

I stayed long enough to finish my shrimp. A man needs sustenance. Looking around, I recognized six, maybe eight faces at other tables. I assumed the rest to be newcomers or tourists. I wondered if they looked at me and thought the same, or didn’t care. Several times in recent years I had felt that once-familiar streets felt changed in subtle ways that threw my balance, made me the tourist. Passing the old Cobo Pharmacy building on my way to the restaurant, I had stifled a weird impulse to pound on the door, demand that the clock be turned back. Maybe my subconscious was trying to whisper to me, tell me to slow down. Or speed up. Or quit worrying about it. I wished I was back on Bimini where my biggest worry was bird crap on the bike seat.

As I left the restaurant a woman seated close to the door tapped my arm. “It’s okay, darling,” she said. “She was just suffering a short nervous. She’ll be fine in the morning.”