How I Spent My Summer Vacation (14 page)

He was a kind, face-saving man, I decided. And then I thought about how many times a day I revised my opinion and description of him. I wondered what that meant.

Mackenzie told me that he’d spoken to Sasha again. The imminent arrival of her cousin the lawyer had elevated her spirits. “She says this is all a crock,” he relayed, “and that she didn’t do it, and that all she’s letting herself worry about is whether the saltwater taffy people won’t mind a short delay.”

We talked more about the case. “I still can’t figure out who in that bar did do it, though,” I said. “None of them fit the witness’s description.”

“Except Sasha.” Mackenzie spoke softly, watching me all the while.

“What?” I asked with a smile.

“You really, truly believe the killer was in that lounge?”

I nodded. “At least one of them. There were two, remember? Killers. Plural.”

He brushed my small point away. “In the lounge, already festerin’ about how to get rid of Jesse Reese—for reasons we cannot even begin to speculate on now, correct?”

I nodded twice for that one.

“An’ this killer person, he says, ‘How convenient. Just as soon as I finish this martini, here, I’ll frame that big black-haired woman.’”

“Well,” I said. “Well…
yes
.”

He shook his head and said nothing, which is one of the single most annoying actions a person can make. Back and forth, back and forth, despairing of my logic, of my intelligence.

“Mandy.” He finally spoke, thereby avoiding death by mischance at my hands by a fraction of a silent second. “Mandy.” He made my name sound heavy, something he must bear. “That is just too… Sure, there could be a little coincidence in this world, and if you consider bad timin’ a form of coincidence, then there’s sure a lot of it in crime. But still, somebody who wants to kill Reese happens to be there, in the same cocktail lounge? What is he doin’, trailin’ him? And Reese wouldn’t notice or react?”

“Yes. He was there, drugging him, too. Starting his plan. The bar was
full
of people who knew Reese. Frankie. His wife. A woman with rings on her toes.” He was decent enough to refrain from once again pointing out that none of the aforementioned fit the witness’s description. Only Sasha did.

I kept pushing my theory, ignoring its holes. “Even Lala’s boyfriend Tommy pointed him out and knew who he was. Maybe Reese didn’t know that the other person wanted to do him in, but that’s not relevant. Why are you acting like this is all silly?”

Mackenzie shook his head again. “We don’t
require
fancy theories like that—”

“
Requahr
! We don’
requahr
?”

He sighed rather histrionically. “That sure wasn’t a professional assassin that did Reese in. It was somebody madder than hell at him. Right then. Doesn’t require old secrets or a long history, either. A minute of fury, that’s all it took.” His voice dropped until it was barely audible above the soft hum of the sea. “Enough anger and a key to that room, that’s all it took.”

“Not a key—I
told
you.” But that hadn’t been his point. I lowered my voice. “You’re not a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t Sasha, are you? You’ve been really nice about this, and I thought you—but you aren’t sure, are you?”

He didn’t answer right away. “I’m a hundred percent sure I don’t want it to be Sasha,” he finally said.

“But what?”

“But nothin’ else—nobody else—makes a bit of sense.”

“
Sense
! How could it make sense to bludgeon a man you didn’t even know? How could it make sense to think that my friend since childhood, that Sasha Berg could ever,
ever
—”

He was shaking his head back and forth again. I shut my eyes and resumed ranting blindly until I ran out of steam. “The
witness
—” Mackenzie began.

I found a further supply of steam. “The so-called witness saw
two
people. A woman and a man. If you’re so eager to lynch Sasha, tell me who the man was.”

Return to head shaking. I was causing him either palsy or massive despair, and worse, it was giving me a bitter pleasure. He had to atone for his lack of faith, for his policeman-deep love of evidence. “That second-man business doesn’t help Sasha’s case, y’know.” His voice was soft and menacing, as if a silencer had been put on it. “Or Dunstan’s, either. Bein’ party to a murder is a mighty good reason all by itself to not want to be found.”

That’s about when I stopped talking to him and started wondering how deep a hole I’d have to dig to bury a body Mackenzie’s size in the sand and keep it hidden through the time, tides, and tourists of the summer season ahead.

“MAYBE,” MACKENZIE SAID AS WE walked back across the soft sand, “we need a little perspective.”

Our silences had grown incrementally along with the lengthening shadows of afternoon. “Everybody needs perspective on everything.” I admit I was snappish. I also admit I didn’t care. “What else is new?”

“Maybe we need a little distance, a little time apart.” I didn’t know what to say to that. It’s scary when men overuse adjectives, as in a
little
distance, a
little
perspective, a
little
time apart. Besides, Mackenzie and I already had our full measure of distance, only not in well-placed or meaningful spaces.

That was part of the problem. Plus, I was supposed to be the one saying sentences like that. When I decided to say them.

“Ahm not much use here. The police are real competent, an’ Ahm an outsider.”

He sounded serene, devoid of emotions, but according to the ahm-slurs-per-second test, he was either upset or pissed with me. Sometimes, it’s affection that’s on the upswing, but I was pretty sure this was not one of those times.

We meandered toward the boardwalk. It looked chilly and dark in the recesses under it, but Georgette wasn’t underneath. She was, however, crossing the sand toward us along with a shaggy, bearded man. Both were swathed in layers of shirts and socks, and both carried lumpy bundles.

“So now that you can get your things back,” Mackenzie said, apropos of nothing.

It took me a second to grasp his meaning. “My things? The things up in the, ah, suite? They’ll let me have them now?”

He nodded.

I felt a new surge of irritation. Why hadn’t he told me sooner? My feet hurt. I wanted my other shoes.

“Hey! Where’s the kid?” Georgette’s voice was loud and hearty.

I could sense Mackenzie’s muscles tense at the ready, so I spoke quickly. “Hi, Georgette, this is Mackenzie.”

She nodded. “Didn’t think anybody grew up that fast.”

“Lucky’s with his mother, or at least with the security guard.”

She pointed one half-gloved finger at me. “He’ll be out again before the sun’s down. I see him and lots others all the time. I always watch. I see everything. And this here is Blinks.”

He was aptly named. It was a twitch or an old injury or a tic, but his eyes moved up and down double time.

“Been hunting.” Georgette lifted her bundle as proof. “Tuesday pickings are best, you know.”

“Wednesday’s trash day.” Blinks was either ill or had a naturally hoarse voice. “Won’t be much for the next few days.” His unkempt beard and bleary eyes made him look old, but he was really only worn, the lines on his face unnatural, like scribbles defacing a photo. His hardscrabble life didn’t allow people to live long enough to be as old as he looked like he was.

Georgette’s age was equally unreadable. The etchings on her forehead and below her eyes were like scars, the result of external, not internal, processes. Her lips were chapped, she was missing teeth, and her wispy brown hair belonged on a person twice the age I was sure she must be.

She smiled now, cradling a bundle that was larger and more bulgy than her companion’s, but less expertly tied. “Didn’t I say this was my lucky day?” she asked with a low chuckle. The high heel of a shoe poked out of one of the bundle’s openings, although I couldn’t imagine her tottering on spikes across the sand. In another gap in the fabric, I glimpsed something metallic, and in still another break, a brown and hairy swatch I didn’t want to think about. I just hoped it had never been alive. I could see, too, the edge of a bright red book. Not her
War and Peace,
then, but another paperback chucked by a tourist. Georgette was a literate pack rat.

“Didn’t I say?” she repeated, looking right at me.

“You did, indeed.” Seeing her clutching other people’s trash and beaming her gap-toothed smile produced a dull ache at my center. What made a day lucky for her except that it hadn’t rained or snowed and no one had hurt her?

Oh, yes, the zapping of her enemies, she’d said. Well, whatever her imagination seized upon as a source of joy, whatever provided her with a sense of justice, was fine with me. The woman had precious little to hang on to in her life.

“I thought Mr. Hoover would get him,” she told Mackenzie.

“Who’s that?” he asked mildly.

“J. Edgar. Our FBI in action.”

“Yes, but I meant—who was the person he was going to get?”

“That no-good Reese.”

“Jesse Reese?” His deceptively mild voice was a dead giveaway that he was suddenly and intensely interested.

Wisps of her fine hair floated as she nodded. “Hoover didn’t care. President Reagan wrote me back, though. Thanked me for my interest. Presidential seal on the paper and everything.”

Mackenzie’s interest level flagged. Georgette’s combo platter of Ronald Reagan and the long-dead J. Edgar was a bit much for credibility. “So…you knew Jesse Reese,” he said with minimal interest.

Georgette nodded. “Not like I know
you
. Not to
hang out
with, friendly like. But I knew him. So did my sister. He gave talks. Took money. I know lots of people. Everybody on the beach and on the boards. Everybody. Like The Donald, you know?”

My turn to nod.

“And Prince Charles? People think he’s stuffy, but he’s a very good singer. Lots of pep, poor, blind thing. Wouldn’t think he was royalty.”

“You mean Ray Charles, maybe?” I asked.

She waved the question away and peered at Mackenzie. “This your husband?”

I shook my head. I didn’t look at my nonhusband because I didn’t want to know how he had greeted this suggestion.

“Husbands don’t last,” Georgette said. “My Kurt died.” She seemed still surprised by the loss. “Went like that.” She tried to snap her fingers, but the cut-off gloves got in the way.

The Ancient Mariness was at it again, schlepping out her story at the slightest—or no—provocation. I remembered Kurt’s name from this afternoon’s portion, and now I knew he’d been her husband. She’d been married. She’d had a sister, a home with curtains on her windows, and a child. She’d had more ties and more stability, at least at one point, than I’d yet managed to obtain. And she’d wound up on the beach.

“No money then,” she said. “No job. No more house.” Her eyes misted up, then over. “Money thought I was dead.”

Mackenzie’s interest reignited. “Heap o’ stir and no biscuits,” he said.

“Hey!” Georgette smiled with delighted recognition.

Blinks and I stood watching. It was hard, though, with his incessant eye movements, to know whether he was as confused by the exchange as I was.

“Enjoyin’ poor health,” Mackenzie went on. “Life is short and full of blisters. Money thinks I’m dead.”

“How’d you know that?” Georgette asked.

“Had an uncle sang it all the time,” Mackenzie said. “Kind of the family theme song, to tell the truth.”

“He’s okay,” Georgette said to me.

Blinks, still clutching his hobo pack, winged out an elbow and pushed at her. “Hurry up,” he said. “You gab too much. Everybody we meet. Makes me crazy. Miss dinner you keep talking.”

I thought she might slug him, but instead she smiled almost coquettishly. “
Men
,” she said, but she turned and followed him up the stairs and onto the boardwalk.

“‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,’” Mackenzie murmured after they were gone. “Do you think Frost was talking about a rescue mission?” We slowly walked toward the boardwalk. “What a life. Particularly in the shadow of those casinos. You know they give away seventy mil a year in complimentary food and drink and rooms like yours?” He appeared lost in his own dark thoughts. “‘And homeless near a thousand homes I stood / And near a thousand tables pined and wanted food.’”

“Who said that one?” It was embarrassing that a cop knew more poetry—or at least could quote more—than an English teacher, but that’s how it was.

“Wordsworth, a hundred years ago. How did he know how it was going to be?”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I think about the poorhouse scenes in Dickens, and how righteously superior to those times I used to feel. Now, I’m not sure. Maybe they were kinder back then. A poorhouse has to be better than no house at all, no place on earth that has to take you in.”

“Or my grandma,” Mackenzie said. “She used to talk about how her house was marked with a chalk that told hobos—a nicer word than
homeless
, don’t you think?—she’d feed them. Somehow, back then, they were thought of as unlucky victims of the system. Now, we blame the victims instead. I know some of them made bad choices and crash-landed on the streets, but still…”

My urge, as always, was to do something about it, but this one was beyond even my most ambitious imagination. We walked along, kicking sand, sighing, lost in our separate thoughts. But by the top of the steps Mackenzie began talking again, and not about contemporary social problems. Georgette and Blinks had not been forgotten, but put in a mental pending file, to be retrieved only in proper sequence. Meanwhile, like a needle lifted from, then put back on the same track of a still-whirring record, to use an archaic image, he was right back where he’d been when we were interrupted.

“So you can get your things,” he said, “then pack up. I have my car, too, a real shame, but if you want, we could both use mine, then come down on the train later this week or whenever, and both use yours and—”