It Takes Two (34 page)

Like liners passing in the night,

Before the break of morning’s light,

We rush apart in desperation

Never knowing that, as lovers,

We could joyfully unite

Forever at our secret destination.

Gone before dawn, love passing in the night—that about sums it up
, I thought. My imaginary, crowded shower room suddenly became the empty bottle in my hand.
Wartime passion
, I thought.
Hell, it’s no different than what’s served back home. Plug yourself into this or that Navy beauty, Lieutenant. Next, try a Marine stud. Ride him and get off. Rushing, blasting desperation—faster than a Fort Myers’ widow’s pot shots, faster than Jap torpedoes or a horny priest on his back. Boom, flash, splash and love goes to Davey Jones and your life is changed forever. But the secrets all remain. Doesn’t it ever stop?

I signaled for a refill.

Wearing an aloha-cloth sarong and matching head bandage, Carmen danced toward us from across the room, snaking his hips, undulating his thin, golden arms and snapping his fingers. Following him with his eyes, Tommy quickly bridged through “Anchors Aweigh” before shifting effortlessly into “Little Grass Shack.” Catching the cue, Carmen paused at the edge of the dance floor and hula-bumped a quick tale of happy rain, high tides and satisfactory love affairs.

“Aloha, ladies and gentlemens,” he cooed as he approached us. “Freshen everybody up, yes?”

Not far behind him, the Caloosa Club’s newest waitress worked the room with a plated-silver tray of hors d’oeuvres. Slim had spiffed up one of her nylon waitress uniforms with black fishnet stockings, spike heels, a white lace apron and matching cap. She looked like a middle-aged tart disguised as a French maid.

“How you be, sugar pie?” she said, throwing me a wink before turning her full attention to Asdeck. “Admiral, honey, would you like a delicious canapé?” She pronounced the word “canopy,” selling it with a garnishment of upturned tits and the explanation that “these shrimp and cream cheese things are real, real good, sir.”

We each took two. She was right. They were indeed real good, seasoned with just enough Tabasco sauce, chopped onion and celery salt.

“Settling in, then, my dear?” Asdeck inquired politely. “We’re delighted to have you on board.”

“Sure hope to stick around longer than that poor little house-maid,” she replied, shifting the tray, clearly tickled to be noticed by the Caloosa’s real boss.

“This is gotta be better’n serving cold twat to some bull-dagger jailhouse matron,” Emma Mae commented charitably.

Asdeck took another shrimp cracker. “Was Mary Davis even jailed long enough for the dragon ladies to actually notice her?”

Emma Mae glanced over at one of the tables of poker-playing men beyond the bar. “Lawyer Ridley Boldt,” she said, elbowing Slim. “You know him, right over there behind all them red and blue chips? He bonded Mary out Monday afternoon. But who you figure put up the money? Mary don’t have none. And they tell me he don’t run no charity ward.”

“Poor little thing hardly got home,” Slim said, speaking directly to Asdeck, “before she was back on the street. Didn’t even get her shoes off and you know who shows up? Them boys in the white sheets. Girlfriend of mine says they were in a mood like General Sherman with a toothache. Told Mary to tote her ass outside on the double because they were fixing to burn the house down. And she answered, ‘You’ll burn it with me lying in my bed.’ ”

Asdeck nodded. “And they were as good as their word?”

“One of them sons-a-bitches tossed a pine-knot torch onto the porch,” Slim continued. “House was dry as a church picnic. Might’s well a-been a wood pile.”

“Fire hadn’t hardly spread up to the roof,” Emma Mae said, “before little Mary was out the back door and down the alley.”

“Cracker boys ran faster, though,” Slim concluded. “In the opposite direction. Once they heard the fire engines.”

“Them gelded, no-account weasels, they don’t like nobody seeing their ugly faces,” Emma spat. “I’d like to burn one or two of them out myself someday—put a torch up their candy asses, see how they like that.”

“And where did Mary go?” Asdeck inquired politely, accepting a second scotch and soda from Carmen.

“Nobody knows,” Emma Mae answered. “Left town, most likely.”

“If she knows what’s good for her,” Carmen offered, “then she is catched some kind of jitney to someplace where they never heard of Fort Myers and don’t speak Florida cracker.”

And that’s basically what had happened. After her house burned, Tommy put Mary on a bus to Frank Bridge in Philadelphia. A few days later, a Lee County grand jury indicted her for evidence tampering. On the advice of Ridley Boldt and a visiting Yale-trained barrister sent down by Father Bridge, she turned herself in a month later, quietly pled guilty to leaving the scene of a crime and was sentenced to time served plus a month’s probation.

Willene and her cousin Mildred happened to be out of town the day Mary’s hearing took place, having embarked on an extended trip to Mexico and the Panama Canal. Not incidentally, they left exactly one day after Carmen swore out assault-and-battery warrants on his assailants, as well as anyone known to have aided or abetted them. In a small town, not much happens by accident. So we toasted Mary, Willene and Mildred with our freshened drinks, and then the subject turned to fishing.

A few minutes later, Brian Rooney, the masseur who doubled as the club’s bouncer, appeared at my side. In contrast to Carmen and Slim, he was soberly dressed in black waiter’s pants, white shirt, maroon necktie and blue blazer.

“You got a gentleman of the press outside,” Brian whispered, leaning close to my ear. “Says he’s a real good friend of yours. Says you definitely want to hear what he’s got to say.”

“Skinny as a cheap golf bag? Face like a starched wash cloth? A Mr. Nype?”

“That’s him. From the
News-Press
. You want I should toss him out?”

“No, let him in. Just be sure he’s not carrying a camera. No sense scaring the natives.”

Reporter Nype did indeed have something to say. Once he got a whiskey sour in his hand and consulted his watch, he informed me that his Sunday edition, on which the presses were just now rolling, would report exclusively that Sheriff Hollipaugh has solved the double killing of Hillard Norris and Washington Jefferson Davis. Hollipaugh expected to present evidence to the grand jury tending to show that the two men shot and killed each other in a misunderstanding over a job offer. Although two guns were used, one weapon had been removed from the scene of the crime by a person or persons unknown and never recovered.

When I remarked that this news ought to make the town sleep better at night, Nype iced the shit-cake the sheriff had handed him. His newspaper would further reveal that Hollipaugh had charged two out-of-work laborers and a Bradenton businessman with the vicious attack on my restaurant manager, Cabildo Morales.

“The laborers,” he said, smiling thinly, “are well-known Klan members presently residing in Dade City, miles from Lee County. After arraignment, they failed to post bond, and are jailed pending a hearing in two weeks.”

The troublemakers, in other words, were imports, and thus no reflection on law-abiding Lee County.

Nype had drained his drink and was now sucking the cherry in a distracted way. Catching his meaning, I signaled Carmen. Slim quickly delivered the refill. Nype blinked when he recognized the former Arcade Café waitress, but didn’t say anything. Instead, he gulped down most of the second whiskey sour, then added that Bobby Jim Carter, the Bradenton van-line manager, had been arrested in the parking lot of Flossie Hill’s department store. Given that Carter was being arrested on an aggravated assault-and-battery charge, Nype opined that he certainly didn’t help his case by foolishly resisting arrest.

“Must be one tough cookie,” I remarked. “Moving furniture for a living.”

“Too tough for his own good,” Nype replied. “It seems he was unavoidably injured while being taken into custody. The name of the arresting officer, by the way, was not made available. By the sheriff ’s office, I mean. And I asked twice. I really did. They told me that the record had been sealed.”

I said, “I doubt that Carter was hurt as bad as Mr. Cabildo Morales, who is currently scheduled for reconstructive dental surgery.”

Nype shrugged. “An eye for a mouthful of teeth, did I make that up? Mr. Carter is a patient in the hospital’s lock-up ward. He won’t be moving anything anytime soon. Both his arms were broken. And three fingers and a couple of ribs. He’s in traction.”

“An eye for a mouthful of teeth,” I said. “I’ll have to remember that.”

Slim returned with the canapé tray. Nype ate six or seven shrimp toasts, one by one, while Slim stood there beaming. Then he finished his cocktail and handed her the glass.

“There any limit on these beauties?” he asked.

“Not for you, sweetheart,” she answered.

“Yeah,” Nype said, the word going soft around the edges. “You bet. No limits for Ralphie. Let’s try one of those martini things next time.”

Admiral Asdeck, who had been making conversation across the room, drifted over and introduced himself to Nype. “Believe I’ll chance another glass of rat poison myself,” he said, his smile that of a shark contemplating a grouper. “Anyone care to join me?”

When Nype replied that he had a new model on order, Asdeck took him by the elbow and led him slowly to the far end of the bar where Carmen was just adding gin to a silver shaker.

Glancing down at my Regal, willing the shower fantasy to reappear, I wondered how I was going to get through the summer. Frank Bridge had left town. And Bud had said he’d swim back to Iwo Jima before he’d return to the Caloosa.

In the background, I could hear Wanda Limber’s golf-course gush as she was introduced to Nype. “Oh, I read all your articles,” she declared. “So well written.”

Behind me, someone in Ridley Boldt’s party shuffled the cards. The Louisianans were on the dance floor, fox-trotting to “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Lou Salmi had exchanged his waiter’s coat for a gabardine sports jacket and was dancing with a rich widow from Norfolk. Behind the bar, Carmen inspected his heavily rouged mouth in the mirror.

With the chandelier gleaming overhead and the soft-focus neon outlining the bar and tray ceiling, my little windowless club room seemed to be transforming itself into a Southwest Florida haven of tolerance and sophistication.
This might all work out after all
, I thought. And I felt like hell.

So I hardly noticed the low click-click of the bulletproof door being opened. The newcomer was dressed in a freshly pressed gray suit, electric blue sports shirt, brown and white wing-tip shoes and aviator sunglasses. His broad shoulders and the muscles of his arms and thighs strained lightly against the fabric of the suit. A smile dodged here and there around his wide, just-shaved face. When he caught sight of me, his smile widened out into a grin.

I touched my eyebrow in salute. Detouring around the dance floor, he shot me a V-for-Victory sign.

When he was standing next to me, icy nail-pricks skittered around my scrotum and up and down my spine.

We both spoke at once.

“Lieutenant, I’m damned glad to—”

“I heard somebody rounded up a whole herd of Klanners and—”

We tried again, with no more success, before falling silent. Dropping into a chair and signaling for beer, I patted the empty seat next to me. “Welcome back, Sarge,” I said, my throat going a little tight.

He lowered himself jauntily, made fists and pounded softly on the chair arms. Then he grazed my shoulder with his balled-up hand. “Happy to be back,” he said, raising the aviator shades and winking at me. His left eye-socket was black and purple. The tan, cat’s-tongue cheek below it was badly bruised. “Can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.”

I could have just smiled and smiled, stayed goofy all night, gotten nowhere. Instead, I leaned forward, inspected the eye briefly, and asked, “A man named Carter do that?”

Bud shook his head. “Was one of his little buddies caught me off guard. Had to take all three of them in. See, once I got a good description from your Mr. Morales there, and asked around a little, it wasn’t no trouble finding them two worthless crackers. And Carter I seen once, right here.”

“Carmen,” I said. “Carmen Veranda. “That’s what he goes by around here.”

“Right. Yes. Carmen,” Bud agreed. “If you say so. Have to say he wasn’t looking like no movie star in that hospital bed. But he sure told me enough to round up those bastards. Told me he’d got two of ’em good with his fingernails. Scratched their ugly faces. So there wasn’t no trouble about initial identification.”

When I said I wouldn’t have thought so anyway, Bud glanced in Carmen’s direction. “He’s tough. He rode in the squad car with me up to Dade City to finger the first two. Had his head bandaged like a busted bowling ball. Same for sighting Carter. The two of us just marched right into the bastard’s office, took a look around, rode back and swore out the warrant.”

I asked Bud who’d helped bring the Klanners in. He looked surprised. “Wasn’t but three of ’em. And the boys from Dade City is just little fellas. Bobby Jim Carter now, he does put on a good show. He’s big. And when I come up to him and asked him to go peaceful, he tried to knee me in the nuts and get me in a hammerlock all at the same time. Might of worked if he knew what he was doing, and was half in shape. But he moves slower than a yard dog sniffing a rattlesnake hole.”