Unexpected Dismounts (13 page)

“You gonna make me take notes, Big Al?” he said as he loped beside me across the intersection of St. George and East King.

“You don’t need to take notes. You’re like a sponge.”

“You mean like I’m all the time scrubbin’ things?”

“Um, no, that would definitely not be your MO. I mean you absorb everything you see and hear.” I gave him a sideways look. “Which sometimes serves you well and sometimes doesn’t.”

“Like when I listen in on what you and Mr. Chief sayin’ about me when I ain’t s’posed to be listenin’.”

“Exactly. Matter of fact, today, just pretend you aren’t supposed to be hearing what I’m saying and you’ll be fine.”

“Unh-uh,” Desmond said. “You gon’ be impressed with how good Imma listen to you.”

He was actually true to his word. During his first foray through Castillo de San Marcos, the enormous seventeenth-century Spanish bastion that still guarded Matanzas Bay as if an attack by a band of marauding Englishmen was imminent, Desmond watched my lips as I regaled him with tales of pirates hunting the treasure fleets and of the intrigue of three hundred years of back-to-back colonial wars, in which the fort was never defeated.

But I was more impressed with the way he climbed on the bronze cannons and pressed his ear to the wall to try and hear the screams and fighting in the
coquina,
just as the legend had it. He gazed from the always-burning watchtower light to the bay beyond, as if he, too, were watching for his comrades coming from Spain. And he shivered in the dungeon where even after at least a hundred visits, I also felt the death and dread and victory that seemed to ooze from its weeping walls. It was late afternoon and the busloads of school kids had already left for the day, so there was no one to pretend to be cool for. He was finally the child he’d never gotten to be, and I no longer cared whether he passed history or not. This was the test
I
couldn’t fail.

The Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse near the City Gates on St. George Street was about to close when we got there, but I knew Cricket, the current guide, so she let us slide in, pointing out the button for the self-guided tour. I nixed that. Desmond would have a field day with the robot professor. He actually took one look at the tiny ramshackle bald-cypress-and-cedar room and decided this was far superior to the school he was currently attending.

“I don’t think so, dude,” I said. “They wouldn’t let you chase girls here like you get to do at Muldoon Middle.”

He smiled slyly. “I could chase women anywhere.”

Yeah, I definitely needed to get Chief to have the talk with him. Again.

The sun was sinking beneath the tops of the palm trees when we emerged from the school’s outhouse, clearly Desmond’s favorite part of the school experience, which meant all the other historical sites were closed. I decided to just take him for a stroll down carless St. George Street and fill him in on some of the lesser-known stories along the way. I was just getting into the Dragon of St. George Street when a voice called out,

“Now there’s a lady who looks like she could use a nice aperitif to finish off the day. Don’t you think, Lewis?”

“If ‘aperteeth’ mean food, I am there,” Desmond said, and bolted for the Monk’s Vineyard, where two old guys sat on the front porch sipping the fruits of their own vines.

“It doesn’t mean food,” I said, on Desmond’s heels, since he was already going up the two small steps.

“It
can
mean food,” said the one who’d been referred to as Lewis. He had a ridiculous mustache that looked like he’d stolen it off the figure of Yosemite Sam in the wax museum on the Plaza. “We serve appetizers now.”

The other man rocked his chair onto its back legs and waved in the direction of the chalkboard hanging behind him. His mop of gray curls brushed against it and erased half the items on the menu. Was that hairdo a perm? A
perm?

Desmond gazed at the board and pointed toward the smeared version of “Wings Hotter than the Surface of the Sun.”

“I’ll have me a order of them,” he said.

“Coming up,” Moustache said. “And you, pretty lady?’”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said. “Except to a Diet Coke if you’ve got one.”

“You want it with lemon, lime, or cherry? It’s all fresh.”

They were trying so hard I felt a stab of pity. Five years ago, when the Monk’s Vineyard had opened here in the heart of the historic district, they’d served only wine, and the best of it. At first it had taken off, attracting the more trendy locals as well as their traveling counterparts. I used to recommend it to some of my carriage tour customers, the ones who tipped generously and weren’t carrying shopping bags full of cheap souvenirs.

But like most specialty businesses, the owners of the Vineyard—two older men whose names I’d never caught—had been slammed by the recession. From the looks of the menu, they’d gone from exclusively selling fine wines to serving up Mrs. Paul’s and calling it hors d’oeuvres. It didn’t seem to be working. The FOR SALE sign they’d had hanging on the front railing for a year was still there.

“Make that two orders of wings,” I said. “The kid has a hollow leg.”

Just the thought of eating them nearly gave me the heaves, but the smile it brought to Moustache’s face might make it worth a little indigestion. I’d never met these two before and might not again if the place ever sold, so what was the harm? Besides, Desmond was settled in at a table, legs propped on the railing, chewing the proverbial fat with Curly. I hoped he’d find out if that was a perm or natural. I was trying not to imagine the old gentleman under a dryer with rods in his hair.

“You going to give me a hand, George?” Lewis said from the doorway.

“I’ve got to entertain the guests,” George said.

“I could give you a hand,” Desmond said.

“No, you couldn’t,” I said.

“What will you have to drink, son?” Lewis said.

“Whatever’ll make my moustache grow like yours. That thing is
cool.”

“Nothing with alcohol, caffeine, or sugar for him,” I said.

George chuckled, a sound seldom heard in anyone but an old man with time on his hands. “That just about rules out everything, doesn’t it?”

“Why don’t you let him come in and pick something out?” Lewis said.

I sighed and gave Desmond the nod. He was through the door before I could take my next breath. Give it fifteen minutes and he’d be filling orders himself, guaranteed.

“He’s a pistol,” George said. “Reminds me of myself at that age.”

I had to agree in terms of the hairstyle. I forced myself not to ask him for the name of his salon.

“I see you made the papers.”

I almost overshot the chair I was just lowering myself onto.

George chuckled again. “Front page too. Now, Lewis, he’s an old journalist from way back—used to run the night desk. He wasn’t that impressed with the article—said it was slanted—but I got the gist of it, and I have to say, I knew it was only a matter of time before you started to stir things up around here.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Do we know each other?”

“I used to hear you giving your carriage tour spiel. Liked your spirit.”

“The owners didn’t call it ‘spirit,’” I said. “They called it ‘sarcasm.’” And worse, but I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.

The way George was nodding, I didn’t have to. “I’ve been following your work the last several months,” he said.

“And?” I said.

He waited while Desmond presented me with a Diet Coke, festooned with a lime wedge, a lemon slice,
and
a maraschino cherry, and disappeared back into the innards of the Vineyard, though not before calling over his shoulder that those wings would be up in just a minute. I’d once worked in a short-order restaurant, and it was a week before I got that lingo down. He was obviously a natural for the food-service industry.

When Desmond was gone, George leaned forward in conspiratorial fashion. “It’s quite the coincidence that you walked by today because I was thinking about trying to contact you.”

“I’m not sure there are any coincidences,” I said.

He looked up at the porch ceiling, and brought his substantial gray eyebrows into a scowl.

“Would you know anything about a brothel upstairs there?”

I gagged on the cherry.

“You work with the ladies of the night,” he said. “I thought you might have heard about these two.”

“What two?” I said.

“I don’t know for sure. Lewis thinks I’m going senile, which is why I’m mentioning it to you while he can’t hear. But ever since we rented that apartment up there to those two women, there’s been a lot of foot traffic between the hours of dark and who knows when. When we come in to open up in the morning, their shades go down and it seems like they sleep all day. The next night when the sun sets, it starts all over again, and not always the same guys.” He shook his curly head ruefully. “Seems like they’re doing a better business than we are.”

“Here’s your hot wings.”

Desmond approached with two steaming plates. He’d donned an apron with a silk-screened figure of a Friar-Tuckish monk holding an impossibly large bunch of grapes on the front of it. Lewis watched fondly from the doorway, wearing its twin.

“What else can I get you?” Desmond said as he set the platters on the table. “Another Diet?”

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I said.

“I ain’t got time for that. We just had a order called in.”

George raised his copious eyebrows at Lewis. “Called in? From where?”

“From above.”

“Upstairs above?”

“That’s the one.”

“No.”

“It’s for two pastrami on rye and an order of baked beans, George.”

“We don’t make pastrami on rye.”

“We do now.” He nodded at Desmond, who was whipping off his apron. “Desi’s making a deli run.”

“No, really,” I said—but I couldn’t get more than two words in between George and Gracie.

“We’re not taking food up there,” George said. “Not until Ms. Chamberlain checks it out for us.”

“What?” I said.

“I told her about my suspicions.” He nodded significantly toward Desmond. “I’m having her go up and see if we’re right. She knows how to handle these things.”

“You got you some bad women up there, Mr. Georgio?” Desmond said.

Both men looked at me, hearts probably beating faster than they had in years. Either that, or they were about to stop altogether.

George regained his composure first. “I see the boy is aware of the kind of work you do.”

“My bio mom was a—”

“I’m appropriately honest with him,” I said.

“You better go check it out, Big Al,” Desmond said. “I can hang here with Mr. Georgio and my man Lewie. We got plenty to do.”

“Sit down and eat these wings,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I directed a stony gaze at George. “You’ll keep an eye on him.”

“I won’t let him out of my sight.”

I turned to Lewis. “How do I get up there?”

“There’s an elevator in the hall,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

I was still gritting my teeth as he led me briefly into the dark interior of the Vineyard and then to an even darker hallway that ran to another door onto the street.

“Thank you for doing this,” Lewis said. He pulled at his moustache with nervous-looking fingers. “I keep telling myself George is wrong, but if he isn’t, we don’t want any trouble with the police.”

“I’m just going to look it over and tell you what I see, and that’s all,” I said.

But “Lewie” was already on his way back to the kitchen.

I decided I must be crazy as I bypassed the deathtrap of an elevator and went for the stairs. Who knocks on a door and says, “Excuse me, but are you turning tricks up here?” What was I, the moral police for the entire town now? Only because I didn’t want Desmond to think I was a slacker did I keep going up to the first landing. Okay, that was a lie. I reached the second floor, crossed the hall, and banged on the door only because I knew Lewis and Clark weren’t going to let me go until I finished the expedition.

I half-hoped nobody would respond, but my fist hammering was rewarded by “Hang on—I’m coming,” followed by a jerking open of the door. A woman blinked at me in the semidarkness. Dressed in cleavage-to-thigh spandex, she was only slightly more classy than the women who still walked West King Street.

Doggone it. George and Lewis were right.

“What is it?” the woman said.

Make that “girl.” Even through the smoky air, I could see that the half-inch layer of makeup she was wearing added five or six years to her face. She couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one.

“So who are you?” she said. One side of her goopy lip headed toward her nostril, where a tiny gold ring resided.

“I’m looking for a job.”

No. I did not just say that. Who was going to believe—

But the girl stepped back briskly and nodded me into the room with a snap of her head. The moment I stepped into the light from the lava lamp on the table, of course, she apparently realized her mistake.

“I don’t think you’re qualified for the work we do here,” she said, words jammed together like a runaway train.

Her polyurethane smile was so condescending, I wanted to shake her. Maybe the girls on West King
were
classier than she was. At least they weren’t proud of their profession.

“Sorry.” She pointed her breasts toward the door. “We’re a modeling agency and quite frankly, you’re a little old.”

“Get off it, honey,” I said. “I know what you’re doing up here.”

She jerked her arms into a fold across said breasts. “And what would that be?”

As if on cue, a seductive giggle rippled from behind the closed door off the room we were standing in. A muffled male voice responded, followed by another throaty laugh. I watched Chesty swallow. Desmond’s Adam’s apple had nothing on hers.

“If you’re a cop, you better show me a badge,” she said.

“Look, I’m not here to bust you,” I said. “I’m not even a cop.”

A light dawned in her eyes, which were so dilated I wondered she didn’t pull a pair of shades out of that cleavage. “If you’re looking for your husband,” she said, “that isn’t him in there. Not unless you robbed a cradle.”