No Regrets, Coyote Page 6

  “I don’t know. Are you okay?”

  “Stop playing games.”

  “Dad, I’m going to hang up. You go to bed.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Good night, Dad. See you on Thursday.”

  I walked Phoebe to her car behind the Datcha dance club. She clicked her remote and the car’s lights flashed. I opened the door, and she slid into the seat. “You need to find a woman who can reciprocate. You’ve done this before.”

  “I loved two women in my life, you and Georgia. The others were sweet but inconsequential romances.”

  “What about Molly Seagrove?”

  I met Molly at Knew and Used, a secondhand bookshop in Eden where she worked. I had been surprised and delighted to find a copy of Edward Trelawny’s recollections of the last days of Byron and Shelley, a book that I had previously owned, read, and lost three different times. I brought my prize to the register. Molly looked at it, smiled, and said she remained skeptical of Trelawny’s claim to have snatched Shelley’s undamaged heart from the funeral pyre. “But it makes for a good story,” she said. “And that’s what counts.”

  I asked her immediately if she wanted to go dancing. And I don’t dance. She said yes and we found ourselves that night at the bandstand on the beach awkwardly bopping to fifties doo-wop played by Poochie and the Skylarks. We talked about books and movies and Molly passed my snarky but crucial Forrest Gump/Black Swan test: she disliked them both as much as I did. We went to her place on Cleveland Street. She led me through the darkened house to her bedroom.

  When I picked her up that Saturday for an outing to Shark Valley, I met her mom, Désirée, and her two children. She hadn’t mentioned any of them at the dance. Joey was seven, the girl, Carson, four. I took Molly and the kids to the beach the following Sunday, and, of course, the kids were jealous of the mother’s attention to the interloper. Carson grew a bit more open to my presence after she and I took a stroll along the beach, carefully stepping around the stranded jellyfish. She looked up at me and said, “Would you like to hold my cute little hand?” And I did.

  That evening I learned that Désirée and her boyfriend Snooky Scampini lived with Molly and the kids. Snooky was snaggletoothed and squinty-eyed. His dark hair was thinning; his lips were glossy. He was the only English-speaking dishwasher at the Mangrove Diner. He went to Mass every morning and twice on Sunday.

  When I asked Molly about the kids’ dad, she told me his name was Ezra Seagrove, and he was a calamitous drug addict whom the children loved to death. “He’s not without his saccharine charms,” she told me. Then she told me that she was still married to Ezra, and that led to an uncomfortable discussion and to tears and confusion and to my telling Molly that she needed to choose. And that was the last time I saw her. I said, “I can’t do this.” Knew and Used has since closed. The house on Cleveland Street was vacant for a year and a half before an Asian couple moved in. Snooky left his job at the diner. I still check the obits for Seagrove and Scampini. Molly once told me that her mom grew up in Atlanta and missed the place, and that’s where I picture them now when I think of them.

  5

  The bar is called Leo’s, but insiders call it the House of Blues. It’s a cop bar in Eden owned by the Police Benevolent Association, the cops’ union. It attracts male officers, county and cities, and the women who love them from all over South Everglades. It’s always a little intimidating to walk in. Anyone who’s not a cop is suspect. I’m barely tolerated, and that only because I know Carlos and have helped the Eden Police Department out with some cases, but I find it hard to relax in there. A lot of heavyset guys in Dockers with buzz cuts and brushy mustaches, wearing their polo shirts a size too small. Lots of aggressive posturing, cursing, trash-talking about the Dolphins, and arm wrestling.

  The bar itself is pleasant enough, a kind of faux–Irish country pub. Stone floors, timbered ceilings, whitewashed walls. There’s a pool table beyond the bar, a dozen high-tops in the center of the room, and a row of tables facing cushioned benches against the wall. That’s where I spotted Carlos, his tie loosened, his reading glasses at the tip of his nose, studying a report and absently swirling a cocktail straw in his gin and tonic. At the back of the bar was a room that I’d never seen into. The door was always shut and, I’d guess, locked. Carlos called it the Debriefing Room, and when I’d asked him what went on in there, he said, Business. The door was guarded by a retired cop named Frankie the Golfer, who sat by the door in an upholstered bar chair that he leaned back against the wall. Over his head were memorial photographs of fallen officers. I slapped Carlos on the back and slid into my seat. I ordered a Ketel One martini, straight up, dry, with a twist, and a Bombay and tonic for Carlos.

  Carlos said, “You still thinking about the Halliday case?”

  “I don’t think he did it.”

  “Why?”

  “A hunch.”

  “A hunch?”

  “Intuition. It’s what you don’t pay me for, remember?”

  “Didn’t I buy you lunch at Oppenheimer’s?”

  “I paid.”

  “Much appreciated. You’re letting your imagination get carried away.”

  “That’s what you want me to do.”

  “No, I want you around for your scrupulous observations.”

  “You haven’t come across any photo albums or home videos or photo files on his computer?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Doesn’t that seem peculiar?”

  “It does, but not everyone is sentimental. He had no pictures on his cell phone, either.”

  “The waiter at the restaurant told me Halliday was there at four the day he died. You said he’d been at the mall for a couple of hours and got home at five. How can he be in two places at the same time?”

  “He can’t. The waiter was mistaken about the time. We have credit card records from Banana Moon and Brookstone.”

  “Maybe his wife used the card.” I got my dirty martini on the rocks with two olives speared on a plastic toothpick, served in a highball glass. Before I could say anything, Carlos held up his hand, thanked Gretchen, and then told me to let it go.

  “How hard is it to remember a drink order?”

  “Hey, there’s no whining in a cop bar.” Carlos held up a finger for me to wait, and he took a call on his cell. I saw Officer Shanks at the bar, chatting up a chiseled young brunette who’d obviously done some serious bodybuilding. Carlos ended his call.

  I said, “I’ve been doing some research on Malacoda and McArthur.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “Malacoda sets up these bogus think tanks and political action committees that undermine the values they claim to represent. The American Council for Environmental Preservation lobbies to ease pollution control.”

  “That’s politics.”

  “His Concerned Citizens for a Healthy America is underwritten by Big Pharma.”

  “So he’s not the Boy Scout I thought he was.”

  “McArthur’s mother was killed by Vito ‘The Busboy’ Borzilleri and Remo ‘Fungi’ Lombardo. The Busboy’s cousin Gaetano Borci was McArthur’s partner in the auto dealership.”

  “So?”

  “Seems fishy to me.”

  “Coyote, you don’t know the rules of the game. Best you stay on the sidelines. Capisce?” Carlos excused himself. “Got to see a man about a horse.”

  On the muted TV above the bar came the subtitled notice of an Amber Alert for a missing fourteen-year-old girl who had been taken from her front yard in Eden Hills by two men wearing masks and driving a black SUV. I watched Officer Shanks admiring himself in the mirror over the back bar while he spoke with his bubbly young inamorata. Every time he saw himself he raised his chin slightly and turned to peek at his profile. The adoring glance in a mirror is, of course, something his fawning bodybuilder could appreciate. I thought he might blow himself a kiss. He liked what he saw in the mirror until he saw me watching him. Then he walked to my table, took a wide stance, pu
t his hands on his hips, in a pose they call “command presence,” I think, and said, “Your pal Carlos won’t always be around to protect you.”

  I said, “From what?”

  Shanks had a short, thick neck and a small, square noggin. His lips were thin, his chin cleft, his hair a few days gone from clean-shaven.

  He said, “Watch your back, pussy!”

  His eyes were tiny, almost translucent blue, unnerving and unblinking. These were the shuttered windows to his soul. He was determined that nothing be revealed there, but it was clear from his petulant gaze that nothing you could say would ever register with him, that, in fact, he held zero interest in anything you might say or think or feel. He was in the grip of a single thought, whatever that might be. This was a man who spoke, but never had a conversation.

  He said, “I will not be disrespected. I’m the law, my friend.”

  Carlos said, “I’m glad to see you two boys have made up.” Carlos smiled at Shanks and took his seat. Shanks made a gun with his thumb and fingers, pointed it at my face, and smiled. He went back to the bar.

  I said, “Carlos, that dipshit just threatened me.”

  “Don’t take it personally. He’s one of our pit bulls.”

  “I want to report the threat.”

  “You just did.”

  “What’ll happen?”

  “I’ll speak with him.”

  “You already have.”

  “Again.” Carlos held up his hand and signaled for two more drinks. “This is a family matter. We’ll take care of it.”

  “The guy’s a psycho.”

  “Coyote, listen! A bad cop may not be respected, but he is protected.”

  “Why?”

  “If he’s tarnished, we’re all tarnished. Now, I’m asking you as a friend to let this thing with Shanks go. I’ll shorten his leash. I promise.”

  “You’re supposed to protect us from guys like him.”

  “I know what my job is.”

  Gretchen brought our drinks.

  I looked at mine. “What’s this?”

  “A mantini,” Gretchen said. “Royal Crown and vermouth. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

  Perdita Curry, of all people, took a seat at the bar, ordered a drink, and had a look around. She smiled at Carlos. I said, “You know her?”

  “Badge bunny.”

  “A little long in the tooth for that, isn’t she?”

  “Wrote for the Journal-Gazette until they caught her making up stories. Now she writes books.”

  “She told me. I met her outside the Hallidays.’ ”

  “All her books have ‘deadly’ in the title. Deadly Nightshade, Deadly Embrace, Silent But Deadly. Inez has read a couple.”

  “Verdict?”

  “Deadly prose.”

  Frankie the Golfer stood up. The door to the Debriefing Room opened, and a man, an attorney I recognized but couldn’t name from local news broadcasts, walked out followed by two young assistants, I guessed, and a large, balding gentleman wearing a blue guayabera and chewing an unlit cigar. The lawyer thanked the large man for his time, and they all shook hands. The lawyer and his assistants left the bar. The large man went back to the room and closed the door. Frankie the Golfer took his seat.

  I said, “What was that all about?”

  “Attorney Fine—”

  “He’s the lawyer on Help Me, Howard!” I just remembered him.

  “The same. He’s running for district court judge, and he’s here to ask for the support of the union.”

  “The big guy?”

  “Clete Meatyard. Head of the union. You don’t become a judge, or anything else, in Everglades County without Meatyard’s blessing. He’s a thug, but he’s our thug. The union’s the most powerful political machine in the county.”

  “Why do you need a thug?”

  “Because we deal with politicians and bureaucrats who have never had a gun held to their heads and have never had to worry if they’d make it home from work that day and if they’d ever see their wife and kids again, and those demagogues and number-crunchers want to tell us how to do our jobs. Sometimes you have to play hardball, and Clete Meatyard is our ace.” Carlos took his straw out of his drink and placed it beside three others. He held up his glass. “Happy New Year, if I don’t see you before that.” We toasted the New Year and our friendship. Carlos said, “It takes a toll, Coyote. Dealing with depravity and cruelty all day long, day after day.”

  While I was at Leo’s with Carlos, Wayne Vanderhyde, my contentious client—I would learn some days later, when his troubles, we might say, were over, when he sat down with Carlos and explained, or tried to explain, his confounding and appalling behavior—was just then at the Home Depot buying a Weber grill, a barbecue tool set, a gas-grill rotisserie, and a sixteen-inch Homelite electric chain saw. He drove home and assembled the grill in his backyard, cooled himself down in the outside shower, got dressed, peeked in at the girl in the bathtub, drove to a windowless strip club on Griffin Road called Taste O’ Honey, sat down stage-side, and watched a woman named Sable dance to some Lynyrd Skynyrd number. Sable called herself a Holy Hottie. She had preternaturally blond hair, permanent eyebrows, and a tattoo of the crucified Christ on the small of her back. She danced for Jesus, she told anyone who asked. Wayne bought Sable a fourteen-dollar cola and himself a double shot of Jack Daniel’s. Sable told Wayne that if Jesus were on earth today He’d be preaching right here at the Taste to the sorry likes of him and these other desperate and hollow men and to this flourish of strumpets on stage.

  Wayne confessed to Sable that he was being tormented by dangerously wicked fantasies, and she prayed over him. He told her he had stopped taking his antidepressant medications. You don’t need drugs, she said. He told her his new therapist was no goddamn help whatsoever. Sable told him all the help he needed was Jesus Christ. Accept Him into your heart tonight, Wayne. They went to the VIP room, and they fell to their knees, and they prayed for strength and forgiveness. Sable laid her hands on Wayne, and she began to weep and to speak in tongues. Wayne had a boner as stiff as an I-beam.

  He stopped at Publix on his way home and bought an aluminum meat mallet, four bags of ice, a tank of propane, a meat thermometer, and six bottles of Bone Suckin’ barbecue sauce. He ran into Dave Companion mopping up a spill in the dairy aisle. Dave said he was surprised to see Wayne at work on his day off. Wayne said, “Why is that, Dave?” Dave shrugged and said he was just trying to make conversation. Dave would later tell a reporter that Wayne was a good worker—steady and reliable—but he was boring as dry toast and drab as dishwater. “He didn’t interact with people. It just never occurred to him that that was something you did.”

  At the register, Myka Flores smiled and told Wayne she hoped she’d be getting an invitation to his barbecue. “What are you cooking, papito?”

  “Pig.”

  When he got home, Wayne went online and updated his blog, which he called In Private and in Publix. He linked to a Borgesian website called The Indiscernible Library, which, it turns out, is a collection of books that have only appeared in other books. The books were unwritten, unpublished, unread, and they cannot, of course, be checked out. And then Wayne wrote that he had not written a number of books himself, and he listed three of them: Until Nevermas,Boffo!, and Practical Gastromancy.

  6

  I began my New Year’s Eve festivities at three P.M. at a somewhat subdued party at Almost Home. I smuggled in some vodka in a Zephyrhills water bottle, picked up two plastic cups of ice from the snack table, and handed one to Dad. I poured. We toasted. “Another goddamn year,” he said.

  The staff had mounted large sheets of white paper on the cafeteria walls for writing down New Year’s resolutions. As far as I could tell, only the aides had taken advantage, and their resolutions mostly had to do with diets and deprivation. There would be no more smoking of cigarettes, no third mojito, no Entenmann’s, no Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, no chicharrónes, no bacon double cheeseburgers, and no mor
e Junior Torres, “who put me through hell and forced me to give up EVERYTHING I loved and EVERYONE I cared about.”

  Dad said the past was ahead of us. It’s right there in front of our eyes. What we can’t see is the future. It’s always sneaking up behind us. He looked up at the bedsheet full of balloons tacked to the ceiling and said, “I won’t remember this tomorrow, however.” He asked me what year it was about to be, and I told him. He said when something is over, like his eighty-two years, then it all seems to have happened at once, in the blink of an eye. “That’s a little hard to take,” he said.

  I told him we should start planning our annual vacation. Maybe we should go back to Arkansas, to Hot Springs. Go to the track, to the baths. Eat at Doe’s. What do you think? His eyes were closed.

  A man who looked like John Prine sat beside me, patted me on the knee, and thanked me for coming. He wore a navy blue cardigan over his white T-shirt. He called me David, said my mother, his sister Buttons, had told him I wasn’t going to be able to make it this year. “Why would she tell me that?”

  “It was a last-minute deal,” I said. I told him things in Pennsylvania were just fine. Cold, of course. Yes, business was good. Couldn’t be better.

  He told me how much he had dreaded spending the holidays alone, and now he wouldn’t have to. “It’s not right to live so far from family.” He told me about the prostate treatments and the trouble with his teeth. He said, “Look, I’m not going to keep you. Thank you, David. Your coming means the world to me.” We stood. He wiped his tears and kissed my cheek. We hugged goodbye, a bit awkwardly, as relative strangers might, and he walked off down the hall. He waved once without turning around.

  I went to the snack table to replenish my ice and saw an aide sitting by herself, crying. I said, “The holidays can be difficult.” She nodded and wiped her eyes with a tissue. I sat at the table. She said, “I gave him everything. I did whatever he asked.” I guessed that him was Junior Torres.

  She said, “I even stuck around when he went to jail for stealing from the Dollar Store where he worked.” She sat back, took a deep breath, and looked at me for the first time. She tucked a lank strand of brown hair behind her right ear. “We had a baby, and then he left me for this eighteen-year-old tramp. Bitch is still in high school.” She cried.