by Tom Shepherd
Twelve
Next morning I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Naturally, I shot upright in bed and screeched. Tanella just laughed as she pulled on her Spirit Creek Dolphins t-shirt. The Civil War conference was breaking up early and the Blues and Grays had enough black powder to dirty the air a few more times. I peeked out the double storm window at the treetops marking the edges of the lawn beneath. It was overcast, threatening rain.
When Tanella told them about the previous night, Uncle Bob just closed his eyes, but her dad came out of his chair.
“You could have been killed!”
“I wasn’t.”
“I’ve never heard of anything so imbecilic. Three children, looking for drug smugglers alone at night. Where did you get such a fool idea?”
“From you, Daddy.”
“What!”
“You said I should do some original research.”
“Asinine idea,” Dr. Blake said. “I can’t believe a child as intelligent as you could do something so utterly fatuous.”
“Yes, sir,” Tanella said.
“Quit patronizing me. You never call me ‘sir’ unless you’re in trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
Uncle Bob shook his head. “You’re positive it was Clancey Beaumont?”
“No, Dr. Thornburg. I’m positive it was the tall man with dark blonde hair who runs the Gray Ghost of the Island and calls himself Clancey Beaumont.”
“He had Tanella by the hair,” I said. “Stuck a gun in her ear. He’s a crook.”
“Blonde hair? Tee, was he a white man?”
We both nodded.
Dr. Blake frowned. “Then he definitely isn’t Clancey Beaumont. The real Dr. Beaumont is blacker than I am.”
Now that’s a real achievement. Dr. Blake is darker than a moonless night in a coal mine.
“I met him because we're a rare breed, African-American scholars who share a fascination for Confederate history.”
“I should have known!” Tanella snapped her fingers. “You said, ‘Brother Beaumont can really write.’”
“I wasn’t aware of that ethnic peculiarity in my etymology.” He glanced at Uncle Bob, who laughed softly.
I leaned to Tanella and whispered, “What does—?”
“He doesn’t talk like your typical rap musician.”
“Thank you.”
She handed him the discount certificate. Dr. Blake took it to the enclosed balcony for better light. Rain was falling lightly, and I listened to the pat-pit-pat against the windows while the two professors studied the signature, comparing it to Beaumont’s known autograph in the book on Mosby.
“Not even close.” Uncle Bob held up the certificate. “Let’s see if Borkowski has left the building.”
My uncle called the hotel desk on the room phone while Tanella’s father went back into the apartment and took the .38 pistol from his brief case. He shoved the gun into a pocket of his suit coat, which hung on a chair by the writing desk. When Dr. Blake smoothed the bulge, his eye caught Tanella’s painful expression.
Daddy, please don't carry that thing.”
“If this phony is a drug pusher, he’ll come looking for you. You know enough to put him in jail.”
“It scares me when you’re armed.”
“It scares me when I’m not,” he said. “Look, Tee, I have some last minute work before the negotiations begin.”
“What would the delegates say about your concealed weapon?”
“You and Sally Ann go down to breakfast. Find Eric, take him along. Bob, will you escort them?”
“Sure.” My uncle hung up the phone by the peach love seat. “Borkowski is out. I left a message.”
“Please promise me you'll throw the gun away when we leave this place?” Tanella said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Daddy—”
“Go to breakfast.”
Uncle Bob marched us down to the main dining room but couldn’t stay long. After we ate, the rain stopped and the Union and Confederate troops began forming up for one last mock battle. Eric wanted to watch, so we drifted to the porch and sat in white wicker rocking chairs. This battle was the final event on the program. Most of the remaining hotel guests crowded the green. They milled about in their shorts and pastel souvenir T-shirts.
Eric groaned and flapped his hand. “I can’t see nothin’ from here!”
“So?” I said. “Go climb the flagpole on the hotel tower.”
“Why don’t you fly me up there on your broomstick?”
“Eric,” Tanella said, “the window in your room offers a better view.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Go away.”
Eric smiled. “I could see everything from up there.” He galloped off to Observation Summit.
His chair was still rocking when I mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
Tanella leaned forward, squinting, like she was studying something in the distance. “Is that Inspector Borkowski’s vehicle?”
“Where?”
“Parked along the driveway under the trees. Almost touching the Spanish moss.”
“Could be any police car.”
“Pardon me, is this seat taken?”
I looked up at a mustache and black hair. The man was early middle aged and smiled easily. His dark blue suit seemed out of place on this light gray porch dotted with pots of dwarf palms and red flowers, but this time I didn’t take him for a Mexican.
“Please join us, Mr. Rightmeir,” Tanella said.
“You know me?” He unbuttoned his jacket and sat in the rocker Eric abandoned. “That’s very flattering.”
“Solomon Rightmeir. You served in the military with my dad and Sally Ann’s Uncle. You’re a diplomat now.”
He winced a little at the word. “I’m a school teacher from Tel Aviv who was meshuge enough to run for the Knesset. Never thought anybody’d vote for me. After I was elected, the party kept insisting I take special jobs because of my Western contacts.”
“You left America to become an Israeli citizen?” I said.
“Lots of Jews want to live in the Holy Land. I was young enough to make my dream come true.”
“To stroll the places where Jesus walked,” Tanella said, dreamily. “It must be like living in a history book.”
“A hot, dry history book, with army trucks rumbling across the pages and Arab boys throwing stones at you in every chapter.” He smiled. “I’ve lived in Israel a long time. Narrow streets where camels tramp are less romantic once you’ve stepped in dung.”
Tanella looked like she might cry. Smart as she was, she was still a teenager, like me. In her mind, robed men in sandals and veiled women with water jars balanced on their heads prowled the streets where Jesus and the disciples walked. I think Tanella believed she would go to the Holy Land someday and step into biblical Jerusalem. Rightmeir probably didn't know how much Israel meant in her world, too.
I searched for a way to change the subject. “Are y’all and Prince Ahmad working out your oil problems?”
That snapped Tanella out of her daydreams. She twitched her head at me, as if to say, “No, no, no!”
From behind us I heard another, deeper voice say, “Where did you hear that?”
Turning in my chair I found Mordecai Wechtel, the silver-haired Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, standing beside a big clay jar of bougainvillea.
“Dr. Blake didn’t tell us,” I said. “Tanella’s so smart, she can figure anything out.” Actually, I didn’t know what we weren’t supposed to know.
“Well, Miss Blake,” Wechtel said with a smile. “Have you also figured out who killed Carsten O’Malley?”
“Your Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations is a distinct possibility,” she said.
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I pulled out my phone and googled the words.
Wechtel’s smile faded. “They were not involved.”
I gasped when the answer popped up. “The freaking Mossad?” My mind jumped to, “Israeli
spies and assassins!” But for once I wasn’t dumb enough to blurt it aloud.
Rightmeir hunched forward, leaning on his knees. “If you repeat that fantasy, it could easily destroy the talks before they begin.”
“Our agent had nothing to do with O’Malley’s death,” Wechtel said. He glanced at his fellow Israeli.
“We are not involved,” Rightmeir said.
“And the oil?” Tanella said.
“You must keep the Israeli discovery a secret,” Rightmeir said. “You have no idea how important it is.”
What Israeli discovery? Tanella was fishing again, and these adults were biting like bass at twilight.
“I am beginning to understand,” she said.
“Understand this,” Rightmeir said. “Careless, false charges can trigger real wars.”
Wechtel rocked his chair slowly. “You and Sally Ann are playing a dangerous game. Some people would kill you without a thought if their interests were threatened.”
“Whom are we threatening?” she said.
Cold juice squirted through my chest. “Listen to the man, Tanella.”
Mordecai Wechtel took off his glasses and looped them over his hand.
“The future belongs to alternative energies, but today the world runs on black gold. Billions of dollars are at stake. Men have murdered children for less. We Jews know that too well.”
“Are you trying to scare us?” Tanella said.
“That’s the point,” Rightmeir said. “You should be scared. Your lives are at risk.”
“When so much money is up for grabs,” Wechtel continued, “it isn’t good guys against bad guys. All that matters is the money. People who block the path get knocked aside.”
“Daddy asked you to speak with us, didn’t he?”
Mordecai Wechtel nodded. “Nathaniel knows the danger.”
I squeezed her hand. “Tanella, please listen to them!”
“Stop trying to find out if Prince Ahmad killed Carsten O’Malley,” Rightmeir said. “We don’t care. Nobody cares.”
Wechtel raised a finger. “However, implicate the Emir’s son—”
“Plenty of people care,” Rightmeir finished the thought. “Some of them have guns.”
“Will it help Daddy to drop my investigation?” Tanella said.
“You aren’t investigating. You’re playing detective,” Wechtel said with a sigh. “Quit playing detective.”
She nodded. “All right. I’m sorry.”
Rightmeir stood. “Nathaniel will be greatly relieved.”
Breaking glass and screaming hotel guests brought us to our feet. Across the green people were running toward the farthest arm of the Y-shaped complex of buildings. A young black mother was dragging two children upstream against the rush of bodies. Two gray haired women mounted the porch steps. Quivering hands reached for the rail.
“What's going on?” Rightmeir called.
“Terrible, just terrible!” one of the seniors said as she inched toward safety inside the Island Club hotel.
“A man broke through a balcony window and fell to the ground,” her companion said. “Fell—splat!—to the ground.”
I felt a cool whiff of air brush past as the women shuffled into the foyer. With the door open, I thought I saw a redhaired woman looking toward us. Elya? The door closed, and when it opened for the next group she was gone.
Tanella leaned over the porch rail, searching the balconies on the wing of the building visible from here.
“Sally Ann, look! That hole is where the window should be at Daddy’s suite.”
“What?” Rightmeir leaped down the steps and ran off to check. Mordecai Wechtel tottered after him, leaning on the white handrail.
“Nah, that can’t be right.” I joined her at the steps.
“Tanella! Tanella!” Eric burst out the door from the lobby, his eyes big as snowballs. “Your dad just killed Clancey Beaumont!”
Thirteen
Inspector Borkowski, wearing crime scene latex gloves, paced from the enclosed balcony to the peach love seat. His lips moved silently, like he was working on an oral report he had to give in a few minutes. Tanella ran to her dad, who slumped in a chair at the breakfast table on the balcony. When I shut the door, the curtains above him stirred from the warm air let in through a gash in the windowed wall. Daggers of shattered glass pointed to the hole, and blood was clotting on the tips of the blades.
Tanella cried and her dad cried and they hugged. He kept saying, “I didn’t kill anybody,” all the while, kissing her hair and rubbing her shoulders.
When Tanella stopped sobbing, Borkowski took out his pocket notebook. “Professor, I found you with a gun in your hand, a broken window, and a dead man on the lawn below. People in the next room report hearing you shout—” he flipped pages, “—lemme see...oh, yeah. Quote: ‘Beaumont, I’ll kill you if you try to hurt my daughter again.’ Close enough?”
Dr. Blake shook his head, slowly. “I never said that,”
“Then Beaumont yells, ‘Your daughter is—’ excuse me, Miss Blake, but I gotta read this verbatim. Beaumont says: ‘Your daughter is a stupid little…’” Borkowski read some ugly things about Tanella, involving the N-word. I don’t repeat junk like that. “‘…so take the money and shut the F-up.’” Only he said the word. Borkowski folded the notebook. “Nasty guy. Most fathers would consider whacking a guy like that. You a good father, Dr. Blake?”
“Someone came here claiming to be Clancey Beaumont, but he wasn’t. I know Clancey Beaumont. He is a black man. This white impostor offered me $1 million to keep the kids quiet about last night.”
“And you refused?”
“Of course, I refused! I became so agitated I walked out here on the balcony. That’s when somebody hit me.”
“Who hit you?” Borkowski said.
“I don’t know. Not the Beaumont impostor. He was in the living room, alive, the last time I saw him.”
“So, how’d he fall from your window with a .38 slug in his face?”
“Tanella, Sally Ann—go downstairs and wait in the lobby until we work this out,” Dr. Blake said. “You too, Eric.”
Tanella knelt beside his chair and locked her arms around his knees, putting her cheek on his lap. “I’m not leaving you.”
“Tee, please. Go downstairs.”
“I’ll need to ask them some questions,” Borkowski said.
“Can’t you leave the children out of this?”
“Doctor, you are in serious trouble. I’m doing a comprehensive investigation of this crime, to include asking these kids if they saw or heard anything.”
“Eric!” Tanella said. “You were upstairs watching the mock battle.”
Eric shook his head violently.
“Yes! You would have heard any shouting,” she said.
Borkowski eyeballed Eric, who was huddled by the door with one hand on the knob. “Well, kid. Did you hear anything?”
He shook his head again.
“Come on, Eric,” Borkowski said. “You must’ve heard something. People two, three rooms down the hall heard the shouting.”
“I didn’t hear nothing! Okay?”
“Okay,” Borkowski said. “You kids go find Dr. Thornburg and stay with him. Dr. Blake, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me. You are under arrest for the murder of Clancey Beaumont. You have the right to remain silent...”
He took a pair of handcuffs from his jacket. Stainless steel, reflected like a mirror. I saw the pale orange of Eric’s T-shirt flash off the cuffs as the cop snapped them around Dr. Blake’s charcoal wrists. Tanella cried when they clicked tight. I cried, too. Even Eric was wiping tears.
“Daddy...Daddy...” she kept saying as Borkowski mumbled the ritual reading of Dr. Blake's rights.
“I’ll be all right, Tee. I didn’t kill anybody. Find Bob Thornburg. He’s meeting with the Arabs in the Aspinwall Room.”
“I love you, Daddy.” She hugged her father’s neck.
“It’s okay…it’s okay…” Dr
. Blake never looked in her eyes.
The three of us kids were riding in the elevator down to find Uncle Bob when Eric started bawling.
“Dr. Blake will be okay,” I said, slipping my arm around my despicable cousin. Times like these, everybody gets sappy.
“I couldn’t tell. I just couldn’t,” he sobbed.
“Did you hear what happened?” I said. “That’s great!”
“No, it’s not,” he said.
“You must tell the truth,” Tanella said.
“No! I gotta lie, or keep my mouth shut.”
Tanella touched a red button and we lurched as the elevator stopped. Eric stretched his T-shirt sleeve to wipe his nose.
“What happened?” Tanella said quietly.
“I can’t say it.”
“What happened?” she demanded. “Why can’t you tell us?”
“Cause everything Inspector Borkowski said was true.” He closed his eyes and shook his head, spilling tears that darkened the orange T-shirt. “Beaumont shouted all them horrible things. He called Tanella—you know, the ‘N’ word.”
“We know that already,” I said.
“Then Dr. Blake yelled at Mr. Beaumont. Called him a racist. Next thing I hear is a crack and breaking glass...” his voice failed. “I’m sorry, Tanella, but your dad killed that nasty man.”
* * * *
We told Uncle Bob. He shook his head, gave Tanella and me some money, and told us to have lunch then go back to our room. He suggested we should surf the internet or play online games. Never mind that we’d just finished breakfast, or that we were too worried about Tanella’s dad to play Mahjong, solve crossword puzzles, or run from purple dragons.
Uncle Bob hurried away, taking Eric with him, leaving Tanella and me in the crowded lobby. A river of Civil War conference attendees were retreating from Barrier Island before Hagar roared ashore. Out the window in the distance I saw the drawbridge to the mainland, and I thought about the Children of Israel racing across the mud flats to get to the far shore before the walls of water came crashing down. I thought about mentioning my vision to Tanella, ‘cause she’s so religious and all, but it sounded too violent for the circumstances.
“Let’s go someplace quiet,” Tanella said. “I’ve got to figure this out.”
