Washout

by Bill Noel

  Three hours later, our stomachs were full of Blue Fin Crab soup, Low Country Crab Cake sandwiches, and a shared Combination Platter. The four of us filled the Lexus and headed south. Dude was one boat lighter and a Lobster Roll and a big check heavier.

  “Good luck’s struck me lately,” he said out of the blue.

  No more words were forthcoming, which doesn’t do with Charles. “And that means what?” he asked.

  “What means what?” Dude responded. “Have a good drive up?”

  “Dude,” said Charles, “do you have ADD or something? What good luck are you talking about?”

  “Sold the boat, been trying to unload it for three years, wish I’d never found it, sold four thousand bucks of surf stuff yesterday to one guy, good luck.”

  He continued, “Hotshot Doc Stiles from Atlanta has a son. Son has a friend, Parker by name. Friend Parker had a birthday yesterday. More-money-than-sense doctor bought Parker and another friend logs, wet suits, knives, surf posters, flippers, three Beach Boys CDs.”

  “Log’s a surfboard,” said Charles as he leaned over to me and whispered the translation.

  “What’s so strange about that?” asked Larry from his unfortunate position sitting next to Dude.

  “Parker’s a devil wind,” said Dude.

  I looked to Charles for a translation, Charles looked in the rear seat at Larry, and Larry looked out the window. “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “What’s what mean?” asked Dude.

  “Parker being a devil wind, Dude—pay attention,” Charles answered.

  “Wind blows sideways and ruins the waves. Devil wind,” answered Dude. “Parker’s a bad seed, throwing off trouble vibes—a devil wind. Don’t know how he got hooked up with Doc Stiles’s son. Good kid.”

  A lightbulb seemed to go off in Charles’s head, “Hey, those are the kids who came into the gallery the other day, remember?”

  “Thought so,” I said. “Dude, what else do you know about Parker?”

  “Nothing much. Hear things about history. He’s been in trouble with the fuzz. Always hangs here in summer, latching onto friends, using them. He’s a washout at the Washout.”

  Charles had another question for Dude: “A while back you said you found your boat. What does found mean?”

  A rare moment of silence followed. I thought I could hear the wheels clicking around in Dude’s head as he decided what to say next. Larry was finally having a good time, and Charles, well, was being Charles.

  “Found it written on a bar napkin,” said Dude, followed by more silence.

  “Thanks for the thorough explanation,” said Charles.

  “Now I understand,” said Larry.

  “Dude,” I said, “elaborate?”

  He looked at me as though I’d asked him to donate a kidney, but then he grinned. “Poker game,” he said. “Losing streak hit a wall. Big bucks on table. Two pair, jacks high, and the surf shop beat two pair, nines high and the Bayliner. Luck’s a good thing; gambling’s bad. Quit it. Me be Bayliner owner; found it on a napkin. Got it?”

  Scary as it may see, I did get most of what he’d said. I’d always wanted to learn a second language.

  The diamond-shaped towers of the Cooper River Bridge came into view as we approached Charleston. I’ve never known why, but the trip back from anywhere always goes more quickly than going. Today was no exception. Twenty minutes later we crossed the much smaller bridge onto Folly. Dude was still talking about the six-day surfers (vacationers at the beach for only a week, explained my translator) irritating the year-round crowd by taking up valuable waves and crowding out the best spots. I’d heard more surf talk in the last two hours than in my first fifty-nine years—and it was an hour and a half more than I wanted to hear.

  “Whew,” said Larry as we pulled away from the surf shop. “I don’t know what planet that poor boy lives on.”

  Charles stared out the window and said to no one in particular, “‘They misunderestimated me.’ United States President George W. Bush.”

  I believe he was talking about James Cool Dude Sloan.

  Other than Dude’s cash position increasing significantly, it had been a pleasant but uneventful day.

  That quickly changed.

  Chapter24

  Larry’s house was the next stop. In the summer, one of the banes of the Folly Beach Public Safety Department was parking as there were too many cars in too few spaces. And cars, like water, will ooze into whatever space they can find, regardless of who they block.

  Many times I saw flashing blue lights atop a Crown Vic patrol car stopped along a narrow street as the patrolman ticketed an offending vehicle. However, it was off the usual scale when we turned on East Indian Avenue and saw three of Folly’s cruisers, one Charleston television station news van, and no fewer than fifteen people in front of a neat, small house on the marsh side of the road. Larry’s house.

  Larry was out of the car before I shifted in park. The road was clogged with vehicles, so we pulled into the hardware lot. Officer Ash was the first to see Larry. Being the lowest on the seniority totem pole, she’d apparently been assigned the thankless task of keeping the street passable and the gawkers at bay.

  “The chief’s worried about you,” she said to Larry as Charles and I caught up with him. “Go to the porch and holler inside,” she instructed. “Don’t go in until someone escorts you.”

  Charles and I served as wingmen and stood arm in arm with Larry as he made his way through neighbors, vacationers, and three elderly citizens being walked by their dogs. One of the men yelled at Larry and asked what was going on. Larry ignored him and bounded up the front steps.

  Chief Newman stepped out onto the porch as the three of us reached the top. “Larry, thank God you’re okay. Let’s go in the living room.”

  We followed the chief into the room where he stood between us and the door to the bathroom. He nodded at the chairs. We sat.

  “Larry, about sixteen hundred hours, Officer Spencer was working traffic out by the old coast guard station. It’s been so crowded since the Fourth that cars can’t turn around.” The chief hesitated, then continued. “Well, that’s neither here nor there. He’d been walking up and down telling visitors to keep moving so cars behind them could get around. When he returned to his car, this was under the wiper.”

  Chief Newman took a clear plastic bag out of his breast pocket and handed it to Larry. It held a single sheet of paper with the writing visible through the plastic.

  Instead of handing us the note, Larry read out loud, “Bloodbath at LaMond’s house. You’re invited.” Like the other notes, the words and individual letters had been cut from magazines and glued to the paper.

  “Spencer called me,” the chief said after Larry returned the note to him. “I told him to meet me here, and I called Officer Robins who was on patrol. I called here and didn’t get any answer, so I called the hardware, and Brandon told me you’d gone out of town with some guys. He said he didn’t know when you’d be back.”

  “There’s not a body back there, is there?” asked Charles. He was pointing his cane in the direction of the bathroom.

  “Not human,” said the chief. “That television truck was pulling up in front of the house when I arrived. The reporter said someone left a note on their truck at the studio.”

  “Can we get that stuff out of here?” asked Officer Robins as she came out of the bathroom. “Oh, hi, Larry—I didn’t know you were here. Glad to see you’re okay.”

  “Give us a few minutes,” said the chief. He turned back to Larry. “You didn’t answer the door, so I went ahead and broke the window in back and came in. Nothing was disturbed except what we found in the bathroom. Follow me—and please don’t touch anything.”

  We stood and Larry followed the chief, with Charles and I coming after Larry. The b
athroom was small, with a white antique steel claw-foot tub providing the focal point. My view was partially obstructed by Newman and Larry, but that didn’t stop me from seeing something that would forever keep me from appreciating the charm of Larry’s tub.

  A large dog was under the faucet. From my angle, it looked like a collie. Its head was at an odd angle like it had been run over; the lifeless body was twisted to fit the narrow space in the tub. I cupped my hand over my nose to mask the stench.

  At the opposite end of the tub was a stuffed deer head. It had been mounted on a dark wood board and its antlers stuck above the rim of the bath. Larry hadn’t said a word, and surprisingly Charles was also silent. They both moved aside so I could have a clear view of the tub. Between the dog and deer, there were three black specks. I couldn’t tell what they were at first, and even after Charles said they were black widow spiders, I had trouble picturing a living, moving creature. What I could tell was they hadn’t died of old age.

  Larry sat on the closed toilet seat, raised his head, and looked up. “Chief,” he whispered, “what in the hell is going on?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” said Brian, who had been standing in front of the sink. He looked first at Larry, then turned toward Charles and me. “There’s one other thing I need to show you. Let me get out of the way.”

  I was still behind Larry and Charles, so I didn’t know what caused Charles to gasp when the chief moved from the sink. Larry said, “Damn.” I pushed Charles out of the way and looked in the basin. Neatly fitting the round shape of the bottom was a tin plate. On it REVENGE was neatly printed—neatly printed in blood.

  Larry pushed past me and moved back to the living room, then fell into his Morris chair. I had no idea how he must have felt but I knew it was on the down side of terrible.

  Officer Robins was standing in the room, and the chief told him he could get the stuff to the lab. Chief Newman then sat on the ottoman in front of Larry and in his kindest voice asked, “Where were you today, Larry?”

  Larry said nothing.

  The chief lowered his voice and continued, “Larry, it’s important. When did you leave, and who knew where you would be?”

  Larry mumbled something none of us could understand. He was obviously in no condition to answer even the simplest questions. His head was down; his hands were shaking.

  “Chief,” I said, “Charles and I have been with Larry since early this morning. Jim Slone was also with us. Could we work on your questions and get back to you later?”

  Brian looked at me, then Charles, then turned his attention to Larry. “That’s fine with me. Would that work with you, Larry?”

  Larry nodded. I was touched by the chief’s sensitivity. It would have been easy for him to play his role to the hilt by coolly interrogating Larry now. For the moment, I suggested we go to the kitchen so Larry wouldn’t have to sit and watch the contents of the tub and sink being removed.

  ***

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to take a bath in there again,” Larry told us.

  “Phew!” Charles’s response brought the first smile to our petite friend since we’d moved to the kitchen an hour earlier. The police had finished clearing the bathroom, the television van had moved on to other news, and the nosy onlookers had decided the excitement was over. Regardless of what had occurred in one small house on the laid-back island, there was still a beautiful sunset behind the marsh, the deck and rooftop bars were in full swing, and hundreds of vacationers were basking in the thrill of a fantastic vacation on Folly Beach, South Carolina—The Edge of America.

  Larry had a portable docking station for his MP3 player that he usually kept in the living room. Both Larry and I were fans of country music, so I moved the device into the kitchen. John Anderson was singing “I Just Came Home to Count the Memories” in the background. Charles thought that country music was better than fingernails scratching a blackboard (but not as cheerful). That was true sometimes, but right now, the soft, melodic tune seemed to relax Larry. That was the point, after all.

  “Let’s go over it one more time,” I said. We’d talked in circles about the chief’s question as to who had known Larry would be out of town.

  Charles let out a deep breath, “You went to the Dog for coffee before meeting us at his house, right?”

  Larry nodded, a gesture he’d been using a lot since returning home. “Yeah, it was full. I remember telling Amber and the two city council members where I was going. Have no idea who may have overheard—it was crowded and could have been anyone. Of course, Brandon knew; I called him last night to tell him I wouldn’t be in. That’s it.”

  “And,” continued Larry, “no one except you, Charles, and Dude knew that I was going.”

  “Ditto,” agreed Charles.

  We’d moved from soft drinks to more alcohol-infused beverages. Larry pulled out a large bag of Doritos. Our supper.

  “Yeah, Dude knew,” said Charles. “He was pretty excited about unloading that boat. As William Henry Harrison said, ‘As to the presidency, the two happiest days of my life were those of my entrance upon the office and my surrender of it.’”

  “What’s that got to do with …” Larry started before Charles interrupted.

  “Substitute boat for presidency. True as can be.”

  If Larry had high-speed Internet service, I would have looked up Harrison’s quote. “Dude knew you and I were going to meet him in Murrells Inlet, but he didn’t know Larry was going until late yesterday,” I said.

  “He still could have told several people. If they knew what he was talking about,” Charles noted.

  “Yeah,” said Larry. “Like, ‘Dude cruise to Murrells. Like, rich guy get boat, Dude get check and out-of-there. Like, the Chuckster, Larr, and the new guy chariot me back. Like …’”

  “Like, shut up—we get the message,” said Charles. Despite his best efforts, he began laughing.

  So did I.

  So did Larry, finally.

  Chapter25

  The shrill sound of the phone jolted me out of bed before sunrise. Our nightmare of a house party at Larry’s had ended late, and I was in no mood for callers.

  “That’s a damn good job you and that twerp Charles are doing watching miniature man. Remind me never to have you take care of me.”

  “Good morning, Bob,” I said. I wasn’t awake yet, but I knew who was calling. “How did you hear about it?”

  “None of your damn business, but I’ll tell you anyway. Louise called me last night. She heard it on her police scanner. She said if I pestered you about it last night, she’d kill me. I always do what Louise says.”

  Louise was in her eighties, worked in the Island Realty office and was somehow related to Bob. She’d taken a “fancy” to me (Bob’s words) when I rented a house from her during my first visit to Folly. She was also the unofficial busybody on the island.

  “Did Louise say you could pester me before sunrise today?”

  “Didn’t ask, but I’m sure it’s okay with her. Louise said they hauled a damn zoo full of animals out of Larry’s. What in the hell have you got yourself into now?”

  That was an excellent question, but I didn’t give him the pleasure of agreeing.

  “Don’t try to answer—you have no idea,” he said before I could not tell him anything. “Call if I can help.” Then, dead air.

  Anyone overhearing that conversation might have thought Bob to be rude, insensitive, and possibly obnoxious. Of course, they would have been correct, but I’d learned that was only one side of Mr. Howard. I’d witnessed the kind, caring, sensitive, funny, and humane side—although it was like the other side of the moon: invisible to most.

  A loud rap on the door interrupted my difficult decision to go to the Dog or the Holiday Inn for coffee. I pulled on some shorts and golf shirt and opened the door, although I
couldn’t guess who’d be knocking at this hour.

  “Mr. Landrum,” said Officer Ash. “I hate to bother you this early, but the chief asked me to get you.”

  She didn’t read me my rights, so I assumed I wasn’t under arrest. My confusion increased when I noticed two familiar faces looking at me from the rear seat of her Crown Vic: Larry and Charles.

  “What’s going on now?” I asked.

  “The chief will tell you when we get there,” she replied.

  I was impressed with how well she was learning her new job of being noncommittal no matter what the question. I climbed in the front seat, glad I wasn’t behind the heavy metal screen facing my friends in the rear.

  “Nice day for a drive,” said Charles to no one in particular.

  We went down Center Street and turned right on West Ashley Avenue, headed away from town. Before we got to the County Park on the far end of the island, she turned toward the Folly Marina and to the right where the pavement turned to gravel. The Folly River was off to our left, fewer than a hundred yards away.

  My stomach rapidly approached my throat when I saw something similar to what was in front of Larry’s house yesterday—multiple police cars and a television news van. This time, yellow crime scene tape was strung from small wooden stakes about twenty feet off the road. It was windy and the tape shimmered eerily in the breeze. There were a handful of houses farther down the road, but this was one of the more isolated spots around. I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast when I saw a black van with Coroner stenciled on the side. It was going to be a bad, really bad day.

  ***

  “I’m sorry to drag you into this.” Chief Newman stepped across the yellow tape and met us as we exited the cruiser. “But it might be tied to what happened at your house, Larry.”

  Charles began walking into the marsh grass toward the tape, using his cane to push some of the brush aside. I could see a handful of civilians in the nearby yard, but everyone else was either a public servant or gnats from the media flitting around trying to get video for the local news.