dog island

by Mike Stewart

  As I’ve said before, you can get a lot of thinking done if you aren’t able to sleep. You also get to see things that people without night demons never get to see. That morning, I saw a bleary-eyed but exuberant Hispanic family watching the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico. Plump Poppa sat on the sand, presiding over mother and son as they fashioned a drip castle from handfuls of sopping sand. As I approached, the mother seemed to have tears in her tired eyes. I said, “Buenos dias.”

  The little boy, who looked to be about six years old, smiled up at me, and said, “Buenos dias.”

  Mom froze with her pretty profile outlined against the pale, early morning beach; then she turned to her husband. Poppa gave me a hard look and said, “Good morning,” in cultivated English that, despite its precision, had an alien, equatorial inflection. And for the first time—maybe because he had spoken or because anger had flashed across his delicate, puffy features—I seemed to recognize him from some half-remembered news story, from a faded newspaper photo or one of the hundreds of video clips that wash across the television screen every day. And the faint gray-tone memory cast a brief but unsettling shadow over my thoughts.

  As I walked away, the mother gathered up Junior in her arms and the two parents walked quickly toward the motel. I could hear the little boy start to cry and to beg his parents for something. My only Spanish is what I remember from high school. But even I knew that the sweet child who had smiled and wished me a good morning only wanted to stay on the beautiful beach and finish building his castle in the sand. And I knew I was the asshole who ruined it for him.

  chapter ten

  Outside the office window, tender new growth flecked the dark ivy that framed my view of the docks. Sinking deep into my chair, I sipped coffee-flavored milk foam. It beat the hell out of crouching in the rain for sixteen hours. Kelly had brewed cappuccino, in her words, to celebrate my presence in the office. There seemed, I thought, to be a work-ethic message or reprimand in there somewhere. I was thinking about that and about Carli and about sand castles.

  Kelly sat in a client chair blowing gently to make a hole in her foam. She asked, “How’s the coffee?”

  “It’s wonderful. It does, however, seem to be encouraging sloth on my part.”

  Kelly smiled, and, like every time she smiled, I remembered how much I liked her. Kelly stood about five foot two and weighed in at maybe a hundred pounds after Thanksgiving dinner. She wore her black hair short, too short in my unsolicited and unexpressed opinion, and she looked out at the world through bright blue eyes. For years, she had run five miles a day, and she looked it.

  She said, “What happened to the little boy on the beach?”

  “The whole family got on the eight o’clock ferry with Tommy Bobby Haycock and his loaded pickup. Joey and I had to wait for the next ferry, and, by the time we got to the landing, Haycock and the family had cleared out.” Kelly blew her foam some more. I said, “Are you going to drink any of that or did you just make it so you could play with the suds?” Kelly smiled, and a thought occurred to me. “Who do we know at the state docks?”

  She looked out the window and wrinkled her forehead with thought. “No one. We’ve got a couple of clients whose families were in the shipping business a hundred years ago, but no one at the state docks. And really no one who’s in shipping now.”

  “I need to find out what ships or boats were in Apalachicola Bay on two specific dates. And, if there’s any way we can find out, I’d like to know if any of those boats arrived recently from South or Central America.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kelly thought some more and said, “I go out sometimes with a guy in the Coast Guard. I don’t think he’d break any rules for me. We’re not that close. But if it’s public knowledge, he should either know how to dig it out or how to find someone else who can.”

  “Do you mind asking him?”

  “Nah. What’re the dates?”

  “Yesterday and last Tuesday. The twentieth and twenty-second.”

  She said, “Gotcha,” and walked out of the office. Ten minutes later, she was back. “Looks like he’s out guarding the coast. I left a message with the operator, or whatever they call people who take messages at the Coast Guard. And I left a message on his answering machine at home.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome very much.”

  I turned once again to look out the window. Over Mobile Bay, the sun lasered yellow beams through white clouds. I did not feel like dictating or drafting or planning legal strategies. And, for better or worse, my workload was such that there wasn’t all that much of that sort of thing to do. I swiveled my chair around to look at Kelly. “It’s Friday. Why don’t you take off early?”

  “Because I’ve got work to do.”

  “Can it wait until Monday?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then you can probably go home. Take off. I’ll see you next week.”

  A few minutes later, I heard her leave by the front door. I flipped through pink message slips on my desk and tried to return a few calls from fellow members of the bar. No luck. Mobile may be a bustling international seaport, but then it’s also a seaport. People don’t kill themselves with work and worry. And most lawyers play golf on Friday afternoons. It’s one of the things I always admired most about the city.

  I had finished off my coffee and was ransacking the kitchen for a lost bag of double-chocolate Milano cookies when a thought occurred to me. Back behind my desk, I flipped on my laptop and searched Lotus Organizer for the phrase, “natural resource.” Elmore Puppet popped up. Elmore was one of my father’s contacts at the Alabama Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. My father owns a small sawmill, and Puppet had helped him solve minor political problems over the years. And, a few years ago, he had helped me find a job for an out-of-work client with a forestry degree and a bad attitude.

  It was a few minutes past three—a problematic time to find a state employee in his office on a Friday afternoon. I called. After getting passed around by a succession of pleasant female voices, I heard Puppet pick up.

  “Mr. Puppet. This is Tom McInnes in Mobile. Sam McInnes in Coopers Bend is my father.”

  I had forgotten how unreasonably happy the guy was. “I’ll be damned. Sure. It’s Sam’s hot-shit lawyer son. How you doin’?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Puppet.”

  “Call me Elmore, Tom. I may be old as hell, but your old man is family.”

  To Elmore, everyone he ever met was family. I said, “I’ve got a problem. I remember seeing some aerial photos of the sawmill and some timberland on Sam’s desk.”

  “You call your daddy Sam? My old man would have kicked my ass.”

  I turned to look out again at the bay. The truth was that I didn’t much care for the man who begat me, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to call him Daddy. Even as an adult, I never could figure out why so many people seemed to like him. The closest I could come is that my old man had made a lot of money over the course of his life, and too many people seem to like saying some old rich guy is their friend. And it occurred to me that that cynical conclusion probably said something about how nice a guy I was too.

  I took a deep breath. “Elmore, I’ve lost track of everyone who wants to kick my ass.” He laughed too hard, and I resumed my effort to elicit useful information. “Anyway, I know Sam got the aerials from you, and I need some photos of the Panhandle.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, you see, we don’t take the pictures ourselves. We get ‘em from the federal government. Either the Air Force or the Interior Department or NASA. There’s several places that do that.”

  “Are they detailed enough to see a particular boat anchored off the Panhandle and identify it?”

  Elmore paused to think about that. He said, “Let me put it this way. No. But, if you knew the exact location of the boat, you could hire a guy I know in Marengo County to fly over and get any kind of pictures you want.”<
br />
  “All I know is that the boat’s probably in Apalachicola Bay, but it could be anywhere within a dozen miles of Apalachicola.”

  Elmore laughed. “Well then, get out your checkbook. To get the detail you want, you’d have to hire the pilot to fly up and down the coast all day taking a series of overlapping photographs.”

  What I had really wanted were photos from the day before. I had gone ahead and asked about the pilot because there was some possibility that Joey could let me know the next time the smugglers made a nighttime landing, and I could take that opportunity to call the aerial photographer. Which was a pretty stupid idea, since, if I were going to do that, I could just hire a pilot or even a power boat and make the rounds myself. I said, “What about NASA? I heard they had close-ups of Saddam Hussein having breakfast before the Gulf War.”

  Elmore laughed some more. He was one happy guy. “Saddam Hussein ain’t hanging out on the Panhandle, Tom. Most of the time, NASA has their satellites shut down when they’re not over something they’re interested in. I mean, I don’t mean to make you feel stupid. I just know ‘cause I’ve been doing this for forty years.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Check with the Coast Guard.”

  “It’s in the works. Thanks, Elmore.”

  “Any time. Any time at all. And tell your father I said howdy.”

  I said I would and hung up. State employees. Some hold on to their jobs through shifting administrations by digging up dirt, some by never being noticed, and some, like Elmore Puppet, stayed put for forty years by liking every miserable s.o.b. they ever met.

  I couldn’t think of anything else useful to do, and the thought—or more precisely the absence of thought—was making me antsy. I called Susan and invited myself over for dinner at Loutie’s house.

  Susan said, “Joey’s already coming over to see Loutie tonight. Why don’t you pick up some pizza, and we’ll make a party of it?” I agreed that that sounded like one hell of an idea. I called ahead for two deep dish pizzas with everything, then drove to Blockbuster and picked up Rear Window and Get Shorty, figuring that between Hitchcock and Elmore Leonard there would be something for everyone. On the way to the pizza place, I reached Joey on his cell phone.

  He said, “I hear we’re having a party.”

  “Looks like it.” I asked, “Why aren’t you on Dog Island watching Haycock?”

  “I thought I’d come home and talk with Susan and Carli about what happened and go back down on Monday with a fresh perspective.”

  I said, “Wanted the weekend off, huh?”

  “Basically.”

  I told him to bring beer and soft drinks and pushed the end button on my flip phone.

  When Get Shorty ended, Carli popped in Hitchcock and made an effort to get into Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly. Susan asked me to give her a hand with the leftovers, and we carried cardboard pizza boxes, tomato-pasted plates, and sticky glasses into the kitchen. Susan scraped cold crust into the disposal and loaded the dishwasher while I searched out trash bags and stuffed one with boxes and napkins and other trash from the plastic receptacle under Loutie’s sink.

  I finished with the trash and walked through the mudroom and out the back door with the intention of finding an outside garbage can. The flat lawn reached back to a brick wall that separated it from the service alley. The cans hunkered against the wall on the alley side. I reached over the brick wall, stuffed my black plastic bag in an empty Rubbermaid can, and pressed the lid back into place. When I turned around, Susan stood in the doorway framed by light from the kitchen. I started walking back, and she came out to meet me, carrying a fresh beer in each hand.

  She handed one to me, and I thanked her. She said, “It’s nice out, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It is. It’s funny. Joey and I nearly froze in the rain yesterday on Dog Island.”

  Susan walked away from the house and leaned against a slender magnolia tree that looked like a relatively recent addition to the two-hundred-year-old yard. I followed and stood in the shadows looking at her. She asked, “How much longer before Carli and I get our lives back?”

  “I don’t know, Susan. We know a lot. We might be able to go to the cops now and get Haycock arrested, but I don’t think it would stick. It’s just our word against his. I guess we could report the beach rendezvous and shut them down on Dog Island for a while, but they’d just pick back up somewhere else. And then we wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them. Right now, I think it’s better to know where the Bodines are and what they’re doing. And, as far as I can see, shutting down one little smuggling operation wouldn’t do much to keep Carli safe.”

  Susan’s features had disappeared into a dark silhouette, but I could feel her eyes moving over my face like fingertips as I talked. My thoughts turned liquid, and I had to concentrate to bring my mind back on point. “I’m … I’m open to suggestions. But it looks like we’ve just got to stick it out until we can figure out enough about what’s going on to completely shut down whoever’s after you and Carli.” Susan shifted her weight from one foot to the other. With only a sliver of moon in the night sky, she was nearly invisible beneath the tree’s shadow. I said, “I’m going back down there tomorrow to see if I can find out who was anchored offshore last night.”

  Susan’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “I really appreciate everything you and Joey are doing.” I tried to say something about the others wondering where we were, but she kept speaking quietly. “After the comments you made to Carli about getting me hurt last fall, which you didn’t, I want to make sure you’re not doing all this because you still feel guilty about something.”

  “I don’t think I feel guilty. It’s more like I feel responsible. It was my brother who…”

  Susan interrupted. “There’s plenty of blame in what happened, but none of it is yours. You helped me through a very hard time. I am nothing but grateful for that and for what you’re doing for me and Carli now.” As Susan spoke, she leaned forward and hooked her finger in the front of my shirt and bumped me gently on the chest for emphasis.

  When she tilted forward, she came out of the magnolia’s shadow, and I could see her face in the moonlight. Her small hand felt warm against my chest, and my mind filled with the image and sensations of our brief kiss at her beach house. Without really thinking, I leaned forward and kissed her lips. I stepped back, and she smiled. I took a sip of beer, because I wasn’t sure what else to do right then, and felt her hand on my shirt pulling me toward her. I put my arms around her waist, and her hand slid up my chest and neck to the back of my head as our lips met again. Her lips parted and our tongues touched.

  Slowly, I found myself pushing deeper into her mouth and pulling her body close against mine. Minutes later, when we stepped apart, the night air held too little oxygen.

  Susan said, “I haven’t made out like that in years. Jeez. High school at the drive-in.”

  I was glad she couldn’t see my face. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Ohhh. That’s good.” As she pulled me to her, she said, “I liked high school.”

  We kissed again, and I pulled back to look at her eyes. The pupils were dilated, which could have meant she was interested or even aroused if we hadn’t been standing in the dark. But, interested or not, I thought I saw a few too many emotions playing across her face. I realized it had been years since she had kissed anyone but her husband, and, if my guess was right, it had been eight or nine months with no one to kiss or hold since he had died.

  I turned and led her across the moonlit yard to the back door.

  When we entered the kitchen, Susan said, “Come on. I want to show you something,” and led me away from the living room and toward the back of the house.

  “What is it?”

  “Just follow me.”

  Susan led me down the hall to a bedroom door. She pushed it open and reached inside to flick on the light.

  I asked, “Why are we going into a bedroom?”

  Susan ga
ve me a look and said, “You wish.” She stepped inside. “I want you to see something Carli did.”

  I followed Susan into the room and looked around. Taped to the vanity mirror, scattered on the bed, and stacked on the bedside table were a total of maybe twenty drawings. I walked over to the vanity and looked. My charcoal image looked back from a piece of lined notebook paper taped there.

  I said, “This isn’t a stalker thing, is it?”

  Susan shook her head. “We really do think a lot of ourselves tonight, don’t we? No. She’s done drawings of all of us. And some of the house. And some of Loutie’s flowers. I wanted you to see how good they are.”

  I walked over to the bed and picked up a pencil drawing of one of the trees in Loutie’s backyard. “They look good to me. But I’m not much of a judge. How good are they?”

  Susan had walked over to squint at Carli’s picture of me. “Well, they’re not professional. She’s not the next Picasso or anything. But they’re good. Probably on the level of an undergraduate art student.”

  Suddenly I felt uncomfortable. “Should we be in here? This is her private stuff.”

  Susan looked around. “Probably not. I just wanted you to see what your client can do. That she’s not just some little tramp in a wet T-shirt.”

  “I never thought anything like that. Or, if I did, I understand why she’s the way she is.”

  Susan just said, “Well, you’re probably right that we’re invading her privacy here. Let’s go,” and we left Carli’s bedroom.

  Back in the den, Jimmy Stewart spied on Miss Lonely Hearts as she served dinner and made conversation with a make-believe date. Joey sat on the sofa massaging Loutie’s feet. Carli sat cross-legged six feet from the television screen. She said, “This is a good movie. It’s got Princess Grace in it. She was like the first Princess Di.”