by Rex Burns
“Shit!” The voice came back. “I can’t call Martin before seven to check this out—there’s an hour’s difference.” Another silence. “You tell that son of a bitch you’ll meet him at Fort Pickens at eight tonight. You know where?”
“By the old part? Where the wall’s broken down?”
“Yeah. Same place. Eight o’clock. You tell that fucker to be there at eight. And then you stay the hell away.” The telephone clicked dead.
CHAPTER 23
BUNCH HAD FORGOTTEN about Devlin’s call to Yoshi Kamakura until he heard the man’s heavily accented voice, delayed by a couple million miles of satellite relay. “Watanabe Hiroge—the man is very rich. Very important.”
Kamakura was being formal, the way he usually got when he made a report. Bunch, glancing at the wall clock and antsy to get over to Martin’s apartment, silently urged the Japanese private investigator to hurry. But of course he didn’t; it would have been impolite. “He is a very respected businessman. Also active in politics.”
Yoshi was odd that way. Bunch still remembered the World Association of Detectives convention in Singapore. In the ornate hotel’s gymnasium, the little man had taught him a couple of nice moves, complete with a formal apology for knocking Bunch on his ass. Yoshi was a good drinker, too—he would get totally shit-faced with you at night and then the next morning act like it never happened. Devlin shrugged it off and said it was part of the Japanese culture. But Bunch tended to be a little irritated by all those manners, and he couldn’t help letting the irritation slip into his voice. “I know that, Yoshi. What I don’t know—and what I’m trying to find out—is about his daughter. Watanabe Mitsuko. Is her old man really trying to make a hit on her and her round-eye boyfriend?”
“Her father is not so very old, yes? All the more remarkable that he is so successful and has moved upwards in his company so quickly, Bunch-u. Almost making bad manners. But he is very intelligent, so it is okay.”
Bunch sighed. Yoshi would make his report the way Yoshi made reports: detailed and in order. There followed a brief lecture on the stately progression of corporate careers in Japan and the honored social position successful businessmen held in the national consciousness. “Very much like famous generals from the war time, yes?” Yoshi was an Okinawan whose attitude toward the purer Japanese shifted between ironic criticism and genuine awe. Finally he mentioned, almost in passing, that Watanabe Mitsuko was safe and sound and attending a university in Tokyo.
“What’s that? She’s in Tokyo?”
“He has only one daughter. Mitsuko. She is a student of marine biology.”
“But there’s a woman here who claims she’s Watanabe Mitsuko.”
Yoshi was too polite to contradict Bunch. But he did repeat what his agent discovered: “The daughter of Watanabe-san is presently enrolled at Tokyo University. She has no serious boyfriend, Occidental or otherwise. She is attending classes. She has not left Tokyo.”
“Well, who the hell could this be? She’s Japanese, she talks a lot about Watanabe, she claims to be his daughter, and she says Watanabe wants to kill her for shacking up with a round-eye. And by God, someone sure as hell has been trying to kill them!”
A few seconds of silence. “Let me see what I can discover, Bunch-u. I will call back quickly, yes?”
How long that would be, Bunch couldn’t guess. But the case of Mitsi whoever had to be kept on hold while he sat on Scotty Martin and they waited for Devlin’s call. When his beeper finally told him he had an incoming call, he used Martin’s telephone to dial the answering service. Martin and the uniformed officer, sucking on a can of beer while he watched afternoon cartoons on television, both looked up. Devlin’s voice sounded slightly fuzzy as he told Bunch to expect to hear from Pierson in an hour or so. “How’s Martin holding up?”
“He can’t play cribbage worth a damn,” said Bunch. “He’s almost as bad as you.”
“He understands what to say?”
Bunch glanced at Martin, who was staring at him. “He knows what he’d better say. This Pierson guy going for it?”
“We have a meet for after he talks to Martin. If he believes Martin, he’ll show up. If not, we stand a good chance of losing him.”
Bunch spoke loudly enough for the staring man to hear clearly. “If Martin doesn’t convince him—if we lose the son of a bitch because Martin doesn’t convince him—then we hang the murder rap on him. It’s his ass or Pierson’s.” Bunch added more quietly, “Watch your back, pardner.”
“Thanks.”
Bunch eyed the man wearing the county’s wrinkled orange jumpsuit. “You heard that, Scotty? I told him you’ll do your part.”
“I said I’d do it.”
The cop belched and crumpled the beer can, banking it into the trash basket. “When’s the call coming?”
“When does he usually call you?”
Martin’s shoulders bobbed. “Five forty-five, six. It’s after I get home from work. But it’s always Schuler. I don’t hear from Tony. Just Schuler.”
“It’ll be Tony this time. Don’t fuck up, Scotty.”
“I know the story!”
They waited, Bunch looking from time to time at the officer’s watch. The cartoon figures gave way to the bright and cheery chatter of the early local news and a row of faces that took turns smiling at the cameras across a wide desk. Weather had just smiled at Sports, who was saying something about the Bronco injury report, when the telephone rang. Bunch turned the set down and motioned for Martin to answer.
“Yeah? Yeah, that’s me.” Martin nodded and started to turn away, but Bunch’s large hand steered his shoulders around to face the two waiting men. “Yeah, he’s right. No, the guy’s right here, Tony. No, he ain’t kidding … I don’t know, man. All I know is here they are …” He put his hand over the phone. “He wants to talk to you. I think the crazy fucker thinks I’m trying to rip him off.”
Bunch took the telephone. “We got your shit, Tony baby. And you heard the deal. Now hear this… .”
He held up the telephone and squeezed Martin’s neck so he could gurgle into the mouthpiece, “Tony—do it—”
“I better hear the right thing from my man, Tony. You know what I mean?”
The line stayed open for a long couple of seconds and then clicked into silence.
“Jesus, you didn’t have to squeeze so hard!” Martin rubbed at the red patches on his neck.
Bunch gathered up his jacket and started turning off lights. “You were convincing, Scotty. A real actor.” The cop drained another beer and tried a hook shot that missed the trash basket. They left the can lying there as they led Martin back to county jail.
Schuler gave Pierson’s address to Devlin: a street called Ensenada Siete on the gulf side of the island. Mills dropped Kirk off at his car before taking Schuler and Hall back.
“Can you keep these two out of sight until after eight tonight?”
“Hell, I can keep these two out of sight forever if I have to. Right, boys?”
Their worried silence and Mills’s barking laugh were carried away in the van.
Devlin had a slight headache and several hours to enjoy it before meeting Pierson. The headache was a reminder that his stomach was on Denver time and his only meal of the day had been the miniaturized, minced, and microwaved breakfast served on the airplane. With that thought, he found interest in the restaurant signs beside the highway: Holmes Plantation House, the Bar-B-Q Pit, Tahitian House, Marina Restaurant. Swinging onto the bridge that spanned the flat waters of Pensacola Bay, Kirk let the stop-and-go traffic pulse him across to Gulf Breeze and more signs for seafood. Below the newer concrete spans ran the old bridge, now a fishing pier. Even this late in the season, scattered figures stared down into the cloudy waters, their fishing rods tilted at ready angles. At the end of the Bay Bridge, a sign for Flounder’s Chowder and Ale House pulled him out of traffic and into the dim, air-conditioned odor of frying fish. Colorado had a lot of fine things: mountains, skiing, unbounded prairies a
nd high, narrow valleys. It even had Denver, both John and the city. But it didn’t have seafood. If this was going to be his last meal, he might as well pig out on something he couldn’t get back home. But it wasn’t going to be his last meal. That was only a joke, he told himself. Sick, maybe, but a joke nonetheless. And looking over the menu, Kirk found that his appetite wasn’t the least threatened by that thought.
Freshly caught flounder, mullet, red snapper; crab cakes, oysters, fillets of pompano and red drum … . As he slowly drove away from the restaurant, Devlin formed vague thoughts of opening a branch office of Kirk and Associates somewhere on the Gulf Coast. But if he was here all the time, perhaps even the seafood would become stale. And it was too good for that to happen.
A toll bridge led across Santa Rosa Sound to the barrier island itself. Devlin was surprised to see the patches of oak trees and scattered pines rooted on the sound side of the narrow strip of sand. The Gulf Beach, when he finally glimpsed it, stung his eyes. An endless line of brilliant white faded into hazy glare shot with the gleam of surf from blue-green water. The highway branched east and west, the latter toward Fort Pickens and the former to Navarre Beach. He turned that way past a series of streets with Spanish names. The land quickly became dunes anchored with sea oats and palmetto. Ahead, the road surface seemed to sink beneath water as heat waves erased the distance. Lining the gulf side, stark condominiums shimmered in the glare and taunted the next big hurricane.
Ensenada Siete was a small cul-de-sac leading through the dunes almost to the Gulf. Pierson’s address was one of a cluster of condos that overlooked the white sand and crashing surf beyond. Kirk slowly turned past, trying to locate a place for surveillance. But everything was open to sun and wind and eyes. A battery of signs warned tourists that all this was private property. Across the island on the sound side, he found a place to pull off, then strolled over to the gleaming white gulf side and along surf-packed sand until he spotted Pierson’s house. Trying to look touristy in an open shirt and rolled-up pants, Devlin sat and studied the restless waters of the Gulf with binoculars. The sun, low as it was in the sky, began to burn his skin red. Occasionally, he aimed the binoculars at the house, but saw nothing. It was as if the building were empty and the large windows, covered with drapes, already closed for winter. Strollers passed, searching for glinting shells in the ebb of surf or racing happy dogs through ropes of sea spume. Others, isolated in the crash of waves and the hiss of foam, simply stared out to sea. The constant wind, hot at first, began to chill as his skin burned, and the humid smell of salt spray in the air mingled with the occasional rank whiff of a dead pelican tossed somewhere beyond one of the grassy dunes.
Looking back at the house, Kirk noticed that one of the curtains had been drawn open. His binoculars showed a light and airy living room and the corner of a rattan couch. A blur moved quickly across the lens and disappeared: Pierson or someone walking back and forth. A moment later, a girl stood briefly in the doorway and gazed through the screen at the water. Early to mid twenties, blond, tanned, wearing a burnt- orange bikini bra and flowered wrap around her legs. Then she turned and disappeared.
Devlin walked slowly up the dunes and paused at the top to put on his shoes and survey the condo. The garage, now open, showed a flame-orange Buick convertible and a new black motorcycle detailed with orange pin striping. At the end of the street, he took a couple of telephoto shots of the vehicles and their license plates. Then he drove west into the lowering sun.
Fort Pickens is part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. A small entrance building rises lonely beside the flat tar road. A sign posts the hours that the facilities are open and states that the entrance fee is three dollars. But no gate closed the road, and since it was after hours, no fee was collected. Dunes of white sand lifted a few feet above the wind-flattened grasses. Larger clumps of sculpted brush here and there marked both the old World War II artillery bunkers and the direction of the prevailing winds. Occasional wooden signs identified landmarks and recreation areas— “Battery 234 W W II Six-Inch Shield Gun,” “Camp Ground Store,” “Amphitheater,” “Park Headquarters.” The Civil War fort itself was a sprawl of blocks and angles that seemed to seek protection from the ceaseless wind by shouldering itself down into the loose white sand. A pair of bottle-shaped cannons marked the main walk from the parking lot, and a crumbling corner of dark red brick walls rose stark and barren from the empty, treeless flats. In the late sunlight, the walls seemed sharply etched against the sky. The wind sighed vacantly across black gun ports. Devlin’s tourist brochure said the fort had been built in the early 1830s as one of a cluster of gun sites guarding the entrance to Pensacola Bay. The Army Corps of Engineers erected it using some twenty-one million bricks and an uncounted number of contracted slaves. Devlin figured that made it something of a model for pork barrel projects. Under fire during the Civil War, the fort was later used as a prison for Geronimo and his family, and occupied by coastal gunners during World War II. Now it entertained tourists. And served as a meeting place for a killer.
Schuler had described the corner of the fort where Pierson wanted to meet. Kirk traced it out on the self-guided tour map. The channel side away from the parking lot was hidden by the mass of the fort itself from the visitor information center and museum, both closed for the night. Across a ripple of sand and carefully tended sea pines, the main road circled toward a cluster of modern buildings that held the snack bar and public toilets. Beyond that, darkening with late-afternoon shadows, lay the channel between bay and gulf, the next island, and the low, rolling woods of the mainland beyond. He could feel the day’s trapped heat radiate from the crumbly, stained brick, and somewhere in the distance an outboard motor droned mosquito-like over a lull in the wind. One, two silhouetted figures, tiny and still, watched their surf rods and the pattern of currents that wrinkled the channel’s waters. But the fort itself—the block of inner buildings and the brick outer walls—and the low, scrubby wind-sculpted pines near it were deserted.
Pierson would most likely come from the parking lot up the concrete walk. It led past the brick casemates with their roped-off sections and signs warning Danger. Devlin walked the area, familiarizing himself with it and listening to his steps echo from the low, oven-like casemates and the newer gray concrete superstructure that once housed the mortars and cannons mounted for the Spanish-American War. The cool shade of rifle bays and living quarters gaped darkly on a parade ground packed by feet long dead. Sandy paths worn through the sparse grass showed where living feet toured the silent walls. Kirk finally nosed out an angle of grainy and pitted brick that sheltered him from the wind, and settled down to wait.
The sun, barred with a streak of clouds blowing in from the Gulf, was a finger span above the horizon when he heard the clatter of a stone kicked by a shoe. Pierson hadn’t come the way Devlin thought he would. Instead, he apparently circled the long way around the battery foundation in the center of the fort, surveying the area, trying to find out if only one man waited for him. Kirk couldn’t see him, but he sensed the man search the shadows and angles of the parapet. Devlin moved into the open and waited. A figure picked its way across the low domes of the brick casemates, occasionally looking over the wall and down the twenty or so feet to the sand and marsh grass below. Then it turned toward the bastion where Kirk stood.
“Pierson?”
The man halted and stared. He was clean-shaven, but thick sideburns dropped well below his ears, and his hair lifted long and straight in the wind. “You know me?” Lean, with narrow hips and wide shoulders, he wore denims and burnt-orange deck shoes stained with oil. A dark T-shirt showed both muscle and tan and made it hard to conceal a weapon.
“Schuler told me about you.”
“I see.” He waited, thirty feet away across the sandy and glass-clumped surface of the bastion. Behind him, gliding into the calm waters of the bay, the lights of a fishing boat glowed red and green and white. “What do I call you?”
“How about Ishmael
.”
“What?”
“Call me what you will. It doesn’t make any difference.”
Pierson didn’t answer.
“You talked to Martin?”
“Yeah.”
“Then we’ve got some business.” Martin would have told Pierson that Kirk had, indeed, hijacked that last shipment and knew all about their setup. And that it was a shakedown: either they cut Kirk in or no more shipments.
“What kind of cut you sons of bitches thinking about?”
“Fifty-fifty.”
“Go to hell.” Pierson stepped closer, anger tightening his shoulders.
“It’s either half of something or all of nothing.” Devlin added, “Besides, we can help you expand your market. We can handle all you bring in.”
“Shit—who can’t?” Pierson had gradually been closing the distance between them, almost casually stepping first to one side, then the other. Which was fine with Devlin—he wanted to get his hands on the man. Behind him, the sun was halfway down behind the ragged shadows of the distant wood line. Close overhead, pelicans lifted heavily into the offshore wind and beat landward. Higher above the pelicans, still glinting in the sun, a few gulls wheeled.
“I don’t want to expand. I don’t want you in it. And I sure as hell ain’t paying protection.”
Devlin was close enough now to see the scar on the man’s left cheek, a knife-thin semicircle of whitened flesh. “You’ve got no choice, Pierson.”
“Bullshit!” His right arm darted behind his back, and as Kirk lunged for him he saw the handle of a pistol.
Devlin hit Pierson’s elbow with the heel of his hand and drove a shoulder hard into his chest. It tumbled the man back against the gritty brick parapet. The pistol wavered in the sky above Kirk’s head and he knifed an elbow into Pierson’s lower ribs to bend him choking. He brought the weapon down across Devlin’s shoulder; the steel thudded hard against his clavicle, tingling the length of his arm. Then Pierson raised it for another blow. Reaching behind his upper arm, Kirk grabbed Pierson’s wrist and pulled down, rotating the man’s shoulder backward and slamming him into the brick ledge. Pierson beat at Devlin’s head and neck with his free fist while a knee jabbed hard against Kirk’s thigh. He raked the sole of his shoe down Pierson’s shin to crush his instep. Pierson grunted slurs about Devlin’s ancestry and twisted to pull his arm free. Strong—his muscles weren’t all for definition and posing in front of that blonde. But like a lot of body builders, he was slow. Devlin leaned his bulk against Pierson’s arm and saw his whitened fingers loosen their grip on the pistol as the ragged lip of a brick cut into his flesh.
