Cocoa Beach

by Beatriz Williams

  Not this. Your husband’s death.

  “Mrs. Fitzwilliam?” he says gently.

  “No. I suppose I’m not surprised at all. I always thought there was something strange about the whole affair. Something more.” I swallow back a sensation of nausea. Gather some kind of composure. “Do you have any idea who might be responsible?”

  “We have a couple of ideas, yes. You see, that’s my job at the moment. We’re trying to take apart a ring of bootleggers, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, an illegal operation so large and complex, it’s controlling pretty much all the traffic along the coast of Florida. I won’t bore you with all the details—”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be bored at all, Mr. Marshall. I like details. I’m not the kind of woman who sits back with her knitting, you know, and leaves the dirty tasks to the men.”

  He nods, and the tip of his nose catches a bit of light. “I hear you drove an ambulance in the war.”

  “Where did you hear that? Was that in the newspapers, too?”

  “No. I just asked a few questions. Anyway, I thought that might be the case, when you turned up here in Florida like that, sticking yourself right in the middle of all these affairs as soon as your old man’s trial was over. I figured you wouldn’t have traveled down here so quickly, if you didn’t want to know all about it.”

  “Well, yes. Of course I did.”

  “But why, exactly? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Why?”

  “Why come down to Florida. Stick your nose into all this ugly business.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? Because I want to know more. I want to help, if I can.”

  “Help? Help with what?”

  “With whatever it is you’re doing. The truth about my husband.”

  “I see. And that’s all?”

  My God, what an inanimate man, this revenue agent. He doesn’t fidget a bit. Maybe it comes with the job, this steadfast habit, scrubbed of all human influence. As I said, I can only see one side of his face—a rather unsettling effect, if you ask me—and there isn’t much expression there to begin with. His hair is too short to shine in the light; it sort of bristles softly there, at his temples and around the curve of his skull. His one visible eye is black, too shadowed for color, and it hardly ever blinks. I believe I once heard that means he’s telling the truth, or else he’s an especially good liar.

  Either way, I think, I might as well test him. What have I got to lose, really? He surely knows more than he’s letting on. He’s surely got all sorts of details tucked far up his sleeve. That’s plain. I can see it in his unblinking eye, I can hear it in his voice. And I’ve already done the reckless thing. I’ve already met him here, in the garden of the Flamingo Hotel as the clock ticks toward midnight.

  I lean forward and speak in the kind of firm, clear voice I use to reprimand my daughter, when she needs it.

  “No. That isn’t all.”

  “What, then?”

  “Because I sometimes wonder if I’m being lied to, Mr. Marshall. I sometimes wonder if that body in the fire was really his.”

  If I’m expecting some sort of reaction—shock or dismay or anything at all—I suppose you could say I’m disappointed. That damned dark eye doesn’t even blink. I think the crease around the corner of his mouth tightens a bit, like somebody wound the string another notch, but that’s all.

  “Well, that’s strange,” he says. “What makes you think that?”

  “Because the man I married wouldn’t have burned to death in his own house, that’s why.”

  “You hesitated.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Before you spoke, you hesitated.”

  “I was just thinking of a way to explain it. You see, I’ve found that so many men have little regard for a woman’s intuition.”

  A smile at last! At least on that one side of his mouth, nudging up the corner, pushing back the stiff muscle of his cheek. His voice, however, contains not a trace of amusement. “I have plenty of regard for female intuition, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, believe me. But in this case I’m afraid you’re wrong.”

  “Am I?”

  “I’m very sorry. But you see, if there’s one thing I’m certain about in this entire wretched affair, it’s that Simon Fitzwilliam died in a fire at his villa on Cocoa Beach, about two hours after midnight in the morning of February nineteenth of this year.” He pauses. “Again. Very sorry.”

  I whisper, “And how can you be so certain of that, Mr. Marshall? The body was burned beyond recognition. His own brother had to identify him by the coincidental presence of a piece of metal.”

  Mr. Marshall flattens his hand on the table between us, and while I’m staring at his face and not his fingers, I have the impression that they’re as wide and thick and rough as the branches of an oak tree. A peasant’s hand.

  “Because I was right there, that night on Cocoa Beach,” he tells me. “And I guess, in some measure, I’m responsible for what happened.”

  Whatever my own private convictions on the subject of my father’s guilt, I was shocked when the jury returned its verdict. The jury, you see, did not possess all the relevant information. The jury didn’t know what I knew: that my father was in love with another woman at the time of my mother’s murder.

  Well, I can’t blame them. Nobody else knew, either. When I took the stand and described the contents of my memory, nobody asked me that particular thing—not the prosecution’s lawyer, who treated me with great delicacy, and certainly not our own expensive table of defense attorneys, in their neat suits of charcoal and navy blue, sweating out the June heat. Who would expect such knowledge inside the dusty old memories of an eight-year-old girl? But of course I knew. Wasn’t I the cool, steady center of the family maelstrom? Yes, I was. By the time of my mother’s murder, I was a very old, perceptive, experienced eight-year-old, and I knew plenty of things I shouldn’t, and I had seen plenty of things I shouldn’t have. I had, for instance, many times spied the two of them together—my father and our kitchen maid, who happened to be cleaning an upstairs bedroom at the moment my mother was brutally stabbed—and even an eight-year-old girl knows what a kiss means, on the lips, lingering, between grown-ups. Even an eight-year-old girl understands that her father, having spent nearly three years a witness of his wife’s extraordinary moods and her penchant for the intimate company of gardeners, might desire the lips of a more uncomplicated woman. And our kitchen maid was a young, pretty girl of about twenty who liked him back.

  I never saw them do anything more than kiss. I would have sworn that on a Bible, if anyone had asked. But as I said, no one did, and by the end of my father’s trial, everyone in the courtroom thought he should be acquitted. There was no real proof, just the possibilities suggested by circumstance, and my father, when you regard him in a sober suit, and consider his occupation, looks like nothing more than an absent-minded professor who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Then again, the facts of my mother’s promiscuous behavior and unsteady character had been firmly established by the defense. Even if you imagined that her husband might, under extraordinary provocation, have committed a single act of terrible and thoughtless passion, you might have thought the dame had it coming, mightn’t you?

  But it doesn’t matter what the rest of the courtroom thinks. Only the jury matters, and the jury—for whatever reason—thought my father should be held to account for this unspeakable crime. This murder of his own wife. And as that word guilty echoed around the courtroom, I knew what I had always known, what I had spent a lifetime pretending I didn’t know.

  That they were right.

  That I had been making believe all along, because the alternative was too dreadful to contemplate. Because who could still love a man who could commit a crime like that? A crime like murder.

  And it’s the same kind of shock, delivered by Mr. Marshall here in the fragrant Japanese tea garden of the Flamingo Hotel. Only a mere few days since that Connecticut jury returned its verdict, in fact, though it seems like several lifetimes. Shock wil
l do that.

  I turn the words over in my head, examining them at various angles. Unlike in that Connecticut courtroom, there’s no echo, no simultaneous gasp of surprise from a hundred or so lungs to tell me I’ve heard him properly. Because I was right there, that night at Cocoa Beach. My thumb touches the bent circle of metal clinching the fourth finger of my right hand. Spins it around a time or two.

  At last: “I see.”

  “Yes. It’s an awful thing. You see, he’d agreed to work with me, a while back. He’d agreed it might be in his best interest to help us gather up a bit of information. I think he’d realized, by then, he was in over his head, he and that brother of his. He’s not a bad man, your husband. Why, the whole thing was Mr. Samuel Fitzwilliam’s idea to begin with, when he took over managing the shipping company. They started out just wanting to make a few bucks, to tide the business over when the harvest had all been shipped out—he had a lot of debt, you know, a lot of money to pay back to the banks—and the bootleg money, why, it’s a whole lot of dough, real hard for some men to resist. And I guess neither of them thought much of the Eighteenth Amendment to begin with. I understand that. I understand why some might object. I have my own opinions. But it’s the law of the land, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, and I’m sworn to uphold the law of the land, and what happens when you start to break that law—my God, are you all right?”

  “Yes. I’m fine. Please go on.”

  “Let me get you a glass of water.”

  “No! I want you to tell me the whole story.”

  But he doesn’t listen. He reaches forward and grasps me by the shoulders and lifts me right out of my chair—he’s much burlier than I thought—and into his arms. I guess this might count as a romantic gesture to some, but his arms are hard and businesslike, and he doesn’t linger or comfort or anything like that, though he’s careful not to hurt me, either. He carries me briskly across the garden toward the French doors of the hotel, and the truth is, I am a bit light-headed. A little dizzy, a little sick, such that even if I wanted to protest, I really couldn’t. I do need a glass of water. I do need to lie down. There’s only so much a body can endure in a single week.

  At the last moment Mr. Marshall veers from the wall of French doors and carries me to a discreet entrance at the side of the building. He seems to know exactly where he’s going. We proceed up the service elevator in absolute silence—thank God there’s no one about—and I manage not to lean my head on his shoulder, not once, even as we turn sideways through the door and he places me gently on the bed. I glance at the other bed—Clara hasn’t retired yet, it seems—and tell Mr. Marshall that this really wasn’t necessary, and he should leave at once before my companion arrives.

  He’s pouring a glass of water from the pitcher and turns his head briefly to reply. “Miss Clara Fitzwilliam. Is that right?”

  “Yes. My sister-in-law.”

  He hands me the water. “I know. Now listen to me. I sought you out, I arranged this little meeting only because I wanted to inform you in person of the substance of our investigation, and to deliver a warning.”

  “A warning?”

  “Yes. Stay out of the way, do you hear me? These men are dangerous, extremely dangerous. So you’re not going to help, as you put it. You’re going to leave this entire matter to the bureau.”

  “But—”

  “I promise you we’ll catch the men who killed your husband, and we’ll let you know when we do. God knows you’ve suffered enough already. You should go back to New York, Mrs. Fitzwilliam. You should go back to New York, where I’m sure your sister needs you more than we do.”

  I want to ask how he knows about my sister, but I suppose, once more—like Clara, like everyone else except me—he’s read about her in the papers. I set down the water glass on the nightstand. “I’m in no condition to travel all the way back to New York at the moment, Mr. Marshall. I’ll stay right here in Florida, if you don’t mind.”

  “What about your daughter? You want to put her in danger? I’ll tell you this: these men, these Florida gangs, they won’t hesitate to hurt a baby girl. Or worse. I’ve seen what they can do, things no lady should have to imagine. That gun you’re hiding in your pocket isn’t going to do a damned bit of good. Thugs and murderers, every last one.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “You ought to be afraid. For your daughter, if not for yourself.”

  He speaks with terrible sternness. As I suppose he should; after all, he’s got a point, hasn’t he? He’s just confirmed what I suppose I already knew; he’s just slid a few pieces of this vast and complicated puzzle into place. The bootleggers, the Florida gangs, the acts of dangerous treachery. So I realize I should be afraid. I am afraid. I’m afraid for Evelyn, and I’m afraid for myself for Evelyn’s sake. I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother.

  On the other hand—and this is important, mind you—just as in that courtroom in Connecticut, I happen to be in possession of a piece of information that nobody else knows, except Simon himself—a piece of information, a postmark, that constitutes my last particle of hope. If hope, indeed, is the word to describe this pitch of desperation that’s overcome my every nerve.

  “I appreciate your concern,” I say, “but the fact is, I find I’m enjoying myself here in Florida. The sunshine, the sand, the ocean. It’s the best kind of tonic.”

  “Then you’re a fool.”

  “Maybe I am. But I’m not going to be chased out of anywhere, Mr. Marshall. Not by some Florida bootlegger, nor by a stranger with a square jaw and a short haircut who claims he’s a revenue agent.”

  Up until this moment, Mr. Marshall’s been looming over me as I lie on the bed, in the manner of a father trying to remonstrate with a recalcitrant child, while I have looked up at him in juvenile defiance. He straightens now, and his hard blue eyes—more lapis than sapphire, as the lamplight reveals—sort of widen. “Claims he’s a revenue agent?”

  “You’re the one who told me not to trust anybody.”

  He blinks at last, a bit slowly, as if he’s turning over rocks inside that prehistoric skull of his. “You know, Mrs. Fitzwilliam, for a woman who’s lost a father and a husband inside of a few months, you’ve got a quick mouth. Tell me something. Do you know how to fire that gun?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. You might want to find a holster for it, though. You’re liable to have an accident in that pocket of yours.”

  I nod to the door. “My friend will be back soon.”

  “Not for an hour at least, I’ll bet,” he says, reaching inside his jacket, “but I think you need your rest. Here’s my card. If you need anything, or hear anything important, anything you think I might need to know, I want you to call that number right away. Do you understand? Collect.”

  I accept the card between the tips of my fingers. “I will.”

  He puts his hat back on his head—all this time it’s been dangling from the fingers of his left hand, a government-man fedora of dark gray felt, the sinister opposite of the tourist boater this afternoon—and turns to leave. “Oh, and Mrs. Fitzwilliam?”

  “Yes?”

  “I meant to ask. Have you happened to receive any relevant letters from your husband, over the years? Letters that mentioned business, I mean. Names, places, that kind of thing.”

  “Business? Why, no. Nothing as particular as that. Just love notes, really.”

  “I see. But if you remember anything, you’ll let me know?”

  I flutter the card in the air. “Of course. Good night, Mr. Marshall.”

  He stares at me a moment longer, narrowing those eyes in a most unsettling way, as if he’s actually prying inside the contents of my mind. I suppose they train them that way, these revenue men, picking apart truth from prevarication. He’s rather tall, for such a burly fellow, and I can’t help feeling as if he’s about to step forward and snap me in two.

  Instead, he says, “I am very sorry about all this, Mrs. Fitzwilliam,” and steps through the doorway a
s soundlessly as a six-foot cat, nearly brushing the lintel with his fedora.

  Chapter 10

  Paris, August 1917

  At first I thought the man was a ghost. A figment of my imagination, or at least of my unconscious mind. He had flown up from the hole in the center of my soul—the one that hurt so much I had to ignore it—because you couldn’t just go on ignoring the thing that hurt you. You couldn’t go on fleeing the agony in your middle, the discord that plucked through your guts, just because you were afraid to acknowledge the truth.

  So now he had come to haunt me.

  “Captain Fitzwilliam?” I whispered.

  He stepped forward into the light, and I saw that he was solid, not transparent. Whole and real: not a ghost. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I didn’t mean to shock you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  I shook my head, and he smiled confidently.

  “Because Mrs. DeForest told me you were in Paris, by yourself—”

  “Not by myself.”

  “With only that silly nurse for company. Where is she now?”

  My mouth was dry, my tongue almost too thick to speak. “She’s with a friend.”

  “A friend. Hmm. As I thought. And you, Miss Fortescue? Why aren’t you with a friend?”

  “Because I—because—I was unwell.”

  He stepped forward. “Unwell!”

  “Just for a moment.”

  He stopped, and I was already frozen, and so we stood for a moment. Still as forest animals. The wallpaper peeled behind him. The lamp cast a sinister shadow on his face. Above us, the floorboards creaked, while several thousand words floated like dust in the stuffy, sordid air between his lips and mine.

  He moved first, shifting his hat from right hand to left. His voice was soft. “Did you receive my letters at all?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think of them?”