by Ron Base
“Every once in a while someone does,” Lindsay corrected.
Marcello poked his head in the room. “This young man was here yesterday, too,” Lindsay said. “He’s a real little sweetheart.”
“I’m not a little sweetheart,” Marcello said coming into the room. “I’m his partner—and I saved his life.”
“Did you? That’s impressive,” Nurse Lindsay said. “I’ll come back in a little while and check on you, Mr. Callister.”
She smiled and made her exit. Marcello wore a blue-striped T-shirt and a pair of baggy shorts that hung down past his knees. He eased himself into the molded plastic chair beside Tree’s bed.
“That was very courageous what you did, Marcello,” Tree said.
“Mrs. Lake says I shouldn’t have done it. I could have been killed.”
“She’s right about that.”
“I saved your life,” Marcello repeated proudly.
“That’s if Ryde Bodie was really going to shoot me,” Tree said.
“He didn’t seem to have that gun pointed at anyone else,” Marcello said. “Of course, I jumped him and saved your life.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true,” Marcello asserted.
“Have you seen Madi and Josh?”
“Madison. She doesn’t like to be called Madi.”
“Yes, I know. Have you seen them?”
“They’ve gone away.”
“Gone away? Where?”
Marcello raised and lowered his shoulders. “They went with their dad.”
“I thought he would be in jail.”
Marcello fished into his pocket, and brought out a folded piece of notepaper. “Madison wasn’t supposed to, but she wrote you a letter. I promised her that I’d make sure you got it.” He opened it up and handed it to Tree.
Madison had carefully printed on the lined sheet torn from a wire bound student’s notebook. It read:
Dear Mr. Callister
We are going away with our dad. We can’t say where. Thanks to you we know what he does. He helps the FBI. Sorry you got shot. Sorry we can’t visit you. They won’t let us.
Yours very sincerely,
Madison Bodie
At the bottom of the letter, Madison had drawn a flower with black petals.Marcello said, “That stuff about helping the FBI, is that what he really does?”
“Help me out of bed,” Tree said.
“We didn’t do a very good job.”
Tree threw back the covers and began to ease his wounded leg off the mattress. “What do you mean?”
“They hired us to find out about their father, and they ended up having to find out for themselves. We didn’t do anything.”
“Well, I would say we gave them a helping hand.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Marcello said. He got off the chair and allowed Tree to lean on him. “Anyway, I have to get going.”
“Just a minute,” Tree said. “I need you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just help me, will you?”
“Okay, but Mrs. Lake is waiting. She says as a result of what happened, she doesn’t want us to be partners.”
Leaning on Marcello, Tree began hobbling toward the door. “No? Why is that?”
“She says it’s too dangerous, and I should concentrate on my school work.”
“Okay,” Tree said.
“I probably should be associated with a better detective, anyway.”
“You probably should,” Tree said.
“Someone who can get the job done.”
They reached the nurse’s station. Nurse Lindsay looked up, ballpoint pen poised over the paperwork she was finishing. “You shouldn’t be out of bed, Mr. Callister.”
“What room is Ryde Bodie in?” Tree said.
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you that,” Lindsay said.
“Please,” Tree said. “It’s very important.”
“He’s downstairs.” She consulted a chart, and then gave him the room number.
Marcello, grumbling, navigated Tree to the elevator. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” he said.
“You’re helping me, like a partner should,” Tree said.
“Yeah, well, like I said, I don’t think we can be partners.”
The elevator arrived. Tree eased onto it and leaned against the railing.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Tree said. “We may not be partners, and I’m probably not much of a detective, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
“I did save your life,” Marcello said. “That’s something, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” Tree said.
“And I helped you onto the elevator.”
When they reached the second floor, Tree leaned on Marcello and together they found Ryde’s room.
Only the room was empty. A single black iris lay on the bed sheet.
39
Tree picked up the iris, and Marcello said, “How come he leaves a flower behind? What’s that all about?”
Before Tree had to come up with an answer, Special Agent Shawn Lazenby entered. “I was just upstairs looking for the two of you,” he said. “Marcello, your mom’s waiting in the lobby. I think you’d better go meet her.”
Marcello looked at Tree. “Sure you’re gonna be all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” Tree said. “Thanks for your help, Marcello.”
“We never even got paid,” Marcello said.
“No, we didn’t,” Tree admitted.
Marcello shrugged. “But I guess that’s all right, since we came out partners in the end.”
Then to Tree’s surprise, Marcello hugged him hard before disappearing from the room.
Holding the iris, Tree swallowed a couple of times, and then made himself focus on Lazenby. “It was Ryde,” he said.
“It was Ryde what?” replied Lazenby.
“Ryde killed Rodrigo on the yacht. Then he set fire to his own house so he could cover up Jim Waterhouse’s murder—and probably collect a hefty insurance payment in the bargain. If he didn’t kill Paola and Manuel Ramos himself, he engineered it so that Patricio and his men would do it for him—that is, after Patricio’s hit man failed to kill him on Rabbit Road. Once Paola and Manuel were taken care of, he arranged to blow Patricio to hell and gone so he wouldn’t have any second thoughts about coming after him.”
“I think maybe you’re giving Mr. Bodie far too much credit,” Lazenby said.
“What I don’t understand is why he would kill Bonnie. She wasn’t in his way—or was she? Maybe as long as Bonnie was still alive, she could turn on him, and he didn’t want that.”
“As far as the police are concerned, it was Diego who murdered Mrs. Garrison,” Lazenby said.
“And the really amazing thing is, you’re protecting him, letting him get away with all this.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lazenby said.
“Then where is he? Where is Ryde Bodie or whatever the hell his name is?”
“Don’t get your shirt in a knot, Tree,” Lazenby said in a warning voice. “You’ve come out all right.”
“Where is he?”
Lazenby sighed and said, “He’s in a safe place, and so are his children.”
“What did he do? Come to you once he realized Wally and his wife Bonnie had defrauded a Mexican drug cartel?”
“Let’s put it this way, we saw an opportunity to take down the Estrella Cartel, and so we met with Mr. Bodie, and he told us what he could bring to the table.”
“And you even bagged a second drug lord, the Great Patricio himself.”
“Yes,” was all Lazenby said.
“Did Ryde mention he was going to kill everyone who got in his way?”
“We would never agree to anything like that,” Lazenby said.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Tree said. “But Ryde knew that as long as any of them lived, they could potentially come after him, no matter how well the FBI hid him and h
is family. He also knew there wasn’t much you could do to stop him—or maybe I should say there wasn’t much you wanted to do.”
“Like I said before, I believe you are giving Mr. Bodie far too much credit.”
“It would all have worked out just fine, except Ryde’s kids couldn’t figure out what their father was up to, and so they hired Marcello. He came to me, and fool that I am, I allowed him to talk me into getting involved.”
“Yes, I’m sorry about that,” Lazenby said. “I must say, though, you put yourself needlessly in harm’s way.”
“Did I? Or did I get some help finding harm’s way from the FBI?”
“I’m not following you,” Lazenby said.
“I thought it was Rex Baxter who told Ryde about the millions allegedly stolen from the Tajikistan government I was supposed to be hiding,” Tree said. “But it wasn’t Rex. It was you.”
Lazenby smiled and shrugged. “Maybe, just maybe, we underestimated how Mr. Bodie would put that information to use. Mr. Bodie has a remarkable ability to take advantage of everyone.” Lazenby looked at his watch. “I’m going to miss my plane back to Miami.”
“So that’s it? That’s the end of it?”
“I’ve already told you a lot more than I should, Tree.”
He held out his hand. Tree just looked at it. “You know he would have killed me, too, if that boy who just left hadn’t risked his life and tackled him.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Lazenby said. “Mr. Bodie says he’s quite fond of you.”
“I don’t think Ryde Bodie likes anyone but himself,” Tree said.
Lazenby shrugged. “Look, these things are always messy. They never quite work out the way you hope. But in this case, they did work out, so let’s just leave it at that.”
“Sure,” Tree said. “Why don’t we?”
“Hope you’re going to be all right.” Lazenby didn’t sound too concerned one way or the other. Tree could easily imagine him already onto the next case. This one was closed, the dead buried or missing, the survivors hospitalized or in hiding. Time to move on.
“I’ll be fine,” Tree said.
“I hope so,” Lazenby said. “But why do I suspect that a guy like you, Tree, is always going to be in some kind of trouble.”
Tree tossed the flower to Lazenby who caught it awkwardly. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“I don’t know,” Tree said. “Press it between the pages of your memory book so you don’t forget the killer you let go free. Maybe you’ll look at it every once in a while, and you won’t find yourself so easy to live with.”
Lazenby offered a crooked grin. “You take care of yourself, Tree.”
When the FBI agent left, he was still holding the black iris.
40
Here’s what I don’t understand,” Freddie Stayner said as her husband leaned on a cane and hobbled across the Lee Memorial Hospital parking lot. Cooler air had overtaken the overnight humidity creating a thickening fog.
“How I could ever manage to get myself shot twice?” interjected Tree.
Actually, once he got the hang of it, the cane was a great aid, and he was sorry he had kicked up a fuss about using it.
“No, that I can understand. Bruce Willis, for example, would know enough to get out of the way of a bullet. You seem to walk right into them.”
“Bruce benefits from the fact no one is actually shooting at him,” Tree said. “The people I deal with use real bullets.”
“All the more reason to be careful,” Freddie said.
“What don’t you understand?”
“I don’t understand why you kept the money in the first place.”
“You mean the nine million somonis.”
“I think you’re making it up,” Freddie said. “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a somoni—unless it’s something you eat.”
“The one hundred somoni bank note features a very handsome, bearded gentleman wearing a crown.”
“Why didn’t you just leave the money where you found it?”
“It’s funny,” Tree said. “You’re the first person who’s asked me that question.”
As they approached Freddie’s Mercedes, they saw someone emerge from the fog.
“Tommy Dobbs,” Tree said. Trying not to groan when he said it. He should have known. Wherever there was fog or shadow or the darkness of the night, there was Tommy emerging from it.
“Thomas, Mr. C.”
“Sorry, I’ve been shot, I’m not myself,” Tree said.
“I came around to see you a couple of times, but you were always sleeping,” Tommy said.
“I haven’t forgotten you, believe me,” Tree said. “I suspect you’re the one who called in the cavalry.”
Tommy seemed pleased to be so acknowledged. “When you didn’t come back, and there I was with the kids, and they started to get really restless and tired, I figured I’d better call Special Agent Lazenby.”
Tree looked at him. “You know Special Agent Lazenby?”
“I talked to him a couple of times for my story.”
“What story?”
Tommy grinned. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, Mr. C. I heard you were getting out today. The Sun-Times loves my piece. They want to talk to me about a possible job on staff. I’m flying to Chicago tomorrow.”
“Hold on a minute, Tommy—”
“Thomas.”
“You’ve already written a story?”
“The former Sun-Times reporter-turned-private-detective, his life saved by a thirteen-year-old boy. Together these two Sanibel Sunset detectives helped bring down a major Mexican drug cartel. It’s a heck of a story, Mr. C.”
Before Tree could stop him, Tommy embraced him. “I guess I saved your life, Mr. C. But at the same time, you saved my newspaper career. I’ll never know how to thank you.”
Tree thought there was getting to be quite a line forming of people who claimed to have saved his life.
“You can start to thank me by letting go of me,” Tree said. “I’m feeling very fragile at the moment.”
Tommy sprang away, looking embarrassed. “Yeah, of course. Sorry, Mr. C.”
“Tree,” Freddie said in a warning voice. “Be nice. He’s done a great job.”
Tree looked at his wife. “You’ve seen the story?”
“It’s all over the Internet,” Freddie said.
In a more conciliatory voice, Tree said, “Listen I’m glad you’ve got a shot at a job—Thomas. I’m happy for you. Really, I am. I just wish the story wasn’t about me.”
“It’ll be great for your business, Mr. C,” Tommy said enthusiastically. “Just wait and see. Everyone will want to hire the Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency now.”
Freddie frowned. “Every time someone hires him, he gets shot.”
“It’s not every time,” Tree corrected. “A couple of times, that’s all.”
“Too many times,” Freddie said.
She helped him into the Mercedes. Tommy leaned in the window. “I’ll let you know how it goes in Chicago, Mr. C.”
“You’re joining a dying breed, Thomas, but good luck.”
Then Tommy was gone from the window. Tree cleared his throat. Freddie said, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Tree said.
“Anything you say, tough guy.”
“I don’t know whether I mentioned it or not, but I’ve been shot. Twice.”
“I doubt I’m ever going to hear the end of it,” Freddie said.
________
The fog was thicker as Freddie exited the parking lot onto South Cleveland Avenue. Tree said, “You’re right.”
Freddie glanced over at him. “What am I right about?”
“I should get out of this.”
“I never said a thing,” Freddie said.
“Yes, but I know what you’re thinking.”
“I am thinking you should do what your heart tells you—I just wish your heart would tell you to do something t
hat doesn’t get you killed.”
“My heart is telling me living is better than dying,” Tree said.
“Then you should listen to your heart.” Freddie brought the car to a stop at Cypress Lake Drive and gave him a quick glance.
“That’s what I’m doing,” Tree said.
“You’re going to give up the Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency?”
“Don’t you think it’s time?”
When the light turned green, Freddie started the car forward, saying, “If you’re asking me, I would say yes. If getting yourself shot a second time isn’t a wakeup call, I don’t know what is. But that’s me, it’s not you. You have to do what you think is right for you.”
“Lying in that hospital bed, I thought about it a lot,” Tree said. “This is what’s right for me.”
They drove along in silence for a few minutes. Then Freddie said, “You never did answer my question.”
“What question was that?”
Freddie’s eyes kept darting toward the rear view mirror.
“What’s wrong?” Tree said.
“Someone is following us,” Freddie said.
41
Tree tried to crane his head around so that he could get a look at who was behind them. But it hurt too much.
“It doesn’t look like a police car, but now red lights are flashing,” Freddie said, eyes on the rear view mirror.
“Probably an unmarked car,” Tree said. “Better pull over.”
Freddie slowed, turned into a nearby CVS Drug Store parking lot, and brought the Mercedes to a stop. A brown Buick pulled up beside the car. Two men were in the car. Tree recognized the driver.
“Owen Markfield,” he said.
Markfield came over to Freddie’s side as she rolled down the window.
Tree said, “You’re out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you, Detective Markfield?”
“A good police officer is never out of his jurisdiction when he sees wrong being done.”
“Exactly what wrong was being done?” Freddie demanded.
Markfield smirked and said, “Other than the fact that you may be transporting a wanted fugitive, you seemed to be going pretty fast.”
“I seemed to be going pretty fast?”
Markfield looked past Freddie at Tree. “I want you to step out, Callister.”
“What’s my passenger got to do with the fact I’m supposedly speeding?”
