She nodded against my palm. "Mac, I tried so hard to grow up when Candy was born. I wanted to be independent and strong, and I have been. But a couple of years ago I got so tired of being lonely."
I waited for more, but she didn't continue. A pickup truck drove between us and the terminal, and its lights formed long white cones in the fog. The sound of a small airplane engine being cranked and idled came muffled and dull through the open windows.
"I think I know enough about what we're up against to be scared, but I believe in you," she said. "And I know now why Patty did." I swallowed a lump the size of my fist. "I just hope you don't wind up regretting the day you met me."
"That's funny," I said, my voice sounding alien, like a cartoon. "I was thinking the same thing about you."
I'm not sure if I kissed her or if it was Katherine who started it, but t was sudden and we were both shaken by it. At first it was clumsy and urgent, with the sharp clicking of teeth against teeth, but we made alterations en route and ended up with a pretty smooth finish. We backed away from each other reluctantly, and confusion seemed to be the order of the day. She brushed my lips with her fingers and smiled. There was a long silence.
"I need to give you my phone numbers," she said, but she didn't move. "I usually work from noon to eight, but I'm there off and on and I'm hard to find. It's a big place and it never slows down. There's an answering machine at home." She was talking too fast, and she stopped to take a long breath. Her eyes wandered down to my shirt. "Just leave a message and I'll get it."
Katherine turned in the seat, and I reeled in my hand but couldn't figure out where to put it, so I gripped the wheel. She wrote the numbers in he dark, ripped the page from the pad and stuffed it in my pocket.
"Don't come in," she said. Her hand reached for mine, but only touched it. "I'll just make sure there's room on the plane and, if I can get on board, I'll wave to you from the window." She kissed me and slipped out of my car.
"I'll call you soon," she said, leaning down into the window. We stared at each other, not sure how far to take it. "Be careful."
"You, too," I said, and it seemed a terribly ordinary farewell. She straightened and walked away.
"Katherine," I called out, and she turned expectantly. I really didn't know what else to say, and after a few seconds she blew me a kiss and walked inside. She came to the door after a few minutes and waved toward the car, then disappeared. I sat and watched until the plane rose into the fog, its flashing lights swallowed up before the noise of the engines faded away.
I drove slowly, and when I got to my neighborhood I missed my own street and had to turn around and double back. The driveway was closer than I thought, and I almost drove past it, too. The small porch was dark and I stumbled on the steps. My hands were shaking as I fumbled for my keys, but I finally got the door open and stepped into my empty house, a place suddenly cold and unfamiliar.
Everything was in its place; the aquarium still bubbled, and the fan in my refrigerator still clattered when it stopped. I left a trail of clothes from the sofa to the bedroom and avoided the bathroom door, falling on my unmade bed in a state of utter exhaustion. I held a hand over my face and could smell Katherine's perfume, so I left it there.
The world tilted when I closed my eyes, and I fell into a winter day, filled with sunshine. Thin, gray shadows from the naked trees stretched across Patty Sheevers and, like pencil sketches, gave mere suggestion to her form. She smiled, and sunlight danced in her eyes. She looked through strands of yellow hair and noticed me. Warm, moist air that had been deep inside her poured from Patty's parted lips and turned to ice in the winter chill when she said my name. Her voice was such a familiar melody and I ached for her, but we made no effort to touch. I was disoriented, and wasn't sure if I was standing up or lying down, or maybe floating somewhere slightly above. But those vinegar-colored eyes had no problem staying locked on mine.
This wasn't a new dream, so my stomach had already knotted up by the time the first wound broke open on her chest. Soon there were more and she begged me to help, but I stayed where I was, watching in horror as she dislocated her shoulders in an attempt to get free of her bonds, eyes wider and wider until I woke up screaming and the telephone rang.
I lifted the receiver and apologized to my neighbor, my sweat soaking the mouthpiece. I agreed with the poor man that I really should move someplace else, someplace remote, but we both knew I was resigned to my home like a dragon to his cave.
SIX
"You're a detective?" the rich girl said, then giggled.
The bad thing is, I always knew something was wrong with the Limestone Creek murders, that someone was going to catch hell for it. I just never imagined it would be me. I stared up at the girl from where I lay on the lawn, her boyfriend's boot tip touching my ear. She was maybe seventeen, but her face looked tired, like she never slept. The makeup, contemptuously applied, didn't help. There's now way, under the circumstance, that I can say I felt sorry for her and not make it sound sarcastic, but I did. Pretty, rich girls are something like sideshow freaks. Their career choices are limited.
"He's not a real detective," I heard a man's voice come from the patio. He's McDonald Clay."
The boyfriend laughed. The man's voice wasn't new to me; I knew him, too - of course, everyone knew his voice. You didn't watch television or listen to the radio in Palmetto Bay without hearing him sell his condos, his luxury lakefront lots, his Gulf-front properties. When you watched the local news you heard his political opinions, saw him patting minority children on their heads. He was Bob Birk, of Bob Birk's everything.
Everyone knew his voice, but it was more than familiar to me. Birk's was the first money I ever took to investigate something he didn't want investigated and come up with the conclusion for which he'd paid. I had thought it would be hard, but it wasn't. It was just me then; Sheevers had been long gone. I sat in my office, drank Drambuie and played dice baseball for five days until they brought me the results of 'my' investigation. 'Proof' that Birk's friend and associate hadn't filled his car lots with hot cars from Alabama, their numbers altered to match serial numbers.
I memorized the facts over the weekend, and on the following Tuesday I sat in the hot seat in circuit court, recited my litany, then stood in the hallway watching their beaming faces as they slapped me on the shoulder and paid me with a check with Bob Birk's logo. I, in turn, made the house payment, paid the bills and bought groceries. Over a period of time, I became a man who could be counted on to do what he's told, for a price.
Birk pulled me aside one day and said, "Clay, you're an idiot. You always swim against the current. Always. I mean, Christ, don't you ever think to yourself, What the fuck am I doing?"
I didn't answer, and it made him mad.
"Well, shit," he said. "It's no skin off my ass, but it seems to me that one day you'd wake up and realize that no one gives a shit for you. You're no hero. You're just a dumb geek that let his girlfriend get bumped off, and you didn't even do anything about it. 'Tell you the truth, it embarrasses me to think of you as an American. I mean, what the hell did you ever do for your country?" He rolled his eyes for my benefit.
I shrugged and asked if he wanted me to gas up the truck while I was in town. He told me to get fucked, then he tossed me the gas credit card. I didn't care what he said to me. The only thing that mattered was the check that paid my bills and allowed me to live in the house where Patty Sheevers still walked, where she and I would sit together through the quiet nights and listen to the wind.
Birk's rich daughter looked down at me without emotion. Even the smile was gone. She would never believe there was a time I laughed at men like her father, the man who seemed destined to be Florida's next governor.
"Oh." I saw the recognition in her pale, blue eyes. It was as though she'd just scraped me from the bottom of her shoe and found something disgusting. "I've seen you," she said. "You work for Daddy."
"Not anymore he doesn't," Birk said. I felt the wet lawn th
rough my suit coat and turned my head to the sound of his voice, looking past his rich daughter. In doing so, I noticed that, except for the distinct jaw line that branded her as his own, she was his direct opposite. Where he was short, she was tall; where he was fat, she was thin; He was dark and swarthy and she was fair and smooth, and I knew then that his wife hated him. I'd never met her, but I immediately respected a woman who could stand up to the great Bob Birk and create this act of genetic defiance.
"Have you ever heard of Candace Furay?" I said.
Birk blinked. "Who?"
"Her girlfriends called her Candy."
Bob Birk looked at his daughter's boyfriend. "Help Mr. Clay to his feet."
The boyfriend leaned down and grabbed my wrist, pulling me upright like he was taking up an anchor, then held my elbow as I caught my balance. It seemed fair, since he was the one who knocked me down. After that one punch I was just glad he hadn't caught me a couple of minutes earlier when I was in Birk's home office with my hands in the safe.
"So that's the reason you were sneaking around my house?" Birk said. "Looking for some bitch?"
"I wasn't aware I was sneaking," I said.
"Shut up," Birk said. "You caused all this trouble just to ask me something you could've said on the telephone? Listen, you asshole, I'm not here to help you chase down your old girlfriends - you've just made me late for a dinner party."
I'd seen it in the newspaper. A gala event at the yacht club to grease the skids on Birk's bid for governor. Several well-known politicians from around the Southeast were slated to appear, and there would be drinks and dancing.
Birk's black tuxedo sucked up the light from his security lamps, and his daughter was in a gown. The boyfriend was wearing one of those long black coats that cost a lot of money and make tall people look short.
"Do you know why I've paid your way these last couple of years, you piece of shit?" Birk said. "And don't you dare forget it's been me lining your pockets. Do you really think you're worth the money I give you? Shit, you make me sick.
"I feel sorry for you." He held out his hands, palms up. "I'm one of the few people who thought maybe you didn't murder your girlfriend, but maybe I was wrong about that, too." Birk was getting madder as he talked.
"Listen to me, you lousy fuck." He dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. "You just fell off the gravy train. You think you can sneak around my home and scare my little girl to death and play Dick Tracy with me and I'm gonna roll over and put my feet in the air?" There was a long and menacing silence. He was looking at my face, but his eyes were unfocused.
"'Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'll give you two minutes to get the fuck off my land and then I'm gonna send SeeSee after you." He nodded to the side and I looked to the corner of the patio. I'd seen the Rottweiler before, but had never noticed he was larger than a garbage can. He sat still as a table leg, watching his master.
Birk had gone through a lot of dogs in the three-plus years I'd been around him, but none like old SeeSee. I didn't spend a lot of time admiring the dog. Before my mind fully registered the fact that something that big was being held back by a choke chain the size of my little finger, my body had turned and my feet were searching down the long driveway for the open gate.
The rich daughter saved my life, but I credit the mother's genes. I was almost at the gate when I heard her say, in a mixture of horror and fascination, "Daddy!"
Because of that I heard the tiny, chinking sound of the choke chain being released, and I took off in a dead run for my car. As I ran around to the driver's side I could hear the dog's paws slapping the pavement behind me. I tore open the door and leapt inside, slamming it shut only to notice, just as the dog lunged, that the window was open.
I fell to the side as the dog's chest crashed against the door, his teeth clacking together so close to my face that I could smell his breath. He bounced back to the street and regained his footing. I sat up, fumbling for the window crank as he leapt again. I had the window about a quarter of the way up and he pushed his head inside, growling as his teeth clamped down on the thin collar of my dress coat.
I pulled back on the crank and felt pressure as the edge of the window met the dog. I gripped the puny alloy in both hands, drawing it back like an oar. The glass pressed into the dog's throat, but he didn't seem to notice until he tried to pull his head back for a better grip and found himself held. He tried to turn his head from side to side on the massive neck but I kept pulling, watching the top of the window sink deeper into the thick folds of skin. Suddenly, he realized he was in trouble and tried to retreat, grunting as he twisted against the headliner, his claws tearing at the paint, screeching down to the metal.
I hung on to the crank desperately, hoping it wouldn't break off in my hands and the dog went wild. He let go of my collar and clamped his mouth shut, eyes closed as he began thrashing against the window. He struggled. I heard the window crack and saw a spider web of lines form in the depths of the safety glass as he pushed and pulled. I put all my strength into the crank, giving up the notion of waiting him out, and it slipped over the metal nipple that held it. I had to lean into the door to get a better grip, and we touched heads. He was whimpering, and I could smell the stink of his fear. I pushed hard with my feet against the floorboard, my palms sweaty as I struggled to hold on to the crank.
The dog shuddered and his lips went slack. He blew out bubbles of blood that dotted the dash and fell on my jacket, moaned so deep inside him it sounded as if
it came from down the street, and died. His body sagged against the door and the window gave way, breaking out and holding its shape for a moment as the dog hung there, then falling outward as the massive body dropped to the street.
My arms were twitching as though they attached to electric wires, but I managed to open the door and push the body aside until I could climb out. I heard the clapping of shoes on the drive as they ran to the sound of the commotion and I reached down, wrapping my fingers around the dog's throat. I used up all my remaining strength lifting the carcass and walked on wobbly legs to the sidewalk.
As Birk and the boyfriend rounded the corner from the large brick and cast-iron gates to the street, I pressed my thumbs into the dog's neck and shook it a few times for effect. I looked up at their comic forms, frozen in midstride, snarled and dropped the lifeless body at my feet.
I turned my back on them and walked around the car's trunk to the door, stepped inside and drove away with the window glass hanging like a thick cloth over the mutilated paint job. Better to leave them guessing.
I knew I had crossed the line then. For the first time in nearly five years, I had become a threat to someone. I saw it in Birk's eyes when he blinked. I heard it in his voice, and when he responded to Candy's name by mentioning old girlfriends, I knew it was real. There was something in his voice, in his eyes. It wasn't much to base a suspicion on, but I didn't need much. Up until then, though, I had wanted to be wrong.
SEVEN
"You did what?" Mark Thornton shouted at me over his office phone in his best lawyer voice.
"I killed his dog." I tried to make it sound like the kind of thing anyone would've done. We breathed at each other through the wires.
"God damn it, Mac," he said. "Are you out of your mind?"
"No," I said. "The dog started it."
"Shit," he said, then I heard rinky-tinky music and knew he'd put me on hold. I studied my drapes until he came back on the line.
"Okay, meet me at the marina at two-thirty." He hung up, and I did the same. I looked at my watch and it was only eleven o'clock. I'd gone into Palmetto Bay earlier that morning to order a new window for my car, and on the hunch that Birk would suspect I was setting him up for political blackmail, I stopped in at each of the other gubernatorial candidates' new offices and dawdled around inside long enough to give ulcers to whoever was following me, or at least to the ones they reported to. I was sure somebody was following me.
I picked up the piece of white paper I had
placed beside the phone and walked into the bathroom, staring at the series of numbers on it. I sat on the toilet seat and leaned back to think. Each movement made my shiner throb and my eye water. The boyfriend's roundhouse right had landed squarely on the side of my face, and if I had stayed on my feet he would've beaten me to a pulp. Lucky for me, I have a glass jaw. I really was lucky, though. He'd caught me on the grounds on the way out, not before I had broken into the office, and not, thank God, while I was inside the house in Birk's den with my fingers in his desk. Hell, in his safe.
I wasn't surprised that the combination to Birk's safe was unchanged. He was so sure no one would attempt to cross him that I doubt he'd even thought about it. Besides, he'd have to learn new numbers if he did that. What I found in the safe, a built-in that occupied the lower right half of his giant desk, did surprise me.
He always kept his most important business there. Stacks of contracts and bundles of cash for the little ceremonies he held on occasion to give 'bonuses' to his 'helpers.' I'd watched him open the safe so many times that it was easy to remember the combination. This time, though, there was only one piece of paper lying on the thick floor of the safe. A sheet of paper with four sets of numbers scrawled on it, and nothing else. I'd ripped a sheet from his notepad and copied the numbers down before I closed the safe, but looking at them now for maybe the hundredth time, I still had no idea what they meant or why they were so important. A line of four four-digit numbers with no other markings anywhere.
I sat on the toilet seat and stared at the numbers. Sheevers' presence filled the room, and I waited for her to say, "Oh, yeah. I know what those are." But there was only the sound of the wind in the trees outside.
I really hadn't expected to find anything in Birk's safe to implicate him in Candy Furay's rape and subsequent abortion, but I was ready to settle for any scrap of information that would let me know something he didn't want known. Now that I had it, I was still ignorant. I tried to imagine what the numbers might be; maybe the last four numbers of a telephone, or stock certificates, auto tag numbers or any damned thing under the sun. Finally, frustrated, I stood and stuffed the paper into my shirt.
A Thousand Bridges Page 6
