Nothing seemed right. Nicaraguan Contras didn't need to be on private land, and Birk was much too careful and powerful to risk everything by raping a fourteen year-old girl. I paced the house like a raccoon in a cage and chased my mind down one dead end after another. All my notes on Tommy Lovett and the Sunset Girls had been removed from my house and car those three days I spent in jail, but I have a very good memory for details. Sheevers was murdered about two months after the Limestone Creek killings, and if Candace had waited until she knew she was pregnant before she told her mother, I'd have to add at least two months to that. She would've waited until she was sure. I needed to find out exactly when it happened.
My coffee table was a mosaic of notes and diagrams that reminded me of the past. The litter of my investigation overflowed onto the floor. In the weeks since Katherine had gone home I'd been working on my jigsaw puzzle of facts, but there were too many pieces still missing. Unlike a store-bought puzzle, there was no picture on the box to go by.
I had gone through the courthouse records and the library for any scraps of information on our public figures and the makeup of Omni, Inc., but there was precious little to be culled. My contacts around town had been silent, but I hoped that would change abruptly after my visit to Birk's house the night before. Birk wouldn't take chances now that he had his one big shot to become governor, but he couldn't let me get away with what I'd done, either.
I stood over the coffee table and took a last look at all the parts, then leaned down and scooped them up, making sure I got every scrap. I dumped them into a paper bag, emptied my coffee grounds in on top of them, rolled the bag closed and tossed it into the garbage. The telephone rang and I debated answering it, but there was no need to put anything off now. The ball was in play.
"Hello," I said into the phone.
"Hey, Mac," Katherine's voice was relaxed. I sat on the arm of the sofa and closed my eyes. "I've been thinking about you," she said.
We hadn't talked since she left, and I had just about convinced myself she was only a client, never mind that I'd forgotten to mention money to her the entire time. Never mind my trip to the bank to withdraw my own money to help her get away from Las Vegas. It wouldn't take many clients like her to have me resettled at the Mission, fighting for a place in the soup line.
"Are you okay?" she said.
"Yeah," I said. "But you're not a secret here anymore. I confronted Birk last night, and when I asked if he'd ever heard of Candace Furay, he made a puddle." I waited for it to sink in.
"Okay," Suddenly, I was afraid she was somewhere close, somewhere exposed.
"Where are you?" I said.
"I'm a Dr. Kuyatt's office here in Las Vegas. We got an early start this morning so I can get as much together about Candy as possible. Mark Thornton called last night and booked me on a flight to Tallahassee this afternoon so I can make the deposition."
I heard a man talking in the background, and there was a pause before Katherine spoke again. "Dr. Kuyatt wants me to ask you a few questions before I hang up." She giggled, and it sounded nasty. "Mr. Thornton said he tried to call you last night but you weren't home."
"I have a meeting with him in a couple of hours," I said. "I'm sure he'll fill me in. Do you have to come back here to do it?" I wanted her as far away as possible.
"Can't you go to a lawyer out there and have it faxed to Mark?"
"Yes, I guess so." She sounded disappointed. "Mr. Thornton wanted me to come there so I could deal with his people, and I thought maybe you could drive over for dinner or something."
I took a deep breath and scratched my chest. Even as I thought that I really did have to take her the getaway money, I knew that I was climbing out onto that little limb again. "I only go to restaurants that have drive-through windows."
"That's fine," she said, and again I heard a man talking. Katherine said something to him then came back on the line. "Mac," she said, "Dr. Kuyatt wants to know if you handle stress well." I looked out the screen door to my car, the door mutilated.
"Pretty well," I said. She laughed in my ear and sounded happy. "I think he's worried about you taking advantage of me," she said. "He's afraid you'll go macho."
"That won't happen," I said. "Tell him that I'm really just a woman trapped in a man's body, but it's okay because I'm a lesbian."
She covered the phone and I heard muffled conversation. "He didn't think that was funny," Katherine said. "But I'd like to hear more about it." She was in a good mood, and I wanted to be with her.
"Say you'll be there," she whispered into my ear.
"I'll be there," I repeated. "I don't want you to say it over the phone, but I'll need to know where."
"Ask Mark Thornton," she said. "He's made all the plans. All I know is, I'll arrive at six o'clock this afternoon, your time. Can you pick me up at the airport?"
"No way," I said. "I've seen how you act in airports."
I remembered my appointment with Phil's Glass Shop for the afternoon. "I really won't be able to meet you there," I said. "But I'll find out from Mark where you'll be staying and pick you up for dinner."
"I'll be ready." Again, there was conversation on her end. "I'd better get off the line,"she said. "We have a lot of paperwork to finish, and my plane leaves soon."
"See you tonight," I said, and hung up. I liked Katherine and enjoyed her company, but there was no room in my life for this kind of relationship. She never really said whether she was married or not, but I was, in a ceremony of blood and sacrifice, and I knew Sheevers waited patiently for me. She wasn't angry at me for letting them kill her, she was simply waiting for the day when I would join her - a Wagnerian ending where she would cradle my wide-eyed soul in hers and take me to the promised land. But first, I had to finish this thing that had been thrust on me, to keep my oath to Patty's friend.
I fiddled around the house, fixing things I'd been putting off as I waited for two-thirty. I left early and drove around Palmetto Bay. It really was a beautiful place, built before the turn of the century by a coalition of shipbuilders and timbermen when labor was cheap and men were desperate for work. The choice locations were still showcases of giant homes with pillared fronts and glassed-in views of the magnificent Gulf of Mexico.
Downtown Palmetto Bay was laid out to run parallel to the bay, and ended at a marina dominated by a large railroad station that had been converted into government offices and fancy retail shops. Sleek white sailboats with blue sail covers were nudging out the old fishing boats, and shrimpers were sinking under the weight of accumulated regulations. Parking lots were connected by access roads around the shops, and I pulled into a space with a view of the water. Seagulls stood on handrails with their backs to the wind and waited impatiently for scraps of food. I glanced around and decided the two guys in a green Dodge Ram were my keepers.
I leaned over the wheel and let the breeze dry out the back of my shirt. A reggae song on the radio added a soundtrack to a large ship that crept along the distorted blue horizon. Mark's cream-colored Mercedes slipped silently around the nose of my car and eased to a stop. His window was in line with mine.
Mark was one of those people born to be a lawyer, and as he sat looking over the parking lot, I tried to imagine him as a baby in a crib,, hair styled and eyebrow arched, already possessing a mouth full of perfect white teeth. His clothes were immaculate and his skin tone perfect. He worshiped at Our Lady of the Perpetual Tan. I'd known him for over seven years, and looking at him now, I wondered if there was a painting of him, somewhere in his home, that showed him aging normally.
"The clowns in the green truck?" he spoke at last.
"Yeah," I said. "I think so."
"Mac, I don't know if you're my substitute for a life of crime," he said. "But I want you to listen to me now. If you interrupt even once, I'm leaving and you can try hiring a lawyer who might want to be paid every once in a while." He paused, but I wasn't about to say anything.
"I like you, but that doesn't mean shit. You've just c
hallenged one of the most powerful men in Florida to a fight, and the odds of you winning are practically nonexistent. Even with the testimony of Ms. Furay and her daughter.
"I talked to Katherine last night," he went on, "and she's coming to Tallahassee to give a deposition to my staff. She's bringing one from Candace and some transcripts from her doctor."
Mark's car was so quiet I couldn't tell if it was running, but I figured it had to be because the air conditioner was blowing at him hard enough for me to feel the coolness in my open window. He noticed my door.
"Holy God!" he said softly. "The dog did that?"
I thought it was possible he was trying to trick me into talking out of turn, so I just nodded.
"Mac, I want you to know I'm scared shitless going up against these guys. It's taken a long time for me to get a foothold in Palmetto Bay, and I don't want to blow it." He leaned toward me. "But I believe in you, and after talking to Katherine Furay, I believe her, too. But this is the big time, and you're going to have to act responsibly. From now on, I don't even want a little trouble - in fact, if Bob Birk pisses in your soup I want you to say thank you, do you understand?"
I nodded again. "You can talk now, god damn it!"
"Okay," I said. "Where's Katherine staying tonight? I'm taking her to dinner." Mark's face got hard, and each time he clenched his jaw his ears wiggled. He spoke through his teeth.
"This is not a fucking game, Mac!" He was really mad. "If you think it is, then you can save us both a lot of trouble by dropping this whole thing right now and leaving me alone. Once I file it I can't turn back, and I'm going to make some enemies here. That doesn't make me happy."
"I'm not an idiot, Mark," I said. "And I'm not going to take unnecessary chances. But Katherine doesn't know anybody here but me, and I'm going to keep an eye on her."
"What about them?" Mark nodded toward the truck.
"They won't be with me for long," I said. Mark studied my face, then scribbled on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. It said, 'Bainbridge Motor Lodge on Tennessee Avenue. Room 303.'
I put the note in my shirt pocket with the other sheet of paper.
"Be careful, Mac," he said. "After we get the deposition in the morning she'll be safer, but all hell's going to break loose when the press gets hold of this."
"Thanks, Mark," I said. He smiled at me and put his car in gear, slipping away with no goodbye. I stared at the water for a while then, pretending I didn't see them, I drove past the truck and headed across town to Phil's Glass.
I left my car with a man named Teddy and sat in the air conditioned waiting room, thumbing through health-and-fitness magazines until I found a week-old Tallahassee newspaper in a stack of others from Pensacola and Gainesville. One copy of the Palmetto bay sun lay on an end table and was soaked in coffee from a leaking Styrofoam cup. Three saturated cigarette filters bobbed in the leftover coffee.
I was pretty familiar with the capital, but thought it might be a good idea to check restaurant ads and decide where we'd go. I looked through the plate-glass window and they were already removing the inside lining of my door. I was pulling the newspaper apart in sections looking for an eats column, when an article caught my eye. At first I didn't know why, and I almost tossed it aside. Then I saw the headline and felt a piece of the puzzle fall into place. It was a short editorial on battling drugs, and it mentioned a tough new enforcement bill introduced to the legislature as HR4512.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the larger, folded piece of paper, opening it as I let the newspaper settle in my lap. The third series of numbers on the sheet of notepaper I'd copied from Birk's safe, was 4512. I looked back and forth from the article to the note a couple of times, then refolded the note and put it back into my pocket.
I read the article again, and all it said was that the bill had been designed to help 'law enforcement' in its battle against drugs by clarifying older laws on the confiscation of property. I finished reading without learning more than that. The article was either poorly written or intentionally vague.
It seemed the numbers may have been just four 'get tough' laws for Birk to use so he could sound like a legitimate candidate. But why hide them in his safe? I was getting pretty fed up with being stupid, so I found a pay phone and called Mel Shiver.
He still wasn't very friendly, but when I told him about the numbers and the article in the newspaper he came alive. He milked me for all the information I had, asked how Katherine was, and said he'd let me know if he found out anything. Teddy was waving at me through the window, and he looked pleased. I stepped into the heat and he handed me the bill. He wiped his face with a brown cloth.
"Boy, Mr. Clay, that window was a mess!" he said.
"Did you fix it?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah," he said, his curiosity kicking the crap out of his manners until he broke down. He pointed to the car. "How in the world did that happen?"
"Raccoons," I said. "At the state park. I left a loaf of bread on the seat when I went swimming."
I shook my head slowly. "I won't make that mistake again." I wrote a check and gave it to Teddy, a man with a newfound respect for the wild kingdom.
The afternoon limped along. I cleaned up and checked my wallet for cash. My clothes felt as if they fit wrong and my hair bounced back up when I tried to brush it down. It felt like prom night, and I expected zits to begin popping out on my cheeks.
Plato and Aristotle sat in the green pickup truck that was a cartoon of tubular bumpers covered with Bocephus stickers, worn balloon tires and a black roll bar that had floodlights perched on it like crows on a fence. They were trying to be unobtrusive, and it was hard as hell to act as though I didn't notice them.
I drove toward the interstate, glancing at my watch to make sure it was still rush hour. The traffic was heavy but had smoothed out a bit by the time I whipped my car into the outside lane. I checked the mirror and saw my pals make a space for themselves several car lengths back. I accelerated to match the flow and turned on the radio, catching the last hour of the Red Flannery program, a petulant diatribe about ethics and morals in American business. Broadcasting live from a satellite pick up network in Mobile, Alabama, he was the commuter's friend, stroking their helpless anger and encouraging them to write to their congressmen about pornography, graft and corruption. I still couldn't believe he and Mel Shiver were old friends.
I flipped on my turn signal, braked hard, and pulled onto the emergency strip, watching the green truck slow down and pull over behind me a couple of hundred yards back. I got out of my car and walked to the front, leaned down and looked at my tire, scratched my head, hopped back in and darted back into traffic. I punched it up to speed again and watched in the mirror as the guys in the truck finally found a hole and raced back onto the road. They had lost a lot of ground and pulled into the fast lane to catch up.
As soon as I saw them merge into the other lane I put on my blinker and pulled over again. I didn't look at them as they zipped by, but as soon as they found a place to pull off the road I put my foot to the floor, sliced out a thin strip of asphalt between two eighteen-wheelers, and hit the passing lane at warp speed. When I swerved onto the exit ramp they were nowhere in sight. I drove under the interstate and took the eastbound lane to Tallahassee.
EIGHT
I stopped in the parking lot of the Bainbridge Motor Lodge but didn't get out of my car. The lights on the third floor balcony were bright, and the door to Katherine's room was just sitting there, waiting to be opened. My nerves were shot. I looked back with longing to a couple of weeks before when I was comfortable in my own little gutter, biding my time and waiting for judgement day. I didn't want to get involved with anyone and, even if I did, why did it have to be someone with these kinds of problems?
I reached for the handle but didn't pull it, couldn't act. Two men got out of a black Camaro that was parked in a corner space, and walked toward the motel. Those guys can get out their car, I thought, so why can't I get out of mine?
> Then I recognized the taller of the two.
I hadn't seen Allen Farmer for almost three years, but his walk, his profile were enough to turn my stomach. He free-lanced for Birk on occasion, when one of Bob's associates needed something really lousy done, and as soon as I saw him I knew why he was there. He and the other man, small and wiry, had passed into the shadows of the first floor landing and were moving quickly. I almost tore my door off its hinges getting out, and I could see them rounding the second landing as I ran across the pavement. It didn't seem as if I was gaining on them at all.
I spun on the landing and raced up the steps to the second floor, and when I twisted up the next flight of steps I tore a red fire extinguisher from its platform, tucked it under my arm, and tried to fly up the last incline. From the third floor I could hear the sounds of a door crashing open.
I rounded the corner just as the second man disappeared into the room. When I cleared the doorway I saw Katherine backed against the far wall and knew there was nothing I could do. Farmer was a good five steps ahead of me and, still on the run, he pulled a large shiny pistol from his belt and raised it to Katherine's face.
I expected her to fall back and cover up, but she did the opposite. She stepped toward Allen and grabbed his wrist, then twisted back, hooking his leg as he raced by. His pistol fired and the slug hit the wall just a fraction of a second before his face slammed into it, a little above the bullet hole.
The second man took a wild swing and his fist connected with Katherine's jaw as she was trying to regain her balance. She fell back and crashed into Allen as I brought the fire extinguisher around in a wide arc. It crunched into the smaller man's rib cage, just under his arm, and he dropped like a brick. I drew back to hit him again when I heard Katherine shout.
A Thousand Bridges Page 7
