Lovelady

by Wynne, Marcus

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Lovelady?”

  It was a man, hesitant, someone I didn’t know.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Lewis Pound? My son Tom was in Special Forces with your friend Jim O’Neal?”

  “I don’t know a Tom Pound.”

  “You met him once,” Lewis Pound said. “You had drinks with him and Jim at Fort Bragg, after they came back from the Gulf, the first Gulf War…he remembered you…”

  Jim O’Neal I knew. He was an old friend from my SF days, retired now, who worked as a contract civilian at the JFK Special Warfare Center doing something in Special Projects. He’d been, and still was, a high speed shooter, a runner and a gunner. During the first Gulf War, his team had been one of those inserted deep behind the lines to seek out Scuds and Saddam’s caches of chemical and biological weapons. Now, as I thought back, I remembered, barely, meeting Jim’s team mates at Bragg after the Storm.

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember him. Sorry. How did you get this number?”

  “Jim O’Neal said he didn’t know your home phone number. He said you lived in Minneapolis and that you went to this night club on Friday nights. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I need to speak to you about something important.”

  “You’ve spoken to Jim?”

  “Yes, sir, I have. I asked him for some help, and he said I should talk to you.”

  “And why would he say that?”

  “Because you’re in Minneapolis, and even though you’re not in service any more, he said you were the best there was at finding people.”

  “Now you’ve got me confused.”

  “It’s about Tom and his daughter, Mr. Lovelady.”

  I was irritated. Jim had no business sending me a civilian for favors.

  “What do you want, Mr. Pound?”

  “I’m sorry…my grand-daughter has gone missing in Minneapolis. I was hoping you could help me find her.”

  “Where’s her father in all this?”

  “I thought you knew…Tom died. He had the Syndrome, from the war. Turned into cancer. I’ve been raising Luella since then.”

  The Syndrome. The name for the assorted set of maladies that afflicted large numbers of Gulf War veterans, attributed to environmental toxins from the burning oil wells, but also linked to the hidden use of nerve agents by Saddam.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your son, Mr. Pound. But I don’t know what I can do to help you.”

  “Tom heard stories about you from Jim…he heard about how good you were at finding people. Jim said you always found who you were looking for.”

  “Search and rescue is different than runaway kids, Mr. Pound. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “Please! I’ve called the police out there, but they won’t do anything. They put her name in the computer in case they run across her, but they won’t look for her. I’m old, Mr. Lovelady. I never expected to bury my son. Parents shouldn’t bury their children, it’s supposed to be the other way around. It was hard for Luella and me, I’m alone, she had to take care of me as much as I took care of her. But she’s my blood and I was glad to do it, in Tom’s memory.”

  “It’s a matter for the police. I can’t do anything for you.”

  There was a long silence. I listened to an old man’s labored breathing from someplace far away.

  “You could hear me out…maybe you could talk to someone…” The hesitance was gone, replaced by a bitter resignation.

  “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t know who to talk to.”

  A sigh. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Lovelady. Would you take my number in case you change your mind?”

  “I won’t be changing my mind. I’m sorry.”

  “My number is 217-422-1212, I’m in Illinois.”

  The part of my brain that is always ready to hunt memorized the number, visualizing it in big red letters and attaching the name Lewis Pound to it.

  There was another sigh, more labored breathing. “I’d hoped you would be able to help me.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Good night.”

  I hung up the phone. Gigi appraised me.

  “Search and rescue? Just what are you into there, soldier boy?”

  “Voices from my past, Gigi.”

  “You’re like my closet at home, Frank. I never know what I’ll find in there.”

  ii.

  Later that night I wandered from the bar along the streets that led to the Target Center parking lot. There’s a life on the street between the well dressed people laughing their way from one club to the next: watchful clusters of young black men in baggy clothes, hands buried deep in their pockets, stroking concealed weapons; extravagantly pierced and tattooed boys and girls sitting outside a pizza shop, eating their two-dollar dinners; white girls in their teens having brief, harsh conversations with men in cars, who pulled away and left the girls standing there, nervously watching the passerby.

  I wondered if Luella Pound was one of them.

  That street life was there for the viewing if you looked for it; most people chose not to see it, brushing past the requests for spare change from the homeless and the veiled come-ons from the young hookers. There wasn’t much risk to the citizen. The cops did a good job of keeping the downtown streets safe. There was little reported street crime, and most of that was predators preying on the weak, the homeless and the lost who hid in the shadows and the alleys.

  I wondered what Luella Pound was like.

  I couldn’t remember her father. All I could come up with was a vague image of a stocky man with thick black hair cropped short on the sides and back, laughing over a beer in the Rucksack Inn at Bragg. I decided I’d call Jim O’Neal tomorrow and see just why he’d sent me a civilian to do a cop’s job.

  I didn’t have any connections to the police department here. I thought it best to keep my distance from them. Cops have good eyes and ears, and a nose for things that weren’t as they seemed. The few cops I’d known became overly curious about my travels and my work. Something about me didn’t come across right to them.

  I had to be cautious around perceptive people.

  I looked up at the stars gleaming high above the lights of the city. It was a beautiful night. And time to go home.

  I got my car from the Center parking lot, paid my fee, and then drove the direct route home. I sometimes liked to drive the Chain of Lakes at night, but this time I went straight down Hennepin to 36th Street, around Lake Calhoun and past Lake Harriet to my house. It’s a small two-bedroom with a den, only two blocks from the shops of Linden Hills on Upton between 43rd and 44th Streets, right around the corner from the library, where I spent a fair amount of time.

  After I pulled into the garage, I stood outside. I liked it late at night. It was past two in the morning. No one was stirring. I could feel the presence of other people in the surrounding houses, people sleeping soundly in their beds. I was the only one awake, and I liked that. There was a whirring sound, and I turned to see a man on a mountain bike riding as fast as he could past my house, one hand raised in greeting. I waved, but he was already gone.

  It was strange, but then, I was used to strange things.

  iii.

  I woke late the next morning and went to the Linden Hills Diner for a cup of coffee. I paid at the counter and took my cup outside to a sidewalk table, where I sat and scrolled through my cell phone’s address book till I found Jim O’Neal’s phone number. He was an hour ahead of me on the East Coast, which made it eleven o’clock his time. I punched in his work number and waited through four rings till his distinctive hoarse voice said, “Hello?”

  His voice was hoarse because a bullet had grazed his throat during the First Gulf War, when he and his eight man team had an epic gunfight with a company sized element of the Iraqi Republican Guard. Jim’s team won. And the phone was always just answered, “Hello?” That way an accidental caller would never know they had just reached the Special Projects Unit at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center, where
some of the best unconventional warriors in the U.S. arsenal hung their berets.

  “Is there anybody left who calls you Moonbuzzard?” I said.

  There was silence, and then a throaty laugh. “The fuck are you, Frank?”

  “Getting fat in civilian land.”

  “We’ll have to start calling you Fat Frank.”

  “It’s good living and well deserved.”

  Jim laughed. He wasn’t sure what I did, but he knew he didn’t need to know. That’s one of the pleasures of having friends in the community; you’re free to enjoy each other without the bullshit of “What are you doing?” or “How’s work?”

  “So what’s the story on this Pound guy?” I said.

  “He found you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not at home.”

  “No. In my Friday night hang.”

  “That’s all right, then.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “It’s a sad one,” Jim said. “Do you remember Tom Pound?”

  “Barely.”

  “He was on a split team in Kuwait, right after the Republican Guard pulled out. Caught a lot of toxins from the oil fires and whatever else was cooking off in there. He had a daughter he was raising on his own. Wife ran off. The daughter stayed with his father when he was away, the grandmother was dead. Anyway, Tom got the Syndrome and died of lung cancer. Young, late thirties.”

  “That is young.”

  “Tell me about it. His daughter, she stays with the grandfather. Then I get this call from the grandfather.”

  “Lewis Pound.”

  “That’s him. He tells me the girl and him had a fight. She’s a teenager, you don’t have any kids, you don’t know what they’re like when they’re teenagers. She runs off to Minneapolis. He gets a letter or two from her, then she falls off the map. The grandfather, he’s in a walker, he’s too old to go out and look for her, the cops won’t do anything for him, he’s desperate. So he goes through Tom’s old Rolodex and finds my name, calls me.”

  “Why you?” I said.

  “This guy, he thinks Special Forces is like what he sees in the movies, like we got all kinds of spy goodies we can use to find her.”

  “So you put him off on me?”

  “It’s not like that,” Jim said, heat in his voice. “You’re there in Minneapolis, you’re the best urban SAR man I ever knew, and whatever you’re doing these days, you’ve probably got better connects than I do to get the cops to take a look.”

  SAR. Search and rescue. I’d done those, behind the lines during hot wars, as well as in other places when an agent or operator needed to be found and plucked out. Jim knew about some of those.

  “I figured you’d do a favor for another SF guy,” Jim said. “Pound’s dead and there’s nobody else. Hell, if I was there, I’d take a look around to help the old man out. His wife’s gone, his only son’s dead, and his granddaughter is missing. He’s shit out of luck all the way around.”

  “I need to steer clear of entanglements,” I said.

  “Whatever, Frank. You do what you got to do. I’m sorry I sent it your way.”

  We were both quiet for a time.

  “I’ll think about it, Moon,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”

  “Have a look around, Frank. What’s that going to hurt? You got time on your hands. Maybe you could get the cops to take a look.”

  “I don’t like working with cops.”

  “Why? You’re just a writer, right?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, I’m just a travel writer.”

  “Then go travel and write, motherfucker.”

  “Fuck you too, Moonbuzzard. Stay in touch.”

  “Let me know what you find. Tom was one of my best guys.”

  “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

  “Can’t ask for more than that. Take care, Frank.”

  I pushed the end button and slid the phone into my T-shirt’s breast pocket. My coffee had grown cold. The owner’s wife, Barbara, was making the rounds with a fresh pot, so I emptied my cup into the gutter and held it out for more.

  “You don’t need to dump it in the street, Frank,” she said. “I can get you a fresh cup.”

  “Save you a trip, Barb.”

  She refilled my cup and went inside, miffed at my sloppy behavior.

  I thought about what Jim had said. We still did search and rescue in the Cells, but that wasn’t my cell’s specialty. We were good at finding people, but once they were found, they got lost – forever.

  I sat back in my chair and sipped my coffee and let the sun beat down on my face.

  iv.

  Marcos Diaz was born in Minneapolis of Brazilian parents, devoutly patriotic as so many new citizens are, so it was natural for him to go into the military. Not just to serve his country, though that was a factor, but for the benefit of the GI Bill to pay his way through college, a big plus to a large, and less than wealthy, immigrant family.

  Marcos earned his college money.

  He enlisted, volunteered for the infantry, volunteered for the airborne, volunteered for the Rangers, and was assigned to the 3/75th Ranger Battalion at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was deployed to Somalia as part of Task Force Ranger, the ill-fated special operations unit that tackled the Somalis in the Battle of Mogadishu. He saw lots of action, saw some friends die, and caught a round himself. When his time was up, he came back to Minneapolis and enrolled in the University of Minnesota as a double major in English and Psychology.

  I’d learned all this in a long afternoon chat one day outside the Linden Hills Diner, when Marcos laid his mountain bike against the wall and joined me at the table, the only one with a vacant seat, for one of the countless cups of coffee he drank every day. He worked part-time as a bike messenger and lived like a mechanical centaur on his bike downtown, ducking through traffic at high speed, the threat of a bashing with his kryptonite lock held high sufficient to keep the cars at a respectful distance.

  I liked a lot of things about him. He was a combat veteran, hard working and honest, though he lived an alternative lifestyle that was completely foreign to me, and he could hold up his end of a conversation. I especially appreciated that he didn’t nose into my background, that he took me at face value.

  We met on Saturdays for coffee and conversations, and today the subject was runaway girls.

  “So what do you think?” I said, after I laid out the bones of the story. “Where would a girl go here in the Cities?”

  “You hear a lot of weird shit about runaways, mano,” Marcos said. He was wearing 3/4 length cropped baggy camouflage BDU pants and a muscle tank top, his long legs kicked out in front of him as he sprawled bonelessly in his chair. “You see them all around, Uptown, Lyn-Lake, downtown. These little farm boys and girls, they want to see the lights of the big city, they’re tired of living down on the farm. So they hop a bus or catch a ride, come here, try to find work, hang out on the streets. Always in summer time. Things don’t work out, they find themselves taken in by the fucking pimps and freaks when it starts getting cold.”

  “How would you go about finding a girl like this?”

  “I don’t know, Frank. I’m no detective.” He sipped his macchiato and stared into space for a long minute. “I know where they hang, you could ask around, but these kids, they don’t trust adults or cops. Most people seeking them out don’t mean them any good.”

  “Do you know any of them?”

  “Not by name. I see some of the same faces when I’m working.” He held up one finger. “I know somebody.”

  “Who?”

  “A cop, Joe Spenser. I’ve seen him out on the streets talking to kids. He’s a good guy, I’ve had a couple of beers with him. He works out down at the Kali Group with Rick Faye.”

  “I don’t like cops.”

  “What you got to be worried about? You’re just asking about a friend’s daughter. Chill. They got no reason to stick their noses into your life.”

  “Where can I meet him?” />
  “Swing by the Kali Group. He makes the kickboxing class on Saturday.”

  “Little late for that today, isn’t it?”

  Marcos looked at his oversized Casio G-Shock, a souvenir of his Ranger days.

  “Yeah, mano, you’re right. Next time he’s in class is Monday night, six o’clock. You should come down, get a work out in.”

  “That hand to hand stuff scares me.”

  “Bullshit. I’ve seen you move.”

  “That’s what they make guns for.”

  “Whatever, dude.” Marcos drained off the last of his coffee and set the cup down. He stood and stretched. “I got to ride. If you want, I’ll see you Monday, introduce you to the man.”

  “Thanks, Marcos. Take care.”

  “Likewise, bro.”

  He slid onto the saddle of his bike like a horseman and then was off, steadily picking up speed as he swept between the cars inching along on Upton.

  It was obvious that getting involved in the business of Luella Pound was going to take more time than I wanted to give it. I finished my own coffee and walked across the street to the bookstore and looked in the front display window. There was a copy of a book titled No Other Option in the display, next to a hand written sign that said set in linden hills! I’d read the book. It was an action thriller set in my neighborhood; the author had either lived or spent a lot of time here. The story was about a special operator who came to the neighborhood to hide out. I had to laugh at that. It was the perfect neighborhood for an operator to disappear into. If only the writer knew.

  I walked down 43rd Street till it curved round down to the Lake Harriet band shell. The trolley car was running, and it wheezed past me at the intersection at the bottom of the hill. Kids waved merrily from the trolley windows at passersby. It was a fine summer Saturday afternoon. The lake parkway was ringed with stop and go traffic, and a throng of people walking, biking, roller blading and running filled the pedestrian paths that circled Lake Harriet. I eased into the crowded walking path and strolled along, enjoying the sun on my shoulders and head, my eyes hidden behind sunglasses.