by Lowe, Tom
“Please, just drive.”
He laughed and snorted, his eyes lowering from her face to her lap. “If you won’t slip me some tongue, I’ll slip you some. Take your pants off.”
“I’m on my period.”
“Take your panties off.”
“What if I took your head off?” She raised the Beretta and aimed right between his eyes.
“Oh shit! Put the gun down!”
“Drive!
“Huh?”
“Drive the truck! Head to Tampa.”
He held both hands up, a nerve below his right eye twitching like a beetle was crawling under his skin. “I ain’t goin’ that way.”
“You are now.”
“Listen, I’m supposed to have this load to New Orleans in a day. This truck’s got GPS on it, which means dispatch knows where it’s at twenty-four-seven.”
“You should’ve thought about that before you tried to force yourself on me.” She used her thumb to flip the safety off. “Drive.”
He cranked the diesel, his ruddy face now shiny with perspiration. He checked both side mirrors, put the truck in gear, and eased out of the parking lot. “You gonna keep that gun on me the whole way?”
“Yes.”
“You shoot me out there on the highway doin’ seventy, this rig will jack-knife, roll over and you’ll die, too.”
“But you’ll die first. Don’t talk to me again until we’re there.”
***
Although I hadn’t seen Andrea Hart in two decades, it didn’t take long to track her down. If I cared more about politics, I wouldn’t have had to use a combination of data-finding search engines, social media sites, and sites that accessed public records. I learned as much as I could about the woman I’d known as Andrea Hart.
She was now Andrea Logan, wife of U.S. senator, Lloyd Logan, a three-term member of the senate and chairman of the Appropriations Committee. More than that, he was a front-runner in the pack of candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination. I would have known about her status earlier had I watched cable news the last few months.
They lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan where she worked as director of development for a large conservative think tank guised as a foundation. I couldn’t find anything indicating Andrea had a daughter or any other children. No birth records. No school records. Any adoption records were probably sealed.
I stared at a picture of Andrea. Her eyes were still just as beautiful as the morning I’d first met her in a coffee shop twenty years earlier. I remembered walking in the crowded shop, and after waiting in line to order coffee at the counter, it appeared as if every table in the place was taken. From across the shop I first saw Andrea’s eyes, and then her smile. I stepped to her and she offered me the vacant chair across from her. We spent the entire morning talking. A week later to the day, a Sunday morning, she awoke next to me in bed, and in the soft morning light coming through the window, she traced her finger over my birthmark and said, “That is really beautiful. It’s like art.”
So damned long ago.
As the image of Andrea stared at me from my computer screen, I enlarged the picture then envisioned Courtney Burke’s eyes. Although Andrea’s eyes had a captivating command to them, they didn’t have the mesmerizing power and depth I’d seen in Courtney’s eyes. What would a geneticist say about the probability of Courtney’s iris color having come from the cobalt blue in my eyes and the hazel green in Andrea’s eyes?
Tomorrow I would do my best to find out.
19
The next morning, as the sun rose over the Atlantic, I jogged along the beach at Ponce Inlet. I ran between the gentle roll of waves breaking, the surge of water yawning and stretching on the cool hard-packed sand under my bare feet. I pictured Andrea Logan’s face, then ran harder for a short burst, the sea foam scattering in the breeze like confetti defying the laws of gravity. The old lighthouse was behind me, Daytona Beach ten miles to the north, my thoughts not in either place. A gull flew over my head, flapped its wings twice, sailing in the cross-breeze and squawking a wake-up call over the crash of waves. I was shirtless, the morning sea breeze already warm across my chest. I glanced at the shamrock-shaped birthmark on my upper left arm and thought of Courtney Burke.
Max followed me at a trot. Twenty feet behind, the tip of her pink tongue visible in her open mouth, panting, short legs moving in a dachshund dash, her eyes bright with the potential discovery of what a new morning by the sea might bring. She stopped to inspect a starfish stranded on the beach. I spun around toward her. “Max, what do you say we return this little fella to the sea?” She cocked her head and stared up at me as I lifted the starfish from the wet sand, walked into the swell of waves lapping over my knees, and lowered the starfish back into the ocean.
I jogged a final fifty yards, Max doing her best to impersonate a greyhound loping along the beach. We stopped and sat on a park bench under a canopy of palm trees. I thought about what I’d say to Andrea when I found her—what I hoped not to hear in return. Then I thought about Courtney again, a girl on the run, a suspect in at least two killings, possible cold-blooded murders.
Where was she at this very moment as the sun peaked over the edge of the world and painted the ocean in rippling brushstrokes of red wine and dark honey? Did it shine light at the end of her dark path? I stared out into the enormity of a crimson sea and felt no larger than little Max resting beside me. I watched the surface of the ocean turn the color of a new penny and I tried to picture what was waiting just beyond the horizon.
***
The truck driver glanced at the Beretta once again as he slowed the big rig and exited from I-75. He said, “Okay, we’re here. I done what you asked. What the hell else you want?”
Courtney rested her gun hand on her raised left knee, the Beretta still aimed at the driver’s head. “I want you to turn right at the light. Pull into the Shell station.”
The driver went through the gears, and entered the parking lot of a Shell gasoline station and eased to a stop. “What now?”
“Give me your phone.”
“What? Why?”
“Give it to me!”
“All right. Hell, you weren’t jokin’ when you said you were on your period.”
“And I wasn’t joking when I said I’d kill you. The phone. Now.”
He slid the phone across the seat. “You are crazy.”
“Maybe. Now, you listen to me, you pervert. You’re gonna turn this truck around, drive up the interstate to New Orleans or wherever you’re supposed to be heading, and you’re not going to tell anybody about our little road tip. Because if you do, then I get to tell them you tried to fuck a teenage girl, me. Your wife will be the first to know.”
“How’d you know I’m married?”
“I didn’t. But most of you creeps are, I just feel very sorry for the wives.” Courtney scooped the phone from the seat, opened the door, and climbed down from the cab, slipping the pistol into her bag.
***
I closed the sliding glass door to Jupiter’s salon and sat on the couch with my laptop looking up Senator Lloyd Logan's campaign tour, his fund-raising events. There were a half dozen here in Florida, one was very soon and not far away. A place called The Villages about an hour north of Orlando.
I’d heard about The Villages. It wasn’t a retirement community, but rather a retirement city. High average net worth of its residents. Golf for life. Defibrillators on most corners. A donor pit-stop in every presidential race. Mitt Romney was the last to refuel there. And now it was Senator Lloyd Logan’s turn at the wheel.
All I wanted was a few minutes with his wife, a few minutes to take me back two decades. Maybe it was politically incorrect, but I had to go there, had to go into the past for the sake of a girl whose future was looking very dark.
20
I took a small can of dog food from the galley and picked up the leash. Max cocked her head, knowing change was in the air. “Come on, kiddo. I have to hit the road for a f
ew hours. Let’s see if Dave or Nick can hang out with you until I get back.” I locked Jupiter and stepped onto the dock, Max trotting in front of me, her nose lifting in the air. Smoke signals were coming from Nick’s boat.
Dave Collins and Nick Cronus were sitting in deck chairs on St. Michael, a Hibachi behind Nick puffing white smoke, the scent of cooking grouper, garlic, lemon, onion, and red pepper in the air. Max stopped in her tracks and headed for St. Michael. Dave had a GPS device in his lap, bifocals at the tip of his nose, and a small jeweler’s screwdriver in his large fingers as he opened the back panel.
“Hot Dog!” Nick bellowed, standing to turn the cooking fish. “Where you been, huh? You supposed to help Uncle Nicky in the kitchen.” Max trotted over the transom and stepped down onto the cockpit, squatting in full attention next to Nick. “Sean, you and Hot Dog come eat. Grouper and snapper’s on the grill. Got some bread, cheese, and Greek wine is in the icebox.”
I stepped aboard as Dave looked up. “Nick has an ailing GPS. I’m trying to re-set its clock, so to speak.”
Nick used a fork to break off a small piece of fish for Max. “My GPS is more than ailing; it’s a sick puppy. Not like you, Hot Dog. I was in my boat half a mile off the rocks last week. Had to use my Greek sailor’s sixth sense to find a school of snapper.” He squeezed a ripe lemon over the sizzling fish and closed the Hibachi lid.
Dave grunted as he removed the back panel. “GPS is a wonderful thing, when it works—which is most of the time. And speaking of time, a global positioning system is really all about timing. Anywhere on the planet, at any given moment, at least four satellites with overlapping radio signals can pinpoint your GPS location within a few meters. It gives weight to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Time moves differently the farther you are from earth and the faster you’re moving. This means that astronauts coming back from the International Space Station actually age less than babies born on the earth at the same time that the astronauts were in space. But it’s all relative.” He looked over his bifocals and grinned, then dropped his smile. “What’s the latest on the girl and the killing?”
Nick glanced down at my hands. He said, “You’re holding a leash for Max. You don’t ever do that unless you want one of us to watch Hot Dog for a while. Where you heading, Sean?”
“A place called The Villages.”
Nick smiled. “I’ve heard of it. Heard the V might as well stand for Viagra. Lots of baby-boomers doin’ the big boom. Gotta blame it on those seeking medical attention or some kinda attention for those four-hour erections.” Nick grinned, his moustache rising. Black eyes vibrant, squinting in the noon sunlight. He bent down and picked up an icy bottle of Corona next to his deck chair.
“Why are you going up there?” Dave asked.
“Because a girlfriend I knew twenty years ago is visiting her mother there. She happens to be with her husband, Senator Lloyd Logan who’s making a fundraising stop. I’d like to ask her a question.”
Dave pushed his glasses up to the top of his head. “Wait a minute, Sean. Your ex-girlfriend is the wife of a presidential candidate?”
I smiled. “That’s assuming he wins the Republication nomination.” I told them the story of my relationship with the former Andrea Hart.
Dave exhaled and nodded. “I’d rather contemplate Einstein’s theory than yours. You may have, unknown to you, impregnated this former girlfriend, Andrea Hart, now Andrea Logan, the wife of a powerful U.S. senator, a man vying for a presidential bid. She gives the baby up for adoption nineteen years ago, and then almost two decades later, you find a young woman walking on a remote road in the heart of a national forest. You prevent two Neanderthals from attacking her. Later, she shows up here at the marina in the aftermath of a murder. A man with a Munchkin voice tells you that she told him about a shamrock-shaped birthmark on your upper left arm. And if you bore this mark, then you may be related to her. But she didn’t say how. Why wouldn’t she say how she believes you’re related if this girl was your daughter? Why the mystery?”
“I don’t know. And I don’t know how she knew about my birthmark.”
Dave crossed his thick arms. “What happens if you go waltzing back into Andrea Logan’s life and somehow find out that Courtney Burke is your daughter? And to extrapolate this theory, what happens if it’s later proven that Courtney is in fact a serial killer and the biological daughter of a woman who could be the next first lady in the White House, should her husband, the esteemed Senator Lloyd Logan win the Republican nomination?”
I said nothing for a moment, listening to the slap of water against St. Michael, the sound of a siren in the distance, the flapping of a pirate’s flag on a trawler tied up behind us. “I didn’t seek this intersection at this point in my life. I can go left, right, turn around, go straight, or go nowhere.”
Nick wiped his hands on a white towel. “Sean, Forrest Gump may be a spot-on philosopher as movie characters go, but this is the real deal, brother. Shit doesn’t always have to happen if you don’t make it happen. Man, just walk away from this one. The only place this can go is the dark side.”
“What would you do if she was your daughter, Nick? I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about some politician’s desire to become president and what, if anything, this could or couldn’t do to his campaign. What I care about is the girl, what’s happened to her and what might happen to her.”
Nick lifted Max to his lap and said, “But if she’s a killer, all positive bets are off, and if she’s your daughter, how would you deal with that? What if she drew down on you, had you in her sights … would you take her down? Could you?”
21
Senator Lloyd Logan lifted the wireless microphone from the podium, surveyed the people, smiled, and said, “This my kind of crowd! Hello good people of The Villages!” I watched as the audience of more than three-thousand cheered. Logan, tall, a touch of gray in his dark, neatly parted hair, looked like he was sent from a casting office to play the part of a presidential contender. His smile beamed as he worked the spectators into rousing bursts of applause, saying all the well-rehearsed lines he knew they expected to hear.
He spoke to them from a raised platform in the center of the town square, American flags and red, white, and blue balloons were everywhere. The town square that could easily be a facade for a film set. The perfect blend of eateries, coffee shops, trendy bars, and a movie theater all around the city center dotted with majestic oaks draped with Spanish moss.
Many of the over age fifty-five residents sat in customized golf carts, resembling miniature classic cars, holding bottles of water in their hands and high hopes in their hearts that Senator Logan was there for them. He was a man who told them he could change Washington into a streamlined system of efficiency.
I stood as far to the right side of the podium as possible in order to get a good look at the first few rows of people standing, wearing sunglasses, ball caps, and big grins on their faces. I didn’t watch Logan. I watched for his wife.
And there she was.
Andrea looked stunning. She wore a blue summer dress, brown hair to her shoulders, and a strand of pearls around her long, slender neck. She stood next to a man in a sports coat, pale blue shirt open at the collar, no tie, dark glasses, and a flesh-colored receiver in his left ear. I knew he wasn’t listening to music.
I thought about Dave’s reference to “Plan B.” Maybe I could come up with a Plan C when dealing with the Secret Service. If the guy to her immediate right was visible to me and everyone else, the other members of his team were not. What I didn’t know was why Lloyd Logan would warrant government agent protection at this stage of the race. He hadn’t won the nomination yet. He certainly wasn’t a minority or an obvious threat to hate groups. There were six other Republican hopefuls hitched to the dream-wagon as well. Did they all have a federal posse in tow?
Maybe these guys were the newbies. Maybe not.
Plan C.
I worked my way through the crowd, careful not to move too quickly,
keeping my hands open and visible. I knew their first responsibility was the guy on the stage, the candidate, not the candidate’s wife. These meet-and-greets were more casual, geared to press the flesh, to solicit campaign contributions, to convince voters to buy into future visions. All I wanted was a look into the past. And I wanted to look into Andrea’s eyes when I asked the question that gnawed at my gut and now, my heart. I stepped next to her, the opposite side from where the Secret Service agent stood, and I said, “You must be very proud of him.”
She turned to me and smiled. “I am. The country needs Lloyd right now.”
“What do you need, Andrea?”
Her eyes opened wider, mouth forming a slight O, removing her sunglasses, the carotid artery in the side of her neck pulsating. “Sean … Sean O’Brien. Oh my God! It’s been so long.” Her eyes moistened. She didn’t know whether to shake my hand or give me a hug. She just stood there and looked at me like a ghost just tapped her on the shoulder.
The agent turned to me and nodded, face suspicious. He looked at Andrea. “Is everything all right, Ms. Logan?”
“Yes, everything is fine, Robert. Sean is an old friend of mine.”
The agent looked at me again, his body language taut, lower jaw muscles rigid. I could tell he was listening to a voice in his earpiece. The agent nodded and turned from us, whispering something into his sleeve.
I looked into Andrea’s eyes, eyes as lovely as the first day I saw them across the coffee shop. “If you can sneak away for a quick break, I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee. There’s a Starbucks across the street. As I remember from that first day we met, you liked your coffee with a touch of cream, no sugar.”
She smiled. “I still do. Sean, I can’t believe you’re standing right here. How are you? Do you live here in Florida?”
