Fled

by Jason McIntyre

  He hoisted his bottle in a drunken toast to the moon. “Cheers to you, Charles S. Scobie, you lucky son of a bitch. You’ve hit the jackpot and you keep wanting to give it all back. You did the unthinkable. You climbed out of that hole. Now don’t blow it by being selfish. Get a hold of yourself—” he said in a hurl of volume. Then he added in a shout. “—ya old bastard.”

  The truth was, Charlie wasn’t pissed off at them. Not Chrissy and not her dad. He was pissed off at himself. Usually in total control, Charlie Scobie wasn’t used to sharing say in anything. His days of being a free agent were over now. He’d signed papers and stood in front of God to do it. This partnership thing was new and it was going to be tough. That was perfectly clear. He was exhausted now and he admitted to himself that he was more than a little wary of coming back here with reminders of the past blinking on and off at him like the Vegas strip. The idea that some faces from back then might crop up...well, he pushed that thought out of his head.

  And still he walked. The world blurred. He drank more. In a few dozen paces, he finished the bottle and tossed it into the sand. Muttering to himself—“Old drunken bastard, old drunken bastard,”—he plopped down beside it, feeling jovial. Feeling love and wishing that his bride was indeed with him. Down the pant leg of his boxers, his member swelled as he watched the surf and listened to it heave and retreat. He’d like a moonlight roll out here with her. Maybe tomorrow night. Get through the afternoon at the range, have that steak and lobster he’d been anticipating and then a nightcap, stroll and roll. Sounded like a plan to Charlie’s drunken mind.

  Thoughts of his last island visit came in on the tide and crashed down on his thoughts of porn-flick sex out here on the sand. He struggled to push these old visions away. It was about as successful as if he’d tried to stop the actual tide with nothing more than his hands. He didn’t want this euphoric drunkenness to leave him. In a moment, Charlie thought his dizzy head might force him to just lie down right here and sleep it off in the sand.

  He wavered. Then a twinkle caught his eye. It was a lighthouse. The tell-tale silhouette of the tower, then the movement of the light, yellow and simple, then winking out. It hadn’t been the beam of a functioning lighthouse. In his hazy, faraway thinking, he wondered if it was a flashlight, or a little lantern flicked on by someone up there on top—

  Movement, much closer than the lighthouse on those distant bluffs, stole his thoughts. This could have come a second or two after the yellow light winked out, or it could have been a hazy lapse of ten minutes later. He just couldn’t tell. But the motion was tipping back and forth. And it was just down the beach a ways. Around the slight bend but hard to discern in the black-on-blue of the night. A family of clouds moved across the partial moon, blocking even more of its light.

  Charlie squinted. Walking towards him, now at a distance of a dozen yards, it was a man.

  Not Zeke. But someone he knew.

  It was a ghost. Had to be.

  Part II

  Sped

  “Cowards can never be moral.”

  ― Mahatma Gandhi

  1.

  At seventeen, Charlie Scobie’s father kicked him out of the house. His big brother, Kelly, had been gone for four years already, tired of dealing with Dad and Dad’s drinking. The old man didn’t hit either of them much anymore. By then, it was more about the smack of the words that came out of the old bastard’s mouth.

  The old bastard, he was tired of watching how badly Charlie seemed to mess things up, how worthless he was. And Charlie, he was tired of hearing it anyway. They parted ways and that was just as well, for Charlie’s money.

  But money wasn’t anything Charlie could count on, not in those days. He never seemed to have enough. He struggled to rub even two nickels together back then. And calling it a ‘struggle’ would be putting it mildly.

  It got really bad in his twenty-second year. By winter, he was sure he’d starve. He owed and he owed and he owed. And when he borrowed even more to try and win back what he owed, he nearly lost his mind when the tides turned again and the hole tripled the size of its hungry mouth.

  He went to one of his creditors, the only who might help him. He would ask the creditor, nay, he would beg him, to forgive Charlie’s debt. That’s the least he could do, the very least, considering all that they’d been through together. “We can work this out, can’t we?” Charlie said, blinking back tears in his eyes and hating that this made him look weak.

  Indeed, promising they would discuss the matter like reasonable businessmen, he took Charlie into his office in downtown Portland, leaving two heavies behind him at the door to block his escape. Charlie was sure this was it for him.

  But that creditor made him a deal. It had a little something to do with Charlie breaking down into stringy, violent sobs. On his knees, red in the face, hitting bottom, as some in the AA circles call it. It also had something to do with the fact that, in the grand scheme, Charlie didn’t really owe him all that much. But Charlie, with not much life experience under his belt, he didn’t know that his bill wasn’t that high. For him, it was. But for the creditor, it was a proverbial drop in a proverbial bucket. So little, he was willing to give the kid another chance. A clean chance to get the money owed. That was, until Charlie broke down.

  And the creditor knew he could use that fear. He could turn the tide back for the kid and have the kid’s fear fuel another vendetta, one that he owed. Everybody owes something to someone.

  The creditor gave Charlie a second chance all right. And two crisp hundred dollar bills to get him cleaned up and started on his way.

  “You square this for me and I’ll forget you,” he told the sobbing boy at his feet. “I don’t want to see anyone suffer. After all, I’m a reasonable man.”

  Along with his offer, there was a pistol in a black leather shaving case, plus the picture of a man and his name printed in block letters on the back of a grocery receipt. And one of the heavies handed him a printed schedule for the Deus Island ferries.

  “If you leave on the first ride out, you can have this licked by sundown tomorrow. You come back here with proof and I wipe the slate,” the creditor told him. “Now, turn tail. Buy yourself a suit and get a shave, then work up the nerve. Some men use the drink. You’re a scotchman. Get some whiskey in you and get to it.”

  Charlie Scobie did turn tail. He didn’t run out of that backroom office. But he fled all the same. And he took that small black leather shaving case with him.

  2.

  The man’s name was Dennis Munn. It was in big blue ink letters on the back of the bill. DENNIS MUNN. 6’ 1” BROWN EYES + HAIR. On the other side, it was dry pasta, two loaves of bread, one stick of butter, and bulk oats. There was shaved chocolate listed too.

  “Burn it all when you’re done,” the one heavy had said to Charlie when he handed the ferry schedule to him. “You’ll know Munn by the fancy suit. Drives a mint Caddy and spends like there’s no tomorrow. Likes the ladies, but who doesn’t? He drinks Tom Collins, no orange, two cherries.”

  Now, in his own new suit and loafers that ate nearly all his first hundred in pin money, Charlie Scobie sat in a window seat on the ferry watching the white foam play on the light blue water. It showed a dance-play of skip-tracing lines across its upside-down portrait of the sky and the ferry. He was shivering and couldn’t seem to get warm. The armpits of his dress shirt had sweat through. He took a whiff and then clapped his arms back down to keep his odour to himself. Beside him, a paper grocery sack with a change of shoes, a towel, a bar of soap, a fresh undershirt and his black leather shaving bag. Seeing it peeking out from under his folded towel brought on a fresh round of shivers.

  If he could just find something to hang on to, something to hook into his sanity and keep it from floating away on the foam as the white of it trailed off behind the lumbering diesel ferry. Think, Charlie, he said to himself. Think. And calm yourself down. You need to do this and then it’s done. If you can find this Munn guy, you’ll be free and c
lear and off this island by morning.

  Munn. Charlie thought about Munn. What did he know about him? What would flush him out into the open?

  Tom Collins, no orange, two cherries. Spends like there’s no tomorrow.

  Well, for starters, there was the question of why anyone wanted him taken out. That heavy had few details. But for Charlie’s money, he had enough. His location, his looks—hell, they even had a goddamn picture of him.

  Spends like there’s no tomorrow.

  For a dunce comfortable enough to look after the creditor’s best interest and know that much about Dennis Munn, the heavy could have done this job himself. But Charlie tried not to read too much into it. If it was a hard job, he’d handle it. If it was dangerous to get that close to this Munn character, he’d figure it out. This was an opportunity knocking. And Charlie Scobie wasn’t stupid enough to roll over and go back to bed while it rapped on his door.

  He’d answer and let opportunity come in and put its feet up. No matter how many demands the snide bugger made.

  Charlie took out the photo and cupped it, holding it like a poker hand to ensure no one might peek over his shoulder.

  Likes the ladies, the heavy had said. But who doesn’t?

  Charlie saw the island town approaching. Broad daylight, so it was harder to tell than at night when a set of pinpricks would paint a pretty accurate picture of how big a town was. But he got a decent sense. And the ferry terminal was small too. This wasn’t a big place. And the island only had the one town. It was a coastal setup, lots of fishermen and blue collars. And nowhere to run.

  There would be at least one brothel. And if not, then the ladies of the night would be hanging out at the watering holes.

  Charlie was smarter than his old man. The old bastard made some mistakes. Charlie wouldn’t. This would prove it.

  3.

  He took lunch at a place called the Highliner Café. He had a double BLT and two refills on his coffee. Sugar, no cream. They had pineapple cheesecake on the menu but were all out according to the waitress. When the fry cook came out with a platter to help clear some tables, Charlie gave him a look, caught his eye, and showed him a folded bill between the knuckles of his first two fingers. Sure enough, the Latino tilted his hat and came over.

  “Yuh?” he said to Charlie.

  “Where can a guy like me find some company t’night?”

  The cook scratched his scruffy chin and thought for a second.

  “Like, I mean, real good company. It’s gonna be a cold night,” Charlie said, in a further prompt.

  In choppy English, the cook spat out, “Up Beacon Street. Place called LowBalls. Girl name o’ Fanny Mae Banks. She warm up the night.”

  “Thanks, stranger,” Charlie said, as cool as a cucumber. He winked and held out the folded bill to the cook who took it, palmed it and headed off to the kitchen with his half-loaded tray.

  At a quarter past seven, toting his paper sack and with his collar turned up to fight the night air, Charlie Scobie went into LowBalls with a joke in his head that made him smile. So cold out here, they might as well call it BlueBalls. Though if this ‘Fanny’ was on duty tonight, not many Cove men with money in their pockets would suffer the blue variety.

  He was getting better at this. He was catching his calm back. He’d gone into the men’s room at the cafe to soap his underarms. He’d dried out the armpits of his shirt sleeves under the hand dryer and hadn’t sweat through them again. Granted, it was early December, but he’d spent the afternoon in the warmth of that cafe then moved to a little restaurant on the waterfront to get an early dinner and sip more coffee while his leather shaving case stared at him from the paper sack on the chair across from him. He’d struggled not to linger at any length on what was to happen tonight—only on who he had to find.

  In the belly of LowBalls on Beacon street, the door settled shut behind him. He let his eyes adjust, then went to the dark wood bar as he took off his coat. Only three men with a seat between each of them sat looking like the sad sacks in all the bars in Portland. A duo were playing darts and the juke was droning out some Johnny Cash.

  Chin nod to the bar keep. “What’ll it be?” he asked Charlie and shouldered his dirty towel to lean with both hand heels on his bar.

  “Does Fanny Mae still come in here?”

  “She does. You can have a drink while you wait. Two minimum, pal.”

  “Sure thing. Whatever’s on tap. Bring them both. What time does she—?”

  “I ain’t no secretary for Fanny Mae, pal.”

  “Right,” Charlie said, some of his cool leaving. “Definitely not. Just the drinks then.” He took a seat at a table for two after slinging his coat over the back of his chair. He dropped his paper grocery bag down on the floor at the foot and up against the wall. He did nothing but fiddle with the coaster and snack on peanuts while he nursed the first of his pints, letting the second stagnate.

  The screens flickered with sports but Charlie, he watched the door.

  The place didn’t exactly fill up. But it did double its patronage by about nine.

  All men. All on their own. He wondered if this ‘Fanny Mae’ took appointments every ten minutes on the tens…or if they just lined up at the men’s room door. He laughed a little to himself at the vision of a dozen men with their jeans bulging at their crotches, all standing there with a beer in hand, like they were waiting to get into a ball game.

  He laughed again. It was a ball game, of sorts.

  And then, at quarter past, a woman came in. He couldn’t tell how old she was. She could have been forty-five—or only twenty-five with a lifetime of experience jammed into only seven or eight years. Long, jet black hair. Not pretty per se, but attractive. Mostly in the way she carried herself. Like she was part-owner, she took off her men’s pea coat and hung it neatly in the entryway. This reveal exposed an ample block of cleavage on a pair of creamy white breasts. Both nipples stood hard against her low top, making it clear she was chilly. He could see her bright red brassiere peeking out of the deep scoop neck. Its straps were haphazard beneath those of the her tiny crop top. It bared much of her chest, much of her flat tummy, and was held together by black zig-zag laces that revealed a wide swath between her boobs. She really needed to wear something warmer, but Charlie knew that keeping warm wasn’t the point of her outfit.

  She hugged herself, rubbed her upper arms and went over to the barkeep. “Hot tea, please, John.” Johnny Wile, the barkeep, gave her a warm smile while he dried a shot glass with his dirty rag. “Sure thing, Fan,” he said. “You got an admirer tonight.” He nodded and drew eyes in Charlie’s direction. Charlie felt a flush when Fanny Mae looked his way. He’d never stooped to a hooker, never had to once word in the neighbourhood got out about his prowess. Seems like certain kinds of women didn’t much care how well you used it—or at least they didn’t trade stories about how well, not when it became a matter of how big.

  Fanny took the tea mug that John put down on the bar for her. It poured steam into the air and she brought it to her face to bathe in its warmth. She sauntered over, making eyes at Charlie. Charlie’s cock filled with blood and pressed against his leg. She wasn’t pretty, not in a magazine kind of way. But she had a way of looking at a man. And she had a presence, like pollen on the air. And, hey, Charlie was a sucker for big supple boobs, jiggling when their owner swayed.

  “Sailor,” she said, and touched the backrest of the chair opposite him.

  He nodded at it, then returned his eyes to her. She squeaked it out on the tile and sat while he sipped at his beer. She kept her mug in her hands, letting it warm them.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Charlie said, using his bottom lip to encapsulate his top and sup up some foam there.

  “I’ll bet,” Fanny said. “I’m Fanny Mae.”

  “You have quite the reputation,” Charlie said, lilting a smile at the corner of his mouth.

  “For good reason, sailor. What’s your pleasure?”

  “Told you,�
� Charlie said. “I’m looking for someone.”

  “And I’m to understand from that you ain’t found her when you’re staring right at me?”

  “Well, let’s say you are the one I’m looking for...”

  “Okay...”

  “What would it cost me?”

  “I repeat: what’s your pleasure?”

  Charlie looked over at John the barkeep who was saying something sideways to one of the poor shleps at the bar, then glancing over at him and Fanny.

  He looked back at her. She sipped and put the cup back down, smiling at him as he made up his mind. At least that’s what she looked like she was doing.

  Charlie rolled his tongue on his teeth. “Truth is—Fanny—I’m looking for a man.”

  Fanny let out a one-note laugh. “Well, sailor, I can’t help you there—” She made to get up.

  “Wait—” Charlie said, holding out one hand to her. “You can help me. And I will pay you for it.”

  “Talk,” Fanny said. She leaned in, all her good nature gone, but not in a mean way. Just in a business way. “I’m good at one thing,” she said, low enough for no one to hear much of it. Then she reconsidered. “Well, three things. But I’m really good at those three things. And men like you—well, not like you, exactly—pay me their hard-earned cash to do one of those three things. Or, if time and the wallet is fat, all three, in whatever order they choose. You have one or two sentences to let me know exactly what you want that isn’t included in that list of three. And how much you’ll be paying me for it. Capiche?”

  “Capiche,” he said, sweating a little. He took a breath, looked sideways to ensure he wasn’t being overheard and started. “I’m looking for a feller who’s got lots of money and drives a Caddy. Big shot on this island, but not too big. He likes the ladies. And since everyone seems to know you’re the crème de la crème around here, I figured you might know him. If you give me an address or point me at his residence, I’ll hand you a twenty for your trouble.”