No Joke

by Bill Noel

  A couple hundred yards later, I figured, if Wallace had come this far, his shoes would’ve shown evidence of the walk. “Let’s head the other way.”

  “You’re the tour guide, lead on.”

  We returned to the pier quicker than it had taken us to get to our turn-around spot. It took little time passing the Tides and on the far side of the hotel’s parking lot, the long, four-story Charleston Oceanfront Villas condo complex.

  Along the next few blocks past the condos, houses were set farther back from the beach than in the direction we had first canvassed, so we spent more time looking at the dunes and the overgrown foliage on the street side of the barrier. Charles seemed less intent on taking photos and spent more time looking for signs of something that shouldn’t be there.

  I was a couple of strides ahead of my friend and was the first to see an object seriously out of place. Unless someone was looking for it, the body would’ve gone undetected. Wallace was right.

  I stuck my arm out for Charles to stop then grabbed a three-foot long piece of driftwood. I stayed a couple of feet from the partially covered body and used the stick to move underbrush and sea oats away from the head. I was thankful that I hadn’t had much breakfast. The face was covered with flies. Charles leaned closer but, from where he was standing, he could only see part of the corpse.

  This was a crime scene, so I didn’t want to disturb it more than I already had. I took several steps back, motioned Charles to do the same, and punched 911 on my phone.

  “Did you recognize him?” Charles asked after I’d told the dispatcher where we were and what we’d found.

  “His face was in the shadows. I couldn’t see much. Don’t think I recognized him.”

  I heard the siren from a Folly Beach patrol car as it pulled in the parking area adjacent to a path to the beach.

  Seconds later, an officer I didn’t recognize approached. He had his hand on the butt of his weapon as he glanced around like he expected an armed maniac to jump out at him. “Step back. Keep your hands where I can see them,” he barked.

  We did as directed while he stepped closer to the body and squinted at it.

  He moved to the beach and keyed his mike. “Call the Sheriff’s Office. We have a possible 187. Yes, umm, yes.”

  He keyed off his mike and asked us for identification.

  I took out my wallet, and Charles said he didn’t have any ID on him. He didn’t have credit cards and drove so seldom that he kept his driver’s license in his car.

  Officer Fisk, according to his name badge, jotted down the information from my license then stared at Charles like he wanted to frisk him to prove that he’d lied about no ID.

  “Officer Fisk, my friend and I were walking down the beach when we saw the body.” I pointed toward the dunes. “I’m the one who called 911.” I hoped that would alleviate thoughts that we had something to do with the death.

  Fisk pointed to the shoreline. “Most people walk out there. It’s illegal to walk on the dunes, so what were you doing up here?”

  I wasn’t ready to get into a discussion about Wallace’s comments. I pointed to Charles’s camera. “My friend takes photos of the flora and fauna along the beach, especially in the area separating those houses and yards from the beach.” I pointed at a pre-Hurricane Hugo cottage close to where we were standing.

  Charles looked at me like, “I do?”

  I heard a second patrol car approach plus the distinct siren from one of the city’s fire trucks. I was relieved to see Allen Spencer scampering down the path to the beach. He was followed by two firefighters who doubled as EMTs.

  Officer Fisk pointed toward the body as Allen and the EMTs moved toward the person who had no need for assistance from the medical techs.

  The EMTs stayed near the body, and Allen joined the three of us closer to the water. “What do we have?” Allen asked, although I suspected he knew.

  Fisk gave a facts-only rundown while glaring at Charles and me like he had caught us, red-handed, killing the guy.

  Allen thanked Fisk and told him to get the crime scene tape from his car to mark off the area. Allen was the senior officer on the scene, and he let Fisk know it.

  “Who’s Officer Friendly?” I asked. “Thought he was going to shoot us for finding a body.”

  Allen watched Fisk return with the tape. “He’s new. He was over in Columbia and worked for the University of South Carolina’s Division of Law Enforcement and Safety, or something like that.”

  Charles said, “Why the piss-poor attitude?”

  “He’s trying to prove that he’s up to the job. He’s also pissed because he was one of the guys the chief asked to scout the beach the other day.” Allen looked toward the gathered EMTs and Officer Fisk. “The body’s well-hidden, so I can see how he missed it. That doesn’t mean that he won’t catch an earful if the chief finds out that it’s the same body the guy with you was talking about.”

  True, I thought.

  Allen, once again, glanced toward the body then turned to me. “I suppose it is the one?”

  “Appears to be,” I said.

  “Crap,” Allen said, not an official police code.

  No joke, I thought, but remained silent.

  Chapter Seven

  A series of ominous-looking clouds rolled in while Charles and I were waiting to give a statement to the detective from the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office. The Folly Beach Police Department provides the public safety needs of the community, which include both police and fire protection. The department is outstanding, yet relies on the Sheriff’s Office when it comes to investigating major crimes. Today’s find qualified.

  Officer Fisk and an officer who arrived on a black ATV erected a ten-by-ten-foot canopy over the body to protect the scene from the rain that appeared moments from soaking the site.

  Detective Callahan from the Sheriff’s Office arrived the same time as the rain. He wore a navy sport coat and gray slacks, hardly appropriate beachwear.

  Charles and I followed Allen and Callahan to the detective’s unmarked vehicle, where the police officials took the front seats. I’d met Callahan three years ago, when he was assigned a murder case involving members of a film crew that had descended like locusts on the island to shoot a movie. A swarm of locusts would’ve been more welcomed after the filming wreaked havoc on the island and exposed residents to corpses. Callahan had struck me, at the time, as being too young for his position. Nevertheless, he proved to be competent. I was glad to see that he’d caught this case.

  The detective wiped the raindrops off his coat sleeves before twisting around in the driver’s seat and facing me.

  “Mr. Landrum, here we are again. Please don’t tell me that you’ve stumbled on another murder.”

  Allen answered for me. “I’m afraid he has.”

  Callahan sighed then took a notebook out of his coat pocket. “Start from the beginning.”

  I thought about starting from our walk on the beach today, but decided Callahan needed to hear it all. I had to stop several times so he could write down the cast of characters and tidbits from the bio on each of them. The list included Theo, his brother, and the other three stand-up comics.

  Allen Spencer chimed in a couple of times to tell the detective that he had met one of Theo’s guests and that Chief LaMond had heard most of the story and had dispatched two officers to canvas the area for a body.

  “See if I have this right,” Callahan said and closed the notebook. “The Folly Beach Police Department heard about the possibility of a body along here three days ago, sent officers to scour the area, they found nothing, yet Mr. Landrum and his friend, Mr. Fowler, have no trouble finding it. Is that correct?”

  “Mostly,” Allen said.

  “Mostly?” Callahan asked.

  “Wallace, the gentleman that Chris introduced me to, seemed confused. Remember, he said he could have seen the body that day, or years ago. Even then, all he said was that it was in the dunes. You know how many miles of dunes ther
e are around here?”

  Instead of guessing, Callahan glared at Allen. “Yet the two guys in the back seat walked four blocks from the hotel and found it.”

  Charles and I were asked by Callahan to tell our story again, plus repeat the names of the people visiting Theo. He gave us his card and asked that we call if we remembered anything else.

  We said we would and were dismissed. It was still raining, although not as hard, as we walked back to the hotel and waited for it to end so we could continue home.

  Charles slipped his camera under his shirt, pulled his soaked hat down as far as he could on his head, then reminded me that I’d said it was going to be a nice day.

  The rain moved out overnight, and Folly Beach was rewarded with a stunning sunrise. The full spectrum of reds reflected off a layer of low clouds closer to the horizon while soothing oranges filtered through the higher clouds closer to the beach. It was the kind of morning that drew me to the island a decade ago. I no longer had the photo gallery, yet I hadn’t stopped practicing my lifelong hobby of photography. I grabbed my camera, a light jacket, my Tilley, and headed out to capture images of the early April morning.

  My first stop was at the coffee urn near the back of Bert’s Market, an activity that I did so often that I could do it blindfolded. With coffee in hand and a camera strap over my shoulder, I walked a block to Center Street, the epicenter of commerce on the island. My first reaction was to turn toward the beach but, after what’d happened yesterday, I headed in the opposite direction.

  My quest for the perfect photo, a quest I’d had since I’d taken up photography decades before the word digital had been used to describe a method of making photo images, was put on hold when the sinewy, sixty-six-year-old body of Dude Sloan nearly ran into me.

  “Whoops, me be distracted,” Dude said as he stopped inches from my feet.

  He wore one of his many tie-dyed, psychedelic-colored shirts with a large peace symbol on the front. With his thinning, curly, long gray hair, Dude could be mistaken for Arlo Guthrie, the folk singer.

  The surf shop, with all letters lower case for reasons known only to the owner, was a couple of blocks behind me, so I assumed he was headed to work. “Morning, Dude,” I said and stepped aside so he could pass. “Heading to work?”

  He shook his head. “No, be walking to Portugal.”

  “Have a safe trip,” I said with a straight face.

  “Boss,” he said with an equally, although more straggly, straight face.

  We were in front of the Folly Beach Crab Shack, where one of its employees was sweeping the sidewalk.

  Dude moved closer to the road and leaned against a Palmetto tree at the edge of the sidewalk. He appeared to have postponed his walk across the Atlantic.

  I said, “I hear you offered Barb surfing lessons.”

  He rubbed his hand through his week-old beard. “She as stoked about lesson as you were.”

  I didn’t need to be reminded of my ill-fated surfing lesson from years gone by. “She enjoys spending time with you.”

  “Not as much as she enjoyin’ with you.” Dude hesitated and slapped his knee. “Aha, me remember news flash.” He tilted his head in my direction. “Hear you do it again.”

  Not having Charles, my Dude translator, with me, I had to ask more questions than I normally would. “What am I doing again?”

  “Findin’ bod in brambles.”

  I didn’t need a translator for that. “Yes. Where’d you hear it?”

  “Folly rumor mill be runnin’ three shifts. Like, he told her, her told her, her told he, he told me.”

  I doubted any of the he’s or she’s who transported the story to Dude was the person who put the body where I’d found it, so it would be a waste of time to get names. “Did you hear who the man was?”

  “Affirimente.”

  “Who?”

  “He be called murder vic.”

  I sighed. “What about his name?”

  “Clueless.”

  A condition many who didn’t know Dude well might agree with. They be wrong. While my friend’s speech pattern bore a distant resemblance to proper English, his mind was sharp, his sense of humor keen, his concern for others touching.

  I nodded like he’d told me something profound.

  Dude snapped his fingers. “Speakin’ of fractional sis, we be breakin’ bread together. You hang with us? Need help understandin’ lawyer talk.”

  I didn’t want to tell him that Barb had already invited me. “Love to. When?”

  “Soon.” He pantomimed talking on a phone. “Let you know.”

  On any other sidewalk in the universe, our conversation would be considered strange or downright stupid. From my experience, it made perfect sense on Folly Beach, South Carolina. It ended abruptly when two of my most recent acquaintances, Wallace and Marvin, appeared beside us.

  Wallace smiled, looked at the woman sweeping the sidewalk, at the light green doors leading to the Crab Shack, and back to Dude and me. “Mushroom walks into a bar. The bartender yells at him to leave, saying ‘We don’t serve your kind here.’ The mushroom says, ‘Why not? I’m a fun guy.’”

  Marvin laughed, Dude looked at Wallace and blinked, and I wondered why I hadn’t walked in the other direction when I reached Center Street.

  After the hilarity died down, Marvin said, “Wallace closes his act with that. Audiences love it.” He stopped as if that said it all.

  I tried to bring a touch of sanity to the conversation and introduced Dude to the comedians, told him that Marvin Peters preferred to be called Pete, and said that Dude was a good friend who owned the surf shop a couple of blocks from where we stood. I shared that the comedians were visiting Theo.

  Dude smiled. “Theo be cool geezer. Be hangin’ long?”

  Great question. I looked forward to their answer.

  “Maybe,” Pete said.

  I’d waited for that?

  “Hear about dead bod Christer found?” Dude asked.

  “I found it first,” Wallace said.

  “Me be confused,” Dude said.

  I explained to my confused friend that Wallace had told me about seeing a body along the dune line, then I’d shared that information with the police. I didn’t think it would be helpful to share when he claimed to have seen it.

  “That’s right,” Wallace said. “I saw the poor soul yesterday afternoon. Tragic, so tragic.”

  “Why be hangin’ with Theo?” Dude asked, oblivious to the fact that Charles and I had discovered the body before Wallace had claimed to have seen it. I wrote the contradiction off to Wallace’s escapes from reality.

  Pete put his arm around Wallace’s shoulder, and said, “Theo’s brother, Sal, had several conversations with his brother in recent years and felt Theo may have memory issues. He wanted to be close and asked the rest of us if we wanted to take a break from our grueling touring schedule to spend time here.”

  “That be kind.”

  “We’ve been friends for a long time. It’s the least we could do for Sal.”

  That reminded me of Barb’s question about how long it had been since the comics had worked. “Where was your last gig?”

  “Up north,” Pete said.

  “Cool, For Santa at North Pole?” Dude asked.

  Pete and Wallace had never been exposed to Dude’s sense of humor and didn’t respond.

  Dude smiled. “Be kiddin’.”

  “Oh,” Pete said. “Good one.”

  “Santa not alone. Mrs. C plus elves be with him.”

  Wallace said, “Want to go on the road with us? We could use some new jokes.”

  Dude nodded. “Me ponder it.”

  Enough, I thought, and said, “I think Dude has a full-time gig here. When did you perform last?”

  Wallace glanced skyward. “Don’t recall.”

  That was no surprise.

  Pete added, “It’s been a while. Tell us about finding a body. Who was it?”

  Wallace jerked his head toward Pete. “
Body. What about a body?”

  Dude said, “The bod you said you saw other side of last sunset.”

  Wallace looked at Dude and at me. “I don’t understand what he’s talking about.”

  I wondered if it was how Dude said it, or if Wallace had already forgotten what he told us about seeing the body.

  “I’ll tell you later,” Pete said and turned to me. “The last time we talked, you said a good friend of yours owned Cal’s Bar. You were going to talk to him about getting us a gig.”

  That wasn’t how I remembered it, but reinforced that I knew Cal, that I’d mention it to him.

  “When?” Pete asked.

  I avoided the question. “I’ll get back with you or Sal after I talk to Cal.”

  “Good, guess we’d better leave you to your conversation. Sorry to interrupt.”

  Dude said, “Adios.”

  I said, “Talk to you later.”

  Wallace said, “What body?”

  Chapter Eight

  Cal’s Country Bar and Burgers, better known as Cal’s to everyone, except the IRS, was located a block off Center Street in a building that had seen its better days a decade ago. The interior’s condition matched the exterior. The bar hadn’t opened for the early drinkers.

  Its front door was locked, so I went in the side entrance. Overhead, fluorescent lights, not illuminated when the bar was open, cast a cold, depressing image. The walls were painted dark green with patches of the previous brown paint showing through areas chipped away from contact with tables, chairs, and an occasional inebriated customer taking out his frustration over lost love, lost fortune, or lost keys. The ever-present smell of stale beer and long-ago fried burgers rose from the shredding indoor-outdoor carpet. According to owner, Cal Ballew, those “unique” features made Cal’s the perfect country music bar.