Three Shot Burst

by Phillip DePoy

  I’d only been in Fry’s Bay a couple of years, but it didn’t take me long to understand the power of the Seminole Tribal Council. My favorite thing about them was their independence. A few Seminoles lived and worked in town, and a few came into town to work with some of the commercial fishermen. The census had it figured that there were seventy-three Seminoles in the whole place. What most people didn’t know was that, out in the swamp, scattered over hundreds of miles, there were over fifty thousand Seminoles hidden from any sort of government scrutiny. That meant that the tribe was larger than Fry’s Bay by about a million times. And that meant that no matter what anyone said, the Tribal Council ran most things in my part of Florida.

  That’s why I was happy to know Mister Redhawk.

  ‘Yeah,’ I told Baxter, ‘Ironstone Waters has influence. But Mister Redhawk is the Council. And Redhawk likes me.’

  Baxter nodded. ‘So I’ve been told. But unless Redhawk has some kind of Seminole voodoo that can make you bulletproof, the fact that he likes you really don’t cut no mustard.’

  I nodded. ‘So I got a week.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Baxter stood. ‘So I guess you better get to work.’

  ‘It’s good, by the way,’ I said, standing up.

  ‘What? What’s good?’

  ‘You wondered last night if I liked Yudda’s bouillabaisse. I did. You should try it.’

  He smiled at me. ‘Would you please get out of my office and go get shot somewhere else?’

  ‘OK,’ I told him, ‘but I really wasn’t planning on getting shot again anytime soon.’

  He shrugged. ‘You know what they say: if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plan.’

  NINE

  I was back in my apartment twenty minutes later, packing. I figured I’d hustle on over to Lake Wales, see if anyone at the old Chalet Suzanne recognized the picture of Ellen Greenberg. Could be something.

  Just as I folded the last tie, the phone rang.

  ‘I’m busy,’ I said into the phone.

  ‘What are you doing at home?’ the girl’s voice demanded. ‘I thought you’d be out finding my sister.’

  ‘Lena?’

  ‘Hey, Foggy.’ Her voice softened considerably.

  ‘Where the hell are you?’

  ‘Um, you know. Around. Look, I called the hospital, they told me you got out. What are you doing?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘in short, I been looking for Ellen Greenberg. No one in town remembers her. And her flower shop took a Brigadoon. And P.S. my office is closed, at least temporarily. It’s missing furniture and everything. Last but not least, Baxter gave me a week’s grace period before he files charges against me for getting shot by Ironstone, and you for killing his son. I think those are the highlights.’

  ‘In other words you’ve got nothing. What are you doing home?’

  ‘Packing.’

  ‘What? Where are you going?’

  ‘Lake Wales.’

  ‘Oh, the stationery. So you’ve been in the safe deposit box.’

  ‘Right.’ I closed my suitcase. ‘I actually have a few questions about that.’

  ‘Not now. I’ll meet you at the Chalet Suzanne. You got the money?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The money I left for you in the safe deposit box, Foggy,’ she said wearily, like I was an idiot.

  ‘That was for me?’

  ‘What did you think it was for? Crimeny.’

  ‘And did you just say you’d meet me in Lake Wales?’

  ‘I’ll try for room seven. They only have, like, sixteen rooms or something. And two plus five is my lucky number.’

  ‘Seven is everybody’s lucky number, I thought you were a little more original than that.’

  ‘No, Igmo,’ she complained, again with the attitude, ‘my lucky number is two plus five.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I said. ‘I know better than to ask you a lot of questions now. But I just want to tell you—’

  But I stopped talking because she hung up.

  Ten minutes later I tossed my suitcase into the backseat of my car, a raven black 1957 Ford Thunderbird. It was the only one in town and something of a curiosity for the locals.

  I thought I might head over to Abiaka Park before I split for Lake Wales. I’d only been a couple of times, but I’d never seen anyone there, which was odd to me. It was a beautiful park. You could sit there and watch the ocean, and there were always flowers.

  As I drove over to it, I got to thinking about David Waters’s reputation as a pervert. If the park was small and quiet and not many people ever went there, and if it was maintained by the tribe, then you had to wonder: who started the rumors about him?

  In a small town like Fry’s Bay there are all kinds of rumors. It had taken me a while to get used to that. I didn’t gossip much in Brooklyn. I was too busy getting zonked and boosting cars. On the other hand, my mother and my aunt, who raised me as best they could, did nothing but gossip. They never once had a conversation about world events, politics, religion, philosophy, or even the weather. They talked about Mrs Grossinger in the apartment across the hall and how she always smelled of cabbage. Or her no-good son who used too much Brylcreem and never called her except to ask for money. Or the Veelander twins who lived upstairs and who were tramps.

  I always assumed that all that gossip was the reason I couldn’t stand to be at home with them, so for a long time I blamed my mom and Aunt Shayna for my nefarious lifestyle. Until I realized that I really, really liked the coke and I was really, really good at stealing. I had pride in my artistry. And when my friend Pan Pan Washington started bragging that I could steal the shine off a policeman’s badge, I thought I was really Mr Big Stuff.

  The point is: I didn’t get gossip. But even at that, the weirdness of David’s rep was hard to understand just from a practical point of view. Who even saw him there at the park? If it was other Seminoles, why would they spread rumors about him in town, a very un-tribal-like phenomenon.

  My conclusion, as I pulled up to the small, empty parking lot beside the park, was that people in general hated Ironstone Waters. And if there’s one thing that poor people hate more than rich people, it’s rich people’s children. Most Seminoles were poor. And David was a drunk and a jerk even before he got pegged as a pervert.

  As with all my other experiences at Abiaka Park, the joint was deserted. It was probably an acre or so of land. I didn’t know anything about flowers, but there were plenty: shrubs and vines that had flowers, a half dozen small palms, cool looking green and yellow striped giant grass, a rock garden, and tons of shade. There were three benches, all handmade, all facing the ocean.

  I sat down and watched the waves for a second, trying to reconcile the peace of the place with the unsavory small town talk associated with it.

  I never saw the woman. She was just, all of a sudden, sitting on the bench beside me. It was spooky. She was wearing a pale blue sun dress, no shoes, shades, and a white straw fedora. Looked about twenty or so.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, because what else was there to say?

  ‘You’ve been asking around town about Ellen Greenberg.’ She didn’t look at me; she stared out at the ocean.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘John Horse heard about that. He sent me.’

  Good old John Horse was a kind of Seminole shaman, lived way in the swamp. I’d had enough significant interplay with him to consider him a friend. Sure, he’d once dosed me with some hallucinogenic tea and thrown me in a lake, but he’d done it as a favor, at least in his mind. And he was a guy who even Redhawk and Ironstone left alone. So he was a good friend to have.

  ‘How is John Horse?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘He’s not dead.’

  I took a second to think why she’d responded that way. John Horse was, according to plenty of other people, over a hundred years old. So ‘not dead’ was a pretty fair achievement. But he also had lots of enemies, mostly in the government, including several outstanding federal warrants. So he
was also lucky not to be dead from some overzealous local authority. But I got the impression, from the way the woman said it, that she meant something else. She meant that John Horse wouldn’t ever be dead.

  That was the gossip about him.

  ‘And he sent you to do what, exactly?’ I asked her.

  ‘Help you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, turning her way, ‘help me do what?’

  ‘Find Ellen Greenberg, get her daughter the money from David’s will, and keep you from getting killed.’

  ‘Oh.’ I sat back. ‘Tall order.’

  ‘Let’s start this way.’ She took off her hat, let her hair fall down over her shoulders, and stared at me. ‘You couldn’t find her yesterday for three main reasons. One is that she didn’t go by the name of Ellen Greenberg here in Fry’s Bay. Also she didn’t look like the photograph you had – she’d dyed her hair and she wore glasses, fake glasses. Finally, she didn’t work in a flower shop, exactly. She worked the flower counter in the gift shop at the hospital. Maggie Redhawk knew her; Maggie helped her when she was pregnant. See? I just saved you all kinds of time and trouble.’

  I stared back at her. ‘Yeah, you could have told me some of this before I ran all over town with the photo, but this is actually a pretty big boost. So you would understand if I told you I was in love with you all of a sudden.’

  Her smile got bigger. ‘It would never work out, Foggy. Religious differences.’

  ‘You’re anti-Semitic?’

  That made her laugh. ‘No. I mean religious differences, as in, I have a religion and you don’t.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ I asked, trying my best to sound offended.

  ‘John Horse told me all about you.’

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘Well, you’re the road not taken, then.’

  ‘One that got away,’ she agreed solemnly.

  ‘OK now that that’s settled, maybe you can tell me how David Waters got such a terrible reputation in Fry’s Bay.’

  She nodded, a little contemplatively. ‘Interesting question. I knew David most of his life. He wasn’t a nice kid. You know: stuck-up rich dick with an Adonis complex. Nobody liked him. But then he met Ellen. Word is that she took him down a peg or two. That’s what he needed. The Council was disposed to consider him a dick permanently. So when he ran into this trouble with his father – I mean his father not thinking Ellen was good enough for him, which, you understand, was the exact opposite of reality – he got worse. And with all the people saying that David was a child molester, it hurt Ironstone’s heart and soiled his reputation. A couple of solid business deals went south on account of the rumors. What publicity-conscious white businessman wants to screw with a deal involving the father of a pervert?’

  I folded my arms. ‘This is quite a story. How much of it is real and how much of it is what John Horse told you to say to me?’

  See, I was wise to John Horse. He fancied himself a trickster. He had sent this person to talk to me and to wind me up like a top; set me spinning around the countryside doing what I could only assume was his business.

  She only smiled. ‘I see that you really do know John Horse.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I told her. ‘I think you’d better tell me your name. If we can’t get married, we can at least be friends.’

  ‘Hachi,’ she said.

  ‘What does it mean? I know that’s important.’

  ‘It means stream. What does Foggy mean?’

  ‘Um, it means, in my case, vague, confused, bewildered, right?’

  She laughed. ‘Who would give you such a name? Not your mother.’

  ‘My so-called friends in Brooklyn,’ I assured her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I said, standing up, ‘and I actually have to be going. Tell John Horse that your mission was only partly successful.’

  ‘Oh?’ She kept her seat and looked up at me.

  ‘I believe that David Waters may have deliberately exacerbated his rep as a child molester in order to screw with his dad,’ I allowed, ‘but there’s more to it than that, and I’ll find out what it is. And I’ll find out whatever it is that John Horse doesn’t want me to know. Also tell him that Yudda’s bouillabaisse is really good, if he’s planning on coming into town anytime soon.’

  No point wasting any more time in the park. John Horse had tossed an attractive young woman my way and a story that had just enough truth about it to be confusing. The real deal behind David Waters and his troublesome mythology was still as yet to be revealed.

  Then, just as I was about to get into my car, Hachi called out.

  ‘Hey?’ Her voice was like a song.

  I turned around. ‘What?’

  ‘David really loved to go fishing, John Horse says.’

  And with that, she was gone, wandering back into the shadows of the park.

  I cranked up my car and didn’t look back.

  Unfortunately, I spent half the trip to Lake Wales thinking about the way the ocean breeze had lifted the hem of Hachi’s blue dress.

  TEN

  The roundabout in front of the Chalet Suzanne was empty when I got there. I had no idea what time it was, but it was late at night. The place was pink, lit up, with weird spires everywhere: an angular wedding cake of a building.

  I parked, left my suitcase in the car, and ambled in.

  The lobby was small, a perfect example of Florida haute décor: nice pictures and swell furniture – spotless, bright, welcoming. The guy at the desk, on the other hand, seemed very disappointed to see me.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ he asked, but it was in a way that made me think he didn’t really want to help me much at all.

  ‘Yeah,’ I told him, ‘I have a room. My niece is already checked in, room seven I think.’

  He stared. ‘Your niece?’

  ‘Fourteen going on fifty, about this tall, traveling light.’

  He continued to stare. It made me uncomfortable.

  ‘It would, of course, be illegal for a person of that age to register by herself.’ He didn’t blink. ‘No one of that description has been here. May I have your name please?’

  ‘I guess I beat her here.’ I leaned forward, elbows on the counter. ‘I’ll take room seven.’

  ‘Occupied.’ He stood his ground.

  ‘OK, give me rooms two and five.’ I reached for my wallet. ‘And while you’re at it, you can tell me how long you’ve been working here.’

  ‘How long I’ve been working here?’ he repeated.

  I zipped out my wallet, flashed my CPS badge, which looked very official, and I shoved it in his face.

  ‘Let’s start this again,’ I said, ‘only lose the attitude and answer my questions nicely, or I’ll see what I can do about having you arrested.’

  It was an idle boast. I was outside of my county, and as far as I could tell there weren’t any children around who needed protecting, but it worked sometimes.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked me, but his voice was a little less hard.

  ‘It’s about a woman named Ellen Greenberg,’ I said right back.

  I reached into my coat pocket and produced her picture.

  ‘Now tell me how long you’ve been working here,’ I said, smiling. ‘Please.’

  ‘I’ve been the night man for five years. And that woman’s never been a guest, not since I’ve been here.’

  ‘Could have been a year ago, or even two,’ I said. ‘You might not remember her. She would have had a kid with her, a little girl.’

  He shook his head. ‘Look, I’ve got a great memory for faces and an instinct for suspicious behavior. That badge of yours wasn’t police. Are you a P.I.?’

  ‘Child Protective Services,’ I said. ‘It’s a very specific arm of law enforcement.’

  He nodded. ‘She steal the kid?’

  ‘What? No. She’s the mother. Look, why are you giving me such a hard time?’

  ‘Am I?’ He tried to sound innocent, but it didn’t work.

&n
bsp; I stared. ‘When I came in, you seemed very startled.’

  ‘We don’t get many guests in the middle of the night, and we don’t have any outstanding reservations.’

  ‘And you’re the suspicious type.’

  ‘That’s right. So why don’t you tell me what you really want. And I should probably tell you that I have a pistol in my hand, underneath the counter here.’

  ‘Here’s how I work,’ I told him. ‘I latch onto something and I just keep at it until I get what I want. There are some stupid things about this job, but I love it. I help kids. It’s what my Aunt Shayna would call “very rewarding.” Also I have righteousness on my side: very few people want to be known as someone who doesn’t help children in need. Your problem is: that’s what I think of you, that you don’t want to help the children. See?’

  His face showed signs of a weakening will. ‘If you’d just tell me your name, sir,’ he began nervously, ‘I think I might be able to help you.’

  Suddenly I got it. Lena was already there. She’d told the guy that someone was after her and she probably gave him money to keep her secret. Only she’d also given him my name, a moniker that few would claim.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, and even I could hear the sympathy in my voice. ‘The name’s Foggy Moscowitz.’

  I held out my hand.

  The guy’s shoulders relaxed down about two inches, and he exhaled like he’d been holding his breath for an hour. He shook my hand.

  ‘That’s the name I was looking for.’ He managed a smile. ‘Sorry, but Lena, she—’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I got the picture. She’s in room seven?’

  He nodded. ‘Paid for two nights.’

  ‘And gave you how much more?’ I asked.

  He looked down. ‘It was a very generous tip.’

  ‘You really got a gun under there?’ I asked.

  He nodded and very slowly pulled out a familiar looking 1951 Beretta.

  ‘You can give it back to her now,’ he said, his voice a little shaky in a post-adrenaline way. ‘Guns make me nervous.’

  ‘Me too,’ I agreed, taking the thing from him. ‘Room seven is—?’