Three Shot Burst

by Phillip DePoy

  ‘They’ll fix Herbert’s kneecap good as new,’ I told the guy. ‘And you’re not in much trouble at all – the bullet went through clean.’

  He nodded. ‘Really hurts.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m calling right now.’

  I went to the phone, dialed the operator, and waited. After a moment a woman’s voice answered.

  ‘Yes,’ I said cheerfully, ‘we were on our way to the gun show in Miami, my friends and I, and we’ve had a little accident. One of our pistols fell off the bed and inadvertently fired. They’re both shot in the leg, my friends.’

  She asked me a question.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ I told her, ‘it was just an accident. Nobody’s mad. But we really could use an ambulance. They’re both bleeding all over the nice carpet here at the Chalet Suzanne.’

  That provoked more talk from her.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. Chalet Suzanne. Room seven. And could you please hurry. One of my friends is unconscious. Thank you.’

  I hung up.

  ‘Let’s go, Lena,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be here when the authorities get into this room.’

  She clicked the suitcase closed. ‘Done.’

  ‘You heard what I told the nice lady dispatcher,’ I said to Holata. ‘Can you stick to that script?’

  ‘Gun show in Miami,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Accident.’

  ‘Tell John Horse I said l’chaim.’

  ‘What?’ he asked me, trying to focus his eyes.

  I didn’t bother explaining.

  Outside it was getting hot. Somehow Lena had changed into a nice dress when nobody was looking. It was an elementary school look, pale blue, knee length, high collar. Still had the flip flops on.

  As we climbed into my all-too-conspicuous car, I felt I had to ask, ‘What’s with the little kid look?’

  ‘I know the advantage of a good costume,’ she told me.

  ‘Yeah.’ I cranked the engine. ‘Maybe now would be a good time for me to say something to you about shooting people with guns.’

  ‘What did you have in mind to say?’

  ‘I thought I would begin with, “Cut it out.”’

  She nodded. ‘I know you think this is the part of our little story together where you ask me how a smart, good-looking person my age got involved in killing people. But I think I’m more like you than you realize. For example, I’m not the sharing type. Bad stuff happened to me when I was very young, and it was get tough or get dead. And I’m not dead.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I told her as we pulled out from the Chalet Suzanne.

  ‘And my point is,’ she interrupted, ‘that you haven’t told me how a Brooklyn crook got to Florida working this job you’ve got. I imagine you’d tell me that it’s a complex issue.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘And personal.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘Ditto.’

  ‘There will come a time,’ I warned her, ‘when I’ll have to make reports and tell tales, and I’m not any good at lying – not anymore. So when that time comes, I’ll tell you all about my troubled youth, and you’ll reciprocate.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ she said.

  ‘But for now you’ll have to explain to me again how you got those letters.’

  The hot air was rushing all around us through the open windows, and I was very much regretting wearing the old sharkskin suit.

  ‘David gave me the letters when he hired me, like I said,’ she told me, but she wouldn’t look at me.

  ‘Why’d he do it?’ I asked, trying my best not to sound like I didn’t believe her.

  ‘Maybe Ellen told him about me,’ she offered hesitantly, ‘you know: about my work. Maybe David gave me the letters thinking I’d be able to figure them out, which, by the way, I never would have. You, on the other hand, are kind of a genius, have I mentioned that?’

  ‘Not nearly enough,’ I told her. ‘But you’re saying that David had the letters. Does that mean he figured them out? And came here?’

  ‘Good questions.’ She turned my way. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Remember I said I knew where to start,’ I responded, ‘about the question of fishing?’

  ‘So we’re going where?’ she repeated

  ‘To the Cherry Pocket,’ I said, and stepped on the gas.

  ELEVEN

  The Cherry Pocket was a fish house restaurant that Yudda talked about. He said that if I ever wanted to watch a man wrestle an alligator and then eat that alligator cooked in lemon butter, the Cherry Pocket was my ticket.

  The story was that some Floridian by the name of Cherry stumbled on a place between some canals, thought it looked like a pocket, hence the name. Once a place for cock-fighting, itinerant gambling, and exaggerated tales about how big a fish was, our current decade had tamed it somewhat. Now, Yudda said, it was a nice place to go for a decent piece of catfish or a dozen raw oysters. Not for me, obviously, since my mother and my aunt Shayna kept kosher and I still had the habit, but I thought the kid might get a kick out of the place. And it was the perfect spot for me to ask someone where a rich Seminole kid might go fishing.

  I drove a little north and somewhat east from the Chalet Suzanne and ended up in a trailer park on the banks of Lake Pierce in front of a sign sporting a picture of an alligator standing up on his back legs. The sign read ‘Cherry Pocket Fishing Resort Steak & Seafood Shak Tavern.’ Yes, that’s how they spelled shack.

  I parked under a nearby tree and we ambled into the joint. While it was a lovely day outside, it was after midnight inside the place: low lights, fried fish, and tavern smell. Perfect. The hour being early, I was surprised to see so many people. They had the aspect of regulars, good old Florida beer-for-breakfast salt of the earth. They all made a point of ignoring us when we walked in. We took a table close to the door, backs to the wall – habit for both of us.

  A guy wearing a dirty white apron came our way. He sported a pompadour hair style and a look of concern. He stood at the table and didn’t speak.

  ‘You wouldn’t be Tony, would you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Don’t no Tony work here, pal,’ he said quickly.

  I looked at Lena. ‘Too bad. Here I am with twenty bucks from Yudda that he owes Tony, and don’t no Tony work here.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you tried. Let’s go.’

  She made as to get up.

  ‘Hold on,’ the guy in the apron said. ‘I’m Tony.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. Tony’s an older guy. Yudda told me.’

  ‘Yudda owes me twenty from the last time he was in here,’ the guy went on, ‘because he lost a bet about eating raw oysters.’

  I nodded. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You know what a big guy Yudda is,’ he continued. ‘He bet me he could eat twelve dozen raw oysters. He lost.’

  ‘And?’ I prompted him.

  ‘And he got sick as a dog,’ the guy laughed. ‘That’s why he didn’t pay up. Said I give him bad oysters.’

  I smiled, reaching into my pocket. ‘That’s the story he told me.’

  I handed over a twenty. It wasn’t actually from Yudda. He said he’d never pay the creep, or ever set foot in the place again, because the oysters were bad. My opinion was that even if they were supreme, it was disgusting to eat that much raw shellfish. But that’s just me.

  ‘What can I get for you?’ Tony asked.

  When he smiled he showed us that he was missing several teeth, and only one of them had been replaced with a gold substitute.

  ‘I’ve never had gator,’ Lena suggested.

  ‘Well, you in for a treat, little lady,’ Tony said. ‘What about you, pal? You want to try the raw oyster bet?’

  ‘Not for ten to one,’ I told him, ‘but I wouldn’t mind a piece of grouper.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘You ain’t come all this way to give me Yudda’s twenty and fetch the little lady some gator,’ he mused.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What you want?’
He lifted his chin.

  ‘I’m trying to find the place where my friend David Waters goes fishing.’

  I wanted to see what he’d have to say about that.

  He stared back. ‘You what?’

  I shook my head. ‘See, it does you no good to act stupid. You’re so good at it naturally.’

  ‘It’s true,’ Lena added. ‘You have a real gift.’

  ‘Ain’t David Waters a Seminole name?’ he sneered.

  ‘You know it is.’ I stared him right in the eye.

  One of the codgers at the bar rumbled a little and said, ‘He goes over to the campsite, over there by the old dock. Three Tee Pees. Like that: three separate words, for some reason.’

  The codger was maybe a hundred and fifty years old, dressed in camo, and wheezing like a broken concertina in a vaguely Cuban accent.

  ‘It’s called Three Tee Pees?’ Lena asked. ‘Like that?’

  The old guy nodded.

  ‘David Waters goes fishing there?’ I asked.

  The old guy sighed, like talking was exhausting. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you point me in the right direction?’ I asked him.

  The codger hitched his thumb over his right shoulder. ‘Down the dirt road, into the trees on your left. You’ll see the sign.’

  ‘What’s it look like, the sign?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s got three triangles on it. Like teepees,’ he answered me.

  I looked at Lena. ‘You see why we’re idiots, right?’

  She blinked.

  ‘T for telephones. P for pens.’

  ‘Three teepees.’ Her jaw dropped.

  ‘It used to be the campsite here,’ Tony warned. ‘But it ain’t no more. Three Tee Pees campsite. All broke down now.’

  ‘Can you get our food ready to go?’ I asked Tony. ‘We’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘I got to get the money now,’ he answered hesitantly.

  I dug in my pants pocket and handed him a twenty. ‘I’ll be wanting the change.’

  He mumbled something and headed for the kitchen. Lena and I made for the door.

  ‘It’s nothing over there,’ the codger called out. ‘Like he said.’

  I turned to face him. ‘No campers?’

  The old guy shook his head and went back to his beer. Lena and I split.

  We found the dirt road right away, but it was a bit of a hike into the woods. It didn’t take long to figure why the place wasn’t used much anymore. The lake had risen, apparently, and the dirt road vanished into a kind of boggy mess. We had to go away from the lake, higher ground, just to keep from getting my Florsheims messier than they already were.

  Another five minutes tromping through the forest primeval, and we came across what was left of a couple of stone barbecue grills. We never found the sign that Tony mentioned.

  ‘This can’t be it,’ she said, looking around at the rest of the area.

  It was overgrown like an untended grave, and the air was a little hard to take, with the rotting vegetation and wafting fish smell.

  ‘If I was to hide out,’ I told her, ‘I’d pick a place like this, because most people would come to it and say, “this can’t be it.”’

  ‘Good point,’ she admitted. ‘So.’

  ‘We look around.’

  She nodded and headed off more or less toward the lake. I went around the other way. I knew we wouldn’t find anything obvious, if we found anything at all. You wouldn’t go to this much trouble to hide and then just set up a nice tent with a solid cook fire.

  After a while I was pretty convinced that we’d hit a dead end. I was about to find Lena and tell her that when she called out.

  ‘Foggy! I think I got something. Christ!’

  I ran. It wasn’t easy. The ground was littered and soggy and, every once in a while, I hit a sandy part. I fell twice. But I got up, and I dodged through the trees and the fallen limbs. Just when I got to the place where I thought Lena was, I heard something very wrong right behind me. It was the sound of a charging bull – a bull that was whispering curse words in the Seminole language.

  Before I could turn around, a boulder fell on my head, and I rolled into a very dark cave, black as night and twice as cold.

  When I woke up, it actually was dark. So I’d been out all day. The moon was bright enough, and I got a pretty good look around. No Lena. Nobody. No hint as to what it was she’d seen. I didn’t know if she’d gotten away or been taken. I was worried no matter what, but after another half hour crashing around in the relative dark and finding not a single clue, I realized that I needed to regroup. I was dizzy, disoriented, and starving.

  I did notice the cement picnic tables. All of them were in disarray, broken, mostly unusable. But on each bench there was a mold of three teepees.

  We’d been in the right place.

  I made it back to the Cherry Pocket restaurant and stumbled through the door. My head was killing me and I was wet all over.

  Tony smiled. ‘You ain’t had a good day.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. ‘I have not.’

  ‘Lost your little piece of jailbait, did you?’

  Aside from how creepy that sentence was, it suddenly seemed to me that Tony might have had something to do with what happened, my getting bonked and Lena getting gone.

  So just to make sure, and because I was wet, cold, and hurt, I motored up to him pretty fast and grabbed his ear. The ear is a remarkably sensitive place if you grab the whole thing just right. It gives you carte blanche with just about anybody’s head. I moved his around like he was a sock puppet.

  ‘First thing, she’s my friend, so lay off with the jailbait talk,’ I rasped. ‘Second, where is she? And speaking of where – where’s my food? And my change.’

  ‘Christ!’ he squealed. ‘My ear!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I conceded, ‘this probably hurts.’

  ‘I kept your change, your food’s cold, and I ain’t got the first idea what happened to your little friend.’

  I looked around. The codger in the camo was still at the bar, not looking our way.

  ‘I found the campsite,’ I told him.

  ‘It’s a mess,’ the old guy said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  ‘Let go of my goddam ear!’ Tony insisted.

  I shoved his head backward. ‘Would you mind heating my food up?’ I asked politely.

  ‘Christ!’ he shouted.

  ‘Now?’ I asked politely.

  He glared at me for a second, and then he went into the kitchen.

  I sat next to the codger.

  ‘Name’s Foggy,’ I said. ‘If I take care of your bar tab, will you tell me how you know David Waters?’

  ‘I drink for free.’ That’s all he said.

  I looked around. The atmosphere was exactly the same at night as it was in the daytime: 3 AM in Purgatory. There was a drunken older couple in a booth, arguing quietly about poisonous snakes. She said the worst was the copperhead. He said the worst was her mother.

  A guy in fishing gear, vest and hat festooned with lures, was eating shrimp with a kind of reckless abandon usually found in pornography.

  Other than that, the joint was empty.

  ‘How is it that you drink for free?’ I asked.

  ‘I own the place,’ he answered, finishing his beer.

  ‘That’s how you knew about David Waters.’

  ‘Probably.’ He stood up.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I turned a little on the bar stool. ‘Something I said?’

  ‘Almost eight o’clock,’ he mumbled, heading for the door. ‘Time for Columbo.’

  ‘OK but wait,’ I said, sliding off the bar stool. ‘I got a real life mystery on my hands: David Waters is dead and I’m investigating.’

  He didn’t even look back. ‘I know.’

  And with that he was gone.

  I considered going after him, but Tony appeared with my food. It was hot and smelled like heaven. It reminded me how dizzy I was, so I sat back down. Grouper in capers and butter, cr
ispy slaw, hush puppies, French fries, three sauces, and a whole lemon cut in half.

  ‘Tony,’ I admitted, ‘this looks great.’

  ‘My ear still hurts,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, sorry,’ I said, picking up the fork that was on the plate. ‘I got knocked out over at the Three Tee Pees, and you shouldn’t have said that about my friend. I’m worried about her and she’s missing. Although, she can probably take care of herself.’

  ‘All right.’ He held his hand up to his ear. ‘Go on. Try the grouper.’

  I did. After a couple of chews, I looked up.

  ‘This is fantastic,’ I told him. ‘You just warmed this up?’

  ‘Naw,’ he said, ‘I cooked you a new one. Good, huh?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s fantastic. You really got a certain way with a fish.’

  He smiled, and I suddenly got why Yudda liked the guy, in spite of all the supficial anomosity. They both had pride in their work. Made me reevaluate my opinion of Tony. But as I reevaluated, I ate. Everything. I would have eaten the plate if he hadn’t taken it away from me.

  ‘You was hungry,’ he observed, staring at that spotless plate.

  ‘Tony,’ I announced, ‘I misjudged you, and I apologize. You and Yudda are cut from the same cloth.’

  He nodded, not looking at me. ‘I consider that high praise. Yudda, he’s the best.’

  ‘I agree. So keep my change, and the rest of the money I paid you for the kid’s gator, and tell me who hit me over the head.’

  He looked toward the door. I nodded.

  ‘Your boss,’ I began, ‘the Cuban geezer who sits here all day drinking up the profits, he’s not exactly what he seems to be.’

  Tony was still staring at the door. ‘I don’t know what the hell he is.’

  ‘But you’re afraid of him, I can tell.’

  He turned my way; his face was sour. ‘What makes you to say that?’

  ‘Your entire demeanor changed toward me once he left. He makes you tense.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what that means’ – he nodded – ‘but he does make me nervous. He ain’t been the boss but for six months. Don’t do a thing in this world but drink beer all day and stay up all night watching TV. Don’t sleep far as I can tell. And I ain’t never seen him eat.’