by Ron Base
Ferne turned onto a gravel drive next to a yellow and blue rowboat mounted on a pedestal of rocks. Someone had painted “Shipwrecked in Matlacha” in black letters along the boat’s bow.
Tree got out of the Cadillac and stretched his legs. Ferne was already out, buzzing past a souvenir shop, its walls lined with brightly-colored sharks, sea horses, and star fish. For one fearful instant, Tree thought she would plough into a line of rainbow-colored ceramic pots set on the ground. At the last moment, she veered away, turned, and flashed one of those transformative smiles that momentarily made her seem like someone else entirely; the giant-size girlfriend on a date.
“You okay there, Tree?”
“We’re on our way to find your friend, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call Slippery a friend, exactly,” Ferne amended. “Maybe after I get my money back. Right now, he’s just a difficult son of a bitch.”
She disappeared around the corner. He hurried after her and found her approaching a white shrimp boat tied to a dock. The Busted Flush was small and compact, outfitted with line pullers, trap haulers and three wing nets hung from the masts.
Ferne clomped onto the dock, causing the pelicans nestled there, their long pouched beaks folded against their chests, to jump in alarm and quickly fly away. Ignoring the disturbed birds, Ferne thudded to a stop beside the boat. She leaned forward, cupping her hand around her mouth, hollering, “Slippery? You there?”
There was no response. Tree came onto the dock and stood behind Ferne, uncertain exactly what role he was supposed to play. A couple of the pelicans, having retreated to the dock’s edge, eyed the interlopers with what looked to Tree like a great deal of suspicion.
Finally, a voice from the boat hollered back: “That you, Ferne?”
“It’s me, Slippery.”
“Who’s that with you?”
“Friend,” said Ferne.
“Come on board,” the boat voice said.
Ferne wobbled uncertainly. Tree stepped forward to take her hand. She shook him away. “Get aboard first, Tree, and then help me down.”
A breeze came up suddenly, sweeping across the water, causing the Busted Flush to sway and tilt, pulling against its moorings. Tree jumped down onto the moving deck, and almost lost his balance. He righted himself and then turned and reached his hand up to her. She did not move. Her face had gone blank. “It’s too choppy,” she said in a croaked voice. “Make sure Slippery’s alone.”
“What?”
“Slippery. Make sure he’s alone.”
Tree turned toward the tiny windowed cabin. Another gust of wind sent the boat against the dock again, harder this time. Tree braced his legs on the deck. Through the glass’s reflection, he could make out movement.
“Hey,” Tree said.
A shape moved forward and Slippery Street stepped out of the cabin. Unshaven, his thinning hair in disarray, he wore a pair of cargo shorts. Leathery skin stretched across a skeletal torso. He held a gun in his hand.
Tree, fighting to keep his balance on the deck, looked at the gun as Slippery pointed it at him.
Slippery pulled the trigger.
3
The gun did not go off.
Another wind gust caused the boat to rock some more. Slippery Street braced himself against the bulkhead and pulled the trigger a second time. Nothing happened again. Tree stood there, frozen with fear, realizing that somehow Ferne had clambered onto the boat and now stood beside him. He cried out, “Ferne,” in a high, panicky voice. She kept her eyes fixed on the gun quivering in Slippery’s boney hand.
Slippery snarled an expletive, and then reached down, fumbling with something around his ankle. The next thing he had a straight razor in his hand, its long blade gleaming.
Ferne Clowers said, “Slippery, don’t.”
To Tree’s amazement—not to mention Slippery’s—Ferne slapped the razor away. It clattered to the deck. Slippery gave Ferne a look of absolute astonishment. “What the hell are you doing?”
Ferne said, “I can’t do this. I’m sorry, I can’t.” She turned to Tree: “Run. Get out of here.”
“Dammit to hell,” Slippery said.
Tree stumbled off the Busted Flush onto the dock, scattering the pelicans. He glanced back at Ferne and her pal Slippery still standing stock still on the boat deck as if they had turned to pillars of salt.
Tree picked up speed, expecting to hear the telltale pop of a gunshot, confirmation Slippery had finally got his gun working.
But there was only his increasingly labored breathing until he regained the street. The everyday sounds of a normal world resumed; the world wherein most people were not trying to shoot one another. He found himself among tourist throngs intent on shopping or deciding on a restaurant for lunch. A rotund woman with short gray hair looked at him and said, “Are you all right?”—evidence that he did not look at all right.
Winded, Tree came finally to a stop. He heard a sound behind him and swung around in time to see the Cadillac Eldorado roar onto the highway, headed toward Cape Coral. He caught a glimpse of Ferne hunched behind the wheel. She was staring straight ahead.
Slippery huddled beside her.
4
Tree told sheriff’s deputies at Matlacha that someone had tried to shoot him.
They appeared skeptical since there had been no gunshots and no witnesses. They dutifully took down the particulars of what had happened, but they seemed much more impressed by Freddie when she arrived at the police station wearing Dolce and Gabbana.
The deputies were not anxious to do much more than steal glances at Freddie and toss the case to the Sanibel Island police where, as far as they were concerned, the incident originated and thus more properly should be handled.
Freddie drove Tree back to Sanibel in her red Mercedes. She did not sound much more convinced than the Matlacha deputies.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “A woman hired you, brought you out here, and then tried to kill you.”
“Except that after the gun went off, or more to the point, did not go off, Ferne had a change of heart and when this guy Slippery pulled a straight razor, she knocked it out of his hand and probably saved my life.”
“And you don’t have any idea who she is or why she would want to kill you?”
“I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.”
“You sound like Bill Clinton.
“Do I?”
“You could be dead right now.”
“Would you miss me?”
“For a couple of hours at least.” She reached over and touched his knee, a reassuring gesture. “Seriously, though. We should take this seriously.”
“I know that. I am taking it seriously.”
“How are you feeling?”
“I think I’m okay,” he lied.
“I was hoping you would say something like, ‘but determined to find a job that doesn’t get me killed.’”
“And what job would that be?”
“It’s just that I can’t help wondering how well suited you are to this kind of work.”
“If it’s any consolation, I wonder myself.”
“Yet you keep on, my love.”
“Am I crazy or what?”
“Stubborn may have something to do with it.”
“Or stupid,” Tree added.
Freddie did not argue the point.
________
At the Sanibel Island police station, Tree was placed in the same conference room he occupied the last time he was there.
He sat at the table, drumming his fingers, waiting, trying not to look nervous, feeling naked and exposed under the watchful eye of the video camera he knew was installed in here. In rooms like this, you always felt more like the perpetrator than the victim.
The conference room door opened and Cee Jay Boone stepped inside. The last time Tree saw her, Cee Jay and her partner, Mel Scott, had tried to kill him.
Attempted murder and forcible confinement charges had been dropped
when Cee Jay agreed to testify against Scott. Then everything got thrown out on a technicality. Scott pleaded guilty to assault and was serving a three-year prison sentence. Meanwhile, the Sanibel Police had no choice but to lift Cee Jay’s suspension and allow her back to work, pending the outcome of a department review.
“How are you doing, Tree?” she said, closing the door.
Cee Jay had allowed her hair to fill out, and the ten pounds she had gained strained her midnight blue pantsuit.
“I’m doing okay under the circumstances,” he said. “How about you, Cee Jay?”
Under the circumstances, I guess you could say I’m doing okay, too. But imagine my concern when I heard what happened to you at Matlacha.”
Cee Jay did not sound at all concerned. She seated herself across from Tree and flipped open a notebook.
“Excuse me, Cee Jay, but given our history together, should you and I even be talking?”
“I suppose you’ve got a point, Tree. In a better world they would have assigned another detective to this. However, it is not a better world, there is a staff shortage, and so here I am.”
“Yes, here you are,” Tree said unhappily.
Cee Jay smiled and said, “You say someone tried to kill you?”
“That’s right.”
“Seems like someone’s always trying to kill you, Tree.”
“You should know, Cee Jay.”
She ignored that reference to their troubled past and said, “Who is trying to kill you this time?”
“A skinny, unshaven little runt named Slippery Street.”
Cee Jay’s expression remained neutral.
“That’s what Ferne said his name was.”
Cee Jay looked down at the papers she had brought in with her; a report from the Malacha sheriff’s department, perhaps. “Ferne would be this Ferne Clowers. The woman who supposedly hired you to accompany her to Matlacha.”
“That’s right,” Tree said. “She came to my office this morning.”
“And you had never seen this woman before?”
“Correct.”
“Yet you say this unknown woman conspired with a skinny guy to kill you.”
“A skinny, unshaven guy.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so surprised that people want to kill you, Tree.” Cee Jay adopted a deadpan look that was hard to read—or maybe not so hard at all.
The door opened, and a tall, lanky man entered wearing a beige suit. Brown hair shot through with gold highlights was swept back from a high, sunburned forehead. “Sorry I’m late,” the man said. “Did I miss anything?”
“Tree, this is my new partner, Detective Owen Markfield. Owen, this is Tree Callister, the private detective I was telling you about.”
Owen Markfield flopped into a chair. He did not offer to shake hands.
He said, “The cheap detective. Isn’t that what they call you, Callister? The cheap detective? You work for seven dollars, something like that?”
His opening sentence defined him: Owen Markfield would not be playing the good cop.
“I’ve gotten more expensive,” Tree said.
“Tree was just telling me how someone he’d never met before tried to kill him up at Matlacha this afternoon.”
Owen Markfield focused startling blue eyes. He had a square jaw with a dimple in the center, like a young Kirk Douglas.
“Go ahead Tree, tell us what happened.” Cee Jay made it sound as though she was asking him to lie through his teeth.
As quickly as he could, Tree recounted the morning’s events, beginning with Ferne’s unexpected appearance at his office. Owen Markfield made a face as Tree finished. “The gun misfired?”
“It didn’t go off,” Tree said.
“What kind of gun was it?”
“I don’t know. A black gun. A gun that didn’t shoot me. I don’t know a lot about guns.”
Markfield looked surprised. “You don’t have a gun?”
“No.”
“You’re a private detective, and you don’t have a gun.”
“That’s right,” Tree said.
“The gunless detective,” Markfield said.
Cee Jay again consulted the pages before her. “Ferne Clowers? You’re certain that’s the woman’s name?”
“That’s the name she gave me.”
“There’s no Ferne Clowers in the police data base.”
“What does that mean?”
“For one thing, it means no one named Ferne Clowers has a criminal record.”
“What about Bailey Street?”
“You mean Slippery Street?”
“She said his real name is Bailey Street.”
Cee Jay sat back, shaking her head. “Nothing shows up on him, either.”
Markfield pointed a slim, accusatory finger. “Two complete strangers. A woman the size of a house. A skinny guy.”
“A skinny, unshaven guy.”
“The woman pretends to hire you. Lures you up to Matlacha where she has an accomplice waiting with a gun that doesn’t go off.”
“Don’t forget the razor.”
“Okay, the razor. He comes at you with a razor. The woman knocks the razor out of his hand and tells you to get the hell out of there.”
“That’s what happened,” Tree said.
“I talked to the sheriff’s department up there a few minutes ago. No one saw a black Cadillac Eldorado driven by a big woman and a little guy named Slippery. No one saw anything—and you didn’t get a license number for the car?”
“No,” Tree said.
“You’re a detective, Tree,” Markfield said. “Detectives get license numbers.”
Tree said, “What about the shrimp boat?”
“The Busted Flush is owned by a Mr. McDonald who lives in Fort Lauderdale,” Cee Jay replied. “He leases the boat to local fishermen. He doesn’t know anyone named Ferne Clowers or Slippery Street. As far as he knows the boat has been sitting at dockside in Matlacha for the past week.”
“So what are you saying? I’m lying to you? I made this all up?”
Detectives Cee Jay Boone and Owen Markfield just looked at him. No one said anything.
________
Freddie was waiting for him at the bottom of the ramp leading to the police station. “How did it go?”
“They didn’t believe a word I said.”
“Let’s go to the car,” Freddie said. “I’ll drive you back to the Visitors Center.
Tree followed her to the Mercedes. “This is the part where you’re supposed to say, ‘Darling, even though they don’t believe you, I do.’”
“Darling, even though they don’t believe you, I do.”
“It would help if you could say it as though you mean it.”
His cell phone rang. When he opened it up, a familiar voice said, “Good evening, Mr. Callister.”
5
Tree crossed McGregor Boulevard to where those legends of American ingenuity, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, had purchased adjacent summer houses overlooking the Caloosahatchee River. Edison called his place the Seminole Lodge. Ford christened his, the Mangoes. Edison had bought his home first and then convinced his pal Henry to buy the house next door for twenty thousand dollars.
It didn’t strike Tree that Ford was exactly throwing his money around.
He walked across the lush grounds to the gray, wood- frame Edison house and went up onto the wide porch with its hanging wicker seats. He watched the crowd around the entrance to Thomas and Mina’s bedroom. Two single beds were pushed together, flanked by wicker armchairs with pink cushions that seemed more like Mina than Thomas. He wondered how he would feel about strangers with cameras peering into the Tree and Freddie bedroom in a hundred years or so. He probably did not have to worry about it.
“Edison was hard of hearing, maybe that’s why they got along.”
Elizabeth Traven glided across the veranda, shimmering in white, silky hair floating to her shoulders, those opaque, fathomless eyes hidden behind dark glasses.
“You’re kidding? Hitler loved Henry Ford?”
“He’s the only American mentioned in Mein Kampf. Hitler thought Ford the embodiment of what all Germans should become. The Nazis gave him a medal.”
Elizabeth was the wife of the disgraced media mogul, Brand Traven. Several months earlier, while her husband languished in prison convicted of obstruction of justice in connection with his collapsed newspaper empire, Elizabeth had hired Tree. She wanted a woman followed, she’d said.
There turned out to be a lot more to it—Elizabeth had become mixed up with a gang of body parts thieves in her desperation to save the life of Traven’s thirteen-year-old niece. By the time it was over, Tree had nearly got himself killed.
That’s why Freddie urged him not to have anything more to do with Elizabeth Traven. But Tree could not resist. Brand Traven weeks ago had been released from prison after three years, the charges against him thrown out on appeal. Why would Elizabeth want to meet him here? And what could she possibly want to talk to him about?
There was only one way to find out.
Elizabeth looked at two rocking chairs positioned by the railing. “Can you imagine Edison and Ford sitting together out here? I wonder what they talked about.”
“How difficult it is to get good help?”
“They were certainly close,” Elizabeth said. “When Edison died, Ford insisted his son catch his last breath in a test tube.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Who knows? But the test tube still exists. It’s in the Henry Ford museum.”
“You seem to know a lot about this,” Tree said.
“At one point, I considered doing a biography of Ford, but I could never get past the anti-Jewish stuff. He recanted his views, eventually, but it was a case of too little too late.”
Before Elizabeth became Traven’s wife, she had been a respected journalist and biographer. Despite all the troubles surrounding her husband’s imprisonment, she had recently managed to publish a well-received biography of Trotsky.
