Black's Beach Shuffle: A Rolly Waters Mystery

by Corey Lynn Fayman

  It seemed to be getting even darker than before. Rolly felt groggy, a nauseous swirling.

  “Do you understand this message? Can I confirm to my patron that the message has been delivered to the party for whom it was intended?”

  Rolly tried to move his head as if to nod yes, felt the back of his neck go numb. A black sticky sheet wrapped around his eyeballs. The sound of the waves grew dim, the fog came in upon him and the sun slipped down below the horizon. And then he felt only darkness, like sleep.

  The Ex

  The blackness abated. Rolly opened his eyes. It was dark, quiet. There was a scent in the air—flowers. There was a voice in the distance, a woman’s voice, humming. It was earthy, angelic, like Mavis Staples on gospel, but lighter and whiter. Something about it was familiar.

  He was lying on his back, in a bed, with a white timbered ceiling above him. His head felt fuzzy, as if he were waking up from a hangover. But he didn’t drink anymore. So he couldn’t get hangovers. That was impossible.

  A beam of light sliced through a doorway into the room, providing just enough illumination for him to review his surroundings. It was a bedroom, definitely, a nice big one, bigger than his bedroom at home. Bigger than his whole house. Something about it seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

  There was a bathroom off to his right. He pulled himself up to a sitting position on the side of the bed. His head hurt. His back and his left knee were sore, too. He stood up, shaking a little, made it to an upright position, shuffled to the bathroom, switched on the light and looked in the mirror. His forehead had a big red strip down the middle, as if someone had run a belt sander over his face.

  Sand. He remembered now, the trip to Black’s Beach, the search at the bottom of the cliffs. Someone had attacked him. Someone had jumped him from behind as he walked back along the beach.

  He turned and headed back to the bedroom. His head started clearing. But where was he? The light beckoned through the crack in the opposite doorway. He pulled open the door, stepped through.

  A large glass coffee table stood on top of a buffed and shiny wood floor. To the left was a large picture window, a tiled patio outside. There were two deep brown leather chairs and a loveseat to match. A large book, Cuisine de la Mer, sat on the coffee table, angled a perfect forty-five degrees to the table’s beveled corners. He knew where he was now. It was Leslie’s house. Joe and Leslie’s house. Somehow he’d made his way here.

  If he remembered right, the kitchen and dining room were next. He could hear Leslie’s voice. It was she who was singing. He knew what that meant. Most people sing to themselves when they’re happy, but not Leslie. She sang when she was agitated, trying to calm herself down.

  He started down the hall, lying back in the shadows and watching for a moment as he approached the kitchen. Leslie stood on the cook’s side of the kitchen island, punching down dough with her hands, slapping it out on the blonde butcher-block counter. She had her long black hair pulled up and clipped on top of her head. She hummed something familiar, an Eagles song—“Lying Eyes.” She used to hum that song all the time back when they were living together, at least whenever she was mad at him. It was her little form of revenge, a not-so-subtle comment on his excuses. Rolly hated The Eagles.

  He took a step forward. Leslie glanced up, saw him in the doorway, paused her kneading.

  “Rolly! Are you all right?” She had that little flutter in her voice, the one she always had when she worked herself into this state, the one she got just before she started crying.

  Rolly smiled weakly, wanting to let her know he was okay, that everything that had ever been wrong with him was okay now, wanting her to stop getting angry with him, which she never would.

  “Joe and I were so worried about you,” Leslie continued. Well, she might as well spoil it now and bring up Joe. He was the one paying for the house they were standing in.

  “Where is Joe?”

  “He had an emergency call, had to run up to the hospital.”

  Rolly sat down at the dining table. “I feel a little groggy still. How did I end up here?”

  “We found you on the beach. Joe and I were having our nightly sunset stroll and we found you just lying there.”

  “Well, I guess that was lucky for me. Was there anyone else around?” he asked.

  “No. There were a couple surfers when we first went out. But I didn’t see anyone else.”

  Leslie rolled the dough into a ball, wiped her hands on her apron. She walked around the serving island and pulled up a chair next to Rolly, lowered her beautiful butt into it, looked straight into his eyes. She had that unyielding, earnest look on her face, the one he used to see at least twice a day—when he left the house and when he came home. She still looked excruciatingly beautiful. Soon she would just be excruciating.

  “Rolly,” she said in a lowered tone, “you haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  “No.”

  Her virtuous, vigilant tone drove him crazy. It was the same tone of voice he’d listened to every time he’d come home to her later than she expected, every time he’d shown up hung over and sick, tired of himself and promising he was going to change his behavior. She’d act tough and inflexible, then she’d start crying, as if she were playing both parts in a good cop/bad cop routine. It was an old movie they couldn’t stop running.

  “I want the truth,” Leslie said. The bad cop was talking.

  “I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t been taking anything.” Rolly looked her straight back in the eye, something he could never do when he lied to her.

  “Joe wanted to call the police, but I wouldn’t let him. I made him bring you up here. I just wanted to know for sure.” That crying sound came back in her voice, the good cop taking over again.

  It was just as well the police weren’t involved. He wouldn’t have been able to tell them much, anyway. He couldn’t have provided a description of his attacker. And the police might have started wondering what a private detective was doing nosing around near the accident scene. Cops put a lot of stock in coincidence.

  Rolly rubbed his hand along his knee, realized his pants weren’t the khakis he’d put on before leaving his house.

  “Where are my pants?”

  “I hung them up in the washroom. Your pants were all wet from the tide coming in,” Leslie said. “You were halfway in the water when we found you.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “You mean, did I go through your pockets? Yes, I did.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Your wallet, your keys. Some sort of plastic ID card. That’s all.” No drugs, that’s what she meant. That’s what she’d been looking for. Evidence.

  “I need to see them.”

  “Rolly, what’s going on?”

  “I just need to see them.”

  Leslie sighed, got up and walked to the washroom, returned with the khakis and handed them to Rolly. He searched through the pockets, found the security card and pulled it out.

  “What’s that?” said Leslie.

  “An employee security card. If you work for this company, it lets you into their building. I found it on the beach.”

  “You were just lying there, out cold on the beach.” The crying tone became stronger.

  “Leslie, listen. Did you hear about the guy who fell off the cliffs a couple of days ago?”

  “Joe told me something. I don’t like to hear about things like that.”

  “Well, this card is . . . was, his.”

  “Shouldn’t you give it to the police?”

  “Not right now. I need to think about this.”

  “You’re in some kind of trouble, I know it. I know how you are. You can’t lie to me.”

  She was right. He couldn’t lie to her outright. She’d spot it in a second, watching his eyes. He had to think now about how much he could tell her, find a way to navigate through it.

  “Listen, I can tell you what’s going on, but you have to p
romise not to tell anyone else, not even Joe.”

  This was the way he could do it, by acting like she was his only confidant. With that she’d hang on a secret forever. She was his co-dependant, his enabler, that’s what the relationship counselor called it, back when they had tried couples therapy. She took care of him, watched over him, protected him, controlled him. He never really bought into the new age psychobabble the shrink had spouted, but there were probably some pieces of truth floating around in it, like turds in the ocean.

  Leslie looked at him for a moment, mulling her options. She couldn’t resist.

  “I promise. I just want to make sure you’re all right. When I realized that was you on the beach…” Her voice trailed off. That was part of the good cop act, too. Whatever she did was always her sacrifice for him. It irked him now, tweaked his gut. But he missed it too. It was a lot better than having no one in his life. Besides, giving up his secrets, unloading his soul in just the right way used to make her horny. They always had great sex afterwards.

  As long as he didn’t tell any outright lies, he might be able to slip a story by her. If there was anything he’d learned from all those years together, it was that telling part of the truth was a better plan, by far, than telling none of it, and much more likely to pass inspection. He could leave some things out. The audience only complains about the notes you don’t play if they already know how the song goes.

  So he told her about his week, keeping to the parts that others would be able to confirm, if she decided to ask anyone. He told her about getting hired by Eyebitz.com, about Fender, the Magic Key, the newspaper story on Curtis Vox. He didn’t tell her about the body in the pool, or Moogus getting beat up. And for sure he didn’t tell her about Alesis. If Leslie heard anything about another woman, the bad cop would come storming back, she’d start right into that pissed-off place again. Even now, with her life settled and secure with her rich doctor husband, she would get jealous if he brought up another woman.

  He finished his story. She made no complaint.

  “What happened on the beach, Rolly? You were just lying there.”

  In his attempt to tell the story just so, he’d forgotten to explain the part that was probably the most important to her, the part she was involved in, the part she’d have to explain to her husband when he got home.

  “Well, I don’t remember much about that. I found this card on the beach. I was walking back to my car when someone jumped me, knocked me down. That’s all I remember.”

  He left out the warning he’d been given, trying to avoid anything that suggested the mugging had been anything other than a random act. If Leslie decided he was in danger she’d go ballistic, want to call in the police, the sheriff, the shore patrol and the full Navy fleet. She’d secretly call his father, work her act on him. His father didn’t want to hear about Rolly’s problems. He’d given up on Rolly a long time ago. He just wanted to play golf and boink his young wife once a week on Sunday mornings. If Leslie called Rolly’s father, then his father would have to call Rolly and talk to him, pretend that he cared. Or he might call Rolly’s mother. That would be worse.

  “Who knocked you down?” Leslie asked. She wasn’t satisfied yet.

  “I don’t know, like I said.”

  He had to lie now, at least a little bit. He didn’t know who had mugged him, but he had a pretty good idea. It was that harmonica-abusing, surfboard humping, puka-shelled monkey with the oversized hands. Little Walter.

  When he quit drinking, he’d promised himself he’d stop lying, too. But now he had a job that pretty much required lying on a daily basis. For everything he’d done to change his life, here he was again, lying to Leslie in the kitchen while she gave him the third degree, avoiding the truth, figuring out what he could get away with. Sure, it was part of his job. But it didn’t feel any different inside.

  It made him angry, thinking about it. Perhaps if people hadn’t lied to him first, he wouldn’t have this problem. Leslie wasn’t all virtue herself. Matt had confessed to him, when they were both drunk, driving back to San Diego from Capitol Records, ten minutes before the car left the road. Matt confessed to Rolly about the night he’d been with Leslie.

  That was past history. He put it out of his mind. Someone at Eyebitz.com had lied to him, maybe more than one person, maybe every single person he’d encountered there. Except Curtis Vox, who never got a chance. As he thought about Curtis, he realized there might be a way Curtis could talk to him, a way for Curtis to tell him the truth.

  “Leslie, I need to call someone. Can I use the phone?”

  Leslie gave him the look, the stare, the silence, but her heart wasn’t in it.

  “You’re such an asshole,” she said, getting up from her chair. She pointed at the phone. “On the wall, there.”

  She went back to her bread. She didn’t love him anymore, probably hadn’t thought about him for months. Until he turned up, lying face down on her beach. It had confused her, set her back into old patterns she thought were gone. But Rolly wasn’t her responsibility anymore.

  He walked to the phone, punched in the number. He glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost midnight.

  The phone at the other end of the line rang twice. A female voice answered. There were bright and happy sounds in the background, just as always. It was the loft party that never ended.

  “Hello,” Rolly said. “Is Marley there?”

  He waited while the woman went to get Marley. He watched Leslie back at her bread, absorbed in the relentless rhythm of kneading and stretching the dough, building her bread like a fortress against all her unhappiness. He’d gotten fat without her around, but she had stayed slim, hungry, still working hard to control everything. She had little lines on her face he didn’t remember, around her eyes and her mouth. It was all for the better. You could see there was a real person there now, with at least one lifetime behind her. There was an aging, imperfect soul beneath that impossible, beautiful face.

  He thought about what Matt had told him, the day of the accident, on their way home, what Matt had confessed about Leslie. She had left Rolly the day before, taken her pots and pans and fancy kitchen utensils and cleared out for good. Rolly had never asked her about Matt. It seemed cheap and trivial after what had happened, after everything in his life had come crashing down.

  “Hello.” A voice responded at the end of the phone, pulling Rolly back from his thoughts.

  “Marley, it’s Rolly. Have you made any progress with that disk?”

  “I’m not going to get anything more without that encryption key.”

  “What if I could get it for you?”

  “How are you going to do that? It’s on some computer at Eyebitz.com.”

  “I know.”

  “You going to bring the computer to me?”

  “Not exactly,” said Rolly, twitching Curtis Vox’s key card in his hand, watching Curtis’ face appear and disappear. “But I think I can bring you to the computer.”

  A Break-in

  Rolly and Marley sat in Rolly’s Volvo in the parking lot across the street from the offices of Eyebitz.com. They munched on hunks of fresh-baked bread between sips of licorice-scented health soda. Leslie had been unable to let Rolly leave without forcing some form of sustenance on him. Rolly took his care package, drove downtown, picked up Marley. They arrived at the Eyebitz.com office at 1:30 A.M. No one had gone in or out of the parking lot since they’d arrived. Rolly looked at his watch. It was three minutes after two.

  “Sure you want to do this?” he asked Marley.

  “Adventure of a lifetime,” Marley replied.

  Rolly twitched the card in his hand. He hoped it still worked, that no one had deleted Curtis from the system yet. If the card did work, it probably had a unique ID that would get logged on the system. The time it was used would be recorded as well. Rolly wondered if anyone looked through the logs, if anyone would notice a dead man had entered the building just after two in the morning. He realized there might be secur
ity cameras at entrances, taking their picture. It was too late to worry about that.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They climbed out of the car and crossed the street, walked onto the asphalt driveway, stopped at the keypad in front of the gate. Fender had punched in some numbers, but Rolly didn’t know the code. Neither he nor Marley were in the best shape for gate climbing, but that’s what they’d need to do. He put both hands on the metal bars of the gate, preparing to hoist himself up, looked back to ask for a boost up from Marley. A loud, electrical buzz burst from the lock. Rolly jumped back, bumped into Marley, who stumbled and tripped over the curb. He fell onto the ice plant at the edge of the driveway, let out a loud “Ooof.”

  “Shit, Rolly. What was that?” Marley rose to his knees.

  The gate made a clicking noise. It groaned and started to open. Rolly ran to the wooden fence near the hinge of the gate, crouched down in the ice plant.

  “Marley, get up here. Someone’s coming.”

  Marley stood up, ran over and crouched behind Rolly. If they were lucky, whoever was leaving the parking lot wouldn’t look back towards them.

  Headlights illuminated the driveway. A car engine rumbled and a rhythmic bass thump filled the air. An old Cadillac Coup DeVille passed through the gate, leaving the parking lot. Muddy Waters and Johnny Winter were playing “The Blues Had a Baby” on the car’s stereo system. Rolly watched the silhouette of the driver as he passed. One gigantic hand tapped on the steering wheel, playing the downbeat.

  Rolly and Marley stayed low, tried to look as inconspicuous as they could for two overweight middle-aged men crouched in a patch of ice plant at two in the morning. The taillights receded, then disappeared along with the music. The security gate stopped, paused in full open position.

  Rolly remembered Fender’s comment about the slow gate, decided they were better off sprinting than climbing. “Let’s go,” he whispered to Marley and bolted for the entry. Marley followed. They got inside with room to spare as the gate returned in a slow arc to the locked position. Rolly and Marley paused for a moment to catch their breath. They started up the long driveway.