The Last Breath

by Danny Lopez

  He poured two glasses of vodka and handed me one. “Look.” He took a short sip and rubbed his red nose with the back of his hand before setting the glass back on the counter. “I’m not looking for someone to blame. I just … I just want to know what the hell happened out there.”

  I glanced at my drink. I hated vodka. I set it on the counter. Fleming stared at me suspiciously.

  A part of me didn’t want to take the job. What I saw was a rich, lonely man trying to force a narrative that wasn’t there—as if his son was not capable of having an accident. Or maybe he just wanted to prolong his mourning. Either way, it just felt wrong. On the other hand, it seemed simple enough. And it meant a payday. I kept thinking of Zoe and me having a blast in Punta Cana.

  “So you’re basically looking for a second opinion,” I said.

  He handed me my drink again, grabbed his own. “Something like that.” He took a long sip and walked across the living room to the foyer at the foot of the stairs, looked up at the painting. I could tell he wanted me to know we were on the same page, a young and innocent Liam Fleming staring down at us from the large canvas.

  “I can do that,” I said. “We just have to come up with the terms.”

  “Money’s not a problem.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s more than that. I mean, when do we decide the job’s done?”

  His eyes grew wide and he pointed at me with his glass. “You tell me.”

  “If I look into this and come up with a conclusion, even if it concurs with the police report, we call it a done deal.”

  “Well,” he said reluctantly, “what shall we consider a proper conclusion?”

  He had a point. “Evidence,” I said. “My job is to give you evidence that tells what happened. But if I feel I’ve exhausted all the angles, I’m done.”

  He let a few seconds pass before nodding. “Fair enough.”

  We were about to shake hands when a young woman in a stylish tennis dress skipped down the stairs. She had long black hair tied in a tight ponytail and a designer tan—skin as brown as mine but smooth and even. At first, I thought she was in her late twenties, but when she reached us, I could see she was older, maybe mid-thirties.

  “Ah, here’s Brandy.” Fleming seemed to brighten. “My wife.”

  Brandy smiled like a model. She was petite and attractive in a manufactured way: personal trainer, spa every couple days, bright pink fingernails that matched her lipstick. Perhaps an occasional Botox shot in her brow. But I could tell that even if she removed her makeup and was caught late one morning with a hangover, she’d still look good. She was Bob Fleming’s little trophy.

  I introduced myself, glanced at the painting of the family. The woman in the frame was heavier, blond.

  Brandy leaned against her husband, laced her arm around his. “What’s going on, dear?”

  “Mr. Vega’s going to look into Liam’s accident for me.”

  Brandy rolled her eyes and pursed her lips.

  “I’m just going to check things out,” I said quickly, trying to diffuse whatever storm I felt brewing between these two. “Make sure the cops did their job.”

  “Honestly,” she said and shook her head so I got a pleasant whiff of perfume that smelled of money. She stared at him, a slight frown over her dark eyes. “It’s not as if it’s going to bring Liam back, Bob.”

  “Brandy,” he said. “I need to do this.”

  “I don’t think it’s healthy to go on like this,” she said sharply. “You’re obsessed.”

  Bob Fleming seemed to physically retreat at her displeasure.

  I said, “It’s only been a little over a week since the accident. I don’t—”

  “Please,” Brandy interrupted me and ran her hand up Bob’s back and caressed his neck. “Don’t take his side. You don’t know him. He’ll dwell on Liam’s death for months. He’s just going to keep suffering. He’s torturing himself with this.”

  “It’s true,” Bob said and kissed the top of Brandy’s head. “But I need closure, sweetheart. I need this.”

  Brandy glared at me then turned to Bob. “Do what you want, dear. But six months from now when you’re lying in bed in a drunken stupor crying for Liam, don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.”

  After that little verbal slap, she kissed the old man on the cheek and skipped across the living room and disappeared into a hallway.

  Bob cleared his throat and grinned uncomfortably. “She’s always watching out for me.” Then he brought the glass to his lips, and I watched his Adam’s apple go up and down like a bouncy ball as he consumed the liquor.

  “Lucky guy,” I said so we could get back to business. I wasn’t a psychologist and I wasn’t one to judge, but it was clear that big hedge fund millionaire Bob Fleming was weak at the knees for his hard-ass wife.

  “She thinks I’m wasting my money,” he said.

  “Yeah, about that,” I said. “This is a peculiar case. I mean it’s difficult to put a price on the work.”

  “You have a fee?”

  “No, not really,” I said and caught sight of his Rolex again. I thought of a week in Punta Cana, Zoe—all inclusive. “Maybe three grand—”

  “In advance?”

  “That would be best. And if there’s any expenses—”

  “Of course,” he said and pulled out his wallet.

  I thought he was going to give me the cash right there and then, but instead, he gave me a business card for Thomas Pearlman, Esquire, attorney at law. “Tom’s your point man. He’ll pay you for the first week. He also has a copy of the police report for you.”

  Bob didn’t see me out. He moved toward the bar for a refill of Grey Goose. I went out the front door the same way I came in. Just as I reached my car, I heard Brandy call my name.

  She was coming from around the side of the house. “Are you really doing this?” she said when she caught up with me, her hands perched on the sides of her slender waist.

  “Doing what?” We stood face-to-face between my old Subaru and that fine, 160-thousand-dollar Maserati.

  “Taking his money just like that, prolonging his misery. He drinks enough as it is.”

  “I’m sorry. But he hired me to do a job. Someone has to pay for my time.”

  “Now you listen to me,” she snapped and waved one of those perfectly manicured fingernails at my face, her voice sharp and full of poison. “I won’t let you take advantage of him. You understand me? So handle with care, buster.”

  With that she turned around and skipped back to the house. When she jumped up the step to the front door, her miniskirt bounced up and floated down. I could swear she wasn’t wearing any panties.

  CHAPTER 3

  ON MY DRIVE home, I called Pearlman. I expected the runaround, having to set up an appointment and all that crap that usually accompanies anything involving lawyers, but his secretary said to come right over.

  The office was in the sixth floor of the Orange Blossom Tower, a tastefully redone old building on the corner of Main Street and Palm Avenue in downtown Sarasota. The reception was all dark wood and smelled of Murphy’s Oil and tobacco. There were four high-back black leather chairs in front of a wide desk where Pearlman’s secretary sat. Behind her, the wood-paneled walls were decorated with old black-and-white photographs of Sarasota history: fishermen, the circus, parades.

  The secretary’s name was Vivian McCutcheon—it was etched in gold, all caps Helvetica on the nameplate on her desk. She was young and polite and professional. She had medium brown hair combed to the side and wore a navy-blue skirt suit and medium heels. When I entered, she stood and asked me to sit in one of the four chairs.

  After a little small talk about the terribly hot summer, she disappeared behind a set of large double doors and reappeared a few seconds later, closing the door very gently. She offered me two manila envelopes. “This is the file on Liam Fleming,” she said, pointing to the larger of the two. “And this is your weekly fee. In advance, as agreed with Mr. Fleming.”

  I
smiled and nodded at the double doors. “What about him?”

  “Mr. Pearlman?”

  “I’d really like to ask him a few questions about the—”

  “Mr. Pearlman is extremely busy.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “At the moment, he’s on his way to the airport.”

  I looked at the envelope with the file on Liam Fleming. “Did he handle Mr. Fleming’s son’s case?”

  “There was no case,” she said and her eyes dropped to the floor. “It was an accident.”

  “When do you expect Mr. Pearlman back?”

  “Thursday morning.”

  “Can I see him then?”

  “Mr. Pearlman doesn’t see anyone.”

  “What about his clients?”

  “He only has one.”

  “Mr. Fleming.”

  “That is correct,” she said and gripped the back of the chair in front of her. Her eyes darted nervously about the room.

  I glanced at the envelopes.

  “There’s an extra five hundred for expenses,” she said quickly. “Please keep proper records and turn in your receipts at the end of the week.”

  “It’s all very neat,” I said.

  “Mr. Fleming likes things properly handled. I will have another envelope for you next week if the case should need further … looking into.”

  I held up the envelope with Liam’s police file. “And if I have any questions about the case?”

  “Call the office.”

  “You mean, call you.”

  “That is correct.” She bit her lip and stole a quick glance at my ear. “It all goes through me.”

  “Is that how the cops investigated this thing?”

  She frowned. “Mr. Vega, this thing, as you call it, is the tragic death of a human being—of Mr. Fleming’s son. The man is crestfallen.”

  * * *

  I left Pearlman’s office and walked around the corner to Caragiulos. I took a seat at the bar, ordered a Big Top Circus City IPA on draft and looked over the police report.

  It was all pretty cut and dry. The kid was twenty-seven years old. His body was found early in the morning by a woman after it got snagged on her dock off Kensey Lane in Osprey on the other side of the Intracoastal, south of Little Sarasota Bay. Toxicology report showed THC in the blood. So he probably smoked a little weed. I didn’t imagine it would impede his ability as a kayaker.

  I used my phone to Google the Flemings, both father and son. Hedge fund Fleming retired six years ago after twenty-seven years of managing other people’s money in a private fund that was still in existence, and which, as far as I could tell, had never made much of a profit. Still, his compensation and retirement bonus was at least three times the yearly budget of the City of Sarasota. The man wasn’t just loaded. He was mega-loaded.

  Liam Fleming graduated from some prep school in upstate New York. He was on the soccer team and the swim team. He attended the University of Florida in Gainesville where he graduated with a degree in business. He then moved to Sarasota. His father came down a year later from New York City, after he retired.

  I ordered another beer. There are two types of mourners, as far as I know. The ones who clam up and keep their pain inside, and the ones who talk. It’s like therapy. But Bob Fleming was neither. He didn’t tell me what a great kid Liam was, or how much he missed him, or how unfair the whole thing was. Instead he sent me to his lawyer’s office to pick up the police report—a cold, analytical description of the scene. Maybe that’s what the old man was after.

  I wasn’t the best father. My daughter, Zoe, lived with her mother in Houston. We spoke on the phone every so often. I never knew what to say. But deep down in my heart, I wanted more. I wanted to connect, feel that familial love that connected us as father and daughter. All parents want that. Maybe that was what Bob wanted, to know more about his son.

  Either way, there was no point in wasting any more time. From what I could gather, the best place to start looking was with Liam Fleming.

  I drove down to his address on Midnight Pass Road at the south end of Siesta Key, just across the road from Turtle Beach. And maybe it was just a coincidence, but it was just down the road from the Sanderling Club where his father lived.

  I parked on the shell driveway behind a blue Volkswagen Golf with a surfboard on the roof rack. Next to it was a late-model silver Range Rover with one of those Coexist stickers on the back. The house was an old cottage from the early seventies covered in moldy vinyl siding, cheap aluminum jalousie windows, and a tin roof. Still, it was on a huge lot dense with sea grape and scrub oak and mangroves. On both sides were multimillion-dollar mansions. The backyard was the Intracoastal Waterway.

  No one answered when I knocked on the door. I don’t know what I was expecting. I checked the mailbox. It was empty except for a weekly pamphlet with special deals and coupons for local businesses. I walked slowly around the house to the back where there was a patio with a nice set of rattan furniture and a couple of plastic Adirondack chairs arranged around a fire pit. At the edge of the mangrove forest was a narrow dock that led out to the Intracoastal.

  I sifted through an ashtray. A lot of cigarette butts and a couple of roaches. The ground was littered with a dozen empty beer cans, JDub’s and Darwin’s and Corona, and Blind Pass Brewing’s Siesta IPA. I peeked through the back windows. The lanai was empty except for a few oars, a paddleboard, and two surfboards. No kayak. Beyond the lanai was the living room where something moved.

  I knocked on the back door, hard. Tried the handle. Locked.

  “Hey!” I called and moved to the next window where I got a better view of the living room. Something crashed inside, like a pan falling on a hard surface. A figure ran past. I knocked on the window. Then followed quickly around the side of the house. A man in suit pants and a blue Oxford shirt appeared from the front, came walking straight toward me, quick.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m a friend of—”

  He hooked me high on the gut—like a flash. No warning.

  I lost my air. Fell on my knees, gasped for air. Then I got it on the back of the head. Pain. Everything went dark.

  CHAPTER 4

  I WOKE TO a stereo blasting CCR’s Proud Mary. My head throbbed from the base of my neck to my brow. I staggered to my feet, leaned against the side of the house for support. My knees were weak, head dizzy, nauseous. I rubbed the back of my neck. The pain felt as if someone were pressing a hot iron against the back of my skull. I took a few deep breaths and slowly made my way to the front of the house. The sun was at an angle, blinding. I’d been out an hour. Maybe less.

  I shielded my eyes from the sun with my hand. The silver Range Rover was gone. In its place was a cream-colored 1980s Toyota Land Cruiser that looked pretty beat up. A man wearing shorts that sat low on his waist and reached down to his knees and no shirt hopped out of the driver’s seat. He looked like a surfer with shoulder-length blond hair, well built, trim and tan. A tight Puka shell necklace around his neck. Tied to the roof rack of his SUV was a red plastic kayak.

  “Whazzup, brah?” he greeted me with an upbeat nasally tone but didn’t pause his work, moving around the truck, untying the bungees from the roof rack.

  “Nothing.” I grunted and walked to where he was parked, leaned on the front of his car. The hood was hot, stank of burnt oil.

  The surfer snapped a couple more bungees. “Liam around?”

  “No.”

  He finished with the cords and pulled the kayak off the roof and set it on the ground next to the Land Cruiser. “What about Jaybird?”

  “I … no, I don’t think so.”

  He paused, shifted his weight to one leg and looked at me for the first time. “Who’re you?”

  “Dexter Vega. Friend of the family.”

  He showed me his pretty white teeth. “No shit.”

  I nodded. “Who’re you?”

  “Keith, man. I brought back the kayak.”

  “Liam’s kayak?”

  He nodded and tossed his lo
ng blond hair to the side. “Just spent a freakin’ awesome week in Ten Thousand Islands with my kids. Nothing else like it anywhere in the country. I don’t think a whole lot of people appreciate it the way they should. Outrageous place, brah.”

  “So you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “About Liam.”

  He stared at me, waiting.

  “He’s dead.”

  He kept his eyes on me for a moment. Then he chuckled. “No way. You’re bullshitting me, brah.”

  I shook my head. “Drowned. Last Friday.” I pointed to the back of the house.

  “You serious?”

  I nodded.

  “What the fuck?” He ran his hand over his golden hair and turned away. “Liam, man. What happened?”

  “They said it was an accident.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “The cops.”

  “The cops …” He said it with distaste, like he was spitting something out. “Liam, man. Dead.” He leaned against the truck. “That’s some shit.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Yeah, kinda. Like everyone else.”

  “His father said he was a pretty good swimmer.”

  “Like a fucking shark, brah.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Shit’s bogus.”

  I moved to the side of the car and leaned against the side mirror. I needed it for balance. Everything was off, tilted, turning. “So how did you meet … Liam?”

  He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the place behind Midnight Pass Road. “Turtle Beach, brah. We hung out.”

  I pointed to the kayak. Red plastic with a nice back on the seat. “And you borrowed his kayak?”

  “Right on.” He glanced at the kayak, then picked it up and walked past me and along the side path to the back of the house. I followed him, my legs wobbly, my right arm out, hand touching the house in case I faltered.

  He set the kayak on the ground, leaning against the back wall next to the door to the lanai. Then he turned and looked around the patio and nodded. “Man, we had some good times back here.” He winked at me. “Smoked a lot of ganja.”

  “Can I ask you something?”