I almost regretted my decision, however, when I caught sight of the big cruise ship approaching port. I knew it was at least partially filled with little college shits and shittettes with little regard for anyone else. They were in Manta to party hard. They would pour beer and tequila into their mouths through a funnel in hotel rooms and on the beaches, and suck cocaine through a straw in club bathrooms. They hated God and the establishment without offering any alternative other than hedonistic excess. They could tell you how Thor came to be and where the Green Lantern got his power, but couldn't find Panama or Nicaragua on a map to save their soul. In fact, they couldn’t find them without a big cruise ship and a captain to steer them in the right direction. They thought socialism and communism were cool and that they were entitled to what other generations they held nothing but contempt for had fought and died to give them. A generation lacking a moral center, any historical perspective, or the foresight to look beyond Iron Man, a “cool” zombie apocalypse, getting drunk and getting laid. They listened to music with debasing lyrics that fed into their in-your-face excesses and was crap in a way no other music in any era had ever been. They didn't respect themselves so they couldn't respect anyone beyond themselves. It was depressing being around them because it made you wonder how much longer the human race could continue before it died out from stupidity.
By lodging at the most expensive place we could find, Caroline and I were able to avoid them nearly completely. We lived in luxury, never really seeing Panama as we had Belize or Guatemala. Our room had a jacuzzi on the patio overlooking the beach. We lazed in the sun and occasionally headed down to the beach to run on the sand. Caroline swam but I watched, having an aversion to being in the water unless it was absolutely necessary. We made love in a big bed whose sheets and covers magically changed themselves while we shopped and played and acted like typical American tourists. We ordered plenty of room service and exhausted ourselves every evening in the most wonderful way in the world.
When we'd had enough luxury and interaction with the touristy masses we came to the decision that we'd go through the Panama Canal and do Ecuador rather than Brazil, which we would catch as we swung around and came back up the other side of South America. I'm certain Columbia is a lovely country and there is plenty to see, but having dealt with too many Columbians in Miami, all of them in the traffic, I told Caroline I was having none of Columbia. So Ecuador it was.
We had been having so much fun on our extended honeymoon that I almost forgot Harry would be rejoining us soon. I couldn't help wondering how he had been managing on his own. Harry had crawled into a bottle decades ago after a mishap at sea that he didn't talk about except in his nightmares. I kept him on the square by doling out the juice in small but steady increments. Harry knew more about boats and the sea than I ever would and it often seemed to him that he was taking care of me rather than the other way around. In fairness, it sometimes felt that way to me as well, especially in those early days after turning in my shield.
I had purchased his big cruiser/houseboat, Stella, after a major drug dealer named Escobar died at my hands and enough time had passed that I knew I'd gotten away with killing him. But ridding the world of Escobar had shattered the image I had of myself and though I thought I had come to terms with it all by the time we'd docked in Cozumel, it wasn't until I found Caroline and she accepted and loved me in "as is" condition that I truly felt my demons disappearing.
Caroline was sweet and special in a way few girls are born with and even fewer ever manage to achieve on their own. She had been raped and only God knew what else a few years ago in Cozumel. Some of her memories had been lost, but none of her worth. She still forgot things occasionally, but never forgot that she loved me. I loved everything about her, from her sandy blonde hair and deceptively lovely body to her sunny smile and enthusiastic wonder about other places and other cultures. I had come to adore watching her write those little notes to herself and stuff them in her pockets so she couldn’t forget. She had made her peace with the way she was now and I loved that girl more than I'd ever loved anything or anyone. She had recently told me that she would not change anything that had happened to her if it meant missing out on me. How could I not worship a girl like that?
Our boat's name had come about when Harry's old boat, Stella, had been blown into a million tiny slivers of wood and fiberglass and metal off the coast of Cozumel. Stella had joined a young girl named Nancy and a woman named Delana in those turquoise waters off the coast of Cozumel. But that only explains what happened to Stella. The boat we had now had been a wedding gift from the father of the girl I had avenged when I took Escobar's life out on the Florida Keys. Harry had, for obvious reasons, christened the new boat, Sweet Caroline. It was on the deck of Sweet Caroline where I stood holding the flesh and blood Caroline, the soft and adorable Caroline. The Caroline that mattered.
The light rain had stopped falling shortly after the girl hit the water.
"Would you be mad if I made love to you before I told you about something horrible that just happened?" I asked.
She frowned a moment and looked searchingly into my eyes. We were all alone and I knew she was wondering how anything bad could have touched our lives when there were no other boats around.
She finally smiled and whispered, "You haven't found another wife you like better, have you?"
"No!" I laughed. "You've passed the five week trial period! And besides," I said, turning my palms up, "there's no warranty, so now I have to keep you."
She took the back of her right hand and wiped it across her forehead in mock relief, saying, "Whew!"
I swept her up into my arms and her happy laughter filled the gray-orange morning. I carried her below deck to our warm bed and made terrible, sweet love to her, trying to wipe out the image of the falling girl. In Caroline's arms I reaffirmed that we were still alive, even if the girl floating in the water off the coast of Ecuador was not. Perhaps in her heart, on her way to oblivion, she had said her final farewell to someone during that long gray goodbye.
Two
I told Caroline about the falling girl and quite naturally she thought it was terrible. The time we'd spent in each other's arms had distanced us from the immediacy of death, as such pleasures always do. I decided we would cruise out to get the girl, because it was what two American tourists would almost certainly do. I wasn't sure what Ecuadorian cops were like, but if they were like cops everywhere else I had no wish to plant the seed of suspicion in their minds by acting abnormally under the circumstances. So I revved the big diesels and headed for the area where the girl had hit the water.
Caroline stood at the bow looking through my binoculars. Water had begun to spray on her legs as I picked up speed. She still wore my big dress shirt but had slipped into a pair of white shorts.
I throttled down about a quarter mile or so from where I thought the girl had hit and hollered for Caroline to keep a sharp eye-out. It took us about ten minutes to spot her because she'd already drifted a hundred yards or so in the ocean current. I eased alongside her and reluctantly dropped the ladder off the side.
Despite having lived most of my life in Florida, and many of those years around Miami as a cop, I wasn't a big fan of being in the water. I loved the beach, the ocean, life aboard my boat, but had never understood the fascination or pleasure people derived from being cold and wet. Caroline loved to swim, of course, but I had always been content to watch her from the sand as her loveliness moved gracefully through the water, arching and accentuating her in all her sweet girl-glory.
The dead girl felt like mush, a rag doll, making it difficult to bring her up the ladder with me. The impact had probably crushed most of the bones in her young body. Ever brave, Caroline reached down and helped me wrangle her up onto deck. I squeezed Caroline's shoulder to make sure she was okay. There was a very sad look on her face but she flashed me a thin smile and nodded.
"She's so small, Seth."
I rolled her over and Caroline made a ter
rible noise and turned away, throwing up. One eyeball hung loose and the girl's face had been almost flattened, as though it were made of silly-putty someone had decided to squish into nothing.
"I'm sorry, babe. I should have known. Are you okay?" I felt awful. I should have warned her. It was a grotesque sight, made all the more macabre by the white skin, the blonde hair, the frame not fully developed yet, but even in this state, hinting at a loveliness the girl would now never reach.
Caroline was breathing normally again, and was embarrassed even though she shouldn't have been. "I'm sorry. I’m okay. It's just so…awful, Seth. How old do you think she is?"
"I'd say thirteen, maybe fourteen? What do you think?"
She nodded. "Yeah, that's probably about right." Caroline looked up. "She didn't fall, did she, Seth?"
I sighed. "From a single-engine plane that simply flew away? No. Someone threw her out alive."
"What a terrible way to die, Seth. She must have been horrified. All that time on the way down to think about it." Caroline shuddered.
An odor of feces wafted upward and I realized the young girl had been so frightened she had lost control. Her panties had prevented the sea from washing it all away.
"Seth, what's that?"
The girl's dress was all cockeyed, exposing her underwear. They were white, camouflaging the tiny white envelope she'd hidden in a place no one else was allowed access to. Well, unless she was a little tart. Being a cop in Miami I’d known plenty of girls her age who’d seen more action than Patton at the Bulge. Seth Halliday, cynic extraordinaire.
I slipped the wet mailer from her panties. It had been handmade, a bubble mailer cut down to a smaller size. Its small size had possibly prevented even a thorough frisk from uncovering it. Clear packing tape had been wrapped around it after a black felt marker had been used to address it. No stamps or postage mark graced the outside. I recognized the name on the envelope; most of America knew the name.
Laura Garner had been a huge child star, growing up before the nation's eyes as the teenage daughter on a long-running sitcom. She had been the girl-next-door fantasy of many teen boys and emulated by girls. Today she was a lovely woman that not a breath of scandal had ever touched. Everyone genuinely seemed to like her. Unlike most child stars who were either chewed up by the system and thrown out like yesterday's garbage or went off the rails once they were no longer in the spotlight, Laura had gone on to college. When she graduated she'd found a niche making her own shows. Currently she starred in a very high-rated series about an angel who helped people find their true reason for being here. Normal people sick of the shallow reality shows shoved down their throats every time they turned their television on, worshipped the show, and her.
Anyone could have shared the name, of course, but not the address in Boca Raton. Laura Garner as an adult had chosen to live far from the moral sickness called Hollywood. She was Florida's pride and joy, and could often be seen shopping or pumping gas into her 1956 Thunderbird convertible. When some morning show cardboard cut-out of a girl once asked why Laura had painted her classic car orange rather than red like Robert Urich’s, Dan Tanna, or white like Suzanne Somers’ in American Graffiti, Laura answered that she loved Florida oranges so much she wanted her car the same color. This led to the star's stint as the Florida’s spokesperson for the citrus industry, which she did free of charge. Laura Garner was pretty, naturally sexy in a nice kind of way, and talented. According to everyone, she was the real deal.
"Is that…?"
"Yeah, it is."
"Should we, you know?"
I could feel something small and hard inside.
"Go grab the scissors."
I could have used my pocketknife to cut through the tape but I wanted to give Caroline something to do. You can stare too long at death sometimes. She looked better when she returned.
I let Caroline do the honors, if that's what you could call it under the circumstances. She pulled out a tiny cassette, one of those businessmen used to use decades ago. I was a dinosaur when it came to technology so I owned a regular cassette player, but not one of the minis. I wondered if I could even find one in Ecuador. Even in South America the technology might be out of date.
"Put it in the safe while I radio it in."
A look passed between us and Caroline smiled. She knew we were going to do what we could for the young girl who'd had too much time to think about her dying before it happened. A full minute perhaps, sixty-seconds that had become for her, an eternity.
Three
We had to wait quite a while for them to arrive. The early morning rainstorm had blown out to sea, leaving a bright blue sky. Two of the Ecuadorian cops were surprisingly fluent in English. Though unhappy that we'd fished the girl out of the water, their body language said they viewed it as par for the course from American tourists who believed they owned the world. The tall cop in charge spoke even more fluently than his immediate underling. He had introduced himself as Mauricio Lovato upon arrival — not Detective Mauricio Lovato, just his name. He didn't have to tell anyone he was a cop, just like he didn't need to tell anyone he was in charge. They simply knew. Lovato had sad dark eyes, and even though I judged him to be in his mid-thirties, an aura of weariness at the ebb and flow of life which comes and goes so quickly for us all surrounded him. I liked him, but I was also wary of him.
Lovato waited until his subordinate finished writing down our story in a little notebook then nodded for him to take charge of the transport. Two medical people were loading the young girl's body into the metal basket. Lovato stood pensive, watching them. As they transferred the girl from Sweet Caroline to the patrol boat, a few strands of hair escaped from the blanket covering her. They hung off the side like some sad blonde epitaph. Lovato sighed, then turned his attention to us.
"Your boat and driver's license were both issued in Miami. You are a long way from home."
"Like we said, we're on honeymoon."
"We met in Cozumel," Caroline added.
He nodded in an understanding way, not wishing to give us any indication that he didn't believe us — or that he might be trying to trip us up. He knew what he was doing.
"How long ago?" he asked a bit too casually.
"A while back, about the time Carlos Vargas got killed in that explosion." It had been big news, even this far away, so I figured he was heading there.
He smiled. "There is an old saying that it is a small world. I happen to know one of the detectives in Cozumel, named Sanchez. Or at least I know of him through his cousin. He is a missionary, the cousin, and does some good work for the poor."
I nodded. It might have seemed an odd coincidence somewhere else, but the Spanish are connected in ways that many other cultures are not. Missionaries and those doing God's work are always well-known, far and wide. And Sanchez's family apparently went back generations on Cozumel.
Lovato didn't appear to be the type who missed anything that went on around him. Maybe that's what gave him the weariness; knowing too much. It was a safe bet he knew all about Cozumel and my role in Vargas's end. Old Mauricio's easygoing manner was deceptive.
"You know anything about this girl, or why someone dropped her from that plane?" Not questioning, just asking for help, in case we might now. But directed at me, not Caroline, which said he wondered if I did know something I wasn't telling him. I did.
"No, and it was too cloudy to see the plane at the time."
"No one was supposed to be in this area, according to the airport."
"So they didn't file a flight plan," I added.
He nodded. "And did not take off from any official airport." The more formal English, the did nots and could nots rather than didn't and can't, were hallmarks of those using English as their second or third language.
"Is that difficult?" I asked, knowing the answer.
He laughed. It seemed genuine. "If I had a dollar centavo for every dirt runway in Ecuador, I could afford to live on the road to Samborondón, which would make
my wife happy."
Quito was the capital and certainly a desired residence, but Guayaquil is arguably Ecuador's best city for business, and a hub for import/export due to its large port. Kennedy and Ceibos are among its wealthiest places, but the road leading away from Guayaquil in Samborondón is where the very wealthy who do business in the city live. Having worked as a cop for so long in Dade, dealing with the flow of narcotics coming into Florida from various countries in the region, I knew more about Ecuador than your average American tourist.
"Sorry we couldn't be of more help," Caroline said with genuine feeling. "It was an awful way to die."
He looked at Caroline, his face acknowledging the truth of her statement. Not quite a smile, just an indication of sad agreement.
"All ways of dying are awful to the one leaving," he said. "My daughter will be her age one day. This girl was someone's daughter, too." He shrugged. "But she is American, and white, so perhaps someone will report her missing." Always there existed that inference of prejudice in the voice of Spanish cops. I'd never met a Mexican or Spanish-speaking cop who didn't share that sentiment.
"Hopefully you won't just wait around for someone to call in because she's white."
He looked at me sharply, those dark eyes suddenly alive. And then they softened, and he smiled.
"Touché. It is always ignorant to assume the worst."
"Even if it is too often true."
He nodded, still smiling. "Even then."
We were done. Mauricio Lovato joined his fellow officers. By the time Caroline and I pulled up anchor the patrol boat was just a speck on the horizon. I fired up the powerful diesels and pointed Sweet Caroline toward Manta.
The Long Gray Goodbye: A Seth Halliday Novel Page 2
