The Long Gray Goodbye: A Seth Halliday Novel

by Bobby Underwood

  She smiled. “I can tell you that Mauricio is honest. If he were not, his wife would know. She is a friend of mine.” She stood suddenly. “Wait here. We won’t need to concern my husband with this.”

  We watched the sensual sway of her graceful carriage as it swayed femininely across the patio beneath her blue dress until she disappeared inside the house.

  Sanchez let out a soft whistle. “That is one, hot but sweet chili pepper, my friend.”

  When she returned, she’d brought more ice for the tea. After refreshing our glasses with cubes, she poured us more tea. She sat down.

  “Evelia will get back to me in the morning, and Mauricio will not be the wiser.”

  “He doesn’t miss much,” I commented skeptically.

  Josselyn smiled. “You have not seen Evilia.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be in Miami so…”

  She laughed, reached over and playfully gave me a shove. “You still won’t get a cell phone, will you?” She touched my cheek. “Don’t worry, Daniel can give me his number and he can relay the message to you somehow.”

  It sounded odd, hearing someone — anyone — call Sanchez by his first name. He slid his phone over to her and she programmed his number into a phone she’d pulled out of a small pocket on the side of the sun dress. There were so many wonderful things she could have pulled out of her dress that I hadn’t considered a phone, because it wasn’t one of them.

  We stayed another thirty minutes while Josselyn told me about her daughter, and her husband. There was a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there when we’d met all those years ago. When we hugged and said our goodbyes, it was warm and as friends. Good friends.

  Ten

  Sonny offered to fly us back to Miami, but I sensed Katarina wanted to stay in Ecuador and play a bit. I didn’t want to be the one to ruin their fun, so Caroline and I took a commercial flight back to Florida.

  It had been my theory for some time that as the planes got bigger the hostesses had become less attractive. A male chauvinistic attitude to be certain, but I stood by the belief. In the 60s every flight attendant looked like Connie Stevens. In the 70s it seemed every flight attendant had walked straight out of an episode of Charlie’s Angels. In the 80s they’d become Connie Selleca. By the 90s Helen Hunt could be counted on to fly the friendly skies with you. Now you were more likely to be served by young males who spoke a little too softly and smiled a little too much, or frumpy women who didn’t smile enough, and had a matter-of-fact rather than friendly tone when you did ask for something. The flight we took to Miami did nothing to change my mind.

  Once we were level and heading for the Sunshine State I leaned back as far as I could and managed to watch Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher to pass some of the flight time. Caroline put her head in a book for a while but I noticed she rarely turned a page. It seems a great idea, reading on a plane, but I’ve always found it problematic. I can’t get into a comfortable position, which I need to for reading, and there’s just too much anticipation of air turbulence and snakes on a plane to allow me to concentrate.

  My Beretta had been lost off the coast of Cozumel when Delana rigged Stella to blow, putting a punctuation mark on a life that in truth had ended much earlier, in Spain. Though Fernandez had enough sway that I could have flown with the Bren Ten had I made a phone call, there was no need to bother him because after Cozumel I’d had Sonny go by and slip a new Beretta 92FS with the large hammer pin into the Plymouth’s glove box. I’d also had him tape a little American-made Taurus PT 738 TCP inside the back bumper. In Miami, you could never have too many weapons.

  We finally touched down. The pilot was good, a nice smooth landing, none of that jerky-jerky stuff you sometimes have to sit through. After our civil liberties were trampled upon at the airport, as is the case for everyone choosing to fly nowadays, we took a cab to get the ‘Cuda. It wasn’t quite the thrill for Caroline it had been the first time I’d let her drive the sea-blue, ’71 Plymouth Barracuda convertible with its 726 Hemi engine and 425 horses, but enough time had passed since then that it came close.

  “What do you think she’ll find, Seth?”

  Last night I had made a phone call to Tammy Banducci in Miami and asked her to help me locate Holly Carmichael’s father. I hadn’t told her I suspected he was dead, of course, or why I wanted to know. Being a mean drunk, he was certain to have a criminal record. If he’d been murdered, Boon was certain to have disposed of the body somewhere. The Glades would be my bet. But sometimes they were found.

  Being an old friend, Tammy hadn’t asked a lot of questions concerning why I wanted to know. She’d been more interested in how I was doing and where I was calling from. It took us about thirty minutes to get caught up on each other’s lives since I’d quit wearing a badge. She had promised she’d have something by the time I reached sun-drenched Miami the following day, if there was anything to find.

  “I’m not certain,” I finally answered. “Maybe where he died, and how, if we get lucky. If there was an investigation, Boon may have been a suspect.”

  “Do you think Boon murdered him, like Holly thought?”

  “More than likely. If there’s a case file, maybe there’s something on Boon in it. It’s hard having nothing to go on after all these years but what’s probably a nickname.”

  I’d arranged to meet Tammy on Sonny’s charter boat, Candida, so we headed for Dinner Key Marina, in Coconut Grove. The great Pan Am Clippers had a base there a lifetime ago, and the old terminal had been converted into City Hall. Developers had pretty much gutted a lot of Miami’s history, so it was nice that at least one landmark hadn’t been destroyed so that wanna-be Trumps could make a fast buck.

  It was late afternoon and the early days of summer in Miami. In a month it would become hot and sweltering, but today the weather was perfect for a nice drive with the top down. Caroline’s smiling face as the wind blew her sandy-blonde hair every which way told the entire story. I loved driving the ‘Cuda myself, but not as much as giving Caroline these happy moments.

  We parked and headed for Candida on foot. I’d seen an unmarked car several spaces to the right of where we’d parked so I knew Tammy had arrived early. Sonny’s boat was moored near the end of the longest pier and it took us a while to get there. Tammy was leaning against the guard rail and waved to us as we approached.

  She had always been attractive but looked spectacular today in police shorts which showed off shapely white legs and a heart-shaped derriere. Her polo shirt gave the impression of being too small because of what she’d stuffed into it. A baseball cap identifying her as one of Miami’s finest and long dark hair she’d drawn into a ponytail and slipped through the opening at the back of the cap only made her sexier.

  She gave me a hug and then extended her hand to Caroline with a smile.

  “It’s about time Seth settled down. Good to see he found just the right girl to do it with.” She frowned. “That didn’t come out right.” All three of us laughed. Caroline responded, “I know what you meant. Thanks. It’s always nice to meet Seth’s friends. He doesn’t have many, so it means he thinks you’re special.”

  Tammy glanced at me. “Well, that’s nice to hear.” She was holding a file in her hands. “Do we do this out here or go below so I can steal some of Sonny’s beer? How is he, anyway? It’s kind of dull not chasing after him nowadays. Catching him was always a challenge.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t miss it as much as you do,” I laughed.

  “I’m not so sure. It’s a rush, but you know that. I’d think he’d die of boredom taking people out to fish.”

  “I can’t argue with that. Let’s go down and see what Sonny left in the fridge.”

  I led the way, and stopped dead in my tracks at the door. Sonny had an old-fashioned system for alerting him when someone had been on board. He’d slide a tiny piece of matchbook between the door leading down below and the jam. He was smart because he always used a white matchbook, the same color as the door, and rather than p
lace it above, where someone sharp and careful would be likely to spot it, he would place it perhaps an inch above the bottom of the door. It would make no sound, no fluttering that could be caught visually by an intruder when they opened the door. It would simply be on deck in front of the doorway rather than in the jam, where it was now.

  I pulled the Beretta from its sheath. I knew there was no point in telling Tammy to take Caroline off the boat; she’d already drawn her weapon when she saw my reaction. I whispered to Caroline, “Stay here.”

  Her face was still, but she nodded and moved back to the railing where I’d motioned her to move. I didn’t want her directly in the line of fire if someone was in there waiting for that door to open. I held up five fingers so that Tammy would know there were five steps. We stood on opposite sides of the door. For only a second, I exposed my leg to kick open the door. When it swung open from the force of the kick, a shotgun blast blew wood fragments all over deck. It would have put a huge hole in whoever opened the door.

  People quickly began gathering on their decks to see what had happened. Looking inside and seeing that a shotgun had been rigged to fire through the door, Tammy walked astern and held up her badge. “Miami Dade,” she hollered so that everyone could hear. “Everything’s under control.”

  People shook their heads and grumbled, but slowly got back to doing whatever they’d been doing. This was Miami, after all. Sonny’s reputation around the marina was taking a big hit.

  Caroline had come over to stand beside me. “Who’d want to kill Sonny?” She sounded hurt, and just a little angry that someone had tried to ice Sonny.

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Stay here while we go down and check things out. I don’t think there’s anyone here, but we still need to check it out.”

  “No.” Her voice was soft but resolved. “You can both go first, but I’m going with you, Seth.”

  Tammy smiled and pulled a small .25 from an ankle holster inside her sock. She handed it to Caroline. I didn’t like it but I didn’t appear to have much say-so at the moment. I went first, Tammy behind me and Caroline bringing up the rear. It had been a while since I’d been on Sonny’s boat, but I couldn’t see anything which looked out of place at first glance. Tammy was messing around with the shotgun, admiring the manner in which it had been rigged, with fishing line tied to the trigger and a small U clamp screwed into the wall unit behind the shotgun, ensuring that when the door opened, the line would be pulled taught and fire both barrels.

  “What are we looking for?” Caroline asked.

  “I don’t know. There may be nothing to see. Just anything out of place, I suppose.”

  I drifted down a passageway but the two doors were open and no one else appeared to be aboard. “I’ll check the engines,” I hollered. I crawled down and that’s when I saw it. Bluish-gray putty about the size of a computer mouse attached to a fuel line, and wires crossing over to another similar mass of plastique. “Run!” I screamed. “Run!”

  I scrambled back on deck as fast as I could. Tammy and Caroline were sprinting down the pier but Caroline kept looking back. Tammy had to grab her hand and pull her away. Down where we had parked the Barracuda a dark black Dodge Magnum with tinted windows rolled slowly behind the parked cars. I took it all in and instinct took over.

  I’d never have made it to the dock. Even as I made my leap Candida exploded. The force of the blast made me fly like Superman for a couple of seconds before I hit the water. If I’d been in the water near the boat, the concussion of the blast down there might have done me in. If I’d been on the dock next to the boat I’d have been ripped to shreds by the blast. A portion of the pier was gone, and like Candida, raining down from the sky in tiny pieces.

  The blast was loud, but not as loud as it could have been because the explosion began below deck, in the hull. I heard Caroline screaming my name and when I came up from the water she had broken free from Tammy’s grip, who was trying to stop her. She ran until she was about thirty yards from me and dove in to save me. She didn’t know I was okay and didn’t need saving. She was beautiful. I met her halfway and she latched onto me as sirens wailed.

  “I’m okay.” I had to keep saying it as she cried and kissed me over and over. I finally stopped trying to convince her I was alright and just kissed her.

  Eleven

  Tammy directed all the uniformed cops arriving to work crowd control, trying to prevent the marina from becoming a circus. Society professed to hate crime but loved a good crime scene. Every cop who’d been on the job for five minutes knew the score. The public flocked to a crime scene like moths to a flame. Many would explain it away as morbid curiosity, but cops knew it was far worse than that. They hoped to glimpse a body or overhear a salacious detail. Then they could relate what they’d seen or heard the next time they were drinking beers at a party, complaining in the next breath about the cop who’d ticketed them for doing seventy-five in a thirty-five zone while school was letting out. They’d whine about crime in Miami yet vote to cut police funding. They would always, however, support allocating more money to reforming criminals who’d been in the system too long to ever be rehabilitated, and drug programs junkies would only use long enough to get their sentence reduced before returning to shooting, sniffing, or smoking their preferred choice of narcotic. Most of these unrealistic do-gooders would wet their boxers or panties if ever confronted by someone who’d received an early release due to their misguided beliefs, and were certain to complain the loudest when their homes were broken into by some junkie needing to pawn their big-screen TV for a quick hit. Cops called these do-gooders with no idea how the real world worked, Democrats.

  The experts in their fancy jumpsuits, carrying fancy little metal boxes full of fancy little gadgets finally arrived. They’d comb the marina for evidence but they were unlikely to find anything without tweezers and a microscope. It had been one hell of an explosion.

  I was fine other than a muffled ringing in my ears which I knew — unfortunately from experience — would go away in a while. Caroline and I had walked back to the ‘Cuda and we were sitting on the hood waiting for Tammy to get everyone lined out. The slip on either side of Sonny’s boat had by happenstance been empty. When Candida blew, she’d really blew, so the falling debris had mostly been too small to do any real damage to the rest of the boats in the marina. Other than a few minor cuts and bruises suffered by those folks stupid enough to look up at the sky and wait for it to rain wood and fiberglass and aluminum down on them rather than run for cover, no one had been hurt; no one ever said being able to afford a boat and marina fees made a person smart.

  Caroline hadn’t let go of my hand since we’d come out of the water. Her eyes were still moist as I turned to look at her.

  “I’m okay, you know,” I said, reassuring her. “It’s alright.”

  “What if…I don’t know what I’d do, Seth. I’d be lost without you.”

  “You’d be okay,” I said quietly, always reluctant to talk about death. “I’ve provided for you already. And you’d have Sonny and all the people from the party. They aren’t just your friends because of me, you know. They love you, Caroline.”

  She looked at me a long time, tears rolling down her cheeks one after another. “I know. But I don’t want that, Seth. I want you.”

  I reached over and she fell into my arms. “You have me. You’ll always have me. We’ll live forever, you and me.” I heard her sniffle and then felt her laugh against my chest. She wrested herself gently from my arms.

  “I know we won’t, Seth. It’s just, things like this make me think about it, and I hate that. I want it to be when we’re old and together. Not like…this.” She was looking at the empty slip where Sonny’s boat had been moored only minutes before. A boat we’d both stood on seconds before it blew.

  “I know.” I stared out to sea, past Dinner Key, letting the vastness of the blue water carry my thoughts to a place I usually avoided going. “A long time ago, before the senseless deaths
and the traffic and the people in it wore me down, I became a cop to help people, Caroline. Be one of the good guys, like in those old black and white films. When I think about Escobar, it seems a foolish, romantic notion. But when Nancy was murdered in Cozumel, everything began to fall into place for me. Not just the various PI licenses and the carte blanche of having Fernandez in my corner provides me, but you. It felt so good helping you, Caroline. Part of it was because I fell in love with you from the moment I saw you, I know. But it was more than that. Even though we weren’t able to save Delana, or Rosita, I know that money we lifted from Vargas helped Rosita’s sister, and the church. I began to replace the old image of myself that had become so distorted after I killed Escobar, with a new one.”

  I interrupted my thoughts to look at her. She placed her hand on my cheek. I continued, knowing I had to get it out.

  “I saw us enjoying life, but helping people along the way, people like that girl who fell to her death. It means putting myself in danger, something I’m uniquely qualified to do. But for people I wanted to help, and for reasons that matter to me. In a way, it’s my atonement for Escobar. The more people I help, the bit of solace or justice I give them, the further away I feel from that moment out on the Keys.”

  Caroline wasn’t crying any longer. She was staring at me intently. Her face was painted with understanding, her blue eyes etched in tenderness. She whispered, “I love you, Seth.”

  “I’ll drop this if you want me to.”

  “Don’t you dare. I urged you to do this. I just got scared. I want what you want too, Seth. It makes me feel valuable too. Like I can do something important, still.” She looked far away for a moment before she whispered, “Even if it’s not what I used to dream I’d do.”

  “You do something important every day. You love me. That’s what lets me do all the other things. I’m crazy about you, Caroline. I love it that we’re married.”