by Lyle Howard
The redhead was unfazed by Cal's anger. Her head was still spinning from the alcohol and all of this sudden exertion. All she wanted to do was to get aboard the Nocturne, slip out of this binding clothing, and sleep the slumber of the dead. "Raimund!" she called out, toward the ship.
From out of a portside hatch, the towering bodyguard emerged above the gangway like Klaatu, the lumbering metallic goliath in the Sci-Fi classic “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
"I do not feel so well, Raimund," Rachel groaned, pressing her hands to her forehead. "Can you give me some help?"
The bodyguard quickly moved to her side, silently pulling her arm around his waist.
"And just where the hell, do you think you're going?" Cal protested. "This is not going to end well!"
The bodyguard glared at Cal with a look that would have loosened the bowels of any other man.
"Don't you give me that look, Yeti! I know you can understand me! I'm the one ugly American you don't want to screw with!"
"We will talk about all of this tomorrow, Mr. Mackey. I promise," Rachel moaned, nauseously. "Right now, I think I must rest."
"Rest? Half of the access to my damned business is lost because of this monstrosity of yours being grounded on my doorstep like some kind of beached fuckin' whale, and all you can think of is your beauty sleep?"
She let the bodyguard lead her up the gangway. "Take me inside, Raimund."
Cal knew damned well that there was nothing that could be done about this situation at ten thirty at night. No one aboard the Nocturne was going to be giving him any satisfaction. That's probably what frustrated him the most. It wasn't anyone's fault that their engines blew ... but why did it have to happen here?
"Hey, sometime tonight would be nice, Mackey!" the hotshot lawyer shouted, as he circled his boat past the dock for the third time.
Cal gestured at the string of pleasure boats moored along the entire length of the pier. "Just what the hell do you want me to do for you, Al?" Cal screamed back in frustration. "There's no more room for you here. If you want to tie up alongside one of these other boats, then be my guest!"
Bushkin gave Cal a disdainful middle-finger salute. "What, and then I'll have to come out every five minutes to see if someone hasn't untied my boat so that they could get out? I'd bet my boat would be adrift in the middle of the gulf in less than an hour!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Cal's attention was suddenly drawn to a light that blinked out in a bow compartment on the Nocturne. Something about both this yacht and that woman were bad news, and it made the hair on the back of his neck bristle at attention. He hadn't felt anything this menacing since he had found himself smack-dab in the middle of a fire fight in the sunbaked desert of Iraq.
"Are you listening to me, Mackey?" Bushkin shouted. "If you don't find me a spot to moor, I swear I'll take my business elsewhere!"
But as Cal stared up at the two enormous anchors hanging off the bow of the Nocturne, he couldn't have cared less about the lawyer's business. He just wiped his unusually clammy hands off on his shorts and headed back to the only place he really ever felt at peace, tending the bamboo bar inside the Paradise Shack.
Six
"Hey bartender, how about a little service down here?" a familiar voice boomed over the driving bass undercurrent of an old Rolling Stones' classic.
Cal was preoccupied, having trouble with one of the cash register's keys, trying to pry it upward with a spoon handle. Glancing down at the end of the bar, he noted that Geiger had returned, looking stylish in his uniform, bathed in a green spotlight. "Hold your horses, Artie. This damned cash register jammed on me again! I can't seem to get this darned key to pop back up!" Cal poked and urged, but nothing would budge. Nothing he could do, short of smashing the infernal contraption on the ground, was working. This machine from hell seemed to represent everything that was bad—everything that was tormenting Cal this evening—but before he knew it, Deputy Geiger was standing next to him, grabbing the warped spoon from his hand.
"Brute force doesn't always work, mi amigo," Geiger advised, bending the spoon back to its original shape. "Sometimes you just gotta use a little finesse. Lemme show you."
Cal leaned against the bar and waited. "It's just been that kinda night, Artie."
The deputy pretended to roll up his long sleeves. "I don't know how you can work in all of this noise and commotion without it getting to you sooner or later, old buddy! Just kick back for a minute or so, and give me a crack at this baby!"
Cal smiled. "Okay Señor Suavé, let’s see you do your stuff!"
Geiger ran his fingers gingerly across the antiquated brass keys unsure of what he was really looking for. A relic bought at a garage sale in Key West, the circa 1930 cash register had been a longstanding landmark and conversation piece of the Paradise Shack. "How old is this damned thing anyway?"
Cal checked his watch, and smiled at Rosie the waitress who was still waiting impatiently for her change. "Gettin' older by the minute, Arthur."
"You ever think of stepping into this century, Cal?"
Rosie threw her hands up in frustration and walked away.
"Having a problem, Mr. Goodwrench?"
One of Geiger's fingers had become wedged beneath the key, but he shielded it from the bartender's line of vision with his body. "You know they have a thing called computers nowadays, Cal! With one keystroke they can update your inventory, keep track of drinking trends, all that kind of neat stuff!"
Mackey kept a straight face. "Your finger's stuck, isn't it, Artie?"
Geiger puffed out his cheeks like a blowfish. "Yeah, I'm afraid it is."
Cal tried not to laugh. "Need a hand?"
"You gotta get rid of this thing, Cal. It's a death trap, I tell ‘ya!"
"Need a hand?" Cal repeated calmly.
It truly pained the deputy to admit his ineptitude. "All right already! Yes, I need a hand!"
Mackey painstakingly liberated the captured digit, which immediately went into the deputy's mouth. "Are you all right?"
Geiger sucked on his finger like a two-year-old. "Hurts like shit. Do you think I'll lose the nail?"
"Want me to kiss it and make it better?"
Geiger grimaced. "Uh, no. I'll just settle for some ice, thank you."
Cal pointed to the ice vault next to the sink. "Help yourself."
The deputy took a handful of cubes and wrapped them in a dishtowel before applying it to his finger. "So, are you gonna tell me what happened?"
Mackey slammed his fist against the side of the register and the cash drawer slid open with a cha-ching! "Finesse my ass," he said over his shoulder.
Geiger was careful to stay out of Cal's way whenever he was behind the bar. Mackey worked so fast and efficiently that a person could get seriously injured crossing his path. "So tell me about the redhead."
Cal spilled vodka and cranberry juice into a glass to complete a sea breeze as he spoke. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you!"
Geiger rested his elbows on the bar. "Don't tell me you're losing your touch! Please don't tell me that! I've been drivin' around for three hours just trying to imagine what the two of you've been doin'!"
Kahlua and cream for a sombrero. Who really drinks this stuff? Cal wondered as he mixed the concoction. "Straight outta the Twilight Zone, Artie!"
"Whatd'ya mean?"
Rosie rattled off another drink order and Cal shifted his attention to what he considered the real stuff—bourbon, vodka and gin. "Put it this way: it's true what they say, Arthur. Looks can be deceiving!"
The deputy rolled his eyes. "Oh, man! This ought to be good! She turn out to be a guy or something?"
"Not in your wildest dreams!"
Cal definitely had the deputy's attention riveted to his every word. "What do you normally see when you walk out my back door?"
Geiger lifted the dishtowel to check out his injured finger. The nail was already turning black. "Where? Behind the Shack?"
Cal nodded as he continued
to maneuver around the liquor bottles like a pent-up animal. "Yeah, out back."
"The pier? The Gulf?"
Mackey threw a handful of frozen strawberries into a blender. "How about a two-hundred-foot yacht?"
Geiger frowned. "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
Cal dipped the rim of a margarita glass into the salt ring. "Go check it out for yourself!"
The deputy stepped around Mackey as he went behind the bar to the rear exit and opened the door.
"Cal?"
Mackey looked up. "Yeah?" the bartender answered over the sound of clinking glassware.
"There's a God damned battleship anchored at your dock!"
Cal shook his head. "Thanks for the news flash, Mr. Stephanopoulos!"
Geiger stood in the open doorway, his hair blowing in the night breeze. "Mary, Mother of God, look at the size of that thing!"
"It's hers."
The deputy pulled the door shut and flipped the latch to lock it. "What’s hers?"
"The redhead. It’s hers."
Geiger shook his head in disbelief. "Uh-uh. No way!"
Cal nodded that it was true. "I strolled over to her table trying to be my usual charming self..."
The deputy raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"...then ten minutes into our conversation, I think I must have said something to offend the old man because a bodyguard shows up..."
Geiger couldn't believe what he was hearing. "An actual bodyguard?"
Cal spread his hands wide. "Not just any bodyguard, pal. I thought I was in good shape," he said, putting his hands to his chest, "but they must have chiseled this guy right outta Mount Rushmore!"
Geiger smiled. "Well, nothing must have happened, 'cause I can see that you're still in one piece!"
"There wasn’t any confrontation," Cal said defensively, "he just wheeled the old man away. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I learned where he had taken the old man."
"Back to the aircraft carrier?"
"Supposedly they had engine problems and they spotted my beacon from the pier! Now they're stuck here!"
The deputy re-examined his finger. Yep, he was probably gonna lose the nail. "So naturally, in your most affable way, you protested them docking there."
There was finally a lull in the chaos, giving Cal a chance to take a much needed breather. "You're damned skippy I protested!" he said as he started to towel dry some highball glasses.
"And what did she say?"
"Say?" Cal chortled. "She had three sips from her damned drink and nearly passed out on the dock! Then, out of nowhere, the gorilla shows up again and carries her onboard!"
Geiger wished he had an aspirin to stop the throbbing in his hand. "So I can safely assume by the mere fact that the Queen Elizabeth II is still out back that your objections were ignored?"
Cal's eyes narrowed. "Joke all you want, Arthur. There's gotta be some kinda law against this!"
Geiger shook his head. "I don't think so."
Cal slapped his wet towel against the sink. "There's gotta be. They're interfering with my business."
The deputy leaned forward on the bar. "They were in distress, for God's sake! It’s not a private dock. Give 'em a break!"
Cal shook his head. "I don't like it, Artie. I just keep getting really bad vibes from all of this."
"You want me to do a little digging for you?"
Mackey reached into the refrigerator for a beer. "Would you?"
Geiger nodded. "You wanna tag along with me?"
"When?"
"After I get off," the deputy answered, checking the clock on the wall. It read one o'clock. "Two more hours."
Cal rarely smiled, but Arthur instinctively understood his appreciation. "Yeah ... let’s do some digging."
Geiger stretched in place until his back cracked loudly. It had been a long night, and now it was only going to get longer. "Let me do my usual run to get your dad home, and then I'll get a proper dressing on this finger and I'll come back right after that."
Cal jimmied the cap off a bottle of dark imported ale with his thumb and took a long pull from the bottle. "Sounds like a plan. Things should be slow enough by then for me to duck out for a little while."
The deputy craned his neck. "So where is Ernie?"
"Huh?"
"Where'd your father go?"
Cal scanned the bar. "The bathroom?"
The deputy grimaced. "The things I do for you."
Moments later, as Cal oversaw the ingredients of a Hurricane whirring around in the blender, Geiger returned stone-faced. "He wasn't in there."
"You want to check out front for me?" Cal asked.
Again minutes later, Geiger returned alone.
"Hey Rosie," Cal screamed to be heard over a Phil Collin's rhythmical backbeat. "Do you know where Ernie's disappeared to?"
The waitress was busy wiping empty peanut shells off a table. "Ain't he at his usual spot? Passed out at the end of the bar?"
Cal thought it was strange that he wasn't there either.
Ordinarily a person would look through a crowd at eye level, but when the waitress looked for Ernie, she squatted down on her knees thinking he might have fallen asleep somewhere on the soft sandy floor. "Well, he’s not passed out on the floor either," she yelled, red faced from all the sudden aerobic exercise.
"What are the chances that your dad would have found a ride home already?" Geiger asked.
Cal looked at Arthur as though he had just said he believed the earth was really flat. "You're kidding me, right?"
"No chance?"
Cal frowned. "No chance."
"Then, what do you want me to do?"
This was just another in a series of bizarre incidents that made Cal's sixth sense tingle like he had nerve damage.
Like fireworks on the fourth of July, Cal’s father being chauffeured home on a weekend night tipped over in the backseat of a patrol car was a "down island" ritual. Sure, sometimes the old man might wander out onto the highway and one of the regulars would find him relieving himself against some poor schnook's license plate, but to vanish altogether like this was not the old man's trademark style. "Maybe you should take a ride by the trailer park," Cal suggested.
The deputy agreed. "Sure, I can do that."
"Don't forget to knock really loud," Cal warned. "You know when dad goes down for the count ... he's really out of it!"
Geiger had never seen this side of the bartender before and it troubled him. "You're really worried about him, aren't you?"
Mackey nodded. "Yeah, I just wish this whole evening would be over already."
Geiger grabbed a swizzle stick out of a plastic tray on the bar and stuck it between his teeth. "Don't get your undies in a bunch, Cal. I'm sure Ernie's just sprawled out on that old, beat-up sofa bed of his, sleepin' it off, dreaming of his buddy Pablo waking him up for a big money charter in the morning."
Cal looked over at the empty spot at the end of the bar. It was way too early in the evening for that stool to be vacant. "His friend's name is Pépe."
The deputy shrugged. "Pépe ... Pablo ... whatever!"
Cal's demeanor grew weedy with anxiety. "Just let me know what you find out, okay, Artie?"
Geiger nodded and gave a "thumbs up" as he turned to leave. "No worries, Cal. I'll be back in a few hours."
But Cal never heard the sincerity in his departing friend's voice. He was still too bewildered by the bothersome sight of his father's unoccupied barstool.
Seven
On any other Friday evening, the subsequent hours in the Paradise Shack would have rolled by, but tonight the time seemed to be creeping slower than the drift of the continental plates. The crowd had thinned out to a handful of stragglers scattered amidst the oddly shaped tables, each trying desperately not to look like they were going to be leaving the Shack alone ... again. Rosie the waitress was busy making her rounds, wiping out ashtrays, dumping the contents of the aforementioned ashtrays onto the floor and grinding the broken butts into
the sand with the well-worn heel of her silver-toed biker boots.
The dart board hanging in the corner had been abandoned for nearly an hour now, and Cal thought it strange that no one had even bellied up to the bar to challenge him tonight. That peculiarity was very disquieting in itself. On most nights, Cal was usually able to pay Rosie's wages for the evening from the green he collected playing a little "Double-in Double-out" against some mainland braggart who had to prove his own prowess. Maybe it was a good thing tonight, he thought, as he nibbled a handful of smoked almonds from a stash he kept tucked away for only the good customers. Maybe this was just another one of nature's ways of telling him that he should have stayed in bed until tomorrow.
As Jimmy Buffet crooned "A Pirate Looks at Forty,” the dense haze of cigarette smog began to dilute and Cal was able to see clearly all the way to the front door. The front door that hadn't opened in nearly fifteen minutes. The front door that Artie would be walking through at any minute with word about his dad. The front door that all the sheer willpower in the world couldn't budge.
"You wanna do the last call?" Rosie asked, parking her beefy derriere upon a straining bar stool.
Cal looked up at the Coors Beer clock mounted above the bar and sighed. "Yeah, why not? Make one more round and tell 'em to order up or clear out."
Rosie leaned over and stole an almond out of Cal's hand. "You want me to say it in just them words?"
Cal looked down at his shoes and dug his toe into the sand. "Did that come across as impolite as it sounded?"
The waitress lit an unfiltered Camel and squinted as the plume of smoke drifted past her bloodshot eyes and grey streaked hair. "What the hell has gotten into you tonight, Cal? I’ve never seen you acting this weird before. I’m not the only one whose noticed it either!"
