No Regrets, Coyote

by John Dufresne

  “They’re covering it up?”

  “Protecting someone.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “It’s like physics, Wylie. You don’t have to prove it—not yet—to know it’s true.”

  I thought, Let me assume for the moment that Chafin Halliday murdered his wife and his three children and then turned the pistol on himself. That was Carlos’s conclusion, the official version of events. People snap, after all. Hadn’t Ivan Kouzmanoff—whom I suddenly realized may have known Halliday—hadn’t he killed his ten-year-old daughter, his wife of twelve years, and his very successful and prosperous self? Unthinkable, and yet every man has his reasons. Yes. If Halliday’s our killer, then the killer was, indeed, already in the house as Bay’s legerdemain suggested he would be. Let me assume that scenario and ask, Why would he slaughter his own family? Or if you prefer, execute his family. He must not have been enraged, to act with such collected deliberation. There was method to this madness. And maybe that was the answer—madness, insanity. I didn’t know. What I did know was that someone had removed all photographic evidence, save the stolid Olan Mills family portrait and the evangelical wanted poster of the boys, from the house. Would someone about to die bother? And I was also certain that someone other than Halliday composed and typed that suicide note on a typewriter that Halliday did not seem to have owned. And I knew that the EPD had Halliday’s computer in storage and off-limits even though it might contain illuminating and incriminating data. Carlos assured me that there was nothing of forensic interest on the hard drive, but Carlos himself did not examine the hard drive. I would love for Oliver to take a crack at it. What I knew convinced me that Halliday did not kill his family.

  And then it dawned on me why Halliday had no photos or videos of himself in his house or on his phone or, I would bet, on his computer. He was planning to vanish. He would also have destroyed his credit cards, probably, and tried to erase or trash his computer’s hard drive. But why would he have needed to disappear?

  The late Ivan Kouzmanoff, Esquire, whose intermittent employee, Vladimir Drygiin, was my client and housekeeper’s live-in mushina, worked for the illustrious Mickey Pfeiffer, CEO of South Florida’s largest and splashiest law firm and counsel to Jack Malacoda, a vainglorious lobbyist with the same interest in tribal gaming as Kouzmanoff, who, Malacoda, that is, with his Mafia-connected business partner Park McArthur, purchased Gold Coast Cruise Lines from Chafin Halliday and perhaps his furtive and pragmatic associate Pino Basilio with Pfeiffer’s able guidance; Pfeiffer, who employed eager law enforcement officers as his personal security and investigative force, hired Shanks, a cop with a nasty reputation on the street, who, if Red was to be believed, and he was, wanted more than anything to be a made man in the mob, and who moonlighted for Caserta Wholesale Foods—did the guy ever sleep?—a Siciliani Family operation that, I would learn, catered Gold Coast Cruise Lines, then and now, hired Shanks as a personal bodyguard for his wife—Shanks, the first cop at the scene after (or before) the Halliday murders, maker of threatening phone calls, who answered, it seemed, to only one man, the thug, as Carlos called him, Clete Meatyard.

  Were things that rotten in Everglades County? Well, let’s see. Five elected officials had been indicted in the past year for fraud, extortion, bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Six cops had gone to jail for assault (on camera), extortion, fraud (on camera), coercing sex from illegal immigrants, groping female suspects at traffic stops, distributing Oxycodone, and grand theft (a tractor). A half dozen other public officials had been arrested and faced charges. A town manager was busted for stealing $500,000 from town coffers. One county commissioner made the mistake of accepting a doggie bag stuffed with cash from an undercover FBI agent.

  Nothing happens in Everglades County, a Democratic stronghold, by the way, without some unctuous bootlicker getting his or her payoff. These slopsuckers will accept anything, doesn’t have to be a feed bag full of greenbacks. Golf carts, hot tubs, blacktop for the driveway, tickets to a Dolphins game, bottles of single-malt, rental cars, a little landscaping in the front yard, a cruise to Nassau, dinner at a supper club, country club memberships, swimming pool resurfacing, iPod nanos, gift certificates for an Asian massage, in-kind campaign contributions, of course, window tinting, carpet cleaning, lap dances, reserved parking spaces, use of the corporate jet, shoes, workout equipment, anything except a check. The idea of doing business with honesty and integrity is laughable, apparently.

  My phone played “Help Me, Rhonda.” Venise. I told her I’d pick her and Oliver up at six. That should give us plenty of time to get there. We were attending a benefit fund-raiser for a friend of Hiroshi’s whose daughter had some rare form of cancer. It was being held at the estate of Dr. Jordan Jordan in the Isles of Las Brisas. That’s right, two first names, three spectacular children, four plastic surgery clinics, one flawless wife, six vintage automobiles. We’d be meeting Bay there. Dr. Jordan had once hired Bay to teach him how to win at the poker table.

  “Make it five-thirty,” Venise said.

  “It doesn’t start until seven.”

  “I’ll need time to inspect the items in the silent auction.”

  “Quarter of six.” I asked her if she’d talked to Dad this morning. “And did he say anything about movies?”

  “Well, he thinks he’s Lionel Barrymore.”

  Venise decided to bid on the dinner for two at Yardbird but wouldn’t go any higher than a hundred bucks. She was very much enjoying the hors d’oeuvres and spotting the occasional ex-professional athlete.

  Bay said I should forget about my obsession with Halliday. “Someone you don’t know has decided that the case is closed, and that’s it.”

  “Who?”

  “Some wheel in one of the gangs.”

  “What gangs?”

  “The police brotherhood, let’s call it. The Police Benevolent Association. The Mafia. The Russians. All of the above.”

  Venise announced that she was going for more food. Bay brought me across the courtyard and introduced me to the DA, Ken Millard. “You two should meet,” he said and then excused himself. He had to get to work.

  “Bay tells me you don’t care much for Mickey Pfeiffer,” I said.

  “For ten years he chased ambulances out of a tiny office in a Colahatchee strip mall. And then in five years he has the biggest law firm in South Florida.” Millard stirred his old-fashioned. “And so on.”

  We walked to a small, unoccupied table by the pool and sat. “Pfeiffer needed an expert at getting government contracts, so he hired ex–Sheriff Jacques as a consultant.”

  “He’s out of jail?”

  “As of Monday. Unbeknownst to Pfeiffer, Sheriff Jacques will be working both sides of the street.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Of course, I can’t trust Jacques. But neither can Pfeiffer.”

  I told him I thought Pfeiffer might be involved somehow, maybe just tangentially, with the Halliday killings. I connected some dots for him, Halliday to Pino to Malacoda, the boats, the casino, and even Kouzmanoff. I explained why murder-suicide seemed preposterous.

  He handed me his card. “Give me a call.”

  We heard gasps and muffled screams and saw people rushing toward the patio. And then I heard my sister yell, “Don’t touch me! Don’t look at me! Don’t come near me!” Oliver made his way through the circle of guests and bent over his wife. He held out his hand. Venise said, “Get away from me!”

  I excused myself. “Family emergency.”

  From what I could tell, Venise had tripped and tumbled down the three steps and landed facedown on the concrete. She still held a sweet bun in one hand. She rolled to her side with some effort, but refused to stand. She told Oliver once again to leave her alone, and he did. He walked to the abandoned buffet table and began to fill his plate. People shrugged, whispered, and backed away from the spectacle. I sat beside her. I said, “Venise, let me help you up.”

  “Don’t look
at me!”

  She had an angry knot over her left eye and scrapes on her wrist and forearm. She told me to cover her head with my sport coat, and I did. I waited. I patted Venise’s shoulder, told her everything would be all right. She mumbled, gurgled, moaned, and whined for another ten minutes or so, and then got up and bit into the sweet roll.

  I took a call from Inez. Had I seen Carlos? No. He had told her he was meeting me for dinner. I said I hoped I hadn’t stood him up. Inez said she was worried about him; he was working too hard. He couldn’t relax. I told her to call me later if she wanted to send out a search party. I hung up and called Carlos, got his voice mail, apologized if I screwed up, and asked him to call me back.

  After I dropped Venise and Oliver at home, I drove to Leo’s and spotted Carlos’s Camry in the back parking lot. I found a space and headed for the back entrance when I heard, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” and then got slammed on the back of the head so hard that I felt immediately nauseated. My assailant grabbed me by the back of the collar and turned me around. He was not holding the tire iron I assumed he had hit me with. His head was as smooth and round as a muskmelon, and he was otherwise built like a cast-iron furnace. I said, “What the fuck, man!”

  He stepped on my foot. “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “You assaulted me.”

  “Call the cops.”

  “I will.”

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Get off my foot and I’ll leave.”

  He did. By now the buzzing in my head had subsided a bit, but my nose was bleeding. I walked to the car but couldn’t find my keys. Maybe I should just keep walking. I patted my pockets and found my new iPhone. I figured I’d speed-dial Carlos and let him ride to the rescue, and that’s when two cops walked out of the bar and asked Muskmelon what the trouble was. I, rather imprudently, decided to tape the proceedings and opened the video app. I found the keys, but dropped them. One of the cops said he recognized me, and I knew that wouldn’t be good. The other cop said something about going Disney on my ass. Muskmelon laughed and said I’d attacked him; I was like a wild man, probably high on angel dust. We’ll probably have to Taser him. The second cop saw what I was up to. “We got us a filmmaker.” That’s when they rushed me. Muskmelon grabbed the phone and stomped it flat. The cop who knew me asked what hand I used to jack off with. Then he grabbed my hand and bit through my baby finger to the bone.

  15

  Carlos drove me to the hospital, but he wasn’t happy about it. Caught him in the middle of a cribbage game. He brought along his drink in a go-cup. He told me if I’d been looking for trouble I’d come to the right place. I said I’d been looking for him. I had rolled-up wads of tissue stuffed up my nostrils to stanch the bleeding. He said, Let tonight be a lesson to you.

  Carlos got me attended to immediately. I held a cold compress to my fortuitously unbroken nose while a nurse cleaned my wounded finger. Carlos told him that I’d been mauled by a Rottweiler. The nurse didn’t look up when he said, These are human teeth marks. Two stitches, one tetanus shot, and one painkiller later, we were out the sliding doors. On the ride back to retrieve my car, I asked Carlos about Halliday’s computer, said I wanted to examine it. He said I didn’t have that authority and anyway the computer had gone missing. I said, How do you lose a computer? He said he needed Kelly’s diary back before it, too, went missing. I’d forgotten I still had it.

  I told him that Inez had called looking for him, which was why I’d been at the bar in the first place. He said she was getting ready to leave him again—he could read all the signs.

  “You were supposed to meet me for dinner.”

  “My excuse to get out of the house. I didn’t want to give her the chance to tell me she was leaving, and this time for good.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “If there’s anything I can do …” I sounded like an idiot right there, didn’t I? “That sounded disingenuous, Carlos. Sorry. Let me try it again.” I cleared my throat—a fatuous gesture, I realized. Jesus. “If I can be of any help.” Nope. The same hollow sentiment as earlier. I must have been feeling the effects of the painkiller. I said, “You’re a good man, Carlos.”

  “Are you sure you should be operating heavy machinery?”

  “I feel spectacular, actually. I could drive with my eyes closed.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.” He pulled alongside my car. “Here you go, Coyote. Be safe.”

  “You guys owe me a phone.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  Red had set up an umbrella canopy over his campsite. He was dead asleep when I got home. Django was waiting by the door. I picked him up and rubbed his belly. When I tried to put him down, he wrapped his four legs around my wrist and gnawed at my thumb. I walked to the kitchen with him upside down and busy like that. When I laid my hand on the counter, he let go and lay on his back with his legs in the air and his baby claws exposed, ready for more funny business. I set the little goon down by his empty bowl. He looked at the bowl, up at me, back at the bowl. I fed him some of the ocean whitefish in sauce that he loved. I brewed some coffee, took a quick shower, careful to keep the throbbing finger dry. I got the diary out of my desk drawer. I put a shot of Paddy’s in the coffee, sat at the table, slipped the diary out of its Ziploc bag. I opened to an undated entry about two-thirds of the way through the book. Kelly had written a list:

  LONELINESS IS NOT:

  •a blank face in an empty window

  •a solitary figure way out there at the end of the pier

  •anyone curled in the fatal fetal position

  •it is not a white fucking horse galloping through the fog

  •a girl with a bandaged ankle crying into her knee

  •the bus is pulling out of the station and you’re standing there in the parking lot

  •a choice

  I opened my wallet and took out the note I’d found at the DeSoto Street house. Love what you’ve done with the house. Kelly’s handwriting on Wayne’s note. I checked the time. Eleven-fifteen. I didn’t want to believe that what I was thinking could be true. I felt faint. I put my face in my hands, closed my eyes, breathed slowly and deeply, and tried to picture Wayne sitting there in my office for all these weeks. How had I missed the blood on his hands? I tapped my pocket and remembered I no longer had a cell phone. I called Carlos from the home phone and left a message for him to meet me at Wayne’s, and I gave him the address.

  The gravel driveway was empty and the lights were out at Wayne’s house, a squat and charmless box on a scrubby lot with a spindly princess palm growing against the screened-in front porch. I walked around the carport to the back of the house. No lights there, either. I tapped on the cracked and duct-taped window on the back door and waited. I tried the doorknob. Locked. I looked under the doormat and saw a rusted key. It fit the lock. I stepped away from the door and looked around. What the hell was I doing? A rat ran along the telephone line above the cyclone fence. A Weber grill stood beneath a satellite dish that was mounted on the eaves. A green and black softball bat leaned against the house. The label on the barrel read WORTH MAYHEM, and I’m not making that up. I went back out front to look at the carport. The trash bin lid was weighted down with a large brain coral to keep out the raccoons. Beside the bin was a white plastic chair and on the floor a small wooden crate with garden tools, a boom box, and a machete. I tried the front door. Rang the bell. Walked to the back of the house and let myself in. Where was Carlos? I felt along the wall for a light switch. Where was Wayne? I put on the backyard light, and that was sufficient for me to see the living room.

  Wayne’s laptop was opened on his computer desk. I depressed the space bar and woke it up, and there was Wayne’s Facebook page. He had 374 friends. One of those friends, one Daisy L, had posted a quote from Mitch Hedberg: The Dufresnes are in someone’s trunk right now with duct tape over their mouths. And they’re hungry … you can eat when you find the Dufresnes. Wayne’s profile picture wa
s a little blond Dutch boy in a blue cap, blue overalls, and wooden shoes, sitting on a plank beside a bucket of paint, holding a brush, and painting the air above his head.

  Across the room, a ragged sofa faced a TV sitting on a coffee table. On the far wall an unfinished wooden bookcase was devoid of books, but did support piles of magazines and rows of DVDs, a few computer keyboards and what looked like old hard drives. I shut the back door and cut the yard light. I peeked into Wayne’s spare and dismal bedroom—an unmade mattress on the floor, an iPad on the pillow, on the wall above the bed a photograph of a woman wearing only bacon panties. The other bedroom was used for storage—a bicycle, a treadmill draped with jackets, unopened cartons, a rolled-up rug. I walked into the tiny kitchen and opened the fridge. Five cans of beer, one of them opened; a two-liter bottle of Coke Zero; a plastic bag of moldy citrus; a jar of barbecue sauce; a bowl of hard-boiled eggs; and an opened box of baking soda. The cabinets above the counter were empty. Whatever dinnerware Wayne owned was apparently in the sink. On the counter were a white toaster, a compact microwave, and a Teflon-coated electric griddle. Beneath the counter I found a carbo cabinet full of cookies and Pringles and Cheetos and Twinkies, and most of the Little Debbie snack food family.

  A heavy-duty orange extension cord ran from a three-prong outlet in the kitchen to the bathroom and I followed it. Nothing was presently attached to the business end of the cord. There were several long gouges on the insides of the bathtub and what appeared to be blood smeared on the faucet and spout. The walls above the tub were splattered with blood. I turned out the lights and let myself out onto the dark front porch, took a seat in the corner, and waited for Wayne to come home or for Carlos to come to the rescue.

  I must have dozed off. I was startled by headlights, and then I heard a scratchy woman’s voice. “Today salvation has come to this house.”