No Regrets, Coyote

by John Dufresne

  Kevin Alan Shanks played defensive end on the Tequesta High School football team, was president of the Choral Society, and was chosen king of the senior prom. His mom, Emunah, was a local politician, a Gulfstream city commissioner, who favored large floral hats and capacious handbags. His dad, Thomas, better known as Roadkill, died when, high on psychedelics, he tried to stop a southbound freight train with an outstretched hand at the Cypress Avenue crossing. A witness, his pal Warren Stamp, said that just before Roadkill was launched by the locomotive, he glowed a bright orange like something you might see in a blast furnace. After high school, Kevin joined the Navy, hoping to become a SEAL, but washed out in training. He did learn how to take orders, sacrifice for the team, and shoot the wing off a mosquito at a hundred yards. Back home, he worked as a bouncer in South Beach until the opportunity with the EPD knocked. He’d had two brief marriages, the second to an escort who told him on their first assignation that she was ready to settle down. She was not. His son, Jude, had refused to speak with his father for some years now. Kevin, as you know, vanished early in the year. After he did, police found video files on his computer showing him, in his bedroom, raping a series of women he had drugged with Rohypnol. He followed the rapes with glasses of celebratory champagne.

  25

  I hadn’t slept well on the red-eye despite my sleep mask, my earplugs, and my Ambien. Every time I nodded off, I dreamed that my hands were on fire. I was agitated and apprehensive as we taxied to our gate at the New River airport. Bay was fooling with his iPhone, seemingly oblivious to our potential peril. Would the press be swarming the concourse wanting to speak with the man responsible for the release of the appalling and incriminating video file? Worse, would the cops be waiting with arrest warrants? But no one we could see was even vaguely interested in the two of us. Bay reminded me that we were not on this flight. Clockedile and Tremblay were.

  We walked out of Terminal 3 and into the resplendent sunlight and the spectacular humidity. I love to feel the air wash over me when I walk. I could feel all my thirsty pores open and my puckered and brittle cells rehydrate and pop back into shape. Bay asked me for Lincoln Clockedile’s IDs. I handed them to him and they vanished. We hopped into a cab. I borrowed Bay’s iPhone and saw a photo on the screen of two arms outstretched and each hand a blazing torch. Bay flashed his brow and smiled. I called Patience and told her I was home. Bay had the cabbie drop me at my place. I’d almost forgotten about the Studebaker there in the driveway. Inside the house I found a case of Drakkar Noir cologne, actually a knockoff cologne called Our Impression of Drakkar Noir, that Cerise must have brought inside on cleaning day. She’d also left me a note on the counter beside the pile of mail. She said how sad she was to hear about Mr. Myles’s passing. She said that she and Vladimir were going to be married on the beach at sunrise on Easter morning and would I perform the ceremony, something that my notary-public status allowed me to do. I opened the window to air out the house and brewed some coffee. I put the laundry in the washer. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat on the couch with the mail. Bills addressed to Dad from Almost Home—into the circular file. A book from Inez—Skylark by Dezsö Kosztolányi—that had made her weep. But everything made her weep these days, she wrote. She mentioned the breakup with Carlos, her hopelessness, and the relief that was its gift. The letter from the New Orleans law firm of Foley, Ticholi, Terhune & Pickens said that I was being sued for art theft by Red’s brother Blaise. Into the circular file. (A childish response I would come to regret.)

  I switched on the TV to see if there might be some news on the fallout from the Halliday video file. I put a shot of brandy in the coffee. I asked myself if that was a good idea, drinking at 11:14 in the morning. I answered it was indeed. Bay called and said let’s meet for supper at the Universe. I clicked through and erased voice mails until I heard Georgia’s voice. She said she’d tried texting me but got answered by a stranger who wanted to know who she was. I thought it was you goofing around. The guy—Cyril Something—said he’d found the phone and it changed his life. Georgia said her lawyers expect to win the suit, but it might take years and they are considering a settlement. In the meantime the family is staying in the law firm’s condo on Grand Cayman. She knew it would show up on the lawyer’s bill, but it sure was fun, except that Tripp had horrible nightmares and was being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Eden Interim Police Chief Mia Kafka stood before a lectern and addressed a roomful of journalists. She promised a quick and thorough investigation into the murders and the conspiracy to murder, a thorough housecleaning of the department and its apparent culture of cronyism. She dismissed the call for a civilian review board to oversee police operations. She talked about a few bad apples, et cetera. Clete Meatyard stood behind her, hands folded over his belly, nodding his bulky head, perspiring heavily.

  Chief Kafka took a question from someone who sounded like Perdita Curry and then repeated the question. “Do we know the whereabouts of Mr. Chafin Halliday? No, we do not.” She scratched her nose. “There is speculation that he may have fled the country under cover of his new identity.” The chief listened to a follow-up question and tugged at her ear. “We are not at liberty to divulge that information.” She told the press that the EPD was optimistic that Halliday would, indeed, testify before the grand jury. I switched off the TV and called Venise. Oliver told me she was still grieving.

  “Can you put her on?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re dead to her.”

  “Come on, Oliver.”

  “She needs this rage to see her through the hard time. Sorry, Wylie.” He hung up.

  Patience knocked once and walked in with Django sitting on her head and his cat carrier over her shoulder.

  “My two favorite cats,” I said. I reached for Django and kissed Patience on the forehead and the nose. Django gnawed on my finger.

  “He never bites me,” Patience said.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  She put her finger on Django’s mouth. He licked it while he watched me.

  “Great to see you,” I said, and put Django on the floor. He ran into his carrier and wrestled with his toys. I made us two Bloody Marys, and we sat together on the couch. I told Patience I wanted to disappear, go someplace where I would never be found.

  “Can I come?”

  “Of course.”

  “How would we live?”

  “We’d be rich.”

  “By whom do you not want to be found?”

  “Everyone.”

  “What happened up there?” she said, meaning Alaska. Yes, she really wanted to know. So I told her. “Holy shit.”

  We filled Django’s cat bowl and lined up his toys on the arm of the couch. We went out for oysters and beer at Slappy’s Wonderland on the beach before Patience had to go back to work. We sat at the bar, ordered two dozen oysters, hold the saltines, and a pitcher of Sam Adams. I mixed up the cocktail sauce, horseradish, Crystal, and sriracha. Patience dipped her baby finger in, tasted, and tapped in more Crystal. She stared at me and shook her head. “All of that was true?” she said. I nodded. Our shucker, Elwood—it said so on his Slappy’s ball cap—had sharpened his oyster knife to a point so it worked more quickly. He wore a latex glove on his left hand, not neoprene or steel mesh. We ate as he shucked. I asked him if he’d ever stabbed himself.

  “Not often,” he said. “Maybe once or twice a week. I’ve had about fourteen stitches over the years. Usually, though, it’s just a scratch.”

  When Elwood took off a torn glove, we noticed his hand was wrapped in duct tape. “Redneck Band-Aid,” he said. He told us when he does get a cut that bleeds, he pours bleach on the wound—stings like a sumbitch—dries the hand, and rewraps it with duct tape. “You can’t take a chance with filter feeders.”

  Bay and I were at the Universe, drinking martinis, sharing a bowl of steamed mussels, and trying to piece together the story of Chafin Halliday’s Christm
as Eve. We knew that the official version of events was dead wrong, and deliberately so. People who had seen Halliday that evening had already come forward and spoken to the press when they realized they had been ignored by the police. Bay’s partly imagined scenario was closer to the facts and proved to be remarkably accurate:

  On Christmas Eve, Chafin Halliday, who had already assumed his new identity as Steven (with a v) Snowhite of Greeley, Colorado, was late getting home to Krysia and the kids because, on a lark, he’d stopped at an unfamiliar liquor store to make his first purchase with Snowhite’s shiny new Visa card, and he ran into the loquacious Tyler Lopate, a food broker, with whom he had an appointment at La Mélange on the twenty-eighth, and whom, Chafin knew, he would never see again. Tyler was all excited about this new organic farm in the Redlands, heirloom tomatoes to die for! And then he insisted on bringing Chafin out to his car to show him the Rösle food mill he’d gotten his partner, Lawrence. Chafin called home to tell Krysia (he’d have to get used to calling her Leah soon) he was on his way, heard Shanks’s voice, and that’s when he realized that things had gone hellishly wrong.

  Bay washed his fingers with a moist towelette and called my attention to Stavros Kanaracus in a blue jumpsuit and herringbone fedora, standing across the street from the Universe, speaking with a young boy, maybe his grandson. Stavros put a cigarette in his mouth and his hands in his pockets. The boy produced a lighter. Stavros bent toward the boy, and the boy lit the cigarette. Stavros inhaled and blew the smoke out the side of his mouth. He picked a bit of tobacco off his tongue. He looked over to us and smiled. When the boy shrugged at something Stavros said, Stavros slapped him soundly on the back of his head.

  Our waitress, Flor, from Montevideo, brought our martinis. Bay plucked a rose out of thin air and handed it to her.

  She said, “Que es esto, señor?”

  “Una flor para una Flor.”

  We toasted the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, and then Bay summarized what we knew or what we might assume to be true about the Halliday case: Chafin was alive; Chafin’s life was in peril; those he would testify against were on his trail; he had not stopped acting badly when he became Chafin Halliday, and he had been threatened with arrest and incarceration once again, or he would not have agreed to testify in the corruption investigation; he had no choice on Christmas Eve, he could not have saved his family; he would have vengeance on his mind, which he could achieve in one or two ways; he could forget the vengeance and vanish, but disappearing was hard to pull off anymore, especially without the government’s help; Pino’s job had been to protect the identity and person of Chafin Halliday and Halliday’s family; instead, he betrayed Halliday and sacrificed the family; an Eden Police Department death squad, if that’s not too melodramatic, had been dispatched to do the dirty work. Who sent them? And where did all of this leave us?

  I told Bay that sure, maybe I could learn to live with what had happened in Alaska, that maybe one day in like thirty years I’d stop worrying that at any minute an Alaska state trooper would be knocking at my door. Maybe I could do that, but I did not want to also live at home in Melancholy with all the uncertainty and the veiled threats. I wanted all the bad guys to be in the jails, not running them. I said, “We need to find Halliday before Pino does.”

  “We can do that.”

  “And they can’t?”

  “We know where to look.”

  “We do?”

  Bay pointed his chin to his left. “We’re being surveilled.”

  I looked and saw Meatyard and Pino, speak of the devil, sitting together at a table, pretending not to be spying on us. They were both on their phones. Calling in reinforcements? I said, “I suppose they know who sent the video.”

  “They have a good idea. That’s Basilio, am I right?”

  “So he told me. You know him?”

  “I’ve seen the face.”

  “Do you suppose those two clowns dispatched Carlos to Alaska?” Kanaracus was gone, but the grandson was there, leaning against a gumbo-limbo, smoking a cigarette, and staring at us. The guitarist outside the adjacent tapas place played “Bamboleo” for the al fresco diners.

  Bay said, “We should say hello to our friends.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “It’s the polite thing to do.” Bay summoned Flor and told her he was buying drinks for the two gentlemen at the curbside table. He said, “We should pay our respects.”

  “Are you trying to start something?”

  When their drinks arrived, and Flor pointed our way, Meatyard and Pino put down their phones and looked at us, and Bay raised his glass and smiled. After we had finished our drinks, and after Bay asked Flor if she’d like to be his date for an Easter wedding, and after Flor blushed and said she’d think about it, and after he asked her to save our table, we’d be back, and after I asked Bay if he’d been invited to Cerise’s wedding, Bay and I walked over to the curbside table. Bay said, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  Meatyard rubbed his forehead. “We’re conducting some private business here, if you don’t mind.”

  “No need to thank us for the drinks.”

  “Beat it!”

  Bay introduced himself to Pino. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

  Pino slid his chair back. “You heard the man.”

  Bay said, “Your phone’s going to ring.” And it did. Actually, it whistled. How the hell did Bay do that? He told Pino, “You should answer it. Could be important.”

  Pino said, “Hello.” He kept his eyes on Bay. “Who is this?” Pino pressed his lips, listened, and hung up and put the phone on the table next to Meatyard’s.

  Bay said, “Wrong number?”

  Pino stared at Meatyard. Meatyard shifted his gaze to Bay. Bay said, “Does anyone else here smell roses?”

  In fact we did, and so did the folks at adjoining tables, who turned our way. Bay seemed theatrically puzzled at this curiosity until he sniffed his iPhone and smiled. He placed the phone on the white tablecloth between the two other identical phones. We all watched as carmine roses bloomed on Bay’s screen and then faded and withered to brown. We saw petals drop, and then the screen went black and the fragrance was gone. Bay had Pino and Meatyard’s attention, and that of several other diners, who had gathered around the table and were applauding. Stavros’s grandson drifted over. He said, “How did you do that?”

  Bay said, “I didn’t. You did.” He looked at Pino and Meatyard. “May I, gentlemen?” And now they were onstage themselves and under scrutiny. Bay put the three phones beside one another, passed his hand over the phones, and the phones’ screens lit up, theirs with the usual app icons and Bay’s with an image of a gold EPD badge. He said, “We all trust our eyes to see what’s in front of us.” He shuffled the phones as he would cups in a shell game. “But it’s not the eyes that see. It’s the brain. Eyes are just the pinholes where the light gets in.”

  He ended his shuffle with the badge back in the middle where it began. “To really see, you have to pay attention. Is everyone paying attention?” They were. Stavros’s grandson was capturing the performance on his own iPhone. Bay took my elbow and moved me over a step, so the grandson would have a clearer shot. Bay flipped the phones over, screens down, and asked Meatyard to find the badge. Meatyard tapped his finger on the middle phone. The onlookers agreed. Bay turned it over: icons. He turned the others over: the same.

  “All vision,” he said, “is an illusion.” He passed his hands over the phones, and the letters ill appeared, white letters on the first blue screen, the letters us on the second, and the letters ion on the last. The screens went black and then the middle screen shimmered and displayed an EPD badge. Bay touched the screen with his thumb and index finger and seemed to lift the badge out of the phone, and what had been an image of a police badge became a real—whatever that means—badge, appropriately tarnished. Bay held it up, and our small audience applauded. The men at the table did not. “When your gaze stops on a stationary object, the visual neurons in
your brain are suppressed, and the image …”—he looked at the badge, and we looked where he looked—“vanishes!” And it did. The badge was suddenly back on the middle screen and fading away.

  He arranged the phones vertically and pointed to each screen in turn. On the bottom screen in a video, waves lapped on the shore of a deserted beach; on the middle screen, gentle swells on a blue-green sea, and on top, the sun setting—or rising—into—or out of—the ocean. Bay said, “You can see what’s not even there.” Our audience drew closer to the table. “Three-dimensional depth cannot, of course, exist in two dimensions, and yet you see it. The sun is way off on the horizon, far, far away from the sandy beach. And the screens went black in order from bottom to top. “You can fail to see what’s right in front of your eyes.” Bay took my wallet from his pocket and held it up. “Who saw me lift my friend’s wallet?” No one had. He turned to Stavros’s possible grandson and asked him to play back the video recording. “Start where I asked Wylie here to step aside.” We watched the replay as Bay, in plain sight, not only touched my elbow but drew my wallet from my pocket and slid it into his own. He handed me my wallet. I put it in my pocket. Then he took a modest bow.

  He rearranged the phones horizontally and pointed to each screen, and the No Evil monkeys appeared: See, Hear, and Speak. “If we see no evil, and we hear no evil, and we speak no evil, then perhaps we can believe there is no evil, and we can go right on with our happy lives.” He passed his hands over the phones, and the monkeys became the smiling faces of the Halliday children. I recognized them and so did Meatyard and Pino. “But evil does exist,” Bay said, and the faces faded to black, and then we heard what might have been gunshots. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pino grabbed his phone. “Show’s over,” he said.

  Back at our table, Bay said, “The son of a bitch took my phone.”