by Ron Base
Table of Contents
Also by Ron Base
Copyright © 2010 Ron Base
For Ric
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
Acknowledgements
Coming Soon
Title Page
the
sanibel
sunset
detective
a novel
RON BASE
Also by Ron Base
Fiction
Matinee Idol
Foreign Object
Splendido
Magic Man
The Strange
Nonfiction
The Movies of the Eighties (with David Haslam)
If the Other Guy Isn’t Jack Nicholson, I’ve Got the Part
Marquee Guide to Movies on Video
Cuba Portrait of an Island (with Donald Nausbaum)
www.ronbase.com
Contact Ron at
[email protected]
Copyright © 2010 Ron Base
All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval system—without the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, One Yonge Street, Toronto, Ontario, M6B 3A9.
____________________________________________
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Base, Ron, 1948 –
The Sanibel Sunset Detective / Ron Base
ISBN 978–0–9736955-4-0
I. Title
PS8553.A784S36 2010 C813’.54 C2010-907341-X
_____________________________________________
West-End Books
80 Front St. East, Suite 605
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5E 1T4
Cover Design: Bridgit Stone-Budd
Text Design: Ric Base
Electronic formatting: Ric Base
Second Edition
For Ric
1
The advertisement appeared simultaneously in the Want Ads sections of the Sanibel Island Reporter and the Fort Myers News-Press.
Sanibel Sunset Detective
Professional Investigation
Discretion Guaranteed
1159 Causeway Rd.
Sanibel Island, Fl.
Phone 239-555-2348
A week later, Rex Baxter, president of the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce, in what was becoming something of a morning ritual, shambled into Tree Callister’s office and presented him with a Starbucks Grande Caffe Latte.
“I’m sick and tired of waiting on you,” Rex said.
“What’s scary is, I’m starting to look forward to this,” Tree said.
“It‘s not like I feel sorry for you or anything,” Rex said. He eased himself into the only empty chair in the tiny office. “You coming to the end of a wasted life with nothing to show for it.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Tree said.
Rex was tall with wavy grey hair that made him look like a local TV anchorman, which, in fact, he had been for many years at WBBM-TV in Chicago. Well, not an anchor, exactly. Rex was the weatherman for the station’s late afternoon newscast. Before that, he had been a movie actor in 1950s B-pictures. He came to Chicago to host an afternoon movie show. That’s how Tree and Rex knew each other. Tree had interviewed him for his newspaper, the Sun-Times. They had been friends ever since.
Originally from Oklahoma, and proud of it, Rex now was almost as much a part of Sanibel as the palm trees and the beaches. Tree, on the other hand, was not part of anything. Tree was an ex-newspaperman who didn’t know what to do with himself. Rex let Tree have the office upstairs at the Chamber of Commerce visitors center so he could get started in the detective business. Rex thought Tree was out of his mind, but the office was empty, and it would mean there was another body around to answer the phone when everyone was at lunch.
Rex said, “Okay, try this one on for size. Your favorite private detective movie.”
Tree thought about it a moment before he said, “Twilight.”
Rex scratched at one of the wattles that had developed beneath his chin. “Twilight? That vampire movie?”
“This is another Twilight. The better Twilight.”
“Never even heard of it.”
“Paul Newman is an ex-cop, ex-drunk in Los Angeles, living with famous husband-and-wife movie stars played by Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon. Hackman is Newman’s best friend. The scenes between the two of them are priceless. Sort of like us, Rex.”
“You’re Newman, I’m Hackman, is that it?”
“It’s Newman’s last starring role. He’s too old for it, but he’s Paul Newman one final time, a little tired, a little world weary, but not giving into it, beating on, trying to make the best of what he’s been handed.”
“Like you, Tree.”
“Except I’m not Paul Newman. The tragedy of my life. What guy of a certain age doesn’t look at Paul Newman on the screen and identify with him? Everyone wants to be Cool Hand Luke.”
“What’s Twilight about?”
“It’s about coming to the end, but if you mean the plot, who knows? If you can remember the plot of a private detective movie, then it’s probably not a very good private detective movie.”
“Come on,” Rex said. “Private detective movies are nothing but plot.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s The Big Sleep about?”
Rex was silent. “Well, it’s about Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.”
Tree grinned. “And that’s more than enough plot for any movie. I rest my case.”
They were interrupted by the thump of footsteps on the stairs leading to Tree’s office. They both turned to see a boy in a Tampa Bay Rays baseball cap appear in the doorway.
“This the Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency?”
“It is indeed,” Tree said.
“I want to talk to a detective,” the boy said.
Rex winked at Tree and stood. “I’ve got to get over to the Ding Darling Education Center so I can finish making my gun.”
“Your gun?” Tree said.
“A rifle, actually. A replica of the real thing. But it works. Talk to you later.”
Rex ambled out past the boy who remained in the doorway. Tree waved at him. “Come on in and have a seat.”
The boy ventured tentatively into the room. He was African American. A backpack hung from his shoulders. He wore the usual island uniform: khaki shorts and a T-shirt that was too big for him, with a picture of a fish and “Sanibel Island” printed across the front.
“You are the detective guy?” As though he couldn’t
quite believe it.
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Tree said.
“You don’t look like a detective.”
“How are detectives supposed to look?”
“Younger,” the boy said.
He perched on the edge of the chair vacated by Rex, his head barely visible over the desk.
“So like I could hire you, right?”
“What’s your name?”
He hesitated before he said, “Marcello.”
“Marcello?”
“Like the Italian actor.”
“Marcello Mastroianni?”
The boy shrugged. “My mom said the Italian actor.”
“Okay, Marcello. Aren’t you a little young to be hiring detectives?”
“How old do you have to be?”
“How old are you?”
Marcello hardly paused before he said, “Twenty-one.”
“You shouldn’t lie to a detective,” Tree said.
“How do you know I’m lying?”
“I’m a detective,” he said.
“You think I’m young because you’re so old.”
Tree looked at him.
“It’s my mom,” Marcello said.
“What about her?”
“I want you to find her.”
“I see. Where is your mom?”
A look of impatience crossed the boy’s delicate features. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to hire you.”
“That’s true,” Tree had to admit.
“I got a card from her,” he said.
“Okay.”
“Would you like to see it?”
Tree said he would. The boy swung the backpack off his shoulders and from it fished out a small blue greeting card. He handed it to Tree. Fumbling in his shirt pocket, Tree located his glasses and balanced them on the end of his nose. Marcello made a face.
“What are those?”
“The glasses? They’re glasses.”
“You wear glasses?”
“For reading. Just for reading.” Did he sound a tad defensive? He repositioned the glasses on the bridge of his nose and looked at the card. There was a small white heart in the bottom right-hand corner.
Tree opened it up. The handwriting in the interior was neat and feminine.
Hello, my little love,
I know you haven’t heard from me for a while, and I’m sorry. I should have written earlier. I love you very much, I want you to know that. I haven’t forgotten about you. I think about you all the time. I will be coming for you soon, I promise, darling. In the meantime, please be strong and brave, and remember that you are loved more than you will ever know.
Mommy
Tree handed the card back to Marcello who carefully replaced it in his backpack. Tree took his glasses off and put them back in his shirt pocket. “When did you get this?” he asked.
The boy looked uneasy. “Can you find my mom or not?”
“Okay, Marcello, it doesn’t seem as though she’s missing since she recently sent you a letter. She says she’s coming to get you and you should be patient.”
So what does that mean? You won’t find her?”
“If your mom really is missing, you should go to the police.”
“I don’t like the police.”
“Nonetheless, they are the people best equipped to find your mom—if she really is missing.”
“What’s the use you being a detective and everything if all you do is tell people to call the police?”
“I don’t tell that to everyone,” Tree said. “Only twelve-year-old boys.”
“Well, I’m twenty-one.”
“Nonetheless, I think you should go to the police.”
The kid got up from the chair. Even then he didn’t rise up that much above the desk, Tree noted. A small twelve. Maybe he wasn’t even twelve. The boy re-slung the backpack on his shoulders.
“You’re old and I don’t think I like you,” he said.
“Detectives aren’t supposed to be liked,” said Tree.
“Then you must be a great detective.”
Tree couldn’t help but smile. He decided to try to be helpful. “Your mother sounds like a nice person, Marcello.”
“That’s why I want to be with her.”
“Would you like me to call the police for you?”
Marcello shook his head. “I told you already. I don’t like the police.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
Marcello went out. Tree put his glasses back on, wondering if he should let the boy go. He heard him clomp back down the stairs. Tree swiveled around to stare out the window into the parking lot, still wondering what he should do. Marcello swept past astride a red bicycle. Then he was gone. The kid was from around here, no doubt. He’d be all right. Probably mom and dad were divorced. The boy lived with his father and maybe a stepmother. He missed his real mom, that was all, and then he got that letter, and maybe his mom should have showed up by now and hadn’t.
That was it. No more to it than that.
The boy’s comments about age irritated him. He wasn’t that old, was he? He still had most of his hair and that was a plus, and it had remained mostly black, albeit shot through with grey streaks. He liked to think that just made him more distinguished. He had put on some weight in the last few years, but he worked out three or four times a week and being tall like Rex, six feet, two inches, he was, he believed, able to carry a few extra pounds. Or was he deluding himself? It was the age of delusion. He told himself he did not feel sixty. However sixty was supposed to feel.
In addition to telling himself he did not feel sixty, he also repeated to himself how lucky he was—lucky to have met his wife, Freddie, lucky to have experienced the last great days of Chicago newspapers. He had started out at the Daily News and when that folded, a victim of the world’s lack of interest in an afternoon newspaper, he had gone over to the Sun-Times where he toiled away happily. He knew Mike Royko, the legendary Chicago columnist, well, he didn’t know Royko, could anyone? But he would nod at Tree when they encountered each other in the city room, and Mike would say, “Hi, there, Tree.” A cub of a reporter, barely out of his teens, Tree was thrilled.
Newspapermen—and they were mostly men—wore ties, never fully tied, and white shirts with the collar button undone. They punched at Underwood typewriters with two fingers, and editors yelled “Copy!” and everyone smoked incessantly so that a pall of grey smoke hung constantly over the battlefield that was the city room.
They drank draught beer for lunch at Riccardo’s, the watering hole of choice, bitching about the corruption of the Daley political machine that ran Chicago forever—Richard J. Daley, that is, not the son, Richard M. Daley, who, when he was mayor, gentrified the city to the point where Tree barely recognized it. Tree loved all of it, loved it too much, at the expense of things like family.
He loved it so much he hung around long enough to see it all change, which is to say he hung around too long.
His mind drifted to another popular topic lately, the mediocrity of his misspent life. He had a lot of time to ponder that subject. He thought about it in the dispassionate way a man who has recently turned sixty must consider these things. After all, no matter how you cut it, the bulk of a lifetime, its essential weight, already had been mounted on the scale and weighed. The weight in his case was light. The future did not promise much more heft. How could it? There was not, he had to admit, a whole lot of future left to consider. A curious thing to realize that there was more behind you than there was ahead.
He did not think like this out of any sense of depression—Tree could not honestly say he was depressed—more of resignation. This was the way it had turned out, and there was not much he could do about it.
Well, there was one thing. You could open your very own detective agency. Not a universal response to the aging process, but his response. So far it had been pretty quiet. Not unexpected since he had no experience as a detective. Someone asked him how many operatives the Sanibel Suns
et Detective Agency employed. Operatives? There was only one operative. W. Tremain Callister—Tree—he was the Sanibel Sunset Detective.
One detective, then, and zero clients. Tree shifted his gaze away from the window.
You could hardly count the kid. Marcello? Probably home by now. Hopefully, someone was giving him a hug and pouring him a glass of milk and he was okay. Probably forgotten all about his visit to a real live private detective.
Except he wasn’t much of a detective. Maybe he handled the boy the wrong way. Certainly he was capable of mishandling kids. All you had to do was ask his. Suppose Marcello wasn’t home getting a hug and a glass of milk? Suppose someone was knocking him around and his lost mom and that letter were all he had to hang on to? Could his mother really be missing? A lot of kids’ parents were missing in action, he supposed. Maybe he should have taken him home and made sure he was all right. He would be fine. Maybe it wasn’t even serious. Maybe the kid was playing some sort of weird joke.
Who would be crazy enough to hire Tree Callister, anyway? Paul Newman, sure. He could find your mom and solve your problems because he was Paul Newman. But Tree Callister? What could he ever do for you?
2
Tree left the office late in the afternoon and got into his battered yellow Volkswagen Beetle convertible. His wife Freddie’s red Mercedes was at the garage for a tune-up. Tree’s job today was to pick her up and drive her home. He was a private investigator. He could handle that.
The traffic heading off the island on Causeway Boulevard was already heavy. He turned on to Periwinkle Way and came along to Dayton’s, the late afternoon sun glinting off his windshield, Elvis on the radio singing “Jailhouse Rock.” Lately, he had begun listening to one of the local classic rock radio stations for whom time stopped at the end of 1969. He tried to tell himself this had nothing to do with nostalgia for his fading past, but of course it did. “Jailhouse Rock” made him think of the Elvis Presley concert at Cobo Hall in Detroit in 1970, the excitement of seeing a legend who had not performed for ten years, of witnessing a comeback that people still talked about.
Well, people of a certain age still talked about.
Tree supposed his increasing reliance on pop standards also had something to do with his lack of identification with what was happening on contemporary radio. He hated that, hated that the world appeared to be drifting, that what was noise to him was the music of the day to a generation. He was beginning to feel like his parents, the people he swore he would never emulate.
