by Ron Base
Tree pulled into a Winn Dixie parking lot off Gladiolus and made a phone call.
“Detective Boone.”
“It’s Tree Callister.”
“I was just thinking about you.” Suggesting that was not good.
“I have to see you,” Tree said.
“You have to see me. Okay. Come into the office.”
“No,” Tree said. “Lighthouse Beach in forty minutes—and you come alone.”
Tree hung up before she could object. A white van, its side displaying a body outlined in black, pulled up beside him. Todd Jackson waved. Tree turned off his engine and got out of the car. Todd rolled down his window hitting Tree with a blast of Johnny Cash and cold air.
Todd said. “Everything all right?”
“I pulled in to make a phone call,” Tree said. “What are you up to?”
“Just coming back from a job in Bonita Springs. How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay.”
“What about Freddie? How’s she doing?”
“She’s okay, too.”
“You know, given the circumstances.”
“What circumstances are you talking about, Todd?”’
“Her walking out on that son-of-a-bitch, Ray.”
“What?”
“Shit, I don’t blame you for hitting the guy. Still, I guess it makes it pretty tough on Freddie. I mean you punch out someone’s boss, what do you do?”
“What exactly do you mean by walking out?”
Todd looked confused. “Well, quitting. Freddie quit her job. Didn’t she?”
“How do you know this?”
“I dunno, Tree. I mean how can you not know? Everybody knows. It’s all over town.”
____
Incoming clouds reduced the sun to a yellow haze. A few brave souls faced down the breakers rolling in on the beach. Three little boys in floppy sun hats knelt over a crumbling sandcastle. A large man with a small dog passed the lighthouse.
Tree recalled playing on this beach as a kid. A long time ago, but as near as yesterday. He slumped on the sand, staring at the gunmetal sea. You could view a lifetime from here, the years spreading across the water, everything clear and easily reviewed for shortcomings and failures. Where had he gone from here? What had he done? What did it mean when you found yourself right back at the same spot where you more or less started?
Except he was no longer starting anything. He was verging on old age if he wasn’t there already. The fact that he could lay out most of his life sitting here on this beach was testament to that.
Then it hit him. That’s where he had seen those letters. They were as close as his past. Right there in front of him, as the past tended to be these days.
He stood and checked his watch. Cee Jay Boone was late. He would have left except the detective chose that moment to emerge from the parking lot.
“Sorry,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare for a better view of him. “Something at the office I had to take care of.”
She pulled a pack of Camels from her shoulder purse and shoved one into her mouth, turning against the wind coming off the gulf, cupping her hand over the cigarette while she used a Bic to light it.
“You look a little tense, Tree. Everything all right?”
Tree watched her inhale. “Why did I think you didn’t smoke?”
“For five years I didn’t,” she said. “I started again a week or so ago.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know. The pressure of police work? That’s as good an excuse as any, I guess. Maybe we’re both a little tense these days.”
“You never know about people,” he said.
“Are you just now learning that, Tree? You’re late to the party.”
“You could be right. For instance, I’m just learning about Mel Scott.”
While her right hand held the cigarette, she again employed her left hand as a sun shield.
“You know, Mel and Michelle Crowley.”
She lowered her hand and said, “What about them?”
“I saw them coming down a flight of stairs together. Mel was holding Marcello.”
Cee Jay didn’t say anything. She took a long drag on her cigarette.
“I was hoping for a snappier comeback,” he said.
“I’m trying to decide whether I can trust you.”
“Over at Heights Elementary where Marcello is registered as Gregory Scott, they think Mel is his father. Dara’s the stepmother, according to the principal. Interesting combination, don’t you think?”
“Interesting is not the word I would use when talking about Mel.”
“Yeah? What word should I use talking about you?”
“Trustworthy,” Cee Jay said.
“So then help me out.”
“Here’s the deal. Mel’s working this thing undercover,” Cee Jay said. “His relationship with Dara was part of that. She’s been raising Marcello the last couple of years. When it came to time register him at Heights, I guess for some reason they thought it better to use that name.”
“Mel’s working undercover? What for?”
“Dara was a body parts dealer, running a posse out of Mexico. These are the people Mel and I are after.”
“A body parts dealer? What the hell is that?”
Cee Jay flicked more ashes. “You need a kidney? Tissues? Organs? A heart, even. Dara could get it for you. Big business these days. Reno and Dara were partners. Mel says they weren’t getting along. Reno was out of control, attracting too much attention, including your friend at the FBI. He was afraid Dara might give him up. So he dealt with it the way Reno deals with problems—he cut off Dara’s head.”
“Then who killed Reno?”
Cee Jay dropped the remainder of the cigarette to the sand and ground it out with her heel.
“You’re Reno O’Hara. You’re a scumbag. You make enemies on both sides of the border. Lots of competition in the body parts business these days. The number of candidates is endless.”
The sun broke free of the low-hanging cloud cover drenching the sky in crimson. Then the clouds swallowed up the escaping light, and it grew darker.
“Looks like rain,” Cee Jay said. She shifted her eyes to Tree. “I’m being honest with you, Tree. Now I need you to be honest with me.”
“Okay.”
“Tell me where Marcello is.”
When Tree didn’t respond, Cee Jay said, “You have to trust me, Tree. Okay? Mel and I can protect Marcello from Mickey Crowley and her pals, but first we need to know where he is.”
“Give me until tomorrow.”
“You’re cutting it close here, Tree. Dwayne Crowley is out of prison. They are desperate to get hold of the boy. Better if you give him up now.”
“I know where he is, but it’s going to take me until tomorrow to get him,” Tree said.
“Tomorrow. No tricks.”
“You’re sure about Mel?”
“As sure as I am about anything,” Cee Jay said. “Can I count on you or not, Tree?”
“Looks like we’ll have to count on each other, Cee Jay.”
“Just be careful. Dwayne is a whole bunch worse than Reno when it comes to being a homicidal son of a bitch.”
Cee Jay headed back to the parking lot. He could see her trying to light another cigarette a moment before she disappeared. Out in the gulf, lightning stitched against the darkening clouds. The sky turned velvety black. Tree stood in the wind.
____
Freddie wasn’t in the house when he got home and neither was the boy. He remembered she was taking him over to the mall for a haircut. He went into the garage, to the cabinet in the corner Freddie had been after him to clean out—the battered repository for his messy past.
He searched his pockets until he found his reading glasses. He opened the top drawer and began flipping through file folders and old photo albums, the collected evidence of failed marriages and past lives, barely recognizable faces in fading Kodak colors. Y
ellowed newspaper clippings recounted nearly-forgotten stories—an obit of Richard Burton he barely remembered writing. A Cosmopolitan magazine profile about Michael Douglas, anonymously rewritten to make him sound like a giddy young thing, madly infatuated with Michael. Why had he held onto that?
He found a dog-eared photograph of him with actor William Hurt. Hurt looked as though he would rather be anywhere else in the world. A publicity shot of a bathing suit model he briefly dated. More photos. Ex-wives looking happier than they were; children looking sadder.
And finally, what he was searching for. The letter.
My love
I don’t know how it is two people who get along as well as we basically do, get into fights like this. Am I just being immature? I don’t know. I don’t know about us sometimes, except I do. When I think about us, I think about loving you, because, dear Tree, I do love you. We never discuss the subject, but there it is; I love you. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. We are together after all, even when we fight. I know you don’t want me away this weekend, but it is only for the weekend, and I will be thinking of you.
And how much I love you.
S
After all this time the words still haunted and stung. But he didn’t want to think about that. The words were beside the point now. He took the letter into his office, unlocked the top drawer of his desk, and took out the blue cards from Marcello’s mom. He laid them beside the letter from Savannah.
The handwriting was the same. As he knew it would be.
His cell phone buzzed.
“I need to see you,” said the voice of Elizabeth Traven.
34
Rain, unaccustomed rain, poured down on Sanibel-Captiva. The Beetle’s windshield wipers were helpless against the onslaught. The little car shuddered and shook in the wind, like an old dog afraid of the storm. Tree leaned over the wheel, trying to see the road in front of him. He pulled onto the shoulder and called Freddie.
“We just got in,” Freddie said. “Were you here?”
“A few minutes ago,” Tree said.
“Where are you now?”
“On my way to Elizabeth Traven’s.”
A pause before Freddie said, “Is that a good idea?”
“I’m not sure what is or is not a good idea at this point. I’m a little concerned about what’s happening. Can you get Marcello out of there for the time being?”
“You think that’s necessary?”
“Humor me, okay? At least for tonight, until I get to the bottom of a couple of things.”
“Go to the police, Tree.”
“I’ve just been talking to the police. I’m not sure how helpful they are going to be. For now I’d feel better if you weren’t at the house.”
“I guess I could take him over to Jill Stone’s place. She’s one of the assistant managers.”
“Did you quit your job?”
“Who told you that?”
“Apparently it’s all over the island.”
“I didn’t realize I was so famous.”
“Freddie.”
“Ray’s been on the phone. We’ve talked. I’m not sure what I’ve done. Right now, I’d better get Marcello out of here. We can talk about this later. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Please, please, Tree. Please be careful.”
“Careful is my middle name.”
“Not any more,” Freddie said.
____
Tree parked at the side of the Traven house and then dashed through the rain up the steps. Elizabeth answered, barefoot, hair tangled, wearing a toga-like shift that didn’t fall past her thighs. The drink in her hand dispelled Tree’s initial thought of Phaedra, besotted with her stepson. More like Elizabeth, a little drunk and scared.
“Dwayne Crowley’s been released from jail,” she announced. He expected thunder to rumble.
“How did you hear?” Tree shut the door and followed her across the foyer.
“My husband called.” She raked her free hand through her hair. “He’s coming here. I just know it.”
Tree said, “The police know he’s out. They’ll keep an eye out for him.”
“Keep an eye out for him?” She sounded appalled. “You think the police are going to lift a finger to help me?”
She stared at him accusingly, as though he was responsible for the lack of police assistance. “Go into the other room,” she said. “I’ll come right back.”
Outside the big living room windows, nature mounted a sound and light show that could open in Vegas. He watched until he saw Elizabeth’s shifting reflection in the window.
She held a fresh drink in one hand, a gun in the other.
“What are you’re doing with that?” He wasn’t talking about the drink.
She thrust the gun into his hands, a .38 caliber revolver. He stared down at it. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“You stupid bastard. You’re supposed to protect me with it.”
“I don’t know anything about guns.”
She put her drink down and came toward him, breasts moving beneath thin fabric. Her arms slipped around his neck.
“What are you doing?” was all he could think of to say before she kissed him. She tasted like whiskey.
In the detective novels he read as a kid, the hard-boiled private eye—Shell Scott, Mike Shayne, Mike Hammer—always resisted the femme fatales’s advances. Tree could never understand that. How could they resist these hot, compliant women? Why would they resist?
All these years later, a detective of sorts himself, and here he was resisting Elizabeth Traven, Captiva Island’s resident femme fatale, pushing her away, announcing in a lame voice, “I’m a married man.”
Elizabeth hit him. His nose exploded in blood. His glasses went flying. She pummeled him, blood spraying the carpet. He fell to the floor. She was on top of him, screaming unintelligibly, flailing haphazardly but nonetheless landing a few blows. He managed to grab her arms and swing her off, pinning her to the floor.
“You’re bleeding on me, you asshole.”
Straddling her, he let go of her arms so he could wipe his bleeding nose.
“Get off me you fool, get off.” She was weeping now, her face slick with her tears and his blood.
He fell away from her. She rose to her knees, body shaking with the force of her sobs.
Elizabeth stumbled to her feet, pulling at the hem of her shift, reaching for Kleenex in an elegant ivory case on a glass-topped coffee table. She threw a wad of tissues at him. They floated like pink kites. He grabbed a couple and held them to his nose. He saw his glasses on the floor, surrounded by bright red blood spots.
“You’ve got blood all over the carpet,” she said. “What kind of detective are you, anyway?”
“The kind that bleeds.”
He retrieved his glasses and then hoisted himself to his feet holding the tissues against his nose.
“What’s wrong with you? You can’t even be seduced.”
“What are you doing trying to seduce me?”
She flared angrily. “Why does anyone do it? Because they want to get laid. Don’t you know anything?”
“I don’t think you want to get laid, Elizabeth. Not by me, anyway.”
She dissolved into more tears.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m not very seducible these days.”
“You’re such an idiot,” she said between sobs. “Why do you think I hired you in the first place?”
“To have sex?”
She issued a derisive snort. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
She flopped onto a nearby easy chair, alternately pulling at the hem of her shift and brushing away tears. He offered her a tissue.
She blew her nose. He dabbed at his. The bleeding had pretty much stopped.
“We knew the boy had been to see you,” she said. “Do you understand? This was a way of getting you on side, that’s all it was.”
More sobs exploded out of her. He handed
her another wad of tissue. “I’ve had too much to drink,” she said angrily. “I shouldn’t be talking like this.”
Her chin bobbed up and down. “I told my fool husband not to give you that money, that it wouldn’t change anything. Sure enough, it didn’t. So here we are tonight.”
“Where are we, Elizabeth? What are you talking about?”
She was sitting up, holding her head in her hands. “I don’t want you hurt, you or your wife. You’re just a couple of harmless idiots who stumbled into this.”
“I know that the woman I found, Dara Rait, she dealt in body parts. Mickey Crowley and Reno O’Hara are part of it. So was Mickey’s husband, Dwayne.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said.
“Brand must have met Dwayne in prison. You hooked up with Mickey. Mickey brought in Dara Rait.”
Elizabeth lifted her head away from her hands. “We needed a liver, just part of a liver, actually.”
The penny dropped. “For Brand’s niece.”
“Hillary. To save her life. Marcello turned out to be the perfect match.”
“But Reno went crazy for some reason and killed Dara, and suddenly everything was a mess.”
“He thought she was cheating on him.”
“With Mel Scott?”
“I have no idea.”
“Marcello was scared of what they were going to do to him, so he ran away. He didn’t want an operation. He figured if he could find his real mom, everything would be all right. That’s when he came to me.”
“These people are worse than camp guards in the Gulag,” Elizabeth said. “After you found Dara’s body, I tried to get them to go away, but they wouldn’t listen. They are greedy and petty and ruthless. They won’t stop until it’s finished.”
“Until what’s finished?”
“The operation, for God’s sake! That’s what all this is about.” She staggered to her feet. “I should never have had so much to drink. God, what have I got myself into?”
He grabbed Elizabeth’s arm, twisting her around to face him. “What operation? They don’t have Marcello. How can there be an operation?”
“You fool. Don’t you get it yet? This is why you’re here. Dwayne’s at your place. He’s taking the boy.”
“Where? Where are they taking him?” His voice was high, angry. A voice he had not heard for a long time.
