by Ron Base
“That’s the van they brought us here in,” Freddie whispered.
The forlorn little cabins were all but lost in the shadow of the bridge, the white paint peeling, brown porches sagging. Seven of the eight cottages were dark and empty. The eighth cabin at the end was lit.
As they approached, the front door opened. Mickey Crowley stood framed in the light spilling onto the roadway. Mickey stared at them. Tree opened his mouth to say something but before any words could get out, Mickey whipped up her Beretta Tomcat and did what she probably wished she had done the first time they met—she shot him.
It felt as though he had been hit by a two-by-four. He staggered back, dropping the shotgun, trying to stay on his feet, everything swirling. Through the blur, he saw Mickey clatter down the steps, gun held out, getting ready to shoot him again.
Then Freddie stepped past him with the shotgun.
Ka-boom!
The blast ripped through the porch railing, missing Mickey completely, but startling her enough that Tree was able to recover and slam into her, knocking her back against the cottage. She tried to scramble away. Freddie used the shotgun like a club to hit her. She screamed, which provoked Freddie to hit her again.
Tree snatched Mickey’s Beretta off the porch and lunged into the cabin.
Under portable halogen lights, two men in green hospital scrubs were poised on either side of a narrow operating bed. Marcello lay beneath a sheet. A ventilation mask covered his face. An IV line snaked away from his right arm. One of the hospital-gowned men held a scalpel. They stared indignantly at Tree.
He pointed the gun and said, “Put your hands up.” A sentence he never in his life expected to utter. Both men immediately complied. The power of the gun.
Trying to keep the room in focus, Tree issued a further command: “Move away from the table.”
The two men did as they were told. The one on the left said, “We are about to operate on this boy.” He spoke with an accent. Of course, thought Tree. The evil doctors would have accents.
“You’re not operating on anyone.” The words sounded garbled to his ears. Neither of the men said anything. Then Freddie brushed past him and lunged at the table.
“Get that mask off him,” she snapped. “And remove the IV line.”
“You shouldn’t do this,” said one of the doctors.
“We’re taking him to a proper hospital,” Freddie said. One of the doctors removed the ventilation mask. The other unhooked the IV line. As soon as this was done, Freddie lifted Marcello off the table.
She said, “Come on, Tree, let’s get out of here.”
With Marcello nestled in her arms, she swept out the door. Tree shook his gun at the two men as he started to back up. “No one moves!” he shouted.
Another sentence he never expected to utter.
He stumbled outside. Freddie in a hazy ring carried Marcello to the van. She opened the rear door and carefully laid him inside. Then she came back to Tree and put her arm around him. His shoulder hurt. He leaned against her. “I don’t feel so well,” he said.
“Probably because you’ve been shot.”
She got him into the passenger seat and then went around and climbed behind the wheel. Everything was moving so slowly, he thought. He felt nauseous.
“Freddie, I think I’m dying,” he said.
“You’re not dying, my love.” Her voice seemed far away.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because we still have a long life ahead of us.”
“Do you love me?”
“Forever,” she said.
The car jolted forward. His last thought before he lost consciousness was, Forever? Isn’t that nice? In that case, maybe he could live.
38
He got his job back. After everything that had happened, this was the best news yet. He would be a reporter again, and everything would be as it was, in the place where he was most comfortable. All he had to do was report to the newsroom first thing in the morning.
Tree arrived at the side entrance and hurried up the stairs. He found himself in sales and circulation. This was strange. What was he doing here? He thought this was the newsroom. He stared around. No one paid him the slightest attention. He tried to ask for directions. The newsroom. Where was it? He had to get to the newsroom. People stared blankly. They didn’t seem to know what he was talking about.
He got out of there into a stairwell, climbed another set of stairs and went through a fire door. Now he was in a room full of linotype machines. Linotype machines? No one used linotype machines, anymore. What the hell was going on? The clack-clack of the machines filled the air. It was stifling in here. He could hardly breathe. An old man wearing a green visor hobbled over, waving copy paper in his face. He yelled over the incessant metallic clack of the machines. “You stupid young bugger! You don’t know how to spell Mississippi!”
Tree reeled away. No. This was impossible. He couldn’t have misspelled Mississippi, not on his first day back at work. He staggered along an endless line of linotype machines working at full noisy tilt. Where was the newsroom? How could he start work if he couldn’t find the newsroom? And how could he misspell Mississippi? He didn’t even have a story. How could he work at a newspaper if he couldn’t find the newsroom, and he couldn’t spell Mississippi, and he didn’t have a story? Deadline must be approaching. He had to have a story. What time was it? He didn’t have much time left.
And he couldn’t find the newsroom.
Tree jerked awake and saw that he was still in his hospital room. With a combination of relief and sadness, he realized there was no job. He was not the newspaper reporter reborn, merely the Sanibel Sunset Detective shot. And hurting. His arm was in a sling and he was attached to heart monitors and a breathing apparatus.
A voice said, “You were sleeping.”
Tree looked over at the hazy figure of FBI Special Agent Shawn Lazenby seated by the bed, neat and professional in a dark suit and matching tie, his hair in a shiny pompadour.
“Weird dreams,” Tree said.
“I’ll bet.” Lazenby folded his hands in his lap, tidy and compressed. “What with all you’ve been through.” Was that a note of sympathy Tree detected? Hard to tell looking at Lazenby. His face remained as neatly arranged and free of emotion as the rest of him. Nothing showed with Lazenby, Tree thought. Until it did show.
“Or age,” Tree said. “I think the dreams have more to do with getting old.”
“I wanted to see you before I left,” Lazenby said.
“At least you’re not here to kick the shit out of me,” Tree said. “Or are you?”
“I owe you an apology for that. Jealousy. Also, I was on painkillers. Pretty silly on my part.”
“You were in pain?”
“What?”
“The painkillers.”
“A different kind of pain, you might say.”
“Savannah tended to have that effect on people,” he said. “She could even convince an agent who was in love with her to spend time on Sanibel Island helping her find her lost son.”
“Yes, I suppose she could.” Lazenby’s voice remained steadily in neutral, refusing to sound surprised about anything Tree might know.
“How much trouble are you in?”
“I’ll find out more when I get back to Miami this afternoon, but I’m probably finished with the agency.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that.”
“I did love her, although I don’t think she loved me. But that’s all right.”
“I wonder if Savannah loved anyone,” Tree said.
“She loved her son, and maybe you, too.”
“Shawn, Savannah didn’t love me.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Lazenby said.
“As for Marcello, you know more about that than I do. The fact she let him go off with a character like Reno O’Hara gives you pause. What was she doing mixed up with him in the first place?”
“She felt she had no choice at
the time but to let O’Hara take the boy. She lost track of them for several years before she found out they were in the Fort Myers area. As for O’Hara, I guess he was more evidence of how much Savannah liked to walk on the wild side. One of the reasons she joined the FBI, I suppose. But in O’Hara’s case, she paid a pretty high price.”
That reduced them both to silence. Lazenby got to his feet.
“I’d better get out of here. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.”
“Good luck,” was all Tree could think of to say.
Lazenby allowed a hollow smile. “For what it’s worth, you surprised her.”
“Being a detective? I don’t doubt it.”
“Not that so much. The fact that you found something like happiness here. That unsettled her a bit, I think. She didn’t know what to make of it.”
“I am happy,” Tree said. “Whatever happiness is. I’m shot but I’m happy.”
“I’m real glad to hear that, Mr. Callister.”
“You take care of yourself, Agent Lazenby.”
“Yes, sir. You too.”
Lazenby left. Tree lay back in the bed, thinking about his dream. Not being able to find the newsroom, that was crazy. Of course he could find the newsroom again. That is, he could if he ever went back. But he would not be going back. Every time he turned to gaze into the past he saw smoke plumes rising from the distant burning bridges of his life.
He lay there a while longer, becoming tired again, thinking he once beheaded the wrong king of France in a story he wrote. But he didn’t think he’d ever misspelled Mississippi.
Had he?
39
George Clooney is a movie star,” Rex Baxter said a week or so later. He sat across from Tree in his office. The two of them sipped the Grande Lattes Rex brought in from Starbucks.
Tree shook his head. “George Clooney looks like a movie star. He acts like a movie star. If he had come of age in the 1950s or 1960s, he would be a movie star, maybe the rival to Newman or McQueen. But the sad fact is, George Clooney is not a movie star.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because he can’t do the one thing movie stars must do.”
“Which is?” said Rex.
“He doesn’t make hit movies. This is not the age of the movie star. This is the age of computer-generated images. Therefore, someone like Clooney is lost. He doesn’t make studio movies these days. He makes mostly independent films that in this sad time most people don’t see. Regrettable, but that’s the way it is.”
“So there are no movie stars? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Meryl Streep is a movie star. So is Sandra Bullock. These women attract a female audience still interested in stars. They are not interested in CGI and explosions.”
“So the only movie stars are women?”
“The only stars in the time-honored sense, yes. But that’s all right. Women were the first movie stars, anyway. Mae Murray and Mary Pickford. Shirley Temple in her day was a bigger box office draw than Clark Gable.”
Rex frowned and heaved himself to his feet. “I can’t sit around here trying to make you listen to reason. I gotta get over to the mall and listen to some guy who owns an outlet store bitch about his membership dues. You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“There’s been a whole lot of negative publicity, you know,” Rex said unhappily. “Murder on Sanibel Island. Shootings. Not good for business, Tree.”
Rex sounded as though he held Tree personally responsible.
“If I was Paul Newman, it would be fine.”
“Yeah, but you’re not Paul Newman.”
“Funny. When Paul Newman died, that’s when I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That there was no hope for any of us. Paul Newman stayed young forever. He defeated time and age for so long. And then he died. Where does that leave the rest of us?”
Before Rex could answer, Tommy Dobbs, wearing a black suit and looking like one of the Blues Brothers in his Ray-Ban sunglasses, appeared at the office door. “All set, Mr. Callister?”
Rex looked at Tree and shook his head. “What? You’ve got a chauffeur now?”
Tree motioned to his arm in the sling. “I can’t drive like this.”
“Make sure you don’t shoot anyone,” Rex said. “I’ve got enough trouble.”
“I can’t shoot anyone until the arm heals.”
“Thank goodness for small mercies,” Rex said.
Tommy and Tree went down the back stairs and out into the parking lot where they encountered Ray Dayton. He said to Tree, “Do you suppose we could have a word in private?”
Tree turned to Tommy. “Why don’t I meet you at the car?”
“Okay, sure.” Tommy gave Ray a mystified glance as he walked away.
Ray said, “How’s the arm, Tree?”
“Still a little sore, Ray.”
“So you’ve taken a round,” Ray said. “Well, that’s a step in the right direction, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I’ve always wanted to be shot.”
“But it was basically a scratch, right?”
“Well, it broke my arm.” Did Tree sound defensive? Maybe Ray Man would appreciate Tree more if the shot had killed him. He would have liked that just fine.
“Let me ask you something, Ray. Where were you in Vietnam?”
“What?”
“Vietnam. When you were there. Where were you?”
“I wasn’t in Nam.”
“You weren’t?”
“Philippines. I ran a supply chain.”
“You fed people?”
“They couldn’t have fought the war without guys like me.”
Tree tried to think of something to say. He couldn’t think of anything.
“Todd, myself, a couple of the boys from Kiwanis, we’re doing a little fishing this weekend out in the gulf. Few beers, few laughs. We might even drop a line in the water. Thought you might like to join us.”
Tree wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “You want me to go fishing with you?”
“You’re not busy, are you?”
“Not particularly, no.”
“Then come along with us.”
“I’m not going fishing with you, Ray.”
The Ray Man’s face hardened. His eyes got smaller. “Hey,” he said. “I’m trying to reach out to you here.”
“I appreciate that, Ray. But I’m not going fishing with you.”
“Look, you hit me. Fine. Maybe I deserved it, I don’t know. You had your moment. Now you’re a local damned hero, shooting bad guys, screwing up tourism. Good for you. But I need Freddie back at work.”
“You’ll have to talk to Freddie.”
“This is crazy what’s going on. Things happen. It’s water under the bridge. Tell her that, okay?”
“Water under the bridge?”
“I want her back at work.” He turned and marched off across the lot. He had a funny kind of quick step. Like a duck in a hurry.
Then Ray stopped. He turned to Tree and called out to him. “None of this changes my opinion of you.”
Tree said, “How do you spell, Mississippi, Ray?”
“What?“
“Never mind.”
Ray recommenced his curious duck march.
40
Nothing had changed at the Brand house except the “For Sale” sign in front. An elegant “For Sale” sign, Tree noted. Things could only be for sale elegantly in this neighborhood.
He climbed the steps to where Jorge waited. The major domo had the good manners not to comment on the sling holding Tree’s arm as he led the way through the foyer and into the living room. Elizabeth Traven was artfully arranged in a shaft of morning sunlight. The hellion with the wild hair and long legs was nowhere in evidence. The plantation matriarch was on duty.
They stood, eyes on each other, in awkward silence. Finally, she said, “Well, you don’t look too much the worse for wear.”
“Winged me, as they used to say in
the cowboy movies.”
“I don’t watch cowboy movies,” she said.
“I’m shocked,” Tree said.
“I understand you knew the FBI agent who was killed.”
“Savannah Trask. We lived together for a time when she was a law student.”
“And she is the boy’s real mother?”
“So it seems. She had been involved with Reno O’Hara in Chicago. They had the baby together. She gave up custody when she was transferred to Miami.”
“Curious. A woman giving up her child like that.”
“She’d taken a leave of absence to come here and find her son. So had her partner, Agent Lazenby.”
“So obviously she’d had some sort of change of heart.”
“Obviously.”
“How do you feel about all this, Mr. Callister?”
“I don’t feel very good, Mrs. Traven. It was all so unnecessary.”
She scrutinized him as though trying to ascertain how to handle this; what tack to take in an encounter she had not expected.
“Let’s sit outside,” she said. “It’s such a pleasant morning and who knows how much longer I’ll be able to enjoy it.”
“I see you’ve got the house up for sale.”
“There’s no money. Well, that’s not totally true. But there’s certainly not enough money to hang onto this place.”
A vast lawn floated off toward a tidal bay and the clear, straight horizon of the sea. They sat on lovely white rattan furniture beneath a bright green umbrella. Hillary Traven drifted by, a tiny stork in the distance. She saw the two of them and waved.
“How is she doing?” Tree said.
“What’s the term they use? As well as can be expected? That’s it.”
Jorge appeared as though conjured from a puff of smoke, to ask if they wanted anything. Elizabeth suggested coffee and Tree went along. Jorge withdrew. Pink spoonbills skimmed the grass near the water.
“When I’m not dealing with Trotsky, I’ve been reading all about you.”
“The reporter got carried away.”
“Quite the hero.”
“Are you disappointed?”
“In a way, I suppose I am,” she said. “I did not expect you to rise to the occasion.”
