2 Dog River Blues

by Mike Jastrzebski

  I found Rusty Dawson sitting alone at the table tossing down a Budweiser. A dour-looking man in his sixties, Rusty’s silver hair still showed an occasional red highlight. His eyes were alert, despite the six empty beer cans lined up along the edge of the table.

  I’d met Rusty the previous afternoon. When I pulled in he was sitting on a bench in front of the marina store staring out across the river. As I swung the boat around and headed for the dock he walked over, grabbed my line and expertly tied me off to a piling.

  “Hey, buddy, how you doing?” Rusty said when he saw me. Reaching into the small cooler at his side, he pulled out a beer and tossed it to me. “Take a load off, why don’t you.”

  I sat down and popped the lid on my beer. “Funny thing happened today, Rusty. I got a visit from a woman who claims to be my cousin Jessica.”

  Rusty turned his head and spit out of the corner of his mouth. “You got family around here?”

  “So it seems. I found out my father was from the area.”

  “What’s his last name?”

  “Wolfe,” I said.

  “There’s been Wolfe’s around here nigh onto a hundred and fifty years.” Rusty sat back in his chair, rested his hands on his belly and looked up at the ceiling fan. “You get this girl’s daddy’s name?”

  I shook my head. “No, but she mentioned an Uncle Roy.”

  “That would be John and Fran’s son.”

  “So you know the family?”

  “Never much liked John. He was a real son-of-a-bitch. I think John and Fran have a granddaughter named Jessica.”

  I finished my beer and he shoved another across the table. After popping the top I folded my hands around the can and leaned back into my chair. I suspected that if I asked about my father, Rusty would be able to answer at least the basic questions of who, what, and where he was. I wasn’t sure I was ready to learn the answers to those questions.

  Instead, I asked, “Rusty, you know a guy by the name of Fish Conners?”

  He raised an eyebrow and took a good swig of his beer. “He’s meaner than a hungry gator. What business you got with him?”

  “Not me. It seems this Conners fellow had a run-in with my uncle.”

  “That’s too bad. I guess I would a heard if Fish killed him.”

  “Is he capable of killing someone?”

  “He’s a big man with a short fuse. I never heard that he killed anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything. Fish is a bayou boy. For all I know Fish could’ve killed a dozen people. Sometimes a body will turn up along these waterways. After the gators get hold of 'em there ain’t no way to know how they died.”

  I thought about the large alligator I’d seen sunning itself on the bank of the Dog River that morning. I tried not to think about the kind of damage a creature like that could do to a man as I mulled over the implications.

  “Let me lay one more name on you, Rusty. You know anything about a lawyer name of Sam Quinlin?”

  Rusty cleared his throat and spit to the side again. “Don’t recognize that name. You’ve been in town what, little over a day? What do you need a lawyer for?”

  “Not for me,” I said. “The family hired him to look into some legal matters about some book my grandfather brought back from Europe after the war. The book was stolen and Jessica thinks Quinlin might have hired Fish Conners to steal it. She wanted me to check into it.”

  “Why you?”

  “I used to be a PI. I think Jessica got it in her head that I could help.”

  Rusty stared over my shoulder at the river. With a sigh he pushed himself away from the table and stood.

  “I left my cell on the boat. I think I know someone I can call.” He turned and walked off toward the docks that ran behind the restaurant without waiting for my thanks. He moved with sure steps and I was left with the impression of a young man wandering about in an old man’s body. I wondered how he managed it. I counted the cans lined up on the table. They now numbered eight.

  While I waited, I finished my beer and then swiveled my chair around so that it faced the river. A lone shrimp boat had just come in from the bay and was headed up Dog River. A long line of gulls and pelicans trailed behind it looking for handouts as the crew culled the day’s take. Several more pelicans glided in from the north like prehistoric pterodactyls, and then dove on the boat.

  I jumped when Rusty walked up behind me and spoke. “Have another beer if you’d like.” I swung my chair back around and reached into the cooler.

  Rusty took his seat across from me and grabbed the last beer. “Sam Quinlin has a small office off Government Street. It’s a one-man operation; doesn’t even have a full time receptionist. Just some girl who comes in twice a week to do filing.”

  “I wonder why the family chose him.”

  “I asked why someone might hire Quinlin. Seems he’s been running late night ads on TV. Offers low rates, walk-ins welcome. Here, you’ll need this.” Rusty held out a piece of paper, and when I took it from him I noticed it was a crude map with an address and a phone number on it.

  I nodded toward the marina store off to our right. “How about if I get the next six-pack?”

  “Appreciate that, partner.” Rusty spit, stood and gulped down the rest of his beer. “But I’ve got something I’ve got to take care of right now. I’ll take a rain check though.”

  Rusty shoved the empty cans into his cooler, nodded, and headed toward the parking lot. He stopped at the trash bin, dumped the contents of the cooler, and walked over to a burgundy, twenty-year-old tank of a Cadillac. The car was in cherry condition and looked like it had just been driven off the showroom floor.

  As he pulled out of the lot I crumbled up the paper Rusty had given me and tucked it into my pocket to be thrown away later. I was a stranger to the area and I’d pretty much decided that I couldn’t offer much help in finding the stolen book. What the hell did I know about good old boys and bayous? For that matter, I didn’t much care if they found the old book or not. Confident in my decision, I headed upstairs to the restaurant.

  A short, heavyset girl with big hair and too many tattoos was seated at a table drinking coffee and wrapping silverware in cloth napkins. When she saw me she pushed herself away from the table, grabbed a menu, and waddled over. I looked around and saw that there were only about a half dozen people seated around the restaurant. Two more sat at the bar. “Can I eat at the bar?”

  The waitress shrugged as if she was too busy to care and held out the menu to me. “Cathy’ll take your order.”

  Cathy turned out to be a leggy blonde woman of about thirty. She was standing behind the bar in her bare feet, all five-foot-ten of her. As I sat down she walked over to where a young wiry guy with a military style haircut was sitting. He looked like he was about to fall off his stool.

  “You’ve had enough, Billy,” she said. “Go home.”

  Billy started to argue, but a man in his mid-forties, with bulging shoulders and arm muscles, slid off his own stool and moved over next to the boy. He clapped a massive hand on Billy’s shoulder and said, “Come on Billy. I’ll walk you down to the boat. I’m sure Lizbeth’s worried about you.”

  Billy tried to pull away, but the older man’s hand stayed put and he helped Billy off the seat and guided him toward the door. As they left I turned to Cathy. “I used to bartend down in Key West. More often than not when a friend steps in like that the person he’s trying to help takes offense, might even throw a swing. The older guy was taking a chance.”

  She looked at me for the first time and her dark cloudy eyes lit up. When she smiled my stomach did a little shuffle.

  “Billy’s harmless enough. And as for Jack, I wouldn’t let him hear you refer to him as the older guy. Then there would be a fight. I’m Cathy by the way. What’ll you have?”

  “Wes.” I placed my order for a burger and a Miller Lite. When she set my beer in front of me I tilted the bottle in her direction, a silent acknowledgement of her advice.

  As I ate my burger, I
watched Cathy work. She had long delicate fingers and moved with smooth easy motions as she twisted and turned and bent over to pick something up from the floor. I wouldn’t describe her as beautiful. Her ears were a shade too large, her cheeks a little too sculpted, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  In between serving the occasional customer she drifted over to where I sat and we chatted.

  “Sounds like you’re from the Midwest,” she said at one point.

  “Michigan.”

  “Then we were practically neighbors. I was born and raised in Wisconsin.”

  I mentioned that I brought my sailboat in the previous day and that I had some family in the area. She told me she’d accidentally stopped in Mobile, and it suited her. She’d bought a small houseboat and was living aboard in the marina.

  We volleyed back and forth and as I was getting up to leave I asked, “How about going out to a movie and dinner with me?”

  She frowned, and just when I thought she was going to shoot me down she turned her smile back on. “You like the blues, Wes?”

  “I enjoy listening to good blues music, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Tomorrow night is free mudbug night at the Blues Cafe. It won’t cost a lot of money and you might have a little fun while you’re at it.”

  “What’s a mudbug?” I asked.

  “Crawfish, honey. Spicy and hot. You game?”

  “I’ll try anything once.”

  “Good.” She spun around, stopped, and looked at me over her shoulder. “I know you just pulled in and don’t have a car, so I’ll drive. Meet you out front at five-thirty tomorrow.”

  I finished my beer, left a twenty on the counter, and headed outside. I tripped and almost fell on my ass trying to navigate the wooden steps that led downstairs, and making my way along the dock was more of a chore than it should have been. I realized that I was a bit drunk. I’d downed three Buds when I was talking to Rusty and another three beers while I sat in the bar.

  A sport fishing boat was docked a little way down from Rough Draft, and as I walked by I sensed movement. I started to turn, stumbled, and fell to one knee. As I looked over my shoulder a dark shape swished past my head so close that I felt my hair lift in the wind.

  Without thinking I dropped my shoulder and rolled forward. Out of the corner of my eye I watched a fishing gaff slam against the wood piling to my left, ringing out with a dull metallic thud.

  Somewhere in the distant reaches of my mind an anxious voice urged me to get my ass in gear. Before I could move, a boot came out of nowhere and caught me in the ribs. I cried out, and at my inner voice’s command, I tried to scramble to my knees as another kick tore into my right shoulder. My jacket did little to blunt the force of the attack. I was getting the shit beat out of me and I was too drunk to respond. In my altered state, I saw only one avenue of escape. Before my attacker could pummel me again, I curled my body into a ball and rolled into the Dog River.

  The plunge into the icy water did a lot to sober me up. My first thought as I kicked off the muddy bottom of the river was that someone was trying to kill me. My second was why? I’ve often been accused of having a knack for pissing off people, but I’d only been at the marina for a little over twenty-four hours and met maybe six people. That was a record even for me.

  As I broke the surface I sucked in a mouthful of cool clear air and let myself sink back under the surface. My attacker was still on the dock and he swung the gaff toward me. It splashed over my head and came down through the water with enough force to do some serious damage had it hit me.

  I cursed to myself and let the current and the ebb tide tug me away from the dock. Cold wrapped its icy fingers around me. My jacket and shoes dragged me down toward the muddy bottom of the river, and I couldn’t shake the vision from my mind of that eight foot alligator I’d spotted across from the marina.

  I kicked off my shoes, peeled off my jacket and swam back to the surface. This time I was far enough from the dock that my attacker couldn’t reach me. “Hey,” I heard someone call out from the other end of the dock. “What’s going on down there?”

  My attacker, a large shadow with hidden features, looked from me to the man who had called out and back to me. I was shivering and could barely manage to dog paddle parallel to the dock, away from my enemy. I was weakening and I wondered how the hell I’d get out of the water even if I could reach the dock.

  “Hey, I need some help out here,” the same voice called out.

  The shadow on the dock took three long steps and jumped into the sport fishing boat. I listened to the engine grind, and then catch. It only took a moment for me to realize that the prop was far more likely to chew me up than the gator I’d seen earlier.

  Changing direction, I found some hidden source of energy I didn’t know I had. I was almost to the safety of the dock when the boat lurched forward. The hull slammed into me, tossed me aside, and battered me against a wood piling. The wake rose up as the boat sped away and smashed my head into something solid. The night darkened and I began the long slide into the void.

  With oblivion comes deliverance. God reached down and drew me upward, and the next thing I knew I was coughing up a lungful of water onto the dock and looking into the salty face of the man Cathy had called Jack, who’d helped the young drunk home from the bar earlier. Another man was pacing back and forth on the dock behind him.

  When I tried to sit up the second man got down on his knees and put a hand on my chest. “Just lay there for a couple of minutes.” When I complied he took off his jacket and placed it over me. For the first time I noticed that he wore a priest’s collar.

  “I was heading to my boat when I heard someone call for help,” Jack said. “That must have been you, Father.” The priest nodded and Jack went on. “There was a guy standing on the dock looking down into the water and at first I thought it was him that called. I figured you fell in and he was trying to drag you out, but when I started running down the dock, the son of a bitch jumped into the boat and took off. Tell you the truth, I thought you were dead. You all right?”

  “My right shoulder and arm feels like it’s been sliced and diced.”

  The priest moved his face in close to take a look.

  “The barnacles on the piling cut you up. There’s a lot of blood, but it doesn’t look too bad. Can’t be sure in this light though.”

  “Any idea who attacked you?” Jack asked.

  “Not a clue,” I said.

  “He looked like someone I’ve seen around,” the priest said. “His name’s Fish Conners, but I couldn’t swear it was him. I was too far away to see his face.”

  “So how the hell’d you drag me out of the water?”

  “That wasn’t me,” the priest said. I looked over at Jack and he smiled.

  “Been hauling shrimp most of my life. Good thing it’s high tide. I just grabbed your belt and heaved. We’d better call the cops, huh. That asshole tried to kill you.”

  “Did you recognize the guy?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “You didn’t happen to get a boat name or registration number, did you?”

  “I was too busy trying to find you and pull you out of the water.”

  I turned my gaze back to the priest. “You can’t swear it was Fish Conners?”

  “Not with any confidence.”

  “Then there’s not much reason to call the cops,” I said.

  The two men stood and the shrimper grabbed my hand and levered me to my feet. I was shivering so hard that the priest’s jacket slipped from my hands and fell to the dock. My teeth began to chatter and my shoulder felt as if someone had placed a layer of hot charcoal briquettes under the skin.

  The priest snatched up the jacket and threw it over my shoulders. “We need to get you someplace warm.”

  “I’ll let you take care of him from here, Father,” Jack said, as he turned and started walking down the dock.

  “Thanks again,” I called out.

  The priest p
ut a hand on my arm and gave it a little tug. “Come on, Wes. Let’s get you inside your boat so you can warm up.”

  I stopped and pulled away from the priest. I was no longer drunk and my mind was working just fine, despite the fact that my body was shaking so badly my words came out in a stutter. “Who are you and how the hell do you know my name?”

  “I’m your Uncle Ben. I was on my way down here to talk to you when I saw you being attacked.”

  Chapter 3

  Ben, I was having trouble thinking of him as Uncle Ben or Father Ben, helped me over to Rough Draft. I had a monster headache and I felt like I’d taken a spill off a trampoline. I almost passed out as I stepped down into the cockpit and would have fallen if he hadn’t steadied me.

  “Could you grab the flashlight?” I pointed to the storage cubby above the starboard seat. When Ben turned it on, I slid out the washboards, and snapped the flexible plastic door in place.

  I grabbed a handhold, made my way down the steps, and turned on a light before turning to face the priest. “You want to come in?”

  “Someone needs to clean that shoulder for you. It’s still bleeding.”

  I was about to argue the point when a wave of nausea washed over me. I barely made it to the settee.

  “You got a first aid kit?” Ben asked.

  “In the head. Right hand door above the toilet.”

  I closed my eyes and lay back on the settee and must have passed out. The next thing I knew Ben was shaking me and saying something. His face looked grim.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Your shoulder looks like raw meat. On top of that, you’ve got some slivers in there and maybe some broken pieces of barnacle. It’s going to hurt like hell when I clean it out.”

  Ben had cut the sleeve off my shirt while I’d been out and when I moved my shoulder a blast of pain ran up and down my arm. A flock of black spots floated before my eyes and I would have slid back down into the settee if Ben hadn’t grabbed me.