Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

by Bevill, C. L.

  Loyal nodded and repeated the words. “I won’t mention this with anyone.”

  “Or I might have to make some calls. The DEA. Customs. Who is it that deals with illegal aliens and sweat shops?”

  “It’s not a sweat...” Loyal shut up again.

  Gower chuckled. “I’m sure that you’re a saint of propriety, Mr. Loyal. But today’s your lucky day. I’ve got to run. People to call and places to go. I’ll leave you a card with a number on it. If...Mary Lynn...happens to contact you again or if you see her in the street, see her photograph in the papers, remember something that you’ve forgotten to tell me, you’ll call this number.” His hand disappeared inside his jacket and reappeared, a smooth movement that would have made a professional magician nod with admiration. A white business card fluttered to the floor. Then the smile faded from Gower’s handsome face. “Other things can happen to a man with loose lips, Mr. Loyal. Terrible accidents. To their homes. To their businesses. Even to themselves.”

  “Terrible things,” whispered Loyal, beginning to become truly frightened.

  Gower unlocked the door and opened it, standing half in and half out. “By the way, I particularly enjoyed your Picasso in your bedroom. It’s only a drawing, but it has such strong lines and shows the potential of the young man.” His blue eyes caught the other man’s alarmed brown ones as he realized that the unknown man had been inside his own house, in his bedroom. “Wouldn’t you say?”

  Minutes later and five miles away, Gower pulled up to a row of phone booths and parked his rental illegally. He called a phone number in Washington, D.C. When an answering machine picked up he said, “The line is secure. The scarlet tanager has surfaced again. A watcher reports a positive identification on a news segment, originating in the Pacific Northwest. This fits in with previous movements and expectations of our flyaway bird. I’m on my way to the vicinity, post haste, with back up, and will immediately secure our prey before she has a chance to take flight again. I suggest that the local authorities not be utilized unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Less chance of messy questions to be asked by inquisitive police officers.”

  He hung up and made another call to a man he called Redmond, a man who had connections into the worlds that Gower did not. With this powerful and shrewd man watching his back there would be less chance of more slip-ups or miscalculations because he would be coming with him to Oregon. The target had been sighted in some little town called Sullivan’s Bay, right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, some five hundred miles away from where he now stood. He was closer than he had been to her for years. The clever little bitch has finally made a mistake. A very large, notable, newsworthy mistake. Not only did she get photographed publicly, but also she stupidly used her own first name!

  •

  Across the country in an office in Washington, D.C., only two miles away from the U.S. Capitol Building, Jackson Theron listened to his direct line’s answering machine message with a frown knitting his face. A dark haired man with equally dark eyes he considered the implications of the message. Gower sounds excited, he thought. Excited. That cold man with ice water filling every inch of his veins sounds almost...giddy. He didn’t like talking to the man if he didn’t have to as talking to Gower made a chill run down his back. Something inside Theron told him that if Gower ever decided that Theron’s death was requisite then Theron was simply a walking dead man from then on. There would be no discussion. There would be no second chances. Simply death and Gower would continue on whatever venue that motivated him at the time.

  Theron stood up, a lean, well-defined man even with an impeccable gray suit over his wiry frame, and went to the window that overlooked the Potomac River. Off to one side he could see the top half of the Washington monument. A news segment? That wasn’t good. What if someone recognized her? Someone else. True, it had been years, and her appearance had to be different in order for her to have successfully hidden all this time. But if one of Gower’s special watchers who regularly recorded and scrutinized the major news from across the United States in a most likely fruitless attempt to catch the target on digital somewhere caught her, then someone else might have as well. Gower himself had told Theron that this was a longshot, that they would be better off sticking to gumshoe tactics, just plain old basic detective work. In fact this would be like winning the Lotto.

  Laughing to himself, Theron put a hand on the glass. Sometimes longshots pay off. Everyone hopes and prays they would win the lottery. And I have. Oh, have I. It was cold outside. Some icy winds from far north climes had blown in, bringing a front right across the capitol city. This was finally going to be over soon, his mountain of debts could be repaid, he could put his life back together, and Theron could put it all behind him. Finally.

  •

  In Lincoln County, Oregon, Teddy finally got the doctor to write an order to remove the IV. She had spent a restless night in the hospital, with nurses running in and out of her room every five minutes, and journalists in the lobby, waiting to interview the girl who had rescued the boy from certain drowning by jumping off the bay bridge right after the boy had fallen in.

  Teddy had discovered that she couldn’t get ten feet down the hall without someone pointing a finger at her and making excited noises. So she played like she was a good patient and stuck to the rules.

  For the time being...

  All around her were flowers, balloons, and gifts that various and sundry well-wishers had sent to the young heroine. Nurse Chapman had even mentioned that at least a few hundred dollars had been mailed in or dropped off by visitors to pay for the young woman’s hospital stay. And of course, the Sheltons had offered to pay for her bills. All of which meant that Sailor Jack had owned up to someone that he didn’t provide medical insurance for his employees and he certainly wasn’t going to pay the hospital, even if the publicity was great for his two ships and the whale watching biz.

  Shortly after an awful hospital breakfast had been served, Dr. Goodstreet had wandered out, grumbling about patients knowing more about medicine than himself. She had been grateful that he hadn’t asked about some of the scars on her body, or about how some of her limbs had previously been broken, keeping any unwarranted suspicions to himself. Then, Mama Shelton wandered in at eight AM with a pile of glossy new magazines and a make-up kit for the woman who had rescued her one and only baby. Her name, she mentioned, was Clarissa. “Call me Clarry,” she told Teddy, after gushing over the younger woman and embracing her in a hug that Teddy found distinctly uncomfortable.

  Then Clarry told Teddy that Danby would be released this morning and that they would stop by to thank her once more, and that if there was anything more she could do for the young woman all she had to do was ask.

  Teddy fixed Clarry with a look. Can you change my life and make it so some of the sorry shit that has happened to me never really happened? But that wasn’t a reasonable request to make, not even to God Himself, and Teddy merely smiled acquiescently.

  The mother, with her butter yellow hair and sharp face, nodded approvingly, and murmured, “They tell me you don’t have many relatives.”

  “No,” Teddy answered. She didn’t, in fact. Not anyone that she really thought a hill of beans about.

  “Well, if you need money you give me a call,” Clarry nodded again and passed a little business card to Teddy. Teddy glanced down at it and saw that Clarissa R. Shelton was a CPA from Portland, Oregon. It was in an elegant, readable script on a buff colored background and announced that Clarry did all right for herself.

  “Don’t worry,” croaked Teddy. Her voice was still a little raw from the salt water she’d swallowed. “I won’t need money from you.” She paused as she tried to find the words. “I just didn’t want to see your boy hurt. Or killed. I didn’t really think about...”

  Clarry reached out to pat the younger woman’s hand. “I didn’t mean to imply that you’ve done anything for money, dear. It’s just that I’m so grateful and it’s the least I can do.”

 
Teddy blew air out between her lips. “Well, that make-up kit is great. I feel naked without a little something-something on.”

  Danby’s mother had to fight to keep her eyes from rolling up in her head. She very much remembered what Teddy looked like before she’d gone into the drink to rescue her son. After all Clarry had been thinking that young girls like Teddy wore entirely too much make-up and the ticket clerk must go through a tube of mascara on a weekly basis and a score of lipsticks. The make-up kit was just the thing any woman would need after that experience. But if only Teddy Smith would wear less, and lose that dreadful nose stud and eyebrow ring. It detracted from her natural good looks and made her look ten years older than she obviously was. “Well, keep in mind that you have the lovely gift of youth and you don’t need all of that stuff on your eyes.”

  That’s what you think, thought Teddy and shrugged.

  Clarry rose and left. She had to rescue her son from her husband, who had flown down from Portland the previous evening to see what kind of trouble Danby had gotten himself into of late. Last week he’d fallen into a pool with sea urchins at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and been banned for life from that facility. Then there was an incident at a specialty glass works shop in Florence involving the various breakages of materials that had put a large dent in Clarry’s pocketbook. Oh, he’s a precocious child. In any case, Danby Senior had tuned into TBS on the television set in the hospital room and was watching Hitchcock’s The Birds. And Clarry was positive the movie was going to warp their son’s mind about all flying creatures.

  Chapter Four

  August 15th

  Excerpt from Boudraux’s Big Book of Birding for Beginners, written by Boudraux Gille, Smith and Sons Publishing, 1987, pg. 75: The Common Poorwill, Phalaenoptilus Nuttallii, known as such for the male’s similarly sounding and distinctive mating call, ‘poor-will’ or ‘poor-will-up,’ is a master of camouflage accomplishment in the avian universe. These elusive birds are rarely seen until they fly, causing some birders to be wary lest they accidentally step on them. Their nest and eggs tend to blend into their surrounding rocks and dry, open, grassy environments. Their light to dark brown plumage, with pale throat, and finely barred under parts greatly assists this species to avoid potential predators...

  Teddy was using every swear word and phrase that she knew. It was an extensive list. There was a variety of English words and phrases, followed by some in Mandarin Chinese, a smattering in Spanish, and ending up with a few in a Tillamook Indian dialect. She had been picking up the Tillamook at the fish plant from a Native-American named Marge who giggled when the young woman obediently repeated them. She had no idea what the meaning was for some of the words but they sounded great when she lumped them all together.

  Having woken up about six-thirty in the evening from a drug-induced sleep, she immediately realized that she had slept through unknown and numerous opportunities to escape the hospital in relative security. The hospital was much busier during the day and there was ample occasion to evade anyone who would seek to detain her for whatever reason. Teddy was cursing fluidly and with great enthusiasm because she suspected that Nurse Chapman, who could have successfully doubled as a bouncer at a night club in East L.A., had slipped her a mickey because she knew that the young woman had slept little, if any, the night before.

  One minute Teddy was still arguing about the IV in the back of her wrist, which was patently unnecessary, and the next she was waking up hours later because someone was loudly pushing a cart down the hall, its casters screeching like banshees. She looked around her and blinked sleepily. Cursing graphically did not help the waking process. She slipped out of bed and was pleased to discover that not only did she feel better but that the IV had vanished while she was sleeping, that someone had removed it without even waking her. A Band Aid was in its place. Everything else still ached, but it was bearable. The worst was that she learned that stitches above her eyebrow hurt each and every time she made any kind of expression. Smiling hurt. Frowning hurt. Unwittingly arching an eyebrow really hurt, and she did it a lot.

  Making use of the bathroom Teddy washed her face, frowned at the stitches, and immediately regretted it. She rinsed out her hair, which still stank of salt water, and managed to make herself somewhat presentable. She remembered Clarry Shelton’s gift and retrieved it from her bedside, pushing flowers and balloons aside to get at it. Then she put an abundance of make up on, hoping that the nurses wouldn’t straightaway recognize Teddy in full combat goo.

  Pale beige foundation titled ‘sudden ivory’ was followed by eye shadow. That color was labeled ‘twilight violet,’ which was followed by eyeliner entitled ‘deepest black.’ Cheek rouge named ‘burning embers’ was applied. Heavy mascara called ‘stygian black’ that Teddy employed diligently in a repeated layering effect went on next, which was followed by a careful application of ‘shocking pink’ lip liner. The kit was limited to ‘normal’ colors that Teddy wouldn’t have normally used, but there was a lipstick she thought would finalize the whole deal. ‘Candy-apple red’ would make people look at her bow-shaped lips rather than her features. Ditto on the diamond stud in my nose. Likewise the eyebrow ring, fortuitously on the eyebrow opposite the one with the stitches.

  Thinking of the stitches made her wrinkle her brow once more and she crossly thought, Danby would do well to pursue a career in soccer, considering his strong kicking leg.

  Her continued presence in the hospital meant one thing. Sailor Jack had not only blabbed about lack of health care for young Miss Smith, but that sometimes the young woman didn’t have enough money to rent a room and that she slept on the beach. Sometimes she had a regular place, but Sailor Jack didn’t always need steady help at the Bay. Neither did the fish factory, all because of the seasonal flow of tourists and flagging fish industry. Typically Teddy would have been kicked out of the hospital the same day, but they were keeping her because she was a ‘heroine.’ Also it was because she was ‘homeless,’ although they certainly wouldn’t mention that fact to Teddy. Sailor Jack had probably handed over her meager bag of belongings to the local cops so they could find a next of kin, someone who would take responsibility. I.e., someone who would pay the bills in case the Sheltons didn’t cough up the dough or in case donations to the young heroine didn’t cover the cost.

  As a matter of fact, Nurse Chapman had probably done her an unintentional favor by giving her a little extra something in her cup of pills this morning. The homegrown authorities had probably wandered in to question her and found her snoring like a sailor after a three-day binge. Teddy knew she was all right because she was going to be out of this place and just as soon as she could find a way of going undetected.

  No more pills for this thing. She frowned again and instantly winced, feeling a tug of stitches. I’ve got to stop doing that. She felt badly about the hospital bill, no matter what she had done or not done to get in this place. Leaving bills unpaid to people or places like this always seemed wrong, no matter what horrible things she witnessed or how impersonal some corporations could be in the business world. There wasn’t anything she could do about that right now, except maybe call Jack later and tell him to forward her last paycheck directly to the hospital. Sure, the Sheltons had offered to pay, but that didn’t seem right, either.

  When Teddy finished in the bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror and was delighted that she didn’t look even a little bit like the teenaged girl that woke up in the hospital bed a half hour before. Instead she looked like a hooker in a hospital gown, ready to find work. Good.

  The only negative thing was that her hair was lying flat across her head, still damp. She couldn’t do anything about that. But she knew once it was dry, its brilliant scarlet color would still be the main focus.

  When she went back into her room, she found that her clothes had disappeared. They weren’t in the locker. They weren’t under the bed. They weren’t in the garbage can. She rubbed her nose a little and seemed to remember someone cutting on her shirt
to get to her ribs, which explained that vanished piece of apparel. Likewise, the jeans had become invisible. And a little memory told her that when she had been pulled out of the sea, one of her shoes had become fish food. Or at least some sort of fish entertainment.

  Clothing being cut from her body brought back another flash of unwanted memory. A time when she was blanketed in blackness, surrounded by night, tempest-tossed by the sound of screaming, of air rushing past her, of her mother’s frightened moans, and of her father vanishing into the same blackness. When blackness had turned into licking flames she could only see her mother’s fingers touching her arm, covered with blood. Then men were yelling and people in uniforms were cutting bits of cloth from her body, using oddly shaped scissors and murmuring comforting words to her.

  Blinking away the angry tear that beaded at the corner of her eyes, she ruthlessly shoved away the past, putting it into the back of her mind, where it could do the least amount of harm. Any other clothing that she owned was in the bag that had been left at Sailor Jack’s place, not to mention her cache of money. She didn’t doubt that it was long gone now.

  “Crap,” she muttered, her vast repertoire of colorful obscenities exhausted. She glanced down at the hospital gown she wore. Her butt was exposed every time a crosswind blew. She wasn’t going to walk out of the building wearing this, at least not without attracting a lot of undesired attention. There was a hospital robe lying across a chair so she wrapped it around her slender shoulders and tied the bottom loosely. That wasn’t going to get her out of the hospital either. Not with ‘Lincoln Memorial Hospital’ in three inches letters displayed across her backside.