SIX

 

"You're a detective?" the rich girl said, then giggled.

The bad thing is, I always knew something was wrong with the Limestone Creek murders, that someone was going to catch hell for it. I just never imagined it would be me. I stared up at the girl from where I lay on the lawn, her boyfriend's boot tip touching my ear. She was maybe seventeen, but her face looked tired, like she never slept. The makeup, contemptuously applied, didn't help. There's now way, under the circumstance, that I can say I felt sorry for her and not make it sound sarcastic, but I did. Pretty, rich girls are something like sideshow freaks. Their career choices are limited.

"He's not a real detective," I heard a man's voice come from the patio. He's McDonald Clay."

The boyfriend laughed. The man's voice wasn't new to me; I knew him, too - of course, everyone knew his voice. You didn't watch television or listen to the radio in Palmetto Bay without hearing him sell his condos, his luxury lakefront lots, his Gulf-front properties. When you watched the local news you heard his political opinions, saw him patting minority children on their heads. He was Bob Birk, of Bob Birk's everything.

Everyone knew his voice, but it was more than familiar to me. Birk's was the first money I ever took to investigate something he didn't want investigated and come up with the conclusion for which he'd paid. I had thought it would be hard, but it wasn't. It was just me then; Sheevers had been long gone. I sat in my office, drank Drambuie and played dice baseball for five days until they brought me the results of 'my' investigation. 'Proof' that Birk's friend and associate hadn't filled his car lots with hot cars from Alabama, their numbers altered to match serial numbers.

I memorized the facts over the weekend, and on the following Tuesday I sat in the hot seat in circuit court, recited my litany, then stood in the hallway watching their beaming faces as they slapped me on the shoulder and paid me with a check with Bob Birk's logo. I, in turn, made the house payment, paid the bills and bought groceries. Over a period of time, I became a man who could be counted on to do what he's told, for a price.

Birk pulled me aside one day and said, "Clay, you're an idiot. You always swim against the current. Always. I mean, Christ, don't you ever think to yourself, What the fuck am I doing?"

I didn't answer, and it made him mad.

"Well, shit," he said. "It's no skin off my ass, but it seems to me that one day you'd wake up and realize that no one gives a shit for you. You're no hero. You're just a dumb geek that let his girlfriend get bumped off, and you didn't even do anything about it. 'Tell you the truth, it embarrasses me to think of you as an American. I mean, what the hell did you ever do for your country?" He rolled his eyes for my benefit.

I shrugged and asked if he wanted me to gas up the truck while I was in town. He told me to get fucked, then he tossed me the gas credit card. I didn't care what he said to me. The only thing that mattered was the check that paid my bills and allowed me to live in the house where Patty Sheevers still walked, where she and I would sit together through the quiet nights and listen to the wind.

Birk's rich daughter looked down at me without emotion. Even the smile was gone. She would never believe there was a time I laughed at men like her father, the man who seemed destined to be Florida's next governor.

"Oh." I saw the recognition in her pale, blue eyes. It was as though she'd just scraped me from the bottom of her shoe and found something disgusting. "I've seen you," she said. "You work for Daddy."

"Not anymore he doesn't," Birk said. I felt the wet lawn through my suit coat and turned my head to the sound of his voice, looking past his rich daughter. In doing so, I noticed that, except for the distinct jaw line that branded her as his own, she was his direct opposite. Where he was short, she was tall; where he was fat, she was thin; He was dark and swarthy and she was fair and smooth, and I knew then that his wife hated him. I'd never met her, but I immediately respected a woman who could stand up to the great Bob Birk and create this act of genetic defiance.

"Have you ever heard of Candace Furay?" I said.

Birk blinked. "Who?"

"Her girlfriends called her Candy."

Bob Birk looked at his daughter's boyfriend. "Help Mr. Clay to his feet."

The boyfriend leaned down and grabbed my wrist, pulling me upright like he was taking up an anchor, then held my elbow as I caught my balance. It seemed fair, since he was the one who knocked me down. After that one punch I was just glad he hadn't caught me a couple of minutes earlier when I was in Birk's home office with my hands in the safe.

"So that's the reason you were sneaking around my house?" Birk said. "Looking for some bitch?"

"I wasn't aware I was sneaking," I said.

"Shut up," Birk said. "You caused all this trouble just to ask me something you could've said on the telephone? Listen, you asshole, I'm not here to help you chase down your old girlfriends - you've just made me late for a dinner party."

I'd seen it in the newspaper. A gala event at the yacht club to grease the skids on Birk's bid for governor. Several well-known politicians from around the Southeast were slated to appear, and there would be drinks and dancing.

Birk's black tuxedo sucked up the light from his security lamps, and his daughter was in a gown. The boyfriend was wearing one of those long black coats that cost a lot of money and make tall people look short.

"Do you know why I've paid your way these last couple of years, you piece of shit?" Birk said. "And don't you dare forget it's been me lining your pockets. Do you really think you're worth the money I give you? Shit, you make me sick.

"I feel sorry for you." He held out his hands, palms up. "I'm one of the few people who thought maybe you didn't murder your girlfriend, but maybe I was wrong about that, too." Birk was getting madder as he talked.

"Listen to me, you lousy fuck." He dropped his voice to a menacing whisper. "You just fell off the gravy train. You think you can sneak around my home and scare my little girl to death and play Dick Tracy with me and I'm gonna roll over and put my feet in the air?" There was a long and menacing silence. He was looking at my face, but his eyes were unfocused.

"'Tell you what I'm gonna do. I'll give you two minutes to get the fuck off my land and then I'm gonna send SeeSee after you." He nodded to the side and I looked to the corner of the patio. I'd seen the Rottweiler before, but had never noticed he was larger than a garbage can. He sat still as a table leg, watching his master.

Birk had gone through a lot of dogs in the three-plus years I'd been around him, but none like old SeeSee. I didn't spend a lot of time admiring the dog. Before my mind fully registered the fact that something that big was being held back by a choke chain the size of my little finger, my body had turned and my feet were searching down the long driveway for the open gate.

The rich daughter saved my life, but I credit the mother's genes. I was almost at the gate when I heard her say, in a mixture of horror and fascination, "Daddy!"

Because of that I heard the tiny, chinking sound of the choke chain being released, and I took off in a dead run for my car. As I ran around to the driver's side I could hear the dog's paws slapping the pavement behind me. I tore open the door and leapt inside, slamming it shut only to notice, just as the dog lunged, that the window was open.

I fell to the side as the dog's chest crashed against the door, his teeth clacking together so close to my face that I could smell his breath. He bounced back to the street and regained his footing. I sat up, fumbling for the window crank as he leapt again. I had the window about a quarter of the way up and he pushed his head inside, growling as his teeth clamped down on the thin collar of my dress coat.

 

 

I pulled back on the crank and felt pressure as the edge of the window met the dog. I gripped the puny alloy in both hands, drawing it back like an oar. The glass pressed into the dog's throat, but he didn't seem to notice until he tried to pull his head back for a better grip and found himself held. He tried to turn his head from side to side on the massive neck but I kept pulling, watching the top of the window sink deeper into the thick folds of skin. Suddenly, he realized he was in trouble and tried to retreat, grunting as he twisted against the headliner, his claws tearing at the paint, screeching down to the metal.

I hung on to the crank desperately, hoping it wouldn't break off in my hands and the dog went wild. He let go of my collar and clamped his mouth shut, eyes closed as he began thrashing against the window. He struggled. I heard the window crack and saw a spider web of lines form in the depths of the safety glass as he pushed and pulled. I put all my strength into the crank, giving up the notion of waiting him out, and it slipped over the metal nipple that held it. I had to lean into the door to get a better grip, and we touched heads. He was whimpering, and I could smell the stink of his fear. I pushed hard with my feet against the floorboard, my palms sweaty as I struggled to hold on to the crank.

The dog shuddered and his lips went slack. He blew out bubbles of blood that dotted the dash and fell on my jacket, moaned so deep inside him it sounded as if

it came from down the street, and died. His body sagged against the door and the window gave way, breaking out and holding its shape for a moment as the dog hung there, then falling outward as the massive body dropped to the street.

My arms were twitching as though they attached to electric wires, but I managed to open the door and push the body aside until I could climb out. I heard the clapping of shoes on the drive as they ran to the sound of the commotion and I reached down, wrapping my fingers around the dog's throat. I used up all my remaining strength lifting the carcass and walked on wobbly legs to the sidewalk.

As Birk and the boyfriend rounded the corner from the large brick and cast-iron gates to the street, I pressed my thumbs into the dog's neck and shook it a few times for effect. I looked up at their comic forms, frozen in midstride, snarled and dropped the lifeless body at my feet.

I turned my back on them and walked around the car's trunk to the door, stepped inside and drove away with the window glass hanging like a thick cloth over the mutilated paint job. Better to leave them guessing.

I knew I had crossed the line then. For the first time in nearly five years, I had become a threat to someone. I saw it in Birk's eyes when he blinked. I heard it in his voice, and when he responded to Candy's name by mentioning old girlfriends, I knew it was real. There was something in his voice, in his eyes. It wasn't much to base a suspicion on, but I didn't need much. Up until then, though, I had wanted to be wrong.