NINE

 

"I want breakfast!" I opened my eyes and there was an angel in my face. In fact, the angel was in my lap, dressed in the same casual clothes from the night before. "I want it outdoors, and I want sunshine and a breeze."

She kissed me, and this time there was no confusion. The softness of her lips lingered after she backed away. "Mac," she said, "they're not going to take my life away from me. I don't like being told what to do, and I hate the feeling of helplessness I had last night. You and I are going to eat out this morning on the way to my plane. We may even do a little shopping."

I smiled at her and pushed her off my lap. When I stood, my legs were stiff and my back was sore from swinging the fire extinguisher. My eye still hurt. "Boy," I said, "what I wouldn't give for ten minutes alone with a toothbrush."

Katherine turned to her suitcase and produced toothpaste and a brush. When I stepped out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, blinking cold water out of my eyes, Lieutenant Patrick was standing inside the front door with his arms crossed. Katherine had her back to me and didn't turn around when I closed the door.

"What's wrong?" I asked. Katherine didn't move. I followed Patrick's eyes to the bed where the newspaper held a large color photograph of a grinning Bob Birk. The caption read, "I knew they would try something..."

I was tired of seeing his face. The headline said, BIRK ACCUSED OF RAPE, but the front page was a series of articles on the contributions he'd made over the years to the people of Florida, tales of his selfless devotion to the 'little guy.'

When I followed the instructions and turned to page 2A, I was startled by separate photographs of Katherine and me, mine taken sometime during my incarceration five years before. The glaze in my eyes made Charles Manson look like a cherub.

Someone had written short biographies of her and me, and we both sounded pretty disgusting. I tried to imagine the time it would take to put together something like this and the power to place it on the front pages of a seemingly respectable newspaper. Fear tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Boo."

The quote under Birk's picture said he had been expecting the 'opposition' to come up with something to stop his fast climb to the front-runner position in the race for governor but he was surprised, not only by the charges, but by the two slimy characters they'd hired to pull it off. He mentioned that he'd used me to do some work for him over the last few years because he felt sorry for me. He said he was the only person in Palmetto Bay who thought it was possible that I'd been given a raw deal on the charge of murdering my 'live-in' girlfriend, but he had to fire me a couple of days ago after finding me trespassing on his property. He said his daughter told him I was 'peeping' at her.

Birk said the one thing that didn't surprise him was the violence in Katherine's motel room. He said he'd seen Allen Farmer and me drinking together recently, and speculated what happened was the result of a lover's triangle. I had to sit down.

This was good stuff, the best I'd ever seen. Whoever was running his campaign seemed to have unlimited access to power and money, and I honestly felt like crawling in a hole. The printed story of his raping Candace at the Sunset Hotel made Katherine sound like a pimp and her daughter a whore. The hotel came out as the Vatican and Birk as the Pope. They made sure to give Tommy Lovett the position of an injured Cardinal. Birk must've called his handlers right after I left his house, but I still couldn't imagine how they'd done such a complete job of burying us.

"If you plan on getting your butts out of this," the Lieutenant said, "you'd better not waste time sitting on them."

I looked over at him, then at Katherine. She turned from the window and laughed. "Lieutenant Patrick," she hooked her arm in his and held out her other hand to me, "why don't you join us for breakfast?"

"Will you tell me what's happening here?" he asked.

"All of it," I said. I stood up and tossed the paper into the trash can. "Let's eat."

 

 

We spent over an hour in a restaurant having breakfast as people stared. Katherine and I took turns filling in the story as Patrick sat, spellbound.

"What are you going to do about it?" he asked. I shrugged. He exhaled. Katherine ate.

She wanted to call home and brace Candy for the news, so we left her at a pay phone in the airport and stood together at the window. "I have to tell you, Clay," Patrick said, "my natural inclination is to put a lot of space between you and me. Cops are territorial and pretty damned loyal, actually. We're the pit bulls of the human race. You don't live here, so I could turn my back on you, but Tallahassee is my town and this guy Birk is starting to make the hair on my neck stand up.

"I don't know how he's connected, but this ain't ordinary." He looked uncomfortable with this candid monologue. "Truthfully, Ms. Furay's story sounds like a crock of shit to me. Like some kind of radical junk from the Sixties. That's what scares me the most, I think, because I know it's real."

Someone shouted my name, and it startled me. When I turned, bright lights flashed in my eyes and I heard the Lieutenant tell someone to back off.

I blinked my eyes and marveled at the explosions of yellow inside my eyelids. "Is it true you're a convicted murderer?" a man yelled.

"What?" I said.

"Or were you acquitted?" another said.

"Of what?"

"Murder," a woman said.

"I said back off!" Patrick shouted at the crowd.

"I've never been charged with murder," I said. I was surrounded by a mob of reporters, some with tape recorders, some with cameras and video equipment.

"Who paid you to implicate Bob Birk?" a male voice boomed.

"Who paid you to ask me that?" I said. Patrick grabbed my arm and changed places with me.

"C'mon, people, give the man some room," he said. "Stay cool," he whispered to me. People were trying to hold microphones up over his shoulder to reach my face. Floodlights were turned on. I thought about picking my nose.

"Hey!" I knew it was Katherine before I turned my head. As the press beat each other senseless trying to whip their stuff around and aim it at her, she stood defiant, and I heard Patrick say, "Shit."

I wondered if he was as proud of her as I was.

"Bob Birk raped my daughter when she was fourteen years old, and a lot of it just came to light in therapy." Katherine was balanced and direct. "I came to Tallahassee yesterday to file a lawsuit against Birk and two men broke down my door and tried to kill me. If Mr. Clay hadn't shown up just then to take me to the lawyers' office for my deposition, I would be dead."

"Now, which of you people wants to start asking questions?" She gave an impromptu press conference that would have been the envy of the most consummate politician, and the afternoon news carried the story, "Accused Murderer and Girlfriend Try to Slip out of Tallahassee - Questioned at the Airport by Homicide Detective."

Each of the media gave slightly different versions of the same stories.

When I got back to Palmetto Bay I found four broken windows on the front of my house. Someone had painted the word 'Commonist' on my garage door with black spray paint, but I knew what they meant. My phone was wringing, but when I picked up the receiver the caller hung up. This continued until I unplugged the telephone. I swept up the broken glass and four heavy beer bottles from my floor and cooked an early supper.

I parked my car inside the garage, the first time I'd ever done that, and woke twice during the night to the sounds of people running through my yard. After breakfast, I took my cup of coffee outside and hosed broken eggs from the walls. A television news truck was parked at the corner of the block, and as the cameraman held a Minicam, the reporter pointed at me and said things I couldn't hear over the spray of the water. They packed up and zipped away without asking me anything, so I went back in the house and diagramed the important steps in the case, trying to plot a course I could follow. A way out.

Mark came over a couple of days later and flopped down on the sofa, his face pasty, his confidence gone. "Jesus, Mac, I feel like I pulled out in front of a freight train," he said. "They've got me taking out the trash over there."

He worked at the sleekest law firm a resort town could produce, and up until he filed against Birk, he'd been their golden boy. "I've never seen this kind of pressure," Mark said, "I've never even heard of this kind of pressure."

He stayed, and we talked about what had happened. He told me he thought he knew who told Birk where Katherine was the night she almost died. He promised me this person's name as soon as he was sure, not for some macho revenge but just so I'd know. I had to find out who was running things.

We talked about what we thought might happen next, and I told him I was considering giving Katherine a call to tell her it was time for her and Candy to drop out of sight. We hadn't been in touch since the airport, but she told me after the reporters left that Candy and James had been swamped by the press already. I was afraid they would let something slip about Limestone Creek. I pulled my ledger from the desk and wrote a check for Mark.

"Oh, boy!" he said, looking at it. "Now I can get those new flip-flops I've always wanted."

"Kiss my ass," I said.

"Oh," Mark said, reaching into his briefcase and dropping the check in, "I received an express letter from Katherine this morning with some transcripts in it. That's why I came over." He pulled a small yellow envelope from his case. It had my first name written on it in green ink. "This was in the letter."

I took it from him but didn't open it. My fingers were gummy from the sizing I was using to caulk new pieces of glass into my windows. When Mark left I washed up and sat at my kitchen table. I opened the letter and spread the yellow pages out on my tabletop.

"This isn't a love letter," it said. "But I miss you. My bosses have been great at insulating me from the press and (did I tell you Candy's still living with Dr. Kuyatt and his family?). I'm living at the casino hotel now, so you can call me if you want to talk. I told James I wouldn't be coming back to him. I've been trying to do all the right things and please everyone for years, but I'm not sure if we're going to make it through this. I'm going to start pleasing myself.

"I never got the chance to ask about your black eye, but I hope it's better. Mac, no matter how this ends up, I'm glad we met.

"Call me. Kate."

I sat at the table a long time, looking out my window, then rereading the letter. I changed my dirty clothes and went for a drive. I don't know that I'd ever fit in Palmetto Bay, but I was definitely an outsider after my trip to Tallahassee. People cut in line ahead of me at the grocery store and dared me to complain. Gas station attendants shut off the fuel at the nozzle after I'd pumped a dollar or so. Cops cruised along behind me and waited for me to cross the center line. At least Birk didn't send anybody out to follow me around anymore. They were pretty sure I was no longer a bother, so I was able to visit my drops most nights without being seen.

There were various places around town where people I knew left messages for me in the old days, but none of the people I'd called had made an attempt to contact me. This night was no different, so I drove home, parked in the garage and went inside. I reread Kate's letter, poured myself a small glass of wine and walked into the bathroom.

The house was dark and still, and I sat on the edge of my tub, holding the glass in both hands. I felt the peace that only Sheevers could provide, felt myself relax as we shared the silence, and knew my life was changing even as I clung to the past. I didn't want change, and I talked to Patty, alive in the darkness of my mind. Even though I knew this was the crap of which 'Twilight Zone' was made, it was no less real, no less necessary than the air I breathed.

I talked about Katherine. I was afraid I would let her down, afraid I would fail. This case was overwhelming, and my cynicism, my indifference to life, wasn't insulating me the way it once did. I found myself wanting to live, and that felt like a betrayal of Sheevers and the life she gave for me. We sat together in the dark and listened to the little sounds of the world she'd loved so much. It was almost two o'clock, the bars were closed, and it was usually around this time that I lay in bed listening to the eggs splattering against the side of my house.

I heard a car ease to a stop out front and I slipped from the bathroom into the hall. I was embarrassed to be with Sheevers as they trashed our home. I stood still, waiting for the thump of the first egg, but it didn't come. Instead, I heard the tiny snapping sounds the screen door spring makes when it's being stretched. It clicked quietly as someone opened the door very slowly, cautiously. I walked into the bedroom and slipped my pistol from an open drawer, moved through the familiar house to the shadows behind my bookcase, out of the dim light from the aquarium.

The front door opened and a large man tiptoed into my living room, a paper bag in his hand. I stepped up behind him and stuck the cold muzzle of the pistol into his neck. He made a little squeak.

"Do exactly what I tell you," I said, "or I'll kill you."

I put the fingers of my other hand between his shoulder blades. "Get on your knees." He did. I walked to the sofa and sat on the arm, my pistol in line with his eyes. The bore of a nine-millimeter looks just a little bit larger than a train tunnel, especially when you're looking down it into infinity, and this guy's eyes were staring at the unfriendly face of God.

"Whatcha' got there?" I asked, and he looked at the bag as though it were an alien thing. His eyes returned to the pistol. "Well?"

"Eggs," he said. He sounded very meek for such a big man.

"Show me," I said. He reached into the bag, and it rustled as his hand dug frantically for an egg. He produced one at last, and seemed almost proud that he'd done what I'd asked. He held it out to me.

"What were you going to do with those?" I asked, and he shrank back in fear. He didn't know there would be a test, and he had no answers ready. "Tell me." I made sure the pistol didn't waver. He said nothing.

"Maybe you were just hungry?" I said.

"Uh-huh," he mumbled. He was beginning to think he might get out of this alive, so I pushed the pistol into his forehead and said, "Eat the egg."

'What?" he said.

"Eat it, or I'll put a hole in you big enough to drop it through." I gave him a moment to consider this. "Do you understand?"

He squeaked again as he put the egg in his mouth. When he crunched down on it he made such a face that I almost turned away. His eyelids fluttered.

"How many more do you have in there?" I asked politely after he'd finished swallowing. He looked at the bag, and when he spoke his voice was round and hollow.

"Eleven," he said.

"Eat them all," I said. He started to protest, so I got to my feet and curled my finger around the trigger. His eyes crossed.

"Listen to me, you son of a bitch. You're a prowler in my home and I'll kill you in a heartbeat," I said. "And, except for having to clean your brains off my furniture, it won't bother me at all. Now, eat those eggs."

His hand rustled around in the bag for an egg, and he brought it to his lips, popped it in and crunched into it, then made a gurgling sound. "If you throw up," I said, "you'll eat that, too."

He sucked in a deep breath and sucked down another egg. Sweat poured down his face and I was getting sick just watching him, so I moved around behind him and stuck the barrel back into his neck. He repeated the process. Rustle, crunch, gurgle. Rustle, crunch, gurgle.

 

 

I counted them down and told him to turn the bag over and shake it. My voice sounded a little rough and unsteady, but I don't think he noticed. He whimpered as he shook the empty bag.

"Now," I said, "get out of my house."

He took off like a runner out of the blocks and hit the screen door so hard it bounced off the outside wall and caught him in the shoulder as he plunged into the dark yard. I stood in the arch and watched as someone flung open the rear door of the car. He leapt inside.

A couple of excited voices asked questions as the car shot from the curb, then I heard a loud and obscene bubbling sound from inside. The car swerved onto my neighbor's well-kept lawn. Loud curses came from it as the car bounced back onto the road, clipped a mailbox farther down the street and barely made the turn at the corner.

"My car!" a male voice screeched in falsetto. "God damn it! My car!"

I sat on the front step and let the pistol dangle between my knees. The bad thing was, these guys probably hade nothing to do with Bob Birk. More than likely, they were just some concerned citizens - young guys listening to their parents and bosses gripe about people like me screwing up a good town, something that wouldn't have happened in the "Old Days."

The good side was that nobody egged my house again.