Part 1 (2/2)
Wait a minute. Or was Nolen Tyner watching out for them, protecting them? Hired by the piano player.
Christ, he could be keeping an eye on you you, Moran thought. It gave him a strange feeling. It reinforced the premonition he'd been aware of for a couple of weeks now, that he was about to walk into something that would change his life.
Except that it wasn't time for Moran's life to take another turn. He was thirty-eight, not due for a change until forty-two. He believed in seven-year cycles because he couldn't ignore the fact that every seven years something happened and his life would take a turn in a new direction. Only one of his turns was antic.i.p.ated, planned; the rest just seemed to happen, though with a warning, a feeling he'd get. Like now.
When he was seven years old he reached the age of reason and became responsible for his actions. He was told this in second grade, in catechism.
When he was fourteen a big eighteen-year-old Armenian girl who weighed about thirty pounds more than he did took him to bed one summer afternoon; she smelled funny, but it was something, what he learned the human body liked.
When he was eighteen he misplaced the reason he had acquired at seven and joined the Marines, Moran said to get out of being drafted, to have a choice in the matter, but really looking for action. Which he found.
When he was twenty-one, back on the cycle and through with his tour, he left the Marines and his hometown, Detroit, Michigan, and went to work for a cement company as a finisher, to make a lot of money. This was in Miami, Florida.
When he was twenty-eight Moran married a girl by the name of Noel Sutton and became rich. He went to work for Noel's dad as a condominium developer, wore a suit, bought a big house in Coral Cables and joined Leucadendra Country Club, never for any length of time at ease in Coral Gables high society. He couldn't figure out how those people could take themselves and what they did so seriously and still act bored. n.o.body ever jumped up and said, ”I'm rich and, Christ, is it great!” Moran knew it was not his kind of life.
And when he was thirty-five Noel, then thirty, divorced him. She said, ”Do you think you can get by just being a hunk all your life? Well, you're wrong, you're already losing it.” Answering her own question, which was a habit of Noel's. Moran told her answering her own questions was a character defect. That and trying to change him and always being p.i.s.sed off at him about something. For not wearing the outfits she bought him with little animals and polo players on them. For not staying on his side of the court when they played mixed doubles and she never moved. For ”constantly” bugging her about leaving her clothes on the floor, which he'd mentioned maybe a couple times and given up. For drinking beer out of the can. For not having his Marine Corps tattoo removed. For growing a beard. A lot of little picky things like that. He did shave off the beard, stared at his solemn reflection in the mirror-he looked like he was recovering from an operation-and immediately began growing another one. Henry Th.o.r.eau had said, ”Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Moran believed those words ought to be cut in stone.
The divorce was not a bad turn in the cycle. Moran had never been able to say his wife's name out loud without feeling self-conscious or thinking of Christmas. So that was a relief, not having to say her name. Also, not having to look bright and aggressive when he was with her dad. Or look at beachfront property and picture high-rise condominiums blocking the view.
He had certainly been attracted to Noel, a pet.i.te little thing with closely cropped dark hair and a haughty a.s.s: she seemed to be always at attention, her back arched, her perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s and pert can sticking out proudly; but he wasn't sure now if it was love or horniness that had led him to marriage. In the divorce settlement Noel got the house in Coral Gables and a place her dad had given them in Key West and Moran got their investment property, a twelve-unit resort motel in Pompano Beach, the Coconut Palms without the palm trees.
Sort of a U-shaped compound, white with aqua trim. Two levels of efficiencies along the street side of the property. A wing of four one-bedroom apartments, two on each level, that extended out toward the beach. The apartment wing was parallel to a white stucco one-bedroom Florida bungalow that also faced the beach. And the oval swimming pool was in between, in the middle of the compound.
Moran moved into the bungalow and found he liked living on the beach and being an innkeeper, once he'd hired a clerk-accountant and a part-time maid. He liked meeting the different people. He liked being in the sun most of the day, doing odd jobs, fis.h.i.+ng for yellowtail and snapper once a week. Renting the efficiencies for fifty a day in season and the apartments for seventy-five Moran grossed around eighty thousand a year. Taxes, utilities, upkeep and salaries ran thirty-five to forty, so Moran wasn't exactly socking it away. Still, it was a nice life and he was in no hurry to change it.
Then why did he feel it was about to take another turn on him?
He was planning a trip next week: fly down to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, a vacationland Moran had invaded with the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines in 1965 when a revolution broke out and Johnson sent in Marines and Airborne to safeguard American lives and while you're at it run out the Communists. ”I'm not going to have another Cuba in the Caribbean,” the president said. In his thirty-day war Cpl. George S. Moran, Bravo Company, Third Platoon, a First Squad fire-team leader, shot a sniper, was wounded, taken prisoner by the rebels, got a Purple Heart and met a Dominican girl he would never forget. He wanted to walk those streets again without sniper fire coming in and see what he remembered. He might even look up the girl who had once tried to kill him. See if she was still around.
Maybe it was the antic.i.p.ation of the trip that Moran mistook for a premonition of something about to happen.
But maybe it was something else. Something winging in at him out of the blue.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON at the munic.i.p.al tennis courts, Moran worked his tail off to win two hard sets, hanging in there against a kid with a vicious serve and a red headband who'd try to stare him down whenever Moran called a close shot out of bounds. Moran was only in doubt about his calls a couple of times. He d.i.n.ked the kid to death with left-handed backspin junk, sliding the kid around on the clay, until the kid threw his racket at the fence and dug out a ten-dollar bill folded to the size of a stamp. Moran said to him, ”You're all right, kid. Keep at it.” He had always wanted to call somebody ”kid” and today was the first time. at the munic.i.p.al tennis courts, Moran worked his tail off to win two hard sets, hanging in there against a kid with a vicious serve and a red headband who'd try to stare him down whenever Moran called a close shot out of bounds. Moran was only in doubt about his calls a couple of times. He d.i.n.ked the kid to death with left-handed backspin junk, sliding the kid around on the clay, until the kid threw his racket at the fence and dug out a ten-dollar bill folded to the size of a stamp. Moran said to him, ”You're all right, kid. Keep at it.” He had always wanted to call somebody ”kid” and today was the first time.
When he got back to the Coconut Palms there was Nolen Tyner out by the pool with a six-pack.
Jerry Shea, sitting at the office desk with a pile of bills, was whistling as he made entries in the ledger. Moran never knew the songs Jerry whistled. He asked him today, what's the name of that? And Jerry said, ”This Year's Crop of Kisses.” Jerry was a retired insurance salesman, sixty-seven, who c.o.c.ked his golf cap to one side, slapped his broken blood vessels with Old Spice and went after lonely widows who'd invite him up to their condominiums for dinner, happy to cook for somebody again, have some fun. Moran pictured withered moth-eaten flanks, or else globs of cellulite getting in the way. Jerry said there was more active poon around than you could shake a stick at. With the fat ones, you rolled them in flour and looked for the wet spot.
Moran said, sitting down, taking off his tennis shoes and socks, ”That guy out there drinking beer-”
”Mr. Nolen Tyner,” Jerry said. ”Works for Marshall Sisco Investigations, Incorporated, Miami. Actually their office is in Coral Gables.”
”He told you that?”
”Ask a person what they do, they generally tell you,” Jerry said. ”Especially since I recognized the address. We used to use Marshall Sisco on insurance investigations from time to time; it's a good outfit. Nolen says he's been with them a year, but I think he's part-time help. Before that played dinner theaters up and down the coast and says he's been in movies. He was an actor.”
”I think he still is,” Moran said. ”He checked in yesterday about two and left at six, didn't use the room.”
”Well, when he come in today,” Jerry said, ”he took it for a week. Number Five. I asked him was he taking some time off and he says well, you could say that. Sort of combining business with pleasure.”
Moran got up and turned to the window to look at Nolen lounging in the shade. The two secretaries from Fort Wayne had their recliners on the cement walk out by the wall, aimed at the sun that soon would be hidden behind the condo next-door, the Aurora. Moran's gaze moved from their pink corrugated thighs to Number One.
”How about the lovers?”
”They're in there.” Jerry swiveled around from the desk. ”The woman got here first for a change. Then, when the piano player come, Nolen Tyner got up and went over to say something to him. They talked a few minutes, the piano player goes on inside Number One, then comes out again and has another talk with Mr. Tyner.”
”Arguing?”
”I don't believe so. A lot of nodding, both of 'em, getting along fine. Then the piano player goes back inside and Mr. Tyner returns to his beer.”
”This is a nice quiet place,” Moran said. ”I don't want some husband coming here with a gun.”
”Maybe they're friends,” Jerry said. ”Or she's a rich woman and Nolen Tyner's her bodyguard; why he thinks it's pretty good duty, combining, as he says, business with pleasure.”
”Maybe,” Moran said. ”But I better find out.”
He didn't want to talk to the guy in his sweaty whites, barefoot; it wasn't his natural image. It reminded him of the country club, standing around in whites in polite conversation, waiters coming out with trays of tall drinks. Moran followed the walk to his bungalow, pa.s.sing behind the figure reclined in the lounge chair, waved to the two 40year-old secretaries from Fort Wayne and went inside. He drank a beer while he showered and changed into jeans, a T-s.h.i.+rt and dry tennis shoes, old ones that were worn through and he slipped on without socks. He got a fresh beer from the refrigerator, then on second thought another one and took them, one in each hand, out to the Marshall Sisco investigator lying in the shade.
”You must like the place you sign up for a week.”
Nolen Tyner opened his eyes behind the aviator sungla.s.ses, startled, about to rise, then relaxing again as he saw Moran extending the beer.
”Cold one for you,” Moran said. ”Yours must be pretty warm by now.” Four empty cans stood upright on the ground next to the lounge chair with two full ones still in the cardboard casing.
”That's very kind of you,” Nolen said. He jerked the backrest of the chair up a notch and reached for the can of beer that was beaded with drops of ice water. His sleeve rode up to reveal a bluish tattoo on his right forearm, a two-inch eagle with its wings raised.
While on Moran's left forearm, also extended, was his faded blue Marine Corps insignia.
They looked at each other. Nolen said, ”From the halls of Montezuma, huh?” Smiling, popping open the can of beer.
”And I take it you were airborne,” Moran said. ”Not by any chance the Eighty-second?”
”That's the one.”
”Second or Third Brigade maybe?”
”Third. You're leading up to something, aren't you?”
”As a matter of fact,” Moran said. ”I wonder if you were in Santo Domingo sixteen years ago. Sitting on the bank of the Ozama River by any chance?”
”Sitting high on the east bank, up on the grain elevators,” Nolen said, smiling some more. ”You don't mean to tell me you were there?”
Moran pulled a recliner over with his foot and sat down, straddling the leg rest, now eye to eye with Nolan. ”You had a weapons squad up there, didn't you? Up on the silos, or whatever they were. With a one-oh-six recoiless rifle?”
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