Part 1 (1/2)
MIKE STEWART.
DOG ISLAND.
For my parents.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps.
WALT WHITMAN.
On the Beach at Night.
prologue.
The motor stopped. Cool rain glanced off the winds.h.i.+eld and side windows in gray needles and disappeared into the dark sheet of water stretched across the parking lot. Inside the car, a sinewy boy with sun-bleached hair leaned across the center console and pushed his mouth against a teenage girl's lips. She put her hand on the back of his head, and the boy began to fondle her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with his left hand. Pulling away, the girl popped open the pa.s.senger door and stepped out onto wet pavement where she spun in a circle, her arms extended, her palms cupped to catch the rain. Even at night, her face glowed from warm days of Florida sun. Thick black hair bounced against her shoulder blades as she danced.
The boy said something from inside the car. The girl stopped and ran across the pavement and onto the sand toward the surf, where she disappeared into the night. The boy muttered something; then he stepped out and followed.
He found her sitting on a scattered path of gray and white sh.e.l.ls at the high-tide mark, kicking at waves with her toes as they lapped against her feet and calves. He sat down on the sand behind her, encircled her hips with his legs, and reached around from behind to hold both of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in sunburned hands. She seemed not to notice. She sat and watched whitecaps roll across the rain-splattered Gulf.
Growing restless for a response, he pulled her over backward and rolled on top of her. His hands met behind her neck, and his legs intertwined with hers. Their mouths worked together while her hands slowly kneaded the sand beside her hips. Without warning or finesse, the boy's clumsy hands shoved her wind-breaker, s.h.i.+rt, and bra up to her neck, and the sun-bleached head moved down to kiss her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The girl lay still for seconds while his mouth moved over her nipples. Her hands squeezed pockets of sand. Tears filled the corners of closed lids and rolled down her cheekbones and temples, mixing with the salt spray and cool raindrops in her hair.
”Stop.”
The boy didn't respond, except to press harder against her with his hips and to work more frantically with his tongue.
”Stop, please.” She pushed him away and stood up. He watched her b.r.e.a.s.t.s until she had untangled her clothes and pulled her s.h.i.+rtfront over the cotton bra. She looked out again at the whitecaps. Behind her, the boy walked back up the beach and climbed into his Mustang. The girl turned and walked away down the sh.o.r.eline. In the distance, she could hear the car drive away.
She carried her sandals dangling from two fingers and squeezed the sharp, cool sand with her toes as she walked. The rhythms and the scents of the Gulf echoed the rhythms and scents of childhood; they reminded her, in a softer, easier way, of the Atlantic sh.o.r.e. There was still the throb of distant hurt in the waves, but she needed the sound. Maybe she even needed the hurt. She hugged her windbreaker tight. All around her, swirls of fog hugged the beach above rippled shadows in the sand.
She had hoped the boy in the Mustang would walk with her along the sand and softly kiss her and maybe tell her something about the stars, but that wasn't life. She had known that when he asked her out. Now, she had no way to get home.
The girl walked until creosote pilings marking the end of public access beaches materialized out of the night. Turning her back to the water, she moved up the beach and found a lounge chair on the patio of a pastel beach house. There was no car on the oyster-sh.e.l.l driveway and no sign of life inside. She pressed her fist against the flesh between her stomach and chest, closed her eyes, and tried to sleep.
Voices floated out of the beach house, and she sighed. Moving quietly out of the chair, she walked around the corner of the house opposite the driveway and headed for the road. A few paces ahead, a jagged rectangle of light fell from a window onto a tangle of sea gra.s.s, c.o.c.kleburs, and dirty sand. She turned toward the beach, but the sound of something or someone falling brought her back. Crouching to the side of the window, she peered through the slats of a bamboo blind that hung against the inside of the gla.s.s. She saw four men in the room. One lay on the floor and seemed hurt. The others were standing. Two wore tank tops, cutoffs, and caps. One of the two had tattoos on one arm. The fourth man was larger than the othersa”over six feet and bulky, like a weight lifter or an ex-jock going to fat. He wore tan dress pants and a red short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt.
The big one seemed to say something, and the other two picked up the injured man by his armpits. Someone was talkinga”a baritone hum floated into the night. She saw the big man pull a pistol out of the back of his waistband and put it in the hurt man's mouth. A loud thoump bounced against the gla.s.s in the window, and the hurt man's cheeks flashed iridescent blood red like a kid s.h.i.+ning a flashlight into his mouth on a summer evening. At the same time, the man's head popped back and he sagged between the two men in cutoffs.
The next instant, all three men swiveled their heads to look at the window. She may have tried to say ”no,” but what came out was shapeless and gutturala”not something so precise as a word. The big man started out of the room. The other two dropped the dead man and followed. Within seconds, all three were outside searching the beach.
They found nothing to account for the sound.
chapter one.
Spring rains east of Baton Rouge had poured fog across Mobile Bay. A cool breeze, stirred up by warm days and cool nights, swept down the beach and across the second-floor deck where it tugged at my robe. Inside, through French doors, red dots hovered in the dark over the bedside table, showing that it was a little after four in the morning.
Glenfiddich scotch and Umbrto Eco had finally put me under a little after midnighta”about three hours before I woke and wandered out on the deck. I was getting used to it. You can get a lot of thinking done if you aren't able to sleep.
The bedroom phone was ringing. A greenish-white glow pulsed next to the red dots on the clock. The answering machine was off, and I watched the telephone ring for most of a minute before walking into the bedroom. I picked up the handset and cleared my throat. ”h.e.l.lo?”
A woman's voice said, ”Tom?”
”Yeah, this is Tom.”
”Tom, this is Susan Fitzsimmons. I apologize for calling in the middle of the night.”
I felt for the switch on the bedside lamp, and yellow light jarred the backs of my eyes. ”Are you all right?”
Susan said, ”I'm fine. Something bad has happened though.”
”What do you mean by 'something bad'?”
”There's someone here with me who needs to talk to you.
We need some legal advice on how to handle a disturbing situation.”
I had known Susan for six months. We met in early October when fall was just starting to cool the Gulf Coast. She was smart and graceful and striking, and I had almost gotten her killed. Or, at least, I was one reason among many why Susan found herself limping through the holidays recovering from knife wounds. One set of reasons was that her artist husband had gotten greedy, crossed my little brother, and ended up with his throat sliced open. Another was that I stuck my nose in and figured out what happened and, along the way, managed to bring an impressively dangerous person into Susan's life. Now she had only fading memories of her dead husband and, apparently, a friend in trouble. I had a dead brother and a long line of sleepless nights. And I was not blind to the possibility that, over the past few months, I might have been wallowing in it a bit.
I reached for the pen and pad on the bedside table, I asked, ”Where are you?”
”We're at the beach house on St. George. The girl who needs to talk to you is,” she paused, ”a friend of mine here on the island. She thinks she may have seen someone get killed. You know, murdered. Earlier tonight on the beach.”
I thought, d.a.m.n. I said, ”I'm a.s.suming she wasn't involved.”
”No. Well, only to the extent that she saw it happen.”
”Then the advice is easy. Call the cops.”
”She wasn't involved, but it's more complicated than that.” Susan sounded unsure of what to say. ”I think she needs to talk to a lawyer.”
”What's complicated about it?”
Susan didn't answer.
”It's okay to talk on the phone. No one's listening.”
”You're right. I guess it's silly, but I am uncomfortable talking this way. Part of the problem is, well, you know how it is down here on the coast. Somebody disappears or you see somebody flas.h.i.+ng a wad of money or somebody looks like they're up to no good, first thing that pops into your head is it's got something to do with drugs. And you never know whose brother or cousin or friend might be involved, so you don't know who's safe to talk to.”
”She thinks she saw some kind of drug hit?”