Bound for the Outer Banks (4 page)

Chapter 4

Ella had heard the static and click from the agent’s radio. The voice on the other end said in a staccato, enunciated rhythm, “Ro-a-noke Isl-and, North Car-o-lin-a, city of Man-te-o.”

“Got it,” answered the driver as he pressed the voice button on the dash.

Ella’s heart sank. Manteo? Roanoke Island? North Carolina? BeBe’s hometown? How could this be? During her myriad of interviews with the FBI’s and CIA’s joint task force she had never discussed BeBe’s home town. She had assured them that she had never been to her mother’s home state of North Carolina and that she had never met any of her mother’s relatives. The focus immediately changed to Brooklyn and her father’s few remaining relatives.

At this moment Ella racked her brain to ensure she had correctly stated to the authorities that she had never divulged any information about her mother’s family to Dante Vitali. She didn’t even know most of their names! BeBe was tight lipped about her childhood with the exception of where Harmony Beauchamp was concerned. “No,” she quietly said to herself, “I never told Dante any details about my mother except that she was Southern.”

Dante had always assumed that BeBe must be from Biloxi since that was where he’d met Ella. Ella was staying in “her mother’s bungalow” that she’d inherited. She still referred to it as BeBe’s bungalow especially since that’s what the little sign with the brightly painted mermaid said which hung above the front door’s transom.

Ella had only revealed to Dante that her mother was from the South and that she had no living relatives. This just seemed easier than telling him the entire torrid story of why her mother left North Carolina never to return. And besides that, whenever Ella spoke of her mother she became a blubbering hot mess. She had suffered in silence since the accident and she continued to do so.

Ella was certain she had never told Dante anything about Manteo. As far as he knew Biloxi, Mississippi was her only tie to the South besides her college in Savannah and Saint Stanislaus, the Catholic all girls’ boarding school she had attended in Bay St. Louis. BeBe had been thrilled to find the school. She informed Ella that it would give her another possible spiritual path to follow since it was Catholic and she didn’t “know squat” about Catholicism yet. And it was only forty minutes to Biloxi so BeBe could come down to the bungalow and they could spend time together some weekends. “And,” exclaimed BeBe, “we can still head over to the Big Easy for the day!”

BeBe had insisted that Ella live some of her formative years in the South because BeBe would declare, “I do not want you talking like a Yankee!” She would pinch her nostrils together and start yelling, “Waaahhhnnda! Waaahhhnnda! Come heeyah Wanda and look at this!” She would say this in a grating nasal voice that Ella had indeed heard more than a few times while shopping with her mom in Queens.

“Honey you’re going to have a sweet, Southern accent whether you want it or not. Trust me. It will benefit you in the future.” BeBe had told Ella of all her many travels before meeting Joseph Barrantine and how men’s eyes would glaze over when she began to speak. She even had men offer to pay her good money just to sit and talk to them.

It would drive Blythe Barrantine close to crazy whenever someone tried to imitate a Southern accent and they began speaking in double negatives or failing to make their subjects and verbs agree.

“’I ain’t got no paper!’ ‘He weren’t in the garden this morning.’ What the hell are they talking about? That’s not an accent. That’s just stupid.” Blythe would continue to rant. “Don’t they teach the difference between ACCENT and SYNTAX in these fancy acting schools?”

BeBe would always turn to Ella and say, “Elle, just because we’re Southern doesn’t mean we’re ignorant. I can assure you stupidity doesn’t stop just south of the Mason Dixon Line!”

So it was decided that Ella would attend Saint Stanislaus at the beginning of her eleventh grade year. The girls at Saint Stanislaus were predominantly from wealthy southern families. Ella began to see exactly what her mother had been speaking of regarding the soft, rounded accent of the southern girls as opposed to the harsh, grating, nasal accents of the “Yankee girls” as BeBe would refer to them.

Ella already spoke with somewhat of a southern drawl because of the large amount of time spent with her mother. BeBe’s accent was not terribly heavy but when she got upset or especially excited about something, which between the two accounted for approximately ninety percent of the time, her accent became much more pronounced. By the end of Ella’s junior year, she was speaking a drawl which sounded like “honey coated heroin.” At least that was what one of the senior boys at neighboring St. Patrick’s School in Biloxi described it as. Ella had met Jack Murphy while lying on the beach with some friends from Saint Stanislaus when his Frisbee landed on her beach towel.

When she was told a date for the Sadie Hawkins Dance was mandatory Ella was appalled.

“This is ridiculous,” she thought. “I feel like this is a weird form of forced dance prostitution,” she told her roommate Shelby.

“For God’s sake Ella, Saint Stanislaus wants to graduate women who can become heads of corporations, in order to do that you have to learn to manage men. If you don’t have enough gumption to ask a man to a stupid Sadie Hawkins Dance how do you expect to control one in the board room one day?” Shelby crossed her arms waiting for Ella’s response.

Ella said nothing. She wanted to scream, “I’m not here to be a CEO one day. I’m here to make sure I don’t lose my accent!”

She immediately realized the absurdity of the statement, but the truth was she had no desire for some power position in a company. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to spend the rest of her life doing, but the one thing she knew was she didn’t want to work in an office for a big corporation. She got claustrophobic just thinking about it.

Ella knew she was more than likely the only girl complaining about the Sadie Hawkins Dance. The other students, feeling stifled by attending an all girls’ school, were thrilled to be attending a function where the girl was given the go ahead to be so forward as to ask a guy out. This was simply not done in the South, at least not the circles in which Saint Stanislaus girls traveled.

Ella had finally gotten up the nerve to allow Shelby to act as the go between and send the invitation to Jack Murphy by word of mouth through Shelby’s date who also attended St. Patrick’s. Ella was consumed with relief when Jack responded through the gamut of messengers that he'd love to go.

The car lurched forward snapping Ella out of her daydream. Jack Murphy and Saint Stanislaus seemed liked eons ago. So much water had passed under the bridge since then, not clear, calm water either, but a lot of black water, dark and murky that might contain disease causing fecal matter. Yeah, that about summed it up because wading through a lot of crap would pretty much describe Ella’s past decade in a nutshell.

As the Charger pulled out of the Atlanta airport and onto Interstate 85 North, Ella once more decided the arrangement to send her to Roanoke Island was a complete coincidence. Besides, she had always been curious about where her mother’s folks were from. After a few miles, the driver took the ramp onto Interstate 20 East. A few exits later Ella saw the sign for Zoo Atlanta. She wished she was headed for a carefree day at the zoo instead of running from Dante Vitali’s United Sacred Crown crime organization. The agency would only fly Ella to and from major airports deciding a pretty, single girl exiting a plane at a small airport would bring unwanted attention and questions. Also, instate agents were not allowed to take her to her destination. The proximity was too close and should they get curious it would be too convenient for them to seek her out.

Every town Ella had been hidden in had been pedestrian friendly. She was always given a bicycle on which to get around because contrary to popular belief, the agencies did not have unlimited budgets to support an individual, waiting for sometimes years, to testify in a high profile case.

After balling up her lime green Lilly Pulitzer cardigan, which Ella kept with her at all times to combat frigid airplanes and airports, she placed it on top of Old Finnegan. She laid down her head and tried to rest because it would be a nine hour drive to The Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Chapter 5

The nine hour trip to Roanoke Island demanded at least two stops according to Special Agent Jefferson. He did not ask Ella for any input on where they would stop. Three hours into the trip he pulled off Interstate 20 at a Columbia, South Carolina exit and pulled into a Waffle House parking lot. Ella was always embarrassed when she had to exit out of the back seat of The Bureau cars that transported her to her next home but she did it without protest.

When Ella had just returned to the states on a grueling eleven hour flight, after a stop at the embassy to rat out Dante, she asked why the agent was making her ride in the back since she wasn’t a criminal. “It’s just the rule, ma’am,” he said with an especially pronounced Southern accent. Ella had wondered if somehow her late mother had intervened from the afterlife and sent a Southern gentleman to retrieve her from the airport after one of the most emotionally trying times of her life. Ella smiled at the round faced agent and dutifully hopped into the backseat and she’d never questioned it since.

Once she arrived she was given a stipend of cash each month that she picked up at the local post office under the assumed name Belle Butler. What a ridiculous name, she’d think to herself. Of course she figured the spirit of Blythe Barrantine had been working overtime on that little nugget.

“Belle Butler! Dear God Sugar! There isn’t a more Southern lady like type of name! Didn’t you fall into the luck bucket of made up monikers!”

No one had uttered Ella’s real name since the interrogation by the legal attaché at the embassy in Berlin. The paperwork from the FBI had been faxed over the embassy’s encrypted line. Within the paperwork was Ella’s new alias, “Belle Butler.” It was clearly dreamed up by a room full of men at headquarters since Ella thought it sounded like the name of a porn star. “BELLE BUTLER,” her mind wandered as she dissected her new name.

She had been pleasantly surprised, as she introduced herself in the grocery stores, libraries, theaters, etc. in each new town, to have people swoon over her new name. “What a beautiful name!” “You must be from the South! You’ve got the name and the accent to go with it!” BeBe would have gushed and said, “See honey, I told you so.”

A Waffle House waitress in the standard yellow ascot and sun visor with the Waffle House logo approached the table. Her nametag read, “Phoenix.”

“Interesting name,” Ella thought. Maybe Phoenix was an assumed identity made up by the room full of men at The Bureau who sat around coming up with assumed names, probably from the latest centerfold they’d seen, pondered Ella. Once you found yourself in the witness protection program you had wild suspicions about all kinds of people you met. Were they also being hidden? Was the town a kind of two for one place for witnesses where the government received special rental rates or discounts?

As Ella contemplated these things, Agent Jefferson brought her back to reality. “Belle?” asked Agent Jefferson, “Your drink order?”

Phoenix stood poised with her pen and pad, “Oh,” said Ella, “I’d like an orange juice, please.” Ella had been trying to kick the Diet Coke addiction for the past few months. After reading the book “Skinny Bitch” she’d sworn off any type of diet soda and hadn’t had one in over three years until she realized she’d been lied to, kidnapped, and basically held captive by a man she was desperately in love with. She essentially fell off the wagon, crumpling under the stress, and headed straight for a vending machine. “Screw it,” she said under her breath. Rachel her previous middle school friend from the “Goodies” clique, would have been so disappointed. Ella popped open the Diet Coke and downed it in a single breath like a frat boy funneling a beer in Panama City Beach at Spring Break. This was followed by the mother of all burps which she assumed would also have disappointed “Goodie” Rachel.

Ella looked up at Phoenix and said quickly, “Can you make that a Diet Coke?”

“Diet Coke it is,” answered Phoenix. To Ella, Phoenix appeared to be a late forties, early fifties - bleached hair but forgot the toner - kind of lady. Her untoned hair did, however, match the Waffle House yellow perfectly. She kind of had that “rode hard and put up wet” look that BeBe used to refer to. Phoenix’s skin was very tan but not in an olive complexion type of way. It was more of a “my skin is calling up its last reservoir of melanin at an alarming rate induced by my two trips a day to the tanning bed” kind of way. The starburst of lines extending from the perimeter of her lips indicated that Waffle House must offer a lot of smoking breaks.

BeBe used to warn Ella about smoking. “Not only will it kill you Missy, but it will make you look like you just ate a lemon for the rest of your life.” Ella always seemed to be under the impression that BeBe thought the latter was more detrimental than the whole lung cancer, death factor.

When Ella aka Belle received her Diet Coke she was overcome with curiosity with regard to her waitress’s unique name. She envisioned the regal mythological bird that never died, but instead rose from its own ashes, reborn in grand fashion. As Phoenix carefully placed the glass of Diet Coke on the small, square Waffle House napkin, then gently placed a straw next to it, Ella decided to inquire.

“You have a really unique name. Are you named after the Phoenix in Greek Mythology?” asked Ella.

Phoenix threw her head back and laughed, “Oh no Hon, I wish it was something fancy like that, but I was conceived in the back of a ’77 Pontiac Phoenix.”

Ella sat, astonished. Astonished not because of the fact that her waitress had just revealed to her she’d been lustily conceived in a 1970’s era compact car but because Ella had done the math in her head with lightning speed. Even if Phoenix’s mother had conceived her in the car as it was still parked on the new car sales lot before it was legally purchased, she was at least fifteen to twenty years younger than she appeared. Ella made a mental note to use her daily sunscreen more religiously.

“Well that’s a hoot!” Ella said with wide eyes and a toothy smile.

BeBe had made sure that Ella could easily socially maneuver between Waffle House staff and New York City elite or at least elite in their own minds, as BeBe would say. “Honey, some of these folks have actually had a little money for almost half a second and already they think their shit doesn’t stink. I know people with money so old it pre dates the birth of this nation and although they’ve got a bank full of money and know how to set a formal table with their hands tied behind their back, they’re not afraid to shoot an armadillo that’s digging up the yard. They’d probably eat it too so the meat wouldn’t go to waste if it wouldn’t give you leprosy.”

BeBe Barrantine was always tossing out little tidbits of knowledge like that which captivated Ella. She finally stopped looking up every cockamamie sounding BeBe -fied insight when they all turned out to be true. For instance, dining on armadillo cuisine would give you leprosy. Like all the intriguing facts she learned from her mother, it was filed away with the others.

Ella was startled when Agent Jefferson’s phone rang. He answered it and pressed a finger against his free ear to block out the sound of the juke box that was currently blaring the song “Waffle Doo Wop” thanks to a little curly haired boy whose parents were slipping him quarters to allow them to eat their meals in peace.

“Hell no, she’s not getting the grill. In fourteen years of marriage she’s never grilled a damn thing. She was always in charge of baked beans and potato salad and I manned the grill. The grill is mine!” Agent Jefferson realized he was raising his voice and said in an angry whisper, “If she is demanding the grill then I’m demanding her monogramming machine. I paid two thousand dollars for that damn thing. She’s a compulsive monogrammer. She even monogrammed the wash rags. Tell her if she gets the grill, I get the Singer!”

As Agent Jefferson paid his attorney four hundred dollars an hour to complain about his wife’s obsessions with monogramming, nail art, and Juvederm, Ella’s mind began to wander. She looked around the Waffle House and marveled at the consistency of the décor, and the wait staff, and then she marveled at the inconsistency of the clientele. The customers ranged from farmers to ladies lunching with Tory Burch totes and Rebecca Minkoff shoulder bags. The Waffle House appealed to people across the spectrum and why wouldn’t it? Good food fast was its mantra and so far it had certainly never disappointed Ella. Although she had been raised in New York City where there was not a Waffle House to be found, during summers in Biloxi, Waffle House food was a staple for her and BeBe.

All Waffle Houses contained the same ball-like light fixtures. One way the restaurant was apparently able to maintain such low prices was that they had paid an architect once for one design and used it for every location. The blueprint couldn’t have been expensive either since it consisted of a rectangular, block building with plate glass windows on two sides and the exact same floor plan inside. The booths and the high and low bars were made of a wood paneled laminate. All the chairs and tile were also identical and looked like a 1970 contractor special. Phoenix placed Agent Jefferson’s All Star Special and Ella’s pecan waffle down and said, “Here’s some syrup, honey. Y’all need anything else?” Agent Jefferson looked and shook his head no and winked at Phoenix unable to answer since he still had his cell phone firmly attached to his ear.

Ella assumed this was not a flirtatious wink but a Southern man’s way of apologizing for rudely being on the phone while a waitress was trying to do her job. Phoenix gave Agent Jefferson a gum smacking smile and whispered, “Enjoy!”

Phoenix did not look the least perturbed. Ella could only assume that Phoenix had also gathered from the agent’s loud phone conversation that he was getting a divorce and understood the importance of the call.

BeBe had always told Ella there were three types of people in the world whose behavior you should always forgive, a pregnant woman, a woman with a toddler, and anyone going through a divorce because any of these three things could make a person “as crazy as a Bessie Bug.” Since Ella had never personally experienced any of these things, she took her mother’s word for it. She wondered if getting involved with a man you thought had a lucrative legitimate job, was educated, well-traveled, and treated you like a queen but later turned out to work for an Italian crime clan and instead of taking you on an “extended vacation” as promised had actually kidnapped you for companionship on the run would qualify to make one “as crazy as a Bessie Bug” in BeBe’s eyes.

Ella figured BeBe would have been proud that she’d left the man she loved and had the nerve to testify against him. “Sweetie, being in love is more addictive than cocaine. There’ve been studies, so people do insane things when they’re in love.

As usual Ella did not question BeBe. She knew that if she did a little research she’d certainly find a study at a legitimate place like Harvard which measured increases in dopamine levels among cocaine users and people who claimed to have fallen in love recently, and the unfortunate folks “in love” would have registered higher dopamine levels. Apparently cocaine addiction was a lot like love in other ways. In the early stages of cocaine use you get a much better high than after you’ve used for a while. Addicts take more of it to try to get the same effect as when they started. Likewise, after being with a person you’re “in love” with for approximately three months, you don’t get quite as giddy as you did before when he picked you up for dinner or after the first time you picked up his skid marked underwear off the bathroom floor.

Ella spread the fluffy butter she’d just scooped from the little, round, plastic container across the tiny squares of her waffle. At one point Ella refused to put margarine or butter on anything. She then figured it tasted so much better it was worth the risk. She wavered between eating margarine and butter. She had read studies about how margarine was so much better than butter followed by other studies which said margarine increased heart disease by fifty percent over butter. She surmised that maybe because people assumed margarine was so much healthier than butter they’d just slather every food item with it, forgetting it just had a little less fat than butter, not exactly making it a health food. Ella had also read reports that margarine was one molecule away from plastic. She thought, well we’re like one gene away from a Chimpanzee and that’s a pretty huge difference. Millions of things are one molecule away from millions of other things but the scare tactic brought back the butter business with a vengeance. Dairy farmers must employ a pretty damn good advertising agency, Ella concluded.