Birdsongs (4 page)

    “Thank you Bendy,” Red said taking a drink.

    “You’re not from around here are you?” Benny asked.

    “Red put the dirt on mama and papa and rided bus,” Red simply stated. “Mama sick, tractor crash papa.”

    “Where are you staying?” Benny asked. He could tell Red didn’t understand the question and he tried again saying, “Where are you going to sleep tonight?” Red shrugged his shoulders and the look on his face told Benny he had not thought of this yet. He had a feeling if he let Red walk out the door after his drink, he would not be sleeping in a bed. He wanted to know more of Red’s story but decided not to pursue it until later. Being a good judge of character and feeling comfortable and empathetic with Red, Benny made up a quick lie with the hope that Red would accept his offer. “Red, I have another place where I live and I rent this house by the day, week, or whatever. It just so happens that nobody is living here right now. If you would like, you can sleep here for a few days until you decide where you want to go from here.”

    Without speaking Red sat Jezebel on the couch next to him, reached into his pockets and pulled out some money. Red looked at his money, showed it to Benny and said, “Red have this.”

    Benny could see that it was thirty dollars and said, “You can pay me later.” Benny had no intentions of taking his money and wondered what the hell he was doing getting involved with this kid. Benny knew Red probably needed some rest and he needed to talk to Vernon. “I have a few things I need to do Red. You stay here and rest. The sheets in the bed are clean, so you can take a nap if you want, and there are towels in the bathroom closet if you want to take a shower. There’s soap and shampoo under the sink. Do you understand?”

    “Some,” Red said hesitantly.

    Benny showed him around and pointed to all the things he previously mentioned making hand gestures as he went along. Before he left, he pointed to his stomach and asked, “Are you hungry?”

    “Very hunny,” Red answered.

    “I’ll send some food over, and I’ll be back in a few hours. OK?”

    “Yep,” Red said sheepishly.

    As Benny drove off he dialed his favorite pizza place in town and his friend Slick answered the phone saying, “Alfonzo’s Pizzeria, we’re not open for deliveries yet.”

    “Hey Slick, it’s Benny.”

    “Hey Buddy, you never call this early. I don’t know nothing about the murders so don’t ask.”

    “I need a favor Slick.”

    “Anything for you, sir.”

    “I know you’re not open yet, but do you have the ovens fired up, and is Vinny there?”

    “Yes to both questions my friend.”

    “I’ll tell you the details later, but I have a friend staying at my house who just rolled into town from a long bus trip and I don’t have any food in the house for him. He doesn’t speak English well to go out and get something and I have some important things to take care of right now. Could you throw something together and put it on a tab for me? If Vinny will run it over to him, let him know I’ve got a twenty dollar tip with his name on it.”

    “Gladly Benny. Pizza? Sandwich? Wings?”

    “Yeah, that all sounds good. You’re the best, Slick.”

    “Mama Mia he must be hungry!”

    “Can the Italian shit, Slick,” Benny said, joking. “You’re the only Puerto Rican in the world that must say that.”

    “Ciao,” Slick said, laughing.

    Benny knew Vernon would call him at some time during the day but could not wait and called him first. Vernon answered with a tired voice, “Hey Benny, did you get some sleep last night?”

    “I got enough,” Benny answered. “It doesn’t sound like you did. Can I buy you some coffee or lunch?”

    “How about both,” Vernon said with relief in his voice. “Where are you?”

    “At my house,” Benny answered.

    “The one on land or water, Benny?”

    “Land.”

    “Why do you keep that place and why did you even buy it?” Vernon joked. “Meet me at The Deck in about half an hour.”

    “See you there,” Benny said as he pulled out of the drive and watched the red picket fence disappear in his rear view mirror.

    The Deck was an interesting establishment to say the least. The building was a dome that had a series of decks spiraling around the central atrium. There were differing size decks, each having a sole table, so parties no matter the size would be able to have their own semi-private space. For those wishing to dine in the company of others, the inside of the building was quite enchanting as the interior of the dome was decorated with a breathtaking mosaic. All of the glass doorways leading to the various private decks let in ample amounts of sunlight during the day and cleverly concealed lights aimed at the image in the mosaic reflected light that rained down on the patrons perfectly at night. As Benny walked in he could see Vernon through one of the glass doors. Everybody excluding his wife and kids referred to him as Vernon. His actual name was William Delapanapolous Junior. Benny always thought it was quite a strange name for a black man. Benny tried on multiple occasions to uncover the origins of his name unsuccessfully. Benny could understand Bill or Billy or Willy, but Vernon? Vernon was one of the nine black people in the town of Tilley. He had an athletic body, which was in the beginning stages of softening as he recently traded in his jogging and weightlifting hobbies for fishing and ball tossing with his twin six-year-old sons. His wife Connie was a stay at home mother. Vernon carried himself like a humble prince, complete with a natural strut that gave the illusion he was gliding.

    Benny and Vernon sat at their preferred spot just outside of the kitchen. An exhaust fan hung off the side of the building separating their deck from the next one and the hum of the motor concealed their conversations.

    “You look like shit,” Benny said as he sat down. “I stopped by the bar and ordered you an espresso and a coffee. You haven’t been to sleep have you?”

    “No, I haven’t and as tired as I am I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep for a while.” The drinks came. Vernon took a drink of the espresso, paused, and finished it like a shot of liquor. “This guy is good Benny. We’ve got nothing. No prints, hairs, fabrics, shoe or tire prints, or anything that would give us an inside track except the binoculars. Everything he used to hang the body can be bought at any store nationwide. The binoculars however are a specialty item. You can’t pick those up at Wal-Mart.”

    “I stopped by Ned’s earlier and he said they are pretty expensive little suckers mainly marketed to bird watchers. He said a pair runs about eight hundred bucks. This is our lead Vernon. Whoever did this wants to play a game and this is his first move. We had better prepare ourselves for more of this cryptic bullshit.”

    “Do you want to know who the dead guy was?” Vernon asked. “We identified the body.”

    “I don’t think it matters, do you?” Benny answered and asked.

    “Nope.”

Chapter 9

   The Bakers were a family of high social standing and wealth passed down through generations. The Bakers believed in hard work and prestigious degrees. The Bakers owned one of the largest and most profitable food service industries in North America. It included farms, factories, trucks by the hundreds, and employees by the thousands. Baker Foods supplied restaurants, schools, hospitals and more with food and food related products. The small company that began with a small farm and a man unsatisfied with his life grew. With this growth evolved the need for more than farmers, canners, and transporters.

    As years passed, the family expanded mightily as it became the norm for female members to bear six children or more. Rose Baker set the record with fourteen. With the increasing wealth came the Bakers’ ability to provide the children with the best educational opportunities available. The Baker clan took advantage of these prospects that in turn produced and filled its internal needs for financial wits, influential and creative marketers, managers, law-minded individuals, left-brains, right brains, and global thinkers.

    William James Baker was supposed to grow up to be a businessman, accountant, banker, or prominent lawyer like his father.

    This was supposed to be the fortune of William James Baker. It was not.

    The day following his birth, like the winning lottery ticket snatched from its owner’s hand, a deaf-mute couple abducted who was soon known to the world as the Baker baby. The deaf-mute husband and wife, named Mattie and Frederick Jasper were unable to conceive children of their own. They lived in a three-room shack deep in the Ozark Mountains. Excluding their kidnapping crime, they were good people and loving parents.

    They decided to name their new baby boy Fred after his new father. Removed from society by their remote location and the fact that neither of them could speak nor hear, they decided that no one would ever suspect or question the new child. They had never related to anyone their inability to have children of their own. They made sure that no one saw Mattie for nine months before their planned heist and Frederick made sure upon his trips into town to sell crops and buy supplies to gesture to folks that Mattie was pregnant. He had great difficulty communicating with anyone besides Mattie because no one in town knew sign language. He somehow managed. Frederick knew his contacts in town understood Mattie was pregnant because when he made the motion with his hand over his stomach like it was fat and then pretended to rock a baby in his arms he saw how people’s faces showed their understanding with smiles and nods of their heads.

    They drove fifteen hours one way in their old truck on the day planned. Arriving on the outskirts of Atlanta, they rented a cheap motel room and removed their license plate, replacing it with a cardboard sign that said “tayg stowd.” Inside the motel room, they both bathed and Frederick shaved. He put on a suit and tie and Mattie put on a dress and makeup. They pinched every penny for a year to afford their costumes. When they walked out of the room, they looked like a completely different couple.

    An hour later, they headed home with their new baby. They planned and repeatedly practiced their routine once inside the hospital and how they would divert the attention of the workers. They were two miles down the road before anybody knew what happened. Dressed once again in their normal clothes, they were invisible to the police who were looking for a well-dressed man and woman. It took a total of thirty-two hours round trip in which neither of them slept. Upon their arrival home, Mattie and Fredrick stayed up an additional four hours until the adrenaline finally left their bodies.

    Fred’s childhood was anything but normal. He never heard his parents speak, saw a television, or attended a school. He learned sign language from his parents, but their simple lives gave way to a limited signing vocabulary partially invented by the two. His main language was silence and the sounds of mountains. He could make sounds, but more often than not chose not to because he had no need for these sounds. His father could not read, but his mother did the best she could to teach him what little she knew. Trying to teach a child to read without the ability to speak is an insurmountable task. On his fifth birthday, his father took him to town for the first time and bought him a tape recorder from a thrift store and a handful of tapes out of the fifty-cent bin. Not knowing how to read he had no idea what he was buying. Four of the tapes were music and one was a book on tape. This genuine act’s intention was to give Fred the opportunity to hear the English language and learn to speak. He had discussed getting him a radio with Mattie, but living where they did they did not know if they would pick up any signals. Unable to hear themselves they would not know if they had it on a station or not. Little did they know that Fred had already missed the critical years of language development. Fred listened to these tapes hundreds of times apiece. After his first trip to town, he would not let his father leave home without him. Each time they went into town Fred would beg for more tapes. Every so often when money was not too tight, his father would let him pick a few more out of the bin. Fred loved the tapes so much that even when his father said no he managed to hurry over to the thrift store and steal as many as he could get into his pockets. Because of his odd behavior and speech, people tended to ignore him and getting the tapes was easy. By the age of ten, he had nearly a hundred tapes and he spoke like a two year old. He never excelled in reading past the kindergarten level. He even had difficulty saying his own name, which he pronounced, “Red.” William James Baker, who became Fred Jasper, became simply Red.

Chapter 10

   Tilley had two motel choices. One was for lake visitors and those desiring comfort and cleanliness. These folks were willing to pay three times the fee of the other establishment advertising $34.99, double occupancy. The other establishment was intended for motorists simply passing through town, needing a place to rest road-wearied heads. The first choice, The Lakeside Motor Inn was first class. The second choice, The Tuck ‘Em Inn, was a seedy dive, the type some checked out of an hour or so after they checked in. Housekeeping changed the sheets and oftentimes the desk clerk rented these same rooms again later in the day. This is where R.C. made his home for two hundred and ten dollars a week. He thought the weekly rate was fair. R.C. chose a room on the bottom floor at the end of the building. He figured he would be back in prison in two weeks tops. He estimated his available funds would cover the room and groceries for the short amount of time. He decided to fund any unexpected expenditures with the sale of the motorcycle.

    R.C. spent his first day in Tilley resting. He slept mostly and unpacked his few belongings. While working at the diner he bought a few pairs of plain pants and shirts from a second hand store as he knew he would soon be back in a navy or orange jumpsuit, depending on the prison where he would spend his remaining days. He checked, as was his habit daily, to see the ancient letter was still safely between the pages of his lone book. Some days he read it, while on other days he simply fingered the paper that was tissue soft. Every day, sometimes two and three times a day, depending on his mood, he held the letter and envisioned his vengeance.