Bullet Beach (29 page)

Two of the remaining Germans, including the one from last night, sat at the table usually occupied by the four of them. They were subdued. There were a few others as well.

At one p.m. there was a tremendous howl coming from upstairs. Shanahan started toward the stairway only to see his brother half-naked with the hair of a madman coming down the stairs with the ferocity of a charging rhinoceros.

‘Where is my ruby?' he shouted. He grabbed Shanahan by the collar. ‘Where is my ruby?'

‘You lost it.'

‘Lost it? Lost it? You took my ruby. Give it to me. Now.'

‘If I had it and wanted to keep it, I wouldn't be here, Fritz.'

Fritz's blue eyes seemed to burn. He grew dangerously silent, dangerously white. Suddenly he flipped over a table, then another. That's when he saw the Germans and he charged them. Another table went flying and chairs were overturned. The Germans scattered.

He turned back to Shanahan. ‘Who has it?'

‘The sea,' Shanahan said.

Fritz fell back into a chair, head in hands. ‘It's over. There's nothing left.'

Shanahan helped the bartender straighten up the place as Fritz walked like a robot back up the steps.

‘Sorry,' Shanahan said to the bartender.

‘I understand,' the man said. ‘He wanted it too much.'

‘So you know what happened?'

‘Everybody on the island knows what happened.'

TWENTY-NINE

Cross spent two weeks with his parents and Maya. After a hard but welcome rain and the coming of September, the weather was perfect and he was able to complete the roof. It felt good to do physical work and to see something tangible at the end of the project. Next project, before winter, was to get the windows fixed, rip off and replace the bad wood and paint the house. The barn, never in great shape, would no doubt slip into complete decrepitude in a decade. And that simply was the way it was. It was already too far gone to fix.

Breakfasts were wonderful and lunch was, as the farmers have always done, really dinner – the big meal of the day. Supper, the evening meal, was light. He was pulled back into the city a couple of times over the Taupin affair. In spite of the abundance of food, the physical work had worked wonders. He had renewed energy and the little paunch that worried him more than he would ever admit, had diminished. He enjoyed his time with Maya and she seemed to like having him around, though that was something she'd never admit.

He'd had lunch twice with Lauren Saddler, the first time at Shapiro's, a busy, brightly-lit deli. The second time was at a dark, little bar downtown.

Taupin would plea, she suggested. She also suggested Cross get a new mattress.

He left Eaton reluctantly, but it was important to drum up some business. He had been busy, but he was his only client and that's no way to run a successful enterprise.

Shanahan's trip was now at a comfortable distance in his mind. His time was being taken up by morning coffee, newspaper reading and gardening. He also took long afternoon walks with Casey usually down to Ellenberger Park. With no business of his own, he kind of enjoyed getting dinner ready on the weekdays when they weren't dining out. He and Maureen discovered a couple of new restaurants – a great Cajun place, Papa Roux, on the far eastside, and R. Bistro on Massachusetts Avenue. Life had settled back in. On the other hand, there were changes: Harry had definitely decided to close his place on December 31 and didn't renew his ad in the Yellow Pages.

One Tuesday afternoon, Maureen came home from work and brought the mail in, looking long and hard at one of the envelopes.

‘Who do you know in Sydney, Australia?' she asked as Shanahan chopped up some garlic.

‘No one.'

‘For you,' she said, handing him the envelope. There was no return address.

After he read it, he handed the letter to Maureen. She began reading. Shanahan went back to the garlic. When she was done reading, she smiled big. She folded the letter and stuffed it back into the envelope.

‘I got played,' Shanahan said.

‘Well it took a Shanahan to fool a Shanahan,' Maureen said. ‘I think that says a lot.'

‘He trusted a seventy-year-old out-of-shape man to swim out into the sea and save him, but he didn't trust me to be part of the charade.'

‘For someone who hadn't seen you in sixty years,' Maureen said, ‘I'd say he knows you pretty well.'

‘That was supposed to sound like a compliment, but it wasn't, was it?'

‘I love you just like you are. What's for dinner?'

‘Minced chicken, some hot green peppers and fish sauce.'

‘Do you miss it?'

‘Thailand? Oddly yes.'

‘A little adventure is good for the soul,' she said. ‘Where are we going next?'

‘That little table over there, where we'll have a pleasant dinner at home.'

‘I have one question about the little beach party you had on Phuket.'

‘OK.'

‘Who were all of those people shooting at each other?'

Shanahan shook his head, ‘Fritz cleared that up for me. Channarong was working with people in the police department – not to recover the ruby for the rightful owner, but to share in the profits. The Germans had connections with a guy who owned a nightclub, basically, a pimp who had had dealings with Fritz before in the ruby business. The guy with the strange flaying or stretching his fingers worked for the Burmese government who had been denied their share of any transactions in rubies.'

‘So, Fritz was playing with fire.'

‘He was.'

‘So are you,' Maureen said with a thin, knowing grin.

‘Runs in the family apparently.'

THIRTY

Harry was behind the bar making Maureen a second rum and tonic. Rafferty and Collins sat at the bar, on stools close to the booth occupied by Shanahan, Maureen, Kowalski and Cross. The four in the booth were tossing around some cards in a game called Euchre. There were at least ten customers seated at the bar besides the two cops. Old customers who, after tonight, had no reason to leave their small apartments or dilapidated rooms in the collapsing neighborhood.

That's when Lauren Saddler walked in.

‘I heard you were here,' she said to Cross. The big-screen TV was on, showing fireworks from places in the world that brought in the New Year before it came to Indiana. But all eyes were on Cross. His face showed amused confusion.

‘You won't have to testify at Raymond Taupin's trial,' she said.

‘He plead out?' Kowalski asked.

‘Bled out,' Lauren said.

‘He was allowed to attend his father's funeral. Crossing the street to the church a big, black, mean-looking Chrysler came from nowhere and ran him down.'

Cross looked at Kowalski. Neither spoke.

‘Tinted windows. Didn't see who was driving,' she said.

‘You want a drink?' he asked.

‘Yeah I could do with one. Martini.'

‘A Martini, Harry.' Cross shouted.

‘There's isn't an olive for miles,' Harry shouted back.

‘I'm a simple girl,' Lauren said. ‘A twist of lemon, maybe.'

Harry turned and for the first time saw Lauren.

‘Not on your life,' Cross told her.

Rafferty put a dollar bill in the jukebox.

‘If I'd known it was for you,' Harry said to Lauren, ‘I would have turned myself into an olive tree.'

It was Etta James' voice that filled Harry's dim, down-on-its luck bar. ‘At last,' she sang.

‘I see Harry has thrown me over for a younger woman,' Maureen said.

‘The man has no taste,' Shanahan said.

‘So how about a last dance before the new year begins?' she asked.

The two of them found a little space down at the end of the bar, by the door, and danced by the shadowy figures of old guys who had occupied those same stools for the last couple of decades.

‘You want to join them on the dance floor?' Cross asked Lauren Saddler.

She looked at him, started to say something, but stopped. She tried to repress a smile. ‘Yeah let's dance.'

‘Gotta go. Getting too weird in here.' Collins said. ‘Speaking of weird, you coming with me Rafferty? This isn't your style, I suspect.'

Rafferty said nothing. Kowalski joined Harry at the bar.

One of the old guys, a silhouette on a stool yelled out: ‘What's a guy gotta do to getta drink around here?'