Cooler Than Blood (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

M
organ pulled his scooter into my driveway. He owned a scooter, a Harley, and a forty-two-foot Beneteau sailboat,
Moonchild.
Most people travel to find the elusive port of peace of mind. For Morgan, travel
is
the port.

“Hitting the road?” he asked. I assumed he was returning from the beach. Even though our homes have a two-mile bay view, he sojourned twice a day, late morning and sunset, to the Gulf. I checked my pocket for my phone for the umpteenth time. I had forgotten it a second time after Susan had left, and had just scorched my feet again in retrieving it.

“Fort Myers Beach for a day or two.” I tossed my army duffel bag into the back of my black beast
and hit the “close” button. It chimed. I wondered if I could program the close sound on a vehicle’s tailgate like you can program ringtones. “Care to join me?”

“Let’s roll.”

“Need ten?”

“I’m good.”

He parked his bike in my garage, hustled over to the passenger-side door, and hopped in.
Guess I’d better scramble
. I grabbed a couple of waters from the garage refrigerator and climbed behind the wheel.

“Clothes?” I said.

“I’ll pick up whatever I need.”

“House?”

“Nancy’s cleaning today. She’ll lock up.”

“Hold on a sec. I forgot to leave food for Hadley.”

“Hadley the Third.”

“Right.”

Hadley III’s my cat. I’m temporarily watching her for a friend who permanently relocated to another island. I’m not fond of cats, and I’m highly suspicious that Hadley III is equally unfond of me. We’d developed a truce. She pounced on my chest our first night just as I had fallen asleep. I was surprised she had survived the impact with the wall. Tough girl. She now stays clear of my bedroom, and in return I feed her and leave water out so she doesn’t have to lean into the toilet. I left her enough food for a year, got into the truck, and twisted the key.

The engine responded with a throaty growl, and Morgan spat out, “Wait.” He jumped out of the seat—the man had the dexterity and movements of a monkey—and dashed through the door I’d just emerged from.

Morgan grew up on a sailboat and doesn’t know his age, other than he’s older than his sister, who operates the family charter business in the Caribbean. His parents believed that tracking one’s journeys around the sun only creates unintended expectations and limitations. He meditates every morning at the end of his dock, as he’d been doing earlier when I’d departed for my run. He claims it fills his spiritual tank. My tank has a Florida sinkhole in it. A few minutes later, he emerged from my house with a wine box. He opened the passenger door, placed the box on the floor, and reclaimed his shotgun seat.

“Ready,” he announced.

“Supplies?”

“Essentials.”

He brought his legs up Indian style, pulled his sandy hair into a ponytail, and stuck in earplugs before I cleared the bridge that led off the island. Ten minutes later, he snatched his plugs from his ears and with the voice of someone who, having music directly injected into his head, assumes the world is much louder than it really is, blurted out, “I forgot shoes. You got some, right?”

“In the back.” I rarely wear shoes around the house and have a habit of jumping into the truck without them. I keep several pairs of old Sebago boat shoes in the truck.

“Thought so.” The plugs went back into home position.

We hit the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, which spanned the entrance to Tampa Bay. The vertical clearance was around 193 feet, and from that view, the water flattened out, and the sky started to drop down on you. It was just high enough that you started to get a sense of your inconsequentiality before you eased back down to earth.

I put the truck on cruise control at seventy-eight, and she fought the harness. Ninety was her sweet spot, and she didn’t take kindly to others blowing fumes in her grille. We passed crosses along the side of the road that marked where someone’s life had abruptly concluded. What’s the interstate system going to resemble in a hundred years? Talladega cut through a graveyard? Here’s something I know—if I knew where my cross would be, I’d never go there.

Two hours later, we crested the Matanzas Pass Bridge and descended into the public beach area of Fort Myers Beach. I’d spent a year living and drinking on the southern part of the beach after I left the army and before Colonel Janssen came knocking for my services. I’d needed some time to get in touch with my inner person. I found it as rewarding as rummaging around inside a half-empty garbage can. No need to do that again.

We pulled into the parking lot of the Point Carlos hotel-condominiums, less than a mile north of Lovers Key. Everything around there was “Carlos.” Big Carlos Pass. Little Carlos Pass. San Carlos Boulevard. Carlos Surf and Suds—the only beachside bar I know that gives you a paddleboard for a half hour at no cost if you’ve had two or more drinks. (The owner, Kurt Lourdes, swears it was his best business decision. “Patrons love—I mean they flat out
dig
—watching other people fall off those boards.”) All of it was named after Chief Carlos, a Calusa Indian and an enthusiastic practitioner of human sacrifices, as well as the possible killer of Ponce de Leon. Carlos’s brother-in-law, Spaniard explorer Pedro Menéndez (Carlos, in happier times, had passed along his sister to be Menéndez’s bride), had killed Carlos after Carlos himself took a few unsuccessful swipes at Menéndez. Evidently, being a major proponent of human sacrifice doesn’t preclude one from eventually having naming rights to half the damn region.

I had booked a two-bedroom condo—all the condos have two bedrooms—for two nights, and now that Morgan was with me, I was glad I hadn’t opted for a different location. The place was quiet. It was summer, and the western half of the Eastern Time Zone that swarmed the place in March had long departed. Fine with me. When the crowds leave paradise, paradise, not being fond of crowds, returns.

“Room for Travis, Jake,” I said to the lady behind the counter. She had tousled rust-colored hair that splayed wildly out of an overmatched scrunchie. A
USA Today
was on the counter, and its colors already looked liked yesterday’s news. To my right was a corner gift shop with resort towels, hats, T-shirts, and tin-soldier sentinel coffeepots waiting for the morning.

“I see you’re staying for only two nights,” Rusty said. “Gulf front, midlevel, or higher, south side?” I’m picky about the space I occupy. “If you’d like, we can book you for one more night, and the fourth night will be free.” As she spoke, she stared into her computer screen.

“I’ll pass. I only need—”

“We’ll take it,” Morgan chirped in.

I glanced at him. “I don’t think we’ll be here that long.”

“Two keys for four nights will be fine,” he said, keeping his eyes on Rusty.

“Certainly,” she said and glanced up at Morgan. “And how will you be paying for this?”

Morgan said, “I won’t be.”

I placed my credit card on the counter then scrawled my name on a sheet of paper she’d slid in front of me. When I lifted my head, she was beaming at Morgan as if I wasn’t even there. The man adored redheads and transmitted that five-bar signal with an uncommon clarity. I picked up my duffel and headed toward the elevator. Morgan followed with the box he’d brought out of my house. I double-punched the button while the elevator moseyed around on a higher floor. A woman who smelled like the beach joined us. She wore a floppy wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, and a white cover-up. The last item was a real shame, considering what she appeared to be covering up.

“You forgot to grab shoes,” I said as I stared at the floor. Morgan’s second toe was longer than his big toe.

“Oops.”

I looked up at him. “I assume you’ll be in late tonight.”

“If at all.”

“What makes you think we need another two nights, even if it’s just the price of one?”

“I’ll walk to the grocery at midisland and pick up food. We’ll need provisions for breakfast.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” I hit the elevator button for the third time. I’m sure that helped. “And how can you sit at peace in a truck for two hours without asking why we’re coming here?” He’d done that before—hopped into my truck or boat without voicing curiosity as to the destination or the reason.

“Remember,” he said, “I grew up on a sailboat. I need a reason to be stationary, not to travel. As for you, you’re as nervous as I’ve ever seen you.”

“The heck you talking about?”

“You. Your anxiety level is—”

“Skip it.”

He paused a beat then changed tack. “It’s an amazing beach. You do know James Jones pounded out some of his war memories a mile or so up the sand.”

“King’s Cottage, I believe.” I hit the button again. “But what does that have to do with—”

“We could’ve driven from here to eternity, and your hands never would have left ten and two.” Morgan rarely interrupted people but had done so twice in a few minutes. “You fought the wheel like I do at the helm of a fifty-footer battling a summer squall.”

I started to serve up my retort but pulled up as I realized he had lapped me. Again. My aching left shoulder, courtesy of shrapnel from the Battle of Chora in Afghanistan, complemented with a bullet I’d taken to the same shoulder the night
Impulse
took one in a speaker, confirmed Morgan’s observation. Hard to believe ten and two for two hours, but my mind had raced so far ahead of the truck that I barely remembered the drive. As for the Jones reference, it didn’t surprise me. He’d told me the James Jones war trilogy was among his favorites. Mine as well. Kathleen had presented me with first editions for my birthday, and Morgan had borrowed them, as he planned to reread them.

“And”—guess he wasn’t done—“whatever is eating you is unlikely to be resolved in a day or two, or else you would have told me why we’re here.”

“You had your plugs in.” It was a weak defensive remark. I should have just taken the Fifth.

The elevator arrived—four stabs at the button, for future reference, is the magic number—and we stepped in after the lady. She exited two floors before us. The beach went with her. We both observed until the doors, like metal stage curtains, sliced our vision shut. When a woman leaves an elevator and a man is left behind, it’s impossible for the man not to watch as she walks away. Above all, trust me on this.

“And you
never
would have left without the essentials,” Morgan said.

I peered into the box he hugged against his chest: 1800 Reposado tequila, Grant Marnier, limes, a partially eaten block of Welsh cheddar, bread, wine, and tapenade. And speakers. The man is a connoisseur of what goes in his ears. He thinks Edison’s gift—music from air—to be the greatest invention of all.

We entered our unit, and Morgan took the back room with double beds and left me the Gulf-front bedroom with the king. He announced he was going for a walk and would meet me at Fish Head. The door slammed shut, and I said, “Okay.” I gazed down at the Gulf from nine floors up.

Jenny Spencer.

Susan had called when I was in the truck. She instructed me when to meet at her house and provided more details. The police considered Jenny’s actions on the beach to be self-defense, yet she had run. Maybe she just needed some time alone. Maybe she was sitting in a dark booth, spilling it all to a priest. Maybe she’d do evolution a favor and go for the priest too. Hard to say. Dead bodies collect more than fleas. They collect interest, stories, guilt, and often revenge.

But those things had nothing to do with why my hands had been glued to ten and two.

I had called Kathleen before we’d left and informed her I was going to Fort Myers Beach for a day or so. I told her an old friend called and was worried because her niece had run away. I gave their names but omitted that the “old friend” was a hot woman I didn’t trust myself to be around. Think that makes a difference? At worst, I’d get a ticket for being disingenuous.

“Teenage runaway?” Kathleen had asked.

I’d hesitated then said, “There’s a body involved.”

She came in late. “You’re going back in, aren’t you?”

When I left the army, Colonel Janssen had recruited me, along with my partner, Garrett Demarcus, for contract work. I’d been making a good living recovering stolen boats and could still take on an occasional misplaced vessel. Easy money. Guy buys a boat for half a mil and sells it to the Columbians for two fifty. He then reports it stolen and files an insurance claim for 500K. They acquiesce, and he makes 50 percent on his investment. It’s not that simple, because it’s burrowed funds, but that’ll suffice. Scenario two: The insurance company hires me for 20 percent of the boat’s retail value. I locate the boat and return it to the company. They pay me 100K and unload the boat. The same game occurs in the art world, but instead of turning the trick with a Donzi, they flip a Degas. It’s not all tea and crumpets. Occasionally, I need to tango with men brandishing machine guns, but it beats the hell out of a daily commute and having some faceless corporation tell me I’ve got to change ten passwords every twenty days.

The most recent bullets, however, that had embedded themselves in both my boat’s speaker and me, were the result of an assignment from the colonel. I had risked my life to retrieve a classified letter from the Cold War that was held by a man named Raydel Escobar. Kathleen had questioned why I put everything on the line every time. I had no answer but gave her a love letter from fifty years ago that had been in the same envelope as the classified letter. It contained an arrangement of words that expressed, beyond my capability, my feelings for Kathleen. That letter was now in her home. A man I never knew, from a time we didn’t share, expressed what I could never say.

I had tried to assuage Kathleen’s fear. “It won’t be like last time. The police are involved. I’ll just be there to help where I can.”

“I’m fine,” she’d said. But it came out too fast and with nothing behind it.

“I’ll call you when I get a feel for how long I’ll be there.”

“Be careful.”