Crime (25 page)

— You’re out of order. I suggest you apologise or I’ll be compelled to take this further.

— Who the hell are you –

Lennox steps closer to the man, so that he can see his eyes wavering and watering, behind the tinted glass of his sunspecs. Ascertains the anger and the dogmatism are leaking from him. Now several onlookers are taking an interest. — I’m off duty. If you put me on duty, then it gets personal between you and me. A simple ‘I’m sorry’ to the gentleman and we walk away and get on with our lives. Or you can see where I’ll take it. What’s it to be?

The blond man looks at Lennox, then to the construction worker, who seems as embarrassed as he is. — I’m sorry … I guess I reversed … I just got this car the other week … this damn lot is always so busy …

— It’s okay, the construction guy says, palm upturning at Lennox in a discomforted gesture of acknowledgement, before he climbs back into his truck.

The white guy skulks into the convertible and drives off.

Lennox looks up at the sun, screws his eyes against the hazy heat and replaces his shades. Looks across the lot to Cunningham’s Lobster Bar; the social hub of the marina.

— You sure told that asshole, Tianna remarks appreciatively.

— That’s exactly what he was, Lennox says, a complicit grin on his face.

— Are you a cop? Back in Skatlin? Tianna interrogates him in some concern. — Was that what you meant by not being on duty?

— Worse than that, Lennox says, slipping back into lying detective mode, — I’m in insurance. That guy in the smart car was lucky. He could have been paying through the nose for years.

— Do you like your job?

A derailed pause. Back in Scotland working-class kids were generally encouraged – often with good reason – to say nothing to the police. It probably wouldn’t be that different in America, and Tianna knows what Dearing does for a living. — Aye, it’s
okay
, but I
am
on holiday and it’s good to get a break from it. He cuts himself off to avoid compounding his fabrications. — I’m thirsty. Want to get a drink? He thumbs at the bar-restaurant.

— But … Tianna turns and points to the harbour, — Chet’s boat’ll be jus round that corner there.

— My throat’s gaunny close up, he pleads.

— Sure thing, she smiles. — You got a sore throat, huh?

— Aye.

— Aye, Tianna sings, tossing back her hair. — Aye! I like it when you say ‘aye’. Say it again!

— Aye, Lennox shrugs and she giggles as they make their way across the lot.

His throat
is
sore and dry – it always is – but he wants to find out what she knows before he turns her over to Chet.

Inside the bar, the wealth hits them like ozone. Humanity had been brushed out of the equation, sucked like a fart into the extractor fan of an expensive hotel toilet. They take a seat. Tianna asks the waitress for a Diet Pepsi and Lennox follows suit, although he really wants a beer.
We’re never having kids. I’ll go through the ceremony. I’ll build a nice home. But no kids
.

He wonders how Trudi is doing back in Miami Beach. It already seems like days since he’s walked into this. But a terrible elation buzzes inside him, intensified by the encounter with the guy in the lot. Getting better: he’d handled it more satisfactorily than the conflict with the family at the gas station.
Fuck it. It’s needed. It’s therapy
. He’s starting to feel alive, like he did on the job back home, with that familiar taint of vengeful wrath in his mouth. Fuelling the sense that somebody is going to pay for the crime.

And there
was
a crime: Johnnie’s assault on the kid. Could they convict him? Would Robyn testify? What would Lance and Starry say if they were called as witnesses? It would be a difficult one. His judgement is shot to pieces, but his gut tells him that it would be hard to get an arrest and conviction with Dearing evidently hell-bent on protecting Johnnie.
But why?

Lennox studies the menu. Alcohol withdrawal has produced in
him
that insatiable demand for bad food. He tries to talk himself out of it. He waves the card around in disdain. — For such a swanky joint the grub seems quite run of the mill. Surf and turf, burgers …

Tianna shrugs off his quizzical stare. — This is an ol-boys-with-money place. They ain’t gonna go for nuthin too fancy.

He looks around and reassesses. The stressed-out, second-home arseholes like the yuppie in the parking lot were actually in the minority. It
was
mainly older people who had worked all their lives and had a bit put by and had staked their place in the sun.
The kid isn’t a dummy. She’s a fuckin bright wee lassie. In the right circumstances she could develop the resources to get rid of her neediness, like most kids did when they became adults. Get an education. Develop confidence, and real social skills. Not just that faux hard-assed sass that would only end her up in the arms of some wife beater. This kid could, given the encouragement, break the cycle of abuse that had possibly gone on for generations in her family
. Or possibly not, maybe Robyn had just fucked up because she was the weak link. — Your mother’s not had it easy, eh?

Tianna’s eyes and lips tighten as she rubs a lock of hair between forefinger and thumb. — Momma’s okay … she been real good to me. I guess cause she’s still young she kinda wants to party n all. But she always jus seems to meet the wrong guys. I mean, they start off good at first but they soon change. You’re the only one who’s been okay.

Lennox feels his pharynx shift. He’d left Trudi, gone out and taken lots of coke with two strange women. A shiver crawls up his vertebrae.
What the fuck was I thinking of?

— What’s your momma like, Ray? she asks, then adds in raven humour, — Is she as crazy as Robyn?

— She’s a mother. He hears the brusqueness of his retort, thinking about how odd it would be to call her by her first name.
Avril. Avril Lennox, née Jeffreys. A mother. What the fuck is that?

— I’ll bet she’s nice, Tianna is saying, pulling Lennox from his thoughts, forcing him to look at her briefly in loose-jawed incomprehension. — Your mom. I can tell, cause you’re nice … not like
the
other guys Momma brings around … That Vince; he was nice at first.

— Was he a boyfriend of your mum’s?

She nods slowly and falls silent, lowering her head.

Lennox pulls back, he wants to keep her talking, not induce her to clam up. — What about your dad, do you ever see him?

— He died in a car crash when I was a baby, she says, looking up for his reaction.

— I’m sorry, he says. He knows the kid is lying.

— I don’t remember him much.

That is the truth. It was the
extremis
of her father’s absence that made his presence loom so large. Lennox contemplates the baseball cards as he fights a fatigued yawn. Looks to her squashed-sheep backpack. — That’s why you like the cards.

— The cards … yeah, she says, averting her gaze again.

She deserves more, but first she has to survive. The likes of Dearing and Johnnie have to be avoided. Scumbags, but not lone wolves, like Mr Confectioner. There’s something wrong here. It seems as if nonces are everywhere: it’s like some half-arsed pack of paedos are snapping around Robyn and the kid. It isn’t just my paranoia. This Vince guy; does he know Dearing? Johnnie?

They finish the drinks and venture outside. The sun has retreated across the horizon but is still strong in the cloudless sky. Lennox rubs more grit from his heavy eyes and puts the baseball cap on, adjusting its band, moulding it to the contours of his skull. Tianna can’t recognise
Ocean Dawn
, but he realises that those gleaming, white, opulent vessels might all look the same to her. Gazing across the inlet to the building under construction, he sees the workers taking a break on a gangway. One of them waves slowly at him: the guy from the incident in the parking lot. He returns the gesture.

The harbour master’s office is in a strip of broker and yacht insurance storefronts. The manager of the marina is a man in his sixties, clad in jeans, boots and a green guayabera shirt, who introduces himself as Donald Wynter. A man of unbridled enthusiasm, with white hair in a side parting, he bears a striking resemblance to the actor-comedian Steve Martin. It’s so strong that Lennox
feels
like cracking jokes. Instead he asks, — Do you know Chet Lewis?

— Everybody knows ol Chet, Wynter says, taking them outside and showing Lennox and Tianna where
Ocean Dawn
is usually moored.

Only it’s gone.

Don Wynter reads Ray Lennox’s crestfallen face. — Chet’s gone down the coast, put out a few creels to catch some fresh uns. The good stuff is overfished, gotta cast the net a little wider these days. I dare say that he’ll be back early tomorrow. In fact, I know he will, cause he gotta pick up some stuff he ordered here at the office. Usually goes to see ol Mo over at his place on one of the islands. They’ll be in a card game and drinkin beer. Wynter talks like a man frightened of keeling over before he’s spoken his allotted words.

— How do you get over there?

— You don’t, not less you got a boat and know them waters. Wynter shakes his head. — Yep, probably hooked up down the coast right now.

His help is appreciated by Lennox, but he’s so weary and the man’s verbosity grates as he launches into a spiel about tides and the weather. And a glance at Tianna’s pained face tells him her boredom threshold has been breached. As Wynter rambles on, Lennox finds himself thinking back to the elderly witnesses he’d interviewed in connection with the Britney case. They gabbed twenty to the dozen, talking up their roles as central in the drama of her short life. Of course they were just lonely and initially you couldn’t help but be sympathetic, but they soon contrived to exhaust that well of goodwill. Eventually he would want to crack a brittle old head open and scream:
This is not about you, ya selfish cunt. This is a murder investigation
.

Ronnie Hamil, Britney’s chimney-stinking grandfather, he was the worst of them all
.

Then Angela, and now Robyn. You couldn’t even trust your fucking mother
.

Stop this
.

The appearance of a well-dressed, middle-aged woman gives
Lennox
and Tianna the alibi to sneak away from the distracted harbour master. They leave the marina and drive into town, then out on to the highway. Lennox feels at a loss as to what to do. He curses himself.
If I hadnae fannied about with alligator boat trips and milkshakes!

— I don’t wanna go back, Tianna’s hushed tones, her eyes big orbs of fear, — I wanna stay with Chet.

It would soon be getting dark and they wouldn’t see Chet till tomorrow. Lennox ponders the options. Her apartment in Miami was out. They’d come here to get away from that place and the people in it. He could take her back to the hotel in Miami Beach for the night, or to Ginger’s place in Fort Lauderdale, then drive her out to Chet’s. Suddenly a truck horn blares and Lennox’s body seems to lose five layers of skin as he slams on the brakes, thanking a higher power nothing is behind him. He was almost into the back of it. This, and Tianna’s fearful response, makes the decision for him. He’s too tired; he needs sleep. In his current state of fatigue, he’s more of a danger to her than anybody. He pulls into the next gas station and calls Trudi again.

— Ray, where the hell are you? You said you’d be back –

— I’m with the wee girl I telt you aboot. She’s ten. Her mother and her are in big trouble. I can’t let them down, Trude, not like I did with Angela and Britney. I just can’t.

— Don’t they have police here?

— Aye. I’ve met one of them. It’s him that’s harassing them. So I can’t risk going to them right now, I don’t know the score with this cop. I’ve got to find somebody that’s definitely kosher. I’m gaunny have tae stay here tonight. The morn I can leave the lassie with her uncle; that’s when his boat’s due back. You know what I’m saying?

— You’re with this young girl now?

— Aye, Tianna.

— You’re going to spend the night,
spend the night
, with this young girl in a
hotel
?

— A motel, Lennox says, thinking about the ones they’d passed earlier, stuck alongside the strip malls of Highway 41. —
I
mean … we’ll be in different rooms, obviously! Fuck sakes, gie’s a break.

— You give
me
a break, Ray! Trudi says. — Tell me where you are and I’ll come and get you! Ginger’ll come and pick me up.

— It isn’t safe.

— You’re mad. You’re mad and deluded, you – She gasps, suddenly visualising helping him into her apartment, his hand shattered, him gibbering nonsense about the Britney Hamil case, Thailand and God knows what else, and sees her own fingers with his engagement ring, around a real-estate dealer’s circumcised, veiny cock. Her tone softens. — Ray, please listen to me. You … you’ve had a terrible time. I know you haven’t got your pills, Ray. You need them. If you don’t want to come back, let me come to you …

Lennox is blown away by her about-face. When the anger dissipates, she is genuinely worried about him. He’d missed everything she’d done for him. Failed to see that the hiding in the wedding plans was a manifestation of her own personal stress. His voice croaks, pregnant with emotion. — No, baby. Honest, I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. We’ll go round the dress shops and sit down and finalise the guest list …

— I don’t care about the wedding! I care about you! Trudi says miserably, thinking of that stupid tryst with the smarmy real-estate guy. Ray loves her. He needs her. — I couldn’t see it, honey, couldn’t see you were still breaking apart inside. I thought you were on the mend. Please come back to me, baby, please!

Lennox shrinks and sucks in his breath. — I need you to trust me. I’m begging you to trust me.

You don’t know what the fuck men are like
.

— I need
you
to trust
me
, Ray. At least tell me where you are, Trudi sobs.

— I’m about three hours’ drive west of where you are, across the Everglades, on the other coast, the Gulf of Mexico. That’s as much as I can tell you. I’ll call soon, I promise.