Driving Big Davie (Dan Starkey) (23 page)

'Ah, sure he won't mind.' Davie was pretty drunk by this stage. JJ was sitting with five or six of his cronies. I didn't know if they really were cronies, but they looked how cronies should look. A bit like JJ himself, but slightly less sophisticated. They were laughing and drinking and laughing and shouting and clapping each other on the back and giving each other bear hugs and yelling at the TV because there was a baseball game on. They'd been watching it for a while. The TV was set high up behind the bar, and the longer the night wore on, the more excited they became about the game. The way they were sitting, they'd all have sore necks in the morning. And the way they were drinking, sore heads as well. I finally had to acknowledge that this didn't bode well for our car being ready. So Davie wandered across and stood behind them for a while, pretending to watch the game. JJ, in turning to punch one of his friends on the arm, noticed Davie, but said nothing; he just turned away slightly in his seat in the vain hope that Davie wouldn't recognise him. But in truth, he was as hard to miss as a wanker in a convent.

'Get you another beer?' DJ said.

I nodded and he set one up.

'You here on vacation?'

'Here by accident. Car got caught in the flood.'

DJ nodded. 'Right. You're that guy.' I laughed. He laughed. 'Bush telegraph. You gettin' it fixed?'

I nodded across the bar. 'JJ.'

DJ rolled his eyes. 'Good luck,' he said, and retreated into a back room to change a keg. I watched Davie for a while. He was still standing there, waiting to be noticed, and JJ was sitting there, determined not to. I turned the other way and saw that there was now a girl sitting a couple of stools away from me. She was a real stunner; tied-back blonde hair, small sharp eyes, slightly turned-up nose, immaculate skin, perfect figure, white cut-off T-shirt under a white denim jacket which was draped loosely over her shoulders. I'm pretty good with detail when I need to be. I'm not that good with age, but she couldn't have been more than sixteen years old. She was drinking either a strawberry milk-shake or some kind of a cocktail through a straw. She wasn't using her hands to hold the glass. Instead she leaned forward and sucked it up. It was perfectly innocent, and at the same time the most sexually suggestive act I'd seen since the last one.

And working on the principle that she was probably sick of tanned muscle freaks, and that I hadn't flexed my freckles in a while, and that I loved Patricia more than anything but that there wasn't any harm in talking to someone, I smiled across at her. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was ravishing. If she'd been a pig in a wig I would have smiled, although I probably would have followed it up with, 'Shift your big arse, fat chops, I'm going for a piss,' rather than the much more sophisticated, 'What's that you're drinking? Looks nice and cool,' I released on this beauty.

Her eyes flitted towards me. And her lips. She licked them, then sat back on her stool.

'Why, are you offering to buy me one?'

'No, just curious.'

She smiled. Probably everyone in the state had offered to buy her a drink at one time or another. I was a refreshing change. With that and the freckles, I was on a winner.

'But I've nearly finished this one,' she purred.

'Well, how much are they?'

She smiled again. Cheap and ignorant. Gets them every time.

'I really don't know.'

She was like royalty. She probably never had to dirty her hands with money.

DJ was back behind the bar again, but he was down at the other end watching the baseball with JJ, his cronies and Davie, who still hadn't made his move. I didn't mind so much now, he could stay as long as he liked. It would give me time to turn on my cheeky-chappie Irish charm. For the moment I was Irish, even though there was no immediate danger of being hijacked.

Of more immediate concern was how to bridge the gap between my bar stool and hers without looking like a lounge lizard. Or just a lizard.

'You on vacation here?' she asked.

'Sure am.'

'You like our little city?'

'Sure do.'

'I think it sucks.'

'Well, that's what I was thinking, just didn't like to offend.'

She smiled again. Gorgeous white teeth, and all her own. There was a sudden roar from down the bar as someone hit a home run. They were all cheering. Even Davie. I said, 'Friends of yours?'

She made a face. 'They like to think so.'

'I met JJ. He's fixing my car.'

'JJ.' She nodded along the line of them and sighed. 'I know them all. JJ. CJ. LJ. DJ and MJ.'

'Well, they seem okay to me, but that's only an initial impression.'

She laughed this time. 'You're pretty cute, mister.'

I swallowed. She'd said cute. Not funny.
Cute.
I blushed, although with the sunburn it was probably difficult to tell.

It was time to take my chance. I eased off my seat. I moved up the three stools to where she was sitting. I smiled as cutely as I could and put out my hand.

'Dan Starkey,' I said.

She blinked at me for a moment, then shrugged off her denim jacket.

If she'd had any hands I'm sure she'd have put at least one of them out.

But she didn't.

She had —

Flippers.

No hands, no
arms,
just small, slightly fleshy flippers, about six inches long.

My hand just kind of hung in the air in front of her.

Time seemed to stand still. She was looking at me, gauging my reaction, the way she must have done a million trillion times in her life. If I'd had time to think about it I could have dealt with it as well as anyone, I could have shook that flipper as if there was nothing different about it at all — but I was drunk, and she could see from the look of bug-eyed shock on my face that I was a single drink away from yelling, 'Holy fuck — look at those flippers!'

I tried to say something, but it wouldn't come out. She raised an expectant eyebrow. Her mouth was set passively but her eyes were narrowing, an odd combination which suggested both laidback resignation and the possibility of a headbutt.

Luckily, Davie saved the day.

As the baseball fans sat with bated breath waiting on the swing that could win the game, he finally made his move.

'Baseball,' he said into the temporary void. 'It's a pile of fucking shite, isn't it?'

Davie had been a cop for twenty years. He had undoubtedly been highly trained in unarmed combat. He probably had certificates and medals to prove it. But this was a type of fighting they don't teach at school; this was bar-room brawling of the highest calibre. Or lowest. Eye gouging, ear pulling, Chinese burnsing, bottle breaking, stool wrapping, ball squeezing, hair pulling, tongue twisting bloody mayhem. Naturally I sat offside, trying to protect my armless young friend from flying glass. That lasted all of about a minute. DJ, behind the bar, finally remembered his responsibilities and bellowed, 'Michelle! Get upstairs!' before leaping over the counter and weighing into the fight.

Michelle said, 'Bye, bye, Dan Starkey,' and walked round the other side of the bar.

'Bye, bye, Michelle,' I said.

I watched her as she walked slowly up a set of stairs, and only took my eyes off her when a glass flashed past my head and crashed against the bottles of spirits behind the bar. It was too late to duck, but I did it anyway. When I raised my head again, she was gone.

It was a fairer fight than you might imagine. If it had been Davie versus DJ, CJ, JJ, MJ and LJ I would have sprung to his defence, or at least phoned the police, but shortly after the first punch was thrown, or the first eye gouged, it became a free for all. They were all fighting each other. For no reason whatsoever, as far as I could see. For fun. To pass the time. For sure, it was more interesting than baseball, although they could have achieved that by taking up knitting. Five minutes after it started, it was all over — and they were laughing about it. Even Davie. It was like
Fight Club
for drunks. Davie was buying them drinks at the bar. Or he was trying to. They insisted. Then DJ put them on the house and suddenly everyone was happy, and much drunker. Davie twice waved me over to join them, but I just nodded and kept to my own drink. I didn't know if the fight represented some sort of weird initiation, or was just their way of letting off steam, but with my luck, the moment I walked over there and disparaged their national sport they'd inflict the same damage on me as they had tried to inflict on Davie. The difference was he was physically and mentally built to take it. I was not.

So when they were all looking the other way I finished my drink and slipped outside into the cool night air. I stood looking out over the water, wondering why I hadn't joined in with Davie and his new pals. Normally I didn't need a second invitation to get drunk, or indeed a first. Perhaps it was the company. Perhaps it was a newfound maturity. Perhaps it was Michelle and the shock of seeing her flippers and the shame of my reaction to them. She reminded me of Little Stevie and the life he had not had the opportunity to fulfil. Nothing could change that. Not a psychiatrist or a court nor putting a bullet in his killer's head. He was dead. Michelle was one of the most beautiful girls, women, I had ever seen. Yet she had no arms. She had flippers. Did that mean she wasn't beautiful? No, it did not. Did it mean she wasn't a proper girl? No, it did not. Those were the correct thoughts to have. And yet. How good a man would you have to be, to accept her the way she was? Could I?

These are the sort of deep thoughts a drunk has when he has time on his hands, and no real friends to speak of. I smiled to myself. I had spoken to her for ten seconds, and I was already imagining how we'd get on on our honeymoon. Fantasy, once again, as the justifiable preserve of the married man.

I hadn't been standing there more than a couple of minutes when I realised there was someone behind me. Just a subtle clearing of a throat and the quiet setting of a coffee cup on a glass table. I turned and saw a figure sitting in the semi-darkness of the wooden veranda which fronted the Mountain View Bar and Grill. It was only when he leaned forward to pick up his cup again that I saw it was the Sheriff. Sterling Baines.

'Evening, son,' he said, his voice low, gravelled, but not particularly cold.

'Sheriff.'

'See your friend met up with JJ and the boys.'

I smiled. He had his feet up on the second chair, but he took them down and indicated for me to sit. It wasn't an order. It was an invitation.

'You want a beer?'

He leaned back and produced two bottles of Rolling Rock from an ice-bucket behind him. He reached one across to me and I twisted the lid off. He nodded down at his coffee cup. 'Doesn't look good for folks to see me drinking, so I have to hoodwink them.' He began to pour his beer into the coffee cup.

'And do you?'

'Doubt it,' he said.

I took a sip of my beer. I was taking more sips these days, whereas I used to gulp it down, then fall over. 'It's not a race, Dan,' Trish used to point out. Although with her, it used to be. I said, 'You didn't go in to stop the fight.'

'Ah, they're just letting off steam.'

'Glad you think so.'

'Well, son, times is hard. This town is going through a tough time right now. Visitors dropped away since September eleven, those that do come head further up the coast, or stick with Orlando. We had a couple pollution spills, didn't help. Now this SARS thing's reared its head, and that was the last darned straw.'

Call me uncharitable, but I didn't know whether to weep or invite Bruce Springsteen down to record an album. In the old days I might have said, 'Stop whining about it, Pop, and tell me what's really on your mind.' Because cops, even old cops, don't sit outside bars coming on like Grandpa Walton for no good reason. But these weren't the old days, these were the new and I was able to hold off on the abuse. I nodded and did my best to look thoughtful. I took another sip of my beer. He'd get to the point soon enough.

'Any news on that ve-hicle of yours?' Sheriff Baines asked.

'The ve-hicle is still in the gar-age.' I wasn't consciously taking the piss. I was just half drunk. 'And JJ's at the bar.' Try as I might, I just couldn't split
bar
into two syllables.

'JJ's always at the bar. You still planning to leave tomorrow?'

'Just as soon as JJ works his magic.'

The Sheriff nodded. 'Hear you put some valuables in the bank.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Valuables as opposed to evidence, like you told BJ.'

He had opened the trapdoor, and I had dived through it, smiling naively. But I could still argue my case from the darkness of the dungeon.

'Valuables
are
evidence.'

He nodded again. Took another sip of his beer. 'You do realise it's a crime to impersonate a police officer?'

'Is it?' I smiled, and he smiled back. Dig, Dan, dig yourself out of the hole. 'We were only joking, Sheriff. Didn't think he'd take us seriously. We only wanted somewhere to put our stuff.'

He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I shook my head. He lit up, bent his head back and blew a thin stream of smoke into the air.

'If you did that in there,' I said, nodding at the bar, 'I'd have to make a citizen's arrest.'

'And you'd be perfectly within your rights, son.' He continued without pausing for breath; it was a clash of two tangents. 'Soon as I saw you, I ran your plates.'

'No one ever tell you not to judge a book by its cover? We'd just fallen in a ditch.'

'In my experience,' said the Sheriff, 'it pays to
always
judge a book by its cover. Seems to me that vehicle belongs to a St Pete Beach cop called Cody Banks.'

'Yup. That's my friend,'

'Son.'

'He has a split personality. Some days he's a St Pete Beach cop, other days he's a mad Irish tourist.'

'Son.'

'Only raking.'

'Son, I never saw anyone less like a cop in my life.'

I shrugged. 'I know what you mean. Truth is, we met Cody in St Pete Beach a few days ago, got on like a house on fire, he lent us his car. Those hire-car places are such a rip-off. We're shit scared of taking the car back to him now 'cause we drove it into that ditch. But we'll do it, 'cause we're good honest people and we're sure JJ will do an excellent job.'