Heart of Palm (53 page)

“I’ll meet you all at the van,” Frank said. “I just want to walk down to the Lil’ Champ and check on Tip.” He’d seen Tip’s car in its usual spot next to the store as they looped down Seminary Street looking for a parking spot before lunch, and he was surprised—though tentatively relieved—to see that Tip seemed to be easing back into his routine. There’d be a hearing on the vandalism charge, of course, and no doubt a hefty fine, too. But rehabilitation—it wasn’t out of the question, right? Maybe Tip was going to survive in the new Utina after all.

“I’ll come with you,” Carson said.

“Since when do you care about Tip Breen?” Frank said.

“I don’t care about Tip,” Carson said. “But I think I might smell a business venture.” Elizabeth stared at him. He tossed his napkin onto the table, got up, kissed Bell, and squished toward the front door.

Frank reached for the check, then noticed Dean had eaten only a couple bites of his hamburger.

“You’re not hungry, Dad?” he said.

“Pfftt,” Dean said. He leaned back in the booth and stared at the ceiling.

When they walked into the Lil’ Champ Frank realized how long it had been since he’d entered the store. Months, in fact. Over the summer he’d taken to picking up his coffee at Sterling’s in order, he admitted guiltily, to avoid Tip. He remembered being here on Fourth of July but could not recall having been back since. My God, what a mess the place was. The shelves were nearly empty of stock. The Lotto stand was bare. The Krispy Kreme case was blurred and sticky-looking. Even the porn was in sad shape, the rack now busted on one side and dangling rakishly behind the counter, an aspect that made the magazines appear even more obscene. Frank was afraid to look closely at the hot dog warmer, though he could see from ten feet away that a half-dozen shriveled red hot dogs spun slowly across the rollers. He wondered how long they’d been there.

“Christ,” Carson muttered. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Tip,” Frank called. “You back in business?”

The door to the men’s room opened, and Tip Breen shuffled out. He gave the Bravos a tired wave and moved toward his stool behind the counter.

“I guess so,” he said. “You want something?”

Frank looked around, trying to locate something he could purchase. He reached for a bag of chips but yanked his hand back when a roach scuttled across the wrapping. He gave up. They approached the counter.

“Tip, how are you doing?” Frank said. “You doing all right?”

“He’s doing shitty,” Carson barked. “Look at him. Tip, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Tip sighed. “Well, first of all, I been in jail,” he began. “And second, I got no sales. Them developer people. They’re driving me out of business. . . .”

“Oh, this bullshit again,” Carson said.

“Carson,” Frank said. “Go easy.”

“It’s true,” Tip protested. “It’s not bullshit.” He slouched forward over the counter.

“Tip, this place is a pit,” Carson said. “It’s worse than a pit. You’ve given up.” He walked away from the counter toward the front door, then looked out at the boat ramp and the water beyond. He turned back to Tip. “You’ve let them win,” he said.

Tip shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s not that, Carson.”

Carson looked at Frank and raised his eyebrows, annoyed, but Frank was surprised to also see a flicker of pity in his brother’s eyes. He wondered if Carson shared his own memory: Tip’s big hands on Will’s shoulders that night at the dunes.

Carson cleared his throat and walked back over to the counter. “Look, Tip,” he said. He spread his arms out, gestured around the store. “You don’t just die, dummy. You dig in, get stronger. You’re right on the water here. That’s what these people are coming to Utina for. Why don’t you make the most of it?”

Tip shrugged.

Carson started to pace. From the counter to the door, back again. “You can do this. Give them what they want, which is more than porn and beer.” He kicked at a newspaper stand, gestured to the thick layer of filth behind it. “Clean up, for starters. Then put some chairs outside there, some tables with umbrellas. Get some real coffee in here, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “Some of those cups with sleeves. Fucking scones and whatnot.
Compete,
Breen!”

Tip was unmoved. He looked around the ruined store, then sighed.

“I can’t do it,” Tip said. “I’m not like you, Carson.”

Carson regarded him. “You got that right, Breen,” he said, but his voice was softer, almost gentle. They fell silent for a moment.

“Well,” Frank said finally.

“Hey, Tip,” Carson said. He moved in closer and paddled his hands on the counter. “I got a joke for you. What do Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton have in common?”

But Tip slid off the stool behind the counter and walked slowly toward the back of the store.

“Come on, Tip!” Carson called. “Take a guess!”

At the door to the storeroom, Tip turned around.

“I’m sorry, Frank,” he said. “You done a good thing for me and all, but you shouldn’t a sold to them people. They’re killing me. They’re killing Utina. Can’t you Bravos see that?” He looked on the verge of tears, and Frank was suddenly furious with him for not wanting to change. For not even considering the possibility. There was nothing they could do for Tip Breen.

“Get it together, Tip,” he said. But Tip walked into the storeroom and closed the door.

They turned to exit the Lil’ Champ but stopped short at the sight of Alonzo Cryder’s black Mercedes pulling up to the curb in front of the store. “Well, look who it isn’t,” Carson said. They watched as Cryder climbed out of the car, as he spotted Frank and Carson through the storefront. His raised a hand to them and walked purposefully toward the front door.

Frank was surprised to see Cryder here, in downtown Utina, and even more surprised to see that he was agitated, disheveled. He’d taken off his starched shirt and was stripped down to dress pants and a tight white T-shirt that revealed a doughy-looking paunch and deep sweat stains under the arms. He looked like a different person than the smooth man who had sat in Mac’s office just a few weeks ago, sweet-talking Arla into the sale.

Cryder entered the store and sniffed as he approached them.

“Cryder,” Frank said. “What are you doing here? The sale’s all over. Aren’t you supposed to be out of Atlanta? Running marinas or something?”

“That’s very funny,” Cryder said. “But you know I don’t run them. I build them, Frank.”

“It’s Mr. Bravo,” Frank said. “And it’s good to see you supporting the local merchants, Mr. Cryder.”

Cryder looked around the store, then narrowed his eyes and looked from Frank to Carson and back again. “I stopped for a soda—” he said.

“Try the hot dogs,” Carson said. “They’re fabulous.”

Cryder ignored him. “—but I’m glad I caught you people here,” he continued. “I was about to call you. I have a question for you two gentlemen.”

“You want to know where the nail salon is?” Carson said. “Well, you just walk up Seminary about two blocks, and then—”

“Listen,” Cryder hissed. He leaned in closer. “I would like to know why you didn’t tell us about the burial site,” he said.

“The burial site?” Frank said.

“On the property,” Cryder said. “There’s a grave marker. Which means there appear to be human remains on the marina property.” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “And my boss is not happy,” he added.

Carson looked at Frank; Frank saw the realization register in his brother’s eyes, and he raised his own eyebrows in return but said nothing. Drusilla! He’d scarcely thought of her in years, though he remembered now—like it was yesterday—the afternoon he’d first discovered the gravestone in the woods. He’d been six, seven maybe. He and Carson had come across it during a tramp through the scrub, and it had frightened him terribly. Carson scoffed at Frank’s terror, but he followed when Frank ran home to tell Arla about it. She’d laughed at the two of them, sweaty and breathless. “Oh, that’s my dear friend,” she said. “That’s just Drusilla. She won’t hurt you.” Good God, they’d left Drusilla at Aberdeen, left her to the bulldozers and backhoes. He swallowed hard, tried not to look at Carson again.

“You failed to disclose this to us, and now we’ve got problems,” Cryder was saying. “I’ve been hauling my ass all over that site trying to figure out what the hell is going on.” He clawed at his forearms, where Frank could see the raised clusters of at least a dozen fresh mosquito bites. “Florida’s got statutes,” Cryder continued. “We have to get the damned medical examiner in here, get an investigation. It’s slowing everything down, and our permits are time sensitive, for God’s sake. The surveyors were supposed to start tomorrow.” He took a crumpled napkin from his pocket and mopped his brow.

“And this concerns us how?” Carson said.

“You knew about this,” Cryder said. “And you didn’t tell us.”

Carson turned to Frank. “Frank, did you know there was a burial site on the property?” he said.

“Nope,” Frank said.

“Me neither,” Carson said. He turned back to Cryder. “Sorry, fella.”

Cryder narrowed his eyes. “Look, I need a statement,” he said. “I need something from you people saying who that person is, what’s the story on that burial marker. Otherwise we’ll be forever trying to track it down.”

Carson shrugged. “Not our property, Mr. Cryder. Not our problem.”

Cryder glared at them for a moment. “Bravos,” he said quietly. “Do the right thing. Don’t be your daddy.”

Frank felt his brother stiffen beside him, and he wondered for a moment whether Carson was going to throw a punch, but then the storeroom door opened and Tip emerged and stood looking balefully at Cryder. A synapse in Frank’s brain fired—late, of course, stupidly late but palpable and insistent now, making his stomach lurch and his heart clench. The shape of something dark and metallic in Tip’s right hand. Tip. Cryder. Utina. Vista.

I got nothing, Frank,
Tip had said.
They’re killing us, Frank.

“Carson,” Frank said, and Carson was quick, understanding without Frank having to say it. They moved toward Tip in unison, reaching him just as he leveled his aim at Cryder. Frank yelled at Cryder to get down. Then the moment turned to a chaos of sweat and fumbling and the rank odor of Tip’s body, too close, too thick, and damp and heavy as Frank and Carson pushed him backward and down. The three of them barreled into a shelving unit together, and the gun discharged once, firing through the bottom pane of the Lil’ Champ’s windowed front door but missing Cryder, now crouched in mute fear by the Lotto stand, by a healthy margin. Tip dropped the gun, and Carson kicked it, sending it sliding under a freezer case. When the front door’s glass shards settled, the silence was complete and astounding, broken after a moment by the sound of Tip’s voice, thin and frightened.

“Frank,” Tip said. “Oh, shit, Frank.”

The most frightening aspect of death, it occurred to Frank later, was its obdurate, intractable randomness. It was true that at times death could be seen approaching from a great distance, slow but insistent, beating a drum for the sick, for example, or for the old. But then there were times, and in Frank’s experience this had been the norm, when it struck from seemingly nowhere. Bam! Done! It made him unsteady on his feet, unsure of his position. There were times, as when he was driving over the Intracoastal, across the Vilano Bridge, with the ocean spread gray and gleaming in the distance, or when he was bobbing alone in his kayak, watching through water clear as air as the mudminnows delicately nibbled the bait from around the sharp point of his hook, when the beauty was nearly painful, and Frank would have a moment of cloudiness, of vertigo, and he would wonder if perhaps he was, in fact, already dead and just hadn’t realized it yet. There was really no telling. None of this made any sense at all.

To wit: nobody had wanted Will or Arla to die. But they did. Tip Breen had very much wanted Alonzo Cryder to die. But he didn’t. Didn’t even get hurt, really, if Frank didn’t count Cryder’s wounded dignity over the fact that he’d burst into tears once he realized he wasn’t shot and had to venture into the hellish interior of the Lil’ Champ’s men’s room to wipe his face, blow his nose, and generally collect himself.

But Cryder was alive. They all were. By the time the police arrived and packed Tip into the back of a crusier, the rest of the Bravos and Biaggio had hurried down from Sterling’s and had gathered, shaken, outside the store, where now they waited as first Carson and then Frank gave statements to the police. Nearby, Cryder finished a protracted interview with a young cop who looked both confused by the paperwork and intimidated by the little throng of bystanders gawking at the commotion—but thank God for small favors it wasn’t Do-Key on the scene, for once, Frank thought. The family stood near Cryder’s Mercedes, except Carson, who was sitting on the hood.

“Helluva day,” Dean said.

“My God,” Carson said. He exhaled. “Can we get off this ride now?”

“You can get off my
car,
Bravo,” Cryder snapped as he approached.

Carson waited a beat, then slid down from the Mercedes.

“You’re welcome,” Carson said.

“For what?” Cryder said. He sniffed.