Flamingo Lane, page 18
It’s your move, honey, he whispers. Your move.
Kershaw
He pulls onto Rutherford Road, leaving Lake Baylor behind. The mist that blanketed the water and the woods earlier that morning has finally dissolved, and shafts of sunlight now pierce the tangled branches of the roadside trees. He slips on his sunglasses, presses the accelerator, and almost immediately has to slow down for a John Deere tractor whose driver, on the next straightaway, waves him around. A few minutes later, as he negotiates a sharp curve in the road without taking his foot off the gas, determined to get to the precinct on time, he sees a red Ford Capri rapidly approaching from the opposite direction. And as the Capri flashes past, he notes that the man behind the wheel is Dieter.
Harry Crosby is portly, florid, and like many people who find themselves against their will in a detective’s office, antsy. His eyes dart back and forth across the nondescript room: institutional green walls, silent black telephone, file folder propped open next to Kershaw’s stained mug. It’s a bare, depressing, minimalist space, a cave. Harry would rather be outside on the lot in the sunlight flirting with a middle-aged divorcee haggling price on a ’78 Datsun. Or trolling for cobia off St. Andrew’s Bay. Anywhere but here.
To Kershaw, Harry Crosby’s nervousness is the first indication that he probably has something to hide. He finishes scanning the notes in the file and looks up with a faint grin.
So this guy came to the lot, what, last Sunday?
Crosby isn’t able to hold the detective’s gaze, indication number two.
That’s right. Sunday.
And you were working.
I was working.
Kershaw’s smile grows wider now, more congenial. So you always work Sundays?
Not always but yeah, I usually do.
Kershaw consults his notes again, an idle finger tapping the folder. That’s funny, he murmurs.
What is?
No, it’s just that one of your salesmen told us you don’t normally work on Sundays unless there’s, in his words, some kind of emergency.
Crosby tries, with little success, to shrug it off. Well let me tell ya somethin’, detective, in the used-car business there’s a lot of emergencies!
Kershaw nods, that disarming grin never leaving his face. I’m sure there is, Mr. Crosby, I’m sure there is.
Kershaw asks him about the registration on the Monte Carlo, whether the driver happened to mention why he was trading it in, and if a mechanic inspected the car before the transaction was completed. Mentally checking off each question, Crosby replies that the title and registration were clean, the customer didn’t say (and Harry didn’t ask) why he was trading it in, and yes, a mechanic went over the engine.
And it was okay?
The usual wear and tear. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Kershaw studies the open file again, his finger crawling across the page until he finds what he’s looking for.
So the deal was the Monte Carlo plus, what, six hundred for the Mirada?
Right. Six hundred.
And the customer paid cash.
Correct.
Without taking his eyes off his notes, the detective asks, in a casual tone, if Harry knows a guy named Harvey Bellum.
Who?
Harvey Bellum, Kershaw says, looking up from the file. He’s a lawyer.
A lawyer.
Right. A lawyer. In Panama City.
The used-car salesman starts to chew his lower lip, indication number three. In contrast, the detective looks serene, at ease, almost complacent. They’re playing high-stakes poker, the chips are on the table, and he’s ready to call Crosby’s bluff.
Name rings a bell, Crosby admits, but no, I can’t place him.
Uh huh.
Kershaw pauses, drags the tension out, lets Crosby squirm.
How about Mestival? Ever hear of a guy named Pablo Mestival?
Faye
Faye claps her hands and shouts, C’mon Sunny, c’mon girl! And in the blink of an eye the Lab whips past her out the kitchen door. On Lake Baylor, now that the mist has dissolved, the sun sparkles in the wake of a boat trolling the channel, headed for the grassy shallows along the opposite bank.
Tugging on her leash, Sunny drags Faye across the back lawn to the gravel track that circles the water. Where they bear left, following the road past houses with trim lawns, metal tool sheds, and truck gardens. Cedar decks with shiny black grills and vistas of open water. A spray of camellias in a tarnished copper pot. The houses tend toward modest, a retiree’s winter fishing retreat or a working-class family’s dream of raising their kids in the country. Jon boats with trolling motors or occasional pontoons like Kershaw’s cleated to the docks. Stands of cypress and oak separating the properties.
She wraps the leash around her wrist to make sure that Sunny doesn’t bolt and continues down the gravel lane, considering how pleasant it would be to live here. A pickup rattles past, slowing as the driver slings a hand out the window in greeting, because it’s the kind of place where neighbors wave even if they don’t know you, where men drive pickups and children lasso fishing lines into the shallows, where locals gather on weekends at the Drop On In Tavern out on Rutherford Road to eat oysters on the half shell, drink pitchers of ice cold beer, and swap gossip.
But she won’t let herself fantasize. Even though she knows in her bones, because women’s bones know such things, that Dave Kershaw is falling for her, and that she’s falling for him too, she won’t let herself fantasize. Her sexual anxiety has discouraged them from making love yet, but Kershaw’s interest remains as bold and enticing as the Louisiana Hot Sauce he liberally sprinkles on his fried eggs. His attention, his male regard, is provocative. But it also frightens her. In Mexico she buried her romantic inclinations in a very deep grave, and she’s not sure she’s ready to unearth them just yet.
Dieter
As he approaches a sharp curve on Rutherford Road, he catches sight of Kershaw’s car traveling in the opposite direction and raises a hand just in time to acknowledge the detective’s spontaneous greeting. He also notes that Faye isn’t in the car and assumes that Kershaw must have decided to leave for work a few minutes early knowing that Dieter, who had called before he left the house, was on his way.
The prospect of spending a lazy day out on Lake Baylor with Faye pleases him. He doesn’t consider himself a protector—he’s never been able to protect anyone in his life, particularly Jen—but he does take pride in his loyalty, and if Faye feels safer with him around, then so be it. He’ll do anything in his power to bolster her courage in this hour of need. Until the crisis ends—until, that is, Chance is brought in for questioning or it’s determined that he’s fled back to Mexico—he, or Kershaw, will remain by her side.
Crossing a bridge over the murky trickle of a stream, he hears a sudden thump under the car, followed by a loud pop, and the next thing he knows the Capri is skidding out of control, one of the back tires blown out and the front right already slipping off the pavement. He slams his foot on the brake pedal and jerks the steering wheel violently to the left, but this only makes matters worse. Spinning backwards, the Capri careens off the road and shudders to a stop in a grassy swale, the blown tire hissing like a snake in the sudden silence.
Fuck!
He slams the side of his fist against the steering wheel, his heart drumming against his ribs. Creaking open the door, he climbs out to inspect the damage.
Punctured, the back tire hangs limp off the wheel. And even though there’s a spare in the trunk, the Capri, facing forward, facing upward toward the road, has come to rest half in and half out of the ditch, the ground too steep, too uneven to secure a jack. He curses again. Why now? Why did this have to happen now?
Too anxious to wait for someone to stop and assist him, he struggles up the embankment and starts to hike east toward the lake. Wincing from a sudden prick of pain, he raises a hand to his forehead and it comes away bloody. But that’s the least of his concerns. He’s not exactly sure how far he has to go, but he knows that Faye is waiting for him and that she’s all alone and probably frightened. If he has to walk the entire way, then that’s what he’ll do.
After pounding the pavement for ten minutes, he hears a distant sound, a distant hum, and quickly wheels around. The sunlight flames against the pavement but when he squints his eyes, he’s able to see through the heat haze a battered pickup painted in a coat of grey primer roaring toward him. Finally! He raises his arms and waves them over his head. The driver can let him off at the entrance to Lake Baylor or maybe even at Kershaw’s front door, and he can call a tow truck from there. Then he notices that the truck isn’t slowing down but appears, in fact, to be accelerating. In disbelief he watches it zoom past him, horn blaring as a sudden gust of wind in the pickup’s violent wake nearly blows him off his feet. Standing on the shoulder of the road with his eyebrow dripping blood and the sun pounding down on the pavement, he has no other choice, no other option but to start walking again.
Maguire
After escorting Harry Crosby off the premises, Kershaw taps twice on Maguire’s open door.
Can I use your phone, Jack?
Leaning back in the new ergonomic chair that was delivered to his office yesterday, Maguire nods. Go right ahead, you.
Kershaw picks up the phone and dials his neighbor, Andy Smithson. He’s lying, he says to Maguire out of the side of his mouth.
Who’s lying?
Harry Crosby.
How do you know?
’Cause when I mentioned Pablo Mestival he flinched. More than flinched. Practically fell out of his chair. He’s lying.
Before Maguire has a chance to respond, Kershaw lifts a finger for silence. Andy? Dave Kershaw here.
How ya doin’, Dave?
I’m fine, Andy. But listen, I need a favor.
Anything, Dave. What’s up?
I know this is gonna sound kinda strange, but I want you to drive over to Vince Richardson’s place. Don’t stop. Just drive by.
Drive by.
Yeah, drive by and see if there’s a car in the driveway, okay? Then call me back.
He gave Andy the number and hung up. Maguire was staring at him.
Who’s Vince Richardson?
Gotta go, Jack. I’ll fill you in later.
That’d be nice.
Five minutes later, back in his office, he picks up line two. It’s Andy Smithson.
There’s a car there all right.
What kinda car?
A Dodge Mirada, it’s a Dodge Mirada . . . Dave? You there, Dave?
Faye
In the crosshairs of the rifle scope, Chance focuses in on his target. Concentrate, he tells himself. Breathe. He sets his feet, bends his knees, centers the shot, takes a deep pranayama breath . . . and abruptly straightens up, flexing his right shoulder to ease a sudden knot. He grits his teeth in disappointment, in frustration. He knows that he has to do this, that his future depends on it, that whatever other options he once entertained are now gone. But he can’t pull off a head shot, it’s too violent, too graphic, too messy even though what he’s doing, he reminds himself, is not his fault, it’s Angelina’s.
As a steady breeze skitters across the lake, rattling the leaves of the trees, he leans over and presses his eye against the scope again and refocuses on Faye perched in the captain’s chair of Kershaw’s pontoon boat, casting a line into the cove. Then he tilts the barrel of the rifle down a fraction and slightly to the right, aiming at the heart. She won’t know what hit her, she’ll bleed out quickly, it’s more humane this way. Clenching his jaw, he presses his finger against the trigger, at the same time closing his eyes.
A fish, something substantial, suddenly strikes Faye’s line, jerking her forward, and an instant later the bullet slams into her shoulder, shattering her collarbone instead of her heart.
As the report of the shot echoes across the water, Chance opens his eyes. But Faye is no longer there, no longer visible, the impact of the bullet has flung her off the chair.
Lying on the deck of the boat she stares, through a blur, at the yellow Lab leaning over her, whimpering. Instinctively she tries to lift a hand to comfort the dog, but the pain is so sharp the hand refuses to obey. Rotating her head a couple of inches to the left, she shudders. The top of her shoulder is missing, a steady trickle of blood is streaming down her arm, and a piece of her broken collarbone, the end as sharp as a shiv, is pointing straight up in the air.
She loses consciousness for a few moments then snaps back awake. There’s a spray pattern of blood on Sunny’s fur too, and the poor thing’s still whimpering, frantic now, circling her. It’s okay, girl, she groans, it’s all right. But of course she knows it isn’t. She’s been shot, Chance has shot her, and now he’ll come and finish the job.
Yet for some reason she’s unable to fathom, she isn’t particularly afraid. Maybe she’s too numb, too emotionally drained to care. Or maybe death, once feared, now seems a blessing, an end to the sorrow, to the grief, to Mexico. She closes her eyes again—all of a sudden, despite the searing pain, she’s exhausted—and sees Dylan saunter across a stage and assume his place in the glow of a red spotlight. But wait, it can’t be Dylan because she isn’t at a concert, she’s lying on the deck of Kershaw’s pontoon boat, her left shoulder is missing, and she’s waiting for her assassin, her executioner, to come finish the job.
Everyone she has ever loved gathers around her now. She’s sure of that. Her mother’s kiss on the cheek is cool and comforting, a simple declaration of love. Unsurprisingly, her father’s expression is more stoic: it isn’t fair, of course, but this is what happens to wayward daughters. Then Jennifer takes her hand and leads her down to the lagoon in Quintana Roo to watch the dive boat sail away.
Dieter’s at the wheel, heading for the channel, and her mother’s standing next to him waving goodbye. She cries out in anguish, but Dieter can’t hear her, her mother can’t hear her, no one can hear her. At the edge of the lagoon, she falls to her knees, overwhelmed by a sudden desire to sail out to the reef and plunge through the opal water, to freefall past the coral walls into paradise or oblivion, whichever comes first.
Now she’s warm. Safe. Amniotic. Floating in the womb of fluid that protects the unborn and those about to be unborn again. In her dream the sun pours light down on the lake, on the boat, on the trees that shade the cove. Then she opens her eyes and sees Chance, pistol in hand, gazing down at her.
Dieter
At the sound of the first gunshot, he panics, sprinting down the gravel track toward Kershaw’s house. Overhead he hears the screech of an osprey and the echo of the gunshot reverberating in the lakeside trees.
But at the edge of the back lawn, at the sight of Chance pointing a pistol down at Faye, who is lying on the deck of Kershaw’s boat, he freezes, mesmerized by the cinematic tableau: the pontoon rocking gently in the chop, the sunlight in the cedars, the gun in Chance’s hand.
How many thoughts can occur in an instant? He hesitates at the edge of the lawn, not out of fear but wonder, a sense of unreality, shock, as if his fingers, his helpless fingers, are hovering over the keys of a typewriter, unsure how to describe what he sees.
Chance will fire the gun. Or he won’t. Faye will die, or survive.
The lines blur. His life’s a book; everyone’s is. Roman à clef. Is he frightened? Has the sight of Chance’s handgun pointing down at Faye crushed his will, his nerve? Is this his moment of cowardice, his moment of shame?
Faye will die, Chance will elude the authorities, and Maggie will eventually abandon him because he’s an observer, a literary voyeur once removed from the world’s incalculable grief, a writer no longer engaged by reality but by its surrogate, the fictional characters in a fictional town that looks a lot like the place she grew up in, Crooked River.
How many thoughts can occur in an instant?
He takes a step across the lawn, then another. Hears Chance tell Faye to close her eyes.
Now he’s running, sprinting across the lawn. Wait!
What does courage look like?
Faye says no.
Chance
Close your eyes.
No.
Please.
No, I’m not going to do that.
Her defiance is exhilarating. She wants to spit in his face. Grab his throat and strangle the air out of his lungs. Scream in his ear that her last act on earth is not going to be subservience.
He can’t look, so he turns his head at the last moment, his finger trembling on the trigger. Then he sees Dieter running across the lawn and his brief hesitation, that second of indecision—What’s Dieter doing here? He’s supposed to be in Indiana—changes everything.
Gathering whatever strength and resolve is left in her, Faye raises her right hand, the one clutching Kershaw’s .45, and squeezes off a shot.
Faye
She hears sirens, Dieter’s voice, the panting dog. Feels something—A rag? Dieter’s shirt?—pressed against her missing shoulder. Dylan is gone and the stage is empty though the red spotlight remains on. The auditorium’s empty too.
A voice again, but this time it isn’t Dieter’s. Voices, plural. Careful, Tommy, watch your step, buddy. Careful now. Arms like straps link and lift her from the deck, carry her off the boat, place her on a gurney.
When she stubs her toe on a tree root poking up through the broken sidewalk, Jen wraps an arm around her shoulder, says Careful, honey, those roots are a bitch. They’re walking home from the Yucatan Café, back to their little house at the edge of the village. The moon is gold, glowing, monstrous. Harvest moon, isn’t that what they call it back home? Something about the seasons, the cycle of the seasons. Harvest moon. Jaguar moon. Over and over the village by the sea, the boats trolling out to the reef, Mexico.
