Liquid Shades of Blue, page 1
Copyright © 2023 by James Polkinghorn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-60809-550-6
Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing
Sarasota, Florida
www.oceanviewpub.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To my mother, Janet Clark
“… who sang like a lark, in the park, when it’s dark.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not have found its way into print without the selfless efforts of Michael Connelly, who provided invaluable substantive advice and insight.
Larry Loftis encouraged me from the start and kept my spirits up when they were flagging.
Thanks to Bob and Pat Gussin and the Oceanview staff for their enthusiastic support.
PROLOGUE
She glanced at the eight pills in her hand and the glass of water on the finely carved cherrywood dressing table before her. She looked up.
“I hate pain. I can’t handle it.”
“So, swallow the pills,” he said. “You’ll feel nothing. It will be like going to sleep.”
A pause. She considered his words, her situation, and the note she had written. She reached for the glass.
CHAPTER ONE
The day began badly but the worst was coming. This is the way of many stories, although I hadn’t thought of it in a comparative way until I began piecing this together. It’s been a while since it all happened. You wonder about the effect of traumatic events on already imperfect memory and about perceived connections that may not even be real. You, at least, understand that I’m alive to tell this tale, if that’s what it turns out to be. But what of the damage done? What’s the result of all that?
There I was, opening my eyes uncertainly, head throbbing and lips dry; definitely a hangover—nothing new. A shaft of light from a nearby window revealed the murky outline of furniture I recognized as my own. Safe in my own bed at least, I fleetingly thought. But then I heard the soft breathing that was clearly not mine. Turning slowly—agonizingly—to my left, I encountered the bare shoulder and silky black hair of Anna Markova, a high-end Key West sex worker I knew casually from her sporadic visits to my bar.
“Good Lord, Jack! What have you done?” I whispered.
I was dully transfixed by a small heart tattoo on her shoulder blade, wondering why she put it there where she would never see it. I noticed a light dusting of freckles on her otherwise alabaster skin, offering proof that she did sometimes venture out in the tropical Key West sun, although I had only seen her in artificial light. I pondered these things while my mind otherwise raced to fill the void that was last night. Needing answers, I lightly squeezed her right shoulder and watched as she slowly but fluidly rolled over to face me. Her startling cornflower blue eyes settled on me. I tried to hold her gaze but peripherally saw that she was naked, at least from the waist up. As she reached forward to touch my cheek with the back of her hand, she made no effort to adjust the sheet that partially covered us.
“Good morning, Jack. How are you feeling?”
“Never better, Anna. Why are we here?”
She smiled, revealing perfect white teeth and soft lips made to be kissed.
“You don’t remember, Jack? I think I should take this moment to be insulted. Most men find me memorable.”
Her small, firm breasts and seemingly erect nipples taunted me. Still nothing.
“Did we …”
“No, Jack. I think it was not the right time. Maybe never the right time.”
Her breath smelled like orange blossoms. I was certain mine did not. Still foggy, I pressed on.
“So how did you … or should I say we … end up here?”
“Such an interesting question, Jack, if you stand back from it a little bit. But I think you are looking for a simple answer, yes?”
“Please, Anna, give me a little bit of a break. I’m struggling here.” My voice sounded scratchy and weak. Hers rang clearly, natural seduction in every accented word.
“It really is simple. I am not teasing you. It is late Friday night and I am without arrangement, which is not so usual this time of year. I am walking along Duval Street and I notice your new sign down the alley. I really do like it. ‘Jack’s Hideaway.’ Very good description and also says something personal about you, I think.”
She paused—I didn’t bite. I looked back as steadily as I could, not knowing what I told her in the hours before. She continued.
“I just stop in to see how things are going. You and Tracy are behind the bar, most stools are taken, and the tables are full. I sit at the bar in front by the window. I am watching you in the mirror behind the bar. I know you know I am there, but you don’t look at me, which makes me smile. It is dim and the music is loud enough to make people speak up. They are less, what you call, self-conscious. But not you, Jack. You have been here almost two years, and I never see you speaking with pretty girls. Or pretty boys either. But I know your eyes are on me when I come in just for that second of recognizing. You have been watching me, but I confess. I have been watching you too.”
Now this was interesting. It’s true that I had picked up a six-year sub-lease on the bar known as Billy & Bob’s. Both Billy and Bob lived in Ohio and never noticed until it was too late that their manager/nephew was stealing from them. He had some ideas about investing in a human smuggling operation focused on Cuba but was too dumb to realize that everyone he was trying to conspire with was an FBI agent or informant. He’s in prison now, and I took advantage of his uncles’ disgust and financial problem by buying their business, struggling though it was, and taking over their lease. I finally changed the name about six months ago when I realized we were going to make it. Investing in the locals was the key, and after enough of them got to know me, it made sense to put my own name on the place.
We’re a little off the main drag in Old Town, but you can see us from there. People living on the little lanes between Duval and Whitehead Streets, along with the working-class folks living in Bahama Village, needed a place they could walk to, enjoy a stiff drink at a fair price, and talk to their friends without being bowled over by a drunk stockbroker looking for another Jager shot for “his bros” from New Jersey. I made it a point to remember names of repeat customers and Tracy, my tireless lead bartender who was there from the start, had developed a couple of rum cocktails that were gaining a fearsome reputation by word of mouth.
Anna would appear every couple of months, as I remembered it, usually alone but sometimes with men and women I came to realize were clients rather than friends. A six-foot stunner, most conversations paused when she came into view. I guess it’s true that I kept an eye on her, but I preferred to think it was because I wanted to make sure she wasn’t conducting business in my place. I was still new and still trying to understand how the local police viewed the wide gray line between acceptable and arrestable behavior. In Key West, we don’t think so much about whether conduct is illegal—it’s more about who’s being hurt. Personally, I had no problem with sex workers making a living, but I also knew that professionals like Anna held secrets that could hurt people I wasn’t ready to cross.
“Anna, forgive me, but my brain isn’t really working. I’m still not remembering what happened, although you don’t seem to be mad at me.”
“Not a bit, Jack. You are a perfect gentleman, even after too much vodka.”
Except I don’t really drink vodka, at least not as a first choice. But if I did, it would explain my current condition. I tried to lift my head off the pillow but immediately regretted it.
“So how did vodka come into it?”
“Well, you are avoiding me as always until the drunk Navy guy is getting pushy with me—not accepting that I am not interested. I get up to leave, but he blocks my way. He is making a scene, which is bad for me. I just want to go. And then suddenly you are there.”
And then I remembered.
He had grabbed her arm as she tried to slip past him to the door, which violated one of the cardinal rules of Jack’s Hideaway: no one touches a woman who doesn’t want to be touched. That brought me out from behind the bar in an instant. I simultaneously peeled his fingers from Anna’s arm and pulled his hand behind his back while pushing him forward into the bar with my free forearm. I had the benefit of not being drunk, so, for him, this all happened too fast. With his face now pressed into the bar-top wet with beer spilled during the commotion, I told him he was going to apologize, I was going to let him up, and he was going to leave, in that order.
Luckily, his three friends made no effort to intervene. One of them, wearing a blue “Fly Navy” baseball cap, leaned in and said, “Let’s go, Zeke, we’ve got the training run in the morning anyway.”
I added, “Listen to me, Zeke. That run will not be pleasant with the broken nose I’m about to administer if you try to fight me. Got it?”
Zeke seemed to be considering his options, but I noticed he
“So now I need that apology, Zeke.”
He spat out the word “sorry” as I slowly eased him upright, shoving him toward his friends, who wisely reached out to prevent him from doing anything impulsive.
“Don’t bring him back here.”
The Key West Naval Air Station, located about four miles down the road on Boca Chica Key, is a big employer and provider of many drinking customers to bars like mine. It’s home to several service units, including Fighter Squadron Composite 111, an air-to-air combat training group of both active and reserve duty pilots with significant combat experience. The squadron is known as the Sun Downers, taken from the famous F-14 Tomcat Squadron from Miramar, California, disestablished by the Navy in 1995.
The Key West Sun Downers understand their traditions. They are deadly serious in the air and, in my experience, come in two types on the ground. The first group—a large majority—are calm, affable, intelligent, and possessed of a quiet confidence that doesn’t require demonstration. The second group is cocky, loud, and determined to one-up anyone in any competition and in any context. My new friend Zeke was in the second group, but his friends were in the first and quickly walked him out as I considered whether this incident was going to hurt my reputation on Boca Chica.
Only then did I turn to see that the place was back to normal, glasses clinking and voices rising, except that Anna stood very still by the bar squeezing her fists so tightly I could see the veins bulging on the backs of her hands. Her eyes were fixed on the four pilots as they pushed out the door. Her expression was hard to read. Disgust? Contempt? But for whom? She felt me watching her and the spell was broken. The remarkable geometry of her face—the angular cheekbones, aquiline nose, and strong Slavic jawline—took on an appearance of diffidence, something I’d never seen in Anna before.
“I know I must say thank you, Jack, but I want you to know I can take care of myself. That man would not harm me.”
And, with that statement, her confidence returned. She crossed her arms over her chest and took a half-step forward. I had the awkward feeling of knowing the next thing I said was likely to be wrong. I started with, “I’m sorry, Anna. I simply reacted and wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”
This elicited a smile, which seemed promising.
“I am not embarrassed, Jack. This is too strong a word. But I do not need to be protected from men like him by men like you. I know you are the big strong type that wants to protect, but I do not need this.”
“That’s not quite it, Anna. I wasn’t so much trying to protect you as I was trying to educate him on the rules of respect. I don’t like bullies. I react badly to people who think they can have what they want by being bigger, stronger, or louder than the next person. Zeke needed some pretty basic instruction in terms he understood.”
Anna appraised me for a moment before speaking again. “Then I congratulate you, Jack. You are a first-rate instructor, even though I do not understand how you control Zeke so quickly. I will buy you a drink to toast your success.”
And before I could respond, she turned and ordered two shots of Grey Goose vodka from Tracy, who by this time had drifted down to our spot at the bar. She was carrying her cell phone, seemingly poised to dial 911 if things had turned a different way. Although Tracy is only five feet two inches in height and couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds, her presence is palpable. People notice when she’s around, even before they see her mane of unruly red hair and unusual beryl green eyes set wide in an expression of perpetual amusement. I’d guess she’s a few years older than me, possibly thirty-three or thirty-four. Now she was clearly not amused and stared at me intently as if she had not heard Anna speak. I nodded silently and watched her turn to pull the bottle from the shelf below the register, noting the force with which she then slammed the two shot glasses on the bar top, startling a smiling young couple enjoying rum drinks nearby. She poured the shots without a word and left the bottle on the bar as she stalked off in her lithe, cat-like way.
“I don’t think she likes me, Jack.”
“I don’t think it’s you, Anna. She just hates drama, particularly after midnight.”
“She might be in wrong business in wrong town.”
“She might not disagree except she has a gift for mixing cocktails, and people like talking to her. The bad drunks are the problem, so I usually try not to schedule her to close the place. I needed her tonight, though, and now she’s pissed. No worries, Anna.”
“Very well then,” she said as she picked up her glass. “Na Zdorovie, Jack. I am glad we are speaking.”
“Cheers, Anna. I’m glad we’re speaking too.”
With that, we knocked down our shots, neither of us giving any sign of the inevitable burning at the back of the throat when the first shot goes down. I smiled and asked, “Why is a Russian woman like you not ordering Russian vodka? Aren’t there rules about that?”
She did not smile back.
“Russia has nothing for me, Jack. Nothing!”
There was some venom in that last word.
So that’s how it started. I was now peering through the remaining fog in my mind, trying to remember the rest of it as Anna looked at me calmly, her face expressionless. I remembered sitting at the bar as the customers began to leave and Tracy went through the closing procedure, periodically looking over to see what I was doing. Which was talking to a person I was feeling strangely connected to. There was more drinking and more talking, but I realized, in memory, that I was the one doing most of both. That was unusual. I remembered Tracy leaving and ordering me to lock up when I left. I remembered Anna taking me by the hand and walking me toward the back door through the storeroom, which led to a courtyard and the converted garage where I had been living since closing on the place. I remembered standing at the door of the apartment and struggling to open it. Anna placed her hand over mine to steady it and it felt like electricity. I remembered that. We were then very close, noses touching, but I knew I was fading. And so did she, judging by the bemused smile on her face. The rest of it eluded me, hidden in blackness.
And then my cell phone rang from the nightstand beside me, pulling me from the dark murk of recollection.
CHAPTER TWO
I turned and seized the phone like it was a live grenade, hit dismiss, and rolled back toward Anna, dropping the phone on the bed between us. Anna was impassive.
“You do not even look to see who is calling you so early on Saturday morning, Jack. Maybe it is important.”
“I don’t think I can do anything important right now, Anna. I’ll call back later, whoever it is.”
I buried my face in the pillow. But then the phone exploded again, between us. This time Anna deftly snatched it from the sheet, glanced at it quickly, and thrust it toward me.
“You must answer this.”
Without strength to argue, I blindly took the phone, swiped at the green spot, and pressed it to my ear. I croaked out the word “hello.”
“Good morning, Jack. It’s the Duke.”
This was a voice I had not heard directly since I moved to Key West: my father, Claude “Duke” Girard, referring to himself in the third person, as was his custom.
“Something has happened, and I wanted you to hear it from me first. There might be some press coverage, and I don’t know who you’re in touch with these days.”
There was rebuke in this. I felt my heart rate accelerate as I prepared to engage, but he pressed on.
“Your mother is dead, Jack. She committed suicide. A drug overdose. Valium and alcohol according to the initial tox screen.”
No words formed. I was quite literally speechless, and I felt sweat breaking out on my forehead. From the corner of my eye, I saw that Anna was moving. She slipped out of bed and glided across the tile to the chair by the bedroom door where she apparently left her dress. Picking it up, she turned, naked and unabashed, to blow me a kiss, concern reflected in her eyes.
Without hesitating, she turned again and padded through the doorway to the living room, closing the door behind her. Less than a minute later, I heard the front door open and close and she was gone. There was an erotic and confusing quality to this escape, but I couldn’t linger on it.
