Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
night, didn’t you, Detective?”
My heart seized up. Busted.
“I, ah…”
“This is a technical age. Even answering machines can have Caller ID. May I ask what you wanted at eleven thirty-seven in the evening?”
I boiled my intentions down to essentials. “I wanted to apologize for the other day. I spoke out of turn. You’re the prosector, you call the shots. And my remark about you shoveling down was rude and uncalled for.”
She pursed her lips and raised a slender eyebrow. It made her look almost pretty.
“It took you two days to come to that conclusion?”
I shook my head. “No. It took me a half-hour to come to the conclusion and two days to find the courage to call.”
Was that a hint of a smile? The footprint of a hint? I wasn’t being hand-on-Bible honest, but wasn’t about to mention overhearing the scene in Clair’s office; it swerved a little too close to eavesdropping.
I said, “My offer stands, Doctor. Would you care to have dinner? Nothing fancy, I’m thinking quiet and simple. We could grab a sandwich and watch the sun drop into the water.”
She said, “…No.”
But she said it a beat past a hard-and-fast no, the no of dead ends, slammed doors, and fallen bridges. I knew this no. It was the no people used when asked, You sure you don’t want more gravy on those taters? It was a yes in disguise. Or maybe a maybe.
I said, “Please. It means a lot to me.”
Her mouth started to say no again. The next no would have had time to set, and be irrevocable. I held up my palms to cut her off. “Just think about it,” I said. “I’ll drop by later this afternoon.”
This time I was the one who spun and retreated.
The man at the end of the bar sobbed into his hands and no one paid the slightest attention. A mirrored ball in the ceiling threw spinning diamonds of cut light over men slow-dancing to a torchy Bette Midler ballad. Though it wasn’t quite three, the dark bar was filling with the after-work crowd, adding to the others who’d skulked here since the door opened. A fat man with cow eyes gave me a once-over and licked his lips. I sent him a wink and a glimpse of shoulder holster. He disappeared like smoke in a hurricane.
Squill’s “deployment plan” meant putting Harry and me on the shoe-leather trail, aiming us at gay bars around town. Harry’d taken his own list and gone a-hunting. Though the bars had been checked once, we were retracing with Deschamps’s photo.
Canvassing bars is easy on TV, where one bartender works around the clock and knows every client down to shoe size. In reality even a modest bar might have a half-dozen regular barkeeps, plus part-timers on call. Even if you sat all the employees in one room and showed them the photos, it’d still be a crapshoot. My dictum for the experience in six words: memories are faulty and people lie.
The bartender was a guy with cartoonishly huge muscles and a penchant for black leather: cap, vest, belt, chaps. His sideburns looked like black leather pasted in front of his ears. He wasn’t a tall guy, five ten or so, but nail a chrome grille to his chest and he’d have been a Kenworth. His skin looked oiled under the black vest, the better to define the pecs, I guessed. I flashed the shield and set the photos on the bar.
“Seen either of these gentlemen?” I asked the Steroid King.
“No,” he said.
“You didn’t look at the pictures.”
“True.” He pumped his fists to make the muscles in his forearms jump; they looked like steaks wrestling beneath his skin. He gave me bunker-slit eyes and said, “Good-bye.”
I pointed to a corner booth where several men vamped and giggled. “Look over there, Meat. I’ll bet each one’s carrying something. Smoke, Ecstasy, acid…I’ll walk over and check them out. They’ll mask fear with belligerence. I’ll become frightened for my safety and call for backup. Cops will rush in, the place will clear out. What will that do to your tips?”
The steaks went wild. “You think you’re a tough guy?”
I sighed. “Worse. I am a busy guy.”
Meat stared at me, pursed his lips, then shrugged and put his elbows on the bar. He studied the photos.
“Oh,” he said, and—inappropriate to his image—tsk-tsked.
“What?”
He pushed Deschamps’s picture aside and tapped a sausage finger on Nelson’s face. “This one. He’s been around. And I mean that both ways.”
“Enlighten me, Buddha.”
“A charmer, knows how to talk and act above his station. He’ll come in occasionally, pick off some old queen who’ll keep him for a while.”
“Know anyone who’d like to see him boxed and shipped?”
It took a second to sink in. “He’s dead?”
I nodded. The barkeep flipped the photo back. “Sad. I remember him as kind of goofy; a dreamer. He never really hurt anyone, maybe broke a few old men’s hearts.” He paused, thinking. “He was in here a couple-three weeks back. I remember because he usually drank well booze, but he’d switched to top shelf. Buying rounds instead of hustling them. Said he found himself a bottomless honey jar and life was going to get sweet.” The bartender shook his head, grunted a laugh. “Like I’ve never heard that one before.”
“You didn’t believe him?”
The barkeep was still laughing when I walked out the door.
After two hours of dark bars, worn-out faces, and cigarette smoke as thick as jam, I was ready for a final run at the elusive Dr. Davanelle. She sat in her small office working up the preliminary report. Her face seemed washed of color. I wanted to say something charming, pithy, and witty. Instead, I stood in the doorway and settled on the truth.
“Look, Dr. Davanelle, I can be a wiseass at times. If I’ve said things to offend you or make you think I’m a jerk, I apologize. When I asked you if you wanted to do something quiet and simple tonight, I meant only that. My intentions are so honorable I might have an ascension at any moment. That said, it’s a lovely night. Before I ascend would you like to grab a sandwich and watch the sun go down?”
Her head was shaking no before I finished the sentence. But this time her eyes weren’t looking at me like cold pork gravy with a hair in it.
“I’ve got to finish the preliminary report on Deschamps, then drive over to Gulf Shores. My stereo receiver’s being repaired. If I don’t pick it up tonight, I won’t get to it for a week.”
“Need company? I know the area,” I said, instant tour guide to Greater Mobile.
“The store provided me with clear directions, but thank you.”
Mobile Bay encompasses four hundred square miles, a vast, shallow pan of water extending approximately thirty miles from its wide Gulfside mouth to the Mobile and Tensaw rivers that feed freshwater into the northern delta. The city of Mobile is on the northwest side of the Bay, in Mobile County, appropriately enough. Baldwin County is on the eastern shore of the Bay, and has no signature city. Tourists might disagree, tending to think in terms of two motel- and condo-laden beach locales, Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.
Though Baldwin County has rural areas of charm and beauty, it’s not only temporary home to tourists, but permanent home to former Mobilians looking for the “country life.” Driving to Gulf Shores on one of the major thoroughfares is an exemplar of what inrushing money can do, especially teamed up with bulldozers—development after development, billboard following billboard. Strip centers. Big-box stores. Fast food and service stations. I was once traveling through the city of Daphne when I heard an excitement-voiced tourist call back to the Winnebago: “Get in here and