When the Pirate Prays. James B. Johnson
Tapes leaned forward. “Left front quarter-panel.”
The GT was driving without malfunction. “Damn. I hate body work.”
Tapes gave me that look.
“Okay, okay.” I shook my head. Tapes usually fixed body damage and I worked on the engine and accessories.
Gonzáles directed us left and right and a couple turns I wasn’t altogether sure about, and there was the José Gaspar Inn. I recalled that in addition to being a lawyer, he had family money. I guess the grand old hotel was part of that.
I drove through the turnaround under the flapping canopy and we dropped him off.
“Thanks,” he said without any sense of closure.
We went and parked the truck, selecting what I thought would be a safe location. Knowing Gonzáles owed us for the ride, I didn’t mind driving over his lawn and parking on the lee side of the big, sprawling inn. The GT nestled alongside the east wing up against a giant gardenia bush which was whipping around like a gutted snake.
Something had hit the roof and ripped the CB antenna off. The CB was inop anyway, and I hadn’t fixed it since modern cell phones came upon the scene.
With a minimum amount of guilt, I hoped that intriguing woman named Mary Lynn was stuck here, too. Tapes says I fall in love at the drop of a hat. But the fact is I’m seldom attracted at first sight. And once I was old enough to figure life out, I’ve tried not to let the fact that a woman is very attractive sway me to favor her. Sure. But this woman’s high forehead and arched eyebrows spoke of quick intelligence. Her two-color piercing eyes got my attention like a red flag to El Toro Diablo and her legs made my gut contract like a tropical disease. Then the specter of Rebecca in Tallahassee cast a great shadow over the cold, desolate land that was my love life.
Henry Beauchamps Gonzáles was probably dead before we reached the side door.
Tapes retrieved his twenty-five-foot Lufkin Unilok tape measure from the glove compartment and, battling the increasing wind, I got our wet weather gear from the cross-body Trukbox in the pickup’s bed. I believe in the Boy Scout motto or, more specifically, the Seven P Principle: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
It didn’t help the governor a bit.
2: MONDAY, 7:00 A.M.
We came in the east wing door of the Inn, along the high-ceilinged hall, arguing as usual.
“I think John Wayne’s Alamo movie was best,” I said, picking up the conversation we were in the middle of when the governor joined us.
Tapes snorted. “With Frankie Avalon in it?”
I had nothing against Frankie, but he’d never won any Oscars, or Grammys for that matter. “The Walt Disney one had Buddy Ebsen in it,” I pointed out.
“It also had Mike Fink and the other Davy Crockett stuff John Wayne conveniently left out.” Tapes slung water off his brow.
I couldn’t argue that, so I said, “I can’t argue that. But how about this: Richard Boone was in the Duke’s version.”
We passed rooms on each side, the doors topped by old-fashioned transoms. Seemingly as an afterthought, somebody had installed fire-sprinklers and the assorted PVC and hardware right on the high ceiling of the passageway. The José Gaspar Inn was built sometime around the twenties and echoed that style. Old-timey carpeting in the corridors, high ceilings, big rooms with giant paddle fans. Bogart in Latin America, sitting there smoking and drinking, overhead fan moving slowly. Atmosphere. This hotel had four wings laid out on the cardinal points.
We’d checked in yesterday evening and had a ground floor room; since it wasn’t tourist season or tarpon tournament time, the sallow-faced manager who’d assigned us the room had told me that all the guests were staying downstairs along this east wing hall. And the permanent residents, like himself—and, I guess, Governor Gonzáles—lived on the third and top floor.
“That’s not fair,” Tapes said, “nobody can top Richard Boone.”
“See, I told you so,” I said, and somebody screamed.
I just knew it was a female-in-terror scream like you hear in the movies.
Wrong.
We hustled down the corridor and in the middle where the wings adjoin and the grand staircase zigzags up to the third floor, we found the governor—make that the late governor—and a man standing over him.
The man had screamed. He was a dapper little man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a bow tie.
He whimpered lower this time, evoking the memory of his louder scream.
Tapes and I skidded to a stop.
“Uh oh,” I said.
Tapes said nothing.
Henry Beauchamps Gonzáles had been a living, thriving human being not minutes ago sharing human concerns with us. Like “rapidly dissipated” and the weather.
Still dressed in his wet jogging outfit, he lay there at the foot of the stairwell very dead. His neck was askew.
“He told us he was no meteorologist,” I said, the words and thought inane, but it was all I could think to say.
His slicked back hair was mussed and drying.
I knelt quickly and apprehensively, gulped a lot, and checked the pulse at his neck. None. Not with his neck bent and twisted like that.
“There,” Tapes said and pointed.
Following his line of sight, I saw the railing at the top of the stairs on the third floor broken and splintered.
The guy standing next to us had been frozen to this time. He whimpered again.
“Look,” I said. “Move to the left a bit.”
Tapes did so. “Oh, shit.”
So did the geek.
He started moaning in higher squeals, drowning out a motor.
There was a big red streak across Gonzáles’ forehead, the skin stripped back on each side.
Again I pointed.
Off to the side, where it had obviously fallen, was a tennis racquet, a blue and orange tennis racquet, with an alligator ghost painted on the racquet’s sweet spot, obviously the gator mascot/symbol of the University of Florida. One curve of the racquet was bloody.
“What do you call the top corner arc of a tennis racquet?” I asked. “On an ear, it’s the helix,”
Tapes shrugged. He didn’t share my penchant for oddball terms and expressions.
The manager slewed to a stop alongside the geek who was moaning. Silas Smith, the manager, wore plaid slacks and a white shirt. His sallow face was yellow. There were deep scars on his neck. He was so ugly he ought to wear a mask. I’d bet he’d had one hellacious childhood. His first concern was the squealing geek, but then Smith saw the governor.
Other people were coming down the halls and in from the wings.
An overly pregnant woman waddled toward us from the kitchen wing, eyes bulging, fist jammed into her mouth, and eyes fixated on the body.
A hefty guy who looked like an ex-NFL lineman in a T-shirt and brown slacks with a dark stripe down each side lurched from the opposite wing where the bar and lounge were located.
More people entered from the lobby and some came from the rooms behind us down the corridor we’d just walked.
“Ohmygod!” said Silas Smith, his hand against his mouth in a parody of a cliché. “Governor Gonzáles fell.” His voice was octaves higher than it had been last night.
“Not necessarily,” I said, still squatting there. I smelled the storm rain on the body and oddly it made the