Chapter Two:
Stepping out of the rain and into the bar was a welcome relief. I’d only been out in the rain for a few seconds, but it had been long enough to send a deep chill right through to my aging bones. The older I got, the more the cold and rain affected me. And not for the better. This kind of rain was the worst kind of all. The kind of rain that was so debilitating to your mood it would make Mary Poppins (If she was a real person, if she lived in Wannabe, and if ---, just forget it)
John Samuels, owner and sole enforcer of the bar, was standing near the door the door when I walked in. He was involved in a conversation with someone I’d never seen before. Of course, that’s not saying much. I rarely drink. And on the rare occasion I do, I’m usually doing it at home by myself.
John’s a five foot ten inch black man with a just beyond medium build. When I say he’s black, I mean black--like coffee without a single drop of cream. He had wide, natural smile and a calm easy going manner that was always on display for everyone to see. But behind the smile, I sensed a deep, well hidden anger at life. Not so much for what it had done to him, but what it had done so many others.
John was a good man and he ran a clean bar. A clean bar that welcomed anyone in regardless of any particular persuasion you brought with you when came in the door. As long as you didn’t cause trouble, John didn’t care what your background was.
“Neal, man, how’s it going?” John asked while flashing that famous smile of his.
“Still standing, John. How about you?”
“I’m getting by okay. You here for business or pleasure? Or both?”
“I’m meeting someone here. A woman. Hopefully it’s a case with a little meat to it this time.”
“And a lot of money.”
“That too.”
His flat to the skull cheekbones rose up a half a notch as he let out a low deep throated laugh.
“Any chance you and she might---,” he asked.
I checked the clock. It was nearly five minutes to four.
“John, you know it wouldn’t be ethical for me to do that.
“Just checking Neal.”
John was well aware of the consequences the one and only time I did get sexually involved with a client. He was watching out for me like an older protective brother trying to head off a repetition of a past disastrous error in judgment.
“Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“You know.”
“No problem. What’s this woman look like anyway?”
“Don’t have a clue. She’s looking for me. Alex gave her a description.
At the mention of Alexandria, I looked up and saw all of the mirth had gone out of John’s face. His dark brown, close set eyes had narrowed and assumed a somber pose. Putting his small, roughened hands on my shoulders, he leaned into me and spoke for my ears only.
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this Neal, but---”
“What is it? Something serious?”
“It’s about Alexandria.”
“What about her?”
“She’s been in here a lot lately.“
“Yeah, well, she’s more sociable than I am.“
“Man, if she was just in here socializing, I wouldn’t have even brought it up.”
“You mean she’s been in here---”
“Boozing. Hard too. Something’s pushed her back into the abyss. I can see it in her eyes.”
My body started to sway like it had been caught in a swirling crosscurrent wind. I tried to force myself to say something, but nothing would come out. A very rare occurrence for me.
“I thought you should know Neal. I thought it was for the best.”
I nodded my head, mumbled some incoherent babble and went to sit down before I fell down. I took a stool at the bar.
Son of a bitch, I thought. Son of a mother fucking bitch. Alex has been clean since the day we partnered up. What happened to cause her to fall back into, as John put it, the abyss. How did I not know? How did I not see it? Were there obvious signs and I just missed them?
The contemplation, I knew, was useless. Hell, maybe there were no tell tale signs at all. Some people are damn good at hiding their drinking addiction. The important thing was that she was drinking again.
Cassandra, one of John’s daughters was tending bar that day and finally brought herself over to take my order. She was a thin stomached, thick shouldered woman with short, dyed blond hair. Her disposition was generally sour and for me, she made no exception.
“Rum and cola,“ I said. “Jamaican. The dark stuff.”
I wasn’t sure, but I think she growled at me. I swear the woman could scare a grizzly back into hibernation.
“Anything else?”, she asked.
“Yeah, is Dianne around anywhere?” Dianne was Cassandra’s sister and the youngest of John’s two daughters. Dianne was lighter skinned than either father or sister, a deep brown cocoa. Her natural disposition fell somewhere between John and Cassandra, making her much easier to be around than her sibling.
“You trying to play my sister?,” Cassandra asked. “You disgusting old man. You’re old enough to be her daddy.”
“Ease back on the hostility, will you. I’m not making moves on your sister. I was just wondering if my drink could be served by someone less, well, ---. How can I say this? Someone who doesn’t always have her claws out.
Another growl from Cassandra, but it was a short one, completed in the time three seconds before she left to make my drink. Two minutes later, I had my drink. But before I even managed to squeeze my second sip, in walked Gina Wilson. Eyes turned from every corner of the bar to track her as she came in and scoured the place looking for a man of my description.
Gina was a description unto herself. Standing at five feet eleven, she was a wide shouldered, big bodied woman with medium cut auburn hair and dark green eyes. And when I say big bodied, I mean muscle and bone, not fat.
She came up behind me and just stood there lurking without saying a word. After a few seconds of this, I’d had enough and broke the silence.
“Gina Wilson?”
“Yeah. You Caterski?”
“You found your man.“
I offered her the stool immediately to my right. She refused. I offered to buy her a drink. She refused that too. She was all business this one.
“I don’t want to talk here,” she said.
“Then why in th hell did you ask to meet me in a bar?”
No response. No acknowledgment of any kind.
“My car’s out back,” I said.
“Out back where?”
“Behind the plaza.”
“Couldn’t you just have used the parking lot like everyone else?”
“I don’t like crowds. Especially when they bring their cars for company. People in this town drive like they have a death wish. Theirs and anyone who gets in their way.”
“I found that out. On the way over, my cab was almost hit three times.“
“You should try walking. Things are so bad for pedestrians now, insurance companies have started offering human road kill coverage.”
The joke was a good one, I thought. Gina, though, didn’t think so. Which, to me, was no reflection on the joke. Gina, I sensed, suffered from a major physical defect. No funny bone.
“Can we go now,” she asked.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
Outside, nothing had changed. It was still cold, still raining, and still deeply depressing.
“I know a way we can avoid most of the rain,” I said. “There’s a hallway outside my office that leads to a back door. My car’s right there.”
“Okay.”
“You said you took a cab here?”
“Yeah.”
“You flew into town.”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t rent a car when you got here.”
“No.”
Gina was being very clipped with her answers. If she had been anymore clipped, she would’ve said nothing at all. She was hiding something, but I didn’t have a damn clue as to what the hell it was. And I knew demanding an answer from her would get me nowhere. So, I turned and showed the way to my office hallway and the back door. Gina, stalking behind me like a hungry predator after prey, followed right at my heels.
By the time I reached my car, I had a pressure sized headache the size of Mount Rushmore. I unlocked the door quickly, climbed in, and fell into the drivers’ seat. I wanted to drive around while Gina gave me the details of what she wanted done. But Gina insisted we sit still. So, we sat still. When was the last time this woman didn’t have her way, I wondered. Ever?”
“I need to record our conversation.” I said.
“You’re the detective.”
A verbal jab, no doubt. Her tone indicated just a pinch of understated sarcasm. I ignored it, pulled out my mini-cassette player.(Anything case related, I automatically record)
“Okay,” I said. “What’s this all about?”
“Donna Winters.”
“Donna Winters, as in wife of William “Sonny Boy” Winters.”
“Yeah. She’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Sonny Winters kind of trouble.”
”Are they still married?”
“Legally, yeah. But the marriage is a sick joke.”
Gina rolled up her big hands into a tight, knuckle cracking fist. She had the look of many years of volatile frustration on her face.
“I wouldn’t know anything about their marriage,” I said feigning ignorance. Gina knew I was lying and let me know about it.
“You handled a case for Donna before,” she said. “But she changed her mind after you brought her overwhelming evidence against Sonny. It wasn’t your fault.”
So, Gina knew about my previous case involving Donna. She obviously knew about the case itself. What else did she know about that she wasn’t saying? Did she know that Donna and I---? Did she know that we had---? I wish she’d turn and let me have a good, long look at her full profile. The close set eyes, the long, flat cheek line, the taut, thin lipped mouth. My skill for reading faces and their expressions for signs of dishonesty was higher than most people. But Gina was very deliberately going out of her way to prevent me from having the opportunity. Maybe it was just as well, I thought. I had things to hide myself. Maybe there’d be a lot more to lose than to gain from a face to face confrontation.
“I’m going to explain the whole thing to you,” Gina said. “Donna and Sonny had a fight. A violent fight. He hit her repeatedly. She thought he was worked up to kill her right there. But the fight was interrupted. Business. Sonny took a call, then left. Before he came back, Donna packed up what she could and went to a hotel. She’s at the hotel now, but even I don’t know which one.”
There was a pause while Gina checked her emotions and worked to slow her suddenly accelerated breathing. I didn’t let the pause go easily by. I used it to mull over what Gina had said. It was a plausible story. Very plausible. But was it completely true?
Mostly true? Partly true? Or not true at all? Sonny Winters was certainly capable of what Gina had accused him of and much more.
“Donna knows he’s mixed up in illegal activities,” Gina said.
“The Winters family committing crimes isn’t exactly news. Hell, it’s a long standing family tradition. The big question to be answered here is: Is there proof? The kind of proof that can convict a man like Sonny Winters. Massive, overwhelming, and watertight.
“I don’t know. She’s kept it to herself so far. But I do know that Donna is in genuine fear for her life. She believes if Sonny finds her, he’ll kill her. She wants you to pursue the illegal activities angle and help put him away.”
“These illegal activities. Could one of them be microdots inside coffee beans?”
“Mr. Caterski, this isn’t the time for humor.”
I wasn’t trying to trivialize Donna’s situation. I wasn’t trying to demean or degrade it in any way. I was just trying to ease back my mood a shade or two. The rain, the cold, the subject at hand were all working with uniform precision to bring darkness to bear upon my tattered psyche.
This sort of darkness often snuck up on me out of nowhere. But not this time. This time I saw it coming. Yet, I was still powerless to stop it from dragging me down toward the abyss and trying to drown me.
Humor was a weapon I used to fight off these attacks, a defense with a strong, eternal power of its own. It has saved me many times in the past. Saved me from giving in, giving up, and letting myself drown. People so often misunderstood. In this case, there was another reason for my attempt at humor. It was a mask, a thick protective outer face to hide behind.
The mask allowed me to show someone a glib, calm, and brash exterior while inside I was a weak, trembling mass of fear. The fear here was that a obsessively held secret might be exposed, Gina would see it, thus seeing the real me.
“I want to see Mrs. Winters,” I said.
“I told you I didn’t know where she is, didn’t I?”
“Can I at least talk to her?”
“This is for you,’ she replied handing me a thick envelope.
I took the envelope, opened it, and slowly eased out its contents. My eyes dilated to five times their normal size when they saw what I held in my hand. Money. A large sum of money. Ten thousand dollars to be exact.
“That is to help convince you to help Donna,” she said. “You and your partner. There’s more when the case is over. This is just upfront money. In case something happens to Donna, she wants you to keep going after Sonny. So, are you going to take the case.“
“I am, but I can’t speak for my partner. I’ll talk to her and see what she says. Once I put the money in front of her, I don’t think she’ll take much convincing.”
“When will you know?”
“Later today. I’ll call with the news.”
“No, I’ll call you.’
Why she was insisting on doing it that way, I didn’t know. She had her reasons, I’m sure. But what was in back of them. Something harmless? Or maybe something darker and more nefarious? I should’ve asked her what those reasons were but the ten thousand dollars in cash she’d given me had clouded my brain with a dizzying, temporary lack of judgment. Somehow though, as Gina prepared to leave, I did manage to ask her a few questions.
“Just a second,” I said.
“What is it?’ The frustration in her voice was obvious. “I thought we were done.”
“Just a couple of questions. It’ll only take a minute.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where are you from?”
“Maine.”
“What do you do there?”
“Lobsters.”
“What?”
“I catch lobsters.”
I stifled the comedian in me, the part of me that wanted to say: “Well, that sure beats catching crabs.” Instead, I answered with a standard, non-comedic response: “Boats, traps, the whole deal?“
“Yeah, the whole deal. I own the business. I own it, run it, and work it.” I pity any man dumb enough to cross her, I thought. “I’m leaving now Mr. Caterski. I’ll call you. I don’t know when, but it’ll be late. Around ten or so. Goodbye.”
Sitting there in the car and watching Gina disappear into the mist covered rain, one thought was uppermost on my mind. This woman, this big, physically intimidating sister of Donna Winters, had yet to allow me a prolonged, full look at her face.
****
An hour after I got home, the phone rang. I was hoping it was Alexandria, but it wasn’t. It was her husband Carl. What the hell did he want, I thought, and why was he calling me about it? We weren’t close, we weren’t distant, we weren’t anything at all.
“This is Carl.”
“Hey, Carl.”
“Is Alex there?”
“No.” He didn’t believe me. He didn’t say so. He didn’t need to.
“Do you know where she is?”
Hmm, I said to myself, what would be a believable lie? The lie came easily, and to my surprise, quickly as well.
“We got a case today. She’s out working on it. It’s more complicated than our usual case. I came home to get a little rest, then I’m going back out to work on it myself.”
“She’s not answering her phone.”
“The batterys’ probably down. She must’ve forgot to charge it. Is this any kind of an emergency Carl?”
“Not the hospital kind, no.”
“How about this, I’ll go out and look for her.”
“You’d do that for me?” His voice contained at a couple of tablespoons of suspicion and rightly so. I’d never done him any favors before, so why would I start now?
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “No problem. She probably just lost track of time, that’s all.”
“You think so?”
“What else could it be? You’re husband and wife and you love each other like hell.(The biggest lie of the entire conversation, without a doubt, but it slipped out as free and as easily as all the others)
“I guess you’re right,” he said.
“Sure I am. She’s working. If I find her, I’ll have call you., okay?”
“Okay.“
Whether he accepted any or all of this, I didn’t know. But at least it got him off my back and off the phone. He hung without saying another word.
I couldn’t be sure what Alexandria was doing, but I could make one hell of an educated guess. She was in a bar somewhere boozing it up. John Samuels, the owner of the bar near our office, said she’d been in his place a lot lately. She was a recovering booze junkie who’d fallen off of the wagon and right onto her face. Son of a fucking bitch.
What caused this fall, I had no way of knowing. Whatever it was, it had to have been something traumatic. But what? Something to do with Carl? Is that why he called me? Did something traumatic happen between them? Something that caused her to leave him?
Seven different kinds of hell. That’s what all of this was. Seven different kinds of hell. Gina’s going to call me later about the case, and I hadn’t even had a chance to talk to Alexandria yet. Worse still, I didn’t even know how to reach her. Her phone was either turned off or run down. So, calling her was not an option. Knowing she was at a bar wasn’t much help. There was only about a thousand of them around town. Hoping for an astronomical break, I went to John Samuels place first. But she wasn’t there. I checked at a half dozen other places with the same result.
Tense and restless, I went out to visit a woman I know. A woman who, on a strictly part time basis, provides special services for people. From time to time, I sought out these special services. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s not something to be proud of. It’s pathetic is what it is. It’s a part of me I hate, yet it’s a part of me all the same. I’d tell the woman its debasing and degrading, but I’m too busy debasing and degrading myself. That being said, there is no justification for it being illegal. Cigarettes are legal, correct? Alcohol is legal, correct? How much death, misery, and harm are caused by cigarettes every year? How much death, misery, and harm is caused by alcohol every year? Does prostitution cause more death, more misery, and more harm than cigarettes and alcohol?
Anyway, it was a little after ten when I got home. I wanted to check my answering machine, to see if either Alex or Gina had called. But before I even put my key in the door, I heard someone behind me calling my name.
“Neal,” the voice said. “Neal, it’s me, Odessa from across the street.”
I turned and saw Odessa Wright, a neighbor of mine standing at the curb.
Odessa was a fifty something dark brown woman with puffy round cheeks, small liquid eyes, and a short rotund body. Contrary to her last name, little in her life was going the way she’d like it to. A no account husband, a jailed son, and a negligent, thoughtless daughter were doing all they could to make her life miserable.
She kept her chin up most of the time, complained little, and pressed on with the daily routines of her life. Odessa was the only neighbor I had any kind of a relationship with. Neighbors on my block just weren’t, well, very neighborly. For a woman of her size, Odessa could move damn quick when she wanted to. She came running like a wide whirlwind across the street to my front porch. The trip winded her, but only a bit.
“There was a woman on your front porch a little while ago,”she said. “She was drunk and passed out.”
“Describe this woman.”
“Short, dark features, long curly hair.”
“Shit,” I said in a low whispered voice. “Alex. It has to be Alex.”
“I didn’t know what to do at first. I didn’t want to call the cops and get her into trouble. But I didn’t want to just leave her there either.”
“She’s not at your house is she?”
“No, I couldn’t take her there. James is home and he wouldn’t allow that.(James was Odessa’s husband.) I’m lucky I got him to help me out at all.”
“Where is she then?”
“Your patio out back. I took her there myself. She was as wet as a fresh caught salmon. She must’ve got caught out in the rain. I covered her with a couple of blankets, poor thing.”
“Thanks Odessa, you’re a damn fine woman. I’d kill your husband and run off with you if I was any kind of man.”
Her face rose up in a slow flushed smile. I’d flattered her and her enjoyment of it was plain and easy to see
“Neal, you say the sweetest things.”
“I’ll take it from here. Thanks again.”
“Neal?”
“Yeah.”
“I may be nosey for asking this.”
“Asking what?”
“Who is she?”
“My partner at the detective agency. Alexandria. She’s an alcoholic. She’s been sober. But now she’s drinking again.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what else to say. Was there anything else to say?
“Well, I’d better go now.”
“Okay. Bye, Neal. Stay warm.”
“The older I get, the more difficult staying warm gets.”
Quickly and quietly, I went to the patio, got Alexandria, and carried her inside. I took off her damp clothes, toweled her off, and despite a cloying disgust, admired the alluring contours of her naked goose bumped flesh. When the urge to leer thankfully passed, I dressed her in my underwear, a t-shirt and boxer shorts and put her warmly to bed. With my body racked by seven different kinds of tired, I went upstairs, fell onto the bed and waited for Gina to call. But the call never came. With warm drink, warm memories, or warm body to comfort me, I fell asleep with a strong, uneasy feeling that something had already gone wrong.