Bahamarama, page 2
part #1 of Zack Chasteen Series
Goatee flipped his cigarette onto the asphalt. Then he used the same hand to wave me over to the Escalade. He did it like a headwaiter summoning a busboy to clean up a spill that was the headwaiter’s fault.
I stayed where I was. I reached behind me and stuck the plastic pouch with my i.d.’s into the waistband of my jeans. That way I had both hands free. Never can tell.
Goatee cocked his head and screwed his mouth around, giving me his hard-ass look. But he didn’t have the eyes for it. They were big and round and soft and brown. Pretty girls might swoon over them. I didn’t.
He said, “We need to talk, Chasteen.”
There was an accent. Spanish, it sounded like.
“So talk,” I said.
“It is better you get inside and come with us.”
“Better for who?”
Goatee looked at me some more. Then he turned away and said something to the shape sitting next to him, and it opened its door and got out, and I could see its head and shoulders above the roof of the Escalade. It didn’t appear to have a neck, just a big square head planted on big square shoulders.
He came around the Escalade and walked toward me. Good thing the sun was already riding high or he would have blocked it. He was wearing one of those nylon workout suits where the top and bottom match and it always looks ridiculous. The workout suit was maroon, with white stripes on the pant legs, and white stripes on the shirt sleeves. The vertical striping didn’t have much of a slimming effect. The guy was every bit of three hundred and fifty pounds, maybe bigger. Defensive tackle material, only he didn’t move well enough to be a defensive tackle. He’d spent too much time bench-pressing and not enough time running. He was top-heavy and bad on his feet. He rolled from side to side as he walked, meaning his quads were no match for his weight. He was already breathing hard by the time he stopped a couple of yards away from me. He was sweating a lot more than I was. He wore a crewcut. His ears were tiny and pink, in contrast to the rest of him, which was dark, Hispanic, like Goatee. A ’roid muncher for sure. Pumped up and primed, but with a pecker that was probably punier than his ears. That’s the downside of steroids. Certain appendages suffer for the sake of a ripped bod. Life is all about trade-offs. Some people just make stupid trades.
I couldn’t read anything on the big guy’s face. But then, he didn’t look like someone who possessed a vast range of emotions. Eat. Sleep. Work out. Bust heads in between. Abstract thinking didn’t get in the way.
I had seen all of him I needed to see. I looked at Goatee.
“So. What happens next?”
Goatee rubbed his chin. I suppose it passed for deep thought. He said, “You can make this as difficult as you choose.”
“Yeah, you’re right, I can,” I said. “But let’s make it easy.”
Goatee shrugged. He didn’t say anything.
I said, “Who the hell are you?”
“Just get inside, Chasteen. You are coming with us.”
“You’re repeating yourself. It’s boring.”
Goatee looked at the big guy.
“Raul,” he said. “Troemelo.”
The big guy took a step. I spun his way. He reached to grab me.
“Pare, pendejo,” I told him.
In a situation like this, if you’re a white-bread Anglo like me facing off against a Latino and know just enough Spanish to say “Hold it right there, asshole,” then it usually surprises the other guy so much that he actually stops. That’s what Raul did. He was a good dog. At least for the time being. At least until his brontosaurus brain told him he was supposed to be taking orders from Goatee, not me.
I looked at Goatee.
“You got anyone else inside there with you?”
“No, it is just the two of us.”
“Got any backups on the way?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if Raul here takes one more step, I’m going to clean his plow. Then I’ll piss down his throat and set fire to his tiny little balls. Then I’m coming after you. I’m going to break your ribs, and shave you bald, and write haiku on you with a Magic Marker. Then, when I’m done, both of you are going to need someone to drive you to the hospital.”
Used to be I wasn’t big on trash talk. Never did much of it when I was on the field. At Florida the coaches would bench us for running our mouths during a game. And when I was with the Dolphins, well, Mr. Shula was a class act and he expected the same from his players. But you get older, and you get tired of doing things the way you were taught, and you develop skills that suit your needs. Partly adaptation, partly to break the monotony.
I had knocked heads with more than my share of thick dumb big guys, but that was football. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in a fight. Junior high, maybe. I really didn’t want to get into it with Raul. I could probably hold my own. I knew I could outlast him. But most fights aren’t about endurance. They’re about who lands the first good punch, or who wraps the other one up, and if Raul wrapped me up it would be all over.
“Just thought it would be fair to warn you before the hurting begins,” I told Goatee. “So if you’ve got backups you might want to call them in now.”
Goatee started to say something, but before he could get it out the speaker by the gate crackled and I heard Williams’s voice.
“What’s the problem out there, Chasteen?”
I looked at Raul. He looked at Goatee. We all looked at each other. Nobody moved. Then Williams was squawking again.
“Chasteen? You hear me? What’s going on out there?”
I turned and looked at Goatee.
“You the mastermind of this operation?”
He didn’t answer.
“I mean, did you actually plan this thing out or did you make it up when you got here? Because either way you got shit for brains.”
I pointed back at Building A.
“Got armed federal guards sitting in there watching everything you do. We get into it and they’re going to be out here in about thirty seconds. Which is more than enough time for me to whip both your asses. Then they’re going to run your license plate, and run your i.d.’s, and run your fingerprints and anything else you got on you. No offense, but the two of you just don’t strike me as the kind of upstanding citizens who get keyed into the system without making any blips. Know what I mean? You might be sitting in there for a long while. They might even drag me back in there. Which is really going to piss me off. And you don’t want to piss me off any more than you already have because . . .”
“Chasteen!”
I backed up to the gate. I pushed the talk button and spoke into the speaker.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “These guys were just confused about me needing a ride, that’s all. I was trying to cheer them up about making such a long drive out here for nothing.”
Williams thought about it. Then he said, “So where is your ride, Chasteen?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I looked out to the road. Nothing much had changed. I kept looking. The sun glinted off something in the distance, something that took form and became a car. It was coming fast. It was big and white, and getting bigger. A limo. I kept watching it. Goatee turned and watched it, too. Raul kept his eyes on me. He still wanted to play fetch for Goatee.
The limo rolled into the parking lot and made a big loop, and squealed to a stop. It wasn’t your everyday limo. Certainly nothing you’d ride in to the cemetery to bury your beloved. It was trimmed out in bright pink piping with pink curlicues and filigree framing the windows. A track of tiny pink lights lined the running board and bumpers. They were blinking on and off. How festive. A real pimpmobile. There were big pieces of card-board ducttaped to the front doors, covering up whatever was written on the sides of the car.
The driver’s door opened and out stepped a guy in a chauffeur’s uniform. A young guy, late twenties, a shade bigger than me, but still way shy of Raul. He wore his black chauffeur’s cap low on his head. Tweety Bird–yellow hair poked out from under it, proof of a dye job gone bad. His eyes were hidden behind the blue lenses of his reflecto sunglasses, a cheap knockoff of the two-hundred-dollar models that Tour de France bikers wear. A tiny diamond stud sparkled in the lobe of each ear, and the collar of his shirt couldn’t completely hide a tattoo, one of those Celtic ring-around-the-neck designs. He looked fairly presentable, in a World Wrestling Federation sort of way.
“You Mr. Chasteen?” he said.
I nodded. The chauffeur opened one of the back doors and gestured me inside. I turned to Goatee.
“Not to hurt your feelings, but this guy is making a much better first impression. Spiffy set of wheels. Dressed up for the occasion. Called me Mr. Chasteen. Nice touches. You could learn something.”
I looked at the chauffeur. There was a brass name tag on his uniform. Chip, it said. He was the most un-Chip-looking Chip I had even seen.
“So, Chip,” I said. “Who sent you?”
His face was chunky and red and bore a smattering of blemishes that looked more like basal cell carcinoma than acne—a fair-complected kid who had spent too much time outside in disregard of sunblock and his genetic makeup. Florida is full of such folks and dermatologists drive Porsches because of them.
“Ms. Pickering sent me,” he said. He spoke with an accent, too. Vaguely British, but with something else tossed in. Couldn’t place it. “She hired me to drive you to Fort Lauderdale. Said to give you this.”
Chip pulled an envelope from his jacket and handed it to me. I opened it. There was a letter inside, a couple of pages long. I recognized Barbara’s handwriting. There were some hundred-dollar bills inside the envelope, too. I didn’t count them, but there were a lot of them. I closed the envelope and stuck it in a pocket of my jeans.
“It’s been fun, fellas,” I told Goatee and Raul. “Maybe next time we’ll make formal introductions. Exchange business cards and all that.”
It was just beginning to sink in on Raul that he should have grabbed me when he had the chance. Goatee waved him back to the Escalade.
I slid into the limo. Chip shut the door behind me, then went up front and got behind the wheel.
I’ve been in my share of limos and this one was no less cheesy than any of them—creamy faux-leather upholstery and mahogany veneer cabinets, and a dhurrie rug on the floor. There were all kinds of remote-control gadgetry—three TV monitors, and a VCR, and a Bose wireless system—plus a wet bar with crystal highball glasses that tinkled as I squirmed around on a low-slung divan. The divan wasn’t really all that comfortable. It smelled of stale perfume and tutti-frutti deodorizers. Spilled drinks and who knows what else had created a mosaic of grimy stains.
I stashed the plastic pouch with my i.d.’s in a side pocket on the door. Out in the parking lot, Raul was folding his mass back into the Escalade. Goatee was putting it in gear. No doubt they were planning to follow us.
I scooted to the front of the limo and knocked on the Plexiglas divider that separated me from Chip. He slid it open.
“Just wait right here,” I told him. “And be ready to roll.”
There was a stainless steel corkscrew sitting on the limo’s wet bar. A nice hefty one with a big handle. I grabbed it. Then I opened a door and got out and ran behind the Escalade. I jabbed the corkscrew into the left rear tire. I jiggled it around until air started hissing. Then I moved over to the right rear tire.
I was working on it when the passenger door opened and Raul rolled out. He moved faster than I gave him credit for, but instead of coming in low and barreling into me and using all his bulk, he reared back and tried to kick me. Stupid move. It’s easier to grab a shoe than it is to wrestle three hundred pounds of goon. I grabbed and twisted and Raul went down. His head smashed against the Escalade’s fender. It was more of a thwack than a thud. Didn’t knock him out, but it didn’t do him any good.
Goatee jumped out. He was holding a crowbar. As he moved toward me I pinned Raul down with a knee between the shoulders. I yanked his head back and stuck the corkscrew under his chin.
Goatee closed in, trying to get behind me, but I slid over, twisting Raul with me, putting the Escalade at my back. Now would have been a good time for Chip to lug his ass out of the limo and lend me a hand. But he hadn’t signed on for this. I could hear him revving the limo’s engine.
“Put down the crowbar,” I told Goatee.
“Fuck you.”
“Put it down. Or I’m popping your pal’s cork.”
Goatee kept coming. Raul grunted and squirmed. I gave the corkscrew a push. Raul stopped squirming. Blood began dribbling down his throat. I’d nicked the skin at the tip of Raul’s chin, where the bone is close to the surface and there aren’t any major veins or arteries. It looked a whole lot worse than it really was, but it was enough to make Goatee drop the crowbar.
“Now turn off the car and give me the keys,” I said.
He didn’t move.
“Do it.”
I made another nick in Raul’s chin and Goatee backed his way to the driver’s side. He turned off the ignition, pulled out the keys, and dangled them for me to see.
“Now toss them to me,” I said.
He tossed them. There were ten yards between us and they landed halfway. He gave me a smirk.
“That was really stupid,” I said.
I slung the corkscrew aside and grabbed Raul by his little pink ears. I slammed his head into the side of the Escalade. Just once was all it took. He went limp. I was pretty sure it hadn’t killed him.
Goatee was already diving for the crowbar. And that was the perfect time for a kick. I caught him in the side of the head and sent him spinning. He lay groaning on the asphalt.
“What the hell’s going on out there, Chasteen?” Williams hollered over the speaker. The front doors of Building A blew open. Out ran Fairbanks and the pimply kid, hands on their holsters. A couple of other D.O.’s came streaming out behind them.
I picked up the Escalade’s keys and tossed them over the prison fence. They landed in the tall Bahia grass. Then I jumped in the limo.
“Haul ass,” I told Chip.
He gunned it and we were gone from the parking lot before the D.O.’s made it to the gate. We sped along the two-lane road and around the bend, past pine trees planted in neat green rows and nothing else for miles and miles. After a couple of minutes Chip opened the divider and said: “What was that all about?”
“Beats hell out of me,” I said.
I was lying. I didn’t want to face the truth. Not yet, anyway. Because the truth meant dealing with a dead man.
3
Chip put the limo on 1–10 and we headed east toward Tallahassee. Every now and then I looked out the back window. No one appeared to be following us.
After we had settled into the flow of traffic, I opened the envelope and unfolded Barbara’s letter. The stationery bore the imprint of the Albury Beach Club. It’s on Harbour Island, in the Bahamas. It was the very first place Barbara and I had run off to for a weekend together, a dreamy hideout that we had returned to on several subsequent occasions. I guess you could say it was our place. The letter was three pages long, dated Wednesday, August seventh—the day before yesterday—and it was written in Barbara’s perfect, British-schoolgirl hand. Brits don’t just talk differently than us, they write differently, too. They cross their 7s and their Zs, or zeds as they call them. And their spelling’s sometimes a little off, too.
“Dear Zack,” the letter began. “I am so sorry I’m not there, but all hell has broken loose. I had to fire the photographer we hired for the Harbour Island shoot. Then I had to drop everything and fly here to salvage the mess and make sure everything gets organised. It’s the fashion feature for the January issue, so it is critical that everything go smoothly, and I cannot risk it being anything but perfect. Can you ever forgive me?”
Of course I could. I could forgive Barbara just about anything. She had stuck with me when others had bailed. She had loved me during a time when, through no fault of my own, I really wasn’t worth loving. Sure, I would have preferred it if she were sitting in the limo with me and we were toasting my freedom with the bottle of Schramsberg ’98 she told me she had bought for the occasion. But I loved her. She loved me. What was there to forgive?
She had tried to call to tell me about her change in plans, but the phones were out on Harbour Island. Typical. If it’s not the phones, it’s the electricity. Life on a tiny island. Barbara said someone on the island knew a limo driver back in Florida who would make the long haul to the Panhandle to pick me up. I was to join her on Harbour Island. All the commercial flights were booked out of Orlando, so I would be spending the night in Fort Lauderdale. She’d made reservations at Los Altos Inn, a fancy hotel on the Intercoastal.
“I could not arrange a charter until Saturday afternoon. You’ll be happy to know you are flying with Charlie Callahan. He said you should be at Fort Lauderdale General Aviation by 3 P.M. He also said he was renaming his charter service ‘Con Air’ just for you. Zack, you are laughing, aren’t you?”
Well, not laughing exactly, but I could only expect such a groaner out of Sorry Charlie Callahan.
“I have us booked at Albury Beach. Same cottage as always, on the hill behind the sea-grape hedge. It is so lonely in this room without you. This bed is much too big, and I am lying under the mozzy net thinking about . . . well, never you mind exactly what I am thinking about, but know that it most definitely involves you. So perhaps this bed is not too big after all. Wings on your feet and all that. Love . . .”
I folded the letter and stuck it back in the envelope. Then I pulled out the hundred-dollar bills. Twenty of them. There was a Post-it note on which Barbara had scrawled: “Paid driver for two days in advance. He will take you to airport on Saturday. This is mad money, spend it foolishly . . . .”
I felt a twinge of guilt, realizing for the first time that if called upon to fill out any official forms or applications, in the space for “Occupation” I would have to write: Kept Man. I stuck the money in the pocket of my jeans and slunk low in the divan, trying to keep the black funk at bay.
