Bob Morris_Zack Chasteen 02 (21 page)

She stepped away, and Rina Murray joined me. The years had treated her well. She was wearing a black dress, but the way she filled it out was anything but somber. Her smile was just as big and real as it ever was. Monk had been a damn fool to leave her.

I said, “The other day, after I talked to you, they found Monk’s Super Bowl ring at the bomb site.”

“You bring it with you? I know that little boy and girl of his would like to have it, something to remember him by.”

“It’s still with the investigators, but I’ll make sure to get it when they’re done.”

Rina smiled a sad smile.

She said, “You know, they won the Super Bowl the year after we got married, the year Monk got traded from the Saints.”

“I remember. It was my last year with the Dolphins.”

“Gosh, he was proud of that ring. Even had our initials engraved on it, inside the band.” She was quiet for a moment. “They were some good years. Guess I was as happy then as I’ve ever been. When Monk was good he was very good.”

“And when he was bad?”

“Aw hell, even when he was bad he wasn’t awful, Zack. He tried, you know? Only nothing he did ever seemed to click. And he just didn’t have that sticking-around gene in him. That stay-faithful gene either.”

She let out a sigh, said: “You had a chance to go through all his papers yet?”

“No, not yet,” I said. I didn’t want to tell her that they had been stolen from his cottage and confiscated by the U.S. government.

“I’m really hoping there’s some kind of life insurance policy. That poor Annie has gotta have something,” Rina said. “Her mom and dad are both bedridden. She’s looking after them and the kids, got next to nothing coming in except some social security, barely pays the bills. I gave her a little something, thought I’d quietly ask around some of the people here today, see if I can’t get a few of them to chip in a little, too.”

I had plenty of cash on me and I gave most of it to Rina. Said I’d see about lining Annie up with something more once I had a chance to go through all of Monk’s papers.

Rina gave me a kiss and a hug. Then she stepped back and looked at me.

“How come you’re not married yet?” she said.

“Been saving myself for the right woman,” I said.

“You need to stop saving and start investing,” she said. “Life’s too short, Zack. It’s way too goddam short.”

The rental-car place in Tampa had issued me a Mustang, a red one, a retro model with a scooped hood and racing stripes. Not my style, but it was fast, and just a little more than an hour after getting on I-75 near Bushnell and pointing north, I was in Gainesville.

I stopped at the stadium. There was a lost-and-found department, but the woman in charge of it told me she didn’t think anyone had turned in a first-edition signed copy of
A House for Mr. Biswas
after the stadium was evacuated on Saturday.

“I’d have remembered a book; no one ever brings a book to a ballgame,” the woman said.

“It was kind of a special book,” I said.

“Honey, the clean-up crews probably just chucked it,” the woman said. “But you’re welcome to take a look around.”

I spent the next half hour rummaging through all kinds of wayward stuff—ponchos, handbags, binocular cases, backpacks—but no
Mr. Biswas.
I’d been hoping to surprise Barbara with it, but no deal. Damn.

On the way out of town, I swung by the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department. Captain Kilgore was in. He invited me back to his office.

“We had to turn everything over to the feds after what happened
down in Jamaica,” Kilgore said. “They’re working to see if there’s some kind of connection.”

“You can tell that, even after things get all blown to hell?”

“Oh yeah, there’s most always something, little piece of this or that. Building a bomb’s like leaving a fingerprint. Something unique about every one of them.”

“What about the one in the skybox?”

“Well, I can tell you this: It was a damn elaborate dud. One of those LOL designs.”

“LOL?”

“Layer on layer. Made to look like one thing, winds up being something else. Whoever put it together was a pro. It was almost like he was showing off,” said Kilgore. “All that time Mr. Whitehall was sitting in that chair, afraid to move, we thought we were dealing with something had an ADP.”

“ADP?”

“Anti-disturbance penalty. You fuck with it, you move, you try to open it, and it goes off. Only, turns out it wasn’t like that. Darcy Whitehall could have stood up from that chair and nothing would have happened,” said Kilgore. “We found an SCR.”

“Hmmm,” I said.

“You know what that is?”

“Got no idea,” I said. “Just trying to pretend like I knew something for a change. Didn’t want to look dumb.”

“Hard being you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A constant struggle.”

“SCR stands for silicon-controlled rectifier,” said Kilgore. “Like in a garage-door opener. Got a remote gadget on one end that sends out an electrical impulse and it completes the circuit on the other end.”

“And kablowie.”

“And kablowie,” said Kilgore. “Or in this case, just a bunch of squibs that stunk up the skybox and made our eyes water. And whoever did it was sitting back laughing at us.”

“You mean, they were right there in the stadium?”

“No, not necessarily. They could have been anywhere. Some SCRs have a longer range than others. Rig it up right with a cell phone and you can detonate it from the other side of the world,
provided you got a decent carrier. But chances are, whoever did it, they were fairly close by, just to make sure,” said Kilgore. “You want some coffee?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Black.”

He went down the hall to get some. When he came back we sat there, blowing on the coffee, cooling it off, talking about football. The Gators had another soft weekend coming up at home, against Wyoming, then it was the real deal, Tennessee. The Vols were preseason No. 1 in both the AP and the
USA Today
polls. They were opening up that weekend against Fresno State, and to bet on them you’d have to give twenty-seven points.

“What about videotape in the skybox?” I said. “Stadium security get anything on that?”

“Nada,” Kilgore said. “Turns out the only cameras on skybox level are out in the halls, nothing inside the boxes themselves. Think it’s because a lot of high rollers use the skyboxes to entertain politicians and none of them want any of that on tape, lest it come back and bite them in the ass. But someone else is working on that, and it’s probably been kicked up to the feds, too. I’ll ask around, though. I’d like to know myself.”

The coffee wasn’t bad, and it had cooled off just about enough where I could enjoy it. I wrote down my contact info on a sheet of paper, gave it to Kilgore, and asked him to give me a holler if anything else popped up that he thought I should know.

“Will do,” he said. “And Zack?”

“What?”

“I expect you to do likewise.”

I was back at my house in LaDonna by five o’clock. I walked down to the boathouse and looked out on the lagoon. There was a falling tide, and I would have liked nothing better than to have grabbed a rod and reel and headed out in the Hewes to make some casts under the edge of the mangroves where the water runs deep and cool and the reds like to hang on summer days when you can’t find them on the flats. Would have liked nothing better, but . . .

I turned around and walked to the house. I could make it to Orlando International by seven, maybe catch something that would get me back to Jamaica that night. There was no real urgency; I could just as easily wait until tomorrow, but I was sensing something that felt strangely like momentum and, since I had little else going for me, I thought maybe I shouldn’t squander it. Needed to keep moving.

I went to my bedroom and opened the closet. I started throwing shirts and shorts into a bag. Not a good approach to packing. So I got out a bigger bag and transferred everything to it. I’d have to check luggage, but what the heck. It would be nice to wear clothes that fit me for a change.

I was sitting on the bag, fighting with the zipper, when I
heard steps in the hall and looked up to see Karly Altman standing in the doorway.

“Whoa, this is weird,” she said.

“What? You’ve never seen a grown man wrestling a suitcase before?”

“No, not that. It’s just . . .” She stopped, laughed to herself. “This morning we were sitting down to eat breakfast when Boggy, just out of the blue, said: ‘Zack comes.’ And now here you are. Spooky.”

“That’s Boggy.”

“You swear you didn’t call him and tell him you were on your way?”

“Yeah, right. You know Boggy doesn’t answer telephones. Or even talk on them unless he has to.”

“Well, ever since then he’s been acting sort of strange,” Karly said. “He wouldn’t eat what I made for breakfast. Or for lunch, but he went out and picked all this stuff from that little garden of his—I recognized liverwort and dandelion, but not much else—and he made something out of it. Then he drank at least a gallon of water. It must have made him sick because I heard him outside and it sounded like he was throwing up.”

“He’s not sick. He’s cleansing himself. It’s a Taino thing.”

“But why would he be cleansing himself?”

“That’s probably something you should talk to him about.”

She shook her head, smiled.

“He never ceases to amaze me.”

“Makes two of us,” I said. “Say, you mind holding this end of the bag while I pull on the zipper?”

She knelt down to help me out. We didn’t make much progress.

Karly said, “I really didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Me, neither.”

She obviously hadn’t heard anything about what was going on down in Jamaica.

“Well,” she said, “I’m pleased to report that the palm world is abuzz about your carossier. With your permission, I’d like to have a little gathering here in a couple of weeks. Some of my
associates from Fairchild want to come up and see this for themselves. Thought I might also invite some friends from IPS.”

“That the International Palm Society?”

“I’m impressed. You’re learning the lingo.”

“It’s been a big day for me and acronyms,” I said. “LOL. ADP. SCR. All kinds of interesting crap.”

Karly looked at me.

“Zack, what on earth are you talking about?”

So I filled her in on everything, and when I was done she said: “Omigod, I had no idea. We haven’t watched TV or looked at a newspaper since you left. I feel so removed from everything here. It’s nice.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Wish I could stick around and enjoy it.”

The back door slammed and there were footsteps in the hall. Karly said: “I’ll be right back.”

I heard her talking just outside the bedroom door. The other voice was Boggy’s.

I got rid of some clothes, kept yanking on the zipper, finally got the bag closed and dragged it into the hall.

Karly had just finished giving Boggy a hug. He turned and looked at me. He travels light. Everything he needed was wrapped tight inside a cotton hammock that doubles as his gobag. It was slung over a shoulder.

He said, “I am ready to go, Guamikeni.”

Just like I knew he would be.

It was after midnight when Boggy and I arrived at Libido. We dropped off our bags at the cottage. I washed up while Boggy hung his hammock on the porch. Then we went to Darcy Whitehall’s house and checked in with Otee.

“Everything cool, mon. Mr. Whitehall come back yesterday. Not go nowhere since,” said Otee.

“What about Ali and Alan? Everything OK?”

Otee nodded.

“Dey all dem sleeping now. Got four fresh guards just arrived for a new shift.”

Otee was eyeing Boggy with a wariness that I hadn’t seen in him before. I introduced them.

“Otee’s the one I told you about, the one who put the salt and tobacco seeds on the cottage porch to keep the duppies away,” I said.

Boggy gave him a nod. Otee gave him one back, but he edged away, keeping a distance.

Boggy said, “I am sure it has worked well, the salt and the tobacco. It is powerful medicine to frighten away the spirits.” He turned to me. “Zachary, have you seen the duppy of your friend, Mr. Monk DeVane?”

I was already feeling pretty punchy from the day I’d put in,
so Boggy’s question only added to my sense of disconnectedness. Last thing I needed was to stand there and listen to ghost stories. Still, over the years I have learned to put a lid on my skepticism and respect Boggy’s Tainocentric view of the cosmos, a view in which the spirits seem always close at hand.

“Nope, no duppies,” I said. “My life has been amazingly duppy-free.”

Boggy looked at Otee.

“If you do not mind, please come back with us to the cottage.”

“What you want, mon?” said Otee.

“I will show you when we get there,” said Boggy. “Also, a container for the salt and the tobacco seeds. Do you have something special that you keep such things in?”

“Yah, mon. I got my special pouches,” said Otee, patting a pants pocket. “Keep dem with me always.”

“Good,” said Boggy. “Let us go. Now.”

“You want me to do what, mon?”

“Please, remove the salt and the tobacco seeds from around the cottage,” said Boggy.

We were standing on the cottage porch. I was dead on my feet. And I was pretty much in Otee’s camp on this one. If Boggy wanted that stuff gone, he oughta just get rid of it himself.

Otee said, “Why you want me do that?”

Boggy took a moment to answer, as if he were picking the right words.

“You and me, we have different ways with the spirits. In Hispaniola, where I come from, we seek answers from the dead, we do not wish to drive them away.”

“So you invite duppy to come visit you?”

Boggy nodded.

“If they wish, yes,” he said.

“Dat foolishness, mon. Duppy nothin’ but trouble.”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I need you to take away the salt and the tobacco.”

Otee bristled, jabbed a finger at Boggy.

“Cho, mon, why you not just sweep it away yourself? I look like ya house niggah?”

But no sooner were the words out of his mouth than Otee
jumped back and slammed against the porch railing, almost as if Boggy had shoved him. His eyes went wide, his mouth dropped. I don’t know if it was possible for Otee to ever truly look scared, but this was close to it.