Cross Current - Kling Christine - Страница 31

“Damn. Not bad.” He crossed his arms behind his head and, looking up at me, said, “So, what about you? You and B.J. going to be ringing the wedding bells soon?”

I waved my hand in the air as though to dismiss the question. “Let’s not go there. That’s a bit of a sore spot these days.”

He laughed. “Hell, we Sullivans make damn lousy spouses, eh?”

“Just look at Maddy,” I said, and we both giggled.

Pit’s laughter stopped abruptly, and he got to his knees and crawled over to the trunk. “You opened it,” he said, suddenly solemn.

“Yeah. You just left it here and disappeared.”

“I wanted to open it, you know. But something stopped me.”

At that moment, I didn’t want Pit to know about the Cartagena trip and all the questions it had raised. I didn’t want him to feel what I had been feeling, wondering if Red had been involved in drug smuggling. “Yeah, it’s just a bunch of old stuff.” I grabbed the stack of photos off the counter, dropped them into the trunk, and started to close the lid.

“Wait, I’d forgotten all about this old jacket.” He reached in and pulled out Red’s old navy peacoat. The musty smell of the wool filled the room when he stood, shook the coat out, and slid his arm into one of the sleeves. It still didn’t fit him.

“Remember?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, “that afternoon in the garage.” His eyes seemed to be looking across the living room, but they weren’t really focused on anything in that room. He grinned. “I can still hear him yelling at us.”

I touched the sleeve of the coat. In spite of having been closed up in that trunk for years, it still harbored a faint hint of Red’s smell. I stepped toward Pit and pressed my nose into the rough fabric of the coat’s sleeve and tried to remember my father as he was when he was healthy. I put my arms around my brother and inhaled deeply the odor still living in the wool.

“Some days I miss him so much,” I said in a half-whisper.

“I know,” he said. “Me too. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I keep moving all the time. Keeps me from thinking about what I don’t have.”

I pushed back and took hold of his hands. “Hey, you’ve still got a family. I’m here. Maddy is, too.”

“Do we have to count him?” he asked, and we both laughed again.

“We really lucked out in the father department,” I said, “but how Red could have sired Maddy, I’ll never know.”

Pit started to take off the jacket. “You know, it’s not nearly as much fun making fun of him when he’s not here to turn all red and get pissed off. What do you say we go down to see him and torture him like we used to?” This time when he laughed, it helped make the tightness in my throat ease off. God, I’d missed Pit.

“I’m afraid Maddy wouldn’t exactly be happy to see me.”

 “Why do you say that?”

“It’s a long story, but a few months back he got down several thousand dollars at the track, and some not-so-nice guys I’d been involved with kinda took it out on him. Really did a number on his face. Later, when I bought him out of Gorda and he paid off his bookie, he didn’t cut me any slack. Still maintains the whole thing was my fault.”

“Sounds like my bro.”

When we’d first come in, I had noticed the red light was blinking on my answering machine, but I had wanted to take these few minutes to catch up with Pit first.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve got to check this.” I pushed the button and a female voice, slightly accented, started to speak.

“Allo. This is Martine Gohin.” I sat down on the couch and lowered my head over the machine, anxious to hear every word she would say. “I heard about this Earth Angel child on the television, and I would like to help you very much. I am working on my radio show this morning, but if you could join me at my home for lunch, that would be very nice.” She went on to give her address and cell phone number. I checked my watch. I had about an hour to spare—just enough time to swing by and check on Jeannie and Solange.

When the machine clicked off, Pit asked, “Earth Angel? What are you into now?”

I told him the most abbreviated version of the story that I could manage.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Might be. How are your navigation skills?”

“Great. I was the navigator on the last delivery up from St. Maarten.”

“Okay, then, here’s the problem: I want you to find out how this kid and the dead woman ended up in that part of the ocean. If they weren’t on the Miss Agnes, then I’m spinning my wheels trying to find folks who were aboard that boat. You’ll find the position where I picked up the dory entered in Gorda's log. The pilot charts are here in the cottage somewhere— probably at the top of my closet. I think Solange and that woman were set adrift from the Miss Agnes as she was making a run across the Gulf Stream. Problem is I can’t quite make it all fit in my head. The Miss Agnes sank more than a day before I found the kid. Why hadn’t they drifted much farther north if they were riding the Stream? Was there some kind of cross current? It would be great if you could find that out for me. Check the Gulf Stream stats for that date, call NOAA if you have to. Let’s see if we can figure out where the boat set them adrift, and then where these smugglers might have their camp.”

“Will do.” Pit saluted me, then headed to the kitchen for another beer.

After changing from my work clothes into a clean pair of jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt, I jumped into Lightnin’ and took off.

Jeannie lived in a neighborhood called Sailboat Bend, upriver from my house. Sprinkled throughout Sailboat Bend are some of the oldest houses in Fort Lauderdale, pretty little Key Westy Conch cottages, half of which were undergoing some form of rehab. The rest of the neighborhood is dominated by bleak cement blocks of government-subsidized housing, and the place Jeannie lived fell somewhere between the two extremes. Her apartment was on the second floor of a concrete-block building that dated back to the fifties. There were only four apartments in the building, and it was set back on a lushly landscaped lot and shaded by a huge hundred-year-old oak tree. The oak’s trunk split into three parts right at ground level, and the nail holes throughout the branches were from all the different tree houses folks had built through the years. Hurricane Andrew had destroyed the last tree house, and Jeannie was petitioning her landlord to allow her to build a new one. Even without a tree house, the tree was her boys’ favorite playground, and I was surprised, when I pulled into the yard, not to see them up there hanging from its branches.

At the top of the exterior staircase I called Jeannie’s name through the screen door, hollering to be heard above the blasting TV. I recognized the music from Sesame Street. Assuming the kids were watching that TV in the family room, I imagined that someone could easily walk right in the front door and snatch a kid without being seen or heard. So far, I wasn’t impressed with Jeannie’s security.

“Morning!” shouted Jeannie. “Welcome to our madhouse.” She punched several keys on an electronic keypad, then opened the door and waved me in.

“Geez, Jeannie. Wouldn’t it be pretty easy for some crazed kidnapper to punch through that screen and snatch the kid?” She smiled and pointed to the screen. “See that thread, how it’s different? It’s wired into the alarm system. I installed these screens last winter after an irate client’s husband came gunning for me one night over a divorce I was working. I needed security, and I hate air-conditioning, so I wired the screens.”

“Okay, I guess that’ll work. So how is she?”

“Not much change. Come on and see for yourself.”

She led me back to the apartment’s third bedroom, which she had made into a family entertainment room with a big TV, video games, stereo, and shelves covered with children’s books, toys, and puzzles. Jeannie’s two boys sat cross-legged on the rug in front of the TV, chuckling at the antics of Cookie Monster. Behind them, Solange sat on the couch, limp, staring at the TV with unseeing eyes. Her eyes didn’t even flicker when we came into the room.