Blackwater Sound

‘Me and Arnold go way back,’ Lawton said. ‘In the old days I used to bust him about twice a year. Didn’t I, Arnold?’

‘Like clockwork,’ Arnold said.

‘You’re kidding me. This guy’s a cop?’

‘Used to be,’ said Arnold. ‘A good one, too.’

‘Yes, sir, I was a cop and now I’ve got a daughter in law enforcement. She’s a photographer for the City of Miami Police Department. Crime scenes, corpses, bullet wounds, blood spatters, gore. You name it, she snaps it.’

Charlie frowned.

‘I don’t like this, Peretti. Some fruitcake listening in.’

‘Hey,’ Lawton said. ‘I may be retired, but I still got full arrest powers.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Charlie said. ‘Cardiac arrest.’

Brandy giggled, then caught herself and tried to look serious.

‘Look, Charlie, not that it’s any of your business,’ Arnold said, ‘but after we’re done here, me and Lawton are going fishing. I’m looking after him today.’

Charlie closed his mouth and shook his head. The shit he had to endure.

‘I think he’s cute,’ the girl said. ‘You hear, Lawton? I think you’re cute.’

Lawton let go of the box and extended his left hand across the narrow table and cupped the girl’s right breast, lightly feeling its contour. Lawton knew how to touch a woman. He’d never been rough, even when he was young and full of fever. Her breast was round as a honeydew and just as solid.

‘Hey!’ Charlie said. ‘Watch it, asshole!’

Brandy drew back carefully, easing out of Lawton’s grasp. She flattened herself against the leather seat, trying to keep her smile together.

Charlie Harrison leaned halfway across the table.

‘Touch her again, old man, you’re dead meat. You hear me?’

‘Relax,’ Arnold said. ‘He’s confused, that’s all. He makes mistakes.’

‘I’m cracked,’ Lawton said. ‘That’s what they say. Loopy doopy. There’s a name for it, but I forget.’

‘Jesus,’ Charlie said. ‘You okay, Brandy?’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Leave him alone, Charlie. He’s okay.’

‘Cracked,’ Lawton said. ‘But still full of beans.’

Everyone was quiet for a minute, eyes wandering the room, trying to put the moment behind them.

Truth was, even in his heyday, Lawton Collins’s brain had never been what you’d call razor sharp. For one thing, he’d always been lousy with time stuff. Most of his life, you could ask him the day of the week, he’d have to puzzle on it a while. Season of the year was the same thing. But that was partly Miami’s fault. Anywhere else in the world, somebody asked you what month it was, you looked out the window, you could tell. Leaves turning gold, snow on the ground, jonquils blooming. But in Miami, windows were useless. January looked exactly like June and August was the same as November.

Back in his police days, faces were Lawton’s strength. Faces and the names attached to them. But that other stuff, time and dates, chronologies, what happened when, he was never good with that. Like he’d gotten a head start on old age. So when all the rest of the stuff started evaporating in his head, like the fizz going out of a soft drink, it took Lawton and everybody else, even his daughter Alexandra, a good while to notice anything strange was happening.

Right then it was lunchtime, Wednesday. Easter coming up. Beyond the curtained windows the sky was full of juicy spring light, while the interior of Neon Leon’s Riverside Café was as murky as an underwater cave, most of the light coming from one big-screen TV that was tuned in to a pro wrestling match.

Charlie had another tug on his beer, wiped his mouth, and fixed his glare on the box in Lawton’s lap like he was cranking up his X-ray vision.

‘So that’s it?’ Charlie said. ‘You got it.’

‘Like I promised,’ Arnold said. ‘My word’s my bond.’

‘So what do you want from me, Arnold? Credit report? Take a polygraph, what?’

Arnold said nothing. Just eyed the young man in that leisurely way he had.

The boy was wearing khaki slacks and a blue button-down. A long way from the scruffy crowd around the rest of the bar. Tattoos and pierced eyelids everywhere you looked. Ratty T-shirts and torn jeans.

Brandy was silent, smiling nervously at Lawton. Brandy had on a shapeless shirt of pale green and baggy jeans. But the clothes didn’t conceal her. Already several of the guys at the bar had quit watching the wrestling match, swiveling their stools around to give Brandy their total attention.

‘Always in a hurry, this generation. Can’t wait to get to the end of the story, find out what happened. Lost the ability to savor. Isn’t that right, Lawton? Not like us old guys, sitting back, swishing the wine around in our mouths before we swallow it, enjoying every tick of the clock.’

‘True,’ Lawton said. ‘But I gotta say, this young lady certainly has nice bosoms. Firm and round. They’ll come in very handy for suckling her young.’

‘All right, that’s it,’ Harrison said. ‘Come on, Brandy, we’re out of here.’

Arnold reached out and thumped his knuckles on the manila envelope.

‘Keep your ass planted right there, Charlie. You’ll get what you want, but first I got to get what I want. Quid pro quo. You know your Latin, right?’

Charlie stared down at the baskets of fried food that sat in front of him and resettled himself in his seat.

For thirty years Arnold and Lawton had been friends and in all that time Arnold hadn’t changed a bit. Still master of ceremonies wherever he went. For five decades he’d run a sports book out of his condo up in Hallandale. Anybody that was anybody in South Florida knew Peretti.

Seventy-two and still commanded respect. Didn’t matter he was silver-haired with a short, stocky build. Didn’t matter he dressed like a dork. Like today in his lemon-yellow shirt, black shorts, and sandals with white knee-high socks. Big square glasses with gold frames. Behind the thick lenses his eyes were watery and dark. Everywhere he and Lawton went, people knew Arnold. The right people. They were always happy to see him, slapping him on the back, buying him drinks, lighting his cigars.

‘I think it’s me,’ Brandy said. ‘I think I’m the problem, Charlie. Your friend doesn’t want to do business with a woman present.’

Arnold glanced her way, then looked at Lawton, gave him a small, disappointed shake of the head.

‘What’re you going to do with this generation? Never had a decent war or a good Depression to give them any depth of character. Minute they were born, they thought they were entitled to the first-class seat without doing a damn thing to earn it.’

Brandy scooted to the edge of the booth.

‘Would you gentlemen excuse me? This lady needs a potty break.’

She stood up and ambled across the room, with Arnold and the gang at the bar following her movements reverently. As she passed by the last stool and turned into the murky back room, a rack of pool balls exploded.

‘Nice girl,’ Peretti said. ‘At least we know that much about you, Charlie. You got good taste in broads.’

Someone cheered at the bar, and Lawton turned in time to see a big guy on the TV with long hair and a beard toss a guy who looked just like him over the ropes into the first row of the crowd. A murmur passed along the bar. A couple of guys talking on cell phones pulled them away from their ears to watch.