3 A Brewski for the Old Man (11 page)

Rena was a mess, barely coherent and unable to recognize us at first. The police had come and gone, leaving her alone after delivering their news and offering to call someone, but Rena had kept to herself as she always did. Lacey wrapped her arms around her mother and rocked her gently, saying there, there, the eternal murmurs for a bad situation. Rena let it happen, not reaching out for her daughter or pushing her away. “Have you got a doctor?” I asked.

“Yes,” Lacey answered and pointed to a drawer in the end table holding the phone.

I took out the list of numbers and called the medical clinic. The doctor on duty called me back within five minutes. Then I drove to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription he ordered when what I really wanted to do was to go find Tully. I wanted to talk to him before the police got to him. I tried calling his house while I waited at the drive-through window of the drugstore. Tully didn’t have a cell and he wasn’t at home; perhaps the police had already picked him up. There was no answering machine, too hi-tech for Tully.

On the way back to Blossom Avenue my mobile rang. Hoping it was Tully, I grabbed for it before the second ring. It was Styles.

“Where are you?”

“I took Lacey Cagel to her mother’s, then I picked up a prescription for tranquilizers and I’m about to drop them off.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay, when?”

“Now, my office.”

“Can’t right now. Meet me at the Sunset about three.”

“Now,” he bellowed.

“See, ya.” I hit End. He could show up at three or not. It was all the same to me.

I left Rena and Lacey to sort things out between them. When I pulled out onto the divided highway a cruiser turned onto Blossom behind me. Perhaps Styles had really lost his cool and sent them to pick me up.

My purse rang and I fished out my mobile. “We need to talk,” Tully said.

“Well, good morning to you too. Where are you? I’ve been phoning.”

“I’m at Zig’s. Come over.”

“I’m ten minutes away.”

He hung up without saying goodbye but then he never did. I picked up donuts and coffee and headed for Uncle Ziggy’s.

Ziggy Peek isn’t a real uncle. He and my dad were in ’Nam together where they’d sworn some undying devotion to each other in combat and when they got home they bonded over shooting rats out at Uncle Zig’s junkyard, a wasteland of wrecked cars and junked appliances surrounded by an eight-foot-high wood barricade.

As a kid, Uncle Zig’s junkyard was my Wonderland and amusement park, home away from home. When other kids went to adventure parks, I built my own out of ruined vehicles, rusted appliances and broken furniture while Dad and Zig drank beer and told lies. I escaped out into the jungle of crap and into a world of my own creation. I built little rooms furnished with old car seats and crates for tables. With pocket books stolen from Uncle Zig’s stash to transport me to exotic worlds, I dreamt long hot afternoons away. And though it wouldn’t be anyone else’s idea of heaven, some of my happiest hours were spent fantasizing in that junkyard.

Twenty years ago Uncle Zig’s property sat all alone on an empty stretch of the Tamiami Trail. Now strip malls and car dealerships had moved in and housing developments blossomed behind him. In fact, a gated community with four-hundred-thousand-dollar homes sat smack up against his back fence. Irate homeowners, who’d known the junkyard was there but built their mansions anyway, complained about rodents and other things coming from Uncle Zig’s scrap heap. They sent letters to the newspapers and lawyers to court to make his life hell.

Uncle Zig was now in the interesting position of being land-rich and money-poor. The citizens’ group got a zoning change to prevent him from bringing in any more junk, so now he eked out a living selling used auto parts and running a small dirt-moving business. He could barely pay his taxes, never mind my friend Brian’s legal fees to fight off city planners and local homeowners. He was poor as dirt while owning millions of dollars’ worth of land.

The walls of the barrier around Uncle Zig’s property were decorated with hubcabs of every conceivable model. I pulled into his turn-off and honked my horn while I searched for new models along the fence. The gates, rigged by Uncle Zig and Tully, opened magically before me.

Against a backdrop of rusted steel and green mold, a strutting peacock stepped delicately across the hard-packed shell yard in front of me. I stopped while it stood and displayed its jeweled feathers, shaking them and crying mournfully. I laid on the horn. It yelled indignantly but pranced out of the way.

I pulled in beside Tully’s piece of crap which was parked before a dilapidated construction trailer where Uncle Zig lived and worked.

Tully and Uncle Zig sat on wooden captain’s chairs in front of the trailer. An empty white plastic lawn chair sat between them waiting for me. I was about to get double-teamed.

Uncle Zig’s fat face split with a smile that warmed my heart and made me grin in response. At six-four and over three hundred pounds, Uncle Ziggy always looked like he was made up of leftover parts from the construction of other people, pieces that didn’t quite fit together on one person, especially one as big as he was. His long legs looked like they were better suited to a man at least a foot taller, but his arms were short and ended in slim delicate hands, hands surely meant for a surgeon or pianist. He always wore work gloves to protect those hands, whether out of vanity or caution I could never decide, and as a result his hands were always pale and soft, unlike his other weathered parts left bare to the sun. His face didn’t add up either. His nose was large and bulbous while his sparkling blue eyes, dots sunk into folds of fat like raisins stuck in a bun, were graced by long curling lashes, startling and feminine.

He got up out of his chair and held out his arms to me. I set the coffee down on the empty lawn chair and walked into his embrace. He smelt of sweat, grease and something like sandalwood that I’d never been able to figure out but always identified with him. It was like Uncle Zig was wearing his own special scent.

I stepped away from him. “What are these?” I asked, snapping yellow suspenders with black markings, looking like giant yardsticks holding up his oversized greasy black jeans. Stiff with grime, the jeans could probably stand up alone.

“Your dad.” He hooked his thumbs in the suspenders and pulled them away from his chest, tipping backwards on his heels. “I’m always losing my damn tape measure. Your dad thought these would be a two-for. ’Course if I use them, my pants will fall down.” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously. “Bare-assed but accurate, that’s what I’ll be.”

Tully didn’t even break into a smile, just lounged in his chair, one long leg stretched out, chin resting in his hand, waiting and watching. He may look relaxed but I knew he was a coiled spring, holding it together while we did our small talk. I kicked his foot. “So what did you get up to last night?” “I’ve been wondering the same about you,” he replied, lowering his hand and folding his hands across his waist. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”

I handed Uncle Zig a coffee from the cardboard container and then gave Tully one. He took it, watching me, never letting his eyes drift from mine. Suddenly I got it.

“Hey, wait a minute, are you crazy? You think I killed him?”

“Did you?” he asked.

Stunned into silence, not something that happens to me often, my brain was taking in the irony of it. Here I was sure Tully had done the deed and he was thinking it was me. So if neither of us did it, who did?

“Look, kid,” Tully said, “I don’t care if you blew the shit-head away. We just got to decide how we’re going to handle it.”

I picked up the cardboard tray with my coffee and the donuts and flopped down on the chair. Giddiness was bubbling in me.

“Should have come to me or your dad,” Uncle Zig put in. I handed Uncle Zig the bag of donuts and popped the top off my coffee. “Shouldn’t have done it yourself,” Uncle Zig added. “That was foolish.”

I stared from one to the other trying to make sense of what I was hearing. “I should have come to you to kill someone?” I asked Uncle Zig.

“Damn right.” He took a bite of donut, covering his lips in powdered sugar and asked around the donut, “What do you know about killing?” “What do you?”

He hesitated, studying me, and then shoved the rest of his donut into his mouth. He looked at me while he chewed and then stretched his neck out and gave a huge swallow. “What do you thing I was doing in ’Nam?”

He had a point there. I hadn’t thought of that. Vietnam was another life, hard to think of Uncle Zig running through a jungle or actually killing someone. At three hundred pounds he looked more cuddly than dangerous.

Tully sat up straight in his chair. “As I see it we have a couple of options. You could go up to your mother’s but they’d have you in no time. No use hiding out in the States, so the first thing is we get you on a boat today and head south. I can take care of getting a boat, no problem. Don’t want to use my own, too easy to trace. We need one that no one will connect with us.” Totally intense, totally absorbed, thinking it through, he was planning our great escape.

“We stay well away from any marinas, except for gas. From the Keys we can head for the Bahamas and from there down to South America and just get lost.” It was a route I’d planned on taking once before in my life. Maybe it was an example of genetic wiring. Maybe generations of Jenkins had run from every conceivable crime, a perfect example of survival of the fittest. Hysteria was bubbling up in me.

“But we need to leave today, now,” Tully insisted.

“Don’t even go back to your apartment to pack,” Uncle Zig said.

“Right, stay here with Zig. They’ll never look for you here. Zig will take us to the marina and we’ll leave our trucks here behind the barricade where no one will ever find them.”

“I’ll strip them for parts. There’ll be nothing left for the cops to find.”

“But we need to make them think we’ve gone north,” Tully added.

“When you’re gone, I’ll drive up to Georgia and use your credit cards,” Uncle Zig put in. “That will make the police think you’re heading north.”

My head swiveled between them. “Have you two done this before?”

“Naw,” said Tully. “Haven’t been out of the country since ’Nam but I’m pretty sure we can get to Venezuela or someplace like that without ID — boats come and go without people paying much attention — but I’m taking Zig’s and maybe we can get some for you. How about Marley’s birth certificate? That would work.”

“And don’t worry about money,” Uncle Zig said. He reached out and patted my knee. “We’ve got that figured too. I’ll get some down to you wherever you end up.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve thought this all through,” I told them.

“There’s another choice,” Tully said, hitching his chair around to face mine and leaning intently towards me. “The other thing I was thinking is that I go in there and confess to killing Ray John, god knows I wanted to, but you have to tell me everything and give me the gun.” His forgotten cup of coffee, hanging from his hand between his knees, emptied into the earth at his feet. “It’s up to you which way we do it.”

“Gun?”

“Yeah, I need that. I’ll shoot it, have my prints on it.” He pointed a forefinger at me. “And I need to know about the time and everything, need every little detail you can think of. There can’t be any holes or anything to trip me up.”

“Let me see if I understand this. You’re going to confess to killing Ray John even though you didn’t do it?”

He just nodded his head, more intent on going over the details than bringing me up to date on reality. “I drove out to that place this morning but it’s gated,” he said. “How did you get in? Did anyone see you, ’cause if they did that’s going to be a problem. If they have a witness we’ve got to get the hell out of here.” He reached out for my arm and shook me. “Talk. This is no time for you to go white lily on us.”

I started to laugh. These crazy old buggers just weren’t to be believed. My dad’s face turned to confused concern at my hysteria. He dropped the coffee cup in the dirt beside him and reached out to shake me. “C’mon, kid, get it together.”

I wiped my eyes and raised a hand to him to stop him from slapping me out of hysterics. “Okay, okay.” I turned to Uncle Zig. “What about you, aren’t you going to confess too?”

“Your dad thought it should be him, but I will if you think it sounds better.”

I laughed. “No,” I choked out, shaking my head. “Not necessary.”

They looked from one to the other and waited impatiently, watching me, until the madness passed. “Not me,” I babbled, shaking my head.

I jabbed a finger at Tully. “I thought it was you. But I sure have to tell you I wasn’t about to confess and go to jail on your behalf.”

“What are you saying?” Tully asked, sitting up straight.

“Are you telling me you didn’t shoot Ray John Leenders?”

“Yes.” My head was bobbing up and down wildly. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

He looked confused or dubious, I’m not sure which, and told me, “But a pickup was seen leaving the scene. That wasn’t you?”

“Nope.” I had to ask again, “Was it you?” I watched my dad. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Damn, I wonder who did it for us.”

“Wasn’t me,” said Zig. “Although I sure as hell would have given it some thought if I’d known about that bastard. Why didn’t you tell us, kid?”

“Because of this. Do you think I wanted you to get fried? Florida has the death penalty, you know.” “Damn,” said my father. “Damn.”

“Indeed.” I raised my cup to Tully and toasted him. “Here’s to two innocent people.” He picked his cup up out of the dirt and touched his cup to mine. We grinned at each other over the rims. My coffee was barely lukewarm but I didn’t care. It tasted the best I’d ever had.

“I have to call Marley. She’ll be waiting to hear what I found out. Man she won’t believe this.” I dug around for my cell phone. “She made me promise to call her as soon as I talked to you. For reasons that escape me she would hate to see you incarcerated.”

Marley picked up on the first ring which made me think maybe she doesn’t work as hard as she likes to tell me she does. I told her about Tully, trying to keep it light around the lump in my throat.

“Tell him I love him,” Marley said.

“Wait.” I lowered the phone. “Marley says she loves you,” I informed my dad.

“Yeah, all the girls do,” he replied.

“What about me?” Uncle Zig protested. “I wanted to confess too.”

“Oh yeah, he was ready. He wanted to arm wrestle me for the honor,” Tully said.

“A pair of old fools,” I told Marley.

“Lucky you,” Marley said and hung up.

And she was right. These two old men were no one’s idea of happy nurturing family and the pet adoption people would never let them near a stray cat, but they were mine. The one true thing I had in the world, the one thing I knew for sure was mine without question, something I didn’t need to deserve or earn and definitely something that wouldn’t desert me in times of trouble.