The Bear in a Muddy Tutu (32 page)

Sheriff Jaroslaw’s name meant fierce and glorious back in Poland. A good name for a cop walking the beat in Warsaw maybe, but
in
Ocean County, New Jersey, it just seemed to evoke endless dumb Pollack jokes. The sheriff’s father and grandfather had been policemen in Gdansk, a city of a half-million people on the Baltic Sea, which was perhaps why Jakub Jaroslaw had been drawn to the coast here in New Jersey, thirty years earlier.

Sheriff Jaroslaw, neither fierce nor glorious, had survived his three decades as a peace officer by adopting a credo he’d picked up from American movies, from which he’d also learned the language and a healthy respect for how things could blow up in your face when you least expected it. He repeated this philosophy whenever he pulled up on a call, or even when he went to deposit his paycheck in the bank. He’d even said it while walking up the front steps of a strange woman
’s house
, flowers in hand,
on
his first an
d
only
attempt
at a video date.

He said this
:
“I don’t want any trouble.
”

The sheriff looked down at the envelope he’d been sent to deliver to the
so
-
called offending characters who
’
d taken up residence at the end of Great Bay Boulevard. The cease and desist letter was from an attorney hired by that damn cop who’d had that damn kid, who
’d
got
ten
himself killed in that damn stolen car. These things usually smelled like a lawsuit, but Jaroslaw figured the cop just wanted to cause whatever trouble he could for these people. Didn’t matter that the kid
stole
some family’s car and then
went
racing down a highway at a hundred miles per hour, plowing into a circus bear, killing it and his own stupid ass self. One more good reason for Sheriff Jaroslaw to be thankful no women had bee
n inclined toward a second date
and possibly burdening him with a kid of his own. Kids brou
ght more trouble than anything.

Jaroslaw had even allowed the letter to sit right there on his front seat for two whole days before making this drive. He had every intention of giving the traveling circus ample time to pull
up
stakes and hightail it out of his county. After all, he didn’t want any trouble, thank you very much.

But as the sheriff slowly pulled up and over the bridge to Fish Head Island, he was dismayed to see nobody had gone anywhere.
He’d more than half-hoped they’d pulled
up
stakes on their own,
figuring
trouble must be on its way.
In all his years, he’d been down to this end of the boulevard maybe a half dozen times, and most of those
calls
were checking for runaway kids. This was, after all, a good place to make yourself seem lost for a while.

Jaroslaw parked his sheriff’s department car next to a lopsided building
that
seemed to be s
inking into the mud on one side
;
somebody had screwed up setting the pilings. It
stood
precariously between two large tents, an air conditioner poking from one side window. There sure as hell wasn’t supposed to be a building down on these mud flats, Jaroslaw knew. He wondered what these people had been up to, then immediately erased the concern as best he could. The sheriff grabbed his hat and the letter and slid his large body out of the car and into the oppressive heat. He was aware of all the people barely outside of his view, back in the shadows of tent flaps
.

“I don’t want any trouble,
”
the sheriff whispered and then climbed the two steps to the front door of the crooked building.

“Afternoon, officer.
”
Billy Wayne Hooduk
greeted
the sheriff,
cool air rushing out from behind him, as the sheriff held out the letter. “What’s this?
”

“You in charge?
”

“You could say that.
”

Jaroslaw let go of the envelope, which was the moment of serving papers that always made him feel like he’d taken the lid off of a bottle of something that stank.

“I’m sorry
.
”
Sheriff Jaroslaw turn
ed
his back on the pudgy little man who stood staring at the envelope in his hands. The sheriff would be just fine if the guy waited until he was miles away before reading the bad news.

The sheriff dropped his heavy frame back into his car, which rocked on its springs, placed his hat next to him on the seat, and began to back away from the building. More than ever,
Jaroslaw
felt eyes on him, but now he didn’t feel threatened. What he was getting from this place was the sense of sorrow, of the tragedy
that
had recently gone on around here. Probably the accident, Jaroslaw figured. Now they’re getting their asses shut down, like it or not. And if they weren’t gone in seven days, Jaroslaw would have to trudge back down here with whatever court order the lawyers for the dead kid’s father managed to get signed. Maybe even a criminal complaint,
a
big pain
in
his fat Pollack ass.

Getting the car turned around, the sheriff headed back toward the bridge, noticing the mound of fresh earth at the base of the short span for the first time. There was a cross made from whitewashed wood planted at one end, some wild flowers strewn loosely over the sun-baked mud.

Sometimes trouble comes and finds you, Sheriff Jaroslaw thought, watching the traveling circus getting smaller in his rearview mirror.

“Morgan flew away.
”
Jennifer Freeman read the simple caption at the bottom of the picture, while sitting on her daughter’s bed, the sheet of white paper with a drawing and message resting on her lap.

Jennifer didn’t at first recognize it as something Morgan could have made. The fine strokes of the pencil drawing included intricate details much
f
u
rther
beyond what Jennifer imagined her daughter capable of producing. She at first mistook it for a photograph of a small bird trailing below and behind a large flock, perhaps trying to catch up. The large flock was unusual, even a little crazy, because each bird appeared to be a different species.

Morgan’s mother studied the picture as if trying to find Waldo, or some clue. But there were no apparent patterns, except for one thing: there was one bird at the front of the large flock
that
appeared to be the same kind of bird as the one giving chase.

“Morgan flew away.
”
Jennifer reread the caption and then pulled her eyes away from the elaborate piece of artwork. Something was wrong in this room, she thought. Something was different.

“I can see the paint.
”
Morgan had wallpapered every square inch of her room with her nutty bird drawings, in some spots three layers deep, but now there were blank spaces of light blue paint among the dizzying array. And just as her eyes had searched the drawing on her lap for clues, she now tried to make some sense of the missing artwork from the walls
.

Morgan had read the story about Michael Dupont to her mother over a hurried breakfast the morning after the newspaper landed at her feet. The man was described as the great benefactor behind the bird sanctuary project being dedicated this coming Saturday
. B
ut Jennifer hadn’t listened to her daughter. It was all just more of her obsession, her nonsense, and she was tired of telling her to stop. Jennifer had tuned it all out, concentrating instead on buttering her waffles and trying to decide whether she should finish off an old project or get started on the new client’s designs.

It got worse and worse with this kid. Each day, Morgan became more and more like her ridiculous father. Being married to Lennon had been torture, a punishment for being young, stupid, and careless with her diaphragm. Jennifer had rebelled against her own father, a driven salesman who had provided every opportunity for her and her brother and sister, and she’d made some bad choices. She’d let her guard down and fallen for the tall, frumpy journalism major. She’d paid for the mistake for too long. Stupid. Dumb. And she’d thrown away six critical years of her life and was left with a kid who brooded like her fa
ther
and was just as embarrassing half the time.

Jennifer had turned her back on her father, only to be welcomed into the clan of the wretched, backwoods hippies who were Lennon’s parents. It was no wonder her ex-husband had no ambition, having been raised like an animal by potheads.
Jennifer had turned up pregnant
and too blinded by stupid love to do the right thing and end the pregnancy.

Not that she regretted having Morgan. Jennifer looked back down at the meticulously drawn birds on the sheet of paper
. I
t
was
perfectly clear to her that
this
was completely her ex-husband’s fault. She loved Morgan with all her heart, but there was no doubt of the genetic influence of her father. And, of course, his disgusting parents who had shoveled a path to an icy cold outhouse behind their log home. An outhouse!

It was on that first and only visit to the Catskills home of Lennon’s parents
that
she’d probably been impregnated. She’d left her diaphragm back at her apartment, and the relationship
was
still new enough that she let him have intercourse with her just about every night. Jennifer’s skin crawled at the memory of the tiny room, with cheap wood paneling and bed springs so creaky she kept trying to make him slow down, stop making it bounce so noisily. But for whatever reason, she found him loveable at the time, a stray mutt in the rain. She wanted to please him, so she tolerated the bad smells and the dirty sheets. Back at his own cluttered apartment, she tried to be nice to his roommate,
another journalism
major with an equally bleak future.

“The mistakes we make.
”
Jennifer scanned
the walls decorated by her
befuddling
daughter. “She talks to birds and they talk back to her.
”

Every one of these drawings was going in the trash. First thing tomorrow, she was making an appointment with a
full
-
blown psychiatrist. This baloney was going to end once and for all, Jennifer decided. That’s it. You may think it’s cool to grow up acting like a strange little outsider, getting picked on by those horrible, nasty kids, but I have news for you. Your days acting like a loner drama queen are over. Done. Your time for brooding about your worthless father is over. Period.

Jennifer once again looked down at the drawing, and it made her furious. She crumpled the paper with an angry sigh, balling it as tightly as it would go, then rose from the bed and stalked out of the ungrateful brat’s room. On her way to the kitchen trash, she paused at the phone hung from the wall next to the refrigerator, briefly contemplating calling the police to report her missing daughter.

“Morgan flew away.
”
Jennifer opened
the
lid of the trash can and tossed
in the
wadded
-
up picture.

Pete Singe was used to things flying out of nowhere, h
itting him like a freight train
. B
eing left gasping for breath and near death. Heck, the seventh time he’d been struck by lightning there wasn’t even a cloud in the sky, or at least any that he remembered. One second he was running his push mower across his tiny backyard, the next second he was laying right down in the grass clippings, eye to eye with the nozzle of his garden hose, his hair all crackling and smoldering. Luckily, he’d had the presence of mind to reach for the nozzle and put himself out.

Five men sat at the card table in the center of the new building, watching Lennon Bagg’s yellow pencil slowly begin to roll toward the edge, while trying to come up with at least one good idea on how to save the
ir
circus.

“The big rigs are in mighty bad shape, Billy Wayne,
”
Happy the mechanic said, as
ten
eyes watched the pencil drop off the side, bounce surprisingly high off its eraser, then begin rolling again toward the window with the air conditioner. “The salt air is a killer, you know. A real killer.
”

The three
-
page cease
-
and
-
desist letter made very little sense to the men.
It was written
by a lawyer with bullshit, mumbo jumbo jargon
that
didn’t mean shit in the first place, Singe had decided. Criminal negligence for possessing protected wildlife? Did it mean the zonkey? Or the lion
that’d
been trying to cough up the same lung for two years? Maybe the toothless bear the shithead kid had run down?

“We’re a goddamn circus,
”
Singe told the other
four
. “This is just their way of showin’ us the door.
”

“We can fight it,
”
Bagg said. “Hire a lawyer, right?
”

“Building code violations,
”
Warden
Flint
said. “Health code violations. Which of you boys happened to get a building permit for this fine leanin’ tower of shitstorm?
”

“What if it’s a house of worship?
”
Bill Wayne
was
exasperated and already near defeat.

“You sayin’ maybe Jesus H. Christ went up to the court house with his building plans and twenty
seven dollars?
”
Flint
was hungover and his mood was as dark as it ever really got. “If that’s the case, then all this mopin’ around is for nuthin’, praise the Lord. Hell, Moses himself gave that hacking lion its rabies shot, am I right? Nothing to fucking worry about, no sir. You left your balls hanging out and some asshole grabbed hold.
”

“He was just asking,
”
Bagg said. “You have any ideas?
”

“Well
, I have an idea,
”
said
Flint
. “
I have an
idea that I’m about to get shit-canned along with the rest of you sorry bastards.
”

“Who owns the island?
”
Singe asked. “Is it state property?
”

“State property ends back on the other side of the bridge,
”
Flint
said.

“You pulled me
out of the canal the day we met,
”
Billy Wayne said
.

“Don’t mean I ain’t respons
ible for patrolling down here, a
nd the waterways are all my responsibility.
”

“How do we find the owner?
”
Singe asked.

“How the fuck do I know?
”
Flint
rubbed
his temples with sharp knuckles.

“It’s public record,
”
said Bagg
.

“What are you
thinkin’, Bagg?
”
Singe watched
Bagg
stoop
to ret
rieve his pencil and then rush
for the door. “Bagg?
”

*
*
*

“Lilly?
”
Bagg
barked
into his cell phone. “Lilly, I need your help with a property deed and any information you can get on a property owner.
”

Lilly’s voice was far away, almost lost in the crackle and sizzl
e of the poor cell connection
;
barely one out of
five bars showed
on
t
he
small screen indicator
.

“Bagg, I’m a style writer, what do I know about deeds?
”

“Lilly, it’s
life or death.
It’s a couple of phone calls from the press, is all. Then search the database for news items.
”

“Who do you want me to call?
”

“Start with the Ocean County Courthou
se, in Toms River. Then the assessor
, or maybe the clerk’s office. Try asking for the registrar of deeds. I’m not sure, Lilly, but we need to know the owner of Fish Head Island, which is at the end of Great Bay Boulevard.
”

“Fish Head Island? Life or death? I have a deadline coming up.
”

“It’s my life.
”
And Bagg
really meant it.
He
had walked with the phone toward his tent, his home for over a month now. “And if you can get a name, please just run it through Google as well as the Associated Press for any recent news hits.
”

“You’ll be at this number if I find anything?
”

“Yes. Thanks
.
I’ll be waiting to hear.
”

“Oh, and Bagg?
”

“Yeah?
”

“I’m sorry about your daughter.
”

“I know, Lilly.
”
Bagg snapped the phone shut.