Authors: Mike Jastrzebski
My mind was awhirl, and not just because I was trying to digest the information Jessica had provided. Since Jessica had referred to me as her cousin, that meant her father was my uncle. But what about this Uncle Roy? Was he my father? Curiosity had brought me to Mobile, but was I really ready to find out? After all, he hadn’t even tried to contact me in over thirty years. Did I dare ask her?
“Are you listening to me, Wes?” Jessica’s voice intruded into my thoughts.
“Sorry,” I said. “I was distracted. Did you go to the police?”
“Granddaddy didn’t come by the book legally. We all thought it would be better if we kept the police out of it.
“The night after he talked to the lawyer, Daddy was beat near to death. That’s the night the manuscript was stolen.”
“So even after someone steals the book and beats up your dad, you didn’t go to the police?”
“Nope.” Jessica took a sip of her coffee and made a face. “Who taught you how to make coffee?”
“I like my coffee. And I don’t see how I can help you find the manuscript.”
Jessica shrugged; a sensual movement that made me wish we weren’t related. Her face was delicately shaped and pale. It was as if it had been sculpted from fine marble. Even her mouth had an artistic, chiseled look about it. But her eyes told the real story. They were blue and fierce, and I could tell by the way she met my gaze that she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
“All I want you to do is go talk to the lawyer we hired. Sam was going to make some calls to someone he knew in the State Department and see if he could find out who the manuscript belonged to and how we could return it. Next thing we know the book’s stolen. Gran wants to just let it go, but I want to do what Granddaddy asked.”
“If I help you find the book how do I know you won’t just sell it and keep the money? You claim to be my cousin, but I don’t know you from Adam.”
Jessica’s body stiffened and for the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the phrase,
If looks could kill
. I held up my hands in apology before she could take a swing at me. “Sorry, I’ll take you at your word.” For the time being, I thought, as she continued on.
“Way I figure it, the lawyer has to know something. He won’t take our calls. Besides, no one else knew about this except family.”
“The lawyer beat up your dad?”
She gave her head an almost imperceptible shake. “Not exactly.”
Talking to this girl was like pulling teeth from a rabid dog. I sighed, picked up our cups, and nodded toward the cabin. “I’ll make us another pot,” I said. “You want to come in?”
“I’ll wait out here.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But when I come out I want some answers.”
As I made a fresh pot of coffee, I gave some thought to her story. She was obviously holding something back from me.
My mother’s father once gave me an important piece of advice: “Whoever speaks first loses.” It was something that had helped me more than once in the past. This time when I sat opposite Jessica I set our cups down, folded my arms, looked her dead in the eye, and didn’t say a word.
“What?” she asked.
“You seem to be avoiding the subject of who beat up your dad.”
“Avoiding is a strong word.”
“So who the hell beat him up?”
“Fish Conners.”
“What kind of a person goes by the name Fish?” I asked.
Jessica sipped her coffee. A breeze passed over her, and her scent made my nose quiver. “Fish got his name when he was younger. He used to fish a lot. When he was a teenager they said he could drink like a fish. The name stuck.”
A pelican made a clownish dive into the river and I shook my head. “You’re a colorful lot down here, aren’t you?”
“Despite what you northerners seem to think, we’re not all rednecks.”
“I never thought that,” I said. “But there have already been a couple of times when I was talking to one of the locals and felt like I needed an interpreter.”
Jessica grinned. “I gotta admit, I was gonna lie to you, cousin. The truth is—Fish is just mean. He never got over the fact that he blew out a knee and got cut from the University of Alabama football team. He’s big and he’s fast, and he’ll do anything for a buck. He’s gotta be working for someone.”
“Which takes us back to the lawyer,” I said.
“Sam Quinlin.”
“And you want me to what? Politely ask him if he stole the book? And if he did, please return it.”
“There you go.” She jumped up and drew a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “Here’s my number and Sam Quinlin’s office address. Either way you decide let me know.” Not waiting for my reply, she climbed out of the boat and headed down the dock.
“I really don’t want to get involved,” I called out after her.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Think about it, then give me a call. Don’t wait too long though. If you aren’t going to help, I got to find someone else. By the way, how old are you, Wes, thirty-four, thirty-five?”
“Close,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering how a person your age can afford to buy a sailboat and travel around without working, that’s all.”
“Where I come from we don’t ask those kinds of questions.”
“If you don’t want to answer, that’s okay. But I got a lot more questions for you, cousin.” She turned away and sashayed down the dock, a young woman who moved to the beat of no drummer I’d ever heard before.
I was wondering whether I should run after her and ask her about my father, when she turned the corner and disappeared behind the marina store. As for her story, I wasn’t sure what to believe. I also wasn’t buying her country-girl act. I got the feeling she was a little more sophisticated than what she wanted me to believe.
Chapter 2
That evening I wandered down to the gathering area. Most marinas have one. At one place I visited it was the office where chairs lined the walls and a table sat in the middle of the room with a perpetual jigsaw puzzle under construction. At another it was a screened-in porch. At the Bay View Marina it was a large, round, outdoor table set under a recent addition to the restaurant which was built on large wooden pilings. It overlooked the river, was lighted, and had a ceiling fan that helped chase away the no-see-ums and mosquitoes.
I found Rusty Dawson sitting alone at the table tossing down a Budweiser. A dour-looking man in his sixties, Rusty’s silver hair still showed an occasional red highlight. His eyes were alert, despite the six empty beer cans lined up along the edge of the table.
I’d met Rusty the previous afternoon. When I pulled in he was sitting on a bench in front of the marina store staring out across the river.
As I swung the boat around and headed for the dock he walked over, grabbed my line and expertly tied me off to a piling.
“Hey, buddy, how you doing?” Rusty said when he saw me. Reaching into the small cooler at his side, he pulled out a beer and tossed it to me. “Take a load off, why don’t you.”
I sat down and popped the lid on my beer. “Funny thing happened today, Rusty. I got a visit from a woman who claims to be my cousin Jessica.”
Rusty turned his head and spit out of the corner of his mouth. “You got family around here?”
“So it seems. I found out my father was from the area.”
“What’s his last name?”
“Wolfe,” I said.
“There’s been Wolfe’s around here nigh onto a hundred and fifty years.” Rusty sat back in his chair, rested his hands on his belly and looked up at the ceiling fan. “You get this girl’s daddy’s name?”
I shook my head. “No, but she mentioned an Uncle Roy.”
“That would be John and Fran’s son.”
“So you know the family?”
“Never much liked John. He was a real son-of-a-bitch. I think John and Fran have a granddaughter named Jessica.”
I finished my beer and he shoved another across the table. After popping the top I folded my hands around the can and leaned back into my chair. I suspected that if I asked about my father, Rusty would be able to answer at least the basic questions of who, what, and where he was. I wasn’t sure I was ready to learn the answers to those questions.
Instead, I asked, “Rusty, you know a guy by the name of Fish Conners?”
He raised an eyebrow and took a good swig of his beer. “He’s meaner than a hungry gator. What business you got with him?”
“Not me. It seems this Conners fellow had a run-in with my uncle.”
“That’s too bad. I guess I would a heard if Fish killed him.”
“Is he capable of killing someone?”
“He’s a big man with a short fuse. I never heard that he killed anyone, but that doesn’t mean anything. Fish is a bayou boy. For all I know Fish could’ve killed a dozen people. Sometimes a body will turn up along these waterways. After the gators get hold of 'em there ain’t no way to know how they died.”
I thought about the large alligator I’d seen sunning itself on the bank of the Dog River that morning. I tried not to think about the kind of damage a creature like that could do to a man as I mulled over the implications.
“Let me lay one more name on you, Rusty. You know anything about a lawyer name of Sam Quinlin?”
Rusty cleared his throat and spit to the side again. “Don’t recognize that name. You’ve been in town what, little over a day? What do you need a lawyer for?”
“Not for me,” I said. “The family hired him to look into some legal matters about some book my grandfather brought back from Europe after the war. The book was stolen and Jessica thinks Quinlin might have hired Fish Conners to steal it. She wanted me to check into it.”
“Why you?”
“I used to be a PI. I think Jessica got it in her head that I could help.”
Rusty stared over my shoulder at the river. With a sigh he pushed himself away from the table and stood.
“I left my cell on the boat. I think I know someone I can call.” He turned and walked off toward the docks that ran behind the restaurant without waiting for my thanks. He moved with sure steps and I was left with the impression of a young man wandering about in an old man’s body. I wondered how he managed it. I counted the cans lined up on the table. They now numbered eight.
While I waited, I finished my beer and then swiveled my chair around so that it faced the river. A lone shrimp boat had just come in from the bay and was headed up Dog River. A long line of gulls and pelicans trailed behind it looking for handouts as the crew culled the day’s take. Several more pelicans glided in from the north like prehistoric pterodactyls, and then dove on the boat.
I jumped when Rusty walked up behind me and spoke. “Have another beer if you’d like.” I swung my chair back around and reached into the cooler.
Rusty took his seat across from me and grabbed the last beer. “Sam Quinlin has a small office off Government Street. It’s a one-man operation; doesn’t even have a full time receptionist. Just some girl who comes in twice a week to do filing.”
“I wonder why the family chose him.”
“I asked why someone might hire Quinlin. Seems he’s been running late night ads on TV. Offers low rates, walk-ins welcome. Here, you’ll need this.” Rusty held out a piece of paper, and when I took it from him I noticed it was a crude map with an address and a phone number on it.
I nodded toward the marina store off to our right. “How about if I get the next six-pack?”
“Appreciate that, partner.” Rusty spit, stood and gulped down the rest of his beer. “But I’ve got something I’ve got to take care of right now. I’ll take a rain check though.”
Rusty shoved the empty cans into his cooler, nodded, and headed toward the parking lot. He stopped at the trash bin, dumped the contents of the cooler, and walked over to a burgundy, twenty-year-old tank of a Cadillac. The car was in cherry condition and looked like it had just been driven off the showroom floor.
As he pulled out of the lot I crumbled up the paper Rusty had given me and tucked it into my pocket to be thrown away later. I was a stranger to the area and I’d pretty much decided that I couldn’t offer much help in finding the stolen book. What the hell did I know about good old boys and bayous? For that matter, I didn’t much care if they found the old book or not. Confident in my decision, I headed upstairs to the restaurant.
A short, heavyset girl with big hair and too many tattoos was seated at a table drinking coffee and wrapping silverware in cloth napkins. When she saw me she pushed herself away from the table, grabbed a menu, and waddled over. I looked around and saw that there were only about a half dozen people seated around the restaurant. Two more sat at the bar. “Can I eat at the bar?”
The waitress shrugged as if she was too busy to care and held out the menu to me. “Cathy’ll take your order.”
Cathy turned out to be a leggy blonde woman of about thirty. She was standing behind the bar in her bare feet, all five-foot-ten of her. As I sat down she walked over to where a young wiry guy with a military style haircut was sitting. He looked like he was about to fall off his stool.
“You’ve had enough, Billy,” she said. “Go home.”
Billy started to argue, but a man in his mid-forties, with bulging shoulders and arm muscles, slid off his own stool and moved over next to the boy. He clapped a massive hand on Billy’s shoulder and said, “Come on Billy. I’ll walk you down to the boat. I’m sure Lizbeth’s worried about you.”