THE CARBON STEEL CARESS Page 3

  “You won’t quit.”

  “I don't know my friend.” Hook brought the Whaler alongside the dock's floater and caught a line over a cleat.

  Donal helped him tie up and carry the equipment and their catch into the house. He said. “I have to get back to town. Gotta catch a connector flight out of Savannah. Thomas Donleavy, the guy who skipped out with the Haverton Hotel Corporation millions, was spotted in the 'Big Apple'.”

  “He was Haverton's V.P. for finance?”

  “That's the guy. Clever crooked son-of-a-bitch.”

  “When you gonna learn English. It's 'sum-bitch.”

  “Yeah, I know. Like 'Co-cola’.”

  “Got it. Might wring the Yankee out of you yet. When's your flight?”

  “Eight o'clock.”

  “Good. There's time to hit the Sea Horse for a couple of drafts and a pair of rib eyes.”

  “Sorry partner. Can't. Got stuff to do. Gimme a rain check.”

  Donal, six beers to the good, left his Jaguar in Hook's driveway and took a thirty dollar cab ride from A.J.'s place at Bay Point to Moultrie Bay. A iced cooler with fillets from six 8-10 pound- redfish was on the cab floor alongside the P.I.'s feet. Still, Saturday with his old buddy, despite the good fishing, had turned out to be a bummer.

  A.J. had spent the day apologizing for the county executive’s refusal to allow Donal to become involved with their cases. Hell, Druci1la was doing Donal a favor by keeping him out and he had told A.J. as much. He was long since out of homicide and the better for it. No way he wanted to be back into that crap. Murder was for the cops and Donal had done his cop time. He was a P.I. now, makin' bucks in resort security and corporate crime. The P.I. business was enough; it provided all the investigation work that he wanted and needed.

  But A.J. was bitching not listening, his hashing and rehashing the murder cases was getting hard to take. And, it was the second time in days that A.J. had talked about retirement. Naw. No way. Arlen Jerome Hook, bitching not withstanding, was one hell of a career cop. Smart and tough.

  ... Donal and Hook had met in the Marine Corps, Donal a seventeen year old private from Philadelphia and in the Corps to try his wings away from home and family: Hook older, a Parris Island D.l., tired of molding a few good men, waiting for his twenty so that he could return to civilian life in his native South Carolina.

  Their paths had recrossed eight years later in the Columbia, South Carolina Law Enforcement Academy. Hook, now a firearms instructor, Donal, out of the Corps and making South Carolina home, a State Police recruit.

  Later, Donal and Hook partnered in the State police organization's homicide division.

  Hook, a dedicated law officer, finally left the State Police and Columbia and accepted the Homicide Chief's job with the Moultrie County Sheriff's Department. Donal stayed with the State Police unit in the State Law Enforcement Directorate, moving up to homicide Lieutenant and acting as the State liaison officer to the F.B.I. on several multi-state serial murder cases.

  Donal's reputation as a cop with a knack for ferreting out murderers grew. With the rep came jealousy. Donal's bosses resented favorable publicity going to an underling and they made sure with crappy assignments, short budgets, and onerous reporting requirements that the cop suffered. He became increasingly disenchanted with the backbiting that went along with working the cop shop bureaucracy. And, then he was shot and critically wounded while attempting to apprehend a psychotic who lead a rattlesnake cult in a remote area of the western South Carolina mountains. Recuperating for three months in a Columbia hospital, Donal had had lots of time to think and to decide.

  When Donal got out of the hospital, physically fine but sick and tired of the procrustean bed of police bureaucracy, he left SLED and moved from Columbia to the South Carolina Lowcountry where he established his agency. The decision to go out on his own was the smartest move he ever made even though it was several years of hard scrabble before he latched on to lucrative resort security contracts and came to know for sure that he had been right.

  Donal smiled again. Going private had been right for him but Hook, a born cop, was another story. Hook was better at police work than a T.V. evangelist was at squeezing bucks from the born again. No matter how disgusted or disgruntled he got; no matter how he bitched the Department, Hook was grousing, nothing more. He wouldn't quit. Short of the mandatory age cut they'd have to carry him out of the Moultrie County Sheriff's Department on a stretcher.

  But Hook was right. The Sheriff's Department would increasingly bear the brunt of public wrath if the murders weren't solved soon. Newspaper and television editorials were strident, resulting in enormous public pressure for the Sheriff and the County Council to produce results.

  Influential citizens, the movers and shakers of the County, were raising royal hell with individual council members. And the politicians, those steadfast paragons of constancy and fidelity, were expediently eying their colleagues on the council and in County administration and especially the personnel of Sheriff's Department, looking for weaknesses to be exploited when the time came for rolling heads.

  The Moultrie County Sheriff's folks had the nightmare that all cops dreaded. Open murders and an apparently motiveless psychotic serial killer. Now they had a burglar-murderer who nailed a prominent woman.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Saint Catherine’s Island

  Moultrie County, SC

  June 1

  Within a week of his termination as a SLED agent the guy had called Jack Faulkner. Faulkner stonewalled, clouding the details of possible reinstatement, vaguely promising that it would happen, that he'd find a way to bring the terminated agent back into the Directorate. He strung the former operative along with a line about waiting for the appropriate time to make the move, saying, sit tight, things will change in the Statehouse and he’d be able to do a deal. Emphasizing over and over that it was only a matter of time until he could arrange to get the man back on the payroll. Faulkner half believed the line he was feeding the ex agent.

  The man stayed in his ramshackle plantation house on Saint Catherine’s island for weeks. He was relentlessly persistent, contacting Faulkner; trying again and again for reinstatement. Faulkner always putting the ex agent off, saying, 'Later, ... when the climate changes.’

  He slammed his fist against a plaster wall in the master bedroom of the ramshackle plantation house. “Bastards,” he snarled, “stupid, gutless bastards.”

  Ignoring bloodied knuckles, the former agent picked up a book of Zig-Zag papers, a Ziploc baggie, and a glass vial. He mixed white powder and marijuana on a ceramic tray and fixed a joint. He lit up and lay back against the scarred headboard of the sagging eighteenth century cannonball style bed, eyes fixed on the mildew stained plaster of the twelve foot ceiling, staring an unfocused, essentially sightless, stare.

  Outside, wind, the tail end of an early season tropical disturbance, racing in from the open waters of the Saint Catherine Sound, came ashore whipsawing the salt marsh cord-grasses, bending pine and palmetto trees. Palmetto fronds slapped against the weather stained cypress siding of the plantation house. Wind driven rain hammered a tattoo on the verdigris copper of the roof. Platinum lightning flashes momentarily lit the bedroom's pitch blackness. Thunder shook the ancient building.

  Pain was excruciating. The color spectrum flashed behind his closed eyes and milliseconds later the pain seared his brain. At first inhaling did nothing for former agent, the blond man. Then, gradually the mixture of psychoactive substances began to grab. He continued on, toking deeply, relaxing, pain receding, senses sharpening. Detailed, cinematic images reeled through his brain.

  A boy, himself, standing outside the low bedroom window.

  Watching her. Mother. Hearing her laughter.

  Watching Mother cuddle the infant. Baby sister. Half-sister.

  Hearing Mother coo; hearing her talk baby talk.

  Outside. Always outside now. Cutoff. No more in the bed with Mother. No more in her arms. Alone. Always
alone.

  Later.

  Watching Mother with the man. The stepfather. Hearing her ask the man for money. Watching her as she lay on the bed. Watching the man sliding his hand beneath Mother's frothy, filmy lingerie. Watching him touch her. Cup her breast in his hand; lean forward, suckle; like the infant half-sister.

  Hearing Mother coo.

  Still alone; still outside. Always outside. Always alone now.

  Inside the house. The little puppy; Mother's puppy. Pure white and fluffy like Mother's nice things.

  Slashing with the straight razor.

  The puppy struggling, choking on its own blood. The carbon steel blade slicing through the animal's belly. Placing the Pekinese's lifeless body in the drawer with Mother's pretty things. Blood dripping, staining her silks and laces.

  Later, days later.

  Bruises from the man's beating almost faded away. The man's cigarette lighter in his hand. The house in flames. Standing alone. In minds eye waiting for the flames. Seeing the man; stepfather. Seeing Mother. Seeing the baby, 'little sister'. Half-sister.

  Watching the flames.

  Laughing

  Alone.

  Laughter fading.

  Later. Years later.

  The jungle. Nicaragua.

  The woman.

  Drug lord’s bitch.

  Dark hair. Long, lustrous black hair.

  Reaching out for her. Bending her backward, exposing the cafe-au-lait skin of her throat. Stepfather's razor in hand.

  Slashing.

  Blood.

  Footsteps. Her body sliding to the ground. Voices.

  Retreating into the jungle shadows. Little brown men in camo fatigues.

  Cutting them down with bursts of automatic fire.

  Now Mexico.

  Black haired woman in the bedroom of General Hector Estavez's hacienda. The General's whore. Young. Beautiful. So like 'baby sister '.

  The woman turning. Smiling.

  Straight razor flashing.

  Cutting. Again. And again.

  Slashing across her breasts. Across her abdomen. Blade twisting, ripping upward. Frenzy cresting. Laughing.

  Mental holograph shifting.

  Fading.

  Refocusing.

  Little sister'. Grown now. So lovely. So like Mother. Slipping from her silk chemise; stepping forward.

  Naked.

  Exquisite.

  Then blackness.

  He lay on sweat-dampened sheets and slept a fitful, restless sleep, disturbed by the intermittent lightning and crashing thunder outside. Wracked by his own internal demons.

  Hours later, he sat up on the edge of rumpled bed, his head in his hands; “Goddamn them. Stupid gutless fools. Faulkner, Ellerby; all of them.”

  The pain seared again behind his left eye. “They'll need me. They'll learn.”

  The blond man decided that he had to get back in circulation. Find some action. Do something, anything, to relieve the damnable headaches. He slid open the drawer of the bedside table and removed an 8” by 10” photograph and studied the autographed glamour shot of a raven haired young woman.

  He replaced the photograph and went into the bathroom in search of Percodan. And the antique straight razor.

  Georgia On A Fast Train blasting from the Sea Horse bar's juke did nothing good for his headache. Neither did the chubby redneck female rubbing her tits against his bicep. The folded recently stropped straight razor was in his side pocket; he fingered its bone handle. “Jack Daniels, black label. Double,” the blond man said, his words clipped, tone pissy. “Give her one.”

  The bartender nodded, wary; he'd seen this kind before. Trouble. Give 'em their booze and mind your business. He poured the whiskey, pushed the glasses forward, and took eight dollars from the pile of ones the customer had placed on the bar. He moved quickly down the to the middle of the bar and busied himself in the glasses sink.

  The blond man tossed back Percodan with the double Jack. He handed the redneck chick a twenty. “Go make up your face. Or whatever you women do,” he said. He went outside to quiet space and dialed his cell. He listened to the burr of a phone, impatient, about to hang up when it was finally answered.

  “Yeah, Richter speaking.”

  “Everett. Mick Capers here.”

  The voice paused. Then, “Been a fuckin’ coon’s age. You here on Hilton Head Island?”

  “Close enough, Saint Catherine's.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Trying to touch base with Pete Hammil. Thought you might have an idea where he is.”

  “Haven't seen Hammil for years. Last I heard he was running with Billings and Wolfe.”

  “Jack and Sam?”

  “Who else? Sam's here, on the island. He scored some bucks and has himself a fancy beach house. Billings might be there.”

  “You have an address or a phone number?”

  “Yeah, someplace. Hang on.”

  Capers held for Richter to come back with the number. Minutes went by with his almost nonexistent patience wearing. Trace pains of headache began to grow. He fingered the ivory handle of the straight razor.

  Richter came back on the line. “Sorry man, I had a hell of a time finding it.”

  Capers took the number and dialed.

  The phone was answered by a woman who told him that neither Sam Wolfe nor Jack Billings were there, but they were expected later, probably in an hour or so. She had never heard the name Hammil.

  Above the din of beach rhythms inspired by music indigenous to sea island blacks and the background drone of crowd voices, the woman shouted, “Party's hot. Why don't you just slide on by? ” She gave him the address.

  All right Capers decided. He'd check out the action. Touch base with Sam and Jack. Get a line on Hammil. He looked across the sound to Hilton Head Island, shrugged , and got behind the wheel of his M class BMW coupe.

  The woman with the tits came outside just as he turned the car from the parking lot to the road.

  “Hey, wait,” she hollered at the rapidly diminishing tail end of the BMW.

  Capers drove the hour and a half, fifty five mile trip from Saint Catherine's to Hilton Head. A boat trip following a crow flight path across the Port Royal sound would have been about seven miles, maybe fifteen minutes. As he brought the car onto the approach to the State highway 278 bridge that spanned Mackay and Skull creeks the blond man watched a red tailed hawk swoop, talons forward, toward the creek bank. The hawk disappeared behind slash pine and scrub oak. Almost immediately the bird reappeared and climbed toward her nest on a bridge pylon. A marsh rabbit was gripped in her talons.

  The blond man drove on, smiling, admiring the raptor's power.

  The beach house, a stucco and glass pile, sat atop a dune, overlooking a buff sand beach and beyond the Atlantic ocean. Oyster shell tabby entrance posts with filigreed wrought iron gates framed the entrance to a quarter mile long drive. Capers announced himself through an intercom box affixed to a post at the drive's entrance. The gates swung open and he nudged his gun metal blue ride through and up the drive. He parked between a Ferrari Testarosa and a nine eleven Porsche with a whale tail.

  Capers stood in the beach house's doorway and surveyed the crowd. Blue-grey cigarette smoke twisted into the draped crystals of an ornate chandelier and hung heavy beneath the ceiling; the scene throwback to earlier non politically correct times. The babble of voices blended to a near mechanical hum.

  As Capers watched, Sam Wolfe came down the stairs and tapped a diminutive dark haired woman dressed in a silk tee and shorts on the shoulder. Capers edged close enough to hear Sam say, “Friday, thirty kilos.”

  Capers smiled. Nothing had changed.

  “So,” the woman replied?

  “So, I want you in on this with me.”

  “Find someone else, Sam.”

  “I don't want someone else. I want you.”

  “No. ” The woman began to move away.

  Wolfe put a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Shi
t's worth a fortune, babe.”

  “I don't care. And get your goddamn hand off me.”

  Capers heard Sam say, “Come on babe, listen to me,” as he moved into the man's line of sight.

  Surprise registered on the Wolfe's weather-seamed face. “Jesus H Christ! Where in hell did you come from?”

  Before Capers could reply Wolfe yelled across the room, “Hey Jack., look who’s here.”

  Jack Billings sauntered over. “I’ll be fucked. Long time; long, long time. Where ya been.” Billings’s voice held a note of reserve. “You come by for business or pleasure?”

  “I’m looking for Pete. Ev Richter says he runs with you guys.”

  “He did ‘til he reupped.”

  Wolfe cut in, “last I heard the Corps kicked him out and he’s in Hawaii.”

  Billings laughed, “Ha, no doubt balls deep in a wahine.”

  “You could introduce us Sam.” It was the woman.

  “Yeah, sure. Mick. Micah Capers. We served in the Corps together. Did some other jungle shit. Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador.”

  The woman said, “War stories.” She turned her back, moving away.

  “Don't get bitchy,” Sam called after her, and mumbled, “fuckin' head case.”

  Capers watched the woman cross the room.

  “Legs go all the way up to her ass,” Wolfe said. He paused for a second, watching her walk. “Broad's something else again. Whacked. Brilliant, but whacked. You want a piece?”

  Capers continued looking after the woman; raven hair, strikingly beautiful facial features, trim body. A type. She resembled his famous half-sister. He didn't answer Wolfe's question.