Rough Draft (13 page)

Some nights when the booze hit him a little harder, Frank imagined himself on the other side of the camera. The star of his own show. No pretty-boy leading man, Sheffield was forty-one and showed it, his skin a weathered copper, deep wrinkles around the eyes from a lifetime of squinting in the sun. He had straight sandy hair that was thinning, the shine of scalp beginning to show. His eyes were dark brown, and his mouth was usually relaxed in a lazy grin.

He was an inch under six feet, and kept the fat off with those ten-mile laps of Key Biscayne in his kayak. Too laid-back to be a first-rate lady's man, still, Sheffield had become quite adept at what he'd named the three-week romance. A week of seduction, a week of passion, a week of drifting back to earth. After ten years married to a woman whose hostility seemed to grow with every year, Frank was now severely gun-shy. And that was the part he'd play in his own movie. Bogart in
Casablanca.
A single guy with a painful past who'd made his peace with loneliness. Then, of course, out of the blue comes his lost love. Ingrid Bergman, all pale and fragile and queenly. The tale of a rekindled romance. An ember that never died. That was the story that always got Frank going. A second chance at love complicated by the usual subplot. Because eventually, if the story's going to be interesting, the lonely guy has to choose between doing the right thing, the moral thing, or selfishly hanging onto the woman. In
Casablanca
Bogart gives up the woman, surrenders her to a greater cause. Though Sheffield wasn't sure that ending would play anymore. Because, hell, try to think of a cause these days worth that kind of sacrifice.

Sheffield looked over at Helen Shane. She was fidgeting, pulling her ring on and off. Tapping her foot against the cement.
Not used to guys wandering off in their heads when she was around.

He had no idea why she was there. She'd showed up a half hour after his kayak workout. Frank was still sweaty, just about to step in the shower when she knocked three times, then three more right after it. A cop knock.

He'd asked through the closed door who it was.

“It's your boss.”

“Which boss? I got so many.”

“The one that pisses you off.”

“That doesn't narrow it down much.”

He slipped into a pair of trunks, opened the door, stepped out onto the porch. Barefoot, shirtless. Helen looking at his bare chest. Studying it, like she was counting the hairs, doing a masculinity calculation.

Now in the dark, two red wines later, she tugged off an earring. Then the other one. She kicked off her low-heel pumps.

“I'm surprised you're taking the evening off. Thought you'd be running with this the whole seventy-two hours. Popping amphetamines, staying at command central.”

“I needed to get out of there. I was about to punch Ackerman.”

“Yeah,” said Frank. “Guy's a lot easier to take on television. Up close and personal his charisma is a little much.”

Helen said, “They'll beep me if anything breaks. Just before I left, your friend Hannah was driving home from the shrink's office, out of nowhere she U-turns on US 1, drives back to Coconut Grove. Went to see a friend at Dinner Key Marine. Gisela Ortega. Lives on a houseboat there.”

“I know Gisela,” Frank said. “Miami PD. Took Hannah's place as media spokesperson.”

“We're aware of that,” Helen said.

“So why'd you come here? Things are happening. You should be back at the hotel pulling your puppet strings.”

“Nothing's going down tonight. It'll be tomorrow when her boy's back in school. She's got the whole day free.”

“But if she goes now?”

“They'll beep me. It's ten minutes back across the bridge.”

Frank stared out into the dark. Listened to the swollen surf. The wind was stirring his hair, tickling across his chest Mid-eighties, humidity dropping down low enough so he could take a decent breath. He wasn't sweating every second of the day and night Best season of the year. Postsummer, pie-tourist

“All this sand,” Helen said. She stirred her bare toes through the grit sheeting the concrete porch. She had another quick sip of her red wine, stirring her toes some more. “How the hell do you stand it? You track it inside, it's gotta get in everything. The rug, the bedsheets. All the cracks.”

“You come here to check my bedsheets, Ms. Shane?”

“Call me Helen.”

“Call me Agent Sheffield.”

“I like Sheffield better. Frank sounds so damn tightass.”

“Call me Sheffield then, if it gives you a better feel for my ass.”

She looked at him in the dark. He could see the sparkle in her eyes, reflections from the strings of red and green Christmas bulbs at the tiki bar. Three schoolteachers from Ft. Wayne over there. They'd been in town all week. Burned red, they'd picked up two Cuban Romeos, everyone having a hoot. A little cross-cultural education.

“Nothing's going to happen between us,” Helen said.

“Fine by me.”

“I can't get mixed up with the help.”

“Oh, that's good, Helen. The help.'”

“I read your file, Sheffield. You haven't exactly distinguished yourself.”

“Haven't extinguished myself either. Not yet anyway.”

“You really don't care, do you? A lackluster job performance, not a single merit increase in twenty years, cost-of-living raises, across the board, that's all you've gotten. That doesn't embarrass you?”

“Oh, so that's the way you know if you're having a good life, you look at your paycheck?”

“You don't respect yourself, Frank. You've got no ambition.”

“You come all the way out here to give me a career pep talk, Shane?”

She had another sip of wine. Slurring her words already, a little non sequitur creeping into the conversation. Maybe she was a quick drunk, or maybe not. With Helen it was probably dangerous to assume anything.

Frank took a bite off the top of his rum and Coke. Mostly Coke. He watched the schoolteachers and their new Cuban boyfriends swaying on the bar stools. They were all probably trying to figure out how to divvy up. Three schoolteachers, two Romeos. A little creative math. There was a laughing gull standing near their feet waiting for more popcorn to drop from the bowl on the bar.

“So now what do you think of my plan, Sheffield? You starting to see the beauty of it?”

“I don't like it, Shane. Putting an innocent civilian in harm's way.”

“But she's on track. That's the important thing.”

“Maybe.”

“Like a good little detective, following the bread crumbs.”

“No, Helen. Like a woman who wants to nail the son of a bitch she believes killed her parents.”

“Think she'll go to Miami PD? Her old buddies. Try to get them involved.”

“Not likely,” Frank said. “She'd have to know nobody would take her seriously. A bunch of gibberish scribbled in the margins of her novel. What're they going to do, order up a SWAT team on the basis of that?”

“Even if she tries, it won't do her any good,” Helen said. “We've taken care of it. Miami PD, the county people, the staties. Everyone's aware we're running a code-one operation. They're not to get involved. We've got liaison people
there. Anything she tries to do, they'll squash it. So she can talk to her old buddies till she's red in the face, it won't matter.”

“Blue,” Frank said. “Blue in the face.”

“Blue, red. Green in the face,” Helen said. “It won't matter.”

“My bet is she won't go anyway. She's a lone wolf kind of lady.”

Helen gave him a careful look.

“Bingo, there it is. I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“What you just said. ‘A lone wolf kind of lady.'”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“There was a spike in your voice. A definite uplift.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“You have a thing for her, don't you, Frank? A case of the hots.”

“I won't dignify that, Shane.”

“Sure you do. It's written all over you.”

“Jesus, ‘the hots'? Nobody says shit like that anymore. Not even guys.”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, Sheff. Whatever you say.”

“Okay, if I have the hots for the woman, how is it I haven't seen her or spoken to her in five years?”

“Don't protest too much, Sheffield. You'll give yourself away.”

At the tiki bar somebody put a James Taylor song on the jukebox. One of the schoolteachers was dancing with one of the Romeos. Not touching, the woman dancing, the guy just standing close, swaying, some slow claps of his hands like some kind of half-assed flamenco. The others were watching, making cracks, giggling.

“So what about Hal?” Helen said.

“What about him?”

She set her drink on her knee. She had a nice knee. It was gold in the moonlight. Actually it was a superior knee, one
of the best he'd seen. Too bad it was attached to Helen Shane.

“You think Hal's here?”

“Here, meaning Miami?”

She hummed a yes.

Maybe she
was
drunk. Maybe another word or two about bedsheets would nudge her inside the door. Though what he thought was, it would be safer from a purely physical standpoint to walk down to the beach, offer up his pecker to the first crab he found.

“My gut says no,” said Frank. “This guy's been killing people for ten years with you people on his ass the whole time. I'm betting he's not dumb enough to fall for this bullshit.”

“I know what you think of me, Sheffield. I know what you think of the plan.”

“Then you should stop asking.”

“I think he's here,” Helen said. “I think Hal's in the vicinity.”

“You picked him up on your radar, did you? Your personal antennae are all atwitter?”

“I
need
him to be here, Frank. I
need
this to work.”

“To make Senator Ackerman happy. Career advancement. More merit increases.”

“You think there's something wrong with that? Wanting to get ahead?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“I know you don't like me, Frank. You think because I'm ambitious I have to be some kind of twisted bitch.”

“Oh, here we go.”

“What?”

“I must be getting slow. I kept wondering why you'd bother coming all the way out here. Now we're finally getting around to it. I'm this loser, lives in a dump, but I still bother you, don't I, Shane? You're not happy unless everybody's on your bandwagon. Every single one. It makes you uneasy.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do, Helen. You came out here because you want me to know what a terrific lady you are. That's what this is all about, isn't it? For me to punch your ticket, validate you and your goddamn mission.”

“Fuck you.”

“Can't do it,” he said. “I just ate.”

She glowered briefly. Then she leaned back in her chair, reset her face like she'd willed herself to ease off. Her mouth softening.

“I'm taking that as a misfired joke, Sheffield. Because I'd bounce you off this operation in a second if I thought you meant to insult me.”

“Well, then I'll just have to work harder.”

Frank looked over at the tiki hut. He watched the schoolteachers giving the Cuban boys a lesson in Midwest hospitality. The biggest of the three was the dancer, a barrel-shaped woman, shaking all that corn-fed flesh, letting ‘em look.

“I think you're the way you are,” Shane said, “because of your father. His fame. The way everybody glorified him. Growing up in that kind of shadow, it must have stunted your ambition.”

“Wow, look at me,” Frank said. “I'm having a drink with Sigmund fucking Freud.”

“Getting a little too close to the truth are we, Frank?”

“So if I lack ambition because of my terrific father, then hey, that would mean your old man must've been one hell of a loser.”

She sat perfectly still. All the fidgets dead.

“What was he, Shane, a lush? Half in the bag all the time? Or maybe a wife beater. Or, no, I've got it. A molester, the old man came for visits in the middle of the night, showed you the one-eyed monster. Come on, Helen, tell Uncle Frank.”

The wine spattered against his chest. Followed by the thump of the plastic cup against his sternum. She was on her feet. Fumbling with her shoes. She was making noises, huffing.
Maybe it was tears, maybe it was acting. Who the hell cared?

He watched the Hoosier tourists. Taking a few days off to recharge the old schoolteacher batteries. God love ‘em. Simple folks from Ft. Wayne, laughing and drinking on that lush tropical night. No agenda but getting laid. No need to kid themselves into believing anything was coming of it except one luscious memory.

Sheffield stood up. He turned and watched Helen Shane stalk across the parking lot. Watched her get inside her white Lincoln Town Car, start it up, flare on the headlights. Sheffield stood in the full beams. Stood there like that deer that gets blinded and freezes, only Sheffield wasn't any goddamn deer. He turned around and went back to the porch.

He bent down, turned on the hose, started spraying his green kayak that was leaning against one of the coconut palms. He'd already rinsed it off earlier, but hell, you could never get your kayak clean enough. All that salt crud could build up, start the rivets rusting. He sprayed it good. Sprayed it and sprayed it some more. He was going to stand there for half an hour and spray that damn thing till it was the cleanest kayak in all of south Florida. When he was done, he'd finish his drink, maybe afterward he'd go down to the tiki bar, have another, join the fun. After that, hell, he'd see what ball games were on TV. Fall asleep early.' Cause tomorrow was going to be a long day. And what he'd just done was only going to make it longer.