A Firing Offense

TWENTY




SO, JOHNNY,” I said. “Who’s Virginia Dare?” We were driving down the beach road that bore her name. To our left were oceanfront cottages and houses on pilings.

“First child born in this country to English parents.”

“I’m impressed.”

“And I’m hungry. Let’s get some breakfast,” he said, and then, embarrassed, as if having knowledge of the state history was in some way a feminine trait, added, “Besides, I gotta’ lay some pipe.”

We switched over to the 158 bypass and pulled into the lot of a pancake house. It was warm as summer but there were few patrons. The town was in its off-season.

McGinnes ordered a pot of coffee, french toast topped with a fried egg, sausage, and practically everything else from the kitchen that would clog an artery. I had eggs over easy and scrapple.

When we finished, McGinnes grabbed a section of the USA Today he was “reading” and a book of matches and headed for the bathroom. I borrowed the phone directory and a blank sheet of paper from the cashier and wrote down the names and addresses of several restaurants.

Back in the lot I removed my sweatshirt and tossed it in the backseat. We drove to a variety store on the highway, where McGinnes bought sandwiches, beer, and ice for the cooler. While he did that, I pumped gas into my Dodge, then paid a young attendant who had a back wider than a kitchen table. He sang “Tennessee Stud” while I gave him the money and kept singing it as he walked back into the garage where he was working.

We returned to the Virginia Dare Trail and drove south out of Kitty Hawk, through Kill Devil Hills, past the Wright Brothers Memorial and into Nags Head. All of these towns were pleasant and indistinguishable from one another. Near the huge dune of Jockeys Ridge we stopped at a motor court named the Arizona and checked in.

We changed into shorts and walked across the road to the beach. We put our gear down in front of a white cottage on stilts that had boarded windows. The tide was receding and the swells were high at four feet and breaking far from the shore.

When I broke a sweat, I jogged to the shoreline and dove in the ocean. The water was pleasantly cold and clean. I swam parallel to the shore for roughly a quarter mile, then breaststroked back and rode in a few waves.

McGinnes handed me a cold beer as I toweled off. I drank it sitting upright on the blanket. McGinnes pulled another beer from the cooler and announced that he was going for a walk. I watched him go north, stopping to talk to an old man wearing long pants, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap.

When I finished my beer, I pulled another from the ice and walked up the wooden steps and onto the porch of the white cottage. The window frames were peeling and the rusted storm door was permanently weathered half-open. Wooden Adirondack chairs painted a bright green sat in front of the boarded bay window on the splintering deck. I turned one of them to face the ocean, sat in it, and put my feet up on the railing.

The constant crash of the waves was punctuated by the cries of a flock of gulls that sat on the gravelly beach. A young father was surf fishing a hundred yards down the beach, his tackle box, white bucket, and cooler by his side. His blond little boy looked for shells but stayed close by.

I pushed the hair back off my forehead and finished my beer. The area around my nose and under my eyes no longer ached, confirming my grandfather’s claim that saltwater was a cure for every ailment. I crossed my arms and settled into the chair, then drifted to sleep.

McGinnes woke me with a shake. I was sitting half in shade now. I looked at my arms and their deep brown color, quickly regained from my vacation on Assateague three weeks earlier.

“Let’s go, man,” McGinnes said. “You’re starting to look like a Puerto Rican.” I poked his red chest with my index finger and brought up a splotch of white.

We returned to the room. I showered and changed into a denim shirt, jeans, and running shoes. McGinnes put on his Hawaiian shirt and went into the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. He began to cough and shut the door.

I sat on the bed and ate one of the sandwiches as I looked over my list. McGinnes came out of the bathroom and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You all right?” I asked.

He smiled unconvincingly and chin-nodded the list in my hand. “What’s up?”

“Restaurants that Kim Lazarus may have worked in. They should be open by now.”

“Let me check out a couple,” he said quickly.

“Based on what her father told me, I figure there’s only three possibilities, unless the place she used to work in is out of business now.” I ripped the bottom of the page off and handed it to him. “This place has a popular happy hour, judging from the ads, and it’s Mexican. Skip the restaurant and check out the bar. I have a feeling they may be trying to off the drugs, and a bar with employees that use would be a perfect spot. If you get a bite, try and find out if they’re still in town.”

“No problem,” he said.

“I’ll drop you off and check out these other places. Then I’ll swing back and pick you up after I’ve done that. You need bread?”

He put his hand out and I handed him some of my bankroll. He folded it and stashed it in his pocket, then pointed a thumb into his own chest. “Don’t worry about dad,” he said. “This kinda shit is like cuttin’ butter.”


I LET MCGINNES OFF in the parking lot of the Casa Grande, which was in a large, old oceanfront hotel in Kitty Hawk.

“I’ll see you in the Big House,” he said, and shifted his shoulders in a Cagneyesque manner. I watched him in my rearview as I drove away, feeling an odd sympathy for him as he strolled across the lot in his Hawaiian shirt and polyester slacks.

The first place I hit was in a strip center next to a cluster of movie theaters on the divided highway. It had been advertised as a restaurant but was little more than a carryout serving tacos and burritos.

The kid who was behind the counter when I walked in was busy playing air guitar to the Metallica that was coming from his box. I asked about Kim Lazarus and got a dull-eyed look and a negative response.

My next stop was a free-standing restaurant in Nags Head that was done in a stucco and adobe motif, one of those Tex-Mex chains that American families love specifically for their blandness. It was their dinner rush, and when I saw the waitresses’ uniforms—green and gold dresses with some type of elaborate headgear more appropriate on a trotting horse—I had the feeling that Kim Lazarus had never worked here.

The woman behind the register, thin and sharp-featured, seemed to be the only one around not doing anything. I walked up to her and smiled.

“Hi.”

“Hello,” she said. “The hostess will seat you.” She made a jerky, pigeon-like movement with her head.

“I’m not looking for a table. My cousin works here. I’m on vacation, thought I’d say hi.”

“Everyone’s kinda busy, sir. But what’s her name? I’ll see if I can get her attention.”

“Kimmy,” I said. “Kim Lazarus.”

“There’s no one here by that name,” she said.

“I thought for sure she said this place,” I whined. “Did she used to work here?”

“Honey, I’ve been on this station since we opened two years ago. No Kim ever worked here.” She jerked her head again.

“Are there any other places like this?” I asked. “I guess I got confused.”

“Casa Grande in Kitty Hawk. Or maybe she worked at Carlos Joe’s. But they closed down last year. Had some trouble.”

“What happened?” I asked, winking conspiratorially. Then I jerked my head like hers, for punctuation. “Taxes?”

She leaned in and whispered, “Owners got in drug trouble.”

“Oh. Anybody work here who used to work at Carlos Joe’s? Maybe they know my cousin.”

She pulled back and buttoned up. “Not that I know.”

“Thanks.”

I walked to my car with my head down. Carlos Joe’s was the type of place Kim Lazarus would have been attracted to. But it was closed now, and I had driven into a stone dead end.

* * *



THE BAR AT CASA GRANDE was above the dining room and accessible by a staircase to the left of the hotel entrance. I picked a magazine up off the table in the lobby and went up the stairs.

McGinnes was seated at the bar when I entered. He was leaning across the rather appalled-looking woman to his left, showing her companion a trick involving a swizzle stick. He saw me but averted his eyes. I took a seat at a deuce near the window and the hors d’oeuvre station.

The young cocktail waitress who arrived at my table had that look of false health common to beach employees who party every night, then spend a couple of hours in the sun each day for recovery purposes. She had the scrubbed, Baptist good looks preferred by ACC frat boys, but her best days were already behind her. Her summer tan was fading like an Earl Scheib paint job.

“What can I get you?” she asked with a pained smile, and set a basket of chips and salsa on the table.

“A Dos Equis, please. And some queso.”

The place was filled with older, successful men, stag or with younger women, gray-templed gents who tie the arms of their summerweight sweaters around their necks and drink single malt scotch or beer from green bottles.

McGinnes was doing an awful lot of buddying up to the bartender, one of those doughy ex-jocks who “parlay” a summer bartending job into a full-time career that leaves them forty-five at thirty.

The queso was spicy and hot. I ordered beef and chicken enchiladas with a side of sour cream and another Dos. I pretended to read the real estate magazine that I had brought up from the lobby.

The food arrived and was of the same quality as the queso. Someone in the kitchen obviously liked their job. I watched the bartender whisper something to his barback, then leave his station and walk into the men’s room. Half a minute later McGinnes followed him in.

I finished my meal and the waitress removed the plates. The bartender returned to the bar, where he immediately lit a cigarette and drew on it hungrily.

McGinnes emerged from the head and took his seat at the bar, turning to his neighbors and quickly starting a conversation. Then he pulled the rope on a bell that hung from the ceiling. There was applause in the bar, as McGinnes had just bought the house a round.

I raised my bottle in a toast to McGinnes, via the bar mirror. He winked at me, a little too broadly, though he deserved to be somewhat reckless. Clearly he was on to something.

As I finished my beer, McGinnes was in close conversation with the bartender. He looked at me again, then stepped away from the bar, and said loudly, “What do I owe you, professor?” I left twenty on sixteen, walked down the stairs, and out to my car.

I turned the ignition key and knocked the ocean mist off my windshield with a stroke of the wipers. McGinnes bounded out of the hotel and goose-stepped to my car, settling in on the passenger side. He grinned the same cocky smirk when he closed a major deal.

“What’s my name?” he asked childishly.

“Johnny Mac.”

I pulled out onto Virginia Dare, heading south. McGinnes brought the snow seal out of his breast pocket, unfolded it carefully, dipped in with his pinky nail, and did a hit. Then he fed the other nostril the same way.

“What did all that cost me?” I asked.

“Call it a hundred. Thirty for the house round, seventy for the half.”

“Seventy, for a half? You’re pretty generous with my money.”

“You got to ante to play the game, Jim. It was worth it, for what I got.” He pointed ahead. “Pull in there. I’m thirsty.”

“I’ll bet you are.”

He was out of the store quickly with a tall brown bag in his arms. He handed me a cold bottle of beer and took one for himself. We drove on.

“Spill it, man.”

“All right,” he said. “Soon as I walk in the bar, I can see everyone working the place is wired. I strike up a conversation with the barkeep and ask if he remembers Kim Lazarus, used to work there. I’m a good friend of hers from D.C. Not only does he remember her, she was in town last week. I steer the conversation to coke, and how Kim told me I could look him up if I wanted to cop. He gets suspicious now and I ease off. But I get him back on the track when I tell him I’m used to spending one-forty, one-fifty for a gram.” He looked at me and smiled.

“Keep going,” I said.

“This guy can’t resist the high dollar. He offers to sell me a half for seventy. I gotta try it first, I say. We go into the john, he turns me on. Let me tell you, this shit is good. I know you’ve found Jesus and all that, but if this was the old days, you would concur on this, Jim.”

“Get to the meat, Johnny.”

“We go back out to the bar. I tell him this freeze is so serious, I’ve got to cop more. How can I get my hands on some quantity?”

“Kim and the boys, right?”

He nodded. “Let me tell it, man. The bartender, he’s juiced now, he’s my buddy. He tells me that it was my friend Kim that sold him the shit.”

“Where are they?”

“This bartender was too small-time to take on quantities. There was another guy, though, a surf rat by the name of Charlie Fiora who used to work with Kim at Casa Grande. He’s got his own gig now down the coast, a little bar called the Wall. He’s the one that Kim and Eddie and your boy Broda went to see to sell their supply to.”

“Where?” I said.

“Wrightsville Beach.” He took a swig and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

I slapped the steering wheel as we pulled into the lot of the Arizona. “Good job, man.”

“I know,” he said.

In our room I laid out maps and ferry schedules. McGinnes tapped out some lines on the mirror he had removed from the wall.

“You want a blast?”

“No,” I said. But like any former cokehead, I really did.

He did a couple that had the width of fingers. “Let’s go out and have a few.”

“Not tonight. We’ve got a shitload of miles to travel in the morning.”

“Wrightsville’s down there.”

“You want to go, go ahead. My keys are on the dresser.”

“I think I will,” he said. “For a short one.”

“Thanks for tonight, Johnny.”

“No sweat,” he said casually. “See you in the A.M.” He took my keys off the dresser and twirled them on his finger. He was coughing as he bolted out the door.