A Firing Offense

TWENTY-THREE




THE BEACHMARK WAS a tan, three-story hotel on the ocean near the Wrightsville Holiday Inn. It was highlighted with green awnings and a diagonal green sign with white lettering announcing its name. I parked and looked over at McGinnes.

“You coming?” I said.

“You want me to?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the plan?”

“There isn’t one. Let’s just go in and get him.”

There were few cars in the parking lot, and the area around the hotel was still and quiet. The pool’s green light tinted our clothing as we walked around it and on past a Coke machine and ice dispenser.

We ascended a metal stairwell, then went through a concrete hall and onto a walkway around the second floor. We walked along the northside wall and turned right at the oceanfront, where the temperature immediately dropped, the air became damper, and the sound of the surf more pronounced.

I found the last door on the right and tried the knob. It was locked. To the left of the door was a small rectangular window and, through it, darkness. My first thought was that I had been had by Fiora. But McGinnes whistled and directed me to the next door in the row.

The door of that room was ajar. Out of it fell a bar of light and the sound of a radio playing AOR at a very low volume.

I knocked on the door and shouted “Hello.” No response. My knock opened the door halfway. I finished it with a push and stepped onto the green carpet of the living room. McGinnes followed me in.

We walked slowly past the standard bamboo and plastic beach furnishings and the seaside prints that hung on the wall. There appeared to be two bedrooms. I pointed to one, and McGinnes walked in. I walked into the other.

At first I did not recognize the figure lying on the bed. He did not look much like the defiant kid in the photograph his mother had shown me. In the photograph, Eddie Shultz had been alive.

They had gagged him and tied his hands and feet together behind his back, laying him on his side on a dropcloth. Then they had cut his throat down to the windpipe, from left to right. His shirt and jeans were soaked halfway up in blood. Rope burns marked his wrists and his eyes were open. He looked something like a frog.

I fell back against the door, tasted the bile of my dinner, and swallowed my own puke. I felt the blood drain from my face and I thought I heard Maureen Shultz’s voice on my answering machine. I stumbled into the other bedroom.

McGinnes was on the bed, cradling a woman in his arms. Her eyes were barely open and her lips were moving but there was no sound. He pushed some hair out of her face.

“She was unconscious when I walked in,” he said. “I’ve almost got her around.” He turned his head to look at me and dropped open his mouth. “What the f*ck…?”

“Eddie Shultz is dead, man. Murdered in the other room.”

“Hold her,” he said, and I absently put my arms around the woman as he rushed out. I heard him say, “Jesus Christ,” then walk around the apartment until he came back, pasty-faced, into the bedroom.

“Is Jimmy Broda…?”

“Nobody else in the apartment,” he said.

“We’ve got to…. ”

“We don’t have to do shit,” he said, his voice shaking. He reached out and grabbed a handful of the front of my shirt. “Now listen. Did you touch anything besides the front door?”

“I don’t know. I mean I don’t remember. Probably.”

“You walk downstairs, now, and bring the car around to the stairwell we came up. I’m going to wipe this place down and get her walking. I’ll be down in a few minutes. Understand?”

“Yes,” I nodded.

“Do it,” he said, and released my shirt.

I let the woman down gently on the bed, forcing her hand off my back. I walked out of the apartment, around to the north side of the hotel and down the stairwell.

I moved the car past the pool and into the spot nearest the stairwell. I kept the windows rolled up, listened to the tick of my watch, and wiped sweat off my forehead.

McGinnes came down the stairs ten minutes later with the woman. She was walking, supported by his arm. In his other hand was a suitcase. He put her in the back seat, where she immediately lay down. He stowed the suitcase in the trunk and got into the passenger side.

“I think I got everything,” he said to himself, then looked at me. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

I found the bridge over Bank’s Channel, left Wrightsville Beach, and drove into Wilmington. At a convenience store I parked far away from the entrance.

I bought three large coffees and a pack of Camel filters. I returned to the car, handed McGinnes two of the coffees, and tore a hole in the lid of mine. Then I opened the deck of Camels, shoved one in my mouth, and lit it. I had not smoked in more than three years. The raunch hit my lungs and burned. I kept it there, finally exhaling a stream out the window.

“She know where Broda is?” I said, jerking my head in the direction of the backseat, where she slept.

“No,” McGinnes said. “Drive.”

He directed me to 421 heading northwest. It was past midnight and there were few cars on the highway. I kicked on my hi-beams with a tap on the floorboard.

“We blew it,” I said, after a long period of silence.

“Bullshit,” he said angrily. “Everything that’s happened has had nothing to do with you. And everything that’s going to happen, whether they catch up with the kid or not, you can’t change that either. The boy got his hands on some shake that wasn’t his, and the guys he took it from, man, they are not to be f*cked with. You’re way out of your league, Nicky. Forget about it.”

“What about the woman?”

“She’ll be all right. I don’t think she was hurt bad. I’ve got to figure that half of her condition right now is from all the drugs they were doing. Take her back to D.C., drop her off, and wash your hands. Then pray we don’t get implicated in all this.”

We drove for a couple of hours on 421. When we neared the signs for 95, McGinnes had me pull over.

“I’m going to switch with her and try to get some sleep,” he said. “It’ll do her good to open her eyes for a while.”

We urinated on the shoulder of the road. McGinnes rousted the woman and walked with her down the highway for a block, then back to the car. She slid in next to me on the passenger side. McGinnes lay down on the backseat.

At Dunn, past Fayetteville, I turned off onto 95 and headed north. I offered her a cigarette. She took two from the pack and lit them both with the lighter from the dash, then handed one back to me.

She smoked while staring out the window. Her shoulders began to shake, and I could see that she was sobbing. I turned the radio on to a country station and left the volume very low. When she had stopped crying, she turned her head in my direction.

“Who are you guys?” she said. There was that slight Southern accent.

“We’re taking you back to Washington. I’m Nick Stefanos. The guy in the back is John McGinnes. Who are you?”

“My name is Kim Lazarus.” She took another cigarette from the pack and lit it off the first. She still had the long brown hair from her father’s photograph, and large, round, blue eyes.

“You feel well enough to talk?”

“I think so,” she said, but again began to cry. She shook her head. “F*cking Eddie. Why?”

I let it go again for twenty minutes. She drank the cold coffee we had saved for her and smoked another cigarette. I kept my eyes on the road.

“I’m not interested in anything other than Jimmy Broda,” I said finally. “I want you to know that… so you can speak freely. I was hired by his grandfather to find him, and that’s what I was trying to do when I caught up with you. I know he had coke that wasn’t his, and I know you were selling it off as you traveled. But I don’t care about any of that.”

“What can I tell you? We were partying for two weeks straight. We had sold most of it, and we were doing the rest of it like a last blowout.” She dragged on her cigarette.

“Keep going,” I said.

“Jimmy went out for some beer late in the afternoon. Pretty soon after that two guys came into our room. I don’t remember much after that. Either I hit my head backing up or they knocked me out. Anyway, the next thing was, your friend in the backseat was waking me up.”

I thought about that for a while. “You recognize the guys?”

“Black dudes,” she said meaninglessly. I didn’t ask her any more questions, and after a short time she fell back asleep.

I drove on through the night, into Virginia and around Richmond, stopping once more for gas. Kim slept through, though her body jerked occasionally from speed rushes.

McGinnes awoke outside of Springfield and sat up. He stared out the window for the remainder of the trip. We rolled into D.C. just after dawn on Saturday morning. McGinnes grabbed his gear from the trunk and walked back to the driver’s side, leaning his forearm on the door and putting a hand on my shoulder.

“I’ll be talking to you,” is all he said. Then he turned and walked into his apartment building, stoop-shouldered and slow, and suddenly old.


I WOKE KIM LAZARUS and got her into my place. While she showered, I put fresh sheets on my bed. She came out looking clean but still drawn. She had only enough energy to thank me and get into bed. I closed the bedroom door and walked out into the living room.

The light on my answering machine was blinking. I let it blink. I lay on the couch and pulled the blanket over me. My cat jumped up and kneaded the blanket. I went to sleep.

I did not dream. But I woke two hours later, thinking of a redheaded boy who looked so horrible in death that I was grateful for never having known him alive. And there was still Jimmy Broda. Either he was caught now, or he was running. I knew with certainty that he was frightened and he was very much alone. The thought of it made the comfort of my apartment seem obscene.

Unable to return to sleep, I rose, and with great impotence, paced the rooms of my apartment.