CHAPTER EIGHT
“Doc,” I said, “Come on in.”
We shook hands, hugged, and he walked into my living room. I choked back some emotion. “Man, it’s good to see you, Doc. How the hell have you been?”
“Okay, Matt. I’ve seen better days.”
“Let’s get some coffee and sit out back.”
We went into the kitchen, and I poured a mug full of the black coffee. “You’re still drinking it black, I suppose.”
He grinned. “Damn right. No cream in the bush, L.T.”
We went to the patio and sat in two wicker chairs with cushioned seats covered in a floral pattern. A light breeze moved across the bay, barely touching the water. Out by my dock, a fish jumped, a mullet probably, running from a predator. The sun was up, hanging a few degrees above the horizon, painting the bay in pastels of orange and ochre and crimson. It was quiet, the only noise coming from the splash of the diving pelicans that lived on nearby Jewfish Key. Doc and I were quiet too, each in his own thoughts, remembering those long ago days when we were young soldiers doing what we thought was right, trying to survive, dreaming of the big PX that was the United States, of going home and living out the rest of our lives. Mine had turned out well. I wondered about Doc’s.
“How did you make your way to my door, Doc?”
“Do you remember my real name?”
“Of course. Charles T. Desmond, aka Chaz. Hometown, Macon, Georgia. Graduate of Willingham High School, class of nineteen seventy. Had a girlfriend named Julie.”
“Damn. You’re good.”
“I remember them all, Doc. Every last one of them. I knew them, their hometowns, their hopes and dreams, the ones who came home and the ones who didn’t. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you guys.”
“The same thing happens to me, Matt. I’ll be in the middle of something, concentrating on whatever it is, and one or all of you guys will come traipsing across my brain. It’s almost supernatural, but it usually gives me a smile. I get a little warm feeling deep down in my gut, even when I think about the ones who didn’t make it back.”
“They all made it back, Doc. We never left a man.”
“You know what I mean. We got them all back, but some of them were just cold meat. Jimbo Merryman told me about you.”
“Good old Jimbo. I go fishing with him now and then, down on Lake Okeechobee.”
“He told me. He also told me you’d become a lawyer and were living here on Longboat Key.”
“I’m sorry it took us so long to hook up, Doc. Back in Nam, when I got out of the hospital, you were gone. Nobody knew exactly where.”
“You remember what they did to Ronnie Easton.”
“Cut him up like so much fish bait.”
“He was my best friend. I wanted some revenge. More than we got with the napalm that day in the grass. I’d heard about this deep-cover unit that assassinated the VC top dogs. I went down to Saigon and rattled around until some colonel decided to listen to me. He checked out my credentials and the next thing I knew I was part of the secret world. I became part of a group of special-operations types, soldiers, Marines, and CIA people, called Operation Thanatos, after the Greek God of Death. We went after the leaders, and we took them out. It wasn’t bad duty, if you didn’t mind killing up close. I didn’t. I kept thinking about Ronnie Easton and how those bastards butchered him.”
“Did it do any good?”
He smiled ruefully. “No. I still hear Ronnie screaming sometimes in the night when I can’t sleep. When I first got home, I went up to McCormick to visit his grave. It didn’t do anything for me. There was just a slab of concrete with his name on it, sort of lost in a big cemetery behind a church. Some of those graves had been there for over a hundred years.
There were crypts that had fallen in on themselves from lack of maintenance. The inscriptions chiseled into some of the older stones were mostly obliterated by age. Ronnie had a few wilted flowers. Somebody had planted a little American flag at the head of his grave. That was all. I couldn’t feel anything. And I knew that in a few years, in a time after we’re gone, when the memories of Ronnie are lost forever, his grave will be as meaningless as all those others. And maybe the screams will finally stop.”
“I’m sorry, Doc. I am so f*cking sorry.”
“I married the girl from high school, you know. Julie. We had a son. I named him James Ronald Desmond, after Ronnie. He grew up into a fine young man, married a pretty girl from Savannah whom he’d met at the University of Georgia. And then some son of a bitch shot him dead on the beach over near the Hilton. Six weeks ago.”
It hit me. I’m sure I must have heard the name of the shooting victim, but it didn’t connect, didn’t even make an impression on me. “Shit, Doc. I’m sorry. I never made that connection.”
“He was our only child, Matt. Julie’s not doing well. This thing is about to kill her. She had a hard pregnancy, but wanted Jimmy so bad she stayed in bed most of the nine months. He came out healthy, and so did she, but she couldn’t get pregnant again. We gave up on that years ago, but we’d been happy. Now, life is a dismal pit.”
“Do you know if the police have any leads on who killed your boy?”
“Not much. A detective, a woman named J. D. Duncan, is working the case.”
“I know her. She’s good.”
“Yeah. I checked her out. A lot of years on the Miami-Dade police force, ten years as a detective and toward the end, the vice commander of homicide. She’s good, but she has almost nothing to go on.”
“I wish there was something I could do,” I said.
“There is. I want you to sue somebody.”
“I don’t practice anymore, Doc.”
“I checked you out, too. You were one of the best trial lawyers around, practiced a long time in Orlando, and gave it up to come here and be a beach bum.”
That pissed me off. “You checked me out?” I asked, my voice cold.
“Don’t get your panties in a wad, L.T. I’m a businessman. I check people out before I get into bed with them.”
“And just what kind of business are you in, Doc?” My voice was tinged with suspicion and skepticism.
He chuckled. “You can check me out, Matt. After I got out of the army, I went to Georgia Tech, got a degree in mechanical engineering, and then over the years built a consulting firm that does business in twenty-six states. It’s all legit.”
I relaxed. “Sorry, Doc. I’ve had a few rough patches over the last few years. People trying to kill me, if you can imagine that.”
He laughed. “I can’t. Will you help?”
“Asked the man who saved my life. It ain’t like I owe you much, Doc. Whatever you want, if it’s in my power to do, I’ll do it. Tell me how I can help.”
“I understand that you can often prove a case in civil court that you couldn’t prove in criminal court.”
“That’s right. The standard of proof is different. In criminal court, the prosecution has to prove the state’s case beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil court, the plaintiff only has to prove his case by the greater weight of the evidence. That’s quite a difference in the burden of proof. What are you thinking?”
“And any evidence you dig up can then be used in the criminal system?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m thinking that if you could use the civil system to gather evidence that the cops can’t get to, we may be able to find out who killed Jimmy.”
“Then what?”
“I’d want it all turned over to the prosecutors. I’m not going after them, if that’s what’s bothering you. I learned back in Operation Thanatos that all the killing in the world won’t bring back the dead. I just want to see justice done to the bastards who killed my son.”
“Do you have any kind of a starting place? Any suspicions about who may have wanted to hurt your son? Or you, for that matter?”
“I’ve thought a lot about that, but can’t come up with anybody. If Detective Duncan has any persons of interest, I think they call them, maybe you could sue those people and sort some things out that law enforcement can’t get into.”
“It’s a thought, Doc. But we have to have a starting place. We can’t just haul off and sue somebody. We have to find a legitimate defendant. Somebody who we think is guilty, that we at least have an outside chance of proving he murdered your son.”
“Will you talk to the detective?”
“Sure. She’s a good friend of mine. So is the chief of police.”
He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. My plane is at the airport, and I have to be in Montgomery for a mid-morning meeting.”
“Your plane?”
He grinned. “Yeah. Didn’t I mention that I’m richer than hell? I can pay your fees.”
“You paid that fee, Doc. A long time ago. Back in the grass.”