Рон Гуларт: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 5. Whole No. 777, May 2006

He, himself, hadn’t changed that much, Brody thought. Maybe gained a few pounds from eating regularly, but his hair was still dark, no gray, his dimples were as deep as ever, and he’d bet he could still wow the women from vertical to horizontal.

Nathan put his hand on Brody’s arm. “How you been, friend? Wasn’t too bad in there, was it?”

They hadn’t seen each other since the day of sentencing, but Nathan had written about once a month, mostly quoting scripture.

“Bad enough,” he said. “What I can’t figure is why I had to stay so long. All I did was take a few things from a house on an icy night. They got everything back, every single piece. I got a broken leg on the ice, was in the prison hospital three weeks, then got shipped to that friggin’ work camp.”

“But you got out early.” Nathan, as usual, had to look on the bright side and count everybody’s crappy little blessings.

“I served a third of the sentence and got some good time,” Brody said, almost belligerently. “I behaved so good, it was like I was you.”

Nathan laughed. “Keep it up and you’ll keep out of trouble.”

He and Nathan had been thick ever since that day some years ago when he had taken Nathan’s part against a cop. Nathan had been preaching on a street corner when the cop told him to move along. Brody reminded the cop about freedom of speech, then the cop made them both move along.

Nathan and the goddamn prison system were the only ones in the world who knew Brody’s first name was Micah. Even his ex-wife had called him Brody. She was ex because she threw him out when she found out what he did for a living. Threw him out and kept the house.

“I got to have some wheels.” He punched the dashboard for emphasis. “What’d you do with my Chevy, Nathan?”

“Used it some for the church. It’s there now, full of gas and waiting for you.”

“Good! I’m ready to get it right this minute. There’s somewhere I gotta go.”

“Where’s that?”

“The beach. I got this sudden hankering to see the ocean, smell salt air, and look at undressed women. It hit me just as I came out of that hellhole.”

Nathan shook his head, said something that sounded like “Tsk! Tsk!” but, mercifully, didn’t offer a sermon on the subject.

Man, it was the greatest! Speed limit 70 mph. I-40 to the shore. He’d checked with his parole officer, told her he was going to the beach (right here in the state) for a week or so, went to the bank and got his $319 out of savings, and took off. He was very careful to stay within the speed limit — which felt like flying anyway — because he didn’t want to get a ticket on his first free day. Jee-zuss, wouldn’t that be the pits? Get sent back because of a lousy traffic ticket!

The only cloud in his sky right now was lack of the old do-re-mi. As a professional shoplifter, held made a pretty good living, but now he had to think of some other way of fund-raising. During the three years he was “retired,” merchants undoubtedly had come up with dozens of new ways to catch store boosters.

Well, something would turn up. It always did.

He turned east at the outskirts of the port city and headed for the ocean, singing loudly, “By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea...”

The old Chevy didn’t have air conditioning, so he drove with the windows down, and he smelled the salt air long before the ocean came into view. He took a deep breath and made a vow: They’d never put him on the inside again.

First off, he had to find a place to stay. On Ocean Boulevard he stopped at a chain hotel and stood in a trance when the desk clerk told him the cost of a room was $135 a day. Without a word, he went back to his car. If a chain hotel cost that much, the really plush hotels must cost more than he’d made in a lifetime of hoisting merchandise. He kept driving down the street until he was almost at the south end of the beach and then he came to an old frame house, badly in need of paint, that looked as though several hurricanes had stopped there for a spree. In the yard was a sign, GARAGE APT. FOR RENT.

It couldn’t possibly cost as much as those hotels, he thought. So he knocked at the door several times before it was opened by a woman of indeterminate old age, seventy or more, who squinted at him over the top of rimless glasses. She had a mole on her chin, out of which grew a long black hair, and this instantly repelled Brody. He could endure moral flaws until the residents of hell were ice skating, but physical flaws turned him off completely.

“Yes?” the woman said when Brody was slow to speak. “You want something?”

Brody pointed to the sign. “I was wondering... How much you charge for the apartment?”

“Forty-five dollars a week, a week in advance, no refund if you leave early.”

“Could I see it?”

The garage, in the same condition as the house, sat a few yards away from the house with stairs outside going up to a door. The stairs seemed as rickety as everything else around here, including the woman. She took out a key and opened the door. “My name is Miz Dudley. What’s yours?”

“Brody,” he said, and held out his hand to shake before she could ask for another name to go with Brody.

What he saw inside was not an apartment, but one room. There was an old sofa, some chairs around a card table, a double bed, a doll sized fridge, a three-burner hot plate, a sink that was brown with age, and inside a curtained-off area, a lavatory in the same condition, and a commode. He’d had better accommodations in prison.

“Don’t you think forty-five dollars a week is a bit steep for this?” he asked. “There’s not even a shower.”

“You agree to stay a month and I’ll cut it to forty,” she said. “And there’s a bath house a block or two away that has showers.”

What the hell! He wasn’t going to find anything cheaper. “I’ll take it.” What he had to do was get his hands on some money pronto so he could find something better.

After bringing in his lone suitcase, he found a nearby discount store and bought sheets for the bed, a couple of towels, swim trunks, beer, bread, a sandwich spread, and a cantaloupe, a real delicacy that he hadn’t had since before he was canned.

Now he was ready for his day at the beach.

Back in his so-called apartment, he looked in drawers under the sink until he found a knife that would cut the cantaloupe. After eating the whole melon, he put on the swim trunks and headed for the ocean.

When he reached the beach, he simply stood there for a long time looking at the waves, the surf, and taking deep breaths. Damn, this was good! He had forgotten how really great the outside could be. Then his eyes surveyed the sand. It was late in the afternoon and, even with daylight savings time, the sun was beginning to head downward. So there weren’t a lot of people sunning now, but still a few. There was a family down near the surf: mother, father, and two little kids. There were two women lying on a blanket half under an umbrella. There were three guys, beer cans in hand, standing in the surf. Not a shapely girl in sight. Oh well, tomorrow was another day. He’d come early and stay late.

He went back to his apartment, made a sandwich, drank a couple of beers, and wished he had bought another cantaloupe. He sank down on the bed, which sank when he did, but he was so tired he didn’t notice. When he opened his eyes again the morning sun was shining through his one window. He got up, cursed himself for forgetting to buy coffee, had beer and toast for breakfast, and began to think what he could do to get his hands on money, a lot of money.

Just ripping off a few stores wouldn’t do it, and he had never had the guts to rob a bank. Breaking and entering some of the beach cottages... Hell no, that was what had sent him up in the first place. So what...?