Gary Alexander - The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

The government confiscated everything they could find; what they couldn’t find, his lawyer wound up with. He’d bargained for thirty months and maxed it out at the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do the time; it was just that, in the joint, the judicial system is eating the front end off of your future.

Right after his release, he’d met, fallen in love, and moved in with Marlene, a clerical for a bail bondsman in Fort Walton. She had a four-year-old daughter who adored him for no reason whatsoever. So he had come to a conclusion: he didn’t care if he had to be a roofer or a ditch digger or a dishwasher for the rest of his life, he wasn’t going to do any more time. He had a duty to Marlene. And for little Jonquil, he was going to be the father she’d never known. Would Oakley understand his duty to them? Sparrow didn’t think so. Right now, he wished he were at home with them, watching TV. But Marlene was up in Waycross visiting her mama, which was why he now found himself here with Oakley. He hoped they wouldn’t find Redstone.

“When do you want to go?” Sparrow said.

“Now.”

“My truck is on empty.”

“We’ll take my car.”

“When did you get a car?”

“The other day. It’s parked over in the Hampton lot. Keeping it around here might draw attention to my living arrangements. Grab the rest of them beers. Let’s go.”

Sparrow gave the beach a wistful last look. The wind was picking up.

The Hampton Inn was a two-block walk east on Scenic 98 — the original beach-view part of Highway 98 — and two blocks north. There was no view of the Gulf from this Hampton, and it attracted the folks that couldn’t afford one — kids, mostly, or blue-collar families who scrimped to give their children a few days at the beach. From the rooftops, Sparrow would see them: mom, dad, and their youngsters, shuffling along in single file — serious as mourners — on the white gravel shoulders of the beach-access streets, wearing their sandals and bathing suits, loaded down with towels, coolers, floats, umbrellas, and other beach crap.

Oakley’s ride was a late model Taurus. Sparrow got in and took its measure. “You boosted a rental,” he said, checking the column.

“Yeah. But the plates are fresh.”

“Goddamn.”

Oakley was grinning like a dog eating cheese. “Don’t worry, bro. I’ll drive safe.”

“Hi, folks, I’ll be your waitron for your dining experience tonight,” he said — his standard icebreaker that generally evoked a smile from patrons. “Would you like to start with a cocktail?”

The party was comprised of two fortyish couples and a teenaged girl — a daughter, he supposed. The adults wanted cocktails. While they decided, Waitron eyed the girl. Her hair was all wrong — too long, too light.

Leaving with their drink order, he noticed a lone girl at the bar. She was correct: petite, shoulder-length brunette hair, early twenties. Her face was okay — a poor man’s Drew Barrymore. The glasses were an added attraction. By coming in here with that sluttish haircut, she was begging for sex-plus.

This was his last table. If the girl at the bar stayed until his checkout was over, it would be another sign.

She reminded him of number four, decomposing now for some two years in a hole fifty yards into a wooded area off of Highway 7 a few miles outside of Norwalk, Connecticut. Like the others, he had her GPS coordinates committed to memory: bargaining chips that would keep him off death row in case they caught him.

The sun went down. His table decided against dessert, but, to his annoyance, one of the women wanted coffee. He checked on the girl at the bar. She’d just ordered another margarita. His luck was holding.

After Waitron finished with his checkout, he marked time at the waiter’s station, rolling silverware in paper napkins and watching the girl. Finally she finished her drink and paid, leaving, not by the door to the lot that bordered Scenic 98, but down the steps to the beach. Perfect. Waitron felt his nostrils flare; felt his lungs fill to the bursting point. He counted to ten and exited by the front door. He jogged through the parking lot to his car, where he grabbed the sack that contained the things he needed and then walked around the outside of the building to the beach. Her white shorts made her easy to follow as she walked eastward, barefoot in the surf-dampened sand.

Oakley had the pedal flat on the floor on their way back across Choctawhatchee Bay, speedometer bumping 110. The Taurus was bucking like a jackhammer because, having whacked a parked truck on their gravel-slurring escape from the Owl’s Eye, the front end was out of alignment.

“Feels like we’re coming apart,” said Sparrow, gripping the armrest.

“We gotta get off this bridge,” Oakley said. “If they called the five-o’s, we could get bottled up.”

Sparrow thought his prayers had been answered when they walked into the Owl’s Eye to find that the fence was not there. They’d hung around for a while at the bar, casually pumping an evasive bartender about Redstone, and otherwise minding their own business.

Evening dissolved into night. The Owl’s Eye was a dive and it possessed that seething atmosphere that all dives have, but things remained peaceful until a girl who was all teased-up hair and quick movements came up and wanted to know about Oakley’s shamrock tattoo like it was some kind of message aimed at her from outer space.

Turns out: there was a narrow-minded boyfriend.

Oakley knocks boyfriend’s eye out of its socket with a back-handed blow from a two-pound beer mug.

Boyfriend’s friends materialize.

They fought a rearguard skirmish to the door, Sparrow swinging a barstool; Oakley brandishing the Spyderco folding knife that he kept clipped inside the waistband of his jeans.

The Taurus gained the causeway at the end of the 331 Bridge. A second later, they had to swerve to miss an SUV pulling out of a tourist trap called 3-Thirty-A.

Sparrow sucked his teeth. “Slow it down, willya.”

Oakley dropped it down a notch or two. He said, “Ninety-eight is only a mile away. We get there, we’ll be in good shape.”

Sparrow wasn’t so sure. Their remaining headlight was beaming off at a crazy angle, and they were trailing smoke like a crop-duster. “We’re gonna have to ditch this vehicle PDQ,” he said.

“Wonder where that fucking Redstone was,” said Oakley.

When they got to Highway 98, they headed west into sparse traffic. Just east of Sandestin they passed a Florida Highway Patrol cruiser on the opposite side of the highway. The patrolie’s head snapped in their direction as he went by. Sparrow turned around and saw the cruiser’s roof lights come alive. “We got an audience,” he said.

Oakley made a U-turn at the next opening in the median just as the cop was doing the mirror-image same 1,500 feet behind them. With his shirttail, Sparrow started wiping down the armrest and everything else he could remember touching.

“Damn,” said Oakley. He slammed to a stop in the emergency lane. “Good-bye, Taurus.”

They sprinted down a weedy embankment and vaulted a three-strand barbwire fence. Beyond the fence, they were quickly swallowed by the dense ground cover of a pine savanna. Branches whipping their faces, wiregrass snagging their feet, they crashed through. The highway, pulsing with blue light and echoing the squawk of a radio, faded behind. Saw palmetto spines stabbed through their jeans. Overhead, the slash pines cast bottlebrush silhouettes against a pumpkin moon.

Simultaneously, they tripped over a fallen log.

“What place is this?” Oakley puffed.

“Topsail Hill Park. It’s a nature preserve,” said Sparrow. “If we can get through it, we’ll come out on deserted beach.”