Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

All so he could wind up swimming in his pool in the early morning, all by himself with his memories. He reached the end of his routine, did one more lap just for the hell of it, then floated on his back for a minute or two, staring up into the young morning sky, thinking about having a big breakfast down the road at the new and improved Nolan’s, recovered from the hurricane now, and back in business better than ever. Steak, eggs and pan fries and to hell with his cholesterol for once. “Liegt der Bauer unterm Tisch, war das Essen nimmer frisch!” as his papa used to tell him.

He flipped over onto his front, treaded water for a moment and then paddled forward until his feet touched the slightly grainy gunite of the shallow end. He stepped forward, pushing through the water with a side-to-side sweeping motion of his arms, barely feeling the first spike of glass as it sliced through his foot. By the third step he was aware that something was wrong; like a lot of men his age, Kressman had type 2 diabetes and had lost a great deal of sensation in his feet, but by now the pain had gone farther up his legs. He looked down and saw that the water around him was turning pink.

Another step and one of the deadly, invisible weapons sliced through his right Achilles tendon. He staggered, then fell, his arms outstretched. One of his hands was punctured and another piece slashed into his left calf. Kressman, already going into shock, knew that he was in terrible trouble. As well as diabetes, Kressman also suffered from a number of minor heart ailments, all of them requiring the administration of blood thinners. One of them was Coumadin-also known as Warfarin, a powerful rat poison. Multiple cuts like he’d just received and in warm water could easily result in his exsanguinating-bleeding out in a matter of minutes.

He crawled forward, trying to reach the safety of the steps leading out of the pool. His other hand was cut, his index finger almost amputated. He gave a gurgling scream and fell to one side, and he was pierced twice more, once just below his ribs on the right, cutting through his thin flesh into his liver, the second piece of glass goring him in the thigh, opening up the femoral artery close to his groin.

He screamed again, his mouth half underwater and he began to choke. He tried to roll over and failed, his torn hands flailing, trying to find purchase on the bottom of the pool only to meet with more agony. As the ripped artery in his leg poured out his lifeblood the water around him turned from pink to red. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slowly rolled over, his face fully underwater. A moment later he died, the battery in the pacemaker still jolting his heart with electricity every few seconds and getting no response, the organ still jerking spasmodically in the dead man’s chest.

Detective Sergeant Bobby Izzard-known inevitably as Izzy since his days playing box ball on the busy sidewalks outside his apartment building deep in the bowels of Queens-studied the long breakfast buffet on the lower level of Zeke’s Down Under, then filled up his plate with scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries, a few fried oysters, a scoop and a half of marinated Royal Reds and some dirty rice to balance things out.

Like just about everyone else on the Gulf Shores Police Force his belly hung over his belt and it was probably killing him along with the beer, the cigarettes and watching football on Sundays instead of playing it, but frankly, he couldn’t give a good goddamn. He’d escaped his nagging wife, New York winters, a homicide caseload that never seemed to get any smaller and a twisting pain in his gut that was threatening to turn into an ulcer, or maybe something worse. In Gulf Shores, Alabama, of all places, he’d found paradise, and one of its fundamental joys was eating breakfast at Zeke’s Down Under.

Paradise for sure. In the first place, lots of people died in Gulf Shores, which was why there was one full-time funeral home in the town of five thousand and two more in the town of Foley, just up the road. Died, yes-murdered, no. Almost all of the deaths were from old age, almost all the dead bodies had been under a doctor’s care, and none of them had any interest for Izzy.

As part of a three-man detective squad, Bobby Izzard spent most of his time looking into purse snatchings, the occasional bunco beef where some jerk tried to slick an old lady’s life savings, and missing persons, most of which turned out to be people with Alzheimer’s who’d wandered off. Once in a while during the snowbird season-when the town’s population trebled and quadrupled as northerners poured into their high-rise beach condos-Izzy would hook himself up with the marine squad and go out in the big cruiser to look for floaters and annoy boaters who looked like they might be trying to smuggle in a bale or two, but in the three years he’d been on the job serving and protecting the people of Gulf Shores, Alabama, he’d never drawn his gun, only twice used his cuffs and had never had anyone lift a hand in his direction, let alone fire a shot.

And that was just the way he liked it. This wasn’t NYPD Blue or Law amp; Order or CSI or even Kojak. This was Gulf Shores, Alabama, home of petting zoos, miniature golf courses and shark fishing charters. Gulf Shores, where the living was high-fat and who cared? Where dying was just a simple question of your heart stopping after a nice round of mini golf with your friends at Pirate’s Cove. If anyone got murdered it was in Mobile or Pensacola and that was none of his damn business.

He picked up a pot of coffee on his way back to his table, sat down with his favorite view of the marina and the wharf and started to methodically work his way around the oversized plate. It was too early for most people. With the exception of a few hungover-looking charter boat captains and a tottering group of old tourists in yellow T-shirts and Tilly hats to guard against the sun he had the place to himself. For a minute.

He’d just speared his first Royal Red and was swirling it around in the sugary marinade when he saw Kenny Frizell out of the corner of his eye. Kenny was a go-getter, a local, and, God help him, Kenny was his partner, the second man in the so-called investigative team that made up the Gulf Shores Detective Bureau. The third man was the K-9 end, a good old boy named Earl Ray Pasher whose only love was El Kabong, his enormous, drooling, grinning American bloodhound.

Kabong was at his happiest when sniffing around the bloated corpse of a drowning victim, a suitcase full of cocaine, a growhouse basement full of hydroponic weed, or picking out the trailer down the bayou back roads that was actually a crystal meth lab. Kabong was so good at his job that he and Pasher were constantly being borrowed by other forces in Alabama as well as out of state, and neither one of them was around much. Anything that smelled of anything in Gulf Shores had long since been given the once-over by the Kabonger.

Kenny looked like a cartoon character in a suit. He had carrot red hair in a marine corps buzz, a build like Popeye on steroids and a face like Howdy Doody, except he wasn’t old enough to remember the famous puppet. The only reason he was a corporal and a detective was because he’d completed a two-year associate’s degree in criminal justice at Faulkner State Community College, Gulf Shores campus. Kenny didn’t pause in front of the buffet-wasn’t even tempted. He didn’t even hook himself a coffee. Kenny just came on in those big black shoes, the freckles on his round cheeks all aglow. Unlike Izzy, who after three years was tanned a nice tea-stained color, Kenny just burned. He always looked like he’d been gone over with a blowtorch or stepped out of a pizza oven. Watching him cross the floor, Izzy began to lose his appetite. Kenny looked serious. Worse than that, he looked worried.