Chet’s expression is now etched with impatience. — Because she’s in police custody back in Miami, Lennox. She got one phone call. But I got right on to my lawyer in Fort Myers; his buddy’s on the case, a Coconut Grove smartie. She’ll be out on bail tomorrow. He blows hard in exasperation. — Such a stupid woman. It was a damned cocaine bust. If the community care find out about this, she could lose that child.
Wasps crawl and buzz in the honeycomb of Lennox’s brain. He knows next to nothing about the American criminal justice system. But common sense dictates that it isn’t adding up. Detention would surely mean one night in the drunk tank, sleeping it off without being charged. It couldn’t mean spending around thirty-six hours in a cell. And Lance Dearing had supposedly taken her there. What was his role in all of this? And if it had been a cocaine bust, she’d have been formally charged.
Then Chet’s hand is on his shoulder, and in it, the submerged force of the powerlifter. That and the tone dropping an octave are enough to put jitters into Lennox’s frame. — You done a good job, son. Not a lot of fellas would have gone and put themselves out of their way like that, not for a stranger. But I can take over now. Chet withdraws his grip, the breeziness back in his voice. — You have enough to do, with a fiancée to look after and a wedding to plan!
And it made sense. Lennox had intervened enough. You had to let go, to know when to let go. He’d kept Tianna away from Johnnie and Lance, which was his objective. He’d delivered her to the safety of Chet’s boat, which had been her mother’s wish. He’d saved Tianna, but only Robyn could rescue herself, by developing the sense to keep out of bad situations and the skills to look after her daughter. — I’ll go over and say goodbye, he says, wandering across to the jukebox.
He pulls out Trudi’s notebook, freeing the pen from its spine, scribbling two phone numbers and terrestrial and email addresses. Rips out the page and hands it to her. — This is where I am, if you ever need me. You got email, right?
— Momma has, Tianna says in doleful affirmation, taking the paper, looking at it and turning back to him, just as the sun comes in through the window and frames her in a golden stream of light. — I’m gonna miss you, Ray Lennox.
He can see the timeless humanity in her. She could be any age and is genderless. It feels like a religious experience. — Ah’m gonnae miss you.
She has the baseball cards. The one on the top he hasn’t seen before. He looks at it. Hank Aaron. Tianna glances at the card, her finger slowly tracing round its edge. Her voice is small and lisping again, making his blood heat drop degrees. — I thought I wanted to go on the boat with Chet, she says in a whisper he can barely hear, — but I don’t like that boat no more. I wish I could stay with you.
A voice tells Lennox: you can’t leave her. But another says: let go. You’re doing this for you, not the kid. The words of his fiancée resonate: you’re a self-indulgent prick. She’s not Britney Hamil. But then he’s looking back at the smiling Chet who’s heading over and he’s saying to her, — You can come with me if you like. Stay at my friend Ginger’s in Fort Lauderdale, meet his wife and Trudi, then we’ll go and get your mum tomorrow morning.
Tianna nods in grim relief.
Chet is now standing by them, and he has heard the proposal. — I think she’s fine here, he says forcibly. — You’ve been more than helpful, Lennox, and we really couldn’t impose any further.
Ray Lennox looks him in the eye. — I can assure you, it’s no imposition at all, he replies, his voice level, cop-like again.
— I guess I wanna go with Ray, Tianna says in appeasing tones, and now Lennox notices that she isn’t making eye contact with Chet Lewis. Something happened on the boat. He couldn’t have touched her; he was with him. She’d seen something downstairs. Found something. The other baseball card.
Then Lennox catches the abrupt change in Chet’s expression; he’s seen it before, in countless other people. Features pushed outwards, a reflex smile; all mouth, the eyes remaining dulled and calculating. — Sure. If that’s what you want.
— We seem to have a consensus, Lennox provocatively declares. He hasn’t yet sniffed the beast in Chet, but if it’s there, he’ll flush it out. He breezily insists on picking up the tab, before they go back on to the boat. He helps Chet untie the vessel and cast off. They chug wearily out of the harbour, but on clearing its jaws, Chet hits the throttle to transform Ocean Dawn into the machine that rips across the bumpy green water.
Tianna is sitting back in the lower deck, staring out to space, her tense jaw vibrating in concert with the boat’s chopping motion over the rippling surface of the Gulf. Hank’s back, she thinks, then in the glare of the sun and with the engines roaring, her fingers skim the slick, moulded hull of the boat and her stomach feels six inches higher. She’s sick, not seasick, but sick like Momma; stupid and feverish and not knowing where in hell’s name she is.
On the bridge Chet has taken note of the doubtful furrow on Lennox’s brow as he scrutinises the instruments. — We’ve gone a different way as I’ve another creel to check. It won’t take a second, he explains as he cuts the motor and drops the anchor.
The creel has catch. Lennox feels for the lobster, operating innocently in its own environment, only to be kidnapped, boiled alive and devoured by aliens.
Tianna goes down into the cabin, pursued by Chet. Concerned, Lennox is about to follow, but notices Chet’s cellphone sitting in an indent on the console. He picks it up and investigates the calls list. There it was; he hadn’t even needed to check the digits against the ones he’d scribbled down in Trudi’s notebook. The caller ID announced: LANCE D.
Lennox slips the phone back into the holder. There was no lawyer, probably no arrest. Robyn’s cottoned on to something and Dearing and his cohorts are keeping her hostage until they’ve decided what to do with her. And he is probably on his way to the Grove Marina right now.
Outside the stateroom Tianna quivers as she looks in and gapes at the big bed. Closes the door and sits at the table, staring at the grinning bride on the magazine’s cover, as Chet’s flannelled ass comes down the steps. He turns to her with a tired smile. — I spoke to Amy on the phone last week. His croaky voice is heavy with loss. — She was asking after you. She’s thinking of coming down soon. Don’t you think you might be better here, on the boat? … I mean, Lennox seems nice, but your mother did say to bring you here so I really can’t let you go with him.
— I wanna go with him!
— Put yourself in my position, darling, Chet begins, bushy white brows arching, — your mother –
— I don’t wanna stay here!
— But you always liked –
— Can we get going, Chet? Like now? My fiancée, as you say, will be waiting, Lennox shouts as he half descends the steps.
— Yes, of course. Forgive me. Chet turns to him. — You are in a hurry, and he looks vainly back at Tianna before following Ray Lennox up the steps to the deck.
They reach the helm, and a supplicating Chet starts the boat. — But are you sure you don’t want to leave Tianna here?
— I don’t think she wants that. Do you? Lennox looks at the older man’s stern profile. Sees that the knuckles of his big hands are white on the wheel.
— As you wish.
The outward journey had been a clear line across the bay from one harbour to the next. But now Chet is taking his time. — Can we go straight to the marina, instead of hugging the coastline?
— The tides have changed. We need to avoid the shallows or we could run aground, Chet points at the navigation system and the sonic depth meter. — It’s only a foot deep in some places and this is a very heavy boat.
Lennox turns back to the screen. There was a route straight through where the water level was at its highest. — That way, he says, grabbing Chet’s hand in his strong left and bending two fingers back. A searing pain lights up the skipper’s face like the jukebox. Chet forces a smile at Tianna who is now on the deck at the back of the boat as the harsh, clipped ton
es of the Scottish polisman rasp in his ear. — Don’t fuck me about, you cunt. You don’t know what you’re messing with here. Do I make myself clear?
— Crystal, Chet gasps, as Lennox relinquishes his grip. He resets the course and they are back within twenty-five minutes.
Ray Lennox knows that he hasn’t broken Chet’s fingers. But something in him has splintered as he sits miserably, painfully waving them off from the boat at Grove Marina.
Lennox and Tianna climb into the car and drive away. He’d spurned the temptation to use Chet’s cellphone to call Trudi; it would mean the number of the hotel would come up, and he didn’t want her anywhere near this. Now he isn’t messing around with the Tamiami Trail. He has worked out exactly how to get on to Interstate 75: Everglades Parkway, or Alligator Alley.
16
Alligator Alley
THE TRAFFIC IS sparse and sinister as they drive down roads lined with narrow homes and green signs that herald street numbers and the names of distant cities. This, in turn, becomes another strip mall of bad-intention businesses. The Red Sox hat lies on the dashboard. He’s given up on it, two depressions still visible on his temples. Lennox looks to Tianna, sitting silently beside him, the cards in her hand. — Did Chet ever mess around with you?
— No. She shakes her head, then frowns in tortuous bewilderment. — I don’t reckon so, but I jus cain’t figure it out, I felt all kinda weird bein on that boat.
— Well, you’re okay now. Lennox paints a stretched smile over his angst. — It’s good that you found that card, the one your dad left you.
Her gaze seems to cast him as just another collaborator against her, but her anger isn’t for him, it’s the precursor to another revelation. — My daddy didn’t leave me no cards.
— Oh.
— I never knew him. He left Momma way before I was born. That’s if they was ever really together in the first place. I found them cards in the roof space at this place we stayed at in Jacksonville. I used to go up there to get away from … she can barely say the word, — … Clemson.
Clemson. Who is this fucker –
Lennox feels his words freeze in the now infinite void between thought and speech. By the time he finds his voice Tianna’s resumed talking, her tone now high and hopeful. — But I kind of felt that he would like baseball and they sorta make me feel part of him. I guess that’s crazy, huh?
— No, says Lennox, — not at all. He remembers collecting Esso World Cup coins as a boy, his dad helping him. Looking at the sad lower lip of the American girl, he experiences a moment drenched in such pathos that it might have choked him had he not snatched an insistent breath. — Who’s Clemson?
— Tiger Clemson; his real name’s Jimmy, Tianna says, her eyes charged with an electric ferocity. — He was Momma’s boyfriend. He was always nice to her but real mean to me. I was real scared of him. He knew all about me … with Vince. Said that’s just how I was like; that a man could smell it on me. She suddenly gasps in terrified panic. — When he did it to me, he used to say that this was what I was put on God’s earth for. That he was doing me a favour, givin me a head start on all the other girls. But he was different to Vince; I know he didn’t care nuthin for me. So it was easier to just think about other stuff, n let him do what he wanted. But he hurt me sometimes. Sometimes he made me bleed. He’d wait till Momma was asleep with her pills, then come for me. Told me if I said anything to Momma she would believe him n not me. Cause I know what you was up to before, he’d tell me. I used to run up to the roof space, hide away from him.
Lennox has slowed down and pulled off an asphalt exit that segues on to a concrete flatland, designed as a parking lot, but which has remained customless, plant life breaking through its cracked surface. He’s stopped for his own sake as well as hers. His stinging hands still grip the wheel as the blood pounds in his ears. — How did he know? About what Vince did to you?
— I dunno … the girl shrugs. — Used to say that he knew girls like me, the type I was. That he could tell a mile away I was no virgin. That was what he said.
Bile scours his innards.
— Is it true, Ray? Can men jus tell what you’re like? Is that what I am? Her eyes bulge in desperation.
Lennox grips her hands softly. — No. No, they can’t. Listen to me, I think you’ve been really unlucky and you’ve met some very, very bad people. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re a nice girl. They’re the ones who’ve done wrong and they’ll pay for that. I promise you. Do you understand what I’m saying? He looks into her eyes.
— Yes.
— Okay, Lennox says, and starts up the motor.
Tianna.
She should be waking up on Christmas mornings in a house like Jackie’s to presents and –
Lennox can’t believe that he’s having hopes for this girl’s future, unlikely dreams. He plays comforting scenarios in his head, only to reprimand himself that they are foolish: miles away from how she’ll probably end up. The balance of probability. But that’s the trouble with dreams: they willnae fucking shift. And the more vivid they get, the more action they compel.
As he thinks of his own future and Trudi, an abrupt spasm flares in his chest: he realises that he’s left the copy of Perfect Bride on Chet’s boat. — You didn’t pick up that bridal mag, did you?
— No, Tianna says in concern, — I guess I left it downstairs. Was it important?
— Nah, I can get another copy, he says evenly, but he’s unable to stop his molars reflexively cracking together. Trudi had filled out some attached coupons. The address. They have her address.
It will mean nothing. But the thought taints him. Let them try anything back in Edinburgh, he grinds his teeth harder, galvanising himself with scenarios of violence until he genuinely relishes the prospect. Then his displaced, protective glance falls back on Tianna as they pull up outside a gas station with a phone box.
Lennox searches for the phone card in his pockets, can’t find it and curses, then his fingers mine for some change, eyes set in peripheral sweep for the approaching calamity of Lance Dearing. Logic tells Lennox that it’s unlikely to the point of impossible that their paths could cross by chance on the road, at a place like this. Paranoia, the stronger force, is simultaneously informing him of its inevitability.
The quarters tumble from his greasy hands, rattling into the machine. When Lennox estimates they’ve reached the requisite critical mass, his stiff finger punches the metal keys. A gruff voice scratches down the other end of the line: — Eddie Rogers.
— It’s Ray. I need a favour. You and Dolores, he says, reasoning it would be easier to leave Tianna with a woman. He tries to steady the map his sweaty fingerprints have smudged up. — Can you meet me at the truck stop on Exit 49 on Interstate 75?
— That’s right on the Everglades, Ginger’s voice goes high, — at the Miccosukee Indian Reservation. But why do you–
— Reservations are for yuppies and Indians, remember? I need a favour, Lennox repeats.
Ginger purses a long breath of static into his ear. — Okay. I can be there in an hour and a half. Trudi called and told me you’ve gotten into bother. You need to get a fuckin grip, son. You think this is CSF: Miami?
Lennox exhales a small gasp at Ginger’s joke, then tells him, — I hear ye. But just be there. Dinnae let me down, Ginger.
A silence grows in Lennox’s head. Then its puncturing feels sharp enough to perforate his eardrums. — I won’t, Ginger snarls, — and for the last fuckin time it’s Eddie!
— Right, Eddie, Lennox says, the name like sour fruit in his mouth. — It’s appreciated, mate.
— Okay, I’m leaving right now. Screw the fuckin nut, Raymie, he warns and hangs up.
On his return Tianna sits puffy-faced in the car, eye-whites pink with blood where she’s been rubbing at them. Lennox thinks about saying something, but nothing comes to mind, so he elects to let it ride. He sparks up the engine and they leave the station.
They approach the toll at the start of In
terstate 75. A sign indicates that Miami is 127 miles away, Fort Lauderdale 124. The rendezvous point at Exit 49 seems about halfway, so they should get there around the same time as Ginger. Lennox regards the toll clerk, a small, black man with a grey beard, who has his name on a badge above the title LABORER.
— Bastards, Lennox says as he pulls away, then he apologises to Tianna, — I mean, they know people get that they aren’t the CEO of the toll company. Why do they have to rub their faces in it?
Tianna looks back at the man, then at Lennox. — You’re a really nice guy, Ray, I mean, doing this for me, n all. She pauses, then asks, — Why are you helping me?
— We’re mates, Lennox shrugs, — buddies, he qualifies.
— But you don’t even know me really.
— I know enough to realise that you need a friend right now. He points to the radio. — And I need a tune.
Taking the hint, Tianna grabs the dial and twists it on to a disco station. A gutsy, pumping remix of Sister Sledge’s ‘Lost in Music’ rocks the Volkswagen. The line caught in a trap, no turnin back causes them to look at each other in grim synchronicity.
It might have been an interstate with a 70 rather than a 55 mph speed limit, but otherwise Alligator Alley is much the same as Highway 41: a two-lane freeway with a big scrubbed verge in the middle. Fewer signs of hurricane damage are in evidence along the almost deserted road. Fences on both sides keep back dense vegetation, as desperate to engulf the concrete as a mob of teenage girls are a pop star. Lennox barely allows the Volkswagen to dip under 90 mph. Ginger wouldn’t be hanging about and now he really needs to get back to Trudi.
The passing trees become a blur, her eyes blinking as they flash by. Then Tianna can see him, Tiger Clemson, standing in the doorway of her room. Looking down at her in bed. Your momma’s fast asleep, he’s saying, in his soft, gloating tones. She squirms in the hot leather seat of the car, feels the heat on the back of her neck, hears the sounds of the engine ticking over, so loud, like Chet’s boat. But part of her is in the bed and Clemson is telling her that he’s gonna do her real good this time, show her some ol tricks she’ll never forget, but it isn’t Clemson, it’s somebody else and she screams …