A Firing Offense

  I pushed the hair back off my forehead and finished my beer. The area around my nose and under my eyes no longer ached, confirming my grandfather’s claim that saltwater was a cure for every ailment. I crossed my arms and settled into the chair, then drifted to sleep.

  McGinnes woke me with a shake. I was sitting half in shade now. I looked at my arms and their deep brown color, quickly regained from my vacation on Assateague three weeks earlier.

  “Let’s go, man,” McGinnes said. “You’re starting to look like a Puerto Rican.” I poked his red chest with my index finger and brought up a splotch of white.

  We returned to the room. I showered and changed into a denim shirt, jeans, and running shoes. McGinnes put on his Hawaiian shirt and went into the bathroom, toothbrush in hand. He began to cough and shut the door.

  I sat on the bed and ate one of the sandwiches as I looked over my list. McGinnes came out of the bathroom and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  He smiled unconvincingly and chin-nodded the list in my hand. “What’s up?”

  “Restaurants that Kim Lazarus may have worked in. They should be open by now.”

  “Let me check out a couple,” he said quickly.

  “Based on what her father told me, I figure there’s only three possibilities, unless the place she used to work in is out of business now.” I ripped the bottom of the page off and handed it to him. “This place has a popular happy hour, judging from the ads, and it’s Mexican. Skip the restaurant and check out the bar. I have a feeling they may be trying to off the drugs, and a bar with employees that use would be a perfect spot. If you get a bite, try and find out if they’re still in town.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  “I’ll drop you off and check out these other places. Then I’ll swing back and pick you up after I’ve done that. You need bread?”

  He put his hand out and I handed him some of my bankroll. He folded it and stashed it in his pocket, then pointed a thumb into his own chest. “Don’t worry about dad,” he said. “This kinda shit is like cuttin’ butter.”

  I LET MCGINNES OFF in the parking lot of the Casa Grande, which was in a large, old oceanfront hotel in Kitty Hawk.

  “I’ll see you in the Big House,” he said, and shifted his shoulders in a Cagneyesque manner. I watched him in my rearview as I drove away, feeling an odd sympathy for him as he strolled across the lot in his Hawaiian shirt and polyester slacks.

  The first place I hit was in a strip center next to a cluster of movie theaters on the divided highway. It had been advertised as a restaurant but was little more than a carryout serving tacos and burritos.

  The kid who was behind the counter when I walked in was busy playing air guitar to the Metallica that was coming from his box. I asked about Kim Lazarus and got a dull-eyed look and a negative response.

  My next stop was a free-standing restaurant in Nags Head that was done in a stucco and adobe motif, one of those Tex-Mex chains that American families love specifically for their blandness. It was their dinner rush, and when I saw the waitresses’ uniforms—green and gold dresses with some type of elaborate headgear more appropriate on a trotting horse—I had the feeling that Kim Lazarus had never worked here.

  The woman behind the register, thin and sharp-featured, seemed to be the only one around not doing anything. I walked up to her and smiled.

  “Hi.”

  “Hello,” she said. “The hostess will seat you.” She made a jerky, pigeon-like movement with her head.

  “I’m not looking for a table. My cousin works here. I’m on vacation, thought I’d say hi.”

  “Everyone’s kinda busy, sir. But what’s her name? I’ll see if I can get her attention.”

  “Kimmy,” I said. “Kim Lazarus.”

  “There’s no one here by that name,” she said.

  “I thought for sure she said this place,” I whined. “Did she used to work here?”

  “Honey, I’ve been on this station since we opened two years ago. No Kim ever worked here.” She jerked her head again.

  “Are there any other places like this?” I asked. “I guess I got confused.”

  “Casa Grande in Kitty Hawk. Or maybe she worked at Carlos Joe’s. But they closed down last year. Had some trouble.”

  “What happened?” I asked, winking conspiratorially. Then I jerked my head like hers, for punctuation. “Taxes?”

  She leaned in and whispered, “Owners got in drug trouble.”

  “Oh. Anybody work here who used to work at Carlos Joe’s? Maybe they know my cousin.”

  She pulled back and buttoned up. “Not that I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  I walked to my car with my head down. Carlos Joe’s was the type of place Kim Lazarus would have been attracted to. But it was closed now, and I had driven into a stone dead end.

  * * *

  THE BAR AT CASA GRANDE was above the dining room and accessible by a staircase to the left of the hotel entrance. I picked a magazine up off the table in the lobby and went up the stairs.

  McGinnes was seated at the bar when I entered. He was leaning across the rather appalled-looking woman to his left, showing her companion a trick involving a swizzle stick. He saw me but averted his eyes. I took a seat at a deuce near the window and the hors d’oeuvre station.

  The young cocktail waitress who arrived at my table had that look of false health common to beach employees who party every night, then spend a couple of hours in the sun each day for recovery purposes. She had the scrubbed, Baptist good looks preferred by ACC frat boys, but her best days were already behind her. Her summer tan was fading like an Earl Scheib paint job.

  “What can I get you?” she asked with a pained smile, and set a basket of chips and salsa on the table.

  “A Dos Equis, please. And some queso.”

  The place was filled with older, successful men, stag or with younger women, gray-templed gents who tie the arms of their summerweight sweaters around their necks and drink single malt scotch or beer from green bottles.

  McGinnes was doing an awful lot of buddying up to the bartender, one of those doughy ex-jocks who “parlay” a summer bartending job into a full-time career that leaves them forty-five at thirty.

  The queso was spicy and hot. I ordered beef and chicken enchiladas with a side of sour cream and another Dos. I pretended to read the real estate magazine that I had brought up from the lobby.

  The food arrived and was of the same quality as the queso. Someone in the kitchen obviously liked their job. I watched the bartender whisper something to his barback, then leave his station and walk into the men’s room. Half a minute later McGinnes followed him in.

  I finished my meal and the waitress removed the plates. The bartender returned to the bar, where he immediately lit a cigarette and drew on it hungrily.

  McGinnes emerged from the head and took his seat at the bar, turning to his neighbors and quickly starting a conversation. Then he pulled the rope on a bell that hung from the ceiling. There was applause in the bar, as McGinnes had just bought the house a round.

  I raised my bottle in a toast to McGinnes, via the bar mirror. He winked at me, a little too broadly, though he deserved to be somewhat reckless. Clearly he was on to something.

  As I finished my beer, McGinnes was in close conversation with the bartender. He looked at me again, then stepped away from the bar, and said loudly, “What do I owe you, professor?” I left twenty on sixteen, walked down the stairs, and out to my car.

  I turned the ignition key and knocked the ocean mist off my windshield with a stroke of the wipers. McGinnes bounded out of the hotel and goose-stepped to my car, settling in on the passenger side. He grinned the same cocky smirk when he closed a major deal.

  “What’s my name?” he asked childishly.

  “Johnny Mac.”

  I pulled out onto Virginia Dare, heading south. McGinnes brought the snow seal out of his breast pocket, unfolded it carefull
y, dipped in with his pinky nail, and did a hit. Then he fed the other nostril the same way.

  “What did all that cost me?” I asked.

  “Call it a hundred. Thirty for the house round, seventy for the half.”

  “Seventy, for a half? You’re pretty generous with my money.”

  “You got to ante to play the game, Jim. It was worth it, for what I got.” He pointed ahead. “Pull in there. I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll bet you are.”

  He was out of the store quickly with a tall brown bag in his arms. He handed me a cold bottle of beer and took one for himself. We drove on.

  “Spill it, man.”

  “All right,” he said. “Soon as I walk in the bar, I can see everyone working the place is wired. I strike up a conversation with the barkeep and ask if he remembers Kim Lazarus, used to work there. I’m a good friend of hers from D.C. Not only does he remember her, she was in town last week. I steer the conversation to coke, and how Kim told me I could look him up if I wanted to cop. He gets suspicious now and I ease off. But I get him back on the track when I tell him I’m used to spending one-forty, one-fifty for a gram.” He looked at me and smiled.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “This guy can’t resist the high dollar. He offers to sell me a half for seventy. I gotta try it first, I say. We go into the john, he turns me on. Let me tell you, this shit is good. I know you’ve found Jesus and all that, but if this was the old days, you would concur on this, Jim.”

  “Get to the meat, Johnny.”

  “We go back out to the bar. I tell him this freeze is so serious, I’ve got to cop more. How can I get my hands on some quantity?”

  “Kim and the boys, right?”

  He nodded. “Let me tell it, man. The bartender, he’s juiced now, he’s my buddy. He tells me that it was my friend Kim that sold him the shit.”

  “Where are they?”

  “This bartender was too small-time to take on quantities. There was another guy, though, a surf rat by the name of Charlie Fiora who used to work with Kim at Casa Grande. He’s got his own gig now down the coast, a little bar called the Wall. He’s the one that Kim and Eddie and your boy Broda went to see to sell their supply to.”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Wrightsville Beach.” He took a swig and looked at me out of the corner of his eye.

  I slapped the steering wheel as we pulled into the lot of the Arizona. “Good job, man.”

  “I know,” he said.

  In our room I laid out maps and ferry schedules. McGinnes tapped out some lines on the mirror he had removed from the wall.

  “You want a blast?”

  “No,” I said. But like any former cokehead, I really did.

  He did a couple that had the width of fingers. “Let’s go out and have a few.”

  “Not tonight. We’ve got a shitload of miles to travel in the morning.”

  “Wrightsville’s down there.”

  “You want to go, go ahead. My keys are on the dresser.”

  “I think I will,” he said. “For a short one.”

  “Thanks for tonight, Johnny.”

  “No sweat,” he said casually. “See you in the A.M.” He took my keys off the dresser and twirled them on his finger. He was coughing as he bolted out the door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  CROSSING WHALEBONE JUNCTION, we passed the sign for Cape Hatteras National Seashore and blew down Route 12 very early the next morning. The sun sprayed over the dunes to our left, highlighting sea oats and myrtle.

  We rolled our windows down as the dawn chill faded, and sipped our coffee from Styrofoam cups. I had a neo-country tape playing in the deck—Golden Palominos, Dwight Yoakam, T Bone Burnett, and Costello, with some Merle Haggard and Johnny Cash thrown in for tradition.

  McGinnes was singing along to what he knew, and laughed at my voice as I joined him on the occasional odd chorus. The lines around his eyes crinkled out from behind his aviators.

  “This is beautiful!” he said emotionally, his arm straight out the window, his palm catching the wind.

  “‘Everything Is Beautiful,’” I said.

  “Ray Stevens, right? Worst Top Ten song ever recorded.”

  “Right about Ray Stevens. Wrong about the honors. They go to ‘Daddy, Don’t You Walk So Fast’ by Wayne Newton. That’s the worst song to crack the Top Ten.”

  “You mean, ‘Daddy, Don’t You Hump So Fast,’ don’t you?”

  “Whatever you say, Johnny.”

  Soon we were on the Herbert C. Bonner Bridge over the Oregon Inlet. Scores of trawlers and charter boats were heading out into the ocean. On the other side of the bridge lay the Pea Island Refuge, where flocks of snow geese and shorebirds flew by at regular intervals. Egrets laced the wetlands to our right.

  We drove through the nearly empty beachtowns of Rodanthe, Waves, and Salvo, then cruised a long stretch along the coast to Avon and beyond. Near Buxton, McGinnes had me stop at a windsurfing mecca on the soundside called Canadian Hole. He peed on the grass next to my car while I watched the brightly colored sails and their boards ripping across the chop. Then we pulled back onto the highway.

  We stopped once more to fill the cooler in the town of Hatteras, then raced to the end of the highway to make the ferry. I pulled into spot number nineteen just as the khaki-uniformed park employees began to board the cars.

  We were directed to an area behind a North Carolina Christian Academy school bus, where a tan woman wedged wooden blocks beneath my front tires. A fully restored black and white Chevy with red interior parked to our right. The New Jersey vanity plates read “57 Love.” The driver was bearded and fat and wore an Alf T-shirt.

  “Let’s get out and enjoy it,” McGinnes said, as the ferry finished loading and pulled away from the dock.

  The crowd was an October mixture of elderly couples, young parents with preschool children, and a few tradesmen heading over to the island for work. The tourists began to congregate at the bow, where a woman was throwing bread to a few gulls. Those few gulls turned to dozens very quickly and stayed with the ferry for the entire trip.

  McGinnes brought out two beers and handed one to me. I had intended to remain dry that day, but the weather was gorgeous, the final brilliant display of the long Carolina season. I took off my shirt, sat on the hood of my car, put my feet up on the iron rail, and popped the can.

  McGinnes drifted away and struck up a conversation with a group of young men standing around a Bronco that had surf rods stuck in tubes mounted around the front fender. I folded my arms and enjoyed my beer and the view.

  Forty minutes later we approached the island. The ferry ran parallel to the shore, which was crowded with all-terrain vehicles and fishermen, some of whom were throwing out nets. The family next to me waved at an old man motoring by in a Chris Craft, who waved back, mimicking them playfully. Finally we docked with a thud against the rubber-wrapped pilings.

  We drove off the ferry and onto Ocracoke Island. The terrain was flat and covered with shrubs of myrtle, the two-lane road shoulderless and sandy. Many of the cars ahead turned off at beach access trails or state-run campgrounds.

  The drive to the other end of the island took only ten minutes. But when we arrived, the Cedar Island ferry was full, and the next available was two hours away. I bought tickets and walked back to the car.

  “Don’t worry about it,” McGinnes said. “We made good time getting down here. Let’s relax, drive back to the village. I saw a place there.”

  We turned the car around and headed back up the road, where McGinnes directed me into the lot of what looked like an old house on pilings. The small gray sign, camouflaged against the gray house it hung on, read “Jacko’s Grille.”

  “You coming?” he asked, out of the car before it stopped.

  I shook my head. “I think I’ll grab a swim. I’ll swing back and pick you up.” He waved me off and ran up the wooden stairs.

  I drove to a small turnoff that I had noticed earlier, a place w
ith no facilities and no tourists. I changed into shorts and walked on a path through the shrubs, over a barrier dune, and out onto a wide, white beach.

  On my trek to the shoreline there were sandcrabs and shells and no footprints. The swells were small, like those in a bay. I walked out in two feet of water for what seemed like quite a distance. Small fish moved around my feet. I reached deeper water and swam, then walked along the beach until I neared a group of fishermen. I turned and walked back, stopping occasionally to put the more interesting stones and shells in my swimtrunk pockets. Some high clouds drifted in the sky but they never neared the sun.

  I changed back into jeans and drove back to the bar. Inside were picnic tables and a jukebox and a small selection of domestic beer. McGinnes was talking to and drinking with a couple of old-timers. I ordered a burger and a beer and took them both out back to the screened-in deck that overlooked the wetlands and the Pamlico Sound.

  THE CEDAR ISLAND FERRY was a two-hour trip. I grabbed the opportunity to nap on the hood of my car in the warm sun.

  McGinnes shook me awake when we docked. As we prepared to disembark, I noticed the license plates on a car ahead. The “mushroom cloud” on the plates of the men who attacked me was the state tree of South Carolina. I told McGinnes.

  “What difference does it make now?” he said. “You didn’t get the number, so you still don’t know dick.”

  As we drove off the ferry onto Cedar Island, I saw that the vegetation was more tropical. But the palmettos diminished, then disappeared as Route 12 became 70. We went through the lovely seaside town of Beaufort, then passed the more conventional Morehead City and turned off on 24 south. At two o’clock we entered Camp Lejeune, where McGinnes saluted the MP at the gate and told childhood stories all the way through the grounds and beyond. Then we were on 17 south along the coast, passing billboards advertising surf shops and hamburger stands.

  At nearly four in the afternoon we reached Wilmington, a large city in the midst of revitalization, which was still filled with examples of old Southern architecture. McGinnes informed me in the same breath that Wilmington was once the premier city of the state, and that it was the birthplace of Sonny Jurgenson.