The Boardwalk Bomber

By Michael Jesse

Chapter 20

I don't own an alarm clock, but I usually don't need one. I tend to stay up late, but I'm a light sleeper and the sunlight wakes me up. But on this particular morning, I was sound asleep until ten a.m., and when I finally woke up, I was so stiff I could hardly get off the couch. And my butt hurt. The first thing I did was pee, but the second thing was to call the hospital to check on Andy. All I could get was that he was "stable."

I took some pills and turned on the TV so I'd catch the local news when it came on. Curt was coming at noon to help salvage my boat.

I hobbled out my front door to get the newspapers, but the bundles were already cut open with several papers taken. A tattered fast-food cup was wedged between the bundles with the change people had left for the papers. I didn't count it, but was once again impressed by how well the honor system works here in the Midwest.

"Bomb suspect captured" was the headline in the Brayton Morning Star, in a type size they probably hadn't used since Nixon resigned. Reading the story, you could tell the investigators were being cautious about what it meant, but there were also comments from local merchants gushing that it was safe for tourists to return.

When the TV news came on, however, the copycat angle was more clear. McCain was on camera -- looking better than the Barbie-doll reporter interviewing her -- saying investigators were looking at a number of scenarios and did not believe they had apprehended everyone involved. She urged local residents and visitors to remain at a high level of caution regarding suspicious packages, boxes, garbage bags, etc.

I put on coffee and then took the stairs one step at a time. Upstairs in my bedroom, I spent about ten minutes getting my pants off, then took a shower and changed my bandages. I put on a loose pair of gray athletic shorts and pulled on a sweatshirt.

By this time, I heard Curt downstairs. I navigated the stairwell again and decided I'd let him do most of the lifting. We walked down to Woodman's, where Fred "let me use" one of his motorboats -- at a discount of the normal rental price. The marshy-sandy area where my boat lay was inaccessible by vehicles, so a water rescue was the only good option.

We motored down the shoreline until the sand began giving way to reeds at the north edge of the wetlands. There were dry patches of sand intermittently among the marsh grasses. These secluded spots are popular with naturists, and I was probably lucky I hadn't mowed over any naked people when I crash-landed.

For once, Curt wasn't in a talkative mood, and we rode in silence, which I appreciated. There was something bugging me about everything that had happened in the past day, and I was trying to sort it out. I had the feeling there was something obvious I had forgotten or overlooked, and that I'd feel really stupid when I finally figured it out. The pills the hospital gave me weren't working, but I resisted the urge to ask Curt for more of his.

We found the wreckage and waded through the muck and scrambled up to the sand. The mast was shot, and I abandoned it there to weather like driftwood and become habitat for something. The rest of the boat was right enough, and after gathering up the sails, we had it floating in the water. We tethered it to the motorboat and headed back up the shore.

After renting some storage space from Fred and sending Curt over to open my shop, I decided to take Fred's boat on a little cruise. He charges by four-hour blocks, and I still had two of them left.

Roaring across the bay, I felt conspicuous, making way too much noise and wake for my own comfort. I felt like apologizing to every sailor I came near.

I maneuvered into the public dock on Lighthouse Point and paid a ridiculous amount for short-term dockage. My butt was stiff from sitting, and my shorts were still wet. I limped up the boardwalk and then headed down the beach, and was walking almost normally by the time I could hear the music. It wasn't as loud as usual and sounded like something from a live Lillith Fair concert. It was clearly Bigfoot's day off.

Inside the bar, April was at her usual station, and several other young women were clustered along the barstools. There were a couple of empty stools at one end, and I took the last one.

April's hair was no longer grass-green. Now it was a neon lavender, and her eyebrows and eyes were exactly the same. I was impressed by her attention to detail. A new pattern of purple flowers grew as temporary tattoos along her body, very little of which was covered by her bathing suit.

"Hiya, Mr. Durham," she said as she approached.

"Hi, April. I like your new color."

"Thanks. I'm gonna do magenta next, I think."

"Aren't you afraid of running out of colors?"

"Oh, I already have. I just do 'em all again. Wanna beer?"

I nodded, and one was instantly in front of me.

"Dad's not here if you were looking for him."

I shrugged. "No, I was just in the neighborhood and felt like a beer. How's things with you?"

"'Kay. We're all still adjusting to Chad being gone. It's weird. Everything around here is weird right now."

"You mean because of Chad, or ...?"

"I dunno," she said, putting her elbow on the bar and resting her chin in her hand. The movement put her breasts in a precarious position, but I stoically kept my eyes off them and focused on her lavender eyes. "For one thing, Daddy's got a girlfriend."

"Is that weird? He's probably had girlfriends before, hasn't he?"

She nodded, head still in her hands. "Yeah, but he's acting different this time. He's so excited about meeting this chick from high school again, but when he talks about her from back then, she doesn't sound too nice. You know -- real popular chick who let him help her with school work but wouldn't acknowledge him if they passed in the school hallway, cause she was too cool."

"That was a long time ago," I said.

"I know, and people change," April said. "Supposedly." As she said this, she stood up straight again and untied the string on one hip of her bikini bottom and retied it.

"You don't sound convinced."

"It's just that I know he's not a great judge of people. With my father, you always know what he's thinking and how he feels, because it's right there on the surface. He thinks other people are that way too, and it never occurs to him that they might be manipulating him. That's a bit how it was with Chad, I'm afraid."

"Chad manipulated him? In what way?"

"Just talking him into the speedboats and other flashy promotional things. Chad could always convince him that his latest big idea would put them on the map, but Daddy just wanted to run a bar."

Like a person who ties one shoe because it's loose and then feels compelled to tie the other side for balance, April untied the other side of her swimsuit bottom and began to retie it. The front string slipped from her hand, and she caught it as it fell, revealing a split-second glimpse of lavender pubic hair, which I pretended I didn't see.

April put her elbows back on the bar, and I made sure my eyes stayed locked on hers. To keep my focus, I said, "Well, your dad mentioned throwing Chad off the balcony, so that probably didn't help their relationship."

"God!" she exclaimed, covering her face and giving my eyes a nanosecond to stray. "He was, like, so wrong about that whole situation. I tried to tell him afterwards, but he wouldn't listen. I mean, it was true Chad overdid it sometimes, joking around in a flirtatious way with me. But that time on the balcony, he was asking me to help him smooth things over with Daddy, that's all. Thanks for talking to him, by the way."

"Pardon?"

She slapped the back of my hand lightly. "Don't think he can keep a secret from me. I know Daddy went over there to see you, all worried about how this would look. And you talked him down from the ceiling, so thank you."

"Well, I didn't want him to break too much of my stuff, so talking seemed like a good idea."

"Yeah, he told me he did some damage over there. He's the classic bull in the china shop."

"Hmm. Is there anything he doesn't tell you?"

She grinned. "I really doubt it. I can tell when he's covering up. Like when he broke my car that night and fixed it secretly the next day. I saw through that in three seconds, and he confessed in, oh, five seconds."

I could imagine the scene. "I'll be sure not to share any state secrets with him. So did he do a good job with your car?"

"Of course. He's good at stuff like that."

Something struck me. I gestured with my head towards the carport behind the bar's back wall. "He doesn't seem to have a good workspace for that kind of thing."

She laughed. "Of course not. That's why he rents the garage. Didn't he mention that?"

I snapped my fingers. "Yeah, I forgot. I was kind of preoccupied keeping the breakables out of reach. That's the place he rents up around here somewhere." I pointed in the general direction of up the road.

"Actually, it's the other way," she corrected. "About two blocks down. You know that big pink Victorian house facing the main road? Well, around back on the alley, there's the cutest little Victorian carriage house. The lady who lives in the house is in her eighties and doesn't have a car, so she rents the garage to Daddy and Cha-- To Daddy. And I always kid him about a big tough guy like him working in a pink garage."

Right about then, a group of people came into the bar, and April excused herself and skipped off to tend to them, showing me her nearly bare little bottom. I sighed, put a couple dollars under my beer, and limped out the door.

The two-block walk helped loosen me up again after sitting on that barstool. The pink carriage house was easy to spot, and I stopped in front of it and looked at the bay a moment while a guy walked by with his dog. The dog must not have gotten out of the yard very often because it was sniffing every tree and shrub, and street sign in its path. And the owner didn't seem to have anything else to do with his day, so I had to walk another half block down the street and double back to give them time to move on.

The carriage house had been modified with a modern overhead garage door. But the door had windows, and I cupped my hands to look through them. On one side, I could see a workbench and mechanic's tools, and on the other side sat an old Ford Torino with no license plates and the body stripped down and primed for a paint job.

The dog-walker was coming back. We exchanged looks as we passed each other, and by the time I got back to the dock, my butt ached from all the walking and sitting. I used a pay phone to call McCain, getting her voicemail. I left a message, and then powered up the boat and roared back across the bay, feeling guilty all over again for the noise and disruption, but eager to get home where I could rest.

I made it back to Woodman's within my four-hour limit, wanting only to limp back up to my place and take a nap for the rest of the day. But as I approached the marina and maneuvered into the dock, I could see a sheriff's cruiser parked in the lot, and the pot-bellied body leaning against it was clearly Detective Arkin.

I could tell when he recognized me. He pushed his bulk off the car and got in, gunning the engine and bringing the cruiser down onto the loading ramp as I pulled up at the dock.

He had the passenger door open as I tied up. "Get in Durham," he called. "You have an appointment."

"For what?"

"There's trouble at the Brinckman house. Your presence has been requested."

Fred was nearby, and I whistled to get his attention and pointed at the returned boat, then mounted the steps as quickly as I could. "What kind of trouble?"

"It's a hostage situation," he said. "If you want the details, get in the fucking car and I'll tell you all about it on the way." I did, and he gunned the engine and did a doughnut on the sandy ramp, peeling up onto the access road. When his tires hit the asphalt, the bump was like a kick in the ass. I wasn't completely silent in my reaction, and Arkin glanced over with a wicked smile.