Maybe it was the anticipation of the trip that Moran mistook for a premonition of something about to happen.
But maybe it was something else. Something winging in at him out of the blue.
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON at the municipal tennis courts, Moran worked his tail off to win two hard sets, hanging in there against a kid with a vicious serve and a red headband who’d try to stare him down whenever Moran called a close shot out of bounds. Moran was only in doubt about his calls a couple of times. He dinked the kid to death with left-handed backspin junk, sliding the kid around on the clay, until the kid threw his racket at the fence and dug out a ten-dollar bill folded to the size of a stamp. Moran said to him, “You’re all right, kid. Keep at it.” He had always wanted to call somebody “kid” and today was the first time.
When he got back to the Coconut Palms there was Nolen Tyner out by the pool with a six-pack.
Jerry Shea, sitting at the office desk with a pile of bills, was whistling as he made entries in the ledger. Moran never knew the songs Jerry whistled. He asked him today, what’s the name of that? And Jerry said, “This Year’s Crop of Kisses.” Jerry was a retired insurance salesman, sixty-seven, who cocked his golf cap to one side, slapped his broken blood vessels with Old Spice and went after lonely widows who’d invite him up to their condominiums for dinner, happy to cook for somebody again, have some fun. Moran pictured withered moth-eaten flanks, or else globs of cellulite getting in the way. Jerry said there was more active poon around than you could shake a stick at. With the fat ones, you rolled them in flour and looked for the wet spot.
Moran said, sitting down, taking off his tennis shoes and socks, “That guy out there drinking beer-”
“Mr. Nolen Tyner,” Jerry said. “Works for Marshall Sisco Investigations, Incorporated, Miami. Actually their office is in Coral Gables.”
“He told you that?”
“Ask a person what they do, they generally tell you,” Jerry said. “Especially since I recognized the address. We used to use Marshall Sisco on insurance investigations from time to time; it’s a good outfit. Nolen says he’s been with them a year, but I think he’s part-time help. Before that played dinner theaters up and down the coast and says he’s been in movies. He was an actor.”
“I think he still is,” Moran said. “He checked in yesterday about two and left at six, didn’t use the room.”
“Well, when he come in today,” Jerry said, “he took it for a week. Number Five. I asked him was he taking some time off and he says well, you could say that. Sort of combining business with pleasure.”
Moran got up and turned to the window to look at Nolen lounging in the shade. The two secretaries from Fort Wayne had their recliners on the cement walk out by the wall, aimed at the sun that soon would be hidden behind the condo next-door, the Aurora. Moran’s gaze moved from their pink corrugated thighs to Number One.
“How about the lovers?”
“They’re in there.” Jerry swiveled around from the desk. “The woman got here first for a change. Then, when the piano player come, Nolen Tyner got up and went over to say something to him. They talked a few minutes, the piano player goes on inside Number One, then comes out again and has another talk with Mr. Tyner.”
“Arguing?”
“I don’t believe so. A lot of nodding, both of ’em, getting along fine. Then the piano player goes back inside and Mr. Tyner returns to his beer.”
“This is a nice quiet place,” Moran said. “I don’t want some husband coming here with a gun.”
“Maybe they’re friends,” Jerry said. “Or she’s a rich woman and Nolen Tyner’s her bodyguard; why he thinks it’s pretty good duty, combining, as he says, business with pleasure.”
“Maybe,” Moran said. “But I better find out.”
He didn’t want to talk to the guy in his sweaty whites, barefoot; it wasn’t his natural image. It reminded him of the country club, standing around in whites in polite conversation, waiters coming out with trays of tall drinks. Moran followed the walk to his bungalow, passing behind the figure reclined in the lounge chair, waved to the two 40-year-old secretaries from Fort Wayne and went inside. He drank a beer while he showered and changed into jeans, a T-shirt and dry tennis shoes, old ones that were worn through and he slipped on without socks. He got a fresh beer from the refrigerator, then on second thought another one and took them, one in each hand, out to the Marshall Sisco investigator lying in the shade.
“You must like the place you sign up for a week.”
Nolen Tyner opened his eyes behind the aviator sunglasses, startled, about to rise, then relaxing again as he saw Moran extending the beer.
“Cold one for you,” Moran said. “Yours must be pretty warm by now.” Four empty cans stood upright on the ground next to the lounge chair with two full ones still in the cardboard casing.
“That’s very kind of you,” Nolen said. He jerked the backrest of the chair up a notch and reached for the can of beer that was beaded with drops of ice water. His sleeve rode up to reveal a bluish tattoo on his right forearm, a two-inch eagle with its wings raised.
While on Moran’s left forearm, also extended, was his faded blue Marine Corps insignia.
They looked at each other. Nolen said, “From the halls of Montezuma, huh?” Smiling, popping open the can of beer.
“And I take it you were airborne,” Moran said. “Not by any chance the Eighty-second?”
“That’s the one.”
“Second or Third Brigade maybe?”
“Third. You’re leading up to something, aren’t you?”
“As a matter of fact,” Moran said. “I wonder if you were in Santo Domingo sixteen years ago. Sitting on the bank of the Ozama River by any chance?”
“Sitting high on the east bank, up on the grain elevators,” Nolen said, smiling some more. “You don’t mean to tell me you were there?”
Moran pulled a recliner over with his foot and sat down, straddling the leg rest, now eye to eye with Nolan. “You had a weapons squad up there, didn’t you? Up on the silos, or whatever they were. With a one-oh-six recoiless rifle?”
“We had a bunch of ’em up there.”
“And one day you’re using your one-oh-six trying to hit a sniper, firing across the river at this one guy. He was in a building the corner of Isabella Catolica and Luperon.”
Nolen raised his eyebrows. “Marines weren’t ever that close to the river. Were they?”
“I got excited,” Moran said. “The heat of the chase.”
“You mean you fucked up,” Nolen said. “Got suckered.”
“The dinger would fire a round, then disappear,” Moran said. “You never knew where you’d get shot at from next.”
“I remember snipers,” Nolen said. “Yeah, and I remember the troopers talking about they took this guy out. Little fucker with an M-one.”
“It was a medium-size fucker with an M-fourteen,” Moran said. “It was me they got. We’re chasing the dinger, I run upstairs, he’s gone. I look out the window and a fifty-caliber racer round nearly took my head off.”
Nolen was nodding again. “Fired from the spotting rifle.”
“I know what it was fired from,” Moran said. “Followed by screaming one-oh-six. I had a mitt I could’ve stuck my hand up and caught it.”
“Didn’t kill you, huh?”
“It took out the back end of the third floor and the stairs. I got hit here, below my flack jacket and down my leg. Fifteen pieces of iron they dug out and gave me a Heart,” Moran said. “So you were Airborne. What’d I bring you a beer for?”
“You felt something, a kinship,” Nolen said, “one grunt sniffing another. I’ll tell you what. Even if it wasn’t me I’ll buy you a drink later on. Make it up to you.”
“I’m going down there next week,” Moran said.