Dark Tiger Page 3

  “Next,” said the Man in the Suit, “you’ll get a call from a man who calls himself Mr. Brescia.”

  “Brescia,” said Calhoun.

  “He goes by Mister,” he said. “Mr. Brescia. He’ll give you the details.”

  “When?”

  “Pretty soon, I’d expect,” said the Man in the Suit. “We’ve got something pretty urgent going on, Stoney. Your country needs you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A little before noontime the next morning Calhoun was sitting in one of the wooden rocking chairs on the front porch of the shop sipping coffee with the Orvis sales rep, who said he wanted to talk about their new line of waders and wading boots, but who seemed even more interested in telling Calhoun about his recent bonefishing trip to the Bahamas.

  Calhoun had never fished for bonefish. He had a lot of questions. He figured one of these winters he and Kate would shut down the shop for the month of February or March and go someplace equatorial and fish for tarpon and bonefish and permit and snook. Venezeula, maybe. Or Belize. As much as he loved the coming of springtime, Calhoun didn’t think he’d ever get used to those damn New England winters.

  The Orvis guy’s name was Rumley, and everybody called him Rummie. He was a young guy—barely thirty, Calhoun guessed—and he seemed way more interested in fishing than in selling waders, although with all of his stories and his general enthusiasm for fishing, he was actually a very effective salesman. Calhoun was all set to stock some of the new Orvis stuff, just because he liked talking with Rummie and always looked forward to his visits.

  He heard the phone ring inside the shop, and a minute later Kate, who’d been at the counter, poked her head out. She gave Rummie a quick smile, then looked at Calhoun. “I got an important call I want to take in my office,” she said. “Could you watch the front of the store?”

  He nodded. “Sure.” He stood up. “You want to come in, talk some more, add to my discontent because I’ve never waded a bonefish flat?” he said to Rummie.

  Rummie shook his head. “Miles to go before I sleep, Stoney. You got the catalog and my card. Give me a call.”

  “And if you don’t hear from me,” said Calhoun, “you’ll call me, right?”

  Rummie smiled. “We got the best waders and boots in the world. I wouldn’t feel right if you and Kate didn’t stock them. I’ll call you.”

  They stood up and shook hands. Rummie headed for the parking area beside the shop. Calhoun went inside.

  There were a few customers milling around, mumbling to each other and stirring their forefingers around in the fly bins. A couple of them, guys who often dropped in during their lunch hours, looked up at Stoney and nodded by way of saying hello. Calhoun nodded back at them.

  He looked toward Kate’s glassed-in office at the rear of the store. He could see her with both elbows on her desk leaning forward holding the telephone tight to her ear. Her hair was spilling over the side of her face so that Calhoun couldn’t see her expression, but her neck and shoulders looked tense. He hoped to hell it wasn’t more bad news.

  Ten minutes later she opened her office door and came to the front of the shop. She was frowning and shaking her head.

  “What’s up, honey?” said Calhoun.

  “Damned if I know,” said Kate. “That was Mr. Gibson himself calling me. The bigwig from that big national string of rehab facilities? The man who smiles with no teeth, who just yesterday was telling me how they had to kick Walter out because the insurance had got cut off? Well, today Mr. Gibson is telling me how he personally got the Powers That Be—that’s what he called ’em, Stoney, the Powers That Be, all caps, as if they were some big damned church mucky-mucks or something—how he personally got them to reverse their decision, and now Mr. Gibson himself is guaranteeing that Walter will always have a place there in his Scarborough facility.”

  “Well,” said Calhoun. “That’s great.”

  Kate was still frowning. “It is. I know.”

  “The best kind of news.”

  “Annie said she was going to make some calls,” said Kate. “She said it wasn’t right and she’d do her damnedest to get it straightened out, but I didn’t believe it’d be that easy.”

  “What’s right is right,” said Calhoun. “This is right. Don’t matter how it came to be, does it?”

  Kate looked at him and smiled. “No, I guess it doesn’t. It’s a giant relief. I just don’t understand what happened, that’s all.”

  Thank the Man in the Suit, thought Calhoun. He created the problem, just to show me that he could, and then he solved it. Damn him.

  Calhoun went over to Kate and touched her hand. “I’m glad about it,” he said, “no matter why it happened. You have a good time with Annie last night?”

  Kate gave his hand a quick a squeeze, then stepped away from him. She didn’t like to show their relationship in the shop, especially when there were customers around. “We got good and drunk was about all,” she said. “Gotta admit I’m feeling a little queasy today. Annie’s a lot of fun, but I never honestly thought she was such a hot-shit lawyer. I gotta call her, tell her what’s going on, thank her.”

  Calhoun smiled. “You should definitely do that.”

  Noah Moulton showed up around three that afternoon. Kate was behind the counter at the front of the store, and Calhoun was talking to a customer about the new line of Loomis fly rods. He watched as Noah glanced at Kate, then spotted Calhoun.

  Calhoun quickly asked the customer to excuse him for a minute and went to the front of the store so he could intercept Noah. But it was too late. Noah had set his elbows on the counter. Kate was just turning to see what Noah Moulton had to say.

  “Noah,” said Calhoun, fixing the real estate guy with a hard look, “you need to talk to me?”

  “I want to talk to both of you,” he said. “Good news.”

  Calhoun went with it. “Good news, huh?” He glanced at Kate. She was frowning at Noah.

  “Mr. Camby changed his mind,” said Noah. “Decided not to sell after all. We’re working up a renewal contract for you and wondered how you’d feel about five years, guaranteed no increase in rent, provided you folks spruce up your sign and continue to have somebody mow the grass and clip the shrubs and weed the gardens once in a while. How’s that sound?”

  Calhoun shook his head. “We can’t guarantee you we’ll stay here for another five years.”

  “No increase in rent?” said Kate.

  “That’s right,” said Noah. “In return for normal maintenance.”

  “We need to have an out,” said Calhoun. “You don’t know what’s going to happen in five years.”

  “It’s a good deal, Stoney,” said Kate. “Worst case, we might have to sublet it.”

  “We can work out the details another time,” said Noah. “I just wanted to tell you first thing that you don’t have to worry about getting evicted after all. Figured you’d want to know.” He held out his hand to Kate, who shook it, and then to Calhoun, who shrugged and shook it, too.

  Noah headed for the door, then stopped and turned back. “I’ll talk to Mr. Camby about building some options into your lease,” he said. “I don’t see any problems.”

  Then, with a ding of the bell over the door, Noah Moulton was gone.

  Calhoun gave Kate a smile, then went back to the customer who needed a new fly rod. Kate returned to her office.

  After the customer left with an aluminum tube containing one of the new Loomis four-weights under his arm, Calhoun went to Kate’s office and tapped his knuckle on the glass.

  Kate looked up, frowned, and jerked her head for Calhoun to come in.

  He went in and sat in the straight-backed wooden chair beside her desk.

  Kate glared at him. “So what the hell was that?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Noah Moulton. Evicting us? Was I supposed to know what he was talking about?”

  Calhoun shrugged. “He came in yesterday while you were in Scarborough. I was going to tell you
, but you were so upset about Walter I figured I’d wait on it. I didn’t want to add any more to your worries.”

  “You had no right to do that.” Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You listen to me, Stonewall Jackson Calhoun. I do not need some man protecting me. If there is bad news, I want to know it, and you have no right to keep it from me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And don’t, for Christ’s sake, call me ma’am.”

  “I’m sorry, darlin’.” Calhoun was trying not to smile.

  “Or that, either, God damn it.”

  “Mr. Elton Camby,” said Calhoun, “had made a deal to sell this place out from under us. That was yesterday. Today he changes his mind and wants to give us a favorable new lease. Why don’t we just call it good news?”

  “Because,” said Kate, “you betrayed me. You betrayed my trust.” She was getting wound up. Calhoun knew there was nothing he could do but ride it out when Kate got wound up like this. “I thought,” she said, “that I could count on you to share things with me like partners. Instead you’re making decisions to keep things from me because you think they’ll make poor weak little female me sad and upset and maybe I’ll cry. So let me repeat myself. I do not want to be protected. We are equals in this. In our business and in our . . . our relationship. If you can’t show me that kind of respect, that will be the end of us. Do you get it?”

  “I get it,” said Calhoun. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, okay, then,” said Kate.

  “Okay,” said Calhoun.

  “Equals,” she said.

  “Sure.” He nodded. “Equals.”

  She looked out through the glass into the store. “Customers all gone?”

  “Place is empty except for you and me and Ralph, and he’s snoozing out there by the fly-tying bench.”

  Kate got up from her chair, came over, and looked down at Calhoun. Then she sat on his lap facing him with her legs straddling his thighs. She touched his face, leaned forward, put both arms around his neck, and gave him a long wet kiss on the mouth.

  Calhoun had to resist the powerful urge to put his hands on her butt and pull her tight against him. He satisfied himself by stroking her hair.

  After a minute she pulled her face away. She touched his lips with her fingertip. “I’m pretty mad at you,” she said softly.

  “Can’t blame you,” he said.

  “But I suppose your heart’s in the right place.”

  “It’s thumpin’ pretty hard right now,” said Calhoun. “I can tell you that much.”

  “And I am pretty happy about Walter,” she said. “Also about not getting evicted from our shop.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I feel like we should celebrate, Stoney.”

  “Every day’s a celebration, honey.”

  Kate smiled. “How’s about tonight you pour me a short glass of bourbon and branch, toss me a green salad, broil me a T-bone, bake me a potato?”

  “I think I remember how to do those things,” he said. “Though it has been a while.”

  Kate wiggled her butt in his lap and bent to him and curtained his face with her hair and held him tight against her and kissed him again, hard and deep, and even as he felt every muscle and nerve ending and blood vessel in his body respond to her, all he could think was I should tell her right now that I’m going to have to go away for a month or more on some kind of damned mission for the Man in the Suit and somebody who calls himself Mr. Brescia. That is the price we’ve got to pay for me being who I am.

  But he didn’t want to spoil the moment. So he said nothing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A little before seven o’clock that evening, Calhoun was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs out on his deck sipping from a can of Coke. Ralph, who’d already had his supper, was sprawled beside him. They were listening to the gurgle of Bitch Creek, the lovely little trout stream that ran through the woods and under the burned-out bridge behind his house, and enjoying the warmth of the late-day May sunshine. They were only a few weeks shy of the summer solstice, and even at this time in the early evening, the sun had not yet descended below the treetops.

  The charcoal grill was lit. Kate’s bottle of Old Grand-Dad had been dusted off and was sitting on the kitchen table. The rib eyes had been rubbed with sea salt and ground pepper. The Maine russets were brushed with olive oil and wrapped in aluminum foil. The greens and other fixings were ready to be sliced and tossed with oil and vinegar in the big wooden salad bowl.

  Calhoun was never sure when she’d arrive. She usually visited Walter after they closed the shop. Sometimes she found him sleeping and didn’t linger. Sometimes she stayed awhile and watched TV with him. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they argued.

  Calhoun didn’t mind waiting, and he didn’t mind not knowing when he’d hear her truck come growling down his driveway. In fact, he kind of enjoyed the suspense of it. Kate Balaban was worth waiting for.

  When the phone inside the house rang, he mumbled, “Oh, shit,” thinking it might be Kate telling him she wouldn’t be coming this evening after all. That sometimes happened.

  Calhoun always said, “Well, all right, then,” trying not to let her hear his disappointment.

  He got up, and Ralph scrambled to his feet and pressed his nose against the screen door. They went inside, and Calhoun took the phone off its wall hook. “Calhoun,” he said.

  “Stonewall Jackson Calhoun?” A man’s deep voice he didn’t recognize.

  “This is Calhoun. Who’s this?”

  “It’s Mr. Brescia. You’ve been expecting my call.” He made it a statement, not a question.

  Brescia was the guy the Man in the Suit had said would be calling. Excuse me. Mr. Brescia. Calhoun wondered about a man who referred to himself as Mister. He guessed Brescia wasn’t his real name.

  “I’m kind of busy here right now,” said Calhoun. “Can’t this wait?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Mr. Brescia. “Eleven o’clock at the coffee shop down the street from the Stroudwater Inn. You know where that is?”

  “I do,” said Calhoun.

  “I’ll see you then and there,” said Mr. Brescia, and then he disconnected.

  Calhoun hung up the phone. “Looks like it’s happening,” he said to Ralph.

  The sun had settled behind the treeline, and the bats and swallows were chasing blackflies and mosquitoes around the opening in the woods where Calhoun’s house stood when he heard the throaty second-gear grumble of Kate’s Toyota pickup coming down his driveway. He stood up and went to the deck rail. Ralph scurried down the steps.

  Kate’s truck pulled in beside Calhoun’s Ford pickup, and then she stepped out. She was wearing a pair of tight, faded blue jeans and a man’s blue oxford shirt with the tails tied across her belly. Sandals with silverwork on the straps. Long dangly turquoise-and-silver earrings. Matching necklace. She’d braided her hair into two pigtails, which hung over the front of her shoulders.

  He had to swallow back his heart, which had crawled up into his throat.

  Kate scootched down so that Ralph could lick her face, then looked up at Calhoun and waved. “I’m about starved,” she said.

  “We got food, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “What else would I be after?” She came up the stairs and stepped into Calhoun’s hug. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard. He held her tight against his body, and after a minute she slid her mouth away from his and said, “Oh, my goodness. Will anything get cold if we don’t eat right away?”

  “The charcoal actually needs another hour or so to burn down to good cookin’ coals,” he said.

  Kate grabbed his hand. “Come on, then, Mister Stonewall. We got no time to waste.” She dragged him to the bedroom.

  ______

  Around midnight they were sitting out on the deck. Kate was wearing a pair of Calhoun’s sweatpants and one of his flannel shirts. She was sipping another glass of Old Gran
d-Dad on the rocks. Calhoun sat in the chair beside her holding a mug of black coffee in both hands.

  They’d made love. They’d dozed. They’d cooked dinner, and they’d eaten it. They’d cleaned up the kitchen. Calhoun still didn’t know whether Kate was planning to spend the night. Sometimes she did, and sometimes she kissed him good-bye and climbed into her truck and went home. He’d never figured out what impelled her to stay or to leave. It didn’t matter. He liked it better when she stayed, and she knew that, but he guessed she had the right to decide for herself what she felt like doing, so he never argued with her.

  The almost-full moon was high in the sky. A pair of barred owls, one off to their left and one somewhere behind the house, were hooting back and forth to each other. Ralph was inside, curled up at the foot of the bed, his belly full of steak scraps. Kate and Calhoun weren’t saying much. They were pretty comfortable just sitting there listening to the owls and the gurgle of Bitch Creek.

  Now’s a good time, thought Calhoun. I should tell her now, while we’re both feeling good and relaxed and worry-free. He tried it out in his head. I’m gonna be gone for a month or so, honey. I can’t tell you where or why, so please don’t ask. You just gotta trust me on this. It’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll be back. Okay?

  He tried to imagine how she’d respond. Kate was a sweet, loving woman, but she stood up for herself, and she didn’t take shit from anybody, including him. Especially him. She didn’t think two people who loved each other should have secrets, he knew that much about her.

  She might not question him or argue with him. She might not say anything more than I guess you better just do what you gotta do, then, Stoney.

  She’d be angry and hurt, though, and she’d have every right.

  Not tonight, he thought. Let’s not spoil this night. Let’s hear what Mr. Brescia has to say first. Then I’ll know exactly what I’m getting into. Then I’ll talk to Kate.