“You’re living in it now, aren’t you?” I said, meaning the car.
But he was already gone, leaving the door open.
Jackknife
by Danny López
Gibsonton
I finished packing my overnight bag and was about to head to the shelter when my phone buzzed.
“Wes?”
I hadn’t heard Lisa Moon’s perilous voice in over a year. Now she breathed deep into the speaker. “I need your help.”
“Really, my help?”
“Please...”
I tightened my grip on the phone and fought the impulse to throw it against the wall, smash it to pieces like she’d done with our relationship, or whatever you call what we once had. But I was soft — a sucker. She had me wrapped around her finger. She knew it. I knew it.
“I’m sorry,” she went on real slow. “I... I didn’t know who else to call.”
“What’s going on?”
“I need a ride,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m at Jack’s place in Gibsonton.”
Gibsonton. It wasn’t even a real town, just a few blocks of old houses and single-wide trailers that had seen better days. A depressing Florida suburb once favored by circus folk and carnies.
I held the phone away from my face, paced around the living room of my run-down Seminole Heights apartment. I could still hear the sound of the door slamming as she walked out of my life, the chain of the lock swinging, clacking against the dead bolt like a clock.
“Wesley?”
“There’s a hurricane—”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry... but I need help.”
“What about Jack?”
“That’s what I need help with.”
“Jesus, Lisa.”
“Wes...”
“This isn’t a good time.”
“Just say no, then. You can do that, you know?”
No. She knew I couldn’t. So I took down the address. Just before I shut off the TV and walked out the door, the weatherman pointed to the image of the perfect round eye of the storm. Hurricane Lloyd was now a category four with sustained winds of 135 miles an hour. The shiny, well-groomed weatherman warned everyone to evacuate the barrier islands from Longboat Key to Cedar Key and seek shelter immediately from Sarasota to Tarpon Springs.
Gibsonton was right smack in the center of the cone.
I met Lisa Moon at the Mons Venus during one of my first gigs as a PI after I’d been forced into retirement from the Tampa Police Department. The Internal Affairs investigation into the shooting death of a well-known drug dealer destroyed my law enforcement career. I was canned for doing my job. About half a dozen of us responded to a call of suspicious activity that was soon upgraded to shots fired in Ybor City. Two suspects were dead. Turned out neither one of the victims had a weapon. The investigation found we followed proper protocol, but three of us got terminated because heads had to roll.
I started doing work for a bail bondsman I knew who did a little side investigation work for select clients. That’s how I ended up following this sleazeball who’d taken out a second mortgage on his nice home in Bayshore Gardens and was using the cash to live it up while his wife stayed home with the kids. Every few days he’d hit the Mons and throw money at the strippers. He got lap dances, and on a number of occasions took one of his favorite girls to the Seminole Hard Rock Casino for a night of gambling and debauchery.
I sat away from the action at the Mons and observed. I took notes, some photos, maybe a little video for evidence. And every time it was Lisa Moon in her skimpy waitress outfit who came to take my drink order.
“Just soda water.”
“For real?”
“Yeah,” I said, “you have soda water, don’t you?”
She shrugged and wrote the order down on her pad. “You on the wagon?”
“Does it matter?”
“You a cop?”
“What makes you think that?”
She gave me that little sideways smile. “I dunno. The Dockers, the shoes. You got the look.”
“The look, huh?”
“You come in here a couple times a week and sit in the back, drink soda water, and never get a dance. What gives?”
“Nothing gives,” I said. “You getting me my water or do I have to go to the bar and get it myself?”
I took my overnight bag. Hurricane Lloyd was less than a couple hours away. We were already getting occasional feeder bands. If rescuing Lisa Moon took too long, I’d have to find a shelter down in Gibsonton.
Traffic was hell. Every gas station had lines of cars that snaked out onto the street. I-75 was bumper-to-bumper heading north, but the southbound lane was deserted. I was the only crazy headed into the storm.
On my last visit to the Mons, my subject didn’t leave until closing. When I walked out, Lisa was standing outside smoking a cigarette. She tossed the butt in the air and it flew across my path like a falling star, stopped me in my tracks.
“So where to next?” she said.
I had to smile ’cause she was too cool, wearing a pair of black leggings, combat boots, and a gray tank top. She looked totally different than the waitress I’d come to know at the Mons.
“Sleep,” I said.
“What about the dude you’re shadowing?”
“What about him?”
“You gonna follow him or what?”
“Nope. But when that son of a bitch wakes up in the morning, he’s going to be looking at divorce papers.”
“So, mission accomplished?”
I nodded.
“Right on. We should celebrate.”
I looked behind me at the Mons. “Bar’s closed.”
She nodded to the side. “How about breakfast? My treat.”
We walked to the Denny’s down the block and took a booth at the very back. She had French toast and coffee. I had the All-American Slam. She talked. I listened. I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep or that the last few months of surveillance work had destroyed whatever little social life I had, but that morning, as dawn turned the windowpanes a sad gray, I was captured by her bright-blue eyes.
Lisa told me she grew up in a small town outside Augusta. She dropped out of high school and escaped to Miami, where she found a job booking cruises for some online discount outfit.
“It wasn’t as glamorous as I thought it was gonna be,” she said as she drowned her toast in syrup. “I wanted to travel, so I stuck with it for a couple years. The dude I was living with at the time managed a club on Washington Avenue in Miami Beach. One day he tells me he’s been offered a job running the London Victory in Tampa, so he splits. I followed only to find out his move had nothing to do with work. He was chasing some Cuban bitch with huge knockers.”
“What’d you do?”
“I kicked his ass,” she said all casual, “and moved to St. Pete and got a job at one of those trendy restaurants on Beach Drive. Three years and five jobs later, I ended up at the Mons Venus. I should’ve gone there from the start. Place is a gold mine.” She stopped talking and eyed my plate. “You gonna eat that last piece of bacon?”
As predicted, we went back to my place.
The address Lisa had given me led me to the Fairfax — a trailer park across Riverview Drive from the VFW. The place was like a junkyard of eight or nine single wides in various stages of disrepair. My first thought was that I was in the wrong place. I couldn’t see Lisa living in this filth. I couldn’t see anyone living here. But still, I parked between a rusted orange trailer with a Confederate flag on the window and a dirty single wide whose roof was half covered with a blue-vinyl tarp and old tires.