I carried the .38 with me everywhere, sometimes on my belt covered by a light jacket or a denim shirt, sometimes on my right ankle. The damned thing chafed me in both places, but I thought I might need it. I was beginning to wonder why.
It had been quiet. Sunny was teaching during the week. She came home full of stories – good students, bad ones – and lots of in between, but it was obvious that the college gig was good for her. She loved the students and the challenge, found it much more satisfying than filling beer mugs and mixing drinks for a bunch of Key West reprobates and drunken tourists at The Green Parrot – and the college kids didn’t try to pinch her ass.
Occasionally she handed me an essay with traces of innocent brilliance, philosophies or an attitude that screamed idealism or originality. I had to marvel that anyone -- even the young -- had escaped the skepticism and warped sense of reality created by the violence of ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Quaeda and the rest of the nihilists that sometimes seemed to pervade, and even control, too much of our consciousness. Would the kids survive to believe that there was anything true or good in the world? I wish the hell I knew.
I hoped there was, but I had to work to find it too much of the time. Sunny and I seemed safe for now, but there had already been two murders. I didn’t want ours to be the next two. Then there was Glen. I had talked to him a few times. He was upbeat and confident. His karate school was doing well and he’d hooked up with a new band. Lots of Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and Sonny Boy Williamson. They were mostly playing dives around Virginia Beach, but they were working steadily and he loved the blues music they played. “Blood and guts stuff,” he called it.
Nevertheless, Bill’s warnings were never far from my mind, “They’ll wait for a while, but not too long. It’s bad for business.” Glen, Sunny, and I had put a huge kink in their heroin trade – probably only temporary – but it had definitely cost them some money and a couple of dead thugs.
Bill knew. He was a detective with the Norfolk P.D. His wife, Sarah, taught at the college with Sunny. We’d had dinner with them several times. Nice folks. He was a bit quiet, overweight and sartorially challenged, but very clever and thorough when it came to dealing with the guys on the wrong side of the law. She was blond and still beautiful in a graceful maturity. Her face broke into a broad smile whenever I cracked one of my bad jokes. She seemed to have developed a strong bond with Sunny. It was that thing where they were the two that knew something no one else knew . . . and they weren’t telling. I supposed it was instructor insight -- or maybe it was just two like-minded women. Anyway, we invariably had good old-fashioned fun. Too much beer, wine, and lots of laughter. So what’s to complain about?
Me? I’m still a washed up English professor who probably imbibes a bit too much and can’t stop stepping in and out of murder. Sunny says it’s my destiny – that I’m the Ghostcatcher whether I want to be or not. So it goes. I’ve still got most of my hair and I’m carrying my 190 lbs. in the right places. Living on a boat keeps the eternal tan and a fair amount of muscle. It can’t be all bad.
In the short time, Sunny had already established herself as a top-notch professor. They offered her a five year contract with only one provision, that she publish a couple of professional articles a year. She already had one in the bag, a piece on student motivation as it related to introductory philosophy instruction. She was definitely the fair-haired woman of the moment. But the winter was cold. We suffered through the ice and snow like the rest of the country, and longed for south Florida, where the sun rose in the morning and the mid-sixties was considered a cold wave. She had some resumes in the pipeline and we waited. I thought if we could just get through the next few months without anything too scary, we’d be headed for sunshine and safety. I wish I had been right.