normal I reached into my small cooler and uncapped a bottle of Rock, took a long drink and turned my face into the sun.
I came awake when a shadow changed the light on the back of my eyelids and I fluttered them open. In front of me was the passive round face of the same small boy who had caught me unawares on my porch. Again he was staring down at the longneck bottle I’d unconsciously wedged in my lap and the notion flashed into my head that I was breaking the law by consuming alcohol on the beach. Maybe a look of consternation came into my face because the boy looked into my eyes, turned and ran. When I turned to see who the kid would run to, to report me, my cell phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Freeman?”
“Hey, Sherry,” I said, not quite out of the blur of sleep. “What’s up?”
“You tell me.”
Ahh. The beauty of caller ID. Even if I hadn’t left a message on her machine, the detective’s calls would all be digitally recorded, giving her the option to at least know who had tried to reach her.
“I thought we could get together again on this O’Shea deal,” I said. “I took a side trip to Philly, maybe something you should hear.”
I heard her hesitate and wasn’t sure how she was going to take the word of my nosing around in Philadelphia without her knowing.
“Is this information that’s going to help me, or hurt my investigation, Max? Because right now I’ve got another girl missing and I’m about this close to locking up your friend.”
“Another one?”
“Susan Martin, Suzy. The missing persons unit is funneling anything they get with earmarks of my guy’s M.O. to me. I have another frantic mother who’s been everywhere, talked to a dozen friends of her daughter’s, the girl’s landlord down here and nobody’s helping.”
“Bartender?”
“Yes.”
“When did she quit showing up?”
“Six weeks ago.”
“Knew O’Shea?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to question the bar manager now.”
“I’ll meet you,” I said, taking a chance.
“Kim’s Alley Bar during the eight o’clock shift change. You know where it is?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been there before.”
Kim’s is an oddity in the present-day city of Fort Lauderdale. It’s a neighborhood bar tucked in one corner of a landmark shopping center. The land was once occupied by Clyde Beatty’s Jungle Zoo. In the 1930s the site was a training and birthing facility for the big cats of the circus; lions and tigers, predators all.
The present-day center holds restaurants and antique stores, a funky bookstore and a Laundromat. Across the street to the west is the Gateway Theatre which in 1960 held the premiere of Where the Boys Are and changed the atmosphere of Fort Lauderdale for the next twenty years.
But only half of Kim’s changed since it was established in 1948. Once a true alley bar with a small entrance obscured in the shadows, it was later split into two separate rooms by its layout. On one side is a modern place with pool and Ping-Pong tables and dartboards and a small uninspired bar top. But down a narrow, dim hallway, on the parking lot side of the shopping center, is a treasure. In this room is an ancient bar-back crafted in rich African mahogany by artisans from a different century who knew intricate scrollwork and woodcraft. The cabinetry is old school, built in Baltimore in 1820 and then dismantled and moved to New Orleans. Kim’s owner purchased it there and moved it to Fort Lauderdale in 1952. Without knowing its final destination, the proud head of a lion had been carved high in the center of the scrollwork, somehow a testament to the land’s history. I had been inside a few times and never once drank a drop in the gamer’s side.
I arrived just before seven and half the stools at the bar were taken. I took an open one at the close end near the windows and the door. A Steve Winwood CD was playing on the juke and the manager, a pretty woman with shoulder-length brown hair who I knew as Laurie was gathering receipts while a younger woman was refilling ice. Laurie looked over first.
“Hey, stranger. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
I nodded my hello.
“Rolling Rock, right?”
“Perfect.”
Laurie turned to the other girl who pulled a cold bottle from the cooler and set it on a napkin in front of me.
“Hi,” she said. “Run a tab?”
“Hi. No. Thanks,” I answered, putting twenty on the bar top. “I’ll pay as I go.”