WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (51- 55)

51

Ty Hamilton

I knew the Lakeview Resort. I’d gone there once, about sixteen years ago, when Dianna and I were going through rough times. It was one of those mistakes you make, and then you learn to forgive yourself and just live with it, if you know what I mean. The Lakeview Resort was nowhere near a lake, and it wasn’t anything resembling a resort. Not sixteen years ago.  And certainly not now. From the look of it, there had not been any renovations since my last visit.

The decision to come here had been an easy one to make. I needed to get Mulligan’s rental car away from the river, where his body had been dumped. It made sense to move the fallen limb out of the way and take the Camry back to the motel, where he was registered. Any search, if there was to be one, would begin there. And hopefully end there as well. I still had to figure out how to get back to my truck and what to do with it.

Years ago, all hotel rooms came with real keys, and they all had numbers engraved on them. Back then, all you had to do was look at the number on the key and you knew which room it went to. Now, it’s not so simple. Everyone gets a card with a magnetic strip, and you have to remember which room you are in, because it’s not printed on the card. Even little Mom and Pop no-tell motels like the Lakeview Resort had kept pace with the times. Sort of. The familiar sign outside said “Color TV”—like that was still a novelty—but there was no mention of WIFI. There are limits on progress.

The parking lot had only a handful of cars. A beat-up pink Cadillac circa 1973. Must have at one time belonged to a Mary Kay rep. A late-model Hyundai. And a Chevy of indeterminable vintage, painted with primer only, no rear bumper, and Tennessee license plates duct taped on the inside of the rear windshield. Despite the lack of guests using the lot, apparently there was a problem with patrons from the bowling alley next door parking here. This I surmised from the hand-painted sign that said:

PARKING FOR

MOTEL GUESTS ONLY

ALL OTHER’S

WILL BE TOAD

52

Ty Hamilton

I sat in the Camry, trying to guess which of the dozen rooms the key card would open. I supposed that I could simply go through the process of elimination, pressing the card into each slot, one by one, until I found a winner. It wouldn’t take long, being that the place was so small. But, unless I hit the jackpot on one of the first tries, I could easily draw attention to myself—barefooted and dressed in a security guard uniform. Soon after my arrival, a fat guy in tattered denim shorts and a stained wife beater undershirt stepped out of unit 11. His right arm and both legs were splattered with tattoos. His left arm was relatively untouched, with the only visible ink being the stars and bars of the confederate flag on his shoulder. I watched as he leaned against the doorframe and lit a cigarette. After deeply inhaling a few drags, he flipped what was left of the cigarette out into the parking lot, leaving it to burn itself out.

Small things like that can trigger a flashback. I was around ten, maybe eleven years old. Dad had been using some older boys from town to help work on the farm on Saturdays. A couple of them were smokers.

One day, after one of Mom’s famous noon meals that always kept them wanting to work on the Hamilton farm, one of them flipped a half-smoked cigarette into our gravel driveway just before getting into the truck to go back to the field with Dad.

I stayed there. So did my younger brother, Jay. Neither of us moved, each hoping the other would leave us alone with the cigarette. We looked at one another. Then we looked at the cigarette. And back at one another. We both grinned. I grabbed the cigarette, and ran behind the garage, where Mom couldn’t see us. Jay was right behind me.

I took a couple of puffs, and coughed. Not to be outdone by his big brother, Jay did likewise. And, in that moment we became men. We had smoked. That was the end of it. Until Jay’s conscience got the better of him, and he confessed to Dad and Mom.

I remember being called into the kitchen that evening after supper. There was Dad, sitting at the head of the table, a stern look on his face. Mom at the other end, making no effort to conceal her disappointment. And Jay, his head hanging in shame, sitting between them.

To this day I don’t even remember what our punishment was. It must have been traumatic, though, for me to completely erase it from memory. I do know that, as the older brother, I usually got the worst of it, because according to Dad, I was old enough to know better, and I was supposed to be setting an example for my little brother.

God, how I miss my parents. And my brother. How will Jay feel if I go through with my plan? He won’t know I am still alive.

53

Ty Hamilton

A woman with tangled waist-length silver hair, wearing a bathrobe and the worn expression of one who’d lived a hard life came to the doorway, said something to the guy in the wife beater, and he followed her back into the room. I eliminated unit 11 from the list of possibilities.

By being patient, watching the housekeepers and other guests come and go, I narrowed it down to only three possibilities – Units 7; 9; or 12. I started at 7 and worked my way up. I felt stupid, dressed in a security uniform, standing in bare feet. Naturally, it was not until the third attempt, unit 12, that I was successful. I made certain that the DO NOT DISTURB sign was placed on the doorknob, and then began going through the personal belongings Jared Mulligan had left behind.

The first thing I looked for when I entered the room was a pair of shoes. No such luck. Okay, worry about that later.

The fat guy and the silver-haired woman were really going at it in Unit 11. It sounded as if they were trying to knock down the wall separating their room from mine—or should I say, Mulligan’s. She was making a lot of noise, encouraging her lover with every thump of the headboard against the wall. Hard to ignore.

I flipped on the television. The local 24-hour news station helped drown out the noise from next door as I looked around the room for . . . I didn’t know what . . . anything that would tell me something about the man who had tried to end my life.

Mulligan had left an iPad in the Camry, but I didn’t know the Passcode. I’d found an iPhone on him on the island, but it wasn’t working. I assumed that was because he had fallen in the river. I undressed and went into the bathroom, took a few minutes for a good sit-down. And then, a long, hot shower. It felt great, the hot water opening my pores, cleansing and warming me.  I stayed in until the water turned cold.

I came out, toweled myself off, feeling human again, remembering the last time I’d showered here. Coming around the corner, seeing her there on the bed, smiling, inviting. It didn’t seem all that long ago.

There was a hair dryer mounted on a bracket next to the sink, and that gave me an idea. I took the iPhone, removed it from its case, and laid it on a towel on the bathroom counter. I positioned the hair dryer close to it, aimed so that the air would blow over the phone, not directly on it. I turned the dryer on low setting, and left them there. It was probably pointless, but there was nothing to lose by trying. Then it occurred to me to dry out the paper money and all the contents of his wallet, so I placed all of it on the counter, weighing down the corners with soap, hand cleanser, a Kleenex box, anything I could find.

Mulligan hadn’t left much in the motel room. Just a backpack containing a change of clothes and another wallet with a few hundred dollars more cash and a second ID. No shoes, unfortunately.

I needed to think. I sat on the bed, wondering what I should do. I was still having second thoughts about my plan to assume Mulligan’s identity. I was thinking, maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe I could leave the Camry at the motel, then manage to somehow get back to the launch ramp, hop in my truck and drive home. I could invent some story about how I’d had a problem with the boat, and . . . and then what if they found the body? Found my boat, all bloody? My clothes on the island where they’d been drying near the fire? The body of the man I’d shot?

I could just tell the truth. Something like, ‘Well, it happened like this: I pulled this guy out of the river, and then we ended up on an island, where I shot and killed him. But, it was self-defense, I want to make that perfectly clear. The gun? Oh, I threw it in the river. And the body? Well, I tried to bury it. But then, when that didn’t work, I decided I should maybe weigh it down with an anchor and dump it in the river. So you see, I’m completely innocent. Am I free to go now?’

I made a mental note to do a better job of thinking things through before doing anything in the future.

The image of my face—from a recent photograph—was on the television screen, and then a live video feed from a helicopter hovering over my truck and trailer, with personnel from the Page County Sheriff Department and the Indiana State Police milling about. The banner at the bottom of the screen read:

Missing Fisherman Feared Dead

I reached for the remote, turned up the volume to listen to the reporter saying how my family had become concerned when I failed to come home from a fishing trip, and that they were still holding out hope I would be found alive and well. To my relief, there was no mention of Mulligan’s body having been found.

The address listed on his driver’s license showed him to be from New York City. But the other driver’s license—with the same photo as the one on the other license—said he was Michael Welch, and the address was in Messerton, Illinois. I’d never heard of Messerton, but everyone has to be from somewhere, I suppose. So, who was this guy, really? And why did he need two ID’s? Was he running away from himself, too?

I was exhausted. A good night’s sleep, even in a run-down place like this, would be just what I needed. That, and pizza. I called the front desk. “What’s the best pizza place in town that delivers here?” I asked.

54

Ty Hamilton

Sometime during the night, I awoke to go to the bathroom. The hair blower had shut itself down, probably due to an over-temp. When I came out of the bathroom, I picked up the iPhone and gave it a try. The good news was that the hair dryer had done its job, the phone came to life. The bad news was that I needed a passcode in order to use it. And the battery was low.

I took the iPhone to the desk and retrieved Mulligan’s driver’s license. What was his birthday? November 4th. I tapped in 1104. Nothing. Okay, that would have been too easy. He was born in the year 1965. Same result.

His first name was Jared. Using the phone alphabet, I tapped 5273. No good. Mike?—6453—again, no good.

I flopped back onto the bed, staring at the ceiling with the phone in my hand, and fell fast asleep.

Next thing I knew, I was awakened shortly after eight o’clock the next morning when the housekeeper let herself into the room and shrieked at the sight of a naked man lying face-up on the bed. And of course, I jumped up, thinking I was under attack, and rushed toward her. She screamed again, even louder this time.

In the span of only a few seconds, I grabbed a pillow and covered up, the guy in the wife beater shirt came charging into my room with a baseball bat raised and ready to strike, and Jared Mulligan’s cell phone rang.

Just like in the old Pink Panther movies, whenever Inspector Clouseau was fighting Cato, the ringing telephone stopped everything. “Ain’t you gonna get that?” asked the guy with the bat.

I debated the merits of answering the call, and decided against it. I couldn’t risk someone hearing my voice and concluding something had happened to Mulligan. “I’ll let it go to voicemail,” I said. “Probably just a telemarketer.”

The silver-haired woman had joined us, and I was not entirely comfortable with the way she was looking at me, particularly with her boyfriend standing next to her holding a baseball bat.

“I hate them sumbitches,” he said, lowering the bat to rest on his shoulder. “You should gitcherseff on that do not call me list. They call you again, ‘n’ you turn they ass in, you get thirteen grand from ’em.”

Which I knew was bullshit, but what I said was, “Thanks, I’ll do that.” And then, “If you all don’t mind, I think I’ll get dressed now.” No one objected. Nor did they move. “Could I have some privacy, please?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” the fat guy with the baseball bat said. He turned to go, at first not noticing that his companion was lingering behind, eying me with a mischievous smile. Then, “C’mon, Edie. We gotta run out to the Walmart.”

“I’m comin’, Ollie. Don’t get your shorts all in a knot.”

“You want me to come back and make up your room later?” the housekeeper asked.

“Yeah, sure, that’ll be fine,” I said. “Say, Ollie!” I called out to the fat guy.

“What time?” the housekeeper asked.

“What?” Ollie said, with a hint of annoyance.

“What time you want I should come back?” the housekeeper demanded of me.

“I don’t care,” I said. “Come back in an hour.” I turned my attention back to Ollie. “If I give you some cash, could you bring me back some things from Walmart?”

“What’s in it for me?” he said.

“I’m on my break in an hour,” the housekeeper said.

“Come make up the room when you get back from your break, then.” And then back to Ollie again, “I’ll give you fifty bucks to buy some shoes for me,” I said. “And another fifty when you deliver them to me.”

“I want fifty now and fifty later,” Ollie said, “but you give me another fifty to cover the cost of the shoes. And I keep whatever’s left. So, that’d be . . .” Ollie lifted his head, his eyes rolled back as if searching for the answer inside his head. His lips were moving slightly, and he moved his right forefinger along the palm of his left hand as he did his cyphering.

I couldn’t take it anymore. “One-fifty,” I said.

“One-fifty,” said Ollie with a smile that revealed a mouth half-full of tobacco-stained teeth

“I get off work at two,” the housekeeper said. “I don’t stay past two.”

“Look,” I said, readjusting the pillow for better coverage. “I don’t care when you do it, just do it sometime after an hour from now and before you leave work.”

“Okay,” she said. On her way out the door she muttered, “Why didn’t you just say that?”

“Okay, Ollie,” I said. “That will work. I wear size ten.” I wanted something to go with my security uniform. “Get me some kind of comfortable walking shoes that are black, preferably. And some socks. Oh, and underwear!” I said. “I need underwear. XL boxer briefs.”

Ollie and Edie waited for me to get the cash, which was not an easy thing to do without dropping the pillow. Finally I just gave up and set the pillow on the dresser. I took a hundred and fifty from the bills that were on the counter. They were still a bit soggy. “Here.”

“See you soon,” Ollie said. “C’mon, Edie.”

“I’ve got a bit of a headache,” Edie said, winking at me. “I think I’ll stay here. You take your time, Ollie.”

Moments later I heard Ollie revving up the engine of the Chevy from Tennessee. Besides needing a bumper, it sounded as if it could use a new muffler as well.

55

Ty Hamilton

Ollie hadn’t been gone two minutes before there was a knock on my door. I opened it just enough to allow me to see who was there.

“I told Ollie I needed some things, too,” Edie said when I opened the door. “Gave him a shopping list. Should take him at least an hour.”

“Whoa! Hold on,” I said. “Not a good idea.” I’d slipped on my pants right after everyone had left my room. I wasn’t about to take them off again for Edie.

“Oh, c’mon, Sugar,” Edie purred. “I seen the way you was lookin’ at me.” She pushed gently against the door.

“Look,” I said, “Ollie’s a lucky fellow to have someone like you. Far be it from me to come between two people who—”

“What Ollie don’t know won’t hurt him,” she said, adding, “Or us! Come on, baby, let me in.”

“No, Edie!” I said firmly. “No offense. I just went through a breakup and I’m not ready for something like this.”

“Oh!” she said. “Fine. If that’s the way you want it. You’ll never know what you’re missing.” And with that, she turned and went back to her room, and slammed the door.

I got busy again, trying to guess the passcode for the iPhone and the iPad. Most likely the same one would work on both, but I couldn’t crack it.

I hadn’t been at it very long before there was another knock on my door. I looked through the peephole, expecting to see Edie again. To my surprise, Ollie’s Walmart run hadn’t taken nearly an hour. Maybe half that at most. “That was quick,” I said, opening the door and gesturing for him to come in. He seemed surprised. Like maybe he’d expected me to not come to the door, or to not invite him in because I had something to hide. Or rather, someone. I suspected I was not the first one that Edie had offered herself to.

Ollie handed me a couple of bags. One with underwear. The other with a pair of flip-flops. “What’s this?” I asked holding them up.

“Shoes.”

“Um, no,” I said. “These are not shoes.”

“They look fine to me.”

I looked down, at Ollie’s shoes. Old, badly worn sneakers. By comparison, the flip-flops looked pretty good. “Okay,” I said. “These will work.” Better than going around barefoot. I could buy something better later. “I see you got the underwear, too. Thanks, Ollie. I appreciate it.”

Ollie said, “No problem, man.” He turned to go, then stopped at the door. “You never told me your name.”

“Ty . . .” I caught the mistake, cleared my throat, and tried to recover. “Time I introduced myself,” I said. “Jared. Jared Mulligan.” We shook hands.