Chapter 4

JULY 23, 2014

I flew into Jacksonville International Airport for the first time in ten years. The sun was shining and the ground temperature was 92 degrees. As we circled the airport I could see black thunderclouds building in the distance. I'd forgotten how clockwork the summers were in Jacksonville.

Hot as hell during the day, summer heat like a thick cotton blanket lying across your face, followed most days by the rumble of afternoon thunder and violent, refreshing storms that were wonderful to experience if lightning or high winds didn't kill you or demolish your house in the night.

I got a rental and took care of some business, then bought flowers and visited the Ever-green Cemetery. I found the graves without much trouble, although the old cemetery had expanded and added sections since I'd left. Granite headstones marked the resting places of Eileen and Patrick McCarthy.

I'd bought vases for the roses I'd gotten for Mom, her favorite flowers, and the sunflowers that Dad, a big rough Irishman, had told me were his favorite because they had been his mother's favorite.

I'd expected to find the gravesites a little forlorn. Evergreen was managed well and the owners kept things cleaned up. But it had been ten years since I'd last been there, and there was no one else to visit or remember them.

But they were well trimmed and vases already sat on each grave site, although the flowers in them had faded and wilted. I looked around but there were only a couple of visitors a long way off. I knew that sometimes church groups would visit and take pity on the forgotten graves and take special pains to beautify them and leave flowers. Whoever they were, they had my gratitude.

I had meant to leave the flowers and spend only a moment. But I sat for an hour and I could never later exactly remember my thoughts. I don't even know if I thought in words. Only feelings of sadness and loss, for a life and things that were precious and now were gone forever.

I had most of the day to kill so I drove around the downtown and found myself heading out U.S. 17 South. I took the off ramp, drove onto the divided four-lane that veered right and found myself traveling into the past. A lot of buildings, like the old pharmacy, a few small stores on the left side remained unchanged. On the right O'Brien's had expanded at least two stores down from where I remembered it.

And it had been big when I had been a regular. I wondered what O'Brien had come up with to fill that extra space. It was only a quarter to 7 and so there were plenty of parking spaces. I pulled into one on the curb and made my way to the front door. It still said in the same golden, gilt lettering, "O'Brien's."

The doors had changed, now resembling the old fashioned wooden swinging doors of a Western saloon. But there was plate glass above the painted-on wood design and an electric eye swung one door open inside and opened the other to the outside to let customers leave. There were two more doors at the very end of the bar. One had a steps and a railing for the handicapped, another a ramp for wheelchairs. It all seemed so much more – civilized – than it had been. But times change.

I put my hands out and the door swung inward. I stepped inside and looked around. The long wooden bar seemed longer than I remembered. Obviously the business had expanded. There were tables for customers to sit and drink, a large area for dancing, the far area reserved for pool and a few electronic games. Despite the time of day, approaching twilight, the bar was still largely empty. Which wasn't unusual for a Wednesday.

Looking across the floor I spotted a large sign across the wall saying, "O'Brien's Late Night Eats."

Of course, that's where the expansion had been. He had taken over the adjoining shops and turned it into the late night restaurant night owl customers and late night partiers had been asking for. And the doors were handicap accessible. But, I'd be willing to bet, he could lock them with a touch of a button behind the bar.

Occasional brawls had always been part of the lure of the bar, but you couldn't have riots spilling out into the restaurant where customers were eating. So he had the best of both worlds - the wild and woolly bad bar vibes on one side, and a sedate eating experience on the other.

"You doing an inspection, or are you here to drink?"

The blonde bartender's words weren't particularly friendly, but the face and honey hair piled high above her, and the chest that filled out an "O'Brien's World Famous Saloon" T-shirt made me willing to overlook the attitude.

I walked over to the bar and leaned over to see the rest of her. Hot pants caressed a particularly nice ass and she had legs that went on forever, ending in four-inch platform heels.

"How tall are you, anyway?"

"Anybody ever tell you that you're a little too curious? Ask me about what we serve and I'd be happy to talk to you. And keep your eyes off my ass."

The tone still wasn't very friendly, but there was a twinkle in her eye. This was foreplay. I liked this game.

"I'd say six-foot in stocking feet, add in another four inches for heels, and I don't know why you're working here, but with legs like that, I'd say you must have been a showgirl at one point. Vegas? New York? Private clubs? And I'm sorry for staring, but you have a fantastic ass."

She didn't take offense and I didn't expect her to. Any woman that looked like her had to be used to being hit on

"Are you going to drink? That's the reason most people go to bars."

"Coors. In the glass."

"That's the way we serve them."

She turned around and bent under the bar, flexing that ass and I had an almost over-whelming urge to bite it. She came up with a bottle and a mug and poured it until the head lapped the edge of the mug without spilling a drop. She glanced at me from under long lashes and looked like she was struggling not to laugh.

"You must really love your Coors."

"Something like that. I like beautiful things, and Coors is a beautiful beer."

She let me wet my lips and take that first wonderful sip of ice-cold beer and then said, "You're a pirate?"

"Pardon?"

She reached out with one long finger and almost, but not quite, ran it along the deep scar that cut the middle of my face from under my ear to the edge of my lip. It had been bright red when it first healed but now had faded to an angry brown under the sun of a lot of alien climes.

"It makes you look like a pirate, or a very bad man."

"No to the first, yes to the second. And you can touch it if you want to."

That almost made her smile.

"Does that line ever work?"

"About fifty percent of the time."

"You must hang with some really stupid women. I think you'll be disappointed in here. The average IQ of our female customers is too high to fall for that."

"That's okay. I'm not interested in picking up any of your customers. Now, the staff, that's a different story."

"Sorry, our waitresses don't make dates- during business hours. We find it causes too much trouble and distraction. What they do off duty is their own business."

"I was thinking more along the lines of bartenders."

She just shook his head.

"How old are you?" she asked.

I gave her a long up and down look. When I looked closer at her face and neck, it was obvious she wasn't as young as I'd first thought. But she was still a beautiful woman.

"Thirty eight, but you've obviously managed to fight off the ravages of time. Are you forty-five, fifty? I don't have mommy issues and I don't go cougar hunting, but you're a beautiful woman. Could a cup of coffee next door during a break hurt anything?"

This time she did smile.

"I'm closer to sixty than fifty, and if I'd ever had children, you could be my son."

"A little older than I thought, but I'm not asking you to marry me. Just have a cup of coffee and talk? Again, what can it hurt?"

She leaned over toward me and did something that made her breasts bulge out even further.

"But what would be the point? I don't think you're the kind of man that likes to make pointless conversation. I've met men like you many times before. A cup of coffee, or a drink always leads somewhere else. And you're used to getting what you want. But you're not going to get it tonight."

"Even if that was true, would it be so terrible? You've obviously an interesting woman besides your appearance, and I could tell you stories from a misspent lifetime that would probably amuse you. I honestly may never, likely will never, come this way again so we probably won't meet again. Haven't you ever heard that old saying, 'what happens in Jacksonville, stays in Jacksonville'."

I stared at her breasts and smiled. A lot of women have told me over the years that the smile is my best feature.

"And can you honestly say, with no one around, that you won't be even a LITTLE curious after I'm gone about what it might have been like?"

"If you don't stop hitting on my wife, McCarthy, I am going to kick your Irish ass clean across the bar and out to the street."

I swung around on the bar stool to find O'Brien poised to land a haymaker that probably would have jolt me from the top of my head to the soles of my feet.

"O'Brien? Your wife?"

He just grinned.

I stepped into him, wrapped my arms around him, and spun him around. Since I was about a half foot taller, I took him off his feet. We both pounded each other's backs until he said, "Jesus Christ, Mike, let me down. This is embarrassing."

I let him down. He had changed. He'd aged. He still had most of his hair, but it was streaked with silver. He was a little thicker through the middle, but from the strength in his arms he still had the power that had killed at least one man in the ring when he fought professionally. Even when I'd been a young man passing through his saloon, he had been well beyond his pro days, but no young stud was ever stupid enough to think about getting into it with him.

I looked over at the blonde. She was smiling at him fondly.

"Really, your wife?"

He leaned into the bar and she bent down to give him a long wet kiss. It should have been funny, that tall gorgeous showgirl type bending over to kiss the short muscular man, but it wasn't.

"My wife. And I have to tell you, Mike, I'm glad I recognized you before I did something I would have regretted."

"Ignore him," she said. "He's used to men flirting with me. That's the reason why he has me in this outfit. He knows I can handle myself. And now, O'Brien, will you do me the honor of introducing me to your charming friend?"

"Sorry, Sugar. This is Michael McCarthy, the son of an old friend who practically grew up in this bar."

She reached out and shook my hand.

"I'm glad to meet you Michael. How come I've never seen you around here before?"

I took a second to think and then said, "I've been gone a long time."

"Sugar, pour me a beer and Michael, you tell me what you're doing back here. It's been TOO long."

Perching himself on a stool beside me, he took the frosted beer mug she handed to him and turned to me as she moved down the bar to handle three customers who had just walked in.

Touching his mug to mine, he said, "To Old Friends, and Bad Pennies who keep turning up."

"I'll drink to that, and to people that never get old. Honestly, I thought you might be dead by now. It has been a LONG time. Instead, you got yourself one of the nicest – Ladies – I've ever seen. It's got to be a companionate marriage. Considering your age – and all."

He rapped my chin with his fist, still able to move so fast I couldn't have blocked him, and said, "Yeah, it's companionate as Hell. Sometimes we companionate two or three times a night. Actually, I shouldn't lie. I don't companionate twice a night anymore, but once usually does the job."

"You're an old dog, O'Brien. You give me hope for when I get as old as you."

Take a deep swallow of the golden beer in his mug, he wiped the foam off his lips.

"What are you doing back in town, Mike? Davidson told a few of us what happened and that you weren't planning on ever coming back? I'm not sure anyone ever blamed you."

"An old friend of mine, from high school, died a week or so ago. His family got a message to me to make it back for the funeral, which is tomorrow. And I took the opportunity to visit mom and dad's graves. There are a couple of other things I need to do, maybe an extra day, and then I'm out of here. I'm glad I had a chance to see you – and meet your hot new wife – because I don't think I'll ever be coming back. There's nothing here for me anymore."

He looked down the bar to where Sugar was flirting outrageously with the three customers. His eyes actually twinkled.

"So, what have you been doing the last ten years, or at least the last five?"

"Same thing I was doing when Davidson and Mike Henry ambushed me in Guatamala. I've visited maybe 50 countries and all seven continents in the last 10 years, flown into and out of more foreign airports than I care to remember. I've sailed through a few hurricanes and typhoons, ran for my life in the Ukraine and the Congo and Myanmar. I've had dysentery, Yellow Fever, Malaria, the Black Plague. Been shot twice since Guatamala. Stabbed once. Crash landed an airplane twice. Just the run-of-the mill stuff.

"On the other hand, I've seen waterfalls hundreds of feet high that maybe no white man – maybe no man – has ever seen before. I've sailed over what looks like the ruins of Atlantis, but are really only coral formations where the ships haven't reached. I was alone in a 20-foot-long skiff in the Indian Ocean while a 50-foot-long Great White played tag with me."

He shook his head and took another swallow.

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Mike you make me wish I was young again and could go with you."

I looked toward the front doors and the crowd that was beginning to stream in. A few older couples, but most younger couples and singles, the guys looking as cool as they could while they scouted the female singles who tended to hang in groups. Here for the music, the drinks, the good memories and maybe the chance for the Glorious Lay of a Lifetime. It was all so damned sweet and innocent, no matter how bad the guys thought of themselves, the girls in their short skirts and nearly invisible tops with eager young breasts playing peek-a-boo and promising the delights of heaven to lucky young men. They wanted to appear sinfully decadent, but all they were was young and in full bloom.

I felt so incredibly old viewing the scene. I felt like a visitor from another time, another planet traveling back into time.

"It might sound romantic, O'Brien, There are moments, but it's usually pain and being scared shitless, and working 36 hours straight on project that don't pan out. It's eating in strange little hole in the wall restaurants that leave you puking and shitting for 24 hours, It's always be-ing an outsider."

"Then why do you do it?"

"I love it, I'm good at it. And there's nothing else I can do."

"Can do or want to do?"

"Same thing."

"You ever think of settling down somewhere, Mike? The world is a big place, there are a lot of beautiful cities, a lot of beautiful women out there. And there are oil companies and companies that deal with oil everywhere."

"Not really. A city is a city, no matter how beautiful or exotic. And when you can live anyplace, what difference does it make? And there are always women. But, they're only women."

A sad and knowing look crossed his face. He didn't need to say anything, but he did.

"You've never found The One?"

"I did. But I lost her a long time ago."

He motioned to Sugar and she tore herself away from her admirers.

"Give us both another round. And don't get those guys so excited they'll be hopping over the bar to get at you."

She patted him on the head.

"You know I'd just toss them back over again."

She refilled us and then leaned on the bar with her elbows.

"So, Michael, how did you get that awful, romantic scar?"

"A man was trying to kill me. I killed him."

She glanced from her husband to me, then said, "That happen often in your line of work?"

"Fortunately, not too often. Now, it's my turn. One of you guys tell me how you got together. What I'm really asking is how in the world did an old guy land a gorgeous wife like you? It sure as hell wasn't his looks."

"No, it was his money."

"I knew it had to be something like that."

O'Brien swatted me on the back of the head.

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, McCarthy. I'm not that old."

She reached out to caress his gnarled fist that had done so much damage to so many men.

"No. I had semi-retired to Miami-"

"You retired. You were a showgirl?"

"For a few years. In Vegas and New York. I went to school at night, got my accounting degree, started handling money for some of the girls I worked with. Then I started a successful escort service –"

She stopped when she saw the look on my face.

"Not that kind. There are always rich men who want an attractive, leggy showgirl type on their arm at dinners, nightclubs, anything. I kept my business clean enough to keep the cops away. I told my girls, 'if you want to sleep with them, go head, but keep it off the clock. Do it on your own time."

She gave O'Brien a look that almost convinced me they were the real thing. Even though it seemed impossible.

"I branched out into talent management for a while, got married twice and divorced three times. Little story there. Finally decided I didn't need any more money and I wanted a place on the water where I could walk the beach in shorts and bare feet. I found it and I was happy."

She pointed to O'Brien.

"Then this guy came along and everything went to hell."

I laughed.

"I can totally see that."

"Tell him the whole story, Sugar. How you got so lucky to land the man you've been looking for all your life."

She rolled her eyes.

"And modest, too. I hadn't seen my brother up here in years and I heard he and his wife were having trouble. I came up to see what I could do. But, this guy had already saved his marriage, and probably his life."

O'Brien shook his head.

"Chris has been a friend of mine for 30 years. His wife contacted me and told me ... they were in trouble. I didn't do anything heroic. I just sat him down and talked to him like an old friend. I gave him some information and he and his wife were able to straighten out their lives. I'm just glad it resulted in me meeting Sugar."

"My brother told me what had happened and I decided to meet this character before I headed back south. So I walked into O'Brien's one Friday night and ... things just happened."

The look that passed between them proved telepathy existed.

"This was last year? O'Brien, you are a fast worker."

"We were married two months after that first night," she said.

"Neither one of us are spring chickens, McCarthy," O'Brien said. "When you get our age, you realize you don't have forever. You meet someone and you don't want to say goodbye - you don't."

"You gave up heaven on the beach to come up to Jacksonville and work in a smelly bar? Now, that must be true love."

"It's not where you're working, but who you're with,"she said, reaching out to grab his hand again.

"She's not a bartender, Michael. She bought in and is a half partner. We were able to do some work on the place. It was her idea to create the 'late eats' restaurant."

"And there's beaches twenty miles from here," she said. "We keep a condo at Jax Beach for when I have an uncontrollable urge to put my feet into the sand. And I talked him into hiring a real Assistant Manager so he only has to work four nights a week. I thought about trying to talk him into retiring full time with me, but ... this bar is his life and I'll never get him out of here completely."

"I'm happy for both of you. I do have one question though. With you so tall, and O'Brien so – height deprived – how do the two of you – you know... ?"

She just smiled a feminine smile.

"He's tall enough to reach all of the good parts."

O'Brien – as God is my judge – blushed.

There are sailors who told me in my travels there are instincts that cannot be explained rationally. That there are times when all the scientific equipment is clear and the forecasts call for brilliant skies and calm winds. And you're on the deck of a ship and you're looking at peaceful vistas of calm water when a strange feeling will begin to grow at the base of your spine.

It grows up through your stomach and the hairs on the back of your neck rustle and then rise in fear and it takes over your body and even if it is still and calm, you can sense a wind from Hell beginning to sweep across the water. Your eyes strain to see – things – beginning to move deep within the blue. The ship begins to move beneath your feet.

They called it the Dark Seas. And if you ever feel it, they said, get the hell out of there if you can, or get to the nearest shore, because all Hell is about to break out. And when I asked them why I hadn't heard about it before, the answer was simple. The people who didn't run didn't live to tell anyone about it.

I'd never heard anyone talk about it occurring on dry land. But I now knew what it felt like because it swept over me like a chill wind from Hell.

I stared at my old friend and told him, "You'd better call the cops right now, O'Brien. Because I know you used to be a pro fighter and all, but that was 40 years ago. When this is over, I'm going to hurt you."

Sugar stared at me with fear clear on her face, which must have meant she believed my threat.

"When this is over, you've got the first shot," O'Brien said. "And it's been 40 years, but no man has ever put me down. You're welcome to try, Michael, but there are things you don't know, and you need to know. If I get a beating, it will be worth it."

"Hello, Michael."

I turned to face my undying personal nightmare.