Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Ten

Shouts of laughter rang out behind him. He turned to see a guy and a couple of shapely young girls in wetsuits paddling on boards in the rising surf. A black lab ran in the shallows from one surfer to the other, its whole body wriggling in a doggie joy-dance.

A black 1969 Mustang with blue and orange Boogie boards bungee-corded to the roof rolled up First Street past the giant rosebushes, slowing as the men inside caught sight of the girls. The driver, a young man with a mushroom cap of curly blond hair, parked on the street. He and three other lean young men in black and neon wetsuits piled out, took down their boards, and jogged for the beach. Weather like this saved surfers a long ride through the tunnel to Virginia Beach.

John stepped behind a concrete pillar as the surfers stampeded past. Mushroom Head's blond curls, darkening and flattening in the mist, made him think again of Cabbage Clay, whose mug shots boasted the same chin-length blond curls.

No way, John thought. Too easy. All the same, best to wander around the parking lot and check out license plates just in case.

In two minutes he stood in front of it: black 1969 Shelby Mustang GT 500 with Virginia plate number SO FINE, burned into his memory forever from the Pride case file. Clay's.

Now what?

Arresting Clay wasn't going to help him much. All he had to do was say, "Yeah, I was Pride's CI," and not talk.

He could tail the guy home.

If none of them had noticed his plain white detective's sedan, with its city license plates and supersize antenna, sprawled like a beached whale only yards away.

The boy with the iPod dangled his legs over the front of the pavilion, jumped down, and ambled off. The bay rolled and rumbled beyond the retaining wall.

John wandered back over to the pavilion and climbed up from the front. The two girls crowded closer to the center of the stage, away from the mist, and John caught, "My mom pushed me down the stairs." Shrieks and laughter from the surfers wove between the spray and the rushing sound of the water. The dog paddled under the pier.

The two girls clambered down off the pavilion and walked off, rubbing their hands up and down their bare forearms. The black Labrador swam too close to Clay as he pushed his Boogie board out into the choppy bay again, and Clay punched his board forward into the animal's rib cage. A startled yelp pierced the rumble and crash of the water.

From the left of the pier the guy with the dog yelled, "Why'd you hit my dog, asshole?" and crawl-stroked under the pier.

Clay yelled, "Keep it on a leash, asshole!" The first man swam faster, his arms chopping at the water.

John turned and slid down off the front of the pavilion to the ground. He had some nitrile gloves in the glove box of his vehicle; he retrieved a pair and jogged to the Mustang, careful not to actually think about what he was doing. For this kind of thing, one's mind had to be professionally blank.

Not that he had ever done it before. And if he got caught, he wouldn't ever be doing it again. Certainly not with a detective's badge on his belt.

He slipped the gloves on and looked around for a rock. A quick glance around at the empty park, and seconds later the driver's side window lay in pieces on Clay's front seat.

John rifled the glove box first. Yes, the car did still belong to Clay, although the registration wasn't any more help with a home address. The address on the registration was 1408 East Pembroke, which Solly had traced to a Mailboxes N' More months earlier. John glanced over his shoulder and checked the rest of the glove box: zilch. No guns, no drugs, nothing.