“No. No, of course I don’t, Cliffy. We both know Eddie couldn’t do anything like that, that violent. Still, I wish he’d just beat the crap out of Kile and make him go away. But Eddie isn’t man enough to do that.”
“Heck. Why not let Kile try. If he proves Eddie did it, the general may just knock him out of his will and you’ll wake up in clover.”
“But,” Karen said, “if he proves Eddie didn’t do it, any chance I have of the general deciding to give me a bigger cut goes down the drain. It is only the general’s doubt, tiny as it may be, that Eddie is innocent that might cause the general to reconsider how he’ll split it up between Eddie and me. So, no, things would be better with the general having his doubts. I wish he had never hired Matt Kile.”
“I don’t know, Karen. I mean, I want whatever you want. You know?”
“What I want is for you to come over here. Lie down. It’s been too long, Cliffy.”
After Cliff sat on the bed, he felt Karen’s hand on his naked thigh. He looked over at her. She put her hand on his cheek and pushed him back until he was lying beside her. She kissed him on the lips, his neck, and then on his chest. From there she worked her way down until she took him into her mouth and controlled him.
Chapter 14
Last night I stopped short of going to Cliff Branch’s house to confront General Whittaker’s chauffeur. Instead, I had gone home and put in a couple of hours reading the proof of my next novel that my publisher had attached to his email two days ago.
Today would start with me in Cliff’s face. He could have been the male voice that had threatened Cory Jackson and Tommie Montoya eleven years ago as well as Robert and Melanie Yarbrough. None of them would recognize his voice. From what Charles said, he had the skill with a rifle to have shot the Yarbrough’s little dog, Snookie. He had also been tight with Eddie in those days, introducing him to Ileana. I also figured that as the general’s chauffeur he had been an unofficial observer of the Whittaker family for more than a decade. And he had undoubtedly spent time ogling Karen. I understood this completely because I had known her only a few days and I had already spent time doing my own ogling. I had even earned my more-than-ogle merit badge. Maybe Cliff and I were also lodge brothers in that regard.
Charles came out the front door to meet me. I had called ahead to be sure Cliff was there.
“Good morning, Mr. Kile. The general is feeling poorly and won’t be using Cliff today. I saw him head down the stairs to the beach about ten minutes ago. He was in his trunks so he might have gone in for a swim. There’s hardly ever anyone in that stretch of the beach except coming down from our house.”
I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, but I had dressed in a pair of casual slacks, a polo shirt and tennis shoes. They would be good on the wooden stairs; Charles had said there were one-hundred and eleven steps down to the beach.
There were landings about every ten-to-fifteen stairs. When I got near the bottom, a man I recognized to be the general’s chauffeur stepped up toward me. “I’m Cliff, you’re Matt Kile, right?”
I reached out to shake his hand and he hit me square in the jaw. I went down backwards onto the stairs behind me. He stood there waiting for me like an umpire waiting for Tommy Lasorda. His hands up, all Marquis of Queensberry like. I obliged him and stood. When I did, he took another swing at the other side of my jaw. It was my right to turn the other cheek, not his to do it for me. I blocked his blow and hit him in the stomach, then in his face, coming up under his chin. It was his turn to fall back. He did, stumbling down two steps before falling onto the sand.
“What’s your problem, Cliff? I wanna talk, not fight.” After I had my say, I stood back, waiting for him to get up. He didn’t keep me waiting long.
It was an old-fashioned fight. No weapons, just fists. It was the way men used to fight before every punk decided he needed a gun or at least a knife. We smiled, more like smirked, at each other as we moved slowly. His bare feet scarred the sand while my tennis shoes made strange imprints that filled with water, and then went dry.
“Why don’t you get lost, Kile?” He punctuated his question with a controlled left hook. I blocked it. Then he said, “Leave this family alone.”
I let my hands sag to my sides, and then brought my right up into his stomach. My left followed. He took the two blows to his gut well. I could feel its hardness.
“You’re all sweaty, Cliff. You been running on the beach?”
“Karen and me run a couple times a week.” He then dropped to one knee and hit me on my inside thigh. I staggered but stayed upright. He knew how to hurt somebody, but he had chosen not to hit the inside of my knee. He let me have a moment. I wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fight or talk. He kept doing both. “I want you to stay away from the Whittakers.”
It’s hard to say much when you’re getting slugged so I kept it short. “That’s the general’s decision.” I got up off my one knee and drove hard toward him. My head hit him flush and slid off the side of his chest. I wrapped my arms around his back and drove with my legs. We moved toward the surf and didn’t stop until I could see the darker, wetter sand below our feet. “I’ve got … questions,” I said, having to take a breath in the middle.
“Like what?” He grabbed me with his arms down under my chest, and groaned as he tried to lift and throw me off. He wasn’t able to lift me off but he cancelled my ability to drive him farther. Then he leveraged me sideways. I gave up my hold on his midsection and we went back to circling, our feet tearing the harder sand.
He hit me on the side of the forehead with a left cross, then a right to the nose, and two quick blows to my belly. Whomp. Whomp. He was good. He knew how to hit and how to do it in combinations.
I stepped back. “You’re a bit rusty? That combo should have put me down. Hey, let’s sit and talk.” He stood back, smiled and lowered his hands. When I relaxed, he lunged forward and hit me with the same combination leading first with the other hand.
I spat blood on the sand.
I left myself open a bit, inviting him to lead with his right. He did. I punched him in the armpit with my left, then brought that same fist up and around and hit him in the face. Then after faking a tired right cross, I used the flat edge of my open left hand to chop him hard in the throat. He was hurt. He was tough. He dropped to his knees. I dropped to mine and hit him two more times. Once with each fist, my left found his chin, my right caught him high on his opposite cheekbone. I figured he was about done in. I was wrong.
While we were still on our knees, he hit me in the stomach, again and then again. Then two times in the face. I could no longer keep count. It was all I could do to return as good as I took. His blows that landed weren’t hurting as much. I guessed mine had also turned feeble. We were both near the end of our endurance, no longer able to hold our hands up in any semblance of a defense. We were each taking blows and delivering them back, just two hard heads too ornery, too stupid, and too stubborn to do what we both longed to do-collapse onto the sand.
Then I heard voices. Cliff turned toward them. Over the crash of the surf, I couldn’t understand the words, but I saw the people yelling: Karen and Charles were hollering at us to stop fighting, that much was clear. We ignored their words and watched Karen running toward us. The uneven sand made her body do things that made us forget our fight.
“A draw, Mr. Kile?” Cliff extended his hand. I took it, stood and pulled up, helping him stand. Did that make me the winner? I won’t go there. We had fought to a draw. Cliff was a tough guy. It was a good old-fashioned fight, the kind that hurt like hell while feeling good on some level.
“Cliff,” Charles said, “the general will hear about this. The last time he bailed you out, he said no more fighting or you’re gone.”
“Whoa, Charles,” I said. “This wasn’t Cliff’s doing. We got talking about his time in the military, mine in the department. How we both missed getting in the ring with our buds. I asked him if we could go a couple rounds down here in the sand. He said he couldn’t. He had promised the general. I told him the general said the staff was to fully cooperate with me. I talked him into it and told him I’d take responsibility.”