Jason Deas - Benny James 02 - Pushed Read online

  “What is that?”

  “I thought everybody was trying to find this man named Brother Jim? I thought he was responsible for these acts?”

  “That’s the popular theory.”

  “Do you have another theory?” Azim asked.

  “No, but I’m a journalist. I don’t get paid or stand out among my peers if I just accept the main story and parrot it back every night on television. I have to think about all the what ifs and dig up something new.”

  “What if there is nothing new to find?”

  “There is always something new to find. I found you. I discovered that Josephine Brezark had someone in her life who really cared about something other than her body. That someone saw past her occupation and treated her like a human being deserves to be treated. Don’t you think for her memory, that I have not wasted my time this morning?”

  “I think it very much,” Azim answered. A single tear appeared in his left eye. “I think it very much.”

  Rachael finished her cup of coffee and stood up. She held out her hand to Azim and he bypassed her hand and gave her a gentle and sad hug.

  “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep and maybe we can meet again,” Rachael suggested.

  “I would like that,” Azim answered.

  Rachael handed Azim her business card with her cell number handwritten on the back and turned to go.

  Azim stopped her. “She did leave one thing here,” Azim said. “Can I give it to you?”

  “Sure,” Rachael answered. “I’ll make sure it gets in the right hands.”

  Azim reached under the bar and handed Rachael a brown tattered Bible.

  Chapter 7

  Rachael met her producer for breakfast and ran a few other errands before calling Benny at a few minutes before eleven. She was sure he would be out of bed by this hour.

  He answered the hotel room phone after the first ring.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” Rachael said.

  “What happened last night?” Benny said with a little laugh.

  “Let’s see,” Rachael began. “Chatty Cathy came over in the form of Benny James and boy was he thirsty.”

  “I am so sorry,” Benny said, with shame seeping through the phone line.

  “You were actually pretty cute.”

  “Should we do it again tonight?”

  “I don’t think so hotshot. I don’t think my ears can take all that talking.”

  “I thought girls liked to talk,” Benny kidded.

  “Yes,” Rachael answered. “We like to talk—we don’t like to listen all night.”

  “Oh,” Benny said. “Got it.”

  “How about an early lunch?” Rachael suggested.

  “Is it that time already?”

  “It’s almost eleven.”

  “Let me jump in the shower and I’ll meet you.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “You rented a car?”

  “No,” Rachael said. She was parked with the car running. She held the phone out the window and revved the engine. She quickly pulled the phone back to her ear to catch Benny’s reaction.

  “You stole my car,” Benny joked.

  “Girls like fast cars, too. I’ll pick you up downstairs in forty-five minutes. Does that give you enough time to shake off the hangover and get prettied up for a lunch date?”

  “Plenty. See you downstairs in forty-five.”

  Benny was waiting with a cup of coffee when Rachael pulled into the hotel lot. She had on a pair of sunglasses Benny had never seen her wear.

  “Nice glasses, Slick,” Benny said getting into the car.

  “The ones I usually wear did not go with the car,” she answered. “I stopped by a street vendor’s little cart and bought new ones.”

  “Are you planning on keeping the car?”

  “I might,” she playfully squeezed his leg and peeled out of the parking lot.

  As the wind rushed by, Benny asked, “Is it OK if we shut the windows so I can hear myself talk?”

  “I guess,” Rachael answered. “I now know how much you like to talk,” she teased.

  “Ha, ha. Very funny, Mrs. Earnhardt Junior.”

  “What?”

  “Your glasses make you look like a NASCAR driver.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Maybe you are,” Benny said, finally able to set his cup of coffee down to put on his seatbelt.

  As they cruised along the road without talking, Rachael’s right hand found Benny’s left and they laced together. They rode this way without talking the entire way to the restaurant.

  As Benny and Rachael pulled into the lot, Benny noticed that the restaurant actually had a hole in the exterior wall.

  “I don’t want to hear any cliché jokes,” Rachael warned.

  “No jokes,” Benny said. “I just want to know if it’s safe to eat here.”

  “Of course it is,” Rachael answered. “There was a misunderstanding a few days ago.”

  “What kind of misunderstanding places a hole in the side of a restaurant the size of a bowling ball?”

  “It was actually a misunderstanding about a bowling ball.”

  “Am I still drunk?”

  “No, because if you were I wouldn’t be able to get a word into this conversation,” Rachael teased.

  Benny smirked.

  “I’ll explain it to you over lunch,” Rachael assured.

  After ordering nonalcoholic drinks, Rachael explained. “If you happened to notice, the name of this place is ‘Gutter Balls.’ The owners, until a few days ago used to be best friends who were on the same bowling team.

  “One of the guys, named Gary had loaned his lucky ball to the other, Tim, who was in some sort of a slump. With the loaned ball, Tim almost rolled a perfect game three times in a row. After the third time, Gary asked for the ball back and Tim refused. It just so happens that as soon as Gary lent the ball to Tim, he himself went into a slump and attributed the slump to the loaned ball.

  “So, there was a fight over the ball. To make a long story short, Tim is also an aviation enthusiast who owns a small plane, and in his anger he returned the ball from ten thousand feet. Luckily he did not kill anyone, but he did put quite the hole in their restaurant.”

  “Wow,” Benny said. “Next time I get to pick where we eat.”

  The two chitchatted until the drinks were served. Once the drinks were on the table they got down to business and the case at hand.

  “We have not discussed our agreement for this case,” Rachael put forth.

  “We have not,” Benny agreed.

  “On our last case, if I may call it such, we agreed upon an exclusive sharing of information with your promise of exclusivity to my network.”

  “I have a little problem with that this time.”

  “What problem?”

  “My client is the problem.”

  “For Christmas cactus sake, spit out your problem.”

  “Did Jerry Lee teach you how to curse?” Benny teased. The Jerry Lee he spoke of was a writer for the Tilley Bee, the hometown paper where Benny supposedly retired and got caught back up into investigative work. Jerry Lee made up his own curse words after he supposedly found the Lord.

  “No,” Rachael answered. “Jerry Lee certainly did not teach me his way to curse. I just don’t like to take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Benny said.

  “Don’t go there, Benny! It is not negotiable,” Rachael instructed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, with a sheepish smile.

  “Can we get back to your client and his problem?”

  “Sure. Reverend Jim made me sign some papers that forbid me from going on any and all television shows to discuss the case.”

  “For Christ sake!” Rachael yelled.

  “Easy tiger. And watch your language. I thought you didn’t like to …”

  Rachael cut him off before he could finish his statement saying, “You did what? I thought we were a team? I was c
ounting on you. You are my number one source for information. For Christmas cactus sake, what am I going to do?”

  “I did amend the document he asked me to sign,” Benny offered.

  “And what did you amend it to say?”

  “It says I can talk with whomever about whatever I like off the air.”

  “Did you really?”

  “I did, partner.”

  “OK.”

  “So, we’re partners again?” Benny asked.

  “Depends,” Rachael answered with a smirk.

  “Depends on what?”

  “Depends on you not talking so much,” she said, as they both had a good laugh.

  Rachael and Benny perused the menu as their talk fell silent for a moment. A Jimmy Buffet song, Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes played in the background. At one point Rachael piped in with the chorus and Benny’s head popped up as he gave her a quizzical look.

  She noticed him looking at her and said, “What?”

  “Jimmy Buffett fan?” Benny asked.

  “Not really,” she answered. “Doesn’t everybody know this song?”

  “I guess,” Benny answered. His face fell.

  Rachael could tell he wanted to say something but just didn’t want to get into it. “What’s on your mind?” she tried.

  “It’s nothing. I don’t want to go on another rant on the heels of last night.”

  “Can I play investigative reporter on you for a minute?” Rachael asked. She reached across the table and stroked one of his hands, which held his menu tightly.

  “You are an investigative reporter,” Benny stated, putting his menu down to focus on her.

  “Let me show you how good I am.”

  “I already know you’re good.”

  “Let’s take it to another level,” Rachael suggested.

  “OK,” Benny agreed. “Shoot.”

  Rachael took a deep breath. “You my friend, are a Jimmy Buffett elitist. Although you like his greatest hits and popular songs as much as the next guy, you would never ever admit it. Furthermore, you think all the Corona swilling, Margaritaville singing people are faux parrot heads and to you they are sickening. The sight of a tipsy couple singing Cheese Burger in Paradise makes you want to throw up. Am I making sense here?”

  Benny nodded.

  “Should I continue?”

  Benny nodded again.

  “You, my Jimmy Buffett elitist friend have at least twenty-five different Buffett CDs—you probably do not even own the greatest hits one. You know all the rare cuts, the songs he sang long before he was famous, and the songs he wrote for other artists that earned them hits. You consider yourself a true fan because you have not only scratched the surface of his work, but you have buried yourself in it, listening to his work over and over to the point where you feel a deep, deep connection to his soul.

  “A soul you feel is misunderstood by the masses. You are protective of him in a way that even you don’t understand. You just know that he has never received the recognition he deserves as a great songwriter and the drunk Jimmy Buffett party types make your stomach churn and your teeth grind with disgust. You, my friend, are a true fan and a Jimmy Buffett elitist.”

  Rachael took a little bow as she stayed seated and waited for Benny’s response.

  “Damn,” was all Benny could muster. “How…”

  Benny tried to think of something to say, but his brain spun and spun and looked for somewhere to land and did not find anywhere that could hold his out- of-control cranium.

  “Do I need to give away my secrets?”

  “Please,” Benny begged. He looked at her as if she were a magician who had pulled a buffalo out of a hat.

  “Well,” she began. “I did spend some time on your houseboat during the last case. I will admit that one morning when you were off taking care of some police business, I was in the mood for some music and I perused your CD collection. As I was trying to decide what to pop into the CD player I saw a handmade box sitting where all the music was and figured it was some sort of special giant box set or something along those lines.

  “I was not trying to be nosey. I am a curious person, but I stop at nosey.” Rachael’s eyes were sparkling over her drink. “So, I opened it up expecting to find a set of bluegrass CDs or live shows you had attended—or something out of the ordinary that would not fit in with the rest of your extensive collection. And instead I found your sacred Jimmy Buffett CDs. I didn’t count, but I would guess there were at least twenty-five of them.”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “All of your other CD cases were in pristine condition. The Buffett CDs looked as though they had been through wars with you. They had nicks, were discolored in places, some looked as though they had even been under water?”

  “Long story.”

  “I could tell by the box they were very special to you. Add that with the fact that you are a man worth a great deal of money who lives on a houseboat—you feel that lifestyle deep within yourself to some extent. Tell me,” Rachael inquired, “and feel free to rant on and on,” she added, “if I am anywhere near correct.”

  “Bull’s-eye,” Benny answered. “People don’t understand Jimmy Buffett. They think he’s just a guy who you listen to when you get together with your friends on the weekend. You take tequila shots and pound beers while he is blaring over your boom box singing about Margaritaville, Come Monday, and A Pirate looks at Forty. He is so much more than that. I don’t mean to be a hater, but did you ever have a favorite thing that got popular and it kind of ruined it for you?”

  “Yes,” Rachael answered. “You may be too old for this,” she said in jest, “but I was working on a story in Canada and was listening to the radio a good bit thinking that I might learn French if I listened enough. I listened to morning talk radio, a top forty hits type of station in the afternoon, and another talk type of program at night.

  “This Canadian up and coming group named the Barenaked Ladies was the talk of Canada. They had a song titled, If I had $1000000. The song was going nuts up there as well as the rest of their music. I fell in love with their music. When I came back to the states, nobody had heard of them and didn’t seem to care how good I said they were.

  “I kept listening to my recordings and forgot about trying to convince any more people. About a year or so later, I heard the million dollar song on the radio and people were just going crazy over it like it was a new discovery. For some reason it really pissed me off. I felt as if it was my discovery and I was disturbed in a way that I could not properly describe that America was unearthing my previously found property.”

  “I hear you sister,” was all Benny could come up with as the waiter approached their table.

  “Have you two had enough time to look at the menu?”

  Benny looked at Rachael.

  “You order first,” she said to Benny. “I’ll be ready in just a second.”

  Sticking with the theme of the conversation Benny said, “I’ll have a cheese burger with everything, medium rare, side of fries, and a margarita on the rocks with enough salt to melt icecaps.”

  Rachael dropped her menu in a fit of laughter. In between hysterical bouts she somehow found the strength to say, “Make that two.”

  Chapter 8

  Red did not watch a lot of television. He grew up deep in the Ozark Mountains in what could basically be called a shack with very few amenities and fewer possessions. A television set for him in that part of his life would be like an average person having a couple of matching spaceships. Red’s family was lucky to have one cow with working udders.

  When Red showed up on Benny’s doorstep, fresh off a Greyhound bus trip from Arkansas, he had never used a telephone, washing machine, electric or gas oven, or anything resembling a modern appliance. He was a real piece of work.

  Having met Rachael, Red tuned in to her cable show every now and then. The first few times he had seen her on the television he had tried to talk to her and was confused when she did no
t talk back. Benny thought he had explained to Red thoroughly how it all worked after this occurrence. Red’s brain went into super overdrive one time when the network was showing a rerun of her show and she actually walked into the room with Benny. Imagine what it would be like if Elvis suddenly appeared before a tour group at Graceland and you will get a pretty clear visual of what the scene was like.

  Ever since Benny had left for Florida to help with the case, Red made a special effort to catch the show each night to get updates. As the case happened to be one that caught the nation’s attention, it was nearly always the top and first story.

  Red always turned off the television after she stopped talking about the Brother Jim case and turned to other topics. After Benny had been gone for two nights and Red had not seen him on her show he became concerned and did something extremely unusual—he made a phone call. Red, of course had to pull out a piece of paper with instructions Benny had written for him on how to make a phone call. It took Red about forever to punch in the numbers Benny had written down for him. After a few seconds, Red could hear the distant sound of ringing.

  Benny had caller ID and knew it was Red and answered saying, “Hey Buddy!” He waited a moment and said it again, “Hey Buddy, it’s Benny. Can you hear me?”

  “Phone not working good today, Bendy.”

  “Do you have it upside down again?” Benny asked.

  Red pulled the phone away from his face and studied its shape and features and turned it around.

  “Hello?” he said once he had it turned around.

  “I can hear you much better now, Red. Did you have the phone upside down again?”

  “Yes,” Red answered. “You talky machine is not very good made, Bendy. Both sides be looking the same. I think the peoples who make this be not too very smart.”

  “I hear you,” Benny said, still amused by Red’s innocence and ignorance of even the simplest of things. “But remember,” he said, “you just said that it was my talky machine and since you bought the house from me it is now your talky machine. So, if you want to take a marker and draw an ear on the ear side and a mouth on the side you talk into, it is yours to do whatever you like with.”