WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (Part 27 - *The End)

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Jared Mulligan

Sydney, Australia

Approaching Sydney Harbour, I looked at everything with an aspiring novelist’s eye. The Harbour Bridge. The Opera House. The city skyline. Everything I saw offered itself up as potential settings for my novel.

It was with a great sense of anticipation that I disembarked from the ship. At the bottom of the gangway, I stopped to take it all in. The souvenir shops. Waterfront cafés. The Opera House. Street entertainers. People coming and going. I’d never before been here, but I felt like I was finally coming home. After the fight on the balcony, I felt like shit, but I would heal. And I would quit trying to figure out why Archer had attacked me. It was probably just a case of him not liking me. That, and some obvious mental health issues. That was apparent when he threw the photographer over the railing and into the ocean. There was nothing I could have done for Daniel. He was dying, and for me to come forward to tell what I had seen would only have sealed my fate.

So now I was a new man. Never again would I be Ty Hamilton, retired pilot. I was now  Jared Mulligan, and I had not a care in the world. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes for a moment, savoring the Australian air, then let it out, opened my eyes and smiled for the first time in a long time.

A woman walked past me. And without seeing her face, I knew. The fragrance. The same one I recognized before, but could not identify. It was her. Like I said, guys never forget a hot chick. I recognized her gait, the way she walked. And the voice of Little Bo Peep, who had spilled her drink on me at the masquerade party.  “Jasmine!” I called out.

The woman stopped for the briefest of moments, perhaps barely half a second. She nearly turned, but restrained herself, and resumed walking on, head down, at a much quicker, purposeful pace. “Jasmine!” I called again, but this time there was no reaction other than she picked up her pace. 

Just then, man dressed in a business suit bumped into me, and I took my eyes off her. When I looked again, she was gone, vanished into the crowd. No, I must have been wrong. What would she be doing here, alone?

“My fault,” the man said, “Sorry, mate.”

“No problem,” I replied. Nothing was going to bother me today.

I spotted a coffee shop nearby, with outdoor seating. I couldn’t think of a better way to begin my walkabout.

“Excuse me, Sir,” a young woman said. “Is this yours?”

I was taken by surprise. I saw a passport in her hand. “No, I don’t think so . . .” I patted the inner pocket of my jacket. Sure enough it was gone. How could that have happened? I took the passport and opened it. It belonged to Yours Truly, Jared Mulligan. “You’re right,” I said, “It is mine. Thank you!” I said.  “Lucky for me you found it!”

“No worries,” she said. “Enjoy your stay.”

I nodded, smiled. I was going to like Australia. The people here were so friendly and polite. “Absolutely,” I said, returning the passport to my pocket with care.  “No worries!”

And with that, I put away all my concerns. I’d found Mulligan’s offshore bank accounts. Changed all his passwords to one I’d remember. Ty Hamilton and Michael Welch were history. The woman with the familiar perfume—nothing but a mere figment of my imagination. None of that mattered now. I was a new man with a new life. A clean slate.

I had taken my Mulligan. Now I could take a look, see what was behind Door Number 2. I would go wherever I wanted. Do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. With whomever I wanted. For as long as I wanted. All the time. Sounded like a damned good plan to me. My walkabout was about to begin.

Epilogue

Beneath an umbrella at one of the waterfront cafés, not a stone’s throw from the Sydney Opera House, a rough-looking man in his mid-thirties sat with a raven-haired woman. Together, they watched the last of the passengers disembark from the cruise ship. At the bottom of the gangway, the last passenger off the ship was standing alone. As he turned to go, the passenger collided with a bloke dressed as a businessman. They spoke to one another briefly, then parted company. The man in the business suit appeared to be looking at something, then dropped it to the ground.

Moments later, a young woman, barely out of her teens, bent to pick up what the businessman had dropped. She gave it a quick glance, then approached the man from the boat, got his attention, and handed it over to him as he patted his jacket pocket.

Soon after, the raven-haired woman’s cell phone rang. “Hello?” she answered, then listened for only a few seconds.

“You’re quite sure?” She listened for a few seconds more. “I’ll let ’im know.” She hung up.

“That our boy?” the rough-looking man asked without looking her way.

“Jocko pinched ’is passport. Adriana took a look as well. It’s ’im,” she said. “Jared Mulligan is here.”

“Bring him to me. Alive.”

Half a world away . . .

Page, Indiana

Sheriff Mike Bridges pulled into last available parking spot at Trudy’s Uptown Diner. It was suppertime, and the place was packed. When he entered the establishment, a few patrons nodded and waved, greeted him by his first name. Others, presumably people who had voted for his opponent in the last election turned away, ignoring him.

There were no unoccupied tables or booths. Sheriff Bridges spotted an empty seat at the counter and made his way across the room toward it.

“Mike!” Perry Winters caught his attention, motioned for him to join him in his usual corner booth. Bridges changed direction, approached the coroner. Winters stood and the two men shook hands.

“Good to see you back on the job, protecting the community from evil-doers.”

The sheriff half-smiled, chuckled, and said in a quiet, gravelly voice, “Smartass.”

“Have a seat, Mike,” Winters said.

“Thanks, Perry. What are you doing here alone, this time of the day?”

“The wife’s out of town for a couple of days. Visiting her mother in Dayton. I didn’t feel like cooking. How’re you doing? You healing up okay?”

The sheriff nodded slowly. “Doc says I’ll probably never get my normal voice back. What you hear today is probably what I’ll sound like from now on.”

Winters shook his head. “Sorry, Mike.” Changing the subject, he said, “That your new cruiser out there in the parking lot?”

The waitress approached. Sheriff Bridges did not recognize her. “Hello. My name is Cindy,” she said. “I’ll be your server this evening. Our special is chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and green beans. It comes with your choice of a salad or soup.” She smiled, poised with pen and pad, ready to take his order.

“I’ll try it,” the sheriff croaked.

“Soup, or salad?”

“What kind of soup?”

“Chicken noodle.”

The sheriff nodded. “That’ll do.”

“What to drink?” she asked. “Maybe some hot tea? Sounds like you’ve got a sore throat.”

Perry Winters winced. “Geez, Cindy! Are you the only one in town doesn’t know the sheriff here was in a bad accident a few weeks ago? Cripes, he damned near got killed. Look at the scars on his neck. Hell, his windpipe was nearly crushed. That’s why he sounds like this.”

Perry Winters had taken the sheriff all the way from Messerton to the Page hospital while Larry Brown brought the burned-out wreck of the sheriff’s car back to the junkyard. The fabricated accident report stated that the sheriff had swerved to avoid hitting a deer and run off the road, not on the outskirts of Messerton, Illinois, but in rural Page County, Indiana. It was the best cover story they could come up with, given the circumstances.

Cindy was visibly shaken, trembling. “Oh, I’m so sorry!”

“Don’t worry about it,” the sheriff said, dismissing the minor faux pas with a wave of the hand.  “Bring me a glass of ice water and don’t give it another thought.” He turned his attention back to Winters as the waitress hurried away. “What were you saying?”

“I was asking about your car.” Winters said. “Is that your new unit?”

“Yeah. Insurance company came through.”

“It was smart, handling it the way you did,” Winters said, leaning forward, speaking in a hushed tone. “Hurt as bad as you were . . . I don’t know that I’d have had the presence of mind to text Larry Brown to come tow it.”

“Larry’s reliable. And he owes me.”

“Good to have people you can count on.” Winters sighed. “And having Larry’s nitwit cousin Leon run the car through the crusher before the claims adjuster could get a look, pure genius. There would have been a lot of questions to answer if he’d seen what had really happened, your car being all shot up and burned like it was.”

“It’s always good to have at least one nitwit in any operation,” the sheriff smiled. “They do what they’re told and never ask questions. Then, when things go south, it’s easy to pin the blame on them. They’re even more loyal to you afterward for not firing them.”

“I texted Larry right after I contacted you.”

“You gave me a scare, Mike. Caller ID said it was you, and then when I answered – nothing.”

“I was hurt bad. Couldn’t talk. I had to try again, with the text.”

“I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. I was packing heat, just in case. You looked pretty bad when I found you. Nothing could have prepared me for the way you smelled. My God! I never did get the skunk smell out of that car. I finally just sprayed it heavy with air freshener, took it to the dealership and traded it in.” Perry Winters leaned in, whispered, “Larry’s solid?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we don’t have to worry about him, do we? He won’t talk?”

“Larry’s solid,” the sheriff said. “I told him to take care of it. Take the contents to you, so he’s as involved as either of us.”

“What contents?”

Sheriff Bridges head jerked slightly. He leaned in now, “The contents, Perry,” he said. “Hamilton’s body. I told him to bag it and bring it to you, then crush the unmarked unit before anybody got a look at it.”

“Larry didn’t bring me a body.”

“What?”

“I just assumed you had him bury it there, like you’d planned to do originally.”

Sheriff Bridges stared past Winters, at the wall, turning over this new bit of information. He said nothing.

Winters broke the silence. “I did just like you said, when your people found Mulligan’s body on the river. I went through the motions, did a half-assed autopsy and identified the body as Hamilton, then persuaded his family to cremate it.”

The coroner and the sheriff locked eyes. Winters said, “This means he’s still out there, doesn’t it? Ty Hamilton is still alive.”