Excerpt of Deep Six by D.P. Lyle

It was precisely 12:12 a.m. when the window shattered. A crack-crunch, an eardrum concussing pop, and a spray of glass shards. It didn’t explode by itself, mind you, but rather courtesy of a cavity-backed, perimeter-weighted two-hundred-dollar five iron. A Callaway. I recognized it because it was mine. Or at least it had been.

I knew the exact time because the flying glass yanked me from sleep, my forward-slumped head aligned squarely with the dashboard clock. Took a couple of seconds to gain any sort of perspective on what had happened.

Of course, sleep wasn’t part of the job. Watching the house two doors down and across the street was. In my defense, nothing had moved in the house, or even along the street that snaked through the high-dollar neighborhood, for at least a couple of hours. But sitting in the dark, behind the wheel of my car, boredom did what boredom does. Knocking back the better portion of the bottle of Knob Creek hadn’t helped either. Stakeouts were mind numbing and a little more numbing of the mind couldn’t be all bad. Right?

“Jake, what the hell are you doing?” the reason for the glass explosion screeched through the jagged hole.

This wasn’t just any window. It was vintage, the reason it shattered rather than simply spider-webbing. The original passenger window of my otherwise spotless 1965 Mustang. Burgundy with black pony interior, now littered with glass shards. Going to be a bitch to find a replacement.

Speaking of bitches, I recognized the grating voice even before I looked up into the face of my ex. Tammy’s the name; crazy’s the game. I’d lost four good years listening to it. Mostly whining and complaining, sometimes, like now, in a full-on rage. She had a knack for anger. Seemed to need it to get through the day. She gripped the five iron with both hands, knuckles paled, cocked up above her shoulder, ready to smash something else. If history offered any lesson it was that she might graduate from the side window to the windshield and so on until she got to me. Tammy didn’t have brakes. Or a reverse gear.

Cute according to everyone, except maybe me, she was a beach-blond with bright blue eyes, a magic smile, and a perfect nose. Some plastic surgeons were gifted. Expensive, but gifted. I knew. I’d paid for the nose.

But cute Tammy had a short fuse. She could go from zero to C4 in a nanosecond.

Like now.

“Funny, I was just fixing to ask you the same thing?” I said.

Still shaking the cobwebs loose and trying to get oriented to person, place, and situation, I managed to get the characters involved sorted out pretty quickly. Staring at a cocked five iron in the hands of your ex- wife will do that. The place came along in short order. Peppermill Road. A loop off Perdido Beach Boulevard that arched through The Point, a megabuck enclave nestled into another expensive enclave known as Perdidio Beach. Very high up the financial food chain, The Point was a row of seven-figure, stilted homes that hung off Peppermill like charms on a bracelet, each facing the Gulf over a wide sugary beach.

Okay. Two down, one to go.

Person, check. Place, check. It was the situation I struggled with.

“Why are you parked in front of my house?” she asked, chin jutted forward, eyes flashing that anger I knew so well.

Well, there was that.

“I’m not. I’m parked across the street.”

The five iron cocked another couple of inches. Her knuckles whitened even more and her pilate-pumped forearms tensed. “Don’t mess with me, Jake. Why the hell are you here?”

“Is that my five iron?”

Tammy’s face flushed and the rage that rose up in her chest was almost palpable. I knew I could be infuriating, could push her buttons like no one else. Lord knows she had told me often enough. Truth was I did sort of enjoy it. She actually was cute when she was mad. Dangerous, but cute.

That little vein that ran down the middle of her forehead expanded as she spun, switching to lefty, and shattered the Mustang’s small rear passenger window. Also original. Probably even harder to replace.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s wrong with you?” I was smart enough not to add “other than the usual,” but it did cross my mind. Did I mention the woman never could find her own brake pedal?

She pointed the five iron at my face. “Why are you spying on me?”

I now noticed that she was wearing black sweat pants and a cropped pink t-shirt, exposing her tight belly. She would be hot if she weren’t so insane. I’d married the hotness, and divorced the insanity.

I began brushing glass snow from my shirt and shaking it from my hair. “I’m not.”

“Really? You going to go with that?” At least she had lowered the five iron. “You’re parked across from my home, clear view of my living room, and you have your pervert glasses with you.” She nodded toward the binoculars on the passenger’s seat. They were also frosted with shattered glass.

“Night vision. I need them for my work.”

“Work?” She didn’t even make a feeble attempt to cover the sarcasm in her voice.

“I’m on a case. For Ray.”

“Just great. The only person I know who makes you look smart.”

Ray, my dad, actually was smart, sometimes frighteningly so, but Tammy and Ray had never really hit it off. Ray didn’t play well with most people. Neither did Tammy. So they mixed in an oil-and-water, cat-and-dog, fire-and-ice kind of way.

“You remember him?” I said. “He’ll be happy to hear that.”

Another button pushed.

“Don’t be an ass. I tried for four years to sweep him out with the trash, but some lint you just can’t get rid of.”

I smiled. “And he always speaks so kindly of you.”

She bent forward at the waist, her eyes now level with mine. “Right. So why are you working for Ray?”

“He needed someone to do a bit of surveillance work.”

Her expression said she wasn’t buying it. Like I was lying. Can’t imagine where she got such as idea. She gave a soft snort as if to add an exclamation point. “Why not that red-headed behemoth that follows him around?”

“Pancake’s busy.”

Another snort. “Probably eating.”

“Or sleeping. He tends to do that about this time every night.”

She shook her head. Sort of a disgust shake. “And here I thought you swore you’d never work for Ray.” She shrugged. “Guess that’s like every other promise you ever made.”

“Doing a little surveillance isn’t exactly working for him.”

“Surveillance? A big word for snooping.” I started to say something insightful about collecting evidence and not snooping, but Tammy wasn’t finished. “I don’t really give a good goddamn who you snoop on as long as it’s not me.”

“It’s not.”

“Right.” She took a step back and the five iron rose again. She searched for another target. Her gaze settled on the windshield.

“Put the club down and listen.” She lowered it a notch, but her tight jaw didn’t relax an ounce. “I know most things in your world revolve around you, but this has nothing to do with you.”

Her head swiveled one way and then the other. “Who? What did they do?” She was now in full gossip mode. A Tammy staple. “I bet it’s Betsy Friedman, isn’t it?” Not waiting for a response she continued. “Is she humping someone?” She looked toward a gray house with a large fountain in front just ahead of where I was parked. “I bet she is.”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Right. All that private eye protect the client shit?”

“Exactly.”

Longly Investigations, my father’s PI outfit. Ray Longly had been a lawyer and a former FBI Special Agent and then did some kind of spook work for the Feds he would never talk about and now for the past five years a PI. Ever since he split from the alphabet soup of D.C. agencies. Or they split from him would be more accurate. Part of Ray’s “never playing well with others.”

“And your antics aren’t helping the investigation,” I said.

A quick burst of laughter escaped her collagen-plumped lips. “That’s rich. You couldn’t investigate a flat tire. You’re an idiot.”

Sort of explains the divorce, doesn’t it? Partly anyway. Before, back when I played major-league baseball, she’d thought I hung the moon. Could do no wrong. Took her to the best restaurants and nightclubs and vacations down in South Beach, sometimes Europe. Tammy loved Paris. And loved playing a Major League wife. Rubbing shoulders with big-name athletes, believing that she could be a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Truth was, she probably could. Even today at thirty-one.

But four years ago, after my career ended, after I pitched eleven innings on a cold Cleveland October night and never recovered from the rotator cuff injury that followed, and after the paychecks dwindled to nothing, she moved on. To a lawyer. The guy who owned the seven- figure, six-bedroom hunk of steel, glass, marble, and designer furniture across the street.

Circle of life on the Riviera. Not that one. The redneck one. Gulf coast style.

“If it’s not Betty, then who?” she asked.

I shook my head. “At the risk of being redundant, I can’t tell you.”