Saving an Innocent Man

by Robert E B Wright

  "Craig, how many people did you talk to?" McGuire was the picture of doubting calmness.

  "He made announcements in bars, saloons, tackle shops, gas stations."

  "How many people did you hear this from, Craig?"

  "He offered five thousand bucks for the guy! Alive!"

  "Five thousand bucks," McGuire said coolly but with raised eyebrows.

  "Five thousand bucks?" Diaz said with surprise.

  "Five thousand bucks," Mulholland said again, flatly.

  "How many people Craig?"

  "Three."

  "Three?"

  "Yeah, three. What, that's not enough?”

  "And they, the three people, underline three, you spoke to, said, underline said, that Detective Lieutenant DiSantis, underline Detective Lieutenant, said they should get, underline get, this perp, who's probably already dead, underline dead, but they should keep him alive to get the five-thousand-dollar reward! Underline five-thousand-dollar reward!"

  "That's basically it, yeah. Underline basically."

  "And what did you have to do with this Harvard research project, Diaz?" McGuire wanted to know.

  "No entiendo el inglés, Señor McGuire."

  McGuire puffed away at his cigar for a few seconds. "So what are you trying to prove, Craig?"

  "Prove? I'm trying to prove a point, Tom! That DiSantis knows more than we know and that this guy is bigger than we thought, no pun intended. This guy, this fugitive, might be the biggest bust of the decade. In the whole country. I mean, maybe he's a kingpin, I don't know. But I do know that the Chicago PD wants him bad. Bad enough to send a lieutenant down here. Bad enough to go out in the boonies and tell people to bag this guy. Bad enough to offer a five thousand-dollar reward. There's no way in hell I'm going to let some lard-ass of a lieutenant, from Chicago no less, beat me, pardon me, us, out of the biggest bust of our careers, Tom, no fuckin' way!"

  "Sit down, guys." McGuire looked like a cigar smoking Pope. They all sat. McGuire held his belly behind his desk.

  "I used to think you'd make a great detective any day, Craig. Now, I think you might make a great detective any year. Because a great detective works with facts, not assumptions."

  "Assumptions, huh? You think I just make wild ass assumptions left and right, huh Tom?"

  "You made an assumption the minute you walked in here, Craig. You assumed, I repeat, a-ssumed, I wasn't in my office. But I was. I was under my desk looking for a lighter. Then you blew your cool, shot off your mouth and looked like a schmuck!" There was a slight pause.

  "Then you tell me you went out on the trail, checking up on, what sounds like a first-class experienced detective and spoke to three rednecks who said that he said they should get, nail, catch, grab, whatever, a man that looks big. Now as we all know, those rednecks out there like to shoot anything, big or small. You are right about that. You're talking about people who not only poach alligators, which are protected, but shoot bears and endangered Florida panthers, as well. Remember the chief of the Indian tribe who shot a panther for ‘religious’ reasons a few months ago? But you’re assuming that all these people, these three people, are not exaggerating one little bit. Then you assumed that the five-thousand-dollar reward is coming from the Chicago Police Department when, in fact, many rewards are offered by families, relatives and friends of people hurt or killed in crimes. It could be that this is the case here. Maybe DiSantis is getting an even bigger reward from some private source for bringing this bad dude to justice. Maybe from the rich father of some kid who overdosed, you don't know."

  Mulholland kept squeezing a dimple into his chin with his right hand.

  "But I'm leaving you two on this case." They were surprised. "Because if you are right about this, you'd never forgive me for ruining the biggest bust of your lives."

  Then Mullholland said, "You're just afraid you'd get the axe...and I'd get your job!"

  "I'm taking you both off all your other cases. You can concentrate on this one. Now get the hell outta here and do some real detective work. Fill me in every night on what's happening."

  Mulholland and Diaz were smiling like little boys as they were leaving.

  "And remember one thing, Mulholland," McGuire called out before they left, "the first three letters of assume spells ASS."

  Twenty-Six

  The days and nights dissolved one into the other for Malcolm. Every morning, alarm clock jays would awaken him in some tree. Every day the huge sun would blaze over the flooded prairie like a heat lamp, intensifying to a fuse-blowing melting point. Every afternoon, at just about three o'clock, a moisture-laden dam in the sky would burst, sending a torrent of fresh water to the world's largest ankle-deep reflecting pool below. And every night, especially at dusk, the cacophonous symphony would play.

  In the past few days, trekking across alternating geographical bands of wet sawgrass prairie, hardwood hammocks, small, shallow meandering canals and areas that could best be described as a hodge-podge of bushes, thickets, vines and palmetto, Malcolm had eaten more snails than a kid eating popcorn at a horror movie. He had chomped on so many frogs, he was turning green at the thought of another one. He had a new turtle shell helmet on his head. He was sporting a new necklace of spiraling snail shells and a rattlesnake tail. And as he trudged onward, beneath a grand sunset, he carried a sling of four new turtle shell bowls at his side.

  __________________________________

  By now, you’re an expert on what not to eat in the Everglades,

  or anywhere: don’t eat raw snails, frogs, turtles, alligators, snakes, birds…

  __________________________________

  The night came quickly.

  But a glorious early morning came just as fast.

  He awoke with a start from the uncomfortable branches he had placed in the tree to cradle his heavy body. He dropped to the ground like a gymnast wearing four overcoats. His skin was loose as though it were three sizes too big. His fat slathered around inside like the white fat melting off a steak on a charcoal grill. It just kind of hung there in pockets inside his bag of skin. In the more than eleven weeks since the plane crash, Malcolm had lost an astonishing one hundred and five pounds. It was like being pardoned of the burden of carrying around the weight of a small adult. At two hundred and sixty pounds, Malcolm was beginning to feel skinny.

  Inside, much closer to his oversized bones, hidden by millions and millions of fat cells, Malcolm was building muscle cells. Although no one would ever know it to look at him, he was already well on his way to muscular development and strength to match his towering six-foot-five-inch height. He was getting closer to a body that would complement the reflexes of his superior brain. And forces were gathering in his nearly empty reservoir of emotional fortitude to take him wherever he wanted to go in life.

  For right now, however, where he wanted to go was north by northwest. To civilization. To his dying mother. To start a new life.

  In the afternoon shade of three cypress trees, Malcolm stopped dead still. He thought he heard something unusual. He put an ear in the air and closed his eyes to concentrate his senses. There was only the faintest whoosh, almost the sound of a flying insect, but different. He looked around but could identify nothing that could make that sound. He listened intently again. This time the sound was more like a jet engine fading in and out. He looked in the sky. Nothing. He listened hard now, eyes closed shut. He heard what could have been a deep wind, except the sound rose and fell quickly.

  He searched with his eyes, using his telescopic vision to bring a far-distant tree into focus. He got a close-up of a great blue heron just getting airborne. And then he saw it. His eyes caught the movement. A small flash of reflected sunlight. He saw the cars and trucks on the Tamiami Trail about a mile away. He moved toward them.

  The cars, trucks, vans, mobile homes and camping trailers were close now as they shuttled on the old two-lane, coast-to-coast road. On the surface of the road, rising heat lines made the world all squiggly. The tires made
a sizzling sound on the ruler-straight asphalt griddle. One of the tires crushed a huge grasshopper crossing the road. One second alive, the next squished.

  Close to the ground, hidden in a dark recess under the thick growth of bushes that lined the south edge of the Trail, a new pair of eyes peered out. Malcolm’s.

  He was getting a feel for the rhythm of the fifty miles per hour traffic.

  He had no idea what day it was, so he didn't know if the car-count was typical for weekend or weekday. He had no way of telling if it was typical for anything. Not yet anyway.

  As he lay there, flat on his belly, listening to the kind of noises he hadn't heard in nearly three months, he heard other noises that had become all too familiar. The groaning and gurgling of his hungry stomach.

  Slowly, he backed out of his spot under the wall of bushes and low trees. The ground fell away from the rim of the slightly elevated roadway that brazenly slashed through the vast Everglades. He stood in the clear, a mere thirty feet from day-dreaming eyes of passing motorists. His stomach sounded like a pot of boiling water. He put a soothing hand over it. He spotted something on the base of a small tree. He picked up the snail, eyed it and threw it down in disgust, "Jesus, I just can't look at another snail." His eyes crossed when he said it.

  He searched the thickets and he spotted a tree frog. "If I eat another frog I'm gonna croak!" He looked up in the air and saw a small flock of ducks flying in formation. He held out his arms like a blind man pleading for money. "Oh, God, I'd give anything for one nice, juicy bird!"

  At that very moment, a small red sports car was barreling west on the Trail at much more than the normal speed. And, at that very same moment, a lovely, unsuspecting white ibis was flying at a much lower than normal altitude.

  In an instant, the lovely white bird turned into a white-feathered football hurtling to its goal over the green bushes on the side of the road.

  "Jesus, just one stinking, measly bird is all...." KERPLUNK! Right into the arms of Wide Receiver Malcolm, standing in precisely the right spot with arms outstretched.

  Little white feathers snowed around him. Malcolm stopped in mid-sentence. He looked up to heaven and he just grinned.

  • • •

  BUSSSSSSSCHPFSSSSTTT! Glug, glug, glug…

  The beer can was covered with droplets of condensation as the hand placed it on the top of the short wooden post holding up the galvanized guard rail.

  The man in the khaki colored fishing vest baited his hook. His pickup truck was parked about fifty feet away on the grassy shoulder of the road. He was apparently alone and there wasn't another vehicle in sight. A tiara of white feathers moved slowly past small branches and vines in the shadows. It was Malcolm, newly festooned with his ‘Prince of the Glades’ crown. The white feathers were a sharp contrast to the dark mud covering his face and body. And the whites of his eyes were as white as the feathers on his head. He moved cautiously, watching the fisherman through a small opening in the bushes. The fisherman took a sip from the wet beer can and returned it to its little table. With an over-the-shoulder flick of the wrist, he cast into the canal which ran parallel to the Tamiami Trail on its northern side for its entire 110 mile length. A mosquito buzzed in the fisherman's ear and he slapped at it. Without looking, he reached down for his beer can expecting to find it with his fingertips. His hand groped the air. His fingertips felt only the wet ring on the top of the post.

  He looked down, puzzled.

  He looked over the edge of the post, to the ground below.

  He looked on both sides.

  He looked all around the base of the post.

  From the bushes, he heard a loud belch. "Burrrrruup!"

  The fisherman took a half step back then stood stock-still. Only his eyes moved a little left and right as he searched for the sound.

  "Buuuurrrrruuupppp!" An even louder, bigger burp came from the bushes.

  Without waiting another instant, the fisherman dropped his rod and ran for his life.

  As the truck peeled off down the road, all was silent back at the fishing spot. Except for the crickets that rasped, the locusts that chirred, and a burp that came from somewhere in the bushes.

  • • •

  With every metallic clink of the jack, the rear of the pickup truck inched upward. The long mobile-home trailer was already unhitched and stood just behind the pickup on its own crank-down stand.

  The father had removed lots of things from the back of the truck to get at the spare tire. The mother stood close by, lending technical advice and swatting mosquitoes flying around her ample bosom and her own spare tire. From where she stood she yelled out to her three hyper kids, skipping and running around on the grassy side of the road in front of the truck.

  "Jason, don't you shoot any of those pretty birds with that B.B. gun. Just shoot the ugly ones," she called out to her twelve-year-old. The eight-year-old and the six-year-old watched as Jason shot at an endangered Great Blue Heron.

  Way back at the rear of the trailer, the tip of a fishing rod appeared over the tops of the bushes.

  "Jason! Jason don't shoot at your brother! Jay–son!"

  The muddy hand reached for the aluminum handle on the door at the rear of the trailer. The door opened with a mouse-like squeak.

  "Jason, why is Tommy crying? Jason!"

  At the back of the trailer, Malcolm gingerly stepped into the black hole of the open door.

  "Agnes...ouch! Goddamn it! I just skinned my knuckles! Agnes, get me that short pipe in the back of the trailer, it'll give me more leverage on these lug nuts. Jesus, I'm bleeding! Shit!"

  Malcolm was deep inside the trailer, at least half way, and Agnes was almost to the door.

  "Oh, never mind, I found it. Right in the tool box."

  "Figures," Agnes said doing an about-face. "Tommy, get out of that road at this very instant. Tommy, I said now! Matthew, get your brother out of the road!" The little six-year-old ran off the road as two cars sped by.

  "Now I'll just tighten these lug nuts and we'll be on the road again." The sweating father started whistling happily as he completed his task.

  "Now, we'll just jack old Betsy down and we'll be on our way."

  Malcolm's face appeared from the black space. He eyeballed the area like a spy from a bad movie. He was carrying two armfuls of goodies, so he carefully stepped down from the opening.

  Just as his second foot hit the pavement, the three kids appeared from nowhere. They froze right in front of Malcolm. They just stood there in a row, one, two, three. Malcolm froze in front of them. They were small, smaller and smallest. He was huge. They carried a B.B. gun and one dead snake. He carried their stuff. They didn't know what the hell to make of this bearded, nearly naked giant with the white feather crown and necklace of shells and rattlesnake tails. He didn't know exactly what to make of them. So he smiled and said, "Shhhh.."

  They all screamed bloody murder at the top of their lungs! Jason raised his B.B. gun to his shoulder and zapped one into Malcolm's belly. Malcolm sprang forward without dropping a thing, grabbed his fishing rod, and sprinted into the bushes. Another B.B. dug into Malcolm's ass.

  As Malcolm crashed through the thickets and brush he could still hear the screeching of the three little kids.

  After a twenty-minute run to the west, Malcolm stopped in a secluded, shady spot about a mile from the trail. All during the twenty minutes, he dared not stop, dared not put down the booty from his pillaging. Finally, he dropped everything as his new fishing rod whipped to the ground. The backpack landed with a thud. The loaf of whole wheat was half flattened. The red, white and blue first-aid box bounced off something. The aluminum mess kit rattled and clanked as it rolled over the pile. The heavy jar of peanut butter impressed itself into the soft earth. The box of matches fell in with the rest. The warm six-pack of soda pop cans splayed apart on top of the heap. From his clasped hand he slowly spilled a handful of coins onto a large leaf. Later he would count out two dollars and eighty-seven cents.

&
nbsp; And somewhere from beneath the pile Malcolm extracted a beautiful Bowie-type hunting knife in a leather sheath. The steel blade glinted, even in the shadows, as he examined it before his eyes.

  Then Malcolm reached for the backpack, hoping to find wonderful, useful things inside. He didn't know what to expect. He ceremoniously opened the straps, turned it upside down and dumped the contents.

  Falling out around his feet he discovered one medium-sized teddy bear, which the Goliath unhappily held up for a closer look, underwear small enough for a six-year-old, a pair of sunglasses that wouldn't fit Malcolm's face, approximately fourteen toy action figures of spacemen, monsters and soldiers and a half-eaten apple.

  Into the empty backpack Malcolm packed the jar of peanut butter, the loaf of bread, the mess kit, the six-pack of soda, the box of matches and the first-aid kit. Malcolm then dismantled the fishing rod into two pieces and tied it to the side of the backpack with the straps provided for just such a purpose. He scooped up the loose change deposited on the leaf and saved it in a small zippered pouch on the other side of the backpack. He untied his belt – he had to tie it because it was much too big for him now – and threaded it through the loop in the sheath of the knife. He adjusted the straps of the backpack to their largest size and, awkwardly, put just one of his big arms through the loop. Backpack on his shoulder, Malcolm was eager to move on to a safer place.

  Before leaving though, he quickly scooped out a small hole in the moist dirt with a stick and his hands. Into the hole he pushed the teddy bear, the underwear, the sunglasses, and all the action figures. He put the half-eaten apple into his pocket.

  He walked off with great strides, with urgent purpose, with his valuable booty. He rubbed one sore cheek of his rear-end as he walked.

  Twenty-Seven

  CHUU-SHOOOOOK!

  It was the sound of a pump action shotgun.