Karah dusted off her elbows and checked the backside of her incredible dress to make sure no damage was done. When she was sure of that, she composed herself and walked into Drunken Jack’s. The music was cranking up again and the Pseudo-Jimmy Buffet singer was droning on about being sorry for the interruption while tuning his guitar. The bar side of the restaurant was in complete disarray.
Like the parted waters of the Jordan River, the ends of the bar were populated with people rubbernecking like there had been some sort of car wreck. The center of the bar looked exactly like that’s what had happened. Laura Kate Starlington was pushing a moldy mop through a mess of stinky vomit and glass and maybe even a little blood.
Karah caught her eye and mouthed, OMG, what happened??
Laura rolled her eyes and nodded to an empty spot at the far end of the room.
Karah mouthed, Margarita?
Laura nodded again.
Side-stepping through the crowd, Karah made her way to the empty table.
“If we couldn’t laugh, we’d all go insane,” the singer crooned as she sat down and the crowd clapped half-heartedly.
A few minutes later, Laura slid two-mile-high Margaritas onto the table and slumped down in the chair across from Karah. Her usually blonde, vivacious, and beautiful cousin was looking particularly hollow-eyed, harrowed and disheveled.
“You would NOT believe what kind of day I’ve had,” said Laura, and took a long gulp from the tequila-laden beverage that conspicuously didn’t have a salt ring or an umbrella in it.
“Tell me.” Karah reached across the table and took Laura’s hand.
Her cousin’s shoulders slumped and heavy tears began to form in her eyes. “Daddy’s gone.”
Over the next thirty minutes, she told the story of Rick Hairre’s untimely demise. Though Rick wasn’t a blood uncle to Karah, she was still shocked and saddened to hear he was tortured and murdered.
“Sweetie,” Karah said as she wiped a tear from her face, “you need to go home.”
“Can’t.” Laura sniffed and rubbed her red-ringed eyes. “Can’t afford to.”
“Have you called his family?”
“Oh shit,” she said, suddenly realizing she hadn’t told anyone about it. “I guess I should call the Starlingtons, not that they give a rat’s ass. I don’t know if there’s anyone else to tell.” She reached down into her apron pocket, then said under her breath, “Dammit.”
“What?” Karah asked.
“My phone got stolen by some giant tattooed asshat who was in here throwing punches at college guys.”
Karah slid her phone across the table. “I think that asshat ran over me in coming in.”
Laura’s expression looked surprised.
“It’s okay,” Karah said and waved her hand, “Eric came to my rescue.”
Laura clicked open the phone. “He likes you, ya know.”
“Uh huh.” Karah’s eyes twinkled. “But I’ve got a bigger fish on the hook than him.” Karah reached over and clicked the Instagram icon, opening the app. She slid over to the photograph of Troy she’d taken shortly after he’d been attacked by the Jon boat. Hmm, 147 likes. Nice, she thought.
“I know, I know.” Laura pointed at her screen name under the picture. “I saw it and the other fourteen pics of him you sent me. Cute.”
“You have no idea.” Karah pulled out a tube of shimmering lip gloss. “He’ll probably be here any minute.”
“Really?” Laura raised an eyebrow and clicked out of Instagram.
The phone’s background was a picture of Troy that had been taken the day after the fishing incident. He hadn’t known she was taking his picture from the porch of his own beach house.
He was standing out on the beach wearing a straw cowboy hat and khaki shorts. Karah’s cousin shook her head and grinned.
“It’s the hat, isn’t it?” Laura asked.
“Definitely the hat.”
Something tickled the back of Laura’s mind. Something about the hat. It was one of those things that you searched your mind for, but couldn’t come up with it… the name of a movie or a song. Eventually, you just searched the internet and everyone would say, ohhhh, yeahhhhh, that’s what it was. She didn’t think about it long. It would come to her.
The darkness slowly receded from Darren’s beat up brain. He tumbled around unrestrained in the back of the bronze van as his partner, Man’ti, slammed on the gas. The sound of gravel pelting against the underside of the van told him they were off-road, or at least on an unpaved road.
He could feel the infection burning again in his foot and leg. When he put pressure on the disgusting makeshift bandages, a rotten smell oozed out and fire shot up his ankle. He pulled himself up and peered out the front windshield of the van. Darkness was all he could see.
“Where the fook are ye takin’ us, mate?” he asked to his hulking New Zealander driver.
“We gotta disappeyah fer a bit.” Man’ti looked back over his shoulder.
Darren could taste the foul, stale vomit crusted in and around his mouth. “Stop at the next petrol station. Ah need a drink.”
“We ain’t stoppin’.”
This bloke’s forgot who’s in charge here, Darren thought as he climbed into the passenger’s seat.
“Now, listen, ya freak of nature.” Darren pulled a small pistol from his belt and pointed it at Man’ti. “Ya moyt be big, but me gun’s bigga. Ah need a drink and a hospital.”
It was a tiny pistol, maybe a .22 caliber that looked to maybe be a woman’s purse gun. Man’ti did not appear to be impressed. In fact, Darren watched in disbelief as he slowly smiled, then grinned, and then began to laugh.
With impossible speed, Man’ti grabbed the back of Darren’s head and slammed it forward into the dashboard. Darren felt a crack somewhere under his left eye in the split second before the airbag deployed, throwing him backward into the seat and pinning his hand with the gun against his face. Either the van’s ABS or Man’ti, he didn’t know which, slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a squealing halt.
Without thinking, he emptied the revolver and fire burned his cheek. The barrel had become red hot and was melting his face, but he didn’t care as long as Man’ti was full of bullet holes. The sound of glass shattering out of the driver’s door was pleasing to hear, and he waited to hear the big man screaming. That sound never came.
The airbag began to deflate, releasing Darren only to see an extremely mad Man’ti staring at him. There were no bullet holes in the man.
Darren lifted the revolver and grinned. “Say g’night ya bahstad!”
He clicked the gun ten times before he realized it wasn’t firing. Tears began to form in his eyes as he remembered he’d just emptied the gun a few seconds ago. Shit, he thought..
Man’ti grabbed the tiny gun and jerked it out of Darren’s hand. It was so small that the gun’s trigger guard was tight on his forefinger and in one quick motion, the giant Kiwi had not only ripped the gun out of Darren’s grip, but had also removed his forefinger and the top half of his thumb. He hadn’t thought he could feel much more pain, but suddenly he did.
“Ah, fer shit’s sake!” Darren grasped his hand. “Not me hand.”
Suddenly, Man’ti’s hand was around his throat and Darren “The Body” McGlashen began to think his time on earth was done. But amazingly, he didn’t die.
“Mate,” Man’ti said through gritted teeth, “you and me’s through. Ah’m callin’ the boss, see what bridge he wants me to bury ya unda.”
Darren could feel the whimpers coming out of his mouth. “Jus’ leave me, mate. Out by the road… anywhere… I probly won’t make it anyway.”
“Shut yer fookin’ trap,” said Man’ti as he pulled a cellphone from his pocket.
The big man stepped out of the van and walked around to the front, cellphone up to his ear. Darren watched as he spoke, trying to read his lips, and thus, his fate. Man’ti looked back toward him and nodded in apparent response to whoever was on the phone.
>
Darren groaned and whimpered and shook uncontrollably… until he noticed the keys were still in the van’s ignition. Man’ti did not appear to be in a hurry to get off the phone, and a plan began to percolate into Darren’s hazy mind. He waited for Man’ti to rotate and face away from the van, and as quietly as he could, he inched over into the driver’s seat.
With his intact left hand, he quietly locked the door. With his torn up right hand, he gingerly reached for the key. In an instant, Man’ti whirled around.
“Don’t even…” he started to yell as Darren fired up the van.
Darren laughed maniacally as he gunned the van and put it in drive. Pain shot into his ruined right foot as he slammed the accelerator to the floor.
Man’ti had run around to the driver’s side where the window had been shot out and was reaching for Darren, but he was too slow. The bronze van was powerful, if nothing else, and before Darren could hear the rest of the New Zealander’s yell, he had left him in the dust.
Darren wasn’t sure if he was still laughing or crying when he looked up into the rear-view mirror and caught sight of his face. His left eye was still blood red from the beer bottle at Drunken Jack’s, his left eye socket looked like someone had thrown a baseball at him and left a crater in his skull… but his right eye was still okay. His right cheek had the perfect red, blistered outline of a pistol melted into it.
Darren grabbed the rear-view mirror with his now three fingered right hand and jerked it straight up so he couldn’t see himself in it. Hospital, he thought, thas what ah need.
“Then ahm gonna find ‘at fooka and murder his tattooed ass,” he said to no one.
As he drove, he could see a hazy light growing in the distance… hopefully a city… a city with a nice hospital. Civilization began to appear and his hopes were answered by the first gas station attendant who would speak to him. The St. Francis Hospital in Litchfield wasn’t far away, and they had a pretty nice emergency room according to the attendant. The drive would give Darren a chance to regroup and get ahold of his boss… and plan the demise of his former colleague, Man’ti.
He grinned and clicked on the radio. He couldn’t help but laugh at the Judas Priest song that blared into the night.
“Yeah, mate! You got anotha thing comin’!” Darren screamed the rock anthem out the busted window into the cool rushing air.
Man’ti watched in disbelief as the airbrushed sunset scene on the back of the bronze van got smaller and smaller. A ping from the cellphone in his hand brought him out of his shock. He held it up. Text notification from Cute Cop:
-On way.
Man’ti shrugged his shoulders, and hit the back button, more out of curiosity than anything else. The last text was from someone called Sexi Cuz.
That’s more like it, he thought. He scrolled back through the past few messages. A couple of the messages were photos, so of course, he opened them.
“Ah, shit’s sake,” he muttered out loud as he scrolled through the pictures. “Cuz is a fookin’ dude.”
As he thumbed further backwards in the photos, he realized Sexi Cuz was not the dude, but a girl sending pictures of a dude. He found one that made him stop short. It was a picture of a man standing knee deep in the surf at a very familiar piece of beach in front of a very familiar beach house on Pawleys Island. The man was dark haired, tan, looked to be about forty, and he was wearing a cowboy hat with sungla— The hat.
Man’ti scratched his chin, which was beginning to stubble over from the lack of a shower and shave. The hat was an incredibly distinctive straw cowboy hat with a peacock feather stuck on the back. Not exactly the kind of hat you see every day… but he couldn’t place where he’d seen it before and why it made him so curious. He scrolled back to another closer picture of the man wearing the hat, and it hit him.
“Thet hat belongs to fookin’ Rick Hairre!” He pointed at the screen. “How the fook did ‘is fooker get it on ‘is head?”
He started walking a little faster down the street, not exactly sure where he was headed, but very sure where he needed to go. As he pinched, out enlarging the photo to study the hat more closely, a thought crossed his mind about the recently departed Mr. Hairre and the Outback Tea Stained Cowboy Hat.
“Ah shit. Ya gotta be fookin’ kiddin’ me.” He clicked out of the text message and quickly dialed the number he’d just called ten minutes earlier.
The voice on the other end of the line said, “Vell, iz it done?”
“Nah exactly.” Man’ti gritted his teeth. “Darren took off with me van.”
“Then vie are ve speaking?”
“Ah need t’come visit. Ah think ah found it.”
“By all means,” the voice said. “Find your friend, Darren, bring him here. Und den ve vill discuss zee otha matter.”
“Right.”
Part II
Check Please
“I don't want to smoke cigars or go to stag parties, wear jockey shorts or pick up the check.”
-Shelley Winters
18
Hard Labor
Daisy Mae Gallup had one hand on the slippery, cracked dashboard of the 1977 bumblebee yellow-on-black-on-rust Chevy Camaro and one hand on the bottom of her burgeoning, pregnant belly. Ellie Mae Gallup was driving and had the car and trailer rocking violently with each turn.
“I’m gon’ git that sumbitch, Sis,” she yelled over the loudly protesting engine. “Jus’ you hang on now, ya hear?”
Daisy Mae Gallup did not answer for fear of vomit spewing up and out of her mouth. She was afraid to tell Ellie Mae that her stomach, or at least something deep inside her stomach, was aching somethin’ fierce.
Chasing the Lincoln Towncar containing Troy (Daisy Mae’s alleged baby-daddy) off of Pawley’s Island was an oddly slow high-speed chase. The listed speed limit of 25mph was rigorously enforced and the last thing Daisy Mae wanted was to get pulled over when she was so close to nabbing Troy and making him accept responsibility for his unborn child.
“Not so fast, Ellie Mae!” she kept yelling, but her sister wasn’t having any of that.
“I ain’t slowin’ ‘is thang down ‘til he’s in here with you!” she yelled back.
The Camaro and trailer hit a bump hard after crossing the Pawleys north causeway bridge and something kicked hard inside Daisy Mae’s belly.
“Hey, stop ‘at little T.C.” She looked down and tapped her own stomach.
Ellie Mae grinned over at her. “He’s a-kickin’ hard now that he knows his daddy’s nearby.”
Up ahead, the black car with Troy inside picked up speed as they left the island. Ellie Mae punched her foot on the accelerator until it hit the floor. The Camaro picked up speed incredibly slowly and the Lincoln they were chasing began to get farther and farther away.
“Go, ya Gall-Dang Chevy!” Ellie Mae beat her fist on the steering wheel. The horn honked loudly twice and then wouldn’t stop. It just blared on without remorse.
The kicking feeling in her stomach started again and Daisy Mae began to realize it wasn’t a kick at all.
“Ellie Mae!” she shouted over the horn.
“Don’t bother me now,” she yelled as they turned hard right onto Ocean Drive. “Once I git on the straightaway, I think I kin catch ‘em!”
Daisy Mae began the breathing exercises she had seen in the YouTube video about going into labor. She didn’t tell Ellie Mae that she was having contractions. But for now, they were pretty far apart and not very regular. Jus’ hang in there, little T.C., she thought to herself. As she looked up from her belly, she could see the black Lincoln Towncar getting smaller and smaller as it raced away from them.
“Where’n the hell are they goin’ so dang fast?” Ellie Mae shouted over the horn.
Troy looked back through the rear window of One-Eyed Willie’s Lincoln Towncar. “They’re not moving very fast, so can we lose them?”
“Mista Troy,” the old man said, chuckling, “I been practicin’ the art of losin’ little chirren in my ice cream
truck fo years ‘n years.”
Good point, Troy thought.
“And if’n this car cain’t outrun dat heap ‘o junk, imma sell it tommorrah.”
Another good point. Troy took out his cellphone and clicked open the message to Karah.
-“Hey, you still at Jack’s?”
-“Yeah, where are you? It’s been like 45 mins!”
-“Sorry, crazy story. Uber took a side trip. I’ll fill you in when I get there.”
-“Don’t rush, talking to my cuz. She’s had a rough day.”
-“Ok, be there soon.”
Rough day? Troy thought, seems like they’re going around.
“Hey, Willie,” he said and leaned forward and tapped his driver on the shoulder, “there’s an extra twenty spot in it if you can get me there in a hurry.”
One-Eyed Willie winked at him—which Troy thought was unsettling at best—and said, “Mista Troy, for a twenty, I git you there in ten!”
With that, Willie punched the accelerator and threw Troy back against his cushy leather seat. He grabbed the two ends of the seatbelt he hadn’t been wearing and buckled them together quickly.
“I know a real good shote-cut,” Willie said, veering onto the Business 17 exit, “we be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Deputy Chesney R. Biggins turned his cruiser down Wachesaw Road after a quick stop at the Kangaroo Market on the corner to grab a coffee. It was looking like a long night, and he wanted to be alert.
His mind kept going back to his notes and Rick Hairre’s file he’d picked up from Tammy-Anne Tidmore at the GKCU. There had to be a clue to the councilman’s murder in all his notes, but it all just seemed like ordinary life information.
He’d always thought he’d be good at CSI type work, but this was proving to be harder than he thought. First thing to do was get the password to the zip drive. He looked over at the yellow pad notes:
The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Page 9