Geezer Paradise

by Robert Gannon

  When I got home I put all of my information about Clearwater Beach and Sand Key State Park on my laptop and started to write. I wrote about the beaches and the amenities, about the restaurants and the shops, the hotels, the boat rides, the laid back feeling, and the natural beauty of the place. Around noon I was ready to send it off. I attached the article to an e-mail and sent it to John at the Tampa Sun. It didn't take long for John to e-mail me back. He said he couldn't use the article because he had recently published one like it. He suggested articles on places such as Weeki Wachee Springs, Sarasota, or Cassadaga, the community of palm readers and clairvoyants up above Disney World. With the price of gasoline being what it is, a trip to Cassadaga was out of the question, so I decided to look into Weeki Wachee, that was only about a twenty minute ride up the coast. I spent an hour on the computer searching everything I could find on the place, and started some preliminary writing. Then I was finished for the day. I went out to my carport and watched the residents roll by on their golf carts.

  I was sitting there wondering if things would work out for us, so we could stay here and not have to move, when Willey came hurrying over looking agitated. "Mary just called," he said. "The coroner said it wasn't Freddy's heart. He was smothered to death! He was murdered, Barney. Those bastards murdered Freddy."

  I was speechless. Then I remembered the speeding car that almost ran me down. It wasn't a drunk driver, someone was sent to kill me! My feet grew cold. I didn't want to tell Willey about it, he was already overexcited.

  "Those bastards," I said. "What are we going to do? We can't just wait for them to come after us, too."

  "That's what I've been trying to tell you, Barney. We have to stop them or we'll be next."

  "Shouldn't we tell the police?" I asked.

  "The police can't babysit us day and night, Barney. And, besides, the police will think we're crazy if we tell them we think Flaherty might try to kill us. They probably think Freddy was killed by a burglar who thought nobody was home."

  Willey was right, we were in danger from this lunatic, but who would believe us. We had to do something--but what?

  Chapter Three

  AT EIGHT O'CLOCK that night Willey and I had decided what to do about Flaherty, we were going to break into his offices! It was either that or wait until the killer came to kill us in our sleep, like he did to Freddy. I was more than a little nervous about it, but if I didn't go, Willy would go alone. I couldn't let that happen, Willey could screw up a soup sandwich.

  Willey came to my place wearing dark, grubby, clothes. I was dressed the same way. Willey thought we would attract less attention that way. He figured nobody pays attention to grubby old men. I hoped he was right, but my stomach wasn't so sure--it was doing flip-flops.

  "Do you really think being dressed this way will make us less noticeable?" I asked.

  "Of course. If you're a grubby old man you can stand on a street corner talking to yourself all day long and nobody will pay any attention to you. But let some guy under fifty do the same thing and they'll call an ambulance, and a cop with a drug sniffing dog."

  I said, "I'm going to need a drink or two before we do this." Willey agreed. We decided we would stop into a small bar where nobody knew us. That was easy, since neither one of us drank any place but at home. It was the only place we could afford to drink. We climbed into my Wrangler. I noticed the soft top was getting worn in places. Like me, it had seen better days. I would have to patch it up with duct tape. If I ever got home again.

  By nine o'clock we were standing in Bertha's Bar & Grill in Clearwater, just up the street from Flaherty's offices. It was more bar than grill. A dark place with a group of regulars at the bar watching a ballgame and raising a ruckus. A cloud of politically incorrect smoke hung in the air. In the background Frank Sinatra sang elevator music off key. Bertha was a battleship that cruised back and forth behind the bar. She had a voice any drill instructor would kill for. It was just what we needed. I went up to the bar and asked Bertha for two drafts. Willey came up behind me and ordered two shots of bourbon.

  "We're going to need a little something to settle our nerves," he said. Willey pushed my money back to me and said, "You can't afford it."

  "Thanks, Willey. I owe you one."

  "Forget it. Besides, this is my caper." His caper? He must be watching too much television. I looked up above the bar at an oil portrait of Albert Einstein.

  "Look at that," I said.

  Willey looked up and said, "I wonder if Einstein posed for that." Bertha put our drinks on the bar.

  "Who painted the portrait of Einstein?" I asked her.

  "That was painted by a guy who comes in here, but that's not Einstein," Bertha said. "That's the Judge." She pointed to the end of the bar where an Einstein look-a-like sat by himself sipping a beer. He had the same hair as Willey.

  "The Judge?"

  "He used to be a judge until he started spending more time in here than he did in the courtroom." A judge, that meant he was a lawyer!

  "Does he still have his license?" I asked.

  "I guess so," Bertha said. "But he doesn't have any intention of ever working again." I asked Bertha if she thought he would mind if we talked to him.

  "Buy him a beer and he'll talk your ear off," she said. Willey dropped a few dollars on the bar, and Bertha went off and put another draft in front of the Judge. She said a few words to him and the Judge smiled and waved us over. Willey and I sat down next to him.

  "Hello, Judge. I'm Barney and this is Willey." We shook hands.

  "Nice to meet you fellas," the Judge said. "Bertha told me you wanted to talk to me."

  "Yes," Willey said. "We live in a mobile home park up in Citrus Bay, called the Blue Orchid, and we're about to lose our houses to a developer. We can't afford to hire a lawyer. We were hoping you might give us some advice."

  "Is it Flaherty?" the Judge asked.

  "You know about him?" I asked.

  The judge shook his head. "Everybody knows about him. The only advice I can give you is to start looking for another place to live."

  "He's that powerful, huh?"

  "He's connected," the Judge answered. "It would be like trying to fight City Hall." That wasn't what we wanted to hear.

  "Well thank you, Judge," I said. "We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us."

  "You're welcome, fellas. I wish I'd been able to give you better news, but there are some things you just can't fight. I hope someday they'll be able bring that sleazebag to justice." Willey gave me a sideways look.

  "Maybe someday they will," he said. We were in the process of doing just that. We said goodbye to the Judge and took our drinks to a back booth where we could talk. We put our drinks on the table and slid into the booth. Nobody would hear us there as we planned our strategy.

  "I told you I didn't think we could beat Flaherty in court," Willey said.

  "For once you were right. We have to take things into our own hands."

  "Damn right," Willey said. "Here's what we'll do. There's an alley behind Flaherty's offices with a fire escape that leads up to their back windows."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Well, I've been thinking about breaking in there for a while now. Somehow I knew it would come down to this. The problem is finding records that can nail him." Willey reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked to be a drugstore type cigarette lighter. It was small and black. "I picked up a flash drive," he said. "You stick this into a port on your computer and it acts as a separate storage file. If Flaherty's computer has one of these on it, we'll take it off and replace it with this one. All of Flaherty's records will be on that flash drive."

  "Won't they know that their files are missing?"

  "No," Willey said. "Their records are also stored in the hard drive of their computer. We'll put our flash drive in, and as soon as they make a change and store it, their entire file will be saved on the flash drive again, just as if we never touched it."

  I was amazed.
"How come you know so much about computers?" I asked.

  "I don't know anything about computers, I just took the bus to one of those big computer stores and talked to a young kid. He explained it to me. Of course, I didn't tell him what I was going to do with it."

  "I don't think we'll find anything on Flaherty's computer that will tie him to Freddy's murder," I said.

  "No, he's too smart for that, but if we can copy his financial records maybe we can find a computer geek who will know how to trace them to bribes. That's where we'll find the false expense records from when he bribed officials. There has to be plenty of those, and if we can just prove one bribe we'll have him."

  "How will we find a computer geek?" I asked.

  "I haven't figured that out yet." Before I knew it I had finished my shot and beer. I looked over at Willey, his glasses were empty, too. Willey made the trip to the bar. When he came back I asked, "What about alarms? They must have alarms."

  "That's just a chance we'll have to take." That was not what I wanted to hear. I poured my shot into my beer and gulped down half the glass.

  "Easy there, Barney, we have to be sober enough to pull this off."

  I didn't think I could get drunk if I tried all night. "I just hope you know what the hell we're doing," I said.

  "It'll work out just fine, Barney. Just leave it to me."

  After we finished our drinks I suggested we leave. Willey started to get up and then stopped. "I think I need one more round," he said, and he headed for the bar. When he came back carrying the beer and shots, he said, "One more thing, Barney. If we get separated we'll meet back here." That made my stomach lurch again. After more false starts and more rounds, we were off. On the way out, Willey handed Bertha a few dollars. "That's in case the Judge gets thirsty," he said.

  "The Judge is always thirsty. Thanks boys, come again."

  It was a hot night and we were overdressed. Or maybe I was just sweating out of fear. There was an orange half moon peeking over the roof tops, and a warm breeze was blowing. I noticed that both Willey and I were a little unsteady on our feet. Great, drunken burglars. We walked down the block, stopped and looked around. No one in sight. We ducked into the dark alley behind Flaherty's offices. The alley was stacked up with black plastic bags full of garbage. The stench and the heat in the alley were overwhelming. We had to climb onto the pile of garbage to get to the fire escape. The bags broke open as we climbed onto them, forcing garbage into our shoes. So far, Willey's plan stunk as much as the garbage.

  "That's from the Hungarian restaurant out front," Willey said. "Delicious food, terrible garbage." The stench was starting to gag me.

  "Let's get this over with," I said. "I want to get out of here." I reached for the fire escape ladder, but even standing on the garbage I couldn't reach it.

  "Willey, this fire escape is meant for people to come down, not to go up. I thought you planned this out."

  Willey worked his way past me. "I weigh less than you, just give me a boost and I'll grab the bottom of the ladder. I locked my hands together for Willey to step into. He put his foot into my hands and his right hand on top of my head to steady himself.

  "On the count of three lift me up," he said. I tried to push him up, but my arthritis wouldn't let me.

  "Push," Willey stage whispered. I got a better grip and tried again. This time Willey was able to grab onto the bottom rung of the ladder. The ladder swung down in a slow, creaking, descent. Soon the bottom of the ladder was buried in garbage. We climbed up to the grated platform above. As soon as we got off the ladder, it slowly started to swing back up. We stood there studying the single window in front of us.

  "I don't see any alarms," I said. I put the heels of my hands under the top rail of the sash and gently pushed up. The window slid up easily.

  "It wasn't even locked," Willey said. "These guys are just asking for a break-in." I let Willey climb in first. After all, he was the criminal genius, I was just the apprentice. Besides, sometimes these places keep a dog on the premises overnight. A big, hungry, downright nasty, dog. No sense taking chances.

  We stood in the dark office, not much light coming from the alley. I took a few steps into the darkness and bumped into something that felt like a person. Like an idiot I said, "Excuse me." I stood there holding my breath.

  "Why should I excuse you?" Willey wanted to know.

  "Not you, him!"

  "What?"

  "I think there's somebody here!" I squeaked. Willey turned his penlight on. I had bumped into a coat rack full of raincoats. The arms of a large raincoat were wrapped around me.

  "Dammit, Barney. Will you stop joking around. This is serious.

  "Right," I said. My heart was beating like a bongo drum. There was a large mahogany desk in the office. The name plate said, John Flaherty. We were in the lion's den. Willey started going through the drawers on one side of the desk. I pulled out my penlight and started on the other side. Most of what I was reading made no sense to me. We found nothing of interest in the desk, so we headed to the computer. We looked it all over, there was no flash drive attached to it.

  "He must take it home with him," Willey said. Willey put his flash drive into a port on the back of the computer tower. "We'll copy his files," Willey said.

  We turned the computer on and tried to get into the files, but we didn't know the password. We took the flash drive out and shut off the computer.

  "Maybe we'll find something in one of the other offices," I said. We went out into the dark hallway and, using our penlights, we started reading the room names on the door glass. When we came to a door marked, Accounting, we tried the door. It wasn't locked. Willey was right, they had no security in this place.

  We went straight to the computer. There was no flash drive attached to it. We couldn't get in to the files of that computer either. Again, we didn't have the password. We shut the computer off and did a quick search of the desk drawers. We found nothing of interest. We went out of that office and did a quick search of the other offices, and came up empty handed.

  "I guess we're out of luck," I said. "We might as well get out of here. Willey grudgingly agreed. We went back down the hall and into Flaherty's office. As we were heading for the window a light came on out in the hallway outside. We ran into a closet and pulled the door shut just as the office door opened and the room was flooded with light. We stood in the darkness for a minute, sweating in the stuffy closet. Then a woman started to sing in Spanish, and a vacuum cleaner roared to life. I cracked the closet door open just enough to see. A pudgy Spanish woman was cleaning the office.

  We were trapped in the broiling hot closet. I closed the door and we waited, and sweated. Fifteen minutes later the vacuum cleaner shut off, and a minute later we heard the office door close. I peeked out. The office was dark again, the cleaning lady had gone. We stumbled out of the closet. The vacuum cleaner started up again in another office. We opened the window and climbed out onto the fire escape. Willey closed the window.

  "What rotten luck," Willey said. I started down the ladder, Willey was right behind me. The ladder slowly swung down into the garbage, and I hopped off.

  "Help," Willey said. "Get me down from here." I turned around just as the ladder was going back up with Willey's foot attached. Willey was hanging upside down by the time I wrested his foot free. I went down into the garbage on my back, with Willey on top of me.

  "Get off," I said. I pushed him off and rolled onto my stomach as I slid down the pile of garbage. When I hit the bottom I laid there catching my breath. Suddenly I was blinded by a bright light. Damn! I was trying to shield my eyes when I heard a voice behind the light say, "Portable seven to the station. Send the wagon to the alley behind Hilda's Hungarian Restaurant. Two drunks wrestling in the garbage and causing a ruckus."

  From behind me I heard Willey say, "Oh shit." I should have known Willey's hair-brained idea would end badly. Willey was still thrashing around behind me. My mind was racing, trying to come up with a reason for being
there. I looked up into the blinding light and said, "Excuse me, officer. I can explain . . . just then the booze and the fear caught up with me and I barfed all over the cop's shoes.

  The cop said, "Sonofabitch." I decided not to say anything else.

  Chapter Four

  THE CELLBLOCK LOOKED like something out of an old Bogart movie. We were held overnight with three other drunks, and a large, bearded man who stared straight ahead and kept saying, "I'm gonna' kill Lucy." I didn't sleep all night. I was worried Mountain Man might change his rant to, "I'm gonna' kill those two stinky guys in the corner." We each had a metal bunk with an inch thick mattress. It was like trying to sleep on a sidewalk. My back would be out for a week. Willey snored like a champ all night long. I promised myself I'd strangle him when we got out of there--if we ever got out of there.

  The next morning we were brought before a cranky old judge. He leaned over the bench and asked us, "If I put a hundred dollar fine on each of you could you pay it?"

  Willey and I looked at each other. "I could pay it by the middle of next month," I said.

  "That's what I thought. Get out of my courtroom and clean up your act. And don't come back," he warned, as Willey and I scurried out of the courtroom. I think he might have done more except we smelled so bad. I didn't talk to Willey all the way back to the park. I couldn't wait to get home so I could get out of those smelly clothes and get some sleep.

  ****

  The next morning Willey woke up with a stiff neck. He knew it was caused by laying on that hard bunk in jail. He felt a little tired from last night's ordeal. He hadn't been able to sleep a wink, what with Barney snoring and all. He walked out to his carport and picked up the pile of smelly cloths he had dumped there the night before and walked over to Barney's shed to use the washer and dryer. Willey didn't have that luxury.

  Willey thought about the night before. Too bad they hadn't found any damning evidence against Flaherty. And then getting caught! Willey knew it wasn't his fault his foot got stuck in the fire escape ladder. If Barney hadn't insisted they get drunk before they broke in, it never would have happened. As Willey started the washer he knew Barney would hear it and come out to talk to him. He didn't look forward to that. He knew Barney would blame him for everything that went wrong. He'd never hear the end of it.