[Sean O'Brien 03.0] The Butterfly Forest

by Tom Lowe

  I picked up Max and rubbed her head. “You’ll be staying on Dave’s boat for the night, okay? Maybe you can get in some winks between his snores.” I set her down and she trotted toward the salon’s sliding glass doors. “Okay, let’s go to Uncle Dave’s.”

  Max quickly made herself at home on Gibraltar, jumping up onto Dave’s couch. He sipped from a glass of red wine, leaning back from his computer screen, his bifocals reflecting the pop of revolving light from the lighthouse. “You won’t get any second chances out there. You know that…”

  I nodded and said, “It’s time to fish.”

  I DROVE MY JEEP NORTH to Daytona Beach, parked in a pool hall lot, and begin walking. I headed to the strip, the guttural rumble of Harleys bouncing off the biker bars and beachfront motels. I watched cars stopped at a traffic light, assuming one of the cars was a tail. A shirtless man, hair matted down from dirt and sweat, eyes sunken in his narrow face, stood at one corner holding a cardboard sign that read: Hungry

  College kids on spring break, bikers on permanent break, tourists and conventioneers crisscrossed each other as the traffic lights changed. Each group marched with its own agenda, most of the crowd seeking the hedonism promised by the ‘world’s most famous beach.’

  I walked past a strip joint as a half dozen college men stood outside and counted dollars. “Why do they make you pay a friggin’ cover charge?” one of them asked, his voice drowned out when two businessmen opened the club’s door, the grinding music blasting onto Ocean Drive. I passed a tattoo parlor, its bluish light spilling from the window framing a teenage girl who was trying to look brave while a bearded artist, cigarette dangling from his lips, injected ink into a spot just above the crack in her butt.

  In the distance, I could hear an eighteen wheeler shifting gears to cross the Broadway Bridge over the Halifax River. I continued walking, scanning each car as it passed, looking at the tops of high-rise condos, taking in each corner, and crossing streets with people who smelled of sun block, reefer and stale beer.

  I walked for more than an hour, up Ocean Drive and back down the strip and the boardwalk. I couldn’t detect anyone following me. Maybe Gonzales had decided to call off his troops. Maybe he no longer had a bounty on my head, and all was forgiven in the death of Izzy. Maybe I’d hit the lotto.

  Just as the traffic light changed to green, a dark Chrysler switched lanes, pulled forward and passed me. Through the back window, I could see the driver look in his rearview mirror. He spoke to the other man in the front seat. It didn’t look like there was anyone in the back seat. The driver tapped his brakes once approaching the next block and turning right.

  Bingo. I knew they’d been following me, now I’d give them the opportunity to come a little closer. I stood on the street corner, allowing them time to circle the block. I heard a siren somewhere in the mosaic of neon, music and the thunder of motorcycles.

  I saw the car coming slowly around the block, the Atlantic Ocean dark in the background, a strobe of distant heat lightning threading gold stitches through the clouds. I entered the alleyway, the smell of garbage pungent in the night air. I felt that Gonzales wanted me alive. I knew he personally wanted to turn my backbone into calcium powder. They were here to take me alive, take me back to their leader’s hut. But, I wasn’t going to comply.

  Come get me.

  The Chrysler entered the alley, its headlights raking across graffiti and garbage piled in plastic bags. A light rain began to fall on the old brick. As the car came closer, I saw a black cat dart in front of it, the cat running behind a green dumpster. I stepped behind the dumpster and waited.

  The car’s engine turned off, but the headlights stayed on while two doors opened and shut. There was the sound of hard soles, the men making no attempt to quietly approach me. I could see their shadows moving against the walls, the red neon of an exit sign reflecting from the wet brick. I readied my Glock and watched their shadows. Could see them reaching for something in their pockets. In five seconds they would be visible. In six seconds they may be dead.

  The cat snarled and ran between my legs. I felt a drop of sweat roll slowly down the center of my back. A voice said, “O’Brien, no need to play hide ‘n seek.”

  I recognized it. The snide tone came from the same voice I heard that morning in the Walmart parking lot. Frank Soto. “We’re here to talk. We don’t even have guns on us.”

  I said, “Walk into the center of the alley. Both of you hold your hands in the air.”

  “Let’s do as the man asks,” Soto said to the other man. “You sound like a cop, O’Brien.” They moved to the center of the alley, silhouettes in the car’s lights, hands up.

  I walked around the side of the dumpster, the Glock in my hand. The other man had muscle so thick it looked as if he wore shoulder pads, his chest similar to a small refrigerator. But he was a least a foot shorter than me. He had a pale, Germanic complexion. His fish eyes blinked, resembling a contented cat. Soto grinned, his face sprouting a week’s growth of whiskers. He wore a blue jean shirt with the sleeves cut off and rolled to emphasize his muscles. He said, “Lower the heat. We come on a peaceful mission, brother. Mr. Gonzales only wants to have a little chat with you. Word is he might be offering you a job. Lots of money. Travel. Women. He asked us to bring you to him.”

  “Tell him to come here.”

  Soto smiled. The other man’s face was stone. Soto said, “That’s not too easy to do. Lots of paperwork, you know…all that immigration and customs shit. Makes traveling suck, a real pain in the ass. Look, man, the blood’s runnin’ out of my freakin’ arms. Me and Johnny will just drop our hands and talk.” They lowered their arms to their sides. “That’s better,” Soto said. “Now put the piece away and get in the car.”

  “I’m not getting in that car…and neither are you.”

  “Mr. Gonzales doesn’t like to be kept waiting. You can get in the car without a scratch on your body, or you can go with knots on your head.”

  “Take your boots off and lift up your pant legs. Both of you!”

  “Take it easy, O’Brien. I told you we’re not carrying heat.”

  “And I told you to kick your boots off.” I pointed the Glock directly between Soto’s eyes.

  “Kick off your shoes, Johnny. Let’s show this peckerwood we mean what we say.” They untied their boots and slowly lifted their pant legs. “You might take me out, but Johnny’s only seven or eight feet from you. He’ll put you down in less than two seconds.”

  I said nothing.

  Soto grinned. He slowly reached in his jeans front pocket and pulled out a set of brass knuckles. The other man did the same thing. “Looks like we need to teach you a lesson in manners, O’Brien. Mr. Gonzales is a man who knows a lot of shit about people, and he believes the good cop in you won’t allow you to shoot an unarmed man. Whadda you say about that, O’Brien?”

  “You have to ask yourself, Soto, what would the bad cop in me do? Are you willing to risk that?”

  Soto grinned and placed an unlit wooden match in the corner of his mouth. “Let’s see if Mr. Gonzales is right. Take him, Johnny!”

  I shot the man named Johnny in his knee. Soto swung at me, the wind from his big fist raking across my cheek. Johnny fell back into a puddle of water, moaning. I turned to Soto and slid the Glock under my belt. The expression on his face was of wicked delight, as if he’d been told someone drowned the last kitten in the litter. He came closer and said, “Too bad Mr. G wants to personally pop your spine. I’d love to do it tonight, get it the fuck over with. Know what I mean?”

  I was silent, watching Johnny out of the corner of my eye, readying for Soto’s attack. He swung hard. Too hard. I hit him squarely in the jaw. He staggered backward. I saw Johnny’s shadow on the wall, saw him reach into the back of his pants. I turned in time to see a derringer under the ruddy neon light. In his hand it was miniscule, a piece of metal flashing—jewelry in his palm. His stubby finger jerked the trigger, the bullet whizzing by my right ear. I approached hi
s head. Fast. It was a small head stuck on mammoth shoulders. And I aimed—kicking him solid in the teeth, the sound was as if someone stomped on a can.

  Soto hit me in the back of my head with the brass knuckles. There was a burst of white. I heard his laughter. It was arcane, a synthetic sound deep down in a well, the reverberations spinning up to the surface. I turned. He danced around, grinning, fists balled. The shiny brass looked like four big rings on his fingers. He smirked. “I planted the poison in the bitch’s house, the gal you’re seeing. I was gonna fuck her as she died, but a nosey neighbor came by just as I was going to stick it to Molly’s mama. How does that make you feel, O’Brien? You…me…sharin’ the same mama.”

  “Fuck you, Soto.”

  His eyes popped wide. He cocked his fist and swung too hard at me again. Off balance. I grabbed his arm, twisting it out of the socket, dislocating his shoulder. He fell to the ground, cursing me. I hit him hard in the collarbone, felt it snap under my fist. At that moment, Frank Soto passed out. The other man was unconscious, too. I ran to their car and opened the door. The car smelled of smoked marijuana and French fries. I found a cell phone on the console, scrolled through the last numbers. They were all the same. Soto had been calling someone every fifteen minutes giving an update as they followed me.

  I inhaled a deep breath, exhaled and called the last number. After three rings, there was an answer, “Tell me you caught O’Brien, that bastard child of a failed society,” came Pablo Gonzales’ smooth voice. I waited two full seconds before responding, the sounds of an airport in the background.

  “Pablo, your boys are lying in an alley filled with cat shit and mud puddles. Now I’m coming for you.”

  He disconnected as the rain fell harder.

  I called Dave and told him what had happened. I gave him Gonzales number and said, “It’s probably a disposable phone. Maybe they can get a ping off the cell tower. Call Daytona PD and have them pick up Soto and his pal. They’re unconscious in an alley behind McLaren’s Pub on Ocean Drive. They’ll need an ambulance dispatched, too. Remind detectives that the guys on their backs are two of Pablo Gonzales soldiers, accessories in the bombing deaths of nine federal agents. I’ll wait until I hear their sirens, then I’m gone.”

  “That should be in a couple of minutes,” Dave said.

  “When I spoke with Gonzales, I could detect the sounds of an airport in the background. I heard someone being paged in English.”

  “So you think Gonzales is or was in a U.S. airport?’’

  “Probably Tampa International. Let the feds know. They can get flight information from the FAA. Maybe Gonzales flew in his own private jet. Probably some jet affiliated with a dummy corporation. Or maybe he flew in commercial airline. Very few people would recognize him. The only picture the feds have is twelve years old.”

  “Are you coming back to the marina?”

  “I’m driving to Tampa. Soto slipped when he said Mr. Gonzales doesn’t like to be kept waiting. He’s here, Dave. Someone over there may know where Gonzales hides when he comes stateside. If I can find that person, I can find him. Oh, I left Max’s leash on the nail on the outside of Jupiter’s door. ”

  “I figured you did, that’s why I got it about an hour ago. Max and I are good to go for the night.”

  “Dave…”

  “Yeah?”

  “You called Cal Thorp, didn’t you? That day we watched the warehouse disintegrate.”

  “How’d you know? Never mind, yes I called him. He’s on stand-by.”

  “Maybe, between the two of you, I can get an address.”

  “What address?”

  “Pull the phone records to the Marion County Sheriff’s Department for June ninth. I’m looking for an incoming call with a Tampa Bay area code. See if you can tie an address with the number. If you reach Thorpe, ask him to meet me in Tampa tomorrow afternoon, three o’clock at the Tampa Aquarium. Text the address if you can find the caller’s ID. Goodnight, Dave.”

  I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER Gonzales had his men plant a bug on my Jeep. But now I didn’t want to be followed. I rented a car at Daytona Airport, drove west on I-4 through pouring rain. I felt Gonzales was here in the states. Maybe here to personally make sure Izzy’s body was taken home, or maybe he was here to make good on his threat to render me paraplegic.

  It didn’t matter. I had a plan to find him. And if I could make it happen, Pablo Gonzales would never again harm another human being.

  I BOUGHT A THOOTHBRUSH AND a change of clothes at a 24-hour Walmart, paid cash at the truck stop motel on the outskirts of Tampa and checked in under an alias. I parked the rental car on the opposite side of the motel from my room and walked through a breezeway to the room on the second floor.

  My room smelled of dried sweat and chemical bleach. I showered, placed my Glock under the pillow and stretched out on the bed. I was exhausted, sore but too wired to sleep. I lay there and listened to the rain fall, the odor of Clorox and old clothes crawling around the room like invisible spiders. My thoughts finally blurred when fatigue fell harder than the rain outside. Somewhere in my dreams, I saw the face of Agent Flores, smelled her perfume from that morning in the hospital room. Then I saw CSI investigators pick up her head, the eyes locked in the same remote expression I’d seen on Luke Palmer’s face as his body rotated slowly from the end of the rope.

  I sat up in the bed, the single air-conditioning unit rattling and blowing tepid air, my chest damp from sweat, the lavender light from the motel sign bleeding in between the Venetian blinds. I heard the long, desolate echo from a train horn in the distance and remembered the passage in Marquez’s book about the dead banana workers shipped to the coast. I blinked away sleep, but couldn’t wash away images of their bodies. I saw the dead tossed, reminiscent of bags of garbage in open freight cars that bounced along a narrow-gauge track, under palm and banana trees. Under the blanket of a dark sea, sharks circled in expectation of things to come.

  I arose at the crack of dawn to the rumble of a trucker turning over his diesel just outside my motel room window. I squinted to read the time on my phone: 6:17 a.m. There was no text message from Dave. I showered, secured the Glock under my belt, packed my new toothbrush and headed out the door to the truck stop restaurant. I sat at a corner table, full view of the parking lot and entrance, and ordered a pot of black coffee, three eggs, grits, tomatoes, and rye toast.

  During my second cup of coffee, the phone vibrated on the table. Dave texted: only phone # on Marion records the 9th w/727 area code came from 1892 Gandy Blvd - home registered to Maria Fernandez. C. T to meet u at agreed location

  I sipped the coffee and watched a black Cadillac SUV cruise slowly through the parking lot. The windows tinted dark. The Cadillac pulled up in front of the motel office and two men in sunglasses got out, both had steroid constructed blocky bodies. They waddled into the motel office. I dropped enough money on the table to take care of the bill and tip, left through a rear exit, got in the rental Ford and pulled out into the morning traffic.

  I called Dave and received directions to the house. “Don’t know if there’s a tail on me, but two guys who spent far too much time in gyms walked into the motel office.”

  “Gonzales has a lot of eyes and ears out there. From your present location, I’d estimate you’re about fifteen minutes away from Maria Fernandez’s place. It’s a long shot, Sean.”

  “But at this point, it’s really the only shot we have. I’ll call you after I find her.”

  On the way to the address, I drove around apartments that were tantamount to slum dwellings. The buildings looked painful, resembling tired old men trying to support extended families on their shoulders. The cinderblocks were visible behind years of neglected chalky bone-white paint. Brown-skinned kids played in barren yards under the partial shade of two scrawny and diseased elm trees.

  A mile later the scenery changed into single family homes with neat yards and manicured shrubbery. The address on the freshly painted mailbox near the home at the
end of the cul-de-sac was 1892. I parked in the drive and stood by the door and listened before knocking. I heard sounds of a Spanish language newscast on television. I knocked. Nothing. The curtain scarcely parted, enough for me to see a single brown eye. It simply stared a long moment, reminding me of the single eye on the back of a dollar bill. I waved. “Miss Fernandez, I was a friend of Luke Palmer. Your description of Izzy Gonzales helped get Mr. Palmer out of the Marion County Jail where he was being held on groundless charges. Can we talk?”

  The curtain returned to its previous position, the brown eye gone. I waited for thirty seconds. There was no response. I spoke a little louder. “Please, Miss Fernandez, I need to talk with you. I know Pablo Gonzales did something to you or a member of your family. He won’t stop until he’s stopped. That’s what I‘m trying to do.” After another thirty seconds, the door opened the extent of the brass chain, giving me a six-inch view of a light brown face filled with suspicion. “My name is Sean O’Brien. I know you called the sheriff’s office and identified the drawing as that of Izzy Gonzales. That was a brave and responsible thing to do. May I come in?”

  She nodded, closed the door, slid the chain off and stood aside. I walked into a home where nothing seemed out of place. Architectural and home and garden magazines neatly displayed on the coffee table in the living room. Fresh-cut flowers filled the home with the scent of spring. The home was impeccably furnished. Telemundo flickered on the TV screen with the sound turned down.

  Maria Fernandez was, without doubt, a striking woman. She had high cheekbones, eyes like liquid black onyx, full lips and thick dark hair. I guessed her to be about in her mid-thirties. She wore a business suit with a name tag that read Maria. In Spanish, I asked her if she was more comfortable speaking Spanish.