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 Ka
ngaroo 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:
Georgetown Kraft Credit Union Debit Card
BankAmericard Rewards Visa – Expired
Driver’s License – Issued to one Rickard Bertram Hairre. Rickard? Must be a family name.
Hair Club of Georgetown membership card, ID #4747
Humana Medical Insurance Card issued by city council of Murrell’s Inlet.
Five city council business cards
Post-It Note with address: 700 S. Kawasaki – googled for SC, no match. Closest match JFK Auto in NC.
Receipt from Lee’s Inlet Kitchen
Something dawned on him as he read through the list. The zip drive hadn’t asked for a password. He tossed the yellow pad into the passenger’s seat and pulled his laptop open. He clicked the zip drive icon – F: and the box popped up asking him to login. It read: Username:______ PIN:______
“That’s it!” he exclaimed, reaching for the credit union customer file.
As he did, he accidentally pulled the steering wheel and veered the cruiser into the oncoming traffic lane. But Wachesaw Road is a side street and has zero traffic late at night, so no one was coming. His coffee sloshed over the edge of the cup and burned his hand, startling him as he pulled back into his lane. He mopped at a few stray drops on the passenger’s seat.
Ouch, Chesney thought as he put the laptop down and wiped the coffee from his hand. That was a close one; it could’ve poured into my lap ... CRAP!
While distracted with the coffee cup, Chesney had missed the stop sign and pulled straight out onto Business 17 and rammed t-bone style into the side of a black Lincoln Towncar.
In the driver’s side window of the car, Chesney could see a very pissed off black man wearing a black suit and tie ... with a black patch over one eye.
“Willie?”
He couldn’t hear the extremely animated ice cream truck driver, but he could clearly see him mouth the words, You Sumbitch!
Ellie Mae Gallup kicked the gravel parking lot with her beat up cowboy boot and banged her fist on the hood of the Camaro. Smoke billowed out from the edges and from the front grill.
“I cain’t believe ‘is P.O.S. decides ta give up right when we got ‘im!”
She turned to peer down Ocean Drive, but there was no sign of the Black Lincoln Towncar they had been chasing.
“Gall dangit!” she spat and kicked the driver’s side tire, accidentally shearing the top off of the dry-rotted air nozzle. Air hissed out and the tire flattened in seconds.
“Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?!” She kicked the tire again. “Piece ‘a junk.”
From inside the car she heard a low moaning. Daisy Mae Gallup was sitting in the passenger’s side seat holding onto her stomach.
“What’s takin’ so long?” she yelled out her own window, “he’s gettin’ away!”
“I kin see ‘at, Daisy Mae.” Ellie Mae looked around the parking lot of Frank’s. It served a clientele that had pricier vehicles, which were naturally harder to hotwire, but right next door, oddly, sat a Dollar General. The cars parked there looked much easier to—
“Miss?”
Her thought was interrupted by someone tapping her on the shoulder.
She whirled around. “What inna hell do you wa—”
She stopped mid-sentence. He was a cute young man, maybe twenty-five, lots of blonde hair and fairly muscled. He was wearing a Pawleys Island tank top and had sunglasses propped up on his head, even though it was nearly dark. Obviously a tourist. He’d apparently just stepped down out of a brand new, fire engine red, jacked up, decked out Jeep Wrangler Unlimited ... and it was still running.
“Are you having some trouble with your car?
Ellie Mae had a sudden flash of brilliance. “Oh, yes, thank you so much! This dang tire jus’ blew up on me!”
The young man knelt down to inspect it and Ellie Mae gestured wildly over his back to Daisy Mae to get out of the car. She pointed to the Jeep and mouthed, get in.
The man looked up at her holding a broken air nozzle in his hand. “Here’s your problem. You got a spare?”
“Oh my,” Ellie Mae said and leaned over, exposing her cleavage—familiar territory to a former stripper—and said, “I do, but shore ‘nuff, I cain’t change no spare.”
“Ma’am, I’d be happy to change it for you,” he said, moving back to the trunk.
In a few minutes, he was hard at work on changing out the flattened tire for the spare. So hard, in fact, that he never noticed Ellie Mae climbing into the driver’s seat of his Jeep.
He did notice when the Jeep suddenly gunned and kicked up gravel as it screeched out of Frank’s parking lot.
Ellie Mae thought she could hear the man yelling as they turned onto Ocean Drive.
“Poor fella,” Daisy Mae groaned.
Ellie Mae looked over at her sister. She was sweating bullets and breathing hard in a regular, pulsing rhythm. She had one hand on the door handle and one on her belly.
“Daisy Mae?” She brushed her sister’s hair out of her face. “How you feelin’?”
“Ah think ah’m havin’ a baby.”
Troy was thrown into the passenger’s side door of One-Eyed Willie’s Black Lincoln Towncar, but not hard enough to injure him. However, it was hard enough to throw him from the car.
He had seen the other car coming and knew there would be a crash, but didn’t have time to warn Willie. He jumped sideways a split second before the collision and as he slammed into the passenger’s side door, it popped open, spilling him gently onto the pavement. It then rocked back and forth a few times, essentially dropping Troy off on the ground unharmed.
He could hear Willie had gotten out of the car and was yelling at the other driver.
“Ya got ta be kiddin’ me!” he heard the old man exclaim. “Two times in da same week?? And by da same dang po-leese car?”
Police car? He hadn’t noticed it was a police car as it barreled toward them. Glancing back down Business 17 the way they had come, he didn’t see any sign of the Gallup sisters on the road. He wondered if they’d given up the chase. Then he remembered why Willie had stopped at the condos in the first place ... probably enough weed to get them both arrested. He mentally apologized to the ice cream man/Uber driver, and crawled as quietly as he could to the side of the road. Ducking behind a scraggly bush on the corner, he peeked back at the scene of the accident.
Willie was gesturing wildly at the damage to his Black Lincoln Towncar and the cop was having no luck getting a word in edgewise. Neither man was paying attention to the passenger. Troy quickly sprinted away. He wasn’t far from Drunken Jack’s and figured he could make it pretty quickly on foot. He glanced at his cellphone. No messages. 1:47am.
Dammit. He quickly tapped out a text to Karah.
-“You still there?”
No response. He quickened his pace to a slow trot in the direction of DJ’s and tapped out a second message.
-“I’m almost there. More craziness. Tell you all about it when I get there.”
Then he added,
-“Sorry, I’ll make it up to you.”
He shoved his phone into his pocket and started jogging. So much for a few casual beers and a quiet night.
Daisy Mae Gallup was breathing hard in between what Ellie Mae was now certain were contractions. Although they hadn’t quite reached the magical 5-1-1 rhythm yet—five minutes apart, one minute long for one hour—Ellie Mae thought this baby was coming sooner rather than later. But they still had time to catch that rat, Tro
y, and get him to the hospital with them.
“Ah don’t think I’m gon’ make it, Ellie Mae,” Daisy Mae wheezed between her Lamaze breathing. “We gotta git to the hospital now!”
In between her breaths of hee hee hee and hoo hoo hoo, she grabbed the wheel of the Jeep and jerked. Ellie Mae jerked it back, but not before they had swerved off Ocean Drive and onto the alternate road, Business 17.
“What in tarnation are you tryin’ ta do, Daisy Mae?” she yelled as she steadied the racing Jeep into the proper lane. “Now ya done got us lost!”
Daisy Mae couldn’t answer, she just grunted a long, slow, pushing grunt. Ellie Mae finally registered what was happening ... this baby was coming now. She put her hand on her sister’s stomach, and said, “Okay sis, ta haile with that creep. Let’s get you and Troy junior to the hospital.”
Daisy Mae grunted again and nodded.
Ellie Mae slammed the Jeep’s accelerator to the floor.
“Shit, hold on,” she said and put both hands on the steering wheel. “There’s a dang cop up ahead.”
“Don’t stop, sis-uhgghhh,” Daisy Mae groaned out the last.
“I ain’t plannin’ ta.”
Chesney was having no luck getting through to One-Eyed Willie. The department’s insurance would naturally pay for all the damages, but Willie was in a tirade ... and rightfully so. Just a day ago, Chesney had slammed into the rear end of his beautiful ice cream truck and here he sat with the hood of his cruiser buried into the side of Willie’s Towncar. Luckily it had been just behind the driver’s side door, so no bodily harm had come to the old man.
“Willie,” Chesney said and held up both hands as he backed slowly toward his cruiser, “let me radio the station and get you a tow. They’ll get you a rental in the meantime.”
“A rental?!” Willie yelled. “Ah, don’t need no rental. I jus’ need cops ta stop crashin’ inta mah vee-hicles.”
The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection Page 17