by Dan Ames
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Molly Hornor,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“Molly Hornor. You’re her dealer, right? Where can I find her?”
His leg finally popped loose and he rolled free and staggered to his feet. Threw his shoulders back, adjusted his sunglasses.
“I’m no one’s dealer, you fricking caveman,” he said. “Why don’t you get out of my face?”
It seemed that regaining his composure had also sent a shot of adrenaline into him. It was kind of funny to see.
He raised a finger and started to point it at my chest.
“I don’t think you’re a cop so you can–”
Unhurried, I reached up, grabbed his finger and snapped it in two. It was pretty easy to do. I anchored two of my fingers behind his knuckle and pressed my thumb into the pad of his fingertip. It made a sound similar to when you break a piece of kindling over your knee while building a campfire.
He screamed then, a long wailing moan.
“Molly,” I repeated. “Where. Is. She.”
“She hangs out at some place on the beach,” the Candyman screamed, between sobs. Tears were streaming down his face and I realized he was wearing some kind of weird pancake makeup. It was streaking like worm trails through a patch of mud.
“On the beach,” he added, “with a Haitian. A surfer.” He almost screamed the last part. He was holding his finger which had already started to swell and turn blue.
I was about to follow up with another question, but something stopped me.
“Get away from him,” a voice said to my right and sort of behind me.
I glanced over.
The black girl who’d been sitting next to Candyman was now leaning against the fence, a shiny revolver in her hand pointed at the ground. She held it with a casual, everyday expression. Loose in her hand. Like a set of car keys.
Good at following orders, I took a step back.
“Why did you do that to him?” she asked.
“He was being an asshole,” I replied.
“What else is new?” she answered. “You do that to every jackass you run into?”
“No, just the ones who won’t give me what I want.”
She smiled then, a row of dynamite white teeth, they practically shone like flawless diamonds.
“I like your style,” she said. “Now get away from him and run along.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
The gun slowly came up.
I raised my hands and backed away, then circled back to the Maverick.
For the first time since Margaret Hornor hired me, I felt good. After all, I thought, how hard could it be to find a Haitian surfer?
14
Surfers tend to stick together.
In some ways, it was a structured social club. They tended to recognize one another by experience, expertise and attitude.
I wasn’t an accomplished surfer, but I’d learned the basics.
So in addition to working hard to wipe the memory of Candyman’s orange ass from my memory, I swung into a gas station and filled up the Maverick’s tank and headed back home.
Instead of hopping onto I-95, I stuck to the A1A, the narrow road that runs next to the ocean. It was slow going but I had the windows down and savored the warm ocean breeze.
Of course, by law you have to stop when beachgoers cross the street and I slowed down more than once to see the sun worshippers haul their load toward either the ocean or the parking lot.
It was interesting to note the difference in body posture. The ones headed toward the water were full of energy and even a little excited.
Going the other way they moved a lot slower. Relaxed. Sunburned or drunk. Or all three.
Eventually, I hit my cross street and turned away from the water, eventually getting back home.
I pulled into the driveway, got out and locked the car. Just as I was about to unlock the door, I saw a shadow fall across my window so I ducked and twisted to the right.
The tire iron was almost to my head before I caught the arm that held it.
Out of my crouch, I exploded into the chest of the big Florida Cracker whose hand I’d stabbed at Hammerhead’s house. That hand was in a bandage, and the tire iron was in the other.
I had hooked his foot and he went down, hard, on his back which gave time for his companion, Squirrel, to stand there frozen.
This was not a man of action.
Too late, he decided to go for the gun inside his denim jacket but by then, I’d use my momentum to carry me past Cracker and throw a straight right into Squirrel’s mouth.
It was an awful blow, I’m not going to lie. There had been no need to employ any defense on my part, so I’d torqued my body and put everything behind it. A powerful piston of a blow with my fist, which was a size and a half bigger than most.
Squirrel’s lips split like a ripe tomato, blood spraying and his upper teeth folded under my knuckles. His knees went out from under him and as he fell, I snatched the gun from his jacket, flipped it so I was holding the barrel, turned to see Cracker staggering to his feet and swung the gun sideways, hoping to connect the butt with the big man’s temple.
I just missed, though, and instead, the protruding point of the gun’s hammer sunk into Cracker’s forehead and ripped a furrow all along his forehead from eyebrow to eyebrow. It was a really horrible sight because a giant flap of skin had broken loose and folded over his eyes, like some kind of disgusting flesh visor.
Blood poured down and he screamed, blinded and in the dark. Knowing there was plenty of time, I reached down and plucked the tire iron from his hand and bashed him over the head with it. This too, was done with no small amount of force. So much, in fact, that it was wedged into his skull and I had to yank it hard to get it back out. Once it was free I stepped back and swung it in a short, vicious arc, connecting with his jaw which came completely loose and left his face looking like a Picasso sketch.
He dropped like the giant sack of crap that he was, and landed right next to Squirrel.
I quickly pulled their bodies behind the Maverick, so they weren’t visible from the street and then fished the keys from Cracker’s pocket. His giant 4x4 had to be somewhere nearby. I walked down the driveway and up to the nearest intersection, but there was no sign of it, so I walked back the other way and over to the next block. Just as I was about to use the lock button to trigger the horn, I spotted it one more block over, via a glimpse between two of my neighbors’ homes.
It was a bit surprising that he had used so much caution parking this far away from my house. The big Cracker hadn’t acted like he put much thought into planning. If he wasn’t dead, I would be sure to give him a compliment.
A quick unlock from the key fob and I hopped into the driver’s seat. It was odd to be sitting up so high. I immediately understood the attraction for a guy like my unconscious opponent. It made one feel powerful, almost superior, looking down on everyone. I keyed the ignition and from the stereo some country song about fried chicken and beer blasted out at me. I turned the stereo off, put the big vehicle into gear and drove to my house where I backed the truck into my driveway.
I lowered the tailgate, and checked my houseguests. Cracker was in bad shape. Either dead or a coma. It didn’t concern me enough to check.
Squirrel was sort of coming to, so I nursed him gently back to sleep with the tire iron, then threw both of them into the truck bed. I raised the tailgate, climbed back in and drove away from my house.
It took a little over twenty minutes to get into the worst neighborhood I could find. A nasty little stretch of West Palm Beach full of murderers, rapists and ex-convicts. My two companions would feel right at home, if they ever regained consciousness.
There was a deserted alley with a few rats skittering here and there, so I shut off the truck, left the key in the ignition, rolled the windows down and walked up to the nearest cross street. Using my phone, I fired up the Ub
er app and within three minutes an Arab woman in a Toyota Corolla picked me up.
The car smelled like cheap perfume and the penguin tank at the zoo.
God bless America.
15
Human blood and teeth on the driveway tended to drive down neighborhood property values. So even though the Maverick was already spotless, I pretended to wash it in order to clean up after my most inhospitable guests. I figured Squirrel was the one who’d leaked all over the place.
Some people just couldn’t take a punch.
When that was done, I went inside, cleaned up and threw on a pair of board shorts, flip flops and a swim shirt.
Kicking the shit out of those two losers had made me hungry so I whipped together a quick sandwich using lavash flatbread, turkey and lettuce with a squirt of wasabi, followed with a big glass of iced tea.
Back outside I opened up the garage, revealing my other vehicle. This one was a 1971 International Harvester 4x4 Scout. IH was a company based in Illinois that used to make farm machinery and other vehicles. As far as I knew, it was either out of business or had sold to another company,
I’d had this baby rebuilt from the ground up by the same former client who’d done the Maverick. It had a custom teal paint job, with big oversized off-road wheels, and a killer sound system.
This one was customized for beach duty. It had a true jeep feel, totally exposed but everything was rubber and steel, easily cleaned with a garden hose. The upholstery was a custom job, too. A special blend of vinyl and polymer that felt like leather.
I backed the Scout out of the garage, and pulled the Maverick inside. From a wall, I grabbed my surfboard and slid it into the custom-made rack on the Scout.
After locking everything up, I steered the Scout back onto the road, and down to the beach.
The east coast of Florida isn’t known as a great surfing spot. The waves are steady, but not huge. In the summer, the Gulf Stream pushes up from the south and the water is warm and calm. In the winter, the winds go the other way and the waves get bigger and the water colder.
Kite surfing is more popular than regular surfing, but there are still spots where surfers gather.
The main one near Delray Beach is a place the locals call Zuma, after the well-known Zuma Beach in California.
No one seems to know where the nickname came from, but most figure it was a California transplant who somehow made it stick. Whatever the case, the surfing spot wasn’t crowded when I pulled the Scout into a rare available parking space along the A1A.
Hoisting my surfboard on my shoulder, I walked out onto the beach and down to the water. There were plenty of people already in place. There were multiple beach volleyball games going on, mostly guys shouting at each other over the boom box blasting some sort of rap hip-hop mashup.
A family was engaging in a fiery game of paddleball.
You had groups of people lounging on blankets, bottles of beer in hand, along with the occasional loner strumming a ukulele with an upturned hat looking for donations.
Fifty yards offshore were a half-dozen surfers, most just straddling their boards, waiting for the waves to pick up. I waded in, slid onto my board and paddled out next to them.
“Yo,” I said to the nearest guy, a long-haired white guy covered with tribal tattoos. I wondered if his “tribe” was a suburb. Maybe the long, elaborate tribal tattoo on his arm stood for Pelican Sound Condominium complex, a Pulte home development.
“Hey bruh,” he said.
“Has it been calm like this all day?” I asked.
“Nah, just died down ten minutes ago. Just a lull, I think.”
I nodded and we watched a guy take on a small wave, he got to his feet and rode it briefly before flattening out onto the board and body surfing in.
“I heard there’s some good waves up by Daytona,” my tribal friend said. “My ex lives up there and she told me it’s been gnarly for the last week or so.”
“Never surfed up there,” I said. “I go wherever my buddy says the waves are. He’s the best Haitian surfer I’ve ever met.”
The Samoan guy looked at me. “Shit. You mean Chief? That dude’s crazy, man.”
“Yeah, but he knows his waves.”
“I haven’t seen the Chief lately. He still up by Ocean Ridge?”
“Yeah, mostly.”
My tribal surfer buddy shook his head. “I watched him kick some dude’s ass at Doc’s. Scary, man. I thought he was going to kill the guy.”
“Don’t mess with the Chief,” I said. “Or you learn the hard way.”
Suddenly, the wind changed and a nice roller came toward us.
“Yeah baby,” my new friend said. He paddled hard and caught the wave, rode it toward the beach.
I caught the next one and let it carry me all the way onto shore where I picked up my surfboard, walked back to the street where I washed everything off at a shower kiosk and then stowed my board back on the Scout.
I fired her up, and headed north along the A1A, toward Ocean Ridge.
And the Chief.
16
Doc’s is a legendary bar on the beach in Ocean Ridge, which is across the intercoastal from Lake Worth. A decent stretch of sand, some good waves and a little bit of normalcy before those heading north on the A1A hit Palm Beach and the mega mansions.
Price of entry in Palm Beach is around four million or so.
For a fixer-upper.
Ocean Ridge is more down-to-earth. Its neighbor to the west, Lake Worth, is on its way back, striving for the hip vibes of Delray Beach. It’s got a ways to go, especially when you consider the areas near the freeway.
I pulled the Scout into Doc’s parking lot, made sure my board was locked up and went inside, through the indoor bar area, out to the beachside bar. It’s where all the action typically occurs.
Surfing, whether actually doing it or simply watching, always made me thirsty and I ordered a beer.
My table was facing the beach and I could see a half-dozen surfers trying to make the most of some pretty weak waves. When my beer came, I hoisted the cold bottle and took a nice long pull.
Mmm. Hit the spot. Something about surfing and beer that make them the perfect combination.
A little game of beach volleyball caught my eye because it was all-female and competitive. I’m no expert, but it looked to me like some pretty high-quality athleticism going on, and it was a pleasure to watch, on multiple levels.
Eventually, the game ended and some of the surfers came in from the water. None of them were black, but most were tanned a deep brown. Still, I knew I was looking for a Haitian, and none of them seemed to fit the description.
The waitress brought me another beer, without my asking which earned her a special place in my heart.
You just can’t teach that stuff, I thought.
This one tasted even better than the first and I was beginning to think I might just have to call it quits for the day and spend the rest of my time here at Doc’s, enjoying the sunset and maybe meeting a volleyball player.
That plan was interrupted, however, by the arrival of two people on the beach.
Actually, arrival is the wrong word.
They arrived in the sense that they came to my attention. However, it was their departure that precipitated the event. They had apparently been on a towel below the high water mark, not visible to me from the outdoor patio.
I put my beer down and leaned forward. The man was definitely black, big and had on board shorts, not that it means anything down here in Florida. Everybody wears them, surfers or not.
The girl was behind him and I stood, threw a twenty on the table and walked out to the edge of the sand where I waited to see which way they would go. There was the main parking area just behind the bar, and then there was some off-street parking, which is where the couple headed.
As quickly as I could, I trotted around to the Scout, climbed in and fired up the engine. I pulled out onto the street, and saw the girl getting into the front passenger sid
e of a Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon, while the black guy got into the other side.
Even though the view had been a quick glimpse, there was no doubt in my mind.
I had found Molly.
17
The Benz G-Wagon is my favorite vehicle to tail.
It’s just so easy.
The damn thing is like a giant box on wheels, sitting up higher than just about everything except the swamp truck 4x4s with the jacked-up chassis.
Even better, the Chief’s G-Wagon was sporting a clearly custom color: silver with flecks of gold. As it moved through traffic, I felt like I was following a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.
Eventually, we crossed over the intercoastal onto the A1A and the G-Wagon pulled into a gated compound. Over the entrance, I saw a three-story ode to modern beach architecture. It was cement block painted a stark white, with balconies and a circular drive that wound around a fountain. The fountain’s central figure was a naked woman. I could’ve been wrong, but it looked like the sculpture’s figure was wearing a gold chain.
Unable to linger and not willing to pull over to the side of the road to gawk, I drove on, catching a quick glimpse of Molly exiting the passenger side of the G-Wagon.
I drove on, then turned off onto the next block and made my way back past the compound.
Even from the road, I could see the impressive security features, including a large man with a walkie talkie stationed near the front door.
At this point, my mission had been to locate Molly and at least make sure she was alive.
Mission accomplished.
For it to transition to a hostage rescue operation I would have to contact my client. However, it didn’t appear to me that Molly was being held against her will. Then again, I hadn’t seen her up close and personal.
Maybe the Chief had her doped up on drugs and was leading her around like a pet zombie.
I kind of doubted it, but I’d seen stranger things.