by Dan Ames
“Little late to be going for Father-of-the-Year, isn’t it?”
“Screw you, pal.”
He drank from his water. I saw eyes glance down and I knew he was gauging the distance between us, getting ready for another charge.
“Don’t even think about it, Boswell,” I said. “I was pretty kind just choking you out. I could have done some real damage. I’d hate to knock out all of those professionally bleached teeth and I’d hate to have to sweep up your veneers from my floor.”
When he’d spoken, I could tell he’d had them done. It looked like he’d maybe even done some face-tucking here and there. South Florida was the capital of plastic surgery, more so than Los Angeles. At least Los Angeles tried to keep it somewhat dignified. Down here, you saw women everywhere with hideous masks. I mean, how much worse could their real faces look?
“You’re an asshole,” he said.
“And you’re avoiding the issue,” I said. “What, did Margaret tell you she hired me? Or are you one of those guys who follows his wife around and hides in the bushes?”
“From what I heard, you’re the one hiding in my wife’s bush,” he said with a sneer.
At that moment, I decided that I really, really disliked John Boswell.
“You know what? I changed my mind, why don’t you take another run at me?” I said, getting to my feet.
He practically shrank back into my visitor’s chair.
“Look, look, I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I don’t give a flying crap what Margaret does with her life anymore. I’m just trying to get her to stay the hell out of my business, you know what I mean? She’s the frickin’ devil, man! Don’t you see that? I mean, I don’t love her anymore–”
Suddenly, he stopped, and the pained expression on his face morphed into something else. It started with his chin and lower lip. They were practically quivering. And then, right before my eyes, his whole face turned up and he burst into the most riotous fit of laughter imaginable. He laughed and laughed, shaking so hard that he started holding his midsection.
“I’m sorry, I thought I could do it,” he said. His laughing subsided, and he wiped the tears from his face, but then he had an aftershock, and it all started again, not quite as vigorous. Finally, that one passed.
“Are you done now?” I asked.
He let out a long exhalation of breath.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Care to fill me in?”
Boswell tossed me the water bottle, now empty and got to his feet.
“You’re a smart guy, you figure it out,” he answered.
He changed his mind when I slid from the edge of the desk and put myself between him and my door.
There was a mixture of fear and rebellion in his eyes. He was scared of me all right, but he still had some fight left in him. Easy way to take care of that.
I slapped him.
It was an easy blow, from the hip, open palm. The crack was loud, and Boswell’s head snapped to the side.
It probably hurt a little.
But it damaged his pride even more.
No man on God’s green earth wants to get bitch-slapped by another man.
When he faced me, there was still fear in his eyes, but now it was joined by shame, anguish and hurt feelings. The rebellion was gone.
“Margaret is my ex-wife, that’s true. But Molly’s not my daughter,” Boswell said. “If you looked at my phone, you saw messages to Molly. I wasn’t trying to reconnect with her. That’s not what I was doing at all.”
“Then what were you doing?”
“I was trying to warn her.”
“Warn her?” I asked. “About me?”
He shook his head. “No, not you. Margaret. And Molly’s real father. They’re trying to get at the trust fund I provided her. That’s the con, do you get it now?”
Whether or not I believed him wasn’t the point. I understood the game he had just outlined.
“Who’s her real father?” I asked.
He started laughing again and I made like I was going to slap him. He stopped and looked at me.
Shrugged his shoulders in an expression of hopelessness.
“Some loser called the Candyman.”
25
I'm not going to lie, my pride was hurt.
The Candyman?
How incredibly disappointing. I could picture him now, flabby and white with tight orange shorts.
He also had a broken finger that was still probably healing, thanks to me. At the same time, I realized he’d held out on me, even though he’d looked scared shitless.
Still, it was very difficult to reconcile Margaret Hornor with that Orange-Shorted Nightmare.
Margaret Hornor was impeccable looking but her taste in men was apparently not held to the same standard. And now I had to include myself in that equation. It was difficult for me to even imagine Margaret Hornor and that pancake-makeup-wearing piece of crap I had rousted by the pool at the Oasis apartment building.
Jesus Christ in a sidecar.
Look, I'm not saying I've got the biggest ego in the world, but I consider that a low blow.
After Boswell left, I locked up the office and went home. When I got inside I could still smell Margaret Hornor. And instead of it being a delight, a titillating reminder of what had gone on in my house and mostly in my bedroom, it left me slightly aghast.
Shit.
I decided to work out my frustrations in the garage. I had a heavy bag and a speed bag and I punched and kicked and lifted weights, working up a sweat that splattered all over the gray, cement floor. It looked like a crime scene by the time I was done with my workout.
After that, a quick dip in the pool, a shower, a fast meal of mostly protein in the form of grilled steak and a few sliced jalapenos, and then I put on my gear.
The Colt 1911 went into its holster, my little snub-nosed Ruger strapped to my ankle, and into my pocket went my assisted-opening knife. Sort of like a switchblade, but legal.
Back in the Maverick, I cruised down to the Oasis, and parked in the same spot I’d used during my first visit.
From my earlier trip to the Oasis, I remembered the Carrot Cake Lady referring to the Candyman as the “weirdo in unit 11.” She’d also mentioned that he was almost always by the pool.
The pool seemed like the best place to start, however, a leisurely walk past it revealed no one was in the mood for the sun or swimming.
Unit 11 was a corner apartment and I walked past it. The windows were dark and it appeared no one was home.
However, I also remembered his black girlfriend, all sinewy muscle and how she held that shiny revolver so casually by her side. Not a woman to be trifled with.
So I stood and pretended to make a phone call while listening for any movement inside the Candyman’s unit. There was nothing, so I quickly withdrew my lock pick from a hidden slot in my belt, jimmied the front door and stepped inside.
When the door opened, a little bit of ambient light came in and I saw the apartment’s main room was empty. It wasn’t much. A couch, a cheap kitchen table and a ten-year-old television on a sagging stand made of plywood.
I shut the door and the apartment went dark.
With my Colt in hand, I checked the bedroom, bathroom and the closet. All empty.
Now it was time to find the drugs. It didn’t take long. His main stash was taped to the bottom of the toilet’s reservoir lid.
I gave the Candyman a failing grade for creativity. That's the first place anyone would look.
Just to make sure there weren’t any other goodies, I checked the closet, under the bed and between the mattresses. Nothing. After a search of any suspicious patches of carpet that might be hiding a compartment, as well as loose ceiling tiles, the result was the same.
Still, from the stash in the toilet I saw there was enough white powder to put the jackass in prison for quite awhile, assuming he had priors, which I was confident he did.
Now, there was nothing to do but wait. I took
a chair that didn't smell as bad as the rest of the place, and started counting the minutes.
I'm great at waiting. Extreme patience is one of my better qualities.
The only difficult part of this particular endeavor was imagining Margaret Hornor in the bedroom servicing the orange-shorted pasty-assed father of her child.
I tried not to think about that and instead ran through in my mind Margaret Hornor's decision to hire me.
So she starts off being married to a crooked white-collar investor. Well, wait. I tried to figure out the timeline in my head. If Molly was in her late teens or early twenties or so, which she appeared to be, and her sister was at Harvard, that made a certain kind of sense.
Because the social photos that I'd seen of Margaret Hornor and Boswell were around ten years old or so, by my guess. Maybe fifteen. That meant that Margaret had most likely either had an affair or had given birth to her children before she landed Boswell. Maybe she had been one of the Candyman’s clients before cleaning herself up and landing a wealthy mover and shaker.
Maybe Boswell had adopted the girls, bequeathed a trust fund full of illegal money which was probably going to be taken away, and discovered that his wife was the one not on the up and up.
Maybe she was still in love with the Candyman, and continued to see him for sex and drugs after she’d married Boswell.
Now that really depressed me.
In any event, they were now cohorts as well as former lovers. If I believed Boswell, and I sort of did, they were trying to get at the trust fund money before the authorities confiscated it.
I noodled things around in my head for a while longer. Until I heard voices outside the door and then I got to my feet and stood behind the door.
When it opened and light spilled into the room, he wouldn't see me.
As I listened, it sounded like he and the black girl were arguing.
"You blew it," the black girl was saying. "Seriously, you’re the worst drug dealer I’ve ever seen in my life. When are you gonna start doing it the way I say?"
There was no doubt in my mind that the black girl was much more dangerous than the pathetic excuse of a man known as the Candyman. So I drew the Colt and when the door opened and they both stepped inside, I put the muzzle of the gun directly against the back of her head.
"Nag, nag, nag," I said.
They both stopped.
The black girl was smart enough not to do anything. The Candyman practically jumped out of his flip-flops and looked like he was being attacked by a gang of fire ants.
I plucked the shiny little revolver out of the black girl’s shorts and could see she had no other weapon, except maybe for her mouth. After pocketing the revolver, I used my free hand to open the door.
“Get your ass out of here and don't come back,” I said. “This is gonna have a bad ending.”
That's what I love about drug dealers. Absolutely no loyalty. She turned and scooted out of that place like she was late for a red carpet event. Like she'd been invited to the Oscars as a guest of Matt Damon.
I slammed the door shut and locked it.
The Candyman stood there, his knees shaking and I could see a line of sweat along his makeup-covered forehead.
“What's your real name, asshole?" I said. I pointed the gun at him.
He held up his hands. My guess was that he got manicures.
“Charles,” he said. “Charles Laughlin.”
“Sit on the bed, Chucky, and listen up,” I said.
Then I put forth my best theory about his relationship with Margaret and their love children. Following that, the narrative went to Boswell and the pathetic scheme involving me to try to liberate Molly from the Chief.
"Have I got that about right, Chuckles?" I said.
"Yeah, so what? We didn't break any laws doing this,” he whined at me. “Maggie’s smart as a whip. You know one of our daughters is at Harvard, right?"
I rolled my eyes.
"I can't believe you’re going to try to take credit for that," I said. "Look around you. You seriously think any of your daughter's intelligence comes from you? If they inherited your intelligence, they’d be studying textbooks on repairing dishwashers.”
I was goading him a little bit, I’m not going to lie. But he had verified most of my theory. So in a sense I was done with him. But I did have one question left.
"When was the last time you saw Maggie?" I hated using that nickname. She was Margaret to me. The question wasn’t really relevant to the case, it had more to do with my personal pride.
"I haven’t seen that bitch in like a year,” Charles spat. “She refuses to see me in person. We talk via text. Burner phones, usually. She doesn't want anything to do with me. She just wants that money.”
That's how I’d figured it, too.
With an unhurried motion I acted like I was reaching for my cell phone but actually I swung the Colt in a short, but powerful arc.
The side of the heavy gun crashed into the Candyman’s temple and he slid to the floor like a discarded banana peel.
I went and got the bag of drugs and taped it to his chest and tied his feet and legs with a lamp cord. Next, I took a picture of the Candyman in all of his drug-dealing glory and texted it to Barbieri along with the address.
And I added, "You’re welcome."
Always the romantic, I was sure to include the little smiley face icon making a kissing face with a red heart.
26
Although there isn’t much paperwork in my business, I’m quite good at it. So when I went back to my office, I quickly called up the contract I’d signed with Margaret Hornor and analyzed the end date.
She was essentially paying me by the week and we were three days from the end of it. A quick bit of math on the calculator and I had the amount to refund Margaret, based on my terminating the case.
Immediately.
A quick draft of an email notating the termination of our agreement and the subsequent refund was fired off to her email. I printed off a hard copy of both as well, just in case Miss Shady tried any financial shenanigans. I was just glad her checks didn’t bounce, because it sure sounded like she had some issues.
That done, I called Hammerhead. Surprisingly, he picked up.
“Carver, what do you want?” he asked, sounding put upon.
“Don’t sound so glad to hear from me,” I said. “Maybe your Mom needs to remind you what a nice guy I am.”
“Believe me, she reminds me every day.”
In the background, I heard a little bit of music and the clinking of glasses.
“What bar are you at?” I asked.
“Shandy’s,” he replied. It was a hole in the wall just off Federal. “Hey, did you ever bump into those two guys who were rousting me at my house?”
“No, why would I?” It was the truth. I hadn’t “bumped” into them. I’d killed one, if not both of them, and left their corpses in West Palm Beach. Where I’m from, that doesn’t qualify as “bumping.”
“It’s just weird, no one’s seen them,” Hammerhead said.
“Now it’s my turn for a question. What do you know about the Chief?”
Hammerhead nearly gasped. “Oh God, why are you asking about him? Don’t ask about him. Don’t even talk about him. Dude’s pure psychopath. He chainsawed some guy a few months back and used the pieces for shark bait.”
“What else,” I answered.
“You want more?”
“I want what you have.”
“His main street dealer is a guy named Lonzo,” Hammerhead said. “Works along the beach.”
“How do I find him?” I asked.
“I thought you were after the Chief?”
“Answer the goddamn question.”
“You can’t miss him. He drives a G-Wagon all decked out in glitter. It’s the gaudiest G-Wagon in Florida. It’s too tacky for South Beach, even.”
Someone yelled in the background.
“Look Carver, I gotta run, you need anything–”
Nope, I thought, as I hung up on him. I’ve got everything I need.
27
It wasn’t going to be a needle in a haystack, exactly. There were a couple of things going for me. First off, a glittery G-Wagon would never qualify as a needle. Secondly, the stretch of the A1A that hugged the beach was long, I admit. However, parking was limited. There were some long stretches of parking spaces right on the A1A, but there were also a lot of public parking areas.
There was no doubt in my mind that Lonzo would want a space right on the beach. That’s where the foot traffic was. That’s where his G-Wagon would lure prospective buyers in. So, being able to immediately write off the public parking areas and stick to street parking made my task much more realistic.
Also helping me was that the Chief’s “territory” wouldn’t be huge. There was a lot of competition in his business, most likely marked by easily visible borders.
To the south, my starting point would be the Deerfield Beach Pier. It was a huge tourist attraction with a big beach, showers, and the pier itself, which was home to a lot of fishermen. It was also known as a good spot to buy drugs. My guess was that the Chief’s territory didn’t extend that far, but I wanted to be generous with my starting point.
My plan was to go all the way north, through Boca Raton, Highland Beach and Delray Beach until I reached Boynton Beach. Boynton was an even bigger drug town that Deerfield Beach. My guess was that the area between Deerfield and Boynton would be the Chief’s main territory.
This time, I took the Scout for a slightly higher perspective and vantage point. Traffic wasn’t bad, as it was late afternoon. Most of the foot traffic was coming off the beach as opposed to going in. However, this was when a lot of people liked to buy their drugs, getting ready for the evening ahead.
The A1A was busy, as always, by the Deerfield Beach pier, but I slowly navigated my way through it, looking for Lonzo and his pimped out SUV.
No sign of him.