by Tom Hansen
“You boys are brothers?” asked Ev.
“Yep, and have been ever since birth, I reckon,” Otis announced proudly.
“What you want with us?” Lance looked back at Willy.
“Just would like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind?” Willy was still leaning on the car, trying to get Lance and Ev to become a bit more relaxed. That may not have been the best strategy. Lance was now transforming back to his old self: belligerent and uncooperative.
“So you says you’s a copper. Well then, I want to see my lawyer.” Lance glared at Willy with hands on his hips trying to portray a stubborn stance.
Willy chuckled at the thought of Lance hiring a lawyer. He pointed at the phone booth and snickered, “There’s the phone. Be my guest.”
“My brother’s an ex-cop. He just wants to figure some stuff out so there’s no more killing in Seminole Bend,” Otis revealed, hoping to break the ice.
“Well, if you’re no cop, then I need to get back home to my husband,” Ev announced as she started to walk away. “I told you, Lance, we should’ve waited until Friday night to do our business. It’s bad luck changing up things.”
Willy’s eyes and mouth gave him away. He was stunned. So Ev Pritchard has a hubby at home and she’s out fooling around with this loser? He shook his head and smiled again.
“I sees you again tomorrow night, Ev?” Lance asked in a pleading tone of voice. Ev was moving away quickly from the parking lot. Willy assumed that she either walked here or parked a car somewhere hidden, probably so her husband wouldn’t catch her.
“Maybe, Lance, if my husband don’t catch me sneaking in the back door tonight and tear my head off of my neck!” A few seconds later, Ev began to jog slowly and awkwardly away. She was obviously not a fitness guru, but it didn’t take too long for her to go around the corner and out of sight.
Lance looked back at Willy, then at Otis, and again to Willy. He was becoming angry. “See what you’s done now, you has-been cop?”
“Okay, sorry ‘bout that, Mr. Billips, but I need your help. Can you give me just a few minutes to answer a couple of questions?” Willy had become serious. It was time to find out if Lance could help him with information about the piece of glass found at Elmer’s hardware store.
“My father’s name was Mr. Billips. You best call me Lance if you wants me to talk to you.” Willy thought he could detect a distraught tone in Lance’s voice and perhaps that meant he wasn’t too fond of his father. Most likely, Lance had asked his father for some help getting off the street and was turned down.
Willy thought it would be a good time to patch things up. Clearly, Lance would need a bit of anger management so that Willy could get some information from him. Although never claiming to be a psychologist, Willy quickly thought up a plan that he was certain would work with Lance. First, start by formally reintroducing himself with a gentleman’s modus, then get a little help from the sixteenth president of the United States. Yep, a firm grip of the hand was one thing, but Abe Lincoln’s face on a five-dollar bill would go much further in softening up the heart and attitude of Lance Billips! Willy rolled the paper money into a cylinder and stuck it between the middle and forefinger of his right hand. He then leaned forward and offered his hand for a shake. “I’m Willy Banks. I was just fired from the sheriff’s department for stirring things up during an investigation. There’s a bad dude who lives just outside of Seminole Bend that has corrupted our county and I’m determined to stop him. Will you help me?”
Lance snatched the five-dollar bill from Willy’s fingers, pocketed the cash, and then grabbed the huge black hand and returned the greeting. However, Lance’s wimp grip was no match for Willy’s steel vice and he gritted his teeth . . . what was left of the rotting choppers!
“Yeah, man. What’s up?” Lance was willing to talk, hoping to collect more of that green paper treasure. And Otis was delighted that he could help out his older brother.
“First things first. Is this your car?” Willy slapped the roof of the old Buick.
“No, man,” Lance responded, but then paused and reconsidered. “Well, kinda. You see, it was a gift from my cousin, Lenny. He hotwired it from some guy’s driveway down in Stuart. He got ‘bout ten miles from here when the tire went flat. Drove it anyway and parked it right here at my home.”
“Your home?” Willy looked around and saw nothing even resembling a house for a block or two. “Where’s your home, Lance?”
“Over there.” Lance pointed at the vacant telephone booth.
“So you say cousin Lenny came up here to give you a stolen car as a gift? Was it your birthday or something? How did he get back home?” Being Lenny was a car thief, Willy figured that was a rhetorical question, but he wanted Lance to answer anyway.
“Lenny didn’t go back home. He stole a big old Chevy van and drove it up to Tampa with the stuff he had in the car. I know what you thinking, man, that Lenny peddles them cars to people who sells them, but that ain’t right. He ain’t got no transportation to call his own right now and he needs something to carry his products with him. He does that every week, goes from Stuart to Tampa and back. That there is his job, ya know.”
“What kind of job requires you to steal cars each week?”
“Lenny is hauler. But a year ago he rolled his station wagon and trailer just north of here on Highway 441. Didn’t have no insurance. Just like most people, couldn’t afford it.”
“What does Lenny haul?”
“He done haul pita bread from some guy he knows in Stuart up to some grocery store in Tampa called Molly’s International Foods. That place sells a bunch of strange foods, I guess. Pita bread is some kind of Arab round crap that’s baked in a brick oven. It ain’t bad, though, if you smear it with orange marmalade. Anyway, he takes the money he gets from Molly’s and stops at a big warehouse owned by some company named Tampa Liquor Distributors. He loads up with as many cases of Mad Dog Twenty as can fit in his car and takes it back to Stuart where he sells it on the street. Ya can’t buy that stuff down in Stuart or even around here, ya know.”
Lance’s mouth was running more than it should, seeing Willy was an ex-cop and still had connections in the law-abiding world. But with the mention of Mad Dog Twenty, Willy perked up.
“Has Lenny ever sold any Mad Dog Twenty while passing through Seminole Bend, by any chance?” Willy thought he may be on to something.
“I don’t think so. But he stops by my phone booth and gives me a bottle each week, along with a package of that pita bread stuff. I shoplift the orange marmalade from Dixie Food and Drug. I think they sees me but let me do it anyway.”
“Have you ever been drinking that wine over by Elmer’s Hardware store, Lance?”
Lance was taken aback with the mention of Elmer’s store. It wasn’t but a month ago he grabbed a plumber’s wrench off Elmer’s shelf and whacked that big old cowboy dude after he had caused an accident that injured Ev and busted up his MD20 bottle. But why was Willy asking if he’d ever been drinking at Elmer’s? Lance reckoned he shouldn’t have spilled the beans about his cousin stealing cars and him shoplifting, so he decided it was best to shut up and not declare his lethal actions at the hardware store.
“Nope, only drink wine right here in my own domain.”
“Look, Lance, I need the truth here. They don’t sell Mad Dog in Seminole Bend, but you say you get a bottle each week from your cousin. About a month ago, a big guy had his brains extracted from his skull in Elmer’s. So far, there’s no leads in his murder, at least that’s what those who will still talk to me down at the sheriff’s department are saying. But I found a small piece of glass on the floor and our lab said it had traces of MD20 on it. Interesting, eh Lance, that MD20 would be found in a town that doesn’t sell it, but a homeless guy living only a couple of blocks from Elmer’s drinks it damn near every night?”
“I ain’t no homeless guy, Mr. Willy! I just choose to live in small quarters, that’s all.”
Otis piped in, “
Lance, one night when you and me was guzzling those Budweiser’s, you told me ‘bout seeing that car crash that lit up the whole county. You talked ‘bout some knucklehead escaping the crash and hiding out in Elmer’s, you did. You said that same knucklehead had done broke your bottle of MD20, so you done broke his neck. When I asked what the knucklehead looked like, you was going to tell me something, but then you shut up and walked away. Said you needed to pee, so I left.”
“Yep, I needed to pee. We all need to pee sometimes, so is that a crime?”
“The dead big dude and your knucklehead are one and the same, right Lance?” Willy stared directly into Lance’s bloodshot, cavernous eyes.
“Could be, I guess,” said Lance with a tone that couldn’t seem to hide his guilt.
“Are you saying the man in the crash got out alive?” Willy couldn’t believe it! He remembered the volunteer firemen talking about the gruesome scene. They watched in horror as Calvin Potts’ face melted right before their eyes. The Ford LTD that hit Calvin’s Chevy became a terrific fireball and they said no one in that car could have survived. But they never found any remains and the sheriff’s report indicated that the driver had most likely burned to ashes. Could it be possible that the driver did escape and dragged himself over to Elmer’s? If so, and Lance saw him go in the hardware store, well, he had motive for killing him. That is, if breaking a bottle of Mad Dog is grounds for murder.
“Okay, okay, I sees him alright. I sees him go into Elmer’s. But I don’t think he was in the crash cuz he wouldn’t have survived. No way, man! I think the asshole opened the door seconds before it collided with that Chevy and he rolled out onto Main Street. The car was moving pretty dang fast so I knows he couldn’t have jumped out without scraping up his body pretty bad.”
“Then what? So you saw him go into Elmer’s and you followed him? What for, Lance?”
“Now, this here’s the part where I may need a lawyer, Mr. Willy. Can you find me one of them public defenders?” Lance was still not sure about confessing to a murder, but he was beginning to trust Willy.
“Look Lance. If what I’m thinking is right, the big ox driving the LTD was a bad man. A very bad man, in fact. He may have been a hired killer, which means you could be a town hero instead of a future felon.”
“Does he have a reward on his head, Willy? I mean, panhandling is a good career and all, but I sure could use a few extra bucks.”
“Don’t know about no reward, but could be. Anyway, what happened after you followed him into Elmer’s? Did you kill him over a broken bottle of Mad Dog, Lance?”
Lance didn’t say anything for a long time. He put his hands in his pocket and stared down at his feet. Willy didn’t want to lose him, so he pulled out another five-dollar bill, rolled it into a ball and then tossed it at Lance’s shoes. Lance reached down and grabbed the money, then stood up and gazed at Willy.
“I didn’t mean to kill him, Willy. I just wanted to hurt him for hurting my Evie. You see, on the day he crashed himself up, he and me had had a little turf war over using my phone booth. Fortunately for him, I slipped and fell outa my booth or I woulda kicked his butt right then and there. That’s when my bottle of MD20 broke, when I slipped. He called someone, slammed the phone down, then drove like a bat outa hell outa the parking lot. Evie was just coming outa Dixie Food and Drug, and the crazy SOB caused a young boy driving a Pinto to lose control and ram into Evie’s shopping cart. Evie had to dive to the ground to avoid being dead, but she scraped herself up pretty good. I was mad so I followed him and that’s when I seen the car crash. Then after the crash, I sees him go into the bathroom in the back of the hardware store, so I picked up a wrench and hit him in the head when he came out. He fell backward and smashed his skull into the sink, and then I ran outa there fast as bees chasing honey!”
“Wait a minute. You said this same dude you hit had earlier tossed you out of the phone booth to make a call?”
“No, no, no! I slipped and fell. Ain’t no way nobody gonna force me outa my domain!”
“Okay, Lance, you slipped and fell. But did you hear any of the man’s conversation on the phone?”
“Not all of it. But I did hear him say two words.”
“Well, what did you hear?”
“Not sure I want to say it to your face, Willy, cuz it’s kinda offensive, if you know what I mean.”
“Lance, don’t mess with me,” Willy said angrily. “What did that goon say?”
“Something about a Buckwheat, and he called the person he was talking to Roy.”
Suddenly, an intense flash of light lit up the western sky, followed by an enormous boom like that of a cannonade. Willy, Lance and Otis all turned and looked up.
“Wow, big storm must be brewing,” announced Otis. “Never seen thunder or lightning like that. Best be moving on before we get wet!”
CHAPTER 44
Thursday, March 11, 1982
1:00 a.m.
T he large, heavy blunt object torpedoed directly through the middle of Phil’s airboat slicing it neatly in half and sending both ends of the boat upside-down into midair. Lew and Phil saw the article coming seconds before it hit and dove overboard. Sharp, metal fragments rained down from the sky. One piece, a foot in diameter, struck Phil below the calf and his ankle was dangling from severed gastrocnemius and soleus muscles that had been sliced away from his Achilles tendon. Lew was an accomplished swimmer, and with his right arm grabbed Phil under his armpits and elevated his head. While treading water and weeds with his left arm, Lew dragged his friend to the grassy shore. Phil was losing blood rapidly and passed out the moment he was placed on the ground. Lew tore off his shirt and quickly wrapped it around Phil’s lower leg and tied it tightly.
Out of the corner of his eyes, Lew noticed something bobbing on the water. It was the object that had capsized their boat and it appeared to be an airline seat. Lew peered through the darkness of night and spotted what seemed to be two legs sticking out from the seat. He patted Phil’s shoulder and said, “Hang in there, buddy, I’ll be right back.” Phil didn’t hear him. He was out cold.
Lew splashed through the sawgrass and lily pads drudging as fast as he could for the seat. The water depth was about five feet, so Lew was able to swim and totter back to the floating chair swiftly. Lew reached and grabbed the seat by the arms and spun it around. For the second time tonight, Lew vomited what little was left in his stomach. Strapped into the airplane’s seat by a safety belt was likely an elderly man or woman, based upon the wrinkled skin and gray hair on his or her arms. The person’s head had been decapitated. His or her legs were crushed beneath the knees and there were no shoes to be seen. He or she had folded his or her hands in his or her lap, and Lew knew there had been a desperate plea to the Lord for help. Nearby, drifting peacefully away in the choppy waves, Lew sighted a skull whose skin had vanished, burned to the bone. Only a pair of wire-rim spectacles remained oddly in place covering the eye sockets. The intense heat had fused them to the cranium.
Still tucked into the back pocket of the seat was the airliner’s signature magazine. The cover had a picture of a jet flying through puffy clouds with now ambiguous words lithographed in the middle: Fly Safe Fly Jubilant Fly Heartland Lakes.
Lew was dizzy as he trudged back to the shore. The shock of seeing Miguel devoured by a Burmese python was now distant in his mind. He was beginning to believe this trip to Seminole Bend was a death trap that he couldn’t escape. Phil was still unconscious as he knelt down beside him. Lew needed to get Phil to a hospital soon, but dragging him through the swampland would only injure his foot even more. And who knew how many startled alligators awakened by the explosion were now suffering from hunger pains.
Lew decided his best chance was to swim across the Kissimmee River to the marina and call an ambulance from Angler’s Delight. It was just past midnight and the restaurant would be closed, but there was a pay phone out front. Lew tightly refastened the shirt that was tied around Phil’s leg and waded out into the wa
ter. He could hear sirens approaching from all directions, including a marine patrol boat coming in over the lake from the east. The news of the plane crash had finally reached authorities and the rescue had just begun.
Lew was halfway across the Kissimmee when a runabout appeared out of the darkness moving slowly, but its bow heading straight for him. Strangely, the boat was operating without its running lights. Just as Lew was about to dive to avoid a collision with the hull, he could hear a reverse thrust coming from the engine. The bow flattened and the boat came to a stop. A person onboard rushed to the front and switched on a spotlight, shining it directly in Lew’s face, blinding him.
“Señor Lew, Señor Lew! Is that you?!” came the voice from the boat.
“Pancho?”
“Si, señor, it’s me!”
“Get that damn spotlight off me so I can see!” shouted Lew. “Where can I board?”
“Over here,” replied Pancho. He attached an aluminum ladder to the side of the boat and shined the spotlight on it.
Lew swam over to the ladder and scrambled into the boat. It was Oliver Harfield’s. Lew grabbed Pancho by his arms and shook him.
“Pancho, what happened? Why did you leave us, damn it?!”
“I wait for you, Señor Lew. But four hombres in big speedboat crash through trees and tie up their boat to this one. They had guns, Señor Lew. I was scared. Two of them got on my boat. One hombre pointed gun at my head, and the other, he drive off to the lake.”
“What happened to them? How did you get away?”
“We stop out in lake and drop anchor. One hombre, he talk on walkie-talkie. Then they go up in front of boat and look up at sky. Forgot about me, I guess. I sit up and sees airboat coming this way and I know it’s you cuz I sees those four steel braces sticking up. Then, big boom in sky and I sees something crash into your airboat. Our boat start rocking, so I grab oar and hit hombres on back of head and they fall in water. They grab anchor rope and hold on, so I start motor and go backward real fast and anchor get loose. I take knife and cut rope and hombres sink down under water. Then, I get away fast.”