by Les Goodrich
Exploit
The Abscond Series ~ Book 1 of 2 TM
Les Goodrich
Exploit:
The Abscond Series ~ Book 1 of 2
Copyright © 2014 by Leslie Ernest Goodrich.
All rights reserved.
The contents of this book may not be copied or reproduced
(except in instances of brief attributed quotations published for
editorial review) without the prior written permission of the author:
Goodrich, Leslie E. (04-18-2014).
This is a work of fiction and any and all characters and events herein are fictitious events created in the mind of the author for entertainment purposes only. Any likeness to any persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Published by
DV8NOW Publishing
Vero Beach, FL
www.dv8now.com
Cover Photo by Songquan Deng used by license through Dreamstime.
The image is an actual photograph of the Miami
city skyline taken at dusk on 02-07-2012.
Cover Design by Killercovers.
Get a FREE eBook at
LesGoodrich.com
For more books by the author visit
Les Goodrich’s Author Page
on Amazon.com
Continue the adventure and see what happens to Dolph and Colin next in
Exigent: The Abscond Series ~ Book 2 of 2
on Amazon in Kindle
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Links Page
Chapter 1
The confusion of orange cones, prefab concrete walls, piles of gravel and flashing barricades that masqueraded as Florida’s Interstate Ninety-Five between Fort Lauderdale and Miami was at absolute capacity. In other places detours, dump trucks and strobe lights slowed traffic but chaos only excited the South Florida drivers and they played their commute like a white knuckled video game. Eight lanes of cars jostled through the rubble at seventy miles per and the stream of drivers swayed around corners, each pressed to the left then the right, in reckless lunges.
Colin Stone held the wheel of his father’s convertible in one hand and brushed through his chin-length dirty blonde with the other. He squinted through blue mirror sunglasses and negotiated the traffic casually. Colin was a body builder who had been captain of his high school wrestling team. His family was from London but he was a fifth generation American who looked Nordic. In the passenger seat, his arm hanging from the window, was Randolph Simon Stephenson III. Dolph was the intellectual. He read heavy books and always had the answer but he was no nerd. If it made a guy handsome he had it: square jaw, shiny black hair, steel-blue eyes and money.
The two had grown up together in Ft Lauderdale. Dolph lived on the river at the end of a long straight private driveway lined with Royal Palms. Each tree had its own floodlight shining up the trunk so at night the drive looked like a runway. Colin lived on the ocean in the second largest private home in Broward County. Dolph’s was the first. The shortest route between the two homes passed through the worst part of town. Dolph always smiled at the prostitute in the schoolgirl outfit who wore pigtails and carried a giant spiral lollipop. The news had actually shown her picture and said she was HIV positive. Since seeing that Dolph had always wondered how they knew. He also wondered if it violated her rights to say that on the news and he wondered where she got the lollipops. He remembered getting one of those big spiral lollipops on vacation at some tourist trap. The hooker walked through his imagination into the shop to buy one and the bell above the door jingled.
Colin and Dolph were each twenty-two, seniors at the University of Florida, Sigma Alpha Epsilon and loving it to death. Colin was on academic probation for the second straight semester. Dolph’s lowest grade ever was one B in fourth grade. Mrs. Edwards the Headmaster’s wife. “Pain in the ass,” Dolph said to himself whenever he thought about that grade. He could not remember when he had last changed positions. The conversation, mainly movie quotes and wise cracks, had fallen into silence. The dim radio played some flash-in-the-pan teen girl pop star’s version of what had once been a good song and it basically went unnoticed.
Dolph’s back cracked like a twisting tree branch when he reached into the cooler behind the driver’s seat for another beer.
“Feelin’ parched Stone?” he asked.
“No. We got at least four hours on the road still. I start drinking now and we won’t make it past Marathon.”
As good a reason as could be and Dolph agreed.
“Forget it then. I’d rather spend the week in Overtown. Keep driving. I’ll drink for us both.”
“Just pace yourself. You don’t want to be completely worthless before we—never mind—you’re already worthless. Drink up.”
“That’s not what Catherine keeps saying.”
“Oh that reminds me. Tell Carol she left her bikini top in my hot tub Saturday night.”
The two had true respect for each other’s parents or maybe they didn’t. Either way they always tried to drag a mother’s good name in to get the last word and they knew when to stop most of the time. If that was a scale to rate friendship on they could have been no closer. It was more of a sport than a real insult. They never said anything bad about their fathers though because it just didn’t seem quite as fun. Not only that, but they could never conceive of a fantasy to rival the real life adventures of their fathers. Those stories were the stuff of legend, spoken of in whispers, nods and hard to believe shakes of the head.
They were each only-children who had taken it upon themselves to become brothers. They had been together since Saint Andrew’s: a private school where religion was second, if that, to the parent’s bank account and social status. It was the type of school where the poorest kids lacked their own polo ponies and the entire Mercedes Benz fleet lined up each afternoon to collect and take home the flock of juvenile heirs. Colin’s dad was an investment banker who had cleaned house before the bear markets of the late seventies. He bought all of the undervalued utility stock he could get his hands on during the Carter administration, and then liquidated in the mid-eighties boom. Smelling sweeter than the finest hybrid tea rose he retired at thirty-nine when Colin and Dolph were freshmen in high school. He quickly became bored, abandoned his Bermuda shorts, climbed back into his tailored suit and began to dabble in arbitrage from the top floor office of a downtown Lauderdale high-rise that he owned.
Catherine, Colin’s mom, had been Mr. Stone’s high school sweetheart: a small town prom queen who fell hard for the new kid. She seemed to stop aging around twenty-four and simply grew more beautiful each year. While true love may have been the initial energy that brought them together, the Stone’s relationship had slowly grown into a business partnership. Mrs. Stone played collaborator to an endless list of social organizations that gave her at least one title everywhere she and her husband went. Mr. Stone upheld his end of the deal by financing innumerable shopping sprees. Catherine had a tight clique of friends whose names somehow all started with the letter C. There was Catherine, Carol, Carlee, Cindy, Chase, Charlie, Clair and another Catherine
whom everyone called Cath. They called themselves the C troop.
More than once the C troop had to fly home from Palm Beach because they could not fit back into the limo overflowing with bags, boxes and the occasional crate. Mr. Stone’s end of the bargain also included footing the bill for six or so black tie gatherings per year. Each party was complete with a catering army, a garage of Vueve-Cliquot and two hundred close friends. In return he was allowed to wear Catherine on his arm like a gem, adored by everyone, and more precious that the most flawless diamond. They seemed to get along.
As for Dolph, his family owed it all to his grandfather: Randolph Simon Stephenson Senior. He was a hard working pioneer stock banana farmer from Miami who nearly starved his family to death in the depression by buying property instead of food. While Dolph’s father, his Aunt Karen, and his Grandmother Doris were enduring sickness, ignoring hunger, and surviving amid hardships unimaginable to Dolph, his grandfather was buying land in Central and South Florida like a kid in a candy store. When old Randy finally ran out of money he traded the family truck for four chickens and forty-three mosquito ridden swamp acres on the Intracoastal Lagoon in Palm Beach County.
Following this last transaction (as if nothing could increase the growing indignation Doris felt for her husband) their daughter, Karen, ran afoul of some tractor implement while working in the grove and suffered a serious head injury. There was no immediate transportation to get her to a hospital and Doris blamed Randolph Sr. for Karen’s death until the day he died. She was right behind him leaving Randolph Junior alone with thousands of acres of land and all the bananas he could eat. Somehow he survived and, only months after the deaths of his parents, a war that had been trying to start for years finally hit home and put the country to work.
Randy Junior went to work as well, in the banana farm that he technically owned. The farm was entrusted to the family lawyer and was managed by the original foreman. The foreman was a toothless, cigar-smoking ground-in dirty slave driver who worked Randy like a mule until he turned eighteen and legally took ownership of the outfit. He was able to hire a new foreman with the lawman’s guidance then finish high school. By the time he graduated all of the details were resolved and Randolph Simon Stephenson was the proud owner of a banana farm and twenty-seven thousand acres of Florida real estate.
While neither parent lived to see the father’s eccentric foresight come to fruition their son certainly did. Randy immediately sold the farm making well more money than he needed to put himself through college. He spent four years in Gainesville. In that time people were moving to Florida in droves. Real estate agents harassed Randy to the point of his getting an unlisted telephone number and a post office box address. He thought that buyers, maybe more of them, would still be there when he finished school and he was right. He went to work the day he graduated rolling property over like a machine geared to make money until there was no more to be made. He seemed to despise the money for not being there when he was a kid. The only reason he wanted to make more and more was so his own family would never have to go through the Hell that he had. Dolph’s dad still kept a huge office in Ft. Lauderdale although he never spent much time there. He often thought of his sister when he got into a car, onto his plane or aboard his boat. Any one of those might have saved his sister’s life. It annoyed him to see his family, friends and business partners hop in and out of them without the slightest hint of appreciation. If the driver was so much as five minutes late Dolph’s mother would curse through her clenched, freshly polished teeth until he arrived, unless dad was around. Mr. Stephenson hated bananas.
***
Dolph looked up just in time to watch their exit fly by.
“That was it!” he yelled. “That was the exit.”
“Bullshit. I know where to get off. And don’t say anything about my mom right now. Seriously.”
“Alright. Where do we get off?”
“The Homestead Extension,” Colin said frankly.
“You just passed it. At least you just passed a big green sign that said that, and a road under it that veered off away from the one we’re on. Never mind. Keep going. I hear the ghettos of Miami are gorgeous in spring.”
Colin refused to admit he was wrong until the stadium exit sign flew by.
“Sonovabitch!” he said as Dolph exploded in laughter. In a few minutes the two would be so deep in Miami that the FBI could not find them with a road map if they were on the sidewalk dressed as chickens. However, as luck would have it, the perpetual construction zone of Interstate Ninety-Five soon provided a favorable spot for a very unauthorized U-turn/lane change/exit. They hung a hard fast left onto US Forty-One and made a mad dash for the Turnpike. They were once again headed in the right, although opposite, direction.
Chapter 2
With its top down the car sailed through west Miami along the Tamiami Canal without a word inside. After a quick exchange with a smoldering hot Cuban tollbooth attendant, Colin and Dolph were back on track. They shared a barely perceptible sigh of relief. If they had been pulled over for the U-turn the cold beer, opened bottle of really good rum, and quarter ounce of Florida’s finest would have been more than enough to derail them for a solid few hours at best, or at worst end their trip with a phone call to someone’s dad that no one would want to make.
“That was seriously the hottest toll booth attendant I’ve ever seen.” Colin observed aloud breaking the silence.
Freshly relaxed, Dolph pulled a well-crumpled pack of Camel Lights and a box of wooden matches from his front jean pocket. A sharp snap of his wrist jumped a single cigarette one-third from the pack and he grabbed it in the corner of his mouth. He shoved the pack back into his pocket with his right hand and pushed open the matches with his left. With one motion he leaned into the vacuum created by the windshield and struck the match within his cupped hands. The business end of the match erupted in a burst of blue-hot sulfur. Instinctively he tightened his lips and pulled the violent heat into the cigarette, careful not to inhale any of the bittersweet sulfur fumes. The smoke was lit before the match had a chance to condense into flame. He tossed the match over the doorsill into the void, which sucked it down to the roadside where it stuck and smoked out.
“I mean it,” Colin said looking far ahead. “I doubt she speaks English but she was gorgeous. Didn’t you think—Hey! Are you kidding me? You can’t smoke in this car!”
“Oh yeah,” Dolph mumbled, taking his first and final hit before tossing the freshly lit tobacco away. “Wasn’t thinking.” Dolph had forgotten that he smoked.
Certainly if he had been thinking he would never have lit a cigarette in this car. What a car, he thought as he admired the interior and marveled at how his mind could slip so far from the tangible. The car was a brand new, sparkling, deep navy (nearly black) Aston Martin Vantage convertible that belonged to Colin’s dad. Mr. Stone rarely drove this car and it was in better-than-showroom condition. It had been perfectly broken in at the factory by the same men who had built it, from the ground up, completely by hand. Every detail, every part, every gear, screw and bolt had been machined specifically for this car. The dove grey leather, which covered every inch in the interior that had to be touched, had been hand selected and stitched by the same family since the first Aston had rolled from the factory doors generations ago. The rejected leather was sent to the Rolls Royce factory. Yes it was the perfect car.
Dolph had been wondering how his friend had managed it. How had he gotten behind the wheel at all? How were they taking it on a road trip to the Keys for what was sure to be a week of mayhem? Mr. Stone had made many trips down south when he was in college and surely he knew the plan if there was one. He knew, quite correctly, that they would get there as bloody fast as possible. Then they would get drunk and stay that way for a solid week. They would nurse bloody maries with fish and rice for breakfast at the crack of noon. They would raise hell all night. The Duval crawl. What goes on the trip stays on the trip and all of that. How many times had Mr. Stone
uttered or agreed to those very words himself? And yet there they were on their way to Key West for a week away from school, a week away from home, a week away from anything reminiscent of responsibility or future plans. This was to be their last trip before graduating and, as such, was sure to go down in friend history for its calculated and perfectly executed disregard of health, property or any man’s law. So to embark on this mission in the nearly irreplaceable, rarely driven beyond pristine vehicle of one W.C. Stone begged the question: how? Well since Colin had not yet voluntarily divulged this information, Dolph was friend enough to pry.
“So tell me Stone, what exactly did you pull to get this car out of your dad’s sight for a week?”
“Knew the suspense was killing you,” Colin answered. “Took you long enough to ask. I thought it would be the first thing out of your mouth when I pulled up to your house this morning. Your mom was looking sweet in that little robe when she walked through the kitchen.”
“Right. So how’d you get the damn car?”
“Alright. That was just some business between old W.C. and me.” Colin stretched his wide shoulders and cracked his neck as he began to explain. “You remember Friday I took out that girl we met on the golf course?”
“Yeah the plain looking one. What about her?”
“Not plain. So I took her for dinner at San Livorno and I had Tony make that Veal Calabria for us that he used to make at Carmina’s. Totally off the menu. She was impressed. After dinner we went to Pier 66 for drinks and guess who was there?”
“Ted Fucking Kennedy? How the hell should I know? Does this fascinating story have anything to do with you getting the car?”
“That’s just it smartass. My dad was there. Not with my mom, but spilling champagne with that fine-ass twenty-eight year old accountant. So I caught his ass with his pants down.”