by Les Goodrich
Colin looked at Dolph’s new name: Lowell Forester. He instantly thought of their third grade teacher, Fat-Ass Forester and laughed a bit then signed the card.
***
Dolph took his cab south to the Everglades Turnpike where he had to promise to pay the driver extra to take him west to Naples. The driver was a loud bothersome man with a crew cut and a glass eye who complained from one side of the state to the other and wondered aloud often if Dolph appreciated him driving this distance. He asked Dolph inane questions only to interrupt his answers and kept saying that Dolph reminded him of someone. Dolph prayed it was not from a news photo. Dolph exited the cab at a near-Naples commercial bus station that was also a gas station and seemed to rent moving vans as well. Dolph watched the cab drive away and walked into the station.
The station was an open room waiting area with rows of benches and a long counter with glass partition along the back wall. The room was empty but for one man asleep on a bench who looked to be a resident of this gas station, truck rental bus station. Then another person stood up from behind the counter wearing headphones and chewing gum. He looked to Dolph from under his black baseball cap that held back his shoulder length red hair, a teenager, all acne and heavy metal. Dolph could hear the treble hissing from the headphones through the glass and across the room. Dolph approached the counter and knocked on the glass even though the kid was looking at him. Dolph starred at the kid who had a face that only his misfit headbanging girlfriend could love and even then only to presumably piss off her parents.
“Hello,” Dolph said through the vent in the glass and the kid pulled off his headphones.
“What?” the kid uttered as if he had just been busted looking down his aunt’s blouse.
“I wonder if you could help me?” Dolph asked hoping for a no, but I’ll get the manager.
“Sure. Wahtcha need, whatcha need?” the kid said instead.
“When is your next bus leaving?”
“Twenty minutes. Goin to Orlando. Twenty minutes to Orlando. No town like O-Town.”
“Any stops?”
“No pick ups if that’s whatcha mean. It stops for one break and maybe gas. Maybe gas.”
Dolph paused suddenly aware of the kid’s annoying habit and asked, “When does it get to Orlando?”
“Five o’clock this afternoon. This afternoon at five.”
“Perfect. Two tickets. Stephenson and Stone.”
“You’re one of those guys. Holy shit. The gangsters. Take whatever you want! Holy shit!”
“Shhhh! Shut up! Shut up!” Now Dolph was doing it.
Dolph calmed the kid down and told him to just sell him the tickets and not do anything until the cops came. Once they did he could tell them anything he wanted.
“And why should I do that?” the kid asked. “Why? Give me one reason.”
“I’ll give you a thousand reasons,” Dolph said and slid ten hundreds under the glass through the dip in the counter. He had always wanted to say something like that.
The kid’s mouth hung open and his pink gum fell out onto the counter.
“That’s a lot of heavy metal CD’s,” Dolph said.
“Damn straight,” the kid answered as he took the cash and entered the ticket info into the computer. The printer spit the tickets out and the kid, suddenly calmed, handed them through the dip, smiled and whispered, “Good luck dude. Good luck.”
Dolph took the tickets and headed to the door as the man sleeping leaned up and nodded at him.
“God help me,” Dolph said to the guy and left.
***
Colin spent three hours following the technician’s instructions, helping when he could and generally standing around. They stopped for lunch brought in by the head waiter. The cabby had been right about the food. When Sonzo finally returned the little man immediately relinquished his temporary authority and went back to ignoring Colin.
Colin explained that he planned to leave Dolph’s passport at Richie’s apartment to be picked up after Dolph finished setting up their diversionary trails. Sonzo explained to Colin how they were to leave the country. Dolph would take a plane that night and Colin would leave on another plane the next morning. He gave Colin the business card of his private pilot for Dolph to contact. Colin then asked if he could have an extra day to himself before leaving and Sonzo indicated that that was a slight but not extreme risk so that he would set Colin up to leave two days after Dolph but that he must be extremely cautious until then.
Colin thanked Mr. Sonzo for everything, commented on the quality of the documents then asked to be excused. Mr. Sonzo said there was a car waiting to take him anywhere he needed to go. Colin left through the front door hoping to see the cute hostess again but he did not. He walked to the shaded port under the canopy where a black Mercedes was waiting for him. The driver’s door opened and a young Cuban man who looked like Tony and the other kid at Coral Avenue stepped out.
“Jesus, you guys must have come with the briefcases,” Colin said under his breath.
The young man opened the back door and Colin said, “Fuck that. I’ll ride up front with you if that’s okay,” as he walked around to the passenger side.
“Hey no problem. What’s your name?”
The letter “C” formed in Colin’s mouth but he closed his lips again and said, “Victor,” for the first time and decided that he liked it.
Chapter 21
It took a few cabs and even a water taxi to get Dolph back to Richie’s apartment on the bay in Miami. He wondered what had happened to Colin’s BMW, then remembered his own truck and wondered what had become of it. He jogged up the stairs to the small balcony above the garage, punched in the code and went inside. Two empty beer bottles on the counter told him that Colin had been there and gone. He found a manila clasped envelope in the cabinet under the television and dumped the contents out onto the coffee table. There was a passport in a brown leather cover with the seal of the United States embossed on it. Nice touch, he thought. He also found one business card for the pilot and a single yellow legal sheet of paper that was Colin’s note. Dolph looked at the passport that was his driver’s license photo but bigger with a seal over part of it and possibly a different back ground (he could not recall) and a few pages had been stamped with tropical destinations and returns. Dominica. Mexico. Jamaica. He looked at his new name and shoved the passport into his jean pocket. He glanced again at the business card and put that in his pocket as well. He lifted the yellow page and read the note.
Talk about your fake ID’s. So here’s the card for the Pilot. Going to Barbados. Bridgetown. Our benefactor keeps money there. He bought us two houses with cash I’m sure and there’s no property tax there so the places are ours for free and forever I guess. You leave as soon as you call the pilot. You shouldn’t have any trouble at Customs and someone will be there to tell you where to go. A Tony clone in a Dolphins Jersey and a Hurricanes hat I’m told. He’ll find you. I’ll catch up in a few days and be careful. You have the money!
Later,
Colin
P.S. Destroy this well and I’m not even kidding.
“He thinks he’s in a spy novel,” Dolph said aloud. Not that Colin has ever actually read a book he thought and laughed to himself as he tore up the note.
“Mission accomplished,” he said to the toilet and flushed the tiny shreds of yellow paper down. When the water stopped running he flushed again.
He went back into the living room, grabbed the cordless phone and stood at the sliding glass doors to the patio. He opened the curtains just enough to see out and looked across Biscayne Bay. Actually when you get this far north it isn’t a bay, it’s a lagoon, he thought and wondered if Colin would argue with him about that so he decided to bring it up someday. He called the number on the business card and told the secretary who answered that he needed to speak to the pilot. The pilot said he would pick him up at five p.m..
“Perfect,” Dolph said and hung up the phone with thirty minutes to kill.
He dialed information and asked for the number to the Orlando International Airport’s Delta terminal, which he memorized then dialed. He never heard the numbers on the entry keypad being pushed at the front door.
“Delta Orlando,” a lady answered.
“Yes Mam. May I reserve two tickets now and pay cash for them when I get there for a flight tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Well what can I do?”
You can buy tickets with a credit card or I can put your name on a waiting for cancelation list and if a spot opens up that day you can purchase it at the terminal. It happens. That’s the best I can do for you.
Dolph thought about it for a second but he never heard the front door slowly open and silently close as he thought and looked across the water toward Miami Beach then spoke again.
“That’ll work. Do you have anything going to Denver tomorrow morning?”
“Let’s see,” she said and Dolph heard the clicking of her computer keyboard. “I have a flight nonstop to Denver leaving at three p.m..”
“Fine.”
“What name would you like it under?”
“Two names.”
“What two names?”
“Colin Stone and Randolph Stephenson.”
“Colin Stone and Randolph Stephenson.”
“Yes.”
“Um. Okay. I suggest being here two hours before takeoff to have a chance or earlier if you can because there are others on the list and it’s first come.”
“Yes that’s right. Thank you.”
“My pleasure and thank you for choosing Delta.”
Dolph hung up the phone and said, “Don’t spend the reward money all in one place lady.” He turned back into the living room and found himself face-to-face, or face-to-chest, with Carl.
Before Dolph could react Carl shoved him with explosive force into the sliding glass patio door which gave way like a sheet of water and fell with him to smash in a thousand fragments over the back of a patio chair. Dolph’s balance suspended just short of the ground and he twisted to the left as Carl swung him up by his shirt and flung him stumbling back into the living room where dizziness was his only perspective.
“Where’s your friend asshole? You fucking kids killed me. I know you told Sonzo I sold you to the cops and that was your last mistake.”
Dolph stumbled, clamored, knocked a small table over and struggled to gain his balance and direction but until then used gravity and a clumsy momentum to at least move away from Carl’s voice who continued talking as he screwed the silencer on his pistol barrel.
“You thought I’d be dead by now, right? I’m not dead, you are.”
Dolph scrambled frantically on all fours across the edge of the living room and Carl shot a lethal sounding silenced shot that erupted a tuft of carpet inches from his left hand and just ahead but Carl was not phased by missing and he knew Dolph had nowhere to go.
“Where are you going baby? This is our first date and I know when no means yes.”
Carl shot at Dolph’s calf for sport just as Dolph caught traction and halfway stood so the shot ricocheted off the slab under the carpet and shattered a coral stone floor lamp in Dolph’s face when he passed it raining gravel in his eyes and confusing him further but not slowing his effort to continue and even Dolph was beyond understanding what compelled him to move in such a hopeless situation and he could not remember or understand to where or what he was even striving until he fell into the hallway entry and saw the closet door and pictured the pistol Colin had described under the floorboard and he made one last lunge. As Carl rounded the corner into the hallway Dolph kicked the open closet door into his face and bought himself a precious gleaming second that existed in the shadowed hideaway created where the opened closet door closed off the hallway however pathetically and behind it Dolph looked with blurred vision for an edge to the bamboo flooring and found instead the remaining automatic pistol left for him in plain sight by his only friend in the world and his equally singular prayer, as he hefted the gun and oriented his failing body as best he could while watching the closet door slowly close back, was I pray this fucking gun is locked and loaded and indeed it was as he and Carl simultaneously discovered. But unlike Carl’s gun this gun was anything but silent and the cannon sound that blew Carl off his feet rumbled uninvited through the quiet bayside townhomes and behind the ringing in his ears Dolph only knew that he was alive and that he must use that life to fly with all haste.
Gunpowder smoke hung and Dolph stood suddenly alone in the soundless room void of any thought except for a slight sense of what a powerfully final condition death was. The ringing in his ears grew and passed by him like wind where he stood and looked down upon Carl’s lifeless form to study every detail of weight and breathlessness and creeping black blood that expanded from his corpse to pool across the white carpet with a supernatural surface tension. Dolph knew he must run but he also knew he was inside some timeless place and it felt like he could stand there for a century looking at the situation and that no one would ever interrupt him until his mind blinked but he also knew that when that happened the violence here would be visited upon him so he gathered his breath and senses and tuned his attention away from the fragments of organs or skin tissue rolling across and then under the edges of the growing pooling blood as if he were seeing some private traces of greater things that should have always been covered.
He tasted bile and walked into the light of the living room. He forced himself to swallow rather than vomit then called Sonzo who was apologetic but grateful. It was a strange combination but Dolph began to realize it as Sonzo’s only disposition. Sonzo told Dolph to wait for the pilot, whom he would send himself, and goodbye unless Dolph had any other questions. Yes there was one.
“What about the neighbors?” Dolph asked.
“I am the neighbors,” Sonzo replied and hung up the phone.
By the time the pilot arrived Dolph had smoked an entire pack of cigarettes the last of which he flicked into a storm drain on the way around to the back of the pilot’s gray mini van. Dolph threw his bag into the opened back door, closed it and climbed in the passenger side with the pilot already talking.
“Okay kid here’s the deal. Don’t give me any shit and we’ll get along fine. I flew in Cambodia, Salvador and Grenada and I could kill you in a second.”
“You’d have to take a number,” Dolph mumbled and the pilot said something about not being a smartass and Dolph leaned over and whispered to the guy.
“I don’t give a fuck about you and I believe you work for my benefactor so just drive me to the plane and fly me the fuck out of here.”
The pilot laughed and said, “Kids these days,” and “Fucking chill out, man.”
They drove in silence to the airstrip.
Chapter 22
The small plane circled high above Barbados in the Lesser Antilles and Dolph looked down upon it. The island was a mountain of Caribbean jungle rising from a bottle-green sea. The plane scrambled down onto a runway that cut through the near-equatorial foliage in the same raucous manner as a tire track slashing through a country club lawn.
The Barbados Customs officer, regal in his white uniform and plumed hat, asked the pilot to say hello to Mr. Sonzo for him. Dolph walked through the airport undisturbed with more money than he had ever carried before and an automatic pistol that had become a permanent addition to his wardrobe. He exited the front door of the small airport building. He stood on the cracked pavement on what was a slight hill and looked down at the town spreading away before him as it tumbled toward the water. Pink and green stucco and coconut palms, brittle-bleached beach sand and concrete tiled rooftops. He could see masts of sailboats standing high from beyond several dockside buildings like giant popsicle sticks rising from watercolored confections. He saw the motion of people pushing carts of fish and fruit along the waterfront and he felt like he was on another planet or in another time. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the luminous Sun. He f
elt it heat his skin in a fire-warm glow that he had never noticed before or maybe he remembered feeling it when he was a child and his childhood self was with him and he forgot what age he was or who he was and the Sun was all he was for that second and it was eternal.
A voice said, “Look here Mon. You Lowell?”
Dolph ignored it for an instant then remembered that he was. He squinted and shaded his eyes with his hand to see who the voice was. It was a Barbadian boy of about thirteen, shirtless and grinning.
“Follow me now if you’re da one I’m lookin’ for.”
The boy hopped on a bicycle and waved for Dolph to get on the handlebars. Dolph pointed to his own chest with a question mark look and the boy said, “Come on now. I don’t got all day to be playin’.”
Dolph laughed out loud and realized the boy was as impatient as he was and like a smaller version of himself with an island accent. Dolph climbed aboard with his bag slung over his shoulder and put his feet on the axle nuts of the front tire in a way that indicated he had done so before. The boy peddled down through the town and swerved among locals like cones on a slalom course.
“What’s your name?” Dolph yelled over his shoulder.
“I’m Harvey,” he said with a certain pride that a boy his age in the States named Harvey would not have.
“Where are we going Harvey?”
“To your damn house fool.”
They rode through the town and into the trees on the far side of it and up a long, gradually ascending gravel road under a tunnel of papaya trees. The light at the end was fiercely bright and danced in reflection streaks from the emerald surface of the Caribbean Sea below. They escaped the cool tunnel of the canopy and that sea unfolded before them like an impossibly green Chinese fan. They rode high above it on a narrow cliff-top path. Dolph did not notice the metal handlebars as being uncomfortable, nor did he fear falling as he and Harvey coasted and bumped aloft. Dolph could see across the ocean as far as an Albatross and he opened his arms like wings. He breathed the humid balm of salty air deep through his nose and flew.