6/6/66

by JN Lenz

  I had arranged to have a Porsche Boxster for a thank you to Fitch, it would be Clyde that surprised us all when he pointed Oliver in the direction of the marina that the twins would eventually purchase, Clyde pointed out as we were all standing on the balcony of Fitch’s new condo to a forty six foot Chris Craft cruiser docked at the end of a pier over in the Marina

  “See that boat on the end their Jess, I bought that to thank you from keeping my ass out of jail dude” Clyde would say as Fitch slapped Clyde’s back so hard when he thanked Clyde his beer nearing shot out of his hand and over the rail .

  I think all three of us were a little in shock that Clyde had spent so much cash, and surprised he had made all these arrangements to secure the yacht for Fitch. For Oliver and Fitch’s loyalty and trust, Clyde and I would be forever indebted. Not only had the pair been a huge part of our current wealth, but they had been smart about the whole business as well, the proof of that was their new life in the Grand Caymans. With the high import taxes the Porsche set me back well over a hundred and fifty grand so the yacht that Clyde had purchased had to be closer to like three hundred grand, he refused to divulge the exact cost of the yacht insisting the amount paled in comparison to Jessie and all of our freedom from incarceration.

  The four of us would scour the newspapers and internet in search of any kind of report on the disappearance of Pierre Bullard following his release on bail for the cultivation for the purpose of trafficking charges. Each one of us would at some point in the future drive by the location of the four grow houses; Clyde would be the first since he still traveled into the city on a regular basis. For me it would be some six months after Pierre Bullard’s arrest that I would drive past, the twins would return to Canada usually once a year and would both do a drive by what would be four renovated homes that the city had eventually auctioned off.

  That first day with all four of us together safe on that Caribbean Island all our worries in life seemed to melt away helped by the consumption of a number of ice cold cocktails and a fine dinner that night of lobster tails and Red Snapper. After dinner and about an hour of sitting around the table drinking the doorbell to Oliver’s new condo rang, I would wave Oliver off to sit down as I walked over to answer the front door. Opening the door I would be welcomed by a pair of beautiful young ladies who after introducing themselves asked if there were two gentlemen by the names of Oliver and Fitch Costello inside.

  “Looks like desert is here for FO”

  I yelled back down the hall before asking the pretty ladies with perhaps just a touch too much make up into the foyer of the condo. At the ladies arrival at the Condo, Clyde and I departed leaving Oliver and Fitch to enjoy the company of the beautiful escorts Clyde had apparently arranged as well.

  “Thanks, again guys, this makes it all worth while”

  FO would yell back in stereo as we all had a laugh before we began to close the door behind us. The four of us would spend the following couple of days drinking and laughing, Clyde and I really enjoyed spending those days with the twins, for the first time in many years we could be the true friends we always were without the fear of association and the link to the grow op. The Chris Craft proved to be a favorite of Oliver’s as we spent much of our few days together trolling around the islands drinking and telling stories, the four of us usually perched up on the flying bridge as we circumvented the whole island more than a couple times.

  It was roundly agreed upon by us all that bust and leaving the growing business behind was proving to be incredibly liberating for all of us as we promised each other to begin making the best of this new found freedom including spending more time like this all together having fun. During all those years spent growing and selling contact between Clyde and myself and the twins had been kept to a minimum, there was no way that we could risk the association in the event one or all of us were being investigated.

  All our meetings in the past were short and infrequent, with product drops and money exchanges not involving face to face meetings. Instead they had become carefully conceived remote drops, coordinated with the corresponding pickups at a later date, this all to limit direct connection between the four of us. Now that was all behind us, the arrest of Pierre Bullard had given us freedom. The four of us always knew there would be a day we all wanted to quit but that steady flow of money was hard for any of us to end. In the end the cops would do us a favor that day they bashed through the door of grow house number three, we were all ready for a change.

  After parting nonstop for the remainder of our trip together to the Cayman Islands the four of us committed to each other to now remain in close contact and catch up for lost time from the previous years. Clyde and I would return back to Toronto four days later leaving Oliver and Fitch to start their new lives, now calling the Cayman Islands home.

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  Chapter 13

  The hours continued to fly past as I drifted between self-thought of the past and the reading of a couple dozen murder files. Realizing the day was quickly passing by quickly, I decided to jump ahead from the chronological order I had been following and pulled the sixth box from the row of remaining file boxes. Removing the top of the file box I would see that there would be six files stacked neatly inside, pulling the first of the files from the box the front cover page would list the number forty.

  Turning over the front cover page I searched for the date, March third, two thousand and six. . Setting the number forty file down on the desk, I would pull the remaining five files from the file box. Spreading them out like a fan across the top of the desk I selected the file numbered forty six and flipped the front page in search of the murder date.

  December second, two thousand and six, number forty six would be the last of Clyde’s six murders that year. Seeing that year in print brought a flood of emotions and memories for me, it was no wonder the hours continued to pass so quickly as each file brought wave after wave of memories flooding through my mind. That year would bring numerous achievements and happiness for me, first and for most was the birth of my first and only child, Sid. The birth of my son had become an amazing surprise for the both Lilly and I, following several years of unsuccessful attempts by Lilly in getting pregnant.

  We had chased every opportunity, including Lilly taking fertility hormones, including a couple of attempts at vitro fertilization. Everything we tried had proved to be unsuccessful, after spending close to the last ten years in pursuit of our first child we had all but given up hope of having a child two years before our son’s birth. For the past year our attention had turned to the possibility of adoption, we both agreed to pursue an adoption as we entered our forties.

  The morning after Lilly and I had attended a small party at a couple we had become friends with, she had developed what we thought had been either the flu or food poisoning. The last thing we thought was that she was pregnant when she began puking her guts out. Never one to drink excessively, Lilly was convinced it was perhaps food poisoning or a touch of some type of flu she had picked up along the way. By the time noon rolled around she was fine, but by the next morning Lilly once again became sick to her stomach.

  There had been no alcoholic beverages the day before, and she felt it must be some flu bug. The routine of the morning gaffs over the toilet continued for several days, after days of me insisting that Lilly visit the doctor to have her checked out she finally agreed. I still remember watching Lilly looking more radiant than ever walking into the library of the old McGovern Mansion; it is where my office resided and where I now spent the bulk of my time. Since Gladys had passed away (or should I say pushed away) and we purchased her grand old mansion and its eloquent gardens from the estate. The two of us had simply fallen in love with the place and spent as much time there as we could.

  That day in the library when Lilly returned from the doctor’s office the mid-day light was streaming in from the tall thin windows that lined the south wall of the Library and its twelve foot ceilings and dark mahogany
floors. Lilly looked as if she was floating across the floor in her pastel colored dress, the glow that radiated from her blinded the incoming light. I turned towards Lilly as she entered the room; I had heard the lead glass pocket doors being pushed apart.

  I watched as Lilly walked through the alternating bursts of light coming in from the windows and the darker shadows from the sections of the room with the walls covered in the deep colored wood. Although it was October outside the Sun’s rays still shone brightly through the sheers covering the windows, as Lilly emerged from the shadows between each of the windows into the flood of light her face glowed in a way I had never before witnessed, her smile was wide and her eyes sparkled as she began to speak.

  “Well I’ve been to the doctor”

  “By the smile I take it must not be anything to serious”

  “It’s serious alright, seriously amazing news. We are PREGNANT. We’re gonna have a baby Jacko!”

  At that she leapt the remaining few feet throwing her legs and arms around me and planted a big kiss firmly on my still wide open mouth.

  “Pregnant are you kidding me that is the most amazing thing I have ever heard. Should you be jumping around like this?”

  “Maybe your right, I guess we” I remember her replying looking instantly worried like she had somehow ruined everything, seeing the change in her facial expression as she slid her legs off my hips back onto the floor.

  “I’m sure your fine, the baby is fine, just don’t want to shake it loose to early”

  “How wonderful is this Jack, the large back bedroom overlooking the garden will be the nursery, I just don’t know yet what colour it is going to be”

  “What is the due date?”

  “A week after your birthday on June thirteenth, but they say the first one is usually early so maybe he will be born on the same date as you. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  “I can see the birth certificate now born six, six in two thousand and six, one less than big dad at six, six, in sixty six.” I joked back at her as we hugged and kissed for some time holding each other in silence, we had been sure our chance of having a baby had long ago past us by. Now here we were after all this time and we were about to become parents and our prediction would be spot on with Sid coming into the world on the sixth day of the sixth month of two thousand and six. In addition to the birth of our only child the year two thousand and six would be one of our most financially successful years.

  Clyde was almost as excited about the pregnancy when we told him that we had been. Although he never made mention of his own desire to marry or have a child, I was positive it was one of Clyde’s biggest regrets. Perhaps it was the pregnancy of Lilly and the change that would bring to all our lives that had some bearing on Clyde’s decision in that same year to end his killing of wildlife. The Buck that Clyde shot and killed with a cross bow in the fall of the year two thousand and five, turned out to be the last wild game he would kill.

  There would be no such end to him fishing on a regular basis, but by the time he turned forty he would no longer shoot to kill any wild life. Clyde had never shared with me the reason for this decision, which was fine by me I was never one for hunting anyway. But reading these files here and now it struck me as very puzzling that all these years Clyde had refrained from killing animals, yet he continued to stock and kill humans for another twenty years.

  Although Clyde had made the decision to no longer kill the wild animals, this did not mean the complete demise of him stocking many exotic animals of prey around the forests and jungles of the world. Where in the past Clyde would spend excessive amounts of money so he could travel to remote parts of the world to hunt unique species and kill them. After forty he paid for the privilege to track some of the rarest and deadliest wild life to shoot them not with a bullet, but the dart of a tranquilizer riffle.

  Unlike a high powered riffle that has the ability to kill from long distances away from its prey, even the best tranquilizer riffles require a closer shot since the darts have a lower trajectory and effective distance when compared to a bullet. Clyde would treat himself to several of these excursions each year after both of us had turned forty. Traveling from the jungles of Bolivia to the plains of the Serengeti, Clyde would proclaim after the first of these trips that the rush from drugging a wild predator and being able to examine these downed animals would far out strip the rush he had once experienced from killing them.

  After sedating and downing the animal, Clyde and his guides would approach the fallen prey, close enough to feel their heart beating and their warm breath on his face. This Clyde would say gave him a whole new appreciation for the majestic animals.

  I remember Clyde on his return from Bolivia, explaining how he had never been as nervous in a hunt as when he tagged his first Puma. After flying into Bogotá and meeting with a pair of trackers, Clyde loaded his gear into the guides Land Cruiser and headed into the jungle. Within a couple of days Clyde would make sight of his first Puma, by day three Clyde had come close enough to shoot the male cat with a tranquilizer dart. Walking up to that magnificent cat lying on its side still breathing, feeling its warm breath as he reached down to feel the fur and rib cage as the side of the magnificent cat heaved up and down below Clyde’s extended hand.

  It was as close to an out of body experience that Clyde would ever experience, he explained after his return from the South American jungle. The cat would be meticulously checked over by Clyde and his guides who would go on to check the great cats paws and claws, even opening its mouth to inspect and detail the size of the killer cat’s teeth for use in the Bolivian governments environmental agency.

  The evening following Clyde’s return from the jungles of South America, we swapped stories on an evening of heavy drinking way too much whiskey. That elixir always seemed to be the catalyst to more than a few tall tales between the pair of us over the years. Maybe it was all the alcohol and the THC from the numerous dubes we smoked that night but I noticed something seemed to have changed in Clyde after that trip. That nervous energy and darkness that had always radiated from him had somehow mellowed, if just slightly. I had always felt like the guy was searching for someone or something, after the age of forty it felt as if Clyde had either found what he was after or resolved himself to never finding it.

  The year when we turned forty, our good financial fortune made the year after we had been forced from the pot trade perhaps the best year of our lives. That sentiment would be shared by not only Clyde and I but the twins as well, it would be their first full year completely removed from the day to day operations of the grow houses. Their new lives in the Grand Caymans allowed the two to finally enjoy the fruits of their many years of illegal hard work. That year would be the first of many in the past twenty that all of us could now enjoy each other’s company, more than we ever had in the past.

  Clyde and I could not risk much contact with the twins through the growing years, just in case the pair was being watched we had to remain below the authority’s radar. After Jessie’s arrest and the abandoning of the grow op houses, Clyde, Lilly and I would visit the twins in the Grand Caymans, the twins would travel to Canada to visit us several times over the year’s. Of course Lilly would still know nothing of the grow ops, Oliver and Jessie would tell her they moved to the Grand Caymans to escape the harsh Canadian winters.

  In the year two thousand and six, I could finally free my mind from the worries associated with the grow op. There was always an underlying worry that I could never shake through those years, everything we had worked so hard for could come to an abrupt end in an instant. More than that I would have lost Lilly, Sid would never have to know his father was a drug dealer in the years before his birth.

  It had been seemingly easy for me to forget I was an accomplice in multiple murders, within a few years I rarely gave the events a second thought. Each murder had never left a drop of blood on my hands and apparently had not stained my conscience, the bulk of those memories conveniently washed away years
ago.

  One thing was certain there was no way I had the makings of a murderer, much too weak stomached for that. I would do little to prevent those killings either, moving forward after those first murders had kept our business alive.

  Life is for the living I guess. Not much good dwelling on those that are already dead, it’s too late for them. Something I discovered early working in this business, there were very few deaths that really impacted the world around us. No death had stopped the world, the sun still rises the next day and people carry on like they always have, with or without us.

  So much joyous living had taken place in that time since those killings, those events seemed like another existence and a different time to me. I had always loosely believed in the Karma of all good and bad comes back eventually but how had Clyde and I been punished for all that we had done. Where was my bad Karma?

  Life for us both could not have been better, after the grow ops had been closed down and Jessie had been freed on bail the real living life began for all of us. Shortly after the grow houses had been shut down I felt like a different man, by the age of forty there was enough money to last a life time. Our cultivation days were behind us along with all the stress and constant fear of being caught. The absence of the stress and the freedom from all the worries of the grow op allowed me to release something that had always been wound to tight within me.

  The last twenty years had been the best of our lives, yet Clyde had continued to murder, yet somehow we all had lived happily, free of retribution. Karma it would seem had little bearing on our lives after all, unless Clyde and I had bestowed all these bad deeds on someone else instead. Sid had been a healthy his entire life, Lilly was happy and giving, I had enjoyed a privileged life.