Mr. Sandman: A Thrilling Novel

by Lyle Howard

  The helicopter began circling near the wreckage to see if perhaps the teenager had drifted down river. They found no trace of him.

  The winch operator fights back tears as he re­counts his story of the teenager’s valiant effort. “I wanted to cry for him,” he says, barely managing the words. “If I would have seen him again, I would have jumped into the river myself to try and save him, even if he was floating face down.”

  Part 3: A Storm on the Horizon

  ONE

  FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA 1992

  Winslow P. Kirby was a man not even his mother could love. As he sat hunched over his vegetable plate in the gloomiest corner of the Parkdale Cafeteria, he patiently waited for the coast to clear. Within seconds of the last waitress disappearing from view, he dumped the entire con­tents of the plastic container into his opened briefcase. Grinning at the ease of his heist, he withdrew his foreclosure ledger and then closed the leather briefcase and locked it. He really didn’t need all the pink packets of the artificial sweetener, but it was the thrill of not having to pay for them that made it so exciting to him.

  Every waitress and waiter at the Parkdale agreed that Winslow reminded them of a bloated, nearsighted gerbil, although one or two of the servers believed that such a generality did a great disservice to that class of rodents. Because Winslow’s reputation for thievery was so notorious, the serving staff originated two ceremonies that each new waitress wanting to work at the cafeteria had to complete. It was a rite of passage into the kingdom of gratuities. The first step in this pointless ritual was to make sure that every table’s plastic container which held the sugar and pink sweetener packets stayed full. The second assignment was to deliver Winslow his last cup of hot water. “Tea bag and lemon on the side, if you don’t mind! Never, ever put it in the cup!”

  The real motive for the baptism by fire was so that the staff could observe the trainee’s flabbergasted reaction when Winslow would invariably ask the server for more sweetener. Some of the greatest double takes ever seen by the employees of the Parkdale Cafeteria were credited to Winslow Kirby.

  Winslow was a regular who worked next door at the First Trust National Bank. Every morning at eleven forty-five he occupied the same chair at the same table in the Parkdale Cafeteria. He would sit solemnly and eat his vegetable plate, the cheapest thing on the menu, for exactly one hour and then retreat back into the bank until the next day. He had never missed a day behind his desk, or at his lunch table, in over twelve years.

  Winslow Kirby was the consummate professional at dropping the ax, and no one rejoiced in the morose duty more. When it came to refusing a mortgage, or rejecting a personal loan application, Winslow begged to be the one who passed along the unfortunate information. These were the only occasions that the board of directors of the bank would let Winslow interact with the public, and probably the only reason for his lengthy tenure at the bank.

  As Winslow cheerfully browsed through his list of fore­closures scheduled for the month, his sinister smile once again spread across his lips. Straightening the wire-rimmed glasses on his cue-ball-shaped face, he glanced up with disdain at one of the waitresses as she approached his table with a pitcher of ice water.

  “More water?” she asked, holding out the pitcher. Winslow slapped shut his notebook as though it held the formula for building a nuclear weapon. “I drink tea, hot tea. Do you see a water glass within fifty feet of this table?” he said contemp­tuously, running his opened palm across the table’s surface like a game show hostess showing off prizes.

  The waitress had dealt with Winslow before and demon­strated superhuman restraint in not dumping the entire con­tents of the pitcher over what had become known in the cafeteria as his “thirteen-dollar toupee.” Without saying a word, she casually glanced down at the empty sugar container and then her eyes tracked upward over Winslow’s enormous belly until she locked eyes with the wicked man. More was said without speaking in the next ten seconds, than an hour of quarreling would have accomplished.

  From behind the cash register, Stuart Tobler, the man­ager, had a clear view of what was transpiring at the table. With the speed of a competition greyhound, he excused himself from behind the counter and ran over to interfere before anything got out of hand.

  Winslow sneered at the manager and the waitress with a chunk of half-eaten green bean wedged between two of his yellowing front teeth. “You had better keep an eye on this broad, Stu,” he hissed at the acquiescent manager. “We wouldn’t want her to lose her place of employment, now would we?”

  The manager, who was twice the size of the weasely banker, pulled the waitress away without saying anything. He just smiled sheepishly and nodded his head as he towed the waitress toward the kitchen.

  “How can you let him talk to you that way?” the enraged waitress demanded, as she struggled to free her arm from Tobler’s grip.

  “As long as his bank holds the papers on this restaurant, no one gets on Winslow Kirby’s bad side, do you under­stand?” he commanded, standing toe to toe with the infuriated woman. “I’ve heard too many horror stories of him shutting down little joints like mine.”

  The waitress stood with her hands defiantly on her hips and bit her bottom lip. “I just want to know how, with thirty-thousand sperm, he managed to win!”

  Tobler looked down at his wristwatch. “He’ll be gone in fifteen minutes. Until then, I don’t want you anywhere near his table, understand?”

  The waitress rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t go near that table if Tom Selleck was roped naked across it!”

  With the same anticipation that a spectator would watch the clock during a space shuttle countdown, the employees of the Parkdale Cafeteria stared at the clock while Winslow Kirby finished his lunch.

  Scraping his plate to scrounge up every last morsel of food, Winslow finally set down his knife and fork and let out a loud, stinking belch. Three tables away, a young mother and her son, hearing the gastric chorus, picked up their lunches and moved even farther away.

  Winslow never asked for much from life, just a paycheck on Fridays, and a good nudie magazine to curl up with on the sleeper-sofa. He was a man who would never find love because he didn’t know what it looked like.

  Wiping a bit of creamed corn from the corner of his mouth with his napkin, he reopened his briefcase and slid the foreclosure notebook back inside. There was nothing better to Winslow than booting some destitute family out of their house after a hot meal. His life was complete.

  To the delight of the staff and management alike, Winslow took his leave of the cafeteria at precisely twelve forty-three. It was a minute’s walk back to the bank and Winslow was never late. As he quickly made his way from one building to the next, Winslow peeked out from beneath his oversized umbrella at the afternoon sun which simmered in the Fort Lauderdale sky like the yolk of an enormous fried egg. For most of the city’s citizens, the warmth of the sun was a welcome relief from the torrent of thunderstorms that had been plaguing them for the past few weeks. But not Winslow. He cursed beneath his breath at the sweltering rise in tempera­ture. While the palm trees which lined Broward Boulevard devoured the temperamental sun’s nourishment, Winslow pushed unwary pedestrians out of his way trying to escape its warming rays.

  With a snapping shut of his black parasol, Winslow stepped gratefully through the revolving doors into the air-conditioned comfort of the First National Trust Bank’s lobby. Whenever Winslow entered the bank after lunch, a noticeable silence would fall over the interior of the bank. It was as if everyone who worked there prayed that Winslow wouldn’t return after lunch. But Winslow P. Kirby, loyal employee, always did.

  On a hat rack in the corner, Winslow hung his umbrella before stepping into the rear office to punch his timecard. His secretary, Judy Thompson, who was also returning from lunch, was lifting her timecard out of the rack when Winslow stepped in front of her and slid his into the clock first. “Excuse me?” she begged of her boss.

  Winslow just grunted some
non-discernible babble under his breath as he slipped his card back in the rack.

  Judy was mortified. While she was off the clock she didn’t have to take his guff. “How dare you! I was here first, Mr. Kirby!”

  Winslow looked down at his watch and then up at the time-clock. The minute hand clicked to twelve forty-six. “You’re late,” he grunted at her. “Late again and I’ll see that you’re canned!”

  Judy Thompson’s temples throbbed as she watched the lower life-form walk back out into the lobby. Starting a petition drive to have Winslow Kirby fired would be futile. It had been tried before and had failed. There was no getting around the board of directors. Winslow P. Kirby would be around long after secretaries like her had come and gone.

  Judy Thompson had the second-longest tenure of any of Winslow’s secretaries. An old woman named Emma Perkins held the record of two years, but rumor had it that she was living in an institution in upstate New York. No one knew for sure, but Judy didn’t doubt it. She had only been on the bank’s payroll for a little more than four months, but if she didn’t quit or receive a transfer soon, she knew that either therapy or murder would be a necessary eventuality.

  Winslow walked past the teller’s cages with the brass taps on his shoes clicking across the marble floor. To the bank’s customers, the noise was an annoying distraction, but to the employees of the bank, it was a sound they had all learned to drown out, like the buzzing of the fluorescent lights.

  Elsworth Ritchie III, president of the bank, caught a glimpse of Winslow as he walked passed his opened office door. He had been waiting for Winslow to return from lunch. “Uh, Winslow,” he called out. “I need to see you … now!”

  There was a tone in Ritchie’s voice that Winslow had become all too familiar with. It was the sound of dissatisfac­tion. Elsworth Ritchie was the only man that Winslow truly feared. There was no one else that owned any power over Winslow. No one else possessed the authority to fire him, and without this job, Winslow didn’t know what he would do. The saying goes: you should never burn your bridges after you cross them. But Winslow not only burned them … he cremated them. Without his job at the First National Trust Bank, Winslow P. Kirby would probably dry up and blow away.

  Standing just out of Ritchie’s view, Winslow ran his index finger across his upper and lower teeth to clean any food particles that might have lingered from lunch. His finger came away stained with a smorgasbord of leftovers which Winslow promptly rubbed off one of the legs of his pants. “Yes, sir, you wanted to see me, sir?” he asked, peeking into the office.

  “Get inside here and close the door behind you!” Ritchie snarled.

  Winslow swallowed hard and stepped into the office, obeying his superior’s instructions. Ritchie’s office was decorated in warm walls of oak and deep shades of ma­hogany. None of this newfangled Formica “slap-up-the-walls-in-thirty-days” crap for Elsworth Ritchie III. No, siree. This office was a straight “third-generation-old-money” kind of office. First editions filled the maple bookshelves on the east wall, while a family portrait of Ritchie’s father and grandfather hung on the west wall. Anyone who stepped into this shrine to wealth would have to be intimidated, whether they were an employee or not, and that’s the way Elsworth Ritchie III wanted it.

  Ritchie sat behind his desk like a medieval king would sit on his throne, granting an audience to a lowly peasant. He let Winslow stand anxiously for a minute or two while he browsed through some papers that didn’t mean a damned thing to him. Keeping the natives restless was something that his grandfather had taught him. When an employee fears you, his grandfather had said, then you have him right where you want him.

  Ritchie looked up and then went back to browsing through his papers. Winslow wasn’t sufficiently nervous enough; his eyes were still wandering over the spines on the bookshelf. When Ritchie looked up again, Winslow was staring right at him and it caught him off-guard. “You wanted to see me about something, sir?”

  Ritchie reached across to the corner of his desk and picked up an ivory pipe that his father used to smoke. Ritchie never smoked, but he thought it made him look sophisticated when he held it. He was wrong.

  Elsworth Ritchie III was nothing like numbers I and II. He was built like a football player and had the good looks and debonair charisma to charm the most beautiful of pampered socialites out of their evening gowns. He hated finance and depended more on a gaggle of accountants and lawyers to tell him how the bank was doing rather than using his own limited wisdom. If, by some mysterious freak of nature, Elsworth Ritchie III had been created a handkerchief instead of a human being, his sage grandfather would have described him as “one for showin’ and not for blowin’.” There was a good reason that he wasn’t in the portrait hanging on the west wall … his grandfather was an excellent judge of character.

  “Winslow,” he began in an awkward yuppie lilt, “do you own an employee handbook?”

  Winslow looked down at his feet. Own one? I helped write it, you asshole, he thought to himself. “Yes, sir. Of course I own one, sir.”

  Ritchie leaned back in his leather chair and nearly fell over, catching himself at the last second by grabbing onto the lip of his desk. Winslow was no longer nervous; he was now offended by the buffoon acting so condescendingly before him.

  “What does the manual say about animals in the work­place, Wins … l-o-w?” Ritchie asked, dragging out the last three letters of Winslow’s name, as though he were trying to make an adjective out of it.

  The question totally bushwhacked Winslow. He had no idea what Ritchie was talking about. He tried not to show what he was thinking, fearing Ritchie would fire him on the spot. “I’m confused, sir. What do animals have to do with anything?”

  Ritchie leaned forward and spoke with the unlit pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Just answer my question, Wins…low!”

  There was nothing mentioned in the handbook regarding animals because there would be no reason for it. The mere fact that Ritchie was saying there was led Winslow to believe that the man had never read the book himself. Poker was never Winslow’s strong suit, but he decided to bluff anyway.

  “The manual says …. ” Winslow started, choosing each word carefully. ” … that no animals of any kind are allowed on bank premises. This policy excludes customers conducting business, of course,” Winslow added.

  Ritchie cleared his throat. “Of course!” Winslow stood uncomfortably for a moment, not knowing if he was sup­posed to break the awful silence or his boss was.

  “So?” Ritchie asked, lifting his eyebrow.

  “So, sir?”

  Ritchie shook his head suspiciously. “So then, why do you have that animal at your desk?”

  The question hit Winslow like a pie in the face. He stood as speechless and dumbfounded in the middle of the huge office as an illegal alien caught in a searchlight.

  “Well … don’t just stand there with your tongue flapping in the breeze, Winslow!” Ritchie demanded. “I asked you a simple question!”

  Winslow could feel the sweat loosening the glue on his hairpiece. “Sir … I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  Ritchie leaned forward across his desk and pointed the stem of his pipe directly between Winslow’s eyes. “You’re standing there and denying that you know anything about the dog at your desk?”

  Suddenly, Winslow P. Kirby smelled a set-up. Of course, he thought to himself, everyone around the bank would love to see him thrown out on his butt. His anger boiled. Wait until I get hold of the person responsible for this, he promised himself. “Sir, give me ten minutes and I’ll make sure that I get to the bottom of this little episode.”

  Ritchie leaned back in his chair.” You’ ve got ten minutes, mister, to get that pooch out of here, or else you’ll be out of here!”

  Winslow moved slowly backward toward the door, feel­ing behind him for the doorknob. He didn’t know why, but he had a gut feeling not to turn his back on his boss. “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mr.
Ritchie,” Winslow meekly said, “I’ll take care of this right away!”

  Once outside the chamber of horrors, Winslow stood momentarily to catch his breath. Someone would pay for this blemish on his record. Oh yes, indeed, someone would pay dearly!

  From where he was standing, Winslow could survey the entire bank. Across the lobby on his desk, he could see what looked to be a tan plastic box with dime-sized holes cut around its circumference and a handle on top. It was a pet carrier like the ones he had seen in the pet store window. Every few seconds, the box would wobble back and forth as its contents shifted in its cramped quarters.

  This took some real ingenuity, Winslow thought, and it might have worked if he wasn’t such a valuable asset to the bank. Who could have dreamt up such a resourceful plan? He looked around the lobby at his fellow associ­ates and came up empty. There was Joe Ivey, the sixty-eight-year-old security guard, who Winslow had reported for dozing in the bathroom, but no, this was way beyond the old man’s potential.

  Then there was Billy Murphy, the new head teller. Maybe he was behind this subversion, Winslow considered. Winslow had once walked in on Murphy and a female teller fooling around in the copy room. Could Murphy hold a grudge this long, just because the woman was fired after Winslow had left an anonymous note on the president’s desk? Murphy had no possible way of knowing that Winslow was the one responsible for having the bank terminate his strumpet.

  Winslow was in a quandary; he couldn’t imagine anyone, not even his secretary, who hated him like poison. Who was capable of concocting such a clever scheme against him?

  Regardless of who was behind the insidious plot, Winslow had a dog to get rid of. Even from across the lobby, without ever actually viewing the offensive animal, he shuddered to imagine the mange and fleas that had to be multiplying by exponential proportions in the mutt’s ragged coat.

  Winslow strode to his desk with his shoes clacking wildly across the black and white marble. Perched on top of the dark maple desktop, the pet carrier suddenly fell still. Winslow sat himself down in his chair and peered through the wire window at the animal inside.