It was a story about the old man, whose name was Hostetler, refusing to sell the last fifty acres of his property, even though the county was pissed off because they were losing taxes that Disney or Comfort Suites were eager to pay. The picture showed a sour-looking old man with bitter, superior eyes, sitting next to a dog, some kind of pointer that looked more crippled up than the old man.
Damn, the guy was real. Just like Julie had said.
King had flipped to a page that showed another photo, the man inside his house, pointing at a painting. The magazine said it was the old man’s grandfather, the property’s original owner. There was something else, in the background, that was of more interest to King, who’d brought along a magnifying glass.
“A mint set of American gold eagles,” he had told Perry, an authority on coins now, too.
“How you know they’re mint? The picture’s blurry.”
Patiently, King had explained, “Because they’re framed, for chrissake. The photographer was focusing on the painting of the dude in the old Army uniform, not the coins. A set like this is worth twenty grand, easy. How many more you guess he’s got stashed away in that big old house?”
Twenty grand was more money than Perry had ever had in his life, but it was a figure he could get his mind around. Two hundred grand, or two million, those numbers came into his brain as blank pages. But if King said it was possible, maybe it was . . .
Perry, the doer, had said to King, “The dog looks too old to cause trouble. But we can’t just bust in there and expect Hostetler to fill a bag.”
King had already thought of that, too. “I got my hands on a little Hi-Point three-eighty,” he said.
When Perry asked, “You ever shoot a gun?,” King snapped, “I was in the Army for a year, wasn’t I?,” but he wasn’t convincing.
The men had taken a bus back to where King was rooming because Perry, who read gun magazines, wanted to see the little palm-sized pistol—black on silver; five rounds in the clip, one in the chamber—for himself.
The gun was a cheapie, it couldn’t be very accurate, but it would do the job. Same with the two plastic-handled switchblade knives, all in a box.
“One old man, one old dog,” King had said. “House-sitting out there all alone, full of gold coins and twenty-dollar bills. Hell, like the article said, we’d be doing Florida’s taxpayers a favor to free up that shitty excuse for a farm. It’s such an easy setup, I’m surprised someone hasn’t tried it before.”
On the thirteen-hundred-mile trip, Bloomington to Orlando, Perry wondered about that. Three times they switched buses—Evansville, Nashville and Atlanta—and, at each stop, because there was still an opportunity to buy a ticket home, he’d brought up the subject with King, saying “Why you think that is?”
Why hadn’t anyone tried to rob the man? Perry meant.
King and Perry arrived at the Orlando Greyhound terminal, North Magruder Avenue, an hour before midnight on Saturday, only a few hours ahead of the Arctic low. They stepped off the bus into a balmy, orange-scented night that caused Perry to say, “Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all.”
By Sunday morning, though, at first light, the Arctic wind was silver in the palms. By midnight, it was so cold Perry could see King’s breath pluming as he used a screwdriver to lever a window open, then stepped back so Perry could be the first to climb into the old man’s house.
It wasn’t as easy as they imagined because Perry was even drunker than King, plus he’d scored a bottle of Adderall behind the Greyhound station—20-milligram tablets, pure pharmaceutical speed.
Inside the house, when Perry finally found his balance, and his eyes had adjusted, he had his question answered—“Why’d no one ever try to rob the guy before?”
Alfred Hostetler was standing there, shouldering a shotgun, squinting with his bitter, superior eyes, ready to pull the trigger. Cowering behind him was what looked like a Mexican family, a woman and a couple of kids—no, three kids, two snot-nosed boys and a pretty little girl who was maybe thirteen.
It took Perry a moment to arrange it in his mind. He had climbed into the mother’s bedroom, he realized, probably the maid.
“You better be carryin’ more than a damn screwdriver, you expect to rob a man like me and walk out alive,” the old man said to him, sounding pissed off, with no hint of fear, like he had more important things to do.
Even so, that struck Perry as an odd thing to say because it was King who had the screwdriver. Perry was carrying the gun. One of the switch-blades, too.
Clack . . . clack-clack. It was the sound the shotgun made, both barrels misfiring on 12-gauge shells that might have been as old as old man Hostetler. Perry had thrown both arms over his head, terrified, but recovered fast enough to shoot Hostetler twice, in the stomach, as the Mexican maid and her brats screamed, then ran for their lives into the darkness of the big wooden house.
Perry sprinted after them, but shoved the gun into his pocket in favor of the switchblade he was carrying.
A knife would be quieter, he decided. More hands-on and personal, too.
That little pistol was loud.
Two hours later, riding in what was probably the maid’s car—a beat-up old Subaru that smelled of diapers and Taco Bell—Perry was now getting pissed off himself because King, who was driving, kept saying to him, “Jesus Christ, I can’t believe this is happening!”
Because of the Adderall, the man’s voice was abrasive in Perry’s brain, as penetrating as the orange caution lights flashing down MLK Drive at three a.m. on this morning, with a black wind scattering trash across the asphalt.
Perry said, “It happened, so get over it. What was I supposed to do? The guy was pointing a gun at me! The shithead tried to shoot me, goddamn it. I could be dead right now!” He had been scrubbing at his hands and jeans with a towel. Now he cranked down the window, let the wind take the towel, and couldn’t help grinning as he yelled, “That was wild, man! Talk about a fuckin’ high! I was that close to dying, dude!”
Perry had never experienced what he was feeling. It was an overwhelming rush, a screw-it-all freedom that was like soaring, a complete letting go. His brain was flashing postcard images of what he’d done: colors bright, dripping like fresh paint, startled faces, screaming wide eyes, five people, the old man, the woman, then the kids, finding them hidden in closets, under a bed, one by one, the girl last—settling into it then, taking some time to enjoy how her muscles responded to the point of the switchblade—but he hadn’t touched the dog.
Nice dog.
In fact, Perry had said that as he left, walking out the front door, using the towel so they wouldn’t leave prints.
“Nice dog. Good doggy . . .Yes you are!”
King had repeated what he’d said about not believing this was happening, then made a show of calming himself, before saying, “Okay, okay, here’s what we do. You sober enough to at least listen?”
Perry was crashing from the speed, his nerves sparking, but he was sober enough.
What they did was park the Subaru near a pool hall, keys on the dash, and walked fast down MLK to where it became Lake Silver Drive, the wind pushing them along like leaves beneath streetlights. They kept right on walking, even when a cop slowed, cruising past, but the cop never stopped, so they did seven or eight miles before first light, finally buying coffee and doughnuts at the Perkins on Cypress Gardens Drive, both men spending some intense time in the washroom first.
Three miles later, they saw a dozen bicycles racked outside Candlelight Christian Academy off Highway 17. It was early Sunday—probably a soccer team or something doing an overnight, King decided, before saying, “Make sure you take a helmet, too.”
Christ, a bike helmet? After murdering five people?
Perry responded, “Whatever,” keeping watch as King chose a nice Trek, then grabbed a bike for himself.
The two men pedaled south, not too fast—“Like we’re sightseeing,” King kept reminding Perry—riding until noon, which was when
they noticed two helicopters flying search patterns to the north, and King said, “We gotta find trees to hide under. A place to camp, maybe, for a few days, where there’s cover—and water. I want to wash this shit off me.”
King’s slacks and shirtsleeves were stained, too. He was the one who had pulled the girl from beneath the bed, then held her so Perry could use the knife, but not before saying first, “Give the King about five minutes alone with this pretty little thing. Okay?”
Perry did it—but only because one of her brat brothers was making a wheezy, crying sound, still breathing.
Where?
It took Perry a while, maybe five full minutes, down on his hands and knees, crawling with the bloody knife in his hand, searching until he found the kid under a blanket.
Perry guessed the brat thought he would be safe there. But he wasn’t.
For a couple of hours, the men hiked inland, ducking branches, until they found a lake so far from the road that there was no sound of cars, only wind blowing through the high trees where a hawk screeched, but not another living thing around.
Near the lake was a hunters’ storage shed, padlocked, about the size of a Porta Potti. Inside were cans of food in Tupperware tubs, and military Meals Ready to Eat, dense as cheese blocks in their rubberized brown bags.
“No one will bother us here. You think?” King said to Perry, as he collapsed, cross-legged, in the shade.
Perry was walking toward the lake, where trees threw shadows along the southern perimeter. The water was black and clear in a way that reminded him of looking through smoked glass, like a black marble he’d had as a kid.
Perry answered, “I ain’t going back to the joint.” Meaning no one had better try to come after them. He had lost the switchblade during all the excitement, but he still had the pistol.
King had held on to his knife. He used it now to slit open an MRE, took a few bites of a fig bar, then decided to recount the gold coins that had come spinning onto the floor when the fancy frame busted.
Eleven gold eagles, and seven hundred dollars, cash, in twenty-dollar bills, that’s all they’d found worth a damn—but it wasn’t like they’d spent much time searching the place after doing what they’d done.
Perry was staring at the lake—it was teardrop shaped, sharp edged, like a bowl—seeing fish nosing among roots that protruded, knee-high, from the water.
“Weird-looking trees,” Perry said. “Sort of like in comic books, the fantasy ones, you know—girls with big boobs, carrying spears.” He lit a cigarette, crumpled the pack, then watched the wind sail it across the lake.
“They’re cypress trees,” King told him, looking at the sky, before adding, “This cold front’s moving south. By tonight, it’ll get warmer here, but cold as hell in Miami. Probably the Sarasota area, too.” An authority on the weather now.
Perry was still staring at the lake, his eyes suddenly wider, as he whispered, “What the hell was that . . . ?”
He had seen something so unexpected that it startled him. A huge fish or something from beneath the surface, something dark with a tail, had stirred a refrigerator-sized swirl beneath the Marlboro pack. Like it had swum up through the black water intending to eat the glittering wrapper but had changed its mind.
Goddamn, it was big. Seven or eight feet long, at least.
Perry almost said something to King, but decided no, there was a chance he had imagined it. Could be. He had swallowed two more tabs of Adderall and could feel his edges sharpening, the chemical sparkling through his brain, brightening dark threads and creating halos around trees where wind was blowing the waxy light.
There was another matter Perry had been waiting to address. The topic was creating pressure inside his skull and needed to get out. Perry was still fuming about the way King had almost bolted, back there at the old man’s house, instead of joining in and doing what had to be done. There was something else, too.
“The next time we steal bicycles,” Perry said over his shoulder to King, “I take first pick. I wanted that Trek, but you took it. Didn’t even ask.”
He gave the man a hard look, adding, “Bikes or anything else. The King don’t get first pick anymore. Understand?”
King swallowed without making eye contact, afraid of his cell mate for the first time since Statesville.
“Sure,” he said, “whatever.” He was chewing the fig bar, letting his attitude say, No big deal, settling himself by turning his attention to practical matters. Thinking was his job; Perry was a two-time loser, nothing but a punk.
King took some time to review. How safe was this place?
The hunters’ shed was a quarter mile away, no path cut to the lake—like the hunters didn’t know the lake existed. There was a swamp, remnants of a barbed-wire fence cutting through—private property. Maybe that was the reason.
Today was . . . Monday?
Yes, Monday. He and Perry had food, and they could find a place to sleep beneath the cypress trees. Tomorrow, regular people would be working, no hunters to worry about. With any luck, a couple of Perry-dumb punks had spotted the Subaru on MLK, keys on the dash, and would give the cops something to do besides search the area again with helicopters.
King could picture it, the cops spotting the stolen car—Smart—and he let himself relax a little. Couple of days sleeping near the lake, then back on the bicycles and head south. Key West, just like regular tourists.
Safe. Yeah . . . And it got even better the next morning, Tuesday, when the men with the scuba gear and pickup truck appeared out of nowhere.
Perry and King watched the men from the distance. Watched the skinny hippie, with his ribs showing and ponytail, and the Apache-looking teenager and the nerdy-looking guy with glasses and shoulders take their sweet damn time before suiting up in their scuba gear, wearing short-sleeved wet suits, then walking their fins into waist-deep water before submerging, one by one.
That left the old redneck man, the one who’d been driving the truck, alone onshore.
Perry looked at King, but King took his time acknowledging Perry—back in charge now, and he wanted the punk to know it.
“Dude,” Perry whispered, “I wouldn’t go in that water. No fucking way, dude. What you think they’re after?” He still hadn’t told King what he had seen yesterday afternoon, the large dark shadow swirling beneath the surface.
King didn’t answer. An executive silence, that was the way to handle punks on speed.
“Maybe fishing, huh?” Perry said. “Or looking for something. How long you think they’ll be down?”
King held his hand out until Perry finally figured out what it was he wanted.
“Long enough,” King said, as Perry handed him the pistol. “You know what’s funny? They’re down there having fun, thinking nothing in the world can go wrong. But here we are.”
King was smiling, picturing the divers’ faces when they surfaced, finding their truck gone, and the old redneck dude shot or cut up—probably dead, knowing Perry.
ONE
ON A WINTER AFTERNOON, DIVING AN INLAND LAKE, south of Orlando, every small thing was going right, far better than I had anticipated, but then it all went suddenly wrong in ways I could not have imagined.
That’s the way it happens, when it happens. People like me, the obsessive planners, the compulsive guardians, always say later—if they survive—“It’s the one thing I didn’t think about.”
On the water, though, it’s seldom just one thing that goes awry. A single miscalculation can catalyze a disastrous momentum that no amount of planning can interrupt. Much of life is random. It’s as simple as that, although my spiritually devout friends wouldn’t agree. Some people find the illusion of order comforting.
I don’t. I prefer unencumbered facts even in an arbitrary universe. When plans unravel and the sky begins to fall, I’m all too aware that the tiniest bit of random luck can mean the difference between life and death.
On this winter afternoon, for example.
I was fifteen
feet beneath the water’s surface, in what should have been one of the safest little dive spots in Florida, when I heard a clatter of falling rock and looked up just in time to kick free as a ledge collapsed, burying my two dive partners beneath a ton of archaic limestone.
Fossilized bone atop living bone. Water is a relentless and dispassionate reorganizer.
We had been clustered near the ledge when it fell. One of my partners had found a handhold in a rock vent as we peered through masks, studying a yard-long chunk of ivory that was tannin-stained the color of obsidian. It was the tusk of a prehistoric animal, a mammoth. For one million years, the animal had rested here—its calcified scaffolding, anyway. A couple of rib bones lay nearby; possibly a splinter of femur, too.
Then the three of us came along. We disturbed the delicate balance of limestone, causing a million years of history to come tumbling down with inverse irony: the very, very old burying the new.
My partners included my boat-bum hipster pal, Tomlinson, and a troubled teenage Indian kid from Oklahoma via the juvenile court system, William J. Chaser. Will, for short, to the people he’d met around the marina, except for Tomlinson, who called him Will-Joseph—Joseph being the kid’s middle name.
From the beginning, I’d argued against the boy coming along. I’d finally consented, though, as a favor to a high-powered woman—Will’s temporary guardian—and also because Tomlinson had fronted a convincing argument. The boy was a novice diver, true, but he was also an athlete, a high school rodeo star, tough, and as quick as a cat—when he wasn’t stealing horses, selling pot or running away from one detention center after another.
We had been underwater for half an hour. The kid was doing okay—impressive, in fact. He was as confident wearing fins as he was sitting a rodeo saddle. Tomlinson was having fun, and so was I. Old man Arlis Futch—a commercial fisherman and a friend—was miffed because he wasn’t in the water with us, but that was the way it had to be. Someone had to stay topside and watch the truck, right?
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