Gator Wave

by David F. Berens

  The big fella singing was actually pretty good. As the night wore on, Troy found himself sliding down to the end of the bar where he could see across to the back room where women of varying degrees of … talent … took to the stage and proceeded to take all of their clothes off. It wasn’t difficult to work out that Woody’s was not a hotbed of hotties making a ton of money stripping. It looked more like a group of girls competing for attention on what might’ve been visible scar night. Most looked as if maybe they were mothers feeding their kids—or someone else’s kids—or perhaps a drug habit.

  He turned down dances from Mercedes, Crystal, Candy, Kitty, Jade, Destiny, and Bambi. After one particularly large shot of tequila, he had almost given in and allowed Chardonnay to gyrate on his lap to his favorite Aerosmith song, Love In An Elevator. Thankfully, the bartender—Sully—had shooed her away and informed Troy that he might be getting more than he bargained for with the tall, dark dancer. When Troy asked what he meant, Sully simply asked him if he’d heard of the movie, The Crying Game.

  Troy had not, but he just nodded and decided it would be best if he didn’t take the lap dance. Sully slid another tequila across the bar.

  “I better not,” Troy said, holding up his hand.

  “That one’s on me.”

  “Yeah, but I gotta get home and I’m afraid that one might get me lost.”

  “You live on the island, right?”

  Troy nodded.

  “I could tell you weren’t no tourist,” Sully said. “I’ll make sure you get pointed in the right direction. Which way are you from here?”

  “South. Pretty close by. You know the tennis club?”

  “Ah, yep.” He poured another tequila for himself. “Cheers, cowboy. I won’t steer you wrong.”

  A dancer Troy hadn’t seen yet slid onto a bar stool next to him. “How ’bout one of those for me, Sully?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Can’t, unless you’re buying.”

  Troy watched as she reached down and hiked her skirt up revealing a garter stuffed with folded bills—ones, fives, tens, twenties, and even a couple of hundreds. He allowed his gaze to drift up her glittery getup, past her toned tummy, slowing only momentarily at her seemingly non-surgically-enhanced—

  “Hey, buddy,” she said, putting her finger under his chin. “If you’re gonna gawk at me like that, you gotta at least give me a tip.”

  Troy grinned. “Sorry, darlin’. The tequila’s to blame for that. How about if I buy this round.”

  He slid his hundred dollar bill across the bar and Sully looked at the girl. She nodded and he picked it up and put it in the cash register. He started to count out change, but Troy knocked his knuckle on the bar.

  “Just keep that tab open,” he said. “And whatever I don’t drink up is for you.”

  Sully shrugged. “You’re da boss.”

  The girl picked up her shot, tossed it back—no lime or salt—with no discernible grimace or shiver, and turned the empty glass over on the bar.

  “Another?” she asked Troy.

  Troy looked down at his full shot. He took a deep breath and drank it down as quickly as he could. It took two gulps and he couldn’t help but clench his eyes shut and purse his lips. The girl laughed, but it was reserved. Something was up. There was a touch of worry in her eyes..

  She had long, straight blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin with just a touch of sunburn, and just the right amount of freckles on her nose. Troy turned his glass over and belched.

  “Well, I reckon if I’m gonna buy you another round, I should at least know your name.”

  She held out a hand. The gesture seemed odd coming from a stripper, but she didn’t really look like an old pro anyway.

  “Cinnamon,” she said, pumping Troy’s hand once. “Cinnamon Starr. And you are?”

  “Bodean. Troy Bodean. I am very pleased to meet you, Cinnamon.”

  She cocked her head to the side and her eyes relaxed a bit. “That’s the first time a guy hasn’t made fun of my name or asked me what my real name is. Most men get upset when I tell them that is my real name.”

  Troy had naturally assumed it was a stage name, but he didn’t let on. “And a beautiful name it is.”

  He held up three fingers to Sully. The bartender emptied the last of the bottle into three shot glasses and slid them across the bar.

  Troy picked his up and held it high. “Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.”

  Sully gave a thumbs up and promptly tossed his tequila into a nearby sink. Troy and Cinnamon drank quickly racing to finish first. She narrowly clanked her glass onto the bar first, raising her hands in triumph.

  Troy was about to order another when the front door of the bar jerked open and crashed against the wall. He thought it was a small miracle that the black-painted glass hadn’t shattered—must’ve been a lot of paint on that thing to hold it together.

  A wiry man sauntered in, a toothpick in his teeth, his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his cutoff denim shorts. His t-shirt was sweat-stained and his skin was ruddy and tan.

  “I’ll be darned,” Cinnamon said to Troy. “That guy’s got a hat just like yours.”

  Something about the man looked familiar, but it hovered just below the surface of consciousness like that feeling of walking into a room and struggling to remember what you went in there to do. Troy shrugged it off and would later blame the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed for keeping him from recognizing the dude. But in his haze, he turned around to order another drink. Cinnamon refused. Her eyes darted from Troy to the back of the bar at a closed door. Her eyes were flighty with worry.

  “Say,” she said, touching Troy’s hand. “I gotta get out of here. Would you mind if (she lowered her voice as the bartender walked away) well … if I crashed at your place?”

  Troy blinked. “Darlin’ I appreciate what your doin’, but I’ll be honest with you, I ain’t got no cash left and besides that, I don’t really like to pay for—”

  She smacked him hard on the cheek. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  Troy rubbed his sore chin. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs. “That’s quite a right cross you got there.”

  “Shit,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you so hard. It’s just … I don’t do that kind of thing.”

  “Of course. Of course. That is totally my bad.”

  She turned and stared at a door in the shadows behind the bar. “It’s just that … I might be in a bit of trouble. See, I heard something tonight that maybe … maybe I shouldn’t have. Thing is, I don’t really want to be here when Dante comes out of that room back there.”

  “Darlin’ I’d love to help out, but I make it my policy not to get involved in domestic type things.”

  “Domestic?” She wrinkled her slightly freckled nose, until realization spread across her face. “Oh, it’s not like that. I’m not married or even dating Dante. He was trying to get me to date Matty—wherever he is right now—but I’m not sure he’s interested. Anyway, I’m starting to think that the Caparelli family is part of the maf—”

  She suddenly stopped talking and stared at the back door. Troy followed her gaze to see that there was now an older man with white, slicked back hair, standing in the door, a massive cigar between his lips. The smoke curled around his head as he stared at them.

  “Please, Troy,” she touched his arm. “I need to get out of here. Just let me crash on your floor tonight. I just need a day to let all of this blow over.”

  “Well, there’s a problem with my place. It ain’t exactly mine.”

  He proceeded to detail his accommodations and how he was just crashing in the hammock out on the back porch of the tennis club. And then he remembered that Lucas—the tennis pro—was gone. He’d hightailed it after his fiancé and would most likely be gone for at least a couple of days.

  “Oh, please. Anything will do. I just can’t be at my place tonight. I’ll sleep on the floor,” she begged, with her hands folded in front of
her chin.

  Nothing good can come of this, Troy thought, as he heard himself say, “alright then. I s’pose it’ll be okay for one night.”

  He looked back at the man standing in the doorway. His eyes were squinted and his mouth curled into a frown around his cigar. He took one step toward them, but then a clanging racket like spilled pots and pans or trash can lids erupted from the stage. The other dude with the cowboy hat had plopped down behind the drums and started beating on them with reckless abandon. He’d tossed his hat to the side and taken his shirt off. For a second, Troy wondered if Tommy Lee of Motley Crüe fame had a twin brother. If so, this was the guy. When the old man looked away from them toward the cacophony on stage, Troy grabbed the girl’s arm and pointed to the front door.

  “Let’s go.”

  12

  A Murderer In The Room

  Dante Caparelli had plenty of experience with killers—at least, civilized ones like Shorty Malone and Al “Fat Fingers” Luccessi. He could tell when a man had taken a life. The man who he’d seen at the bar sitting next to Cinnamon was the kind who had blood on his hands. Something about the man’s appearance, rugged, ruddy, wandering, and worn made Dante uneasy—a strange experience for a man who had plenty of experience dealing with serious criminal types.

  And it had been a long time since Dante seen two such men waltz into Woody’s. The guy behind the tumbled drum set was clearly a maniac and may or may not have killed someone as well. But, he’d gotten the drums back up and working and the music was actually sounding pretty damn good. Even Big Dick sent a “thumbs up” Dante’s way as the band cranked up a bar favorite with Roadhouse Blues.

  He looked back and found the two barstools where Cinnamon and the cowboy had been sitting were empty. The front door was sliding shut and Dante made to run after them, but his bad leg turned his sprint into a stumble and he was on the floor in no time. Sully flew out from behind the bar and helped him up.

  “Boss, you gotta be more careful than that,” the bartender said. “What with Matty not here and all, we wouldn’t be able to get through the night without you.”

  Dante grimaced at the thought. He really needed to get more managers out here, but money was pretty tight and no one with any real work skills wanted to work in this dump. He had half a mind to pick up the Family phone and tell them to take this place and shove it.

  “Did Cinnamon leave with that other cowboy fella?” he asked Sully.

  The New Yorker shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but they was here before all canoodled up at the bar and now …”

  He pointed at the empty barstools.

  “Did he leave a credit card or receipt or anything?”

  “Nah. Paid cash.”

  “Tell you what his name was?”

  “I think he told Cinnamon it was Bond. Troy Bond or somethin’ like that.”

  Dante huffed. Right. I’m sure that’s his real name.

  “You want I should follow ‘em, boss? The cowboy is stayin’ at the Islamorada Tennis Club. He told me that much.”

  And the piece finally clicked into Dante’s mind. Cowboy. He’d seen something earlier today about… He turned and hobbled back into his office. Slamming the door behind him, he pulled the cord on the banker’s light sitting on the edge of his steel desk. He eased himself down into the squeaky chair and reached under to find his trash can. Yesterday’s Keys News was folded and discarded.

  He pulled it out and spread it across his desk. The latest Cap Wayfarer column had been hilarious in its naïveté—somethin’ about hanging tourists from the banyan trees. Dante hated the self-righteous, Florida-native attitude about tourists. Didn’t those idiots know that tourism was a massive part of how the state made its money? More than that, it always seemed to be some silver-spoon-fed millennial that floated such ridiculousness. He didn’t know this Cap fella, but he was certain he was right about that much.

  “Jackass,” he muttered as he flipped past the front page.

  Finally, he found what he was looking for on page six. It was just above the obits and just below the Peanuts comic strip.

  COWBOY KILLER SLICING HIS WAY THROUGH SOUTH FLORIDA

  He scanned the details and discovered that the man in question was on the run from law enforcement and had likely killed more than four people on a path of terror that led straight down to the bottom of the mainland.

  Dante circled the article with a red pen and found the “If you have information” telephone number at the bottom next to a very familiar artist’s rendering of the serial killer. He didn’t dial the number, but he was certain he knew where the man was hiding out.

  He wondered idly if the dude was planning on killing Cinnamon. Poor girl had no family nearby and really no friends that Dante knew of … except Matty. His Matty. Matty who hadn’t showed up for work coincidentally on the same day this dude wandered into Woody’s.

  What if this guy had killed Matty and had kidnapped Cinnamon, planning to slice her up, too. With a new rage in his heart, Dante pushed himself up from his desk. He walked to the door and shouted out to Sully over the newly rambunctious rock and roll from the band.

  “Get a car down there to the tennis club,” he said. “I want eyes on those two.”

  He slammed the door shut as Sully picked up the phone. He’d have one of their guys over there within minutes. He hoped it was one of the good ones who wouldn’t blow their cover before Dante could get a real pro down here to find out what really happened to Matty. He took a deep breath and picked up the Family phone.

  He punched in a number that wasn’t written on any paper or stored in any phone or computer. It was a number Dante had memorized and could call without looking down at the ancient rotary dial.

  The line connected, but no one spoke.

  “I need the guy.”

  “The guy?” the voice on the line asked flatly.

  “Yeah,” Dante said, rolling a cigar between his fingers. “The guy who … fixes things.”

  13

  Just Rewards

  Gary John Suskind hadn’t come out of his room at the Lime Tree Apartment building for more than two hours over the last couple of days. The only reason he had shown his face at all was to steal a copy of the ever-thinning Keys News paper from his neighbor.

  The Cap Wayfarer column had been dead-on accurate about all the ills of tourists ravaging the sensitive state of Florida. Gary was not a native, but his mother had been and as far as he was concerned, that was good enough. He’d even sought out the writer’s email to send a congratulatory note about the brilliant piece when his blood ran ice cold.

  Under the article, in large red letters, he saw a reward notice.

  $25,000 CASH REWARD for information leading to the recovery of Mr. Wayfarer’s Orange Kayak.

  A picture of the kayak appeared under the details showing the writer sitting atop it with two buxom blonde women—both nearly naked.

  Since the local police department claims it can do nothing about the staggering amount of crime on the island, I am taking matters into my own hands. I am happy to handle the return of my kayak and the subsequent reward anonymously.

  I will also be matching the $25,000 reward in a fund to support the candidate who runs against Sheriff Paul Puckett.

  The rest of the notice was a rant against the sheriff and the local police department.

  “That’s not good, Shakira,” Gary said to the African Grey parrot perched on his shoulder. “That’s so not good.”

  “Not good. Not good,” the parrot squawked back at him.

  Gary leaned back on his designer Divano Roma futon and ran his fingers through his thick, lustrous hair.

  He was in the middle of considering a call to the police to explain exactly what had happened. Surely with all the advancements in crime scene technology they could tell that Matty had been eaten by a gator along with the boat.

  “That is if they ever find the kayak and whatever’s left of Matty,” he mumbled out loud.

  “Whatev
er’s left of Matty,” Shakira, quick to mimic anything she heard, said back in a near perfect echo of Gary.

  “Oh, crap, no, Shakira. Don’t say anything about Matty.”

  “Don’t say anything about Matty. Whatever’s left of Matty.”

  Gary jumped up to grab the bird, but was interrupted by a bony knock at the door. He froze. Shakira let out a squawk, but Gary held up his finger to his lips shushing the parrot.

  “I know you're in there, Suskind,” the muffled voice said through the door. “Open up.”

  Gary watched helplessly as Shakira ruffled the feathers on her head and opened her mouth. “Don’t say anything about Matty. Whatever’s left of Matty.”

  “Shit. No, bird!” Gary lunged at the grey sending it fluttering and flapping wildly about the tiny apartment.

  The knock became more insistent. “I hear you in there, Gary. Open up. I saw the article in the paper about the kayak.”

  Gary nearly stumbled over his coffee table in shock. The voice outside the door belonged to Myrtle Hussholder, his landlord. She’d been the one to suggest he take his secret crush on a boat ride.

  “Always romantic and they can’t get away from you even if they want to,” she’d told him with a sly wink.

  Gary picked up a copy of the latest Broadway Journal magazine from the table and flung it at the escaping Parrot. He took a deep breath and strode across to the door. He took a second to compose himself and ran a hand through his hair.

  Putting on his best smile, he opened the door. Outside on the rusted-rail enclosed walkway stood Myrtle. Gary would’ve been surprised to find out she wasn’t at least a hundred years old.